Page 96 of A Trade of Blood

On the otherside of the door was not some treasury vault full of safes and chests containing jewels, or piles of talints. Instead, it was something like a library, with countless shelves filled with books, many of them terribly old to the point of crumbling. A set of glowing mai-lamps hung from the ceiling, and a desk was set below them, along with quills and ink and many parchments. Next to this desk were several dozen pots of sotwine—and there at the back were many crates that looked to be stuffed full of yet more pots. It seemed Burav had used this space as half library, half wine cellar.

At first I thought this explained the aroma—for the vault reeked quite powerfully of wine. Yet then I realized it smelled of worse things than that: vomit, and excrement, and urine.

Then my eye fell upon the body lying in the vault.

“Ahh,” I said. “There is someone in here.”

A silence.

“Wh…what?” said Tauri.

“What?” cried Ana. “Thereis?”

“Uh, yes,” I said, and entered the vault and walked to where they lay.

She was a Kurmini woman, her face pink and bloated, and her dress and stomach covered in vomit. It was difficult to tell, but she looked middle-aged and was dressed much as a high servant might: a personal valet, or the housemaid, or someone’s personal attendant. Though I wasn’t sure if she was alive or dead, the cause of the vomit and urine was obvious: some dozen pots of sotwine sat open and empty all about her. Indeed, now that I got close to her, I realized her dress and hair had been soaked in the stuff and still had a purple stain to them.

“She’s been here thisentire time?” said Tauri, peering over my shoulder. “Was she hereduringthe fire?”

“Perhaps,” I said. “The walls are reinforced. Someone could survive in here, as you said when we first found the vault, sir. But maybe that explains why she looks so pink—the heat in here must have been imm—”

Then the woman gasped, sat up, and screamed.

I went staggering back, fumbling for the wall with one hand and my sword with the other. There was a flash of steel in her hand, and she cried out, “Back! Geb back! B-b…back!”

She blinked and squinted at us, brandishing a letter opener in what she hoped to be a threatening pose. She was so inebriated that the tip of the blade wandered back and forth like a pendulum.

“Stay back!” she slurred. “You…you s-stay back! Won’t…won’t geb me, too…”

Tauri and I gaped at her, unable to think of a single thing to say.

Ana cried out from the vault entrance: “Din? Who thehellis that?”

I consulted my memories, flickering through all the faces I’d seen here in Lacanthim. This person was not among them.

“I’ve…no idea,” I said honestly.

The woman groaned, then toppled over onto her back.

Chapter 25

We quickly summoned the medikkers,who upon arrival pronounced the woman “dangerously drunk.” One went so far as to say, “She is more inebriated than the worst drover I’ve ever ministered to, including the one who nearly drowned in the water trough!”

“Is her brain harmed?” demanded Ana. “If you rouse her, can she answer questions?”

“I can’t say,” said the lead medikker. “I’m more concerned about heat damage. Her skin is terribly inflamed, like she’s been wandering through a desert! I suppose she hid in this vault as the mansion burned down around it. Though she was saved from the direct flames, she was cooked in here—at least a bit.”

Tauri studied a puddle of vomit in the corner—one of many. “And she had only wine to drink for hydration, of course,” he said. “And, given the state of her clothing, she poured it over herself to cool her body off…”

“Yes,” sighed the medikker. “We shall need to stick her with a potizo crab to rehydrate her. I’ve no idea when she will awaken, unfortunately.”

The medikkers fetched a glass pot containing an exotic sea crustacean with a long, unsettlingly intestinal tube running from its underbelly. It was very similar to what had been done to Velona Armenta, though I presumed this one did not feature any fertility augmentations. The tube’s end sported a glittering needle tooth, andthey stuck it deep in the woman’s arm. She was so deeply unconscious that she didn’t groan at this, nor when a dark blue ichor began trickling down the tube and into her veins.

“I swear,” muttered Ana. “I often enjoy the experience of being blindfolded, but at the moment it is a fucking nuisance! We shall have to wait for this besotted wench to awaken before we can learn anything of use from her. Instead, Din, I advise you look to what isinthe vault! Tell me what you see, boy! It’s well and good that the medikkers are here, for I myself might soon die of fucking impatience!”

I paced the vault, describing the contents aloud to her. There were nearly a dozen shelves here, all filled with ancient tomes. Some were so aged their spines were unreadable, and many more had no spines at all, having fallen to pieces, and were held in preserved bindings of pressed moss. The few that I could read had titles likeHymns of the Daaljhiene,orMusicks of the Ancients and the Third Imperial Age,orBarrow-Sites of the Third Ring of the Grand and Holy Empire of Khanum.

Yet it was the final shelf that caught my eye the most. It was filled with tiny statues, all very old, wrought of stone, and each very different from the other—though all were, unmistakably, Daljen. Some offered cups, others swords, others staves, and still others a crown, but they all had the familiar distended jaw and coned skull. Each had been carefully labeled: Master Qul, Master Haal, Mistress Vadari, Master Gaddar, and so on and soon.