Chapter 16 #2
It was in this latter station that we found Jalin Burav. The boy was not yet placed in a milky healing bath; rather, they had stripped him down and placed him upon a bed of sterile moss and had set burn mites upon his flesh.
I grimaced at the sight of these: the mites resembled tiny black beads picking their way across his skin, removing the dead, burned portion and slathering the wounds beneath with treated saliva.
I knew they were a highly respected and valuable healing tool, but it was still a startling thing to see a human body crawling with thousands of insects pecking at his peeling flesh.
The only thing more disturbing than the mites was Jalin himself.
He was, as Seriv had told me, terribly injured: the boy’s young face was blistered and bleeding, his arms and chest were a bright, furious pink ruin of scabbed skin, and his broken arm and leg, though black and swollen, were already set in a vine cast. A tiny pile of jewelry lay beside his head, including his tughra ring with the large, pointed Burav hawk upon it.
Its band had been snipped in two: likely his hand had swollen so quickly that the medikkers had been forced to remove it to prevent losing the finger.
I relayed this to Ana in a hushed whisper. She waved a hand to silence me, then sat beside his bed.
“Jalin Burav?” she asked.
He cracked an eye, groaning, and peered through the churning pile of mites on his cheeks.
“It is Dolabra, from the Iudex,” she said. “We met recently.”
He swallowed, groaned in pain—his throat was likely scalded—but said nothing.
“You are likely going to be put in sedation while the medikkers tend to your wounds,” she said. “Before they take you, I must know what you saw of the fire.”
He blinked his pinkened eyes, then opened his mouth to speak. Air came out in a ragged, agonized sigh, and he struggled to shape it into words. “Are they…all…?” he whispered.
“Your family? We search the ruins still, sir, so…we don’t know for sure.”
He took a wheezing breath and whispered, “Yes…you do.”
Ana said nothing.
“I tried to save them,” Jalin murmured. His eyes grew wide, and I saw streaks of split skin on his eyelids.
“So we heard, sir,” said Ana.
“Again and again,” he choked. “I tried. But…they didn’t listen.”
Ana leaned closer. “What do you mean?”
His head fell back upon the mossbed. “You should…kill me,” he whispered.
“No matter how much you despair, sir,” said Ana softly, “that I cannot grant you.”
“You…should,” he said again, his voice dying to a tattered sigh. “I…am but flesh. And what else do we do…with flesh in this cursed place?”
Then he gasped and fell silent. Ana turned her ear toward his lips, then shook her head and muttered, “Unconscious. We shall get no more out of him.” She bowed her head for a moment, then said, “His treatment will be long and arduous, but—I would like to have a custodus sent to keep watch over him. Just in case.”
“You worry someone might target the survivors, ma’am?” I asked.
She waved a hand, indicating she wished to leave. Then she took my arm and I led her away.
—
We withdrew to the south lawn of the estate. Ana stood there in the enormous swath of freshly cut grass—even after all the madness of the morning, I noted how odd it was to waste so much valuable land in this fertile place—gripped my arm tight, and shook her head.
“Well,” she pronounced. “That was disturbing as hell, I must say! I’ve had folks ask me for death before, but none so swiftly, or with such earnestness! I feel that boy truly wished to die, Din. Yet what did you make of that bit—about how he’d tried to save them, but they wouldn’t listen?”
“I presume he meant how he tried to wake his family from the effects of the web, ma’am.”
Ana sucked her teeth. “I suppose you’re right.
Still, I wish to learn more of young Jalin.
His house is still standing, yes? Go give it a look-over before some mad bastard puts it to the torch, too.
I’ll have a custodus take me to where Tauri labors on our burned mansion.
How useless I feel, lingering about this damned place like a ghost!
If only Burav’s bookshelves had survived. Then I’d have something to do…”
I did as she bade, stalking off into the vast, sprawling estate. There were actually many homes located on the Burav grounds—high servants, advisers, other kin—but Jalin Burav’s house was positioned quite far away from the main house, tucked into a distant corner and quite inaccessible.
I made note of this. Jalin was the only son of Burilis Burav—yet from his house alone, he had no wish to be close to the family.
The house itself was a cozy, comfortable thing, hidden behind high hedges, draped in blooming vines and shadowed by a leaning tree.
The cottage’s chambers smelled strongly of tea, and were filled with books, paintings, sketches, and little boxes of stones he apparently found interesting.
