Page 120 of A Trade of Blood

You know why,she said.But you also know this is wrong, yes? You should not be here, not now, of all times.

I turned to the open window, glimmering with silvery moonlight.

“I am in a memory,” I said.

Yes.

“I am delivered back to the moment when he conditioned me—outside in the street below, the night Castus perished.”

Yes.

“And…now I hear it again. Because he’s in the tavern with me now, isn’t he? He’s frozen me, and he’s making his play.”

Yes. So. What shall you do aboutit?

The powerful euphoria within me crinkled. Swirled. Then it dissolved, like a dollop of sugar in hot tea.

I then felt what was possibly the most bizarre experience I’d ever had in all my life: my mind very calmly informed me I was in two places at once.

It was like I was seeing a different world out of each eye: I was in the Drover, standing perfectly still in my chambers, just as the music insisted, with the woman on the bed watching me with her deeply sad eyes; in the other, I was at the top of the stairs, gripping the railing, my mouth open as I prepared to shout down to the custodi to come in, come in. It was as if each vision, each experience, was perfectly overlaid atop the next, like parchments glued atop one another.

It is a memory,I thought to myself.And I cannot be forced into a memory any more than a fish can be drowned.

I pushed away the vision of my chambers. Dimmed it, dismissed it, banishedit.

I remember you,I told it forcefully.And you are not now. Not real. Not current.

But though I could see both, I could not resist the commands ofthe beautiful song assailing my thoughts, drowning my mind, suffocating my will. I was still frozen, still forced into paralysis by the infestation in my skull.

Move,I thought to myself.Please move. Please, please…

Yet I could not. It was as if the nerves in my legs and spine and arms had forgotten the very concept. I was trapped in the prison of my body, unable to do anything more than watch the world beforeme.

A shadow moved at the foot of the stairs. Then, cautiously, silently, he ascended tome.

—

He had apale blue cloak about his shoulders, as well as the helmet he’d worn when I’d first glimpsed him, standing weary but proud before the doors of the Lacanthim jail. With his blue cloak and cap, I realized he looked a good deal like a custodus in the dark, which surely had made it easier for him to slip inside. As he climbed the stairs with hardly a sound, I saw he did not bear his lance tonight, but a short sword, and a tool that I recognized right away: a cat pipe, just like the one I’d seen outside mere seconds ago.

I watched, screaming in frustration and rage in my own mind as the huge, hulking form of Trikao Armenta mounted the stairs and carefully stepped around me. He looked not at all like the beleaguered, kindly old man I’d known in the past days. Now there was something cold and dead in his face, and his eyes sat so far back beneath his brows that they were hardly more than glints of mai-light lost in shadow. I had only glimpsed such fury in him once, when Ana had wheedled him about his sister’s inheritance of the family spreads:But was it not Velona who bested you to win the prime seat? If so, she’s surely a woman of strength.

I watched helplessly as Trikao moved past me and continued down the hall toward Ana’s rooms, the sword in his hand shining in the lamplight. A keen edge, for horrid things. I raged within my flesh, howled and bellowed at the idea of him inflicting harm upon her—for Ana had, of course, reckoned that she had been conditioned aswell. She was surely sitting in her chambers as paralyzed as I was: small, vulnerable, powerless.

Then my memories shifted in my mind, trembling and quaking deep withinme.

They spoke, whispering in the dark with that voice, withhervoice:Breathe. And remember. Or she shall die.

I realized the meaning instantly. I took a deep breath through my nose.

Scent is the sense that is most heavy with memory, each recollection and remembrance pulled into thought by the tiniest waft of aroma. Engravers use many distinct scents to categorize and access their memories—but there, at the top of the stairs, I breathed in deep the aromas of the Green Drover: the smell of the fretvine, the dust in the carpets, the faint reek of the mai-lamps that had not been recently cleaned. With that scent I summoned all the memories I’d had of this tavern, every moment either mundane or frenetic as I’d pursued this investigation in these corridors.

My mind filled up with engraved memories, hundreds of thousands of them—and as it did so, the song in my ears faded. The command of the web became one memory among many. And as it did, its mesmerism receded.

With a grunt, I turned and took a step.

This simple movement was impossibly difficult, as if I was trapped within league after league of mud. My joints ached within me, like my bones were splintering in my flesh. Yet still, I picked up my foot and put it down, pursuing Trikao Armenta, however slowly.

I moved forward, putting my weight on my front foot. The fretvine beneath it creaked.