Page 22 of A Trade of Blood

“I can,” I said slowly. “But—why?”

“I told you to hurry, boy!” she snapped. “We are racing against the decay of that girl’s biologies! For while I am unsure what Apoth techniques I’d need to prove myself right, there is an older, simpler test we can use—but her ears must be intact!”

Unnerved, I did so, and brought back a sack of many jumbled pipes, flutes, and some reeded instruments whose names even I did not know.

“Excellent,” said Ana. She flexed her fingers with an unnerving crack, then licked her lips. “I am going to begin playing these instruments, Din—but just a few notes apiece. I believe the higher pitches are what we seek…but I admit, I am not sure. Just keep your eyes on that dead girl! Let me know if anythingunusualhappens.” Then she took a breath and began to play.

Butplaywas not quite the right term for it. Rather, Ana first played a scale that ascended to the instrument’s highest pitches—and then kept going. Soon the notes grew so high that they were either inaudible to me or were akin to a needle in my ear, threatening to make my eyes water.

As she did this, I watched Zansay’s corpse. The girl remained on her side, left arm cast forward, right draping behind. If there was a change in her, I could not detectit.

Ana continued on, cycling through the clartulya, the Uluyrian pipe set, the syrinixia, and a few I had never seen her play myself. Sheplayed the highest pitches possible, and more and more often played in octaves I found difficult to hear at all—yet Zansay remained unmoved.

I bore this experiment in silence until Ana began sweating from the exertion of so much piping. I cleared my throat and asked, “Ma’am—what is it you try to do?”

She glowered in the direction of Zansay’s corpse as if it were a disobedient mule. “Are you familiar with the drokha-cats of this region, Din?”

I didn’t need to browse my memories to answer: I remembered the sight of the cats’ long, leathery, black fingers poking through the bars of their cages all too well.

“I am, ma’am,” I said.

“And what are they most famous for?” she demanded.

“They…are trained creatures, ma’am,” I said. “They go out into the fields at night and pick the crops and place them in bushels for the field hands to collect in the morning. Rather like the spirits summoned by the girl at the loom in the old stories. Thus they save a tremendous amount of labor, all across the agrarian regions of the Empire.”

“Very good!” said Ana. “You are only off slightly, Din. For one thing, you missed that their genesis is actuallyhere,in the city of Lacanthim. This place is where the technique of their use was first developed, thus beginning something of an agricultural revolution.” She fumbled through her bag and selected the shawm as her next instrument. “But more importantly, I would not call themtrainedcreatures, Din. Rather, the cats areconditioned.”

“Conditioned…how?”

“Oh, chemically.Biologically.The cats used in fieldwork are all infected, you see, with a very unusual, altered fungus—one that is known asthe guiding web.The fungus spreads throughout the brain of its host, causing it to become very sensitive to very specific pitches. And this makes them amenable to conditioning.” She spat into her dress and began to polish the shawm’s mouthpiece. “Specifically, associating an action or a task with a very particular sound!”

She expected some response from me here. I stayed silent.

“Each cat is initially guided into collecting the grain or crops of a harvest,” said Ana, “usually by rewarding them with food. While they complete these simpler trainings, however, a person nearby plays a very high pitch or tune upon an instrument—Ibelieve a pipe is preferred. Because of the guiding web infesting their nervous system, the cat begins to associate the action being performed withthat specific sound.After their conditioning is completed, when they hear that pitch or song again, they are filled with a profound, undeniable desireto reenact that task.”

I slowly looked back at the corpse of Zansay Burav, her pale, gray eyes still searching the ceiling so thoughtfully.

Ana paused to play three high pitches upon the instrument. The body did nothing.

“So intense is the desire of the conditioning, Din,” she continued, “so powerful themesmerism,that the cats will thoughtlessly complete any action even remotely similar to the task ingrained within them! If they are trained to collect apples, for example, they will fetch red balls and bring them back to the bushels. If they are trained to collect wheat, they will also feverishly grab other grasses with similar spikelets and florets. These incorrect actions will still grant the cats the blissful chemical release that is the work of the fungus. It is a powerful method, in other words—yet imperfect.”

“And…and you think…”

“Ithink…that cultivating a strain of the guiding web to condition a human being isunthinkable, child!” said Ana dryly. “This is what all the Apothetikal literature says, to be sure. Such a phenomenon has never been recorded in the history of this alteration’s genesis, brief as it is! And yet—we have many strange behaviors here, do we not? We have a girl who stands perfectly still while she is attacked, and does not resist. Almost as if she wasconditionednot to! And a boy who hears a strange, lovely music, and goes into a dreamlike state where he remembers a veryspecificplace, and action!”

“The flensing halls,” I said softly. “Where he gutted the cows.”

“I think it is possible that both Zansay and Castus,” said Ana,“were infected with either the guiding web or something very much like it—and carefully conditioned tocreatethis murder! Perhaps during the hours Castus worked in the flensing halls, he was hearing a high pitch inaudible to others—one that he came to subconsciously associate with that grisly work. And when he walked or moved about in any other common time of day, he heard another pitch, played by some manipulator upon a pipe, to be associated withmovement.And perhaps last night he was helplessly puppeted into not only butchering his lover—but also sprinting outside so that all would behold him as her killer! That divine vision he experienced, the sensation of all creation praising him—that, I suggest, is what itfeelslike to be under the influence of the fungus!”

“Yet…why would this be done?” I said. “Why arrange it so particularly?”

“I’ve no idea, Din!” She played another set of high-pitched notes upon the shawm. “But if I am right, it is a most brilliantly awful method of murder, yes?”

“True…but what is it you wish to prove with the pipes here?”

“Ah, well…I am attempting to exploit a fascinating quirk of nature! For the guiding web is also referred to asthe revenant’s mist,” said Ana. “It has earned this name because its neuro-infestation is so powerful that its hosts can still show limited responses to the proper notes even afterdeath! It was, perhaps, a very unlikely thing, but I was hoping that if Zansay here was infected, I might stumble across the right tones…” She shrugged. “If nothing else, it has prompted me to dig out some instruments I forgot I even owned!”

Then, with a cheerful smirk, she blew on the shawm, louder and higher, so high my ears were pained.