Chapter 23
The dawn sun found me sitting in the back of an open cart, surrounded by Orbiis officers as we trundled east toward the Armenta lands.
A soft rain began to fall, and the Orbiis all grew excited, opening their mouths and allowing the drops to come tumbling in.
Some swilled the drops about like they were the dribblings of fine wine, then whispered to one another, discussing its flavorings and age.
Others sat cupping their hands and peering at the waters in their palms, tilting the tiny droplets back and forth as if they could read the future within them.
“They are reading the winds,” said Tauri dully beside me.
“Beg pardon, sir?”
“Rain is first formed around particulates in the atmosphere, Signum. Dust, mostly. The dust is pulled up from the lands and cast high into the skies, where it catches the humidity and turns into raindrops, bit by bit. By tasting and reading the rain, you can read the highest winds, and the shape of all the earth beyond.” He studied a pearly raindrop on the tip of his finger with a sad eye, then placed it against his bare tongue.
“This batch of rain comes from a very distant stretch of land. Across the sea, in fact.”
“Truly?” I said, surprised. I knew little of lands across the sea, save that they existed, were very strange, and were entirely empty of people.
“Yes. Much can be read in the shiftings of small things, Kol. Though I dread the airs before us, frankly.” He began to put on his warding suit, though by my reckoning we still had a good while to go. After he affixed his helm atop his head, he sat and remained silent.
Finally we came to the Armenta spreads. Their gentry-gate had been wrapped in black ribbons, and all the mai-lamps set about it were veiled—mourning for Castus, surely. I shifted in my seat, unnerved, and was glad when we left the gates behind us.
We wound on into their lands, turning again and again. Then, without a word of signal, the Orbiis officers placed their warding helms on their heads and fastened them tight.
“Better do the same, Kol,” said Tauri through the glass of his helm. “We are not at risk—but we enter dreadful country now.”
I was about to ask what he meant, but then I smelled it.
The odor of rot and putrefaction was so abominable I almost grew sick right there in the cart. I hurriedly put on my helm and fastened it. The humid, oppressive scent of leather was an oasis compared to that smell.
“What is that?” I asked.
Tauri did not answer. He just pointed up. I craned my eyes toward the sky.
Circling above us were hundreds of carrion-birds, if not thousands. It was as if some tremendous battlefield lay ahead, with thousands of soldiers lying dead upon the grass.
Then we cleared a patch of trees, and I looked out.
The River Spurcia curled through the fields in the distance.
Gathered all about it was a sprawling, leagues-long swamp of fen-pits and mireponds, all gleaming sickly in daylight.
At the center of the swamp, clinging close to the river, were some two dozen rounded, sloping structures, wrought of tightly woven fretvine.
Between the way they curved and how they seemed sunken in the mire, I was reminded of leeches or beetles, feasting upon a wound.
Then we heard a sound: a low, fearful, deep yowling of a kind I’d never heard before.
I tilted my helmed head about, seeking their source, and spied a long paddock brimming with altered urhosi cows.
Each massive beast was screaming and lowing, crying out as teams of drovers herded them across a ramp spanning the filthy mires—and then into one of the long, rounded structures.
“The flensing halls, you see,” said Tauri softly beside me.
“In there they shall strike the cows with a hammer and hang their bodies upon the vines. Then altered threadvines will part flesh from bone and sinew and intestine. What they isolate shall be prepared, packaged, sent to the other rings of the Empire. As for the rest…” He gestured at the vast, reeking swamps.
“They deal with it as cheaply as they can.”
We continued down the road and beheld yet another sight: a mountain of something white and yellow and spindly, rising there at the end of the fens.
It had the look of sea coral, yet it was crawling with rodents and insects and other vermin.
Then I saw the eye sockets and realized they were bones: a vast mountain of bones, higher than any building in Lacanthim.
So great was their number that I could not imagine the herd that had been slaughtered here.
“They burn it once a year,” said Tauri. “The bones, I mean. Turn the pile to ash, and fertilizer. We do have use for such organic resources, but…” He shrugged.
