Chapter 21
I walked downstairs to find Fotia comforting a beleaguered Trikao Armenta in the entrance of the Green Drover.
Though Trikao had seemed exhausted before, he now looked like he’d aged half a century since I’d last seen him, so furious and formidable before the doors of Aimafall.
Now his eyes were sunken, his skin looked like paper, and he swayed slightly where he stood.
Tauri stopped at the bottom of the stairs, watching the two of them with a lingering look of dislike.
He gave me a nod and said, “I can do no more thinking after such a day, Kol. I shall go to the Orbiis offices here to bed down with the rest of my folk. I bid you good evening. Though a bit of advice…”
“Yes, sir?”
“I suggest you keep your company carefully.”
“What do you mean by that?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Take from it what you feel.” Then he wandered down the stairs and out the door.
I watched the closed door for a moment, then approached Trikao and Fotia.
“Is what Fotia says true?” Trikao asked me. “Ippeas is not being accused of a crime?”
“No, sir,” I said. “We do not think it was he who set the Burav mansion alight. But we do think someone meant him harm and will try again. We keep him in the jails only for his safety.”
Trikao let out an unsteady sigh of relief. “I have been in a panic all day…I’ve flown about the country, reassuring our allies that this was so, but did not truly know it! I wish to see him now. Can that be done?”
“Of course,” I said. “I’ll accompany you both to the jails now.”
I walked with Trikao and Fotia across the lanes of Lacanthim, but found that such a simple journey was now anything but.
People knew Trikao by sight, and many hissed and jeered at him, accusing him of wishing the Buravs harm.
In but a few blocks, the old man’s very presence caused no less than three minor brawls.
“All unravels,” he murmured softly. “All unravels about us…”
“Grandfather,” said Fotia. “Please.”
As we approached the jail, he raised a hand to her. “You should see to him first, my dear. He…he is often much happier after he has visited with you. Myself, he has less love for.”
“That isn’t so,” said Fotia.
He smiled sadly at her. “I am his father. I know what is true and what is not. I shall wait outside and let your brother keep me company. He is a…” He paused as if searching for a compliment, and chose “…a very stable presence.”
Fotia shot me a look and mouthed—Take care of him!—and slipped indoors.
I waited beside the huge old man, content to let the quiet overtake us. The night filled up with the cheeping of countless crickets and frogs, and folk shuffled through the shadowy lanes before us, many casting Trikao poisonous looks.
“Once I was a celebrated man here,” Trikao said softly. “It seems so long ago now.”
The comment hung in the humid air. I felt compelled to respond.
“Oh, sir?” I said.
“Yes. Booking rooms for flesh merchants and top drovers in the inns and the taverns. Spreading talints and wine and cheer about. But since the deaths began, my footfall has been shunned. They think us cursed. I cannot blame them.”
“I know, sir. We labor now to amend it.”
“I thought I could bear it. I have borne much for my family. But…to have my own son now threatened, I…”
“We will find the killer soon enough. And then all can be set aright.”
A soft laugh. “I rather doubt that, Signum! Much had gone wrong before. My son often resents my…my duties. It is like a great pane of glass between us. I am oathsworn to serve my sister, even though I will not inherit. I must aid her and our family in all things. It is understandable, but…Ippeas resents the attentions I give to others, I feel. And he does not love that Velona doesn’t advance him.
” He looked at me. “May I ask you something, Signum Kol?”
I tipped my head to him.
“Tell me. Am I a poor father for doing this?”
“My father’s attentions were mostly devoted to spending money he did not have. So. My standard is somewhat low, sir.”
He smiled ruefully. “That isn’t as uncommon among the gentry as you might think.” The smile faded. “The difference is custom, tradition. Heritage. The higher you go, the more it owns you.”
“What might you mean?”
He gazed into the black night and thought for a long time.
“When Emperor Ejelgi Daavir conquered the Titan’s Path,” he said, “and first marched to the sea, he celebrated with a great feast. He slaughtered some three hundred cattle and roasted them upon bright bonfires, and he and his soldiers dined and made merry. This feast is as well-known as the face of his son today. It is emblazoned on many crests, and tapestries, and paintings, all across our holy Empire. It is a…a silly thing, but we know, somehow, that nobility and greatness are linked to the riches of a man’s table, to the fare he offers.
Even our very bodies know it. Doesn’t your mouth water, Kol, to sniff the air and taste the tallows on the very winds? ”
I conceded that this was so.
