Page 61 of A Trade of Blood

“Nor I. That may explain why he had so much trouble with his temperament. Interesting…yet why, I wonder, would Jalin Burav be drawing Daljeni symbols? Kurmin folk such as he didn’t keep to such a pantheon.” She sighed. “I will remark upon this, but leave it! For Tauri believes he has found somethingveryinteresting in the house.”

“I thought there wasn’t much house left to find, ma’am.”

“That’s what’s so interesting! This particular bitremains.” She lay back in the box once more but waved at one corner of the mansion. “Look there.” Then she snapped the lid shut again.

I wandered in that direction, and saw that Tauri and the Orbiiswere hard at work—though what they were doing was difficult to decipher.

They appeared to be anchoring thick, tarred rope to several segments of the Burav mansion’s northeast corner, and were using a medley of reagents and steel implements—screws, levers, wrenches, and the like—to secure the ropes to the wall. What made this or that bit of the wall more appropriate for a rope was beyond me, but it was clear that the work had been carefully done.

Tauri saw me approaching and gave me a grin and a lazy wave. “We make good progress here! I honestly think my chaps are having a cheerful time of it. Many were Engineers once, as I said. Probably a good bit of fun to trot out the winches and levels once more.”

“What are they doing, sir?”

“Ah. Well—they intend to rip down the wall, and cause most of this bit of the mansion to collapse.”

“Ahh—pardon?”

An indolent flick of his golden hair, which still shone despite the generous streaks of ash. “Oh, I can hear your thinking, chap. Our primary strategy is not always to stick cords in things and rip them apart, as we did to that poor girl’s skull, and shall now do to her home! Rather, we were surveying the mansion to check its stability to ensure it was safe to enter when we noticed something very strange about its shapings. Many of the walls remain standing. As do a good bit of the stairways, thanks to their covoli-vine threading. Yet we noticed…well, there are chambers on the first floor that havenoegress to any hallway that we could identify!”

I watched as one Orbiis signum screwed in yet another eyed bolt into a stretch of covoli and carefully knotted rope through it. “And…what does that mean, sir?”

“It means a hidden portion of the house that seemingly hasno door,” he said gently. “A set of rooms that fire could not touch—nor could any person enter.”

“A secret room?”

“You’re getting closer. We did some cursory examinations. Pulled away a stretch of woven vine that was deemed safe. We found a steelwall behind it—and not just any steel. It is janarti steel, the same grade they use to produce the bombards of the sea walls. From our testings of its surface, it’s about three span thick. An enormous thing, really.” Another lazy smile, as if we were punting a boat across a river together on a carefree day. “Not a secret room. Avault.And one that assuredly survived the fire!”

I stared at the crumbling mansion, thunderstruck. “Burilis Burav…had a secretvaultbuilt into the foundations of hishouse?”

“Yes, that’s what we think. Haven’t found the door yet. Much of the surrounding structure won’t last a week, so. Can’t really do any snooping in there. Best to pull it down—and then, with luck, we see what’s inside.”

I glanced at him again, and saw that his face was filled with delight, like a child at play with his favorite toys. “You were an Engineer, too—weren’t you, sir?”

“So I was. You can see why I was a little reluctant to perform an autopsy, I expect. I have cursory training in the biologic arts, but…it’s not my strongest virtue.”

“Were you at the sea walls, sir?”

His look of delight vanished. “What?”

“At the sea walls, in Talagray. Spatiasts are often placed among the bombard crews. They have skill with artilleries that are beyond most normal folk. So I simply thought…”

He gave me a piercing look. Then came a smile, and he laughed, as if trying to forget the whole thing. He walked away without another word.

—

It seemed totake no time at all for the Orbiis officers to finish their project. Soon the many tar ropes were braided together or affixed with clamps. These braids and knots were then tied to padded horse collars, which they hung about the necks of three of the most terrifying destriers I had ever seen. The beasts were unused to plow-horse work, and champed and whickered in complaint, but their handlers quickly soothed them.

Commander Tauri’s estimation of the house’s structural integrity was accurate: it took but ten seconds of the destriers’ hauling to make it all come crumbling down. Once more, the air was filled with ash and smoke—but he and his Orbiis had arranged it so that the walls fell in such a specific way as to reveal what lay behind them.

We waited, eyes narrowed against the soot, cloth pressed to our noses and mouths. Slowly the air cleared, and we looked.

It was a vast thing, some forty span long and twenty span wide, and where it was not charred and dark it shone like silver in the midmorning light. The Orbiis officers converged on it like ants upon a sparrow’s carcass and began stripping it, pulling away the smaller bits of blackened wood, or using the ropes and the destriers again to remove the larger segments. Then it was fully revealed.

It was most definitely a vault, much like what one might find in an Imperial Treasury. And there, at one end, was its door.

It was a small thing, rising to about shoulder height on me, and a little narrower than most common doors. It was just the right size of door, I thought, that any child who spied it would immediately find it captivating, like a hatch leading to a hidden attic. In its center was a large handle, and above it was a curious mechanism. It looked like four little beads arranged in the shape of a diamond, each planted there on the door’s steel face.

And there, at its top, were three engraved words—Jiltirlik arkasani qunarli.