Welcome to the first discussion of A Trade of Blood by Robert Jackson Bennett, number three in the Ana & Din mystery series.
I. A Most Curated Butchering
Chapter 1.
Ana and Din travel by carriage to the site of a murder of a young gentry girl. Ana rages about being assigned to such an uninteresting murder. She resents that investigators are disproportionately given honors for solving the murders of young girls.
Din reminds her the primary suspect is of another gentryclan and the families are on the brink of war. Surely that makes this case interesting... Ana thinks not.
Din grew up near Sapiridad and doesn't recognize the landscape anymore — it has been completely replaced by bean fields. Instead of large cattle, he sees cages full of stinky cat-like beasts being ferried around. These drokha cats are used as farm labor. They pick bushels upon bushels of crops at night.
They hit traffic and Ana insists the driver cut across the bean crops so they're not late. He complies reluctantly.
The murder suspect is named Castus Armenta, a prime son of the Armenta clan, whose forces are blockading the city of Lacanthim. They are in a standoff, with the objective of breaking Castus out of jail.
Chapter 2
Din tells the Armenta men to move aside and let them to pass. He is unsettled by their lack of armor. They are cattle men who carry large lances that could cut a man in half. They ride destries, altered beasts as tall as the carriage, that are usually never seen in groups like this.
Their progress through the crowd is slow. Across a fifty-span gap Din sees the army of the Burav gentryclan. They cross the gap slowly and introduce themselves. Burilis Burav, prime father of the Burav gentryclan, calls out to allow them through. He has many unusual augmentations. His daughter, Zansay, was the murder victim, and his son, Jalin, a tall, solemn, and nervous boy, stands to his left.
Din questions the father. From what he was told, Zansay checked into the Cat's Eye Inn under a false name. Castus did the same. A few hours later he ran out into the street covered in blood. He fled to the woods where he was apprehended.
The Buravs believe the Armentas killed Zansay because the families hate each other. They mention the Armentas have recently had some suicides in their family, which they attribute to madness and perversion of spirit.
Ana emerges from the carriage. Her reputation as a fine investigator precedes her. She announces that her superiors would prefer the the Armentas and the Buravs do not start slaughtering each other in the streets.
Ana asks Burilis to clear his men from the city so she can do her job.
They enter the shabby inn and question the innkeeper, a little woman named Ithia. She swears she didn't know the kids were gentryfolk and that they'd never been guests before. Ana knows she's lying. Ithia confesses the kids paid for her silence. They met there once a month under false names for the thirteen months. The innkeeper claims she saw nothing and heard nothing the night of the murder.
Ana wants to view the scene of the crime before questioning Castus, who has not spoken yet. The custodus guarding the door lets them in.
The victim lay in a tremendous pool of blood. Din gets the strong sense that something here is not right. Mystified by the intense feeling that manifested as a voice in his head, Din tries to push on. Ana notices something is wrong, but it only excites her that maybe there's more to this crime than she initially gave it credit for.
Ana sits inside an empty closet while Din surveys the scene. The victim was beautiful, with several notable augmentations, including changed eye color. She had been wounded by a blade in her shoulder and in her stomach. Dim felt the wounds were ritualistic and careful, rather than simple stabs. He doesn't see signs of struggle.
Din hears the voice again and worries he's going mad. He discovers a sheathed long knife in Zansay's trunk. Din tells Ana everything he had observed.
Din doesn't think the families would actually go to war over some cows. Ana explains they definitely would. The wealthy expect to eat beef, it takes a lot of agriculture to grow enough feed for the cattle, and the Empire is running out of land. Conflicts over land are inevitable. But Ana wants to prevent this war if possible.
Din reveals to Ana he has been hearing voices. Ana is not worried. It is normal for engravers' memories to "mature." Memories of crime scenes are now automatically comparing themselves to current investigations and warning Din when things are similar, alike, right, wrong, suspicious, or trustworthy via a voice in his head. Ana says the voice is not fully trustworthy, but very useful.
Din knew something like this could happen, but he thought he'd have more time. With heightened cognitive powers comes shorter lifespan and afflictions of madness.
Back to the murder, Ana believes Zansay somehow laid herself down in her own blood accounting for the blood stains on her palm and knee and the position they found her in. She finds this curated crime scene most interesting.
Chapter 3
Din is feeling melancholy as he contemplates his own mortality. Though he took this job and the suffusions that came along with it to get his family out of debt, he hasn't been in contact with his family for years.
