Page 129 of A Trade of Blood

“Hm.” She cocked her head, as if contemplating a mildly tricky riddle. “And from the sound of your voice, you saw what awaited you there in the cup of heaven?”

“Y-yes, ma’am.I—”

“And Tauri? Does he know?”

I said nothing.

She turned to me, eyebrows raised above her blindfold. “Does he knowall?”

“You…expected he would?”

She turned back to the statue. “I did say he was terribly important, and terribly smart. No fool he! That is for certain.”

I stood there looking at her for a long while. Then I slowly sat down next to her. “What shall happen now, ma’am?”

“What happens now is up to the delightful Commander Tauri,” said Ana. “But I know he has just been handed a great gift—adagger he can soon plunge into the heart of all the flesh industry of this Empire.”

I stared into the bare earth at my feet, stunned into silence.

“How would the cattle trade support itself,” mused Ana, “if it could no longer force so many creatures to harvest our crops? For an urhosi cow takes agreat dealof feed to nourish itself. And I doubt if the Apoths and the Orbiis and all the rest of them will take delight in learning of the true web’s origin.” She sniffed. “I expect they’ll keep it all very secret. The public shall not know.”

“I admit, ma’am,” I said softly, “I struggle to imagine a world in which we abandon the use of the web…”

“Cynical—but true. The Empire is terribly resistant to change. We have learned to augment beasts to be our servants, and it shall be a hard thing to step back from such an innovation. Should we abandon it, or reduce it, or change its application? Or will we do nothing at all? I can’t say. I suppose we’ll just have to find a way to muddle through, eh? That is the Empire’s great talent—muddling through, satisfying no one, but…surviving. More or less.”

“And Tauri’s…revelations about your own self, ma’am?”

She grinned nastily and shrugged. A sheen of sweat shone on her brow: to touch upon this subject pained her, surely. “I don’t know what you mean, Din! But I believe Tauri shall now have to do some very tricky math. Can he press his case against the cattle trade whilealsospreading wild rumors about the woman who put the dagger in his hand? I rather doubt it. And more, he is a smart fellow, and knows he now dances beside—how shall I put it?—very deep waters, with very nasty things in it. He will not be eager to go for a swim. Or is that metaphor not tasteful to you now?”

“You knew all, then.”

“Iguessed.Others needed to see. That is why you’re here, yes? To behold what others cannot.”

There was a great silence.

“Why did they do it?” I whispered.

“The Daljen? Oh, well, because they thought themselvessuperior.And can you blame them? They were stronger, faster, wiser…And then, one day, they looked out upon the race of mortal man and saw little more than livestock awaiting their ministrations. I am sure they thought it a very sensible thing, to contort common folk into mindless tools to better reap the harvest. The Daavir, however, felt that freedom was an inefficiency worth tolerating, and acted accordingly.” A cold smirk. “The bitter irony here is that in but a few decades, other tribes of the first imperials would develop methods of yielding greater food and resources—so much so that they soon dwarfed all the harvests of the Daljen! They hardly needed to enforce such horrors at all. But back then, of course, they did not dine so greatly upon flesh. Different appetites demand different compromises…So. Here we are again.”

My eyes quaked, and a memory came swimming up: the stone statue I’d glimpsed in the wood, of the giant hand, and the figure in its palm, arms raised in supplication, and the words upon its chest—Let the wayward mind bloom.

Then another memory flashed behind my eyes, and I recalled Velona’s comment:They were the shepherds, and we their flock.She had said this with such awed ecstasy, yet how awful the words tasted to me now.

“I…I cannot imagine such a choice,” I said. “How could you come to look upon your neighbor, and dream of their slavery?”

“Is it truly such a reach for you, Din?” asked Ana. “You are a deeply augmented person. In many ways, you are superior to a common man. You not only remember all, but you learn far, far faster, for you recall your lessons perfectly. Do you not struggle with the division between yourself and your very kin?” With a twitch, she turned her hard, pale face to me, her expression inscrutable between her blindfold. “Or, consider the distance between myself and you. Areweequals? Or are you my Coral, capering about as I play a tune upon my pipe?”

I glared at her, but then considered it. “I like to think we are equals, ma’am.”

“Why?”

“Because if we weren’t, you wouldn’t have had me see what was in the well. You wished me to make up my mind about it. Which leads me to believe you want my mind to be my own.”

“Hum! Perhaps you’re right, boy,” she said. “But…the web is a clumsy tool, really. If a being was advanced enough, they could influence and control you in countless unseen ways, without ever having met you…and without your even knowing it was happening at all.”

“I…struggle to imagine how that could be possible, ma’am.”

“Yes. That’s rather the problem, isn’t it?”