Chapter 4 #2
“As in, is there some cleft in our brains full of poison?” said Trikao.
“No. My sister has paid no end of medikkers and Apoths and posigers to come and treat her and her children and her family for all manner of disorders. None have found a thing. Nor did Castus show any sign of madness before last night—or, none that I could see.”
“And what is this gossip you so dislike, sir?”
His eyes grew stony beneath his brow. “That we are being punished by the fates. Perhaps even by the Daljen ancestors themselves—for pride, or some hidden sin. But these, I tell you, are lies and madness. The words of cowards and fools.”
I paused, surprised. The Daljen were an ancestor pantheon that was worshipped by the very rich among the Tala folk. My own family, being nigh destitute, had not observed those customs. I’d not heard mention of the name in some time, so it was something of a shock to hear it now.
Another consequence, I reminded myself, of being back on the Plains of Tala, the lands of my birth. But now I dwelt in a far wealthier portion than any I’d ever known.
“Is there anyone else we can consult about Castus’s behavior?” I asked.
Trikao hesitated. “Though I saw him often, I was not intimate with Castus. My son and his betrothed were close with him, however. I can send for them to come to the city, now that there’s no danger. They may know something that can spare him from the noose—if anything can, that is.”
I thanked him, asked him to do so, and entered the jail with Princeps Seriv.
—
“We’ve young Castus in the common cells,” said Seriv as we entered the passages of the jail. “He’s not said a word yet, though he was a chatty thing before. Perhaps he’s had some affliction of the brain that’s driven him to do this, and it affects him still.”
I glanced sidelong at Seriv as I followed him deeper into the cells. He even had the walk of a drover, loping along with a bowlegged stride. “May I ask a very foolish question, Princeps?”
“That’s the only kind I’ve answered this shit day, sir. Ask away.”
“Why do the Buravs and Armentas hate each other? I know of many gentryclans that bicker over land, but few that draw blades over it.”
He stopped in the hallway and sighed. Then he pushed back his hat and ruffled his (surprisingly tremendous) mane of white hair.
“That question isn’t foolish, but it is…
tricky. I’ll try to keep my answer succinct.
” He pulled a long wooden pipe from his pocket and chewed its end for a moment.
“I suppose it’s like everything else—it comes down to grafts, and alterations. And who got them, and when.”
I motioned for him to continue.
“These are farmlands, sir.” He gestured with his pipe end, as if drawing a map about us.
“Some of the most valuable soil in all the Empire. Our purpose here is the cultivation of leaf, stem, and flesh. So the Apoths, whose domain is entirely that, have a heavy hand in these lands. The Armentas were the first to benefit. About a century ago, the Apoths developed all kinds of grafts, treatments, and suffusions for the altering of flesh. Most of it was ways to make soldiers larger and stronger to man the sea walls—but what can be done to a man can be done to a cow even more so, and cheaper, for a cow’s suffering is of no worth.
The Armentas used these treatments to create entirely new bloodlines of urhosi cattle.
Huge things, massive creatures, with better meat than other herds.
They developed the best ways to do this, became very trusted across the Empire—and very rich.
So much so they bought up almost all the lands of the other families of the canton. ”
My eyes fluttered and I recalled a line that Burilis Burav had said—They nearly extinguished my family’s holdings mere decades ago.
“Including the Buravs?” I asked.
“Indeed,” said Seriv. “The Armentas bought them out until the Burav lands were a speck on the map. Looked like someone had spilled a bit of soup in the corner. But then, about twenty-five years ago, the Apoths came out with another set of miracles—these for the growings and harvesting of plants. Specifically, the beans for cow feed. And the Buravs saw an opportunity and moved.”
“The Buravs could not compete with the Armentas on the growing of cows—but they could do so in growing their feed.”
“That is the spill of it, sir. They made heaps and heaps of money, nearly overnight. The Buravs have bought back almost all their lands. We now have a stalemate, for neither can truly attack the other’s trade.
One dominates the animal—the other, its feed.
They need each other, and hate each other, sir.
They are wealthy beyond measure, but each can think only on what the other possesses.
” He sighed and returned the pipe to his mouth.