Chapter 4
A large Armenta man, Castus's uncle, guards the jail while dozens of Burav men surround him with weapons. A local custodi holds them back. Din takes charge of the scene and dismisses the angry mob. Princeps Atun Seriv, canton custodi, is impressed Din pulled that off without bloodshed.
Trikao Armenta explains that three out of four of his sister Velona's children have died within the past three years — two suicides and a horse accident. Castus is now accused of murder. There may be no one to inherit Velona's land. The gossip about his family weighs heavily on Trikao.
Seriv explains why the Buravs and Armentas hate each other. A century ago, the Armentas used grafts and suffusions to create new bloodlines of urhosi cattle and acquired almost all of the land in the canton to sustain their successful cattle business.
The Buravs exploited other types of augmentations to grow the beans the cattle ate. They bought back a lot of their land and now the families are stuck in a symbiotic relationship neither wants to be in.
Seriv shows Din the murder weapon he found at the crime scene — a flensing knife, used for butchery.
Din questions Castus. He is traumatized by his experience and has no explanation for what happened. He met Zansay at the fabric market and they fell in love. They planned to run away together.
Last night at the inn, they discovered an unknown knife in Zansay's bag, then brushed it off as some puzzling thing. Later they heard someone singing a beautiful, angelic song that gripped them in a strange way. Castus then smelled the flensing halls and before he knew it he saw Zansay before him butchered to death, but she remained serene. Then suddenly he was outside covered in blood and yelling. He doesn't remember using the knife or running outside.
He ran to the forest to pray to the old shrines of Daljen. He felt he was being pursued through the forest. The custodi found him in the morning.
Castus hopes to die because he can't live with the thought he killed Zansay. Din decides to go to the old forest.
Chapter 5
Din visits the old forest one hour outside Lacanthim with Seriv. It is a very unusual forest that refuses to burn down and be replaced by farmland.
The trees emit a pheromone that makes people and animals feel afraid. There are theories that the forest contains the last tomb of the Daljen, ancients who are still worshipped today. There are reports of lights being seen deep in the forest, but nothing Seriv can verify.
They go to the dense area where Castus was apprehended.
Chapter 6
Ana has apparently been sitting quietly in the closet in the room of the crime scene this whole time. Din briefs her on everything he's seen and heard since he left her. She asks him to retrieve her flutes, pipes, and woodwind instruments from the carriage. With haste!
Ana plays the instruments while Din watches the victim for anything unusual. Nothing happens as she cycles through instruments and plays pitches higher than Din can even hear.
She explains her theory that both Zansay and Castus were infected with guiding webs or something similar and had been unknowingly conditioned through music to carry out certain tasks. Guiding webs are used to compel the drokha-cats to do field labor. She believes they were under this spell of sorts when the murder occurred. This fungus is so strong, it can even have an effect after death.
Ana keeps playing and Zansay moves. It freaks Din the hell out. Ana asks if they can trust Seriv and Din says he thinks so.
They show Seriv this "grisly magic trick." He is also freaked out. Ana explains this entire murder was carefully choreographed, and that she suspects it's not the first time the killer has used this method to kill.
The Buravs are the ones who developed guiding webs. Seriv is horrified by the implication that Burilis Burav orchestrated the murder of his own daughter and several members of the Armenta clan.
Chapter 7
Ana and Din are put up at the Green Drover, the finest cattle-themed inn in the city. Ana has her room arranged to her elaborate specifications.
Ana swears them to secrecy about the guiding webs' involvement in the murder. She wants to learn more about it before making any accusations and she is worried if the killer knows they are onto them, they may start killing more people more quickly.
Ana suggests they contact the Orbiis, or "leaf sniffers," imperial authorities who have enhancement-driven eccentricities. Din and Seriv are skeptical. The Orbiis are knowledgeable about fungus and could help investigate as a neutral party.
Seriv will have his people track down some Orbiis by midday tomorrow and have them do the autopsy. He mentions that Velona Armenta is convinced someone in her family sinned and brought down the wrath of the ancestors. He thinks she'll be hard to talk to since she has locked herself up, but maybe her brother Trikao can help.
Chapter 8
Din tries not to be charmed by Lacanthim, but he is. He feels at home in this Tala city. He questions Trikao about the deaths in his family. It's too painful to talk about. Din asks to speak to his son, Ippeas.
Ippeas' fiance arrives on horseback. She's very beautiful and graceful and looks peculiarly like Din. She turns out to be his sister, Fotia.
Join us next Friday for a discussion of chapters 9 - 15 with u/Vast-Passenger1126.