Page 88 of A Trade of Blood

“Yes. Much can be read in the shiftings of small things, Kol. Though I dread the airs before us, frankly.” He began to put on hiswarding suit, though by my reckoning we still had a good while to go. After he affixed his helm atop his head, he sat and remained silent.

Finally we came to the Armenta spreads. Their gentry-gate had been wrapped in black ribbons, and all the mai-lamps set about it were veiled—mourning for Castus, surely. I shifted in my seat, unnerved, and was glad when we left the gates behindus.

We wound on into their lands, turning again and again. Then, without a word of signal, the Orbiis officers placed their warding helms on their heads and fastened them tight.

“Better do the same, Kol,” said Tauri through the glass of his helm. “We are not at risk—but we enter dreadful country now.”

I was about to ask what he meant, but then I smelledit.

The odor of rot and putrefaction was so abominable I almost grew sick right there in the cart. I hurriedly put on my helm and fastened it. The humid, oppressive scent of leather was an oasis compared to that smell.

“Whatisthat?” I asked.

Tauri did not answer. He just pointed up. I craned my eyes toward the sky.

Circling above us were hundreds of carrion-birds, if not thousands. It was as if some tremendous battlefield lay ahead, with thousands of soldiers lying dead upon the grass.

Then we cleared a patch of trees, and I looked out.

The River Spurcia curled through the fields in the distance. Gathered all about it was a sprawling, leagues-long swamp of fen-pits and mireponds, all gleaming sickly in daylight. At the center of the swamp, clinging close to the river, were some two dozen rounded, sloping structures, wrought of tightly woven fretvine. Between the way they curved and how they seemed sunken in the mire, I was reminded of leeches or beetles, feasting upon a wound.

Then we heard a sound: a low, fearful, deep yowling of a kind I’d never heard before. I tilted my helmed head about, seeking their source, and spied a long paddock brimming with altered urhosi cows. Each massive beast was screaming and lowing, crying out as teams ofdrovers herded them across a ramp spanning the filthy mires—and then into one of the long, rounded structures.

“The flensing halls, you see,” said Tauri softly beside me. “In there they shall strike the cows with a hammer and hang their bodies upon the vines. Then altered threadvines will part flesh from bone and sinew and intestine. What they isolate shall be prepared, packaged, sent to the other rings of the Empire. As for the rest…” He gestured at the vast, reeking swamps. “They deal with it as cheaply as they can.”

We continued down the road and beheld yet another sight: a mountain of something white and yellow and spindly, rising there at the end of the fens. It had the look of sea coral, yet it was crawling with rodents and insects and other vermin. Then I saw the eye sockets and realized they were bones: a vast mountain of bones, higher than any building in Lacanthim. So great was their number that I could not imagine the herd that had been slaughtered here.

“They burn it once a year,” said Tauri. “The bones, I mean. Turn the pile to ash, and fertilizer. We do have use for such organic resources, but…” He shrugged. “The flensing halls simply make too much. Much more bone, and skin, and enzymes and reagents and such, than all the Apoths could ever get about to using properly. So. Easier to let it rot here and burn it now and again. You see now, of course, why we Orbiis do not venture to the southern roads of the Armenta spreads—especially when the wind is against us. I will ask them for haste now.” He let out a sad laugh. “How dispiriting it is to think that grave robbing is a less ghastly task than lingering in this place!”

—

Finally, the tallstonewood walls of the Armenta sepulcher emerged above the fields before us. How stark it was to see so much dark black rising from the green grass, set against the brilliant blue sky. It gave me the feeling of approaching some temple or haven of ancient priests.

Fotia and Trikao Armenta awaited us before the sepulcher gates. Both appeared quite wan, but Trikao was clearly the worse of the two: he looked like he was near ready to step into a tomb himself.

Tauri wasted no time as he climbed off the cart. “Has anyone been in there recently?” he asked them curtly.

Trikao cleared his throat. “My sister sends flowers to the tombs of her three children every month. The last time was three…three weeks ago, I believe.”

“And did they notice anything strange about the tombs?”

“Well—no? I would have said, if that were the case.”

“But it could have destabilized your graves, over time,” muttered Tauri. He turned to his officers and called, “We shall have to prepare for leakage, chaps! Move cautiously.”

“Leakage?” said Fotia. She looked to me. “Truly?”

“Perhaps,” I said. “We don’t yet know, Fotia.”

The officers swiftly climbed out of the cart and began to assemble their tools. Trikao and Fotia watched us with some alarm, and it took me a moment to realize that save for Tauri last night, she had probably never seen anyone in a warding suit.

“Should Trikao and Fotia stay away, Commander?” I asked.

“They are probably safe where they are,” Tauri said rather coldly. “Again—got to let the spores get into water and then drinkthatfor it to be dangerous. A few spores borne aloft on the wind are no threat.” Without another glance at them, he opened the gate and went inside.

“Are you close to him?” asked Fotia, watching Taurigo.

“He is superior to me, though not of my Iyalet,” I said.