“The flensing halls simply make too much. Much more bone, and skin, and enzymes and reagents and such, than all the Apoths could ever get about to using properly. So. Easier to let it rot here and burn it now and again. You see now, of course, why we Orbiis do not venture to the southern roads of the Armenta spreads—especially when the wind is against us. I will ask them for haste now.” He let out a sad laugh.
“How dispiriting it is to think that grave robbing is a less ghastly task than lingering in this place!”
—
Finally, the tall stonewood walls of the Armenta sepulcher emerged above the fields before us. How stark it was to see so much dark black rising from the green grass, set against the brilliant blue sky. It gave me the feeling of approaching some temple or haven of ancient priests.
Fotia and Trikao Armenta awaited us before the sepulcher gates. Both appeared quite wan, but Trikao was clearly the worse of the two: he looked like he was near ready to step into a tomb himself.
Tauri wasted no time as he climbed off the cart. “Has anyone been in there recently?” he asked them curtly.
Trikao cleared his throat. “My sister sends flowers to the tombs of her three children every month. The last time was three…three weeks ago, I believe.”
“And did they notice anything strange about the tombs?”
“Well—no? I would have said, if that were the case.”
“But it could have destabilized your graves, over time,” muttered Tauri. He turned to his officers and called, “We shall have to prepare for leakage, chaps! Move cautiously.”
“Leakage?” said Fotia. She looked to me. “Truly?”
“Perhaps,” I said. “We don’t yet know, Fotia.”
The officers swiftly climbed out of the cart and began to assemble their tools. Trikao and Fotia watched us with some alarm, and it took me a moment to realize that save for Tauri last night, she had probably never seen anyone in a warding suit.
“Should Trikao and Fotia stay away, Commander?” I asked.
“They are probably safe where they are,” Tauri said rather coldly. “Again—got to let the spores get into water and then drink that for it to be dangerous. A few spores borne aloft on the wind are no threat.” Without another glance at them, he opened the gate and went inside.
“Are you close to him?” asked Fotia, watching Tauri go.
“He is superior to me, though not of my Iyalet,” I said.
“A careful answer!” she said. “I’m starting to get a sense about that fellow. Though after meeting your immunis, I’m given to wonder about the high folk of your Iyalets…”
I muttered some apology, then entered the sepulcher gates to follow Tauri.
The inner yard of the Armenta sepulcher featured no huge stonewood houses for storing the dead but rather used a very tall, curling breed of stooped black trees that grew all along the paths.
The trees had abnormally thick branches that came coiling close to the ground, and at their lowest points they bore enormous, curious fruit—or perhaps they were seed pods, or cocoons.
I studied one growth as we passed it. It was wrought of a highly altered breed of black fretvine and had been grown in an oblong shape akin to an egg.
It was about seven span long and sported a seam about the middle.
Adhered to its end was a small, brass plate reading: Irphio Armenta, 971–993, Beloved Son. I will hold you again when we awaken.
We continued until we came to the newest section of the Armenta sepulcher, which was grander and more decorated than the rest: a sign of the family’s increasing wealth, I gathered.
Hanging from one large, black glossy tree were three cocoons that were garlanded with bright wreaths of silver leaves.
Tauri inspected the plates on their tops and said, “This is them—Lyimo, Sagma, and Gevma Armenta.” He gestured to his officers, who began unpacking instruments from their satchels.
“Please remind us, Kol, how these poor folk perished.”
I summoned the memories. “For Lyimo, he was found drowned in a pond at the edge of their lands, near the forest. Sagma hanged herself. And Gevma Armenta fell from his destrier while riding.”
“Hum. We shall open the most recent one first—Gevma Armenta. The Armentas are of a sect that wash and preserve their dead, but that’s not a perfect art. And while these tavoskolis are famous for keeping out water and pestilence, they aren’t always dependable, either.”
“I see. So—why Gevma first, sir?”
“Because,” sighed Tauri, “I’d prefer not to deal with a very, very rotted corpse right from the start! I’d rather try and fucking acclimate a little.”
The Orbiis officers produced a set of pots and began to carefully paint the seams of the cocoon—or the tavoskoli as Tauri had called it. There was a slight hissing as they daubed it on. Then they stepped back and waited.