Chapter 2 #5
“And you see no sign of violence in the room, nor any sign that Zansay herself fought back while this was done to her? Despite these wounds being, well—agonizing to suffer, I am sure.”
“No, ma’am.”
“Hm. You mentioned there is a queer staining to her left hand and left knee—both bear distinct blotches of blood?”
“Yes. As if she pressed them against the bloody floor.”
“And the knife sheath—you found it in Zansay’s bag?”
“True. It is the only bag in the room, but—it is curious.”
She sucked her teeth. “And I note that Burilis Burav claimed repeatedly that this was a very straightforward case, and we did not need to investigate at all.”
“Yes, ma’am. I can confirm that.”
“And Master Burav demanded we give him her body as swiftly as possible. A bit odd, yes?”
“I…ah, suppose so?”
“Hm! My, my…” she said, smiling. “Well! What do you think the odds are that our labors here will achieve our goal of preventing a gentry war, Din? For I myself am suddenly pessimistic! If we do not condemn Castus speedily, we will surely have a bloody mess on our hands—or, rather, one bigger than what’s before us. ”
“Can’t say, ma’am,” I said. “But…surely they won’t actually go to war, ma’am?”
“Apparently I have a blind inspector!” said Ana. “Didn’t you see all those fellows with lances just now, boy?”
“Yes, but—while I understand the Buravs and Armentas are competitors…I struggle to imagine people killing each other over cows.”
She laughed gaily. “Oh, no, Din, not just over cows. This is about land! And, specifically, how the Empire is running out of it.”
I considered this. “Last time I glanced at a map, ma’am, the Empire seemed quite spacious…”
“Oh, true, true, true! And we use every inch of it. We have stolen secrets from the bloods of the titans and taught all of nature to grow and warp and shift at our pleasing. But that requires reagents, and fertilizer, and more. In other words, it takes land, child. But an urhosi cow takes a great deal of very valuable land to grow. Not just for pasture, but for feed. I mean, have you seen the damned things? They’re fucking enormous.
The Empire has come to dearly love the taste of beef flesh and forever demands more of it.
But all the easy lands have been claimed, and now the cattle families can only expand by seizing land from one another, by coin or sword.
It has all become a tremendously delicate situation. ”
“I suppose we can’t just tell our citizens to dine on something besides cow flesh.”
She laughed gaily again. “Oh, no. Try that and you’d have riots! The poor so love the taste of flesh, for it makes them feel wealthy, and the wealthy can’t imagine a life without it. And with such social unrest…”
“We wouldn’t be able to hold back the leviathans,” I finished, sighing.
“Just so. Strife of all colors is to be avoided in the grand and holy Empire of Khanum. And thus the price of a luxury, and all the land it thrives upon, becomes so very critical—as does this girl’s death.
Just as the innkeeper said, if the Armentas and the Buravs go to war, all could unravel!
Now, give me a moment to consider everything you told me… ”
She bowed her head and began rocking back and forth and muttering. I glanced about but could find nowhere to sit that was not bloodied—or, in the case of the bed, still damp with the residue of coupling.
Again, I felt an impulse manifest in my mind, and a burst of wordless whispering in my thoughts. It was like a ghostly presence within me, reacting to the sight of the room.
I grimaced. I did not wish to do this—discussing my personal affairs with Ana was something I always strictly avoided—but I found myself desiring guidance.
“One…one other curious thing, ma’am…” I began.
“Eh?” she snapped. “What? I am thinking!”
“My, ah—my mind has been doing something very odd.”
She waved a hand—Go on.
“When I first looked at the room, ma’am, some…
some presence within my thoughts seemed to react to it.
With a voice of its own. Specifically, the voice did not much like that the room was so undisturbed, and the blood so strangely distributed.
I found it very uncomfortable—and very strange. It has never happened before to me.”
I expected her to gawk at me, to claim I was going stark mad. Instead, she blithely waved a hand.
“Ahh!” she said. “You shouldn’t worry! Nothing is wrong.”
“No?” I said, relieved.
“No, no. It simply seems your engraved memories have now attained a new level of maturation, Din.”
“I…what? How do you mean, ma’am?”
“Oh, it’s very common for Imperial Sublimes such as yourself.
I thought you knew of it, but—you likely did not know how it would feel when the time came.
