Page 75 of A Trade of Blood

“Will you tell me what you find, at least?” she said. “I mean—these people tried to kill Ip, brother!”

“I’ll tell you if I can,” I said. “Go see my immunis, please. We’re staying at the Green Drover. I’ll find you there after.”

With an anxious look, she turned and slipped away through the shifting blue lights of the glade. Then she was gone, leaving me alone with the Orbiis and the silent figure of Master Gaddar.

—

“Apologies for causing any,ah, family squabbles, Kol,” said Tauri. “But we’ve larger matters upon us now.” He reached into his coat, then produced another half-face mask and handed it to me. “You’ll need this. The minted cloths can block a little of the forest’s airs, but they’ll be of no help where we’re going.”

“And where are we going, sir?” I asked as I affixed the mask to my nose and mouth.

“Into the trees, of course. After our killer.”

Tauri placed his case on the ground, unlocked it with a key from his pocket, and opened it. Within lay a familiar tool: a reagentsthurible and several vials of milky substances. His two officers knelt about it and began to assemble the apparatus, pouring the reagents into the thurible’s chimney and then setting a bit of sparkwood floating in it. Then they lit a tiny flare-pot, nursed its blaze until it was fully alight, and dropped the pot into the thurible.

The sparkwood began to sputter and flame. The milky reagent about it hissed and burbled. Then a silvery, shimmering mist began to arise from the thurible’s meshings.

Instantly, the trees before us began to shiver, like a gang of thieves rounded up by the canton custodi. Where the silvery smokes lingered heaviest, the trees shook even more. I turned my eyes to the curious grouping of branches above the footprints, where so many grew at the wrong angles: they were parting, ever so slightly, as if desperate to escape one another.

“The forest is old and grand,” said Tauri softly. “But it was built by design. The Khanum crafted it as one might a fortification—and all walls must have gates. Those in the wood are old, but…they are still available, to those who know how to open them.”

The Orbiis signum picked up the smoking thurible and approached the trees. The branches began to part before her, as if bent backward by a colossal, invisible hand, revealing a narrow, leaf-covered path leading into the forest—precisely where I’d spied the two footprints.

The Orbiis militis produced a mai-lantern, lit it, and cast a bright, white luminescence about us. Then she turned to Tauri and nodded.

“We must follow their trail, of course,” said Tauri. “But I hope it will be direct, at least. There’s but one seam built into this fragment of forest. Are you ready, Kol?”

I looked at the thurible, then at the trees ahead, which were shivering and trembling as if in fear ofus.

My memories danced and chuckled in my mind, and my eyes fluttered as I remembered.

Off on another forest jaunt, Master Burav? I’ll tell no one. But why’ve you not got your lantern and smokes, sir?

“Lantern and smokes…” I said softly. “A…a servant said this toIppeas Armenta as he fled the Burav mansion—another forest jaunt, bringing lanterns and smokes.”

Tauri’s face was like alabaster in the lantern light. “So Dolabra told me.”

“How difficult, sir, is it to get a thurible like that?”

“Very. Only the Orbiis are permitted to know of these arts.”

“Yet Burilis Burav was of your order, sir.”

“So he was,” said Tauri. “And if he’d been caught with such a device after his service, he would have been imprisoned. But now he is dead. Only his works persist, though they plague us still. Now come, Kol. Let’s enter.”

—

Our party venturedinto the shivering canyon of pale trees. The sound was unlike anything I’d ever heard: so much creaking, straining, and groaning of tremendous fibers and twists of wood, like thousands of ancient throats crying out at once. Then the trees closed behind us, sealing us within the sea of trunks and boles and shimmering leaves.

We slowly continued forward. Even though I wore the Orbiis mask, I still felt a thrum of dread within my skull as we walked the path. Everything was close and cramped, and always trembling. The shifting of the light grew deeply unsettling, for as the trees bent and twisted to permit our passage, the afternoon sunlight shifted and flickered as well. Between this and the bright lantern the Orbiis militis bore, my eyes could never adjust. I felt there was always something crawling just past the veil of white branches and dark purple leaves or whispering in the near darkness.

But perhaps most disturbing of all was the geometric structure of the forest about us. It was something in the pale boles of the trees, the way they grew from such set nodes, the angles of their branches and the structures of their crowns. The mind somehow sensed that there was a pattern hidden there, some fractal recursion repeated again and again, like a theme echoed in a script of music. It dizzied the eye too much to look atit.

At one point I groaned softly and set my eyes on the path at my feet.

“I wasn’t sure if you’d see it, Kol,” said Tauri lightly.

“Sorry, sir?”