Page 36 of A Trade of Blood

I trudged backthrough the mud, the rain thrumming on my shoulders, my skull pounding with memories attempting to beat their way in. Yet unlike my engraved memories, these were not perfect, preserved seconds floating in my skull: these were sweaty and half remembered, yet heavy with nuance and feeling, for they were from before I’d ever been altered.

The smell of spiced tea in the mornings. The laughter and whisper of my sisters in the next room. The family of foxes that had lived under the wood shack, the little kits peering out at my sisters and me with their bright green eyes. And the lighting of the lanterns on the Eve of the March, these great, ornate, copper things that mygrandmother had cherished, and insisted be hung justsobefore their lighting.

I want them hung high,she’d tell our servants.Hung high so they can be seen from a distance! If we are to be lavish, I wish for others to know it, damn it all!

The pale orange of her robes. The plummy twinkle of the amethysts in her ring. The smell of the reagents she’d mixed into her hair to make it part so precisely. How strange it was to have so much of my grandmother return to me now, in this distant place.

Yet most of all, I remembered how she’d stood over me as I did my letters.

I would kneel on the pad of carpet before the parchment, ink brush trembling in my fingers before I attempted—for perhaps the dozenth time—to carefully form the imperial standard characters with an ink brush. My reading and writing skills had been abysmal then, and no matter how I’d focused and gritted my teeth, each stroke of the brush had been awkward, clumsy, unreadable. My grandmother had stood over me, eyes bright and furious as she boomed—Do youknowhow your fingers work, boy? Do your eyesseethe paper? Why can’t youdothis? I confess, I cannot comprehend it! What weakness lives in your head?

She would relent—eventually. Then—after I’d put away the brushes and burned the parchments I’d written in the fireplace—then came the retreat to the chambers upstairs, and the scrape as I slid open the closet door.

The comforting, musty darkness. The caress of my mother’s forgotten hanging clothes on my neck as I hugged my knees to my chest. And then, finally, the saline sting of tears.

Once, I recalled, as I had huddled in the closet, there’d come a knock at the door, and a voice—Din? Din, are you there? Are you all right?

Fotia. How small her voice had been in those days. She’d asked if I was there, if I needed help. Yet I’d not answered, and had instead hid away deeper in the clothes. When my sister opened the door and peered inside, I’d waited, not daring to breathe, until she’d left without a word.

I wondered as I stood in the rain—why had I hid from her? Why had I disdained being seen? Even now, years later, I did not know.

No,I said to myself as I walked.No, no, you will not think of such things. Not now.

I made my world small then: there was the road, and I was upon it. All the rest could be locked away, put away, forgotten in some dusty shelf of my soul.

Chapter 10

“Yoursisteris anArmenta?” asked Ana. So great was her shock that she ripped off her blindfold and stared at me, her yellow eyes blinking in the dim light of her chambers.

“N-no,” I said resentfully. “Well, yes, in that she works for them. Butno,as in, not ye—”

She flapped a hand at me. “I am uninterested in your flustered mutterings, boy! By hell! This must come as quite a surprise to you. I mean—to be perfectly transparent, Din, you spoke of your familysorarely that I actually felt obliged to check imperial records to confirm they had not suffered some plague, and were all long dead!”

I stood in the glimmering light of Ana’s sole mai-lantern, wishing I’d saved my report until morning. I should have left her with her tomes and her scribblings and her out-of-tune lyres. Her mood was always better after some time tinkering with her obsessions in the dark.

“You have been spying upon me, ma’am?” I asked.

“No, I confirmed that you were not an orphan of some reprehensible tragedy!” said Ana. “Young men of such ilk are often prone to rash stupidity and make for very poor investigators.” She paused to dig a tiny, brined fish out of a pickling jar on the table beside her, then popped it into her mouth and chewed thoughtfully. “Well! I suppose I ought to ask how you aredoing.Emotionally, I mean. Besides, obviously, not very well.”

“It is a…a strange thing. I lack the training for a reunion of this nature.”

She laughed lowly. “Sadly, I do not think the Empire could ever train us on how to manage familial relations, in any capacity. Did youlikethe boy, at least? Did you ask him of his fortunes, his prospects, and so on?”

“N-no?” I said. “We mostly talked about the murder. And the curse, and such.”

“I see. Did you toast them, at least? Ask them what they might desire for nuptial gifts?”

I said nothing.

Ana slowly turned to me. “Did you at least offer them your blessing, boy?” she cried. “Or offer to be at their wedding? Oranything?”

I said nothing.

“By hell, Din! I do not know personally many siblings, but you certainly sound like one of the least adequate ones imaginable!”

“May we turn the subject,” I said, “back to the investigation? Death seems a simpler thing than this.”

“Yes, yes…” Ana idly chewed another tiny black fish, its bones crunching in her teeth. “You are tired, Din.”