A Trade of Blood
Comment: I've left some reviews that can be used to establish notability in a reception section in {{refideas}} on the talk page. ScalarFactor (talk) 02:07, 24 August 2026 (UTC)
| Author | Robert Jackson Bennett |
|---|---|
| Audio read by | Andrew Fallaize |
| Illustrator | |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Series | Shadow of the Leviathan |
Release number | 3 |
| Genre | Fantasy, murder mystery |
| Publisher | Del Rey Books |
Publication date | August 4, 2026 |
| Media type | Print (hardcover), audio, eBook |
| Pages | 400 |
| ISBN | 9780593723852 Search this book on  . |
| Preceded by | A Drop of Corruption |
A Trade of Blood is a 2026 fantasy murder mystery novel by Robert Jackson Bennett. It is a sequel to his 2025 novel A Drop of Corruption and the third installment in his Shadow of the Leviathan series.[1][2]
Plot
Lacanthim is a town in the agrarian canton of Sapirdad. A nearby forest is said to house the spirits of ancient ancestors-turned-gods called Daljen. Two powerful noble families, the Buravs and the Armentas, are bitter rivals who vie for control of the region's valuable lands. Ana and Din are called to Lacanthim to investigate the murder of the Burav daughter Zansay, who was killed by the Armenta son Castus. The situation has escalated the conflict between the families to the brink of open warfare, and both sides demand justice.
Castus claims he and Zansay were lovers, often visited one another in secret, and hoped to run away together one day. He recounts that he was compelled into killing Zansay by a strange music, after which he fled to the nearby forest before being caught. Ana deduces that Castus was hypnotized by "guiding web," a fungus cultivated to grow in the brains of animals to condition them into farm work but thought to be impossible to grow in a human. Experimentation reveals that Zansay too was the victim of guiding web, which compelled her to not resist being murdered. They suspect the guiding web may have been implanted in others; because Burilis Burav (Zansay's father) invented the fungus, he becomes their initial suspect.
Din is unexpectedly reunited with his younger sister Fotia, who has been betrothed into the Armenta family in the years since Din left home. She and her fiancé Ippeas (cousin of Castus) reluctantly arrange for Din to meet and question Velona Armenta, Castus's pious and temperamental mother. She tells them that two of her children recently died by suicide, and a third died in a riding accident. Coupled with Castus's recent bout of madness, she believes the family is cursed by the Daljen.
Din then meets with a local sector of the Orbiis, a division of the Empire that monitors agricultural health and safety. Their commander Tauri agrees to perform an autopsy on Zansay, which reveals she was infected by a variant of the guiding web that requires long-term and low-dosage exposure. That night, Din witnesses a strange flickering light coming from within the haunted forest, which some locals had described to him as the work of the spirits of the Daljen.
When he and Ana go to interview Burilis at the Burav estate the next day, they arrive to find the building is on fire. The entire house burns down, resulting in the deaths of every Burav except Burilis's son Jalin. A witness recounts that the family couldn't escape the fire because they all simultaneously fell into a stupor. Tests confirm that the Burav's well is carrying guiding web fungus, which has infected the entire population of the Burav manor except Jalin. Examination of the ruined house finds a secret vault sealed with a complicated lock.
Ana recognizes the light Din saw in the forest the previous night as a kind of signal code, which she takes as proof of multiple killers communicating. She further deduces the identity of a stranger seen outside the kitchen just before the fire: Ippeas Armenta. After he is imprisoned for his own safety alongside Castus, Ippeas claims he went to the Burav estate that night because he received an anonymous letter promising proof of Castus's innocence. Din theorizes that whoever set the fire might have intended to kill Ippeas in it, or possibly implicate him as the arsonist. Fotia arrives, and when Din describes the case to her, tells him that the forest can be crossed into Burav land via a shrine called Gaddar's glade. Because Castus claimed he heard signs of another person in the forest shortly before being caught, Din believes that whoever compelled Castus to murder might have been heading in the same direction.