” She touched the tips of her indexes to her temples.
“The accumulated memories build up within the mind, you see, and if they are memories of similar subject—say, scenes of violent death—they begin to respond when exposed to new experiences of that same subject. They are almost like an alternate identity within the mind, voicing when things are similar or dissimilar, right or wrong, suspect or trustworthy.”
I listened to this distantly, aware only of the hum of my heart.
“Your memories reacted instantly, child,” she continued, “because they saw the pristine nature of the room and did not like it. Nor should they have! Oh, it is often a very handy thing to have your memories surveying your experiences, counseling you when things are awry. But that voice is not always to be listened to, for the past is not always an accurate predictor of the future! You must not fully trust this voice within you, as beguiling as it may sound.”
A deep pit of dread bloomed in my belly. “I…see.”
Ana cocked her head. “Something wrong, Din? Most engravers welcome this maturation. It often proves a useful tool.”
“Yes. But—my augmentations are…changing, then, ma’am? Entering the…the mature part of their span?”
“So it seems.”
“I see,” I said weakly. “I just…I thought I would have more time, ma’am.”
“More time?”
“Yes. Before things changed. Before…”
There was a long silence. I could not give voice to the thought but knew it well.
All Imperial Sublimes—the folk augmented by the Empire to possess profoundly heightened cognitive powers—experienced truncated life spans, and were afflicted by madnesses and pains in later life.
Engravers like myself often fared poorest: to have so many memories stored within the mind was like running a horse at full gallop too often. Things simply fell apart.
To hear now that my alterations were “maturing” suggested I was further along in this process than I’d thought.
I touched my brow, trying to fight the vague feeling that there was something gestating in my skull: an awful little fetus quietly devouring my thoughts, like a chick consuming the albumen within its egg.
“You, ah, knew the nature of your augmentations when you accepted them, I thought?” asked Ana.
“I knew them,” I murmured. “But knowing them and living them are two different things.”
“I see…Well. The Empire does labor to amend the pains of its Sublimes,” she said carefully. “Though, I will note, not necessarily out of some beneficent impulse—it is no good thing for your most valuable servants to perish early.”
“Last I heard,” I said tartly, “these treatments were still decades away.”
“Perhaps,” she said. “I confess, I do not know, Din. What I do know is that all Sublimes are generously rewarded with lands and dispensation at the end of their service. Yet…I feel this is likely of little balm to you now.”
I stayed silent, struggling to think.
She raised a hand. “I have kept you too busy to permit the necessary reflections here, child. And I should not have brought it up now—not when we have hundreds of gentry farm folk dreaming of slitting one another’s throats! We have pressing matters today.”
I gritted my teeth and took a moment. “Yes, yes…” I said. “I see.”
“Here is what we shall do now,” said Ana. “You must go and talk to Castus Armenta immediately—and specifically, Din, you must ask him what Zansay over there did after she died.”
All thoughts of my own plight faded as I struggled to comprehend her words.
“Beg pardon?” I said. “What do you mean, after she died? Generally I thought people did very little after such an event.”
“True, true,” said Ana. “But! We have signs of much strangeness about Zansay’s death—namely, that she did almost nothing to stop it!
She shows no sign of resisting, as your memories spotlighted for you.
She did not scream. The woundings are terribly, surgically clean.
Really, we have but one indication of her movements—the printing of blood upon her palm, and her knee.
Can you imagine what caused such a printing, Din? ”
“I’m afraid I cannot, ma’am.”
“Well!” Ana smiled, delighted. “It seems to me that those prints were made after she lowered herself down, propped herself up by hand and knee, and lay in her own blood!”
I glanced over at Zansay’s corpse, as if to reassure myself that it was still. “You think…”
“Yes! Though I cannot explain it, I believe someone—presumably Castus—nearly cut off the girl’s arm and then disemboweled her, and then stood back while she very calmly lay down!
The killer’s behavior, I cannot speak to.
But I find the victim’s to be quite curious, given she’d just had her fucking midsection sawed through. ”
“How…how could such a thing be possible, ma’am?”
“I do not know, Din. It will require investigation. But consider—we have a victim, so carefully arranged! And a murderer, so obviously, blatantly complicit! It is to me a butchering most curated. And that I find very interesting. Let us hope young Master Armenta can offer guidance here!”