Page 20 of A Trade of Blood

“I sense your thinking, Iudex. It is the same.”

“I must have your words exactly, though.”

Again, he wiped his eyes. “We remove the limbs first. To get access to the creature’s innards.” He touched his shoulder. “A quick sawing to the cuff, so it will drop but not clatter to the floor. Then…down, and across. I have done this dozens of times with a flensing knife. But I…I have no memory of…of…”

“I see,” I said quietly.

A horrid silence filled the jail cell.

“Is it the curse of my kin?” he whispered. “Is it real? For I can’t imagine that fate alone would do this to us. I have lost two brothers and a sister. My…my life has been little more than funerals for the past years, Iudex. Yet I won’t be able to even go to Zansay’s. WillI?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

A long, solemn silence.

“I have changed my mind,” Castus said. “I hope you do hang me, Iudex.”

“Why do you say this?”

“I don’t want to be out of this cell.” He turned his eyes on me, so wide and despondent. “I don’t want to go back into…into the world I knew, and know for every minute that she’s gone, that I might have killed her. Might have butchered her just as I did so many livestock. That’s not a world I wish to know. So I shall take any escape offered. Even the noose.”

—

I left himthere in his cell. I did not say goodbye: such was his sorrow that a polite gesture felt cruel, somehow. Then I stood in the central chamber, lost in my thoughts.

Seriv approached. “He spoke to you then, sir?”

“Yes.” I sighed heavily. “I suppose I need to see where you found him, Princeps.”

His face creased in dismay. “That would be in the old forest, sir.”

“I know. Yet I must see it.”

Chapter 5

To my surprise,the old forest was but an hour’s ride from Lacanthim. “Remnants of the wood still cling to the waters of these places,” Seriv explained when I mentioned this. “They burned a great deal of it back to make farmland. But along the streams and rivers, it refuses to burn. The greater spread of it is to the north.” Then he paused. “You’ve not seen any stretch of it, I take it, sir?”

“No. We came from the south.”

“I see. Well. It can be an experience.”

I watched as the wood emerged on the horizon. It was already almost evening, so this was a poor time to go seeking evidence in such a place. Yet I knew Ana would demand to know of it, so I narrowed my eyes and studied carefully as we approached.

To begin with, the forest was not green but had a queer, purple hue to it. It formed a velvety wall that surged up above the farmlands, and the contrast—in shape, in color, in darkness—was so striking it almost felt like a hallucination. The trees were of an ancient, altered breed, with pale, delicate boles and wide, amaranthine leaves that blotted out the sun. They did not grow like normal trees, either: they sprouted in very defined, hexagonal clutches, with six different trunks sprouting from each node of roots.

So this was the famous, unnatural forest of Sapirdad: a wood created by the first imperials, the ancient Khanum, long ago in the elder days to ward away any trespassers. Like most works of the Khanum, it was quite renowned—but the forest of Sapirdad was unusual inthat nobody knew quite what the Khanum had wished to keep people awayfrom.The accepted theory was that they’d wanted to keep grave robbers from violating the last resting place of their famed sibling tribe—the Daljen. Who had, like all of the first imperial tribes, died out centuries ago. Yet no one knew for certain.

We rode closer to the trees. The nearer we grew, a strange, unsettling feeling stole over me, though I couldn’t name why. It was as if a great gloom arose behind my eyes, and my heart was suddenly shadowed. Even my horse—apudgy little mare who resented my size—grew skittish and whickered in protest.

“You feel it, sir?” said Seriv.

“I do. What is it?”

“Wasn’t sure if an Imperial Sublime would. It’s the forest, sir. The Orbiis say the trees emit a pheromone that makes the blood frightened. Makes you wish to leave swiftly—because those who made it didn’t wish for anyone to step inside.”

I cringed as a pang of discomfort shot through me. “I thought the trees kept people out just by being so densely grown.”

“That’s what many folk from abroad think, true. Most don’t know about the discomfort because most don’t get near enough to feel it.” He sighed a little. “But we shall, of course. Though we’ll have to go on foot. Our steeds won’t bear it.”