“So we grow our herds,” Trikao said, “and drive our cattle. All so that the Empire can dream of tasting that feast, however long ago it was. In doing this, we maintain our heritage—and our fortune.” He looked back at the jail.
His eyes were bright with tears. “But what a thing this work asks of us! And if we refused it, another would do so. Another would come and do it in our stead. And the Empire would feast, while my family would starve.” He pressed a big hand to his face and wiped his eyes.
“How perverse it is. We make beasts of ourselves, to be sacrificed to this trade.”
I said nothing, but his words struck a chord with me: more and more I felt myself terribly different from my sister, for my augmentations had permanently altered my very biologies.
Had I been made a beast, to be sacrificed for my family and the Empire?
Or was I now a shepherd, and the common folk of the cantons my flock?
Trikao turned to me. “Let me say it. You do not think my nephews and niece died naturally.”
“We do not,” I said, surprised. “Why do you say so?”
“Because of all the questions you have been asking,” he said, “ever since you first arrived. As well as what happened to the Buravs. Tell me—is there some evil at work here in Lacanthim?”
It was no easy thing to resist this aged man, pleading with me here in the dark. But I shook my head. “I cannot speculate on the investigation, sir.”
“But I can’t help but feel it’s so. I…I’ve a mind to ask you to release my son, Signum. I wish to flee with him, if we can. It’s like a plague infects this place, and we must retreat from its spread.”
But, of course, I knew that Ippeas was already infected, if not yet conditioned.
“This would do little good, sir,” I said.
“What do you mean?”
I frowned, wondering how best to thread this needle.
“Are you not Iudex?” he demanded. “Aren’t you meant to protect your people? And here I ask you for protection when…”
He trailed off. A strange sound had come from within the jail.
A long, agonizing moan, rising horribly, then tapering off.
“What is that?” said Trikao.
I turned around, peering through the window behind me. I could see no movement within the jail.
The sound came again, low and rising to a high, ragged crescendo—but this time it did not taper. It continued, growing and growing until it became a shriek.
“What is happening?” whispered Trikao.
I threw open the door to the jail and dashed inside.
—
I’d memorized the layout of the jail during my many visits here, and as I darted through the corridors with Trikao Armenta behind me I estimated that the screams were not coming from a wing or chamber I had seen. Someplace new, then, something different.
I hurtled through the half-lit dungeons. Ippeas Armenta stood at the bars of his cell, crying out, “It’s Castus! It’s Castus, something’s wrong!”
“Where?” I said.
“The infirmary, down there! He started saying his head pained him, and Seriv and an attendant took him away to sedate him, but—”
I dashed on without hearing more.
“What is going on, Signum Kol?” bellowed Trikao Armenta behind me.
“I don’t know, sir,” I said, my voice eerily calm in my own ears.
I ran on down the hallway toward the source of the screaming. It began to gurgle, to choke—and then a new screaming joined it, a terrified shrieking.
My hand flew to my sword, but I did not draw it yet. To draw a sword in tight environs with no enemy about was a foolish thing, for a naked blade often did as much harm as good.
This proved a wise choice, for then the door at the end of the hallway burst open.
Seriv rushed out and nearly crashed into me, one arm around Fotia to shield her.
His face was pale and pained, and hers was horrified beyond words.
My eye flew to her drover’s leggings, which I saw were stained with blood—yet it was not hers, as she seemed to be whole.
I peered through the open door behind them. I saw the infirmary beyond, with a wide medikker’s table in the center and a tray of tincture pots and tools beside it. The top half of the table was spattered with gore, almost as if the occupant had been decapitated there.
The letters flashed in my memory: LYSIS.
And Tauri’s comment: a medikker term, for when an infected body tissue breaks down, or bursts.
That last word hung heavy on me: bursts.
I could hear more screaming from a chamber beyond the infirmary. There, in the corner: another open door, this one leading to a dark passage.
“What happened?” I demanded.
Seriv fought to stand. I saw that his hand was pressed to his stomach, where dark blood was welling through his fingers.
“Said he had a headache,” Seriv gasped to me. “Took him to…to…He grabbed a knife…”
“Where is he now?” I asked quickly.
“Evrik, the infirmary medikker,” said Seriv. He groaned as pain coursed through him. “He…he ran when it happened. Castus pursued him.”
Another scream from the shadowy passage in the corner.
“Where does that lead?” I asked.
“The lading deck,” said Seriv faintly. “Where the sick are taken away.”