Page 119 of A Trade of Blood

“No,” I said, sighing. “It doesn’t. It means he’s under the influence of the web.”

The custodi slowly turned to look atme.

“What?” said one.

“You think…” said Seriv.

“Yes. I think this boy was conditioned to hold that pipe and walk. A simple thing to get someone to do. Likely he’s a cat herder, one of the hands who leads the cats about in the fields. He’s nothing to do with this at all, probably.”

Seriv stared down at the boy, dismayed. “They saw it was a trap, then?”

“Yes. And sent this boy ahead to make sure.” I stared off into the night. “I suspect they’ve fled.”

He cursed loudly. “Then we’ll go searching. They can’t have gone far! We’ll check the lanes and the streets beyond and find the bastard’s trail!”

I watched, crestfallen, as Seriv and many of his officers charged off into the night, lanterns raised high, their pale blue lights washing up the fretvine walls of the taverns. I could not help but feel that they’d have no luck tonight: just like always, the killer remained just beyond our reach.

There was a distant shout from some balcony to keep the noise down, folk were trying to sleep. I instructed the custodi who held the boy to take him to the Orbiis office for testing, then entered the Green Drover and began to ascend the stairs to report to Ana.

It had all seemed so certain. Ana’s instincts were rarely amiss in such matters: once she had made up her mind about a person, she could play them like a harp.

I came to the top step, turned to walk toward her rooms, then paused.

What if, perhaps, the boy with the pipe had not been sent here as a test—but as a diversion?

I recalled the lamp in the window of the Empress Forgotten. It had flashed once—afalse alarm, I’d deemed it, signaling that someone had been spotted approaching, but they hadn’t turned toward the tavern.

Unless,I thought,it was the killer. And they were waiting for their distraction on the south end to draw us all away.

I murmured, “Oh, damn it,” then turned to rush back down the stairs.

But before I ever stepped down once, I heard the song, and all went black tome.

—

I was againstanding in my chambers in the Green Drover, stripped to the waist. I could not move. But this time it was not as if my bones were leaden, or frozen in space: instead, to not move, to be still, to keep my limbspreciselywhere they were, was the most beautiful thing I could imagine.

My ears were filled with music, with voices, with song. It was heavenly, angelic, ecstatic, greater than the greatest balm a reagent could ever grant me, more joyous than any coupling I’d ever experienced. Woven throughout this ethereal music was a single command:Still. Be still. Do not move.

I did so, and thus my heart was filled with joy, my soul bathed in ecstasy beyond any embrace, and the only fear I could imagine was that this sensation might end. It was as if I had found my truest purpose in all creation, the fate that had awaited me through all the tangles of time—and now I would nestle within it and know everlasting peace.

Yet…then, slowly, the joy dimmed in my mind.

I paused and blinked.

No…no, this is not quite so,I said so myself. I wasn’t in my chambers, was I? I had been on the stairs of the Drover. I had realized that something in the street…something in the street had been quite wrong…

There was a shimmer in the room beside me. Just like the last time, someone was now sitting on my bed, half-veiled in shadow, watching me with earnest eyes.

My nose filled with the aroma of gowns and dresses, and comforting warmth, and rain on cool afternoons. I turned my head.

I looked at her and knew her. I knew her face, which was so much like my own. I knew the way she tied her thick, black hair into a braid and cast it over her shoulder so it draped just so. I remembered the patterns of her robes, and the smell of her perfumes, and the scent of her breath in the early mornings, when I would awake in her arms with her slumbering beside me, and I would lie there and study the sun on the fretvine ceiling above us, and listen to the birdsong in the trees beyond.

“Ohh,” I said very softly.

Yes,she said. She smiled, and the sight of it broke my heart asunder.

I swallowed. “Why? Why you?”