“For a long while the feud was mostly bickerings and resentment. In the past five years, it has gotten much worse. There’ve been skirmishes.
Injuries. The occasional casualty. And then the Armentas began to decline, which has made things quite black. ”
We continued until we came to a small rotunda, with several short passageways of cell doors stretching out about me. The air was foul here, reeking of sweat and waste: a familiar odor to me, as I had visited many jails and prisons.
“My briefing mentioned you had found the murder weapon,” I said.
“Yes,” said Seriv. “We found it in the room with the dead girl, and I packaged it up. I had no time to do much else with it, after the Armentas and the Buravs came trooping in…”
He fumbled about in a bag that had been tossed in the corner of the room, then took out a package wrapped in leather. He unfolded it to show me a bloodied, serrated knife, with a blade nearly a span long, and a plain, unmarked wooden handle. Its teeth were about an eighth of a smallspan apart.
My eyes fluttered in my head as I summoned up the memory of Zansay’s wounds. There was little doubt in my mind that this had been the knife that had harmed her.
“A flensing knife,” said Seriv.
“A what?”
“A flensing knife, for work in the flensing halls.” He wrapped it up and placed it back in his bag. “Where all the arts of butchery are put to thousands of cattle carcasses, to make flesh for the inner rings to dine upon. A dark thing that this was used upon the scion of a ranching house—true?”
—
Castus Armenta was locked in the first cell in the passage.
He sat in the corner, head bowed, back slumped.
He was wearing an old linen shirt and breeches, and from the fit they must have once belonged to someone else, for Castus was practically swimming in their sleeves.
I guessed his other clothes had been too bloodied.
He did not look up as I entered and sat on the bench opposite him.
He was a young man, barely twenty, dark headed, well built, and quite tanned: I guessed he, like so many people of this land, had spent his days in the saddle tending to herds of urhosi cows.
Yet there was a softness to his eyes, or perhaps his chin, as if despite his labors he’d left childhood behind so recently that he still bore some of its traces.
But there, behind his ear, and at the base of his neck: a coil of something dark and crusty. Dried blood—Zansay’s blood, to be sure.
“Castus Armenta?” I asked.
He blinked slowly but did not look at me.
“I am Signum Dinios Kol, of the Imperial Iudex. I’m given custody of your case. I am here to listen to your account of last night.”
The young man took a deep breath and sighed.
“Do you recall what happened, Castus?” I asked. “And can you account for your actions before and after the death of Zansay Burav?”
He said nothing.
“I’m tasked to get your account, Castus,” I said. “I must stay here until I get it.”
His eyelids fluttered, and he swallowed. Then, hoarsely, he said, “No.”
“No? No, as in…”
“No, I cannot account for my actions,” he said dully.
“Because you refuse? Or because you can’t remember?”
Silence.
“Or because you can find no explanation for them?” I suggested.
Another fluttering to his eyelids. “The…the last one.”
I watched him sitting there, slumped against the fretvine wall. He looked like a man who had had his spirit ripped from him, like a cook pulling the veins from a shrimp.
“Did you kill Zansay Burav, Castus?” I asked.
“You ask me plainly?”
“I do. Did you?”
A slight crinkling about his eyes. “I…I do not know.”
“Why don’t you know?”
“I…remember,” he said slowly. “But I don’t know. It is like a madness. You wouldn’t understand.”
“I might. I’ve heard many strange things in my time, Castus.”
“But not this. To live it was like living a nightmare, full of sound and strangeness. I’ll not tell you of it.”
“Why?”
“Because…I am sure that what I say will give you cause to hang me. And I feel you’ve enough of that.”
I studied him carefully and considered my words. “You say last night was like a nightmare, and full of mad things. But was one mad thing something Zansay did…after she was attacked? Did you see her do something you can’t explain, Castus?”
He looked up at me with a wild, wary gleam in his eyes. He was silent for a great while. “Was…it real, then?” he whispered finally. “Did it truly happen?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Why don’t you tell me what you saw?”
Castus swallowed again and thought for a moment. “If you’re here,” he said finally, “then you likely already know of…of Zansay and me.”
“Of your tryst? Yes.”
“Did Ithia tell you?”
“We had to threaten her. She tried to defend you until the end. How did it begin?”