Most of the sketches were of landscapes and urhosi cattle.
However, these were not like the other images I’d seen during my time here, where the cows were grim, savage trophies: these depictions were much softer, more thoughtful, more…
kind, in short. That was the only word for it: when you looked at the rich, dark eyes of the creatures on his parchments, so innocent and soulful, you could feel nothing but kindness for them.
I recalled what the servant Kozder had said of him: He struggled under the weight of being his father’s only son. And he disliked the cattle trade, and many thought him too weak for it.
I studied another drawing, this one of an urhosi calf contentedly suckling at its mother’s teat. I noted how the little beast’s eye rolled up in its head with drunken pleasure, and the way the mother’s neck arched down so she could regard her infant.
Weakness, no. Unless sympathy was a weakness in this place, which might be so.
I found only two things of note in the house.
First was the sheer number of mood-adjusting reagents in his bedroom: there were yurtin tinctures for anxieties, anja powders for sleep, tinis for fears, and much more.
The boy must have walked about with his head percolating all day.
Perhaps this was how he dealt with the stress.
Then, yet again, it happened.
I felt my memories move within me, rubbing up against the walls of my skull like a beast attempting to scratch its hide.
A voice in my mind: You know these treatments. Are these not given to engravers, eventually, as their afflictions grow?
I grimaced and pressed the heel of my palm to my brow. Be silent. Be silent, damn you…
A twist in my thoughts, as if bemused: You, too, shall take these cures—should you survive long enough, that is.
Then the strange, trembling in my mind receded, and blessed silence filled the space behind my eyes. I took a breath of relief.
Yet I noted…my memories had spoken with a familiar voice. A woman’s voice. Not Ana’s, but…
No. No, I had lost it. With a shake of my head, I steeled myself and continued my search.
The second notable thing was a drawing I found that was quite different from his sketches of the cattle.
For one, it had been carefully placed on his desk.
Yet more, it depicted not cows, but a tree, tall and beautifully rendered with long, slender leaves.
Each branch was heavy with fruit of a kind I did not know—were they pears, or pomegranates, or figs?
—yet there, in the corner, was a symbol I knew all too well: two spheres, separated by a vertical line.
My eyes quaked, and I heard Velona Armenta’s voice in my memories: It is the sign of Master Gaddar! The tree bearing fruit, for he was lord of all orchards!
I picked up the drawing, folded it carefully, and placed it in my pocket.
—
When I returned to the burned house I couldn’t find any sign of Ana. I was forced to flag down a custodus, who gave me a rather shameful glance and led me to a large Orbiis trunk set on the lawn.
“I see,” I said, sighing. “Thank you, I can manage from here.”
I gave the trunk three quick knocks.
“Din?” said Ana’s voice from within. “Are you done already? Titan’s taint, that didn’t take long…”
I unlatched the trunk, and Ana popped up like a bewitched corpse from its grave. I glanced about somewhat shamedly: she had a fondness for getting into small, secluded places to have a think, and while I had come to tolerate this eccentricity, it was likely quite disturbing to the custodi.
I reported on what I’d found, and she nodded along. “So! We have nothing of note…save this sketch Jalin made of a fruit tree and a Daljeni symbol.”
“So it seems, ma’am,” I said. “Though I found little of worth in that house. He kept no treasures, nor luxuries. He seemed an artistic, gentle soul.”
“And a tremendously bothered soul, too!” said Ana. She pursed her lips. “Din—there was something Castus said to you once, about Burilis Burav and his children. Please recall it for me.”
I frowned, searched my mind for the memory, and then found it: “But I’ve worked in the flensing halls of my family. My mother obliges us to do this, you see—for the Buravs do this to their own boy, out of the belief it makes him strong, and she will be damned if we don’t do the same.”
“Can you,” mused Ana, “imagine Jalin Burav bearing such work well?”
“In the flensing halls? No.”
“Nor I. That may explain why he had so much trouble with his temperament. Interesting…yet why, I wonder, would Jalin Burav be drawing Daljeni symbols? Kurmin folk such as he didn’t keep to such a pantheon.
” She sighed. “I will remark upon this, but leave it! For Tauri believes he has found something very interesting in the house.”
“I thought there wasn’t much house left to find, ma’am.”
“That’s what’s so interesting! This particular bit remains.” She lay back in the box once more but waved at one corner of the mansion. “Look there.” Then she snapped the lid shut again.