Fotia leads Din into the forest to Gaddar's shrine, where they find footprints leading through the supposedly impassable trees. Tauri arrives (sent by Ana) and uses a chemical dispenser to part the trees and follow the footprints. They find a hidden cache containing a vial of web-infected water, a set of musical pipes necessary to control infected hosts, and a guidebook giving instructions in how to do so. Conferring with Ana, Tauri also reveals that the forest was engineered by the Khanum, the people of the Empire long ago, as a security system to protect a "Touched Site," a term for places sealed off for their danger.
Din allows Trikao Armenta (Ippeas's father) to visit his son in jail. They find the guiding web fungus in Castus's head has "fruited," erupting from his skull despite medicines that were meant to keep it in check, and he has been compelled to attack two other officers. Din is forced to kill Castus in self defense. Trikao gives permission to exhume the bodies of his niece and nephews. An autopsy determines they too were infected by guiding web. Din also spots that one of them bears a bruise, which he determines was likely inflicted by Jalin Burav. When he and Tauri go to question Jalin, they find he has escaped and disappeared.
Ana figures out how to open the vault in the ruined Burav home. Inside, she and Din find a small library of Daljen literature, tools needed to navigate the forest, as well as an unconscious woman. When she awakens, she identifies herself as the Burav's housekeeper who fled into the vault to escape the fire. She describes Jalin as having a troubled childhood and growing to hate his own family.
This evidence leads Ana to conclude Jalin infected the eldest Armenta child with the fungus, then staged his death as a suicide. The second, unidentified killer then did the same for the other three Armenta children, blackmailing and threatening Jalin into cooperation. Jalin was the one who compelled Castus to kill Zansay, but not knowing his own sister would die too. The Burav manor fire was his attempted murder-suicide. Ana deduces Jalin fled to a specific shrine in the forest. Din and Tauri trek through the forest to the ruined shrine, where they find Jalin, dead by suicide. They also find a workshop set up by Burilis Burav, as well as his notes from when he first engineered the guiding web.
While Ana peruses the contents of Burilis's journal, Din has a one-night stand with Tauri. He experiences troubled dreams and sleep paralysis, indicating he has been infected with guiding web. Further tests reveal the source is the wells surrounding the town's inns (infecting Ana too), which is how the Armentas became infected. Ana writes a letter to Velona, claiming she knows who the killer is and demanding the two meet at the inn. The trap seems to fail: A decoy killer is apprehended, and when Din returns to Ana, he is hypnotized. Due to his engraver training, he is able to fight through the conditioning and recognize the killer: Trikao Armenta. Though partially paralyzed, Din distracts him long enough for Ana to subdue him.
Din recuperates with Ippeas and Fotia while Ana lays out the plot: Trikao witnessed Jalin Burav fake the suicide of the oldest Armenta child. He then blackmailed the boy into giving him the secret of the human-controlling guiding web, which he then used to stage the deaths of his other nephews and niece. This was all to eliminate the competition for inheritance rights and force Velona to name Ippeas as Armenta heir. He intercepted Ana's letter to Velona, realized she knew the truth, and came to the inn to kill her and Din. However, Ippeas renounces his new claim and plans to sell off his entire estate.
Still needing to find the source of the human-infecting strain of the fungus, Din and Tauri return to the ruined shrine where they found Jalin. They travel to find a tunnel (presumably dug by Burilis) leading underground toward the Touched Site. There, they find an underground lake infected with the fungus, which is being attended by several long-dead but fungus-reanimated humans. They deduce that the ancient Daljen engineered the fungus to create undead slaves before being wiped out by the victorious Khanum faction, the Daavir. Tauri deduces that Ana, immune to the effects of guiding web, must be one of these ancient Khanum and angrily departs.
Ana deflects Din's questions about her nature, but implies that she is indeed a Khanum. She permits him to take some leave in Lacanthim to rest and recuperate, and spend some time with his sister.
References
- ↑ "A Trade of Blood". Penguin Random House. August 8, 2026. Retrieved August 13, 2026.
- ↑ "The Wild Imagination of the Ana and Din Mysteries". Slate. August 8, 2026. Retrieved August 13, 2026.
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