Page 113 of A Trade of Blood

My memories spoke again, their words trickling down to me as ifdribbling through some tiny canal behind my eyes:Are you sure you’re anywhere at all? Or is this a dream—but a very specific dream?

I blinked in the darkness. Then, like he was right behind me, I heard the voice of Castus Armenta: …it sounded like song…Someone singing. Outside our chamber, in the street or the courtyard…But it was the mostbeautifulsound, Iudex…

Then my memories shifted again, like a chick turning over in the egg of my skull, and I heard Tauri’s voice:the cats begin re-creating their conditioned behaviors while they sleep.Nocturnal disruptions,they called it in early tests…

“I cannot move,” I said aloud, “because…I have beenconditionednot to move.”

Light began pouring through my window shutters—this time not moonlight, but daylight, bright and brittle.

The song grew fainter.

“But that would mean,” I said slowly, “that I am infected. And conditioned. That the fungus is awake within me.”

The corners of my chamber filled with shadow, until there was only the blazing window, and all else was a trembling darkness.

The voice of my memories spoke again:Yes.

My skin crawled. For now the voice of my memories sounded very close, and very, very familiar tome.

I looked to the side, and there in the swirling shadows I saw someone sitting on my bed. A shifting image of a person—yet as I looked at them, my nostrils suddenly swam with an achingly familiar aroma.

Clothes. Old clothes and gowns and dresses, stored in an old closet, where all was close and dark, and all was safe.

I awoke.

—

I stood there,gasping in the dark: not the surreal stasis of my own chamber, so silent and cast in twinkling moonlight, but rather in Tauri’s chambers in the Orbiis office. I heard drovers singing in the streets beyond, and a night breeze nibbling at the fretvine walls.

I staggered about. Tauri lay in a gleaming pile on the bed, his face concealed in his hair. With a snort, he awoke.

“Mm?” he murmured. “Din? What is it?”

I swallowed, my heart beating madly in my chest. “Testing paper,” I whispered.

“What?”

“Testing paper. Get me testing paper. Now, please.”

He scrambled out of bed and dashed to where his coat lay on the floor. He fished out the wheel of green paper, saying hoarsely, “Did…did you dream, Din? Is that it?”

I motioned impatiently for the paper. He tore off a piece and handed it to me. I hurriedly popped its end within my mouth, then withdrewit.

Bright orange.

I gazed at it, then up at Tauri.

“Oh, hell,” he said.

Chapter 31

Ana sat on the floorof her chamber, the orange scrap of parchment trapped between her finger and thumb like it bore some secret message in invisible inks. I stood before her, recounting my bizarre dream, while Tauri paced behind me, hands behind his back. We had not bothered to hide our deeds that evening: though we could have invented some story and arrived at separate times, the revelation that I was now poisonedandconditioned seemed much more important than any dalliance.

“So,” said Ana softly when I finished. “So, so, so…”

“It is a terrible thing,” said Tauri. “And animpossiblething! How could Kol be poisoned with the web, as well as have his killer’s commands written into him already? I mean, I can’t imagine he got conditioned accidentally, or some such!”

“I don’t find it impossible at all,” said Ana. “Din—you’ve a ewer of water in your bedroom, true?” Then, pointedly: “I mean the bedroomhere,in the Green Drover, boy. Go and get it. Let us test it now.”