Page 112 of A Trade of Blood

“I don’t know,” I said honestly, and left.

I wandered the streets of Lacanthim as I returned to the Green Drover. And yet, somehow, I knew I was not going there. Not back to my chambers, so lined with animal skins and wreathed in bone and horn. Too much of this canton was dead and crumbling. I could not bear it anymore.

That was the problem with temptation. It never let you be: it just stayed there, perched on your shoulder, whispering in your ear.

The bathing halls roiled with steam so greatly that from a distance they had the look of a kitchen full of ricepots, all bubbling and boiling away. The columns and coils and scrolls of steam came tumbling out, flashing past the bright blue mai-lamps, and though the air was heavy and moist I could hear songs within, and voices, and much merry speaking.

I felt thick and slow and torpid as I approached. It was madness to do this, I knew. Childish foolery to dally so with another during an investigation. And yet, whenever I thought of my own chambers, my mind was doused in the aroma of apricots and spice, and my feet kept moving forward.

“Ah,” said the attendant as I approached. “Your chamber is in the second hall. Bath 23.”

I stared at him, perplexed. “I…”

“Oh, the fellow said you’d be here.Look for a tall, sad-looking chap in blue.And, pardon my saying so, but…that does match you a bit, true?”

I took the key from him and wandered through the corridors, the steaming pools and the saunas, the soaking rooms and the fountains and the little gated meres. And then, at the very end of one long passageway, a small, rounded wooden door, with a plated sign reading23above it; and there, beside the door, a hook with an Orbiis uniform hanging from it, and a pair of shoes below.

I undressed and hung my own uniform. Stepped out of myboots—how my toes ached—and propped my sword in the corner. Then I steeled myself and opened the door.

The flash of steam, and the gleam of a mane of golden hair in the corner. Then a waft of apricot, and spice, and rich earth, and a low, pleased voice: “Ah. There you are.”

Chapter 30

There is a state ofsleep that is deeper than simple slumber, more than any nightly doze. I have had these rests occasionally in my service: a deep, febrile dreaming, when you are granted more than mere satiation of the flesh, but something bordering on transformative. If there is a state of reverie that the moth is granted as it lies within the cocoon awaiting its birth, that is the sleep I speak of now, and that is the rest I was given that night.

I exulted in it. What a wonderful thing it was to slumber here, with him beside me, little more than a twitching tangle of hot limbs, and the occasional buffet of humid breath.

I slept.

Then the veil of darkness drew back, and I was standing in my chambers.

—

I blinked.I looked around. Though I could not explain it, it appeared to be so: I was standing in my undergarments, in my chambers in the Green Drover, gazing at the blank wall. Moonlight filtered through my window shutters, the fernpaper sheets of my bed slightly mussed behind me. I was alone.

And yet someone was singing in the streets below my window. It was a beautiful, soft song, in a language that I did not know—if it was any language at all, for its beauty seemed beyond words.

“Hum,” I said to myself.

I attempted to review my memories and found I had none. I had no idea how I had gotten here. I recalled the steam baths, and Tauri. The way he had stood to meet me, eyes locked on mine, waiting for the signal to proceed, which I had greedily given. But we had not returned to my chambers, but his, at the Orbiis office.

So. How had I gotten here?

I looked around, befuddled. Now that I thought of it, I could not hear anything else in the tavern, or indeed in the streets beyond: no clatter of carters, no whoop or clap from the drovers, no thud of footsteps as the other guests moved about me in their own chambers. There was just the song, its high, pure tone rising up and drifting through my window.

I attempted to move to the window, to peer down at this strange singer and behold them. But, to my bafflement, my legs would not move. I could not even lift my bare feet from the floor. I tried to move again and again, to recruit and activate the muscles in my legs, to force myself to shift. Yet it remained beyond me: it was like I was paralyzed from the waist down, even though I was standing.

Then the room began to change. It began to feel insubstantial, and flimsy. A hazy projection of a room, like light cast through the colored glass of a lantern.

Then my eyes trembled, and I felt another strange sensation—though this one was terribly familiar tome.

My memories awoke, quivering, and whispered in my mind:This isn’t right, is it, Din?

I cringed, for their murmur was terribly loud in this silent world. Again, I gazed about, staring at the shafts of moonlight twinkling just beside me, and listening to that twirling, high song warbling in the darkness.

“Ahh. No…” I said. “It isn’t. How did I get here?”

The walls flickered, darkened, returned, as if this chamber did not like me speaking aloud. The song stuttered as well, like the singer had to pause for breath.