Page 47 of A Trade of Blood

Again, I hesitated—but I decided honesty would be the fastest way to win his favor. Ana had said that we had to make partners of the Orbiis here, as we had no other authority we could trust. And, perhaps, there was something else that made me deem him trustworthy. His eyes, maybe: they were darker than sable, and despite his burbling chatter, they seemed wounded and exhausted. He looked, I felt, like a medikker who had been up for the past three days tending to patients who would not survive; and yet he labored on regardless.

“Yes,” I said.

Tauri’s tiny smirk vanished. He stared at me. “Ohh. Really? Truly?”

“Are you so surprised, sir? You seemed to expect it.”

“Well. Yes, I mean…that seemed to be where things were going, but one thing toexpectit, quite another to hear it’s happened! How did it happen?”

“Are you aware of the murder of the Burav girl?”

“You think the web didthat?”

“Yes.”

“By hell. Why do you think so?”

“My immunis played a series of notes and pitches on her instruments, and the girl’s corpse responded.”

“Responded how? Tremors to the eyes? Muscle seizures? Or…”

“All of those. Yes.”

“I applaud your immunis’s perseverance! It must have taken a long while to find the right note…”

“It did,” I said, “and I had to sit through all of it. We think the boy, her killer, might be infected, too. We’re now in a very difficult place, sir. We believe this poisoner has been operating in this region for some time—conditioning people for all manner of awful things.”

“Oh, Sanctum,” he murmured. “You think there aremorepeople infected beyond them?”

“Yes. But we’re forced to keep this a great secret, lest the killer—or killers—feel they must move quickly.”

A look of great sorrow stole over him. “What a thing! We told them, with one voice, all unified—This shall not end well.You can’t deploy a goddamn unstable neuro-fungus across all the fields of the Empire and expect it to stay tamed! And yet our citizens demand flesh. Without the web in all our field cats, we’d never have enough.” He rubbed his eyes miserably. “You wantmeto autopsy the damned girl, don’t you?”

“Yes, sir. This is a new strain—one that can infect and condition humans. We need a trained eye to comprehend its nature. How it spreads and what it can do. We don’t trust anyone else in Lacanthim with the task, sir. If these acts truly are the work of one of the gentry houses, they could easily learn too much of our investigation if we use the locals.”

At that, his eyes narrowed. “One of the gentry houses…You mean Burilis Burav. You suspect it wasBurilis Buravwho’s been using the web to kill, don’t you?”

“We don’t know, sir,” I said slowly. “For if it is him, why would he kill his daughter?”

“Tell me. Did Burav demand his daughter’s body back? Did he make a scene of it, perhaps?”

Now it was my turn to narrow my eyes. “Yes. Why? How did you guess at that?”

“We’ve no time. Where’s the girl’s body now?”

“In the custodi offices.”

He laughed lowly. “You’ll want to get it the hell out of there, chap! That place is surely unsecured. And if you let her rot for too much longer, her body shall surely fruit.”

“What do you mean, fruit?”

“I mean it willfruit.It will create shoots and tendrils from behind the ear, which will then begin spreading spores. I mean—it’s still a predatory fungus! Just a much-reduced, altered, domesticated version.”

“When…when will it fruit?” I asked, alarmed.

“Sooner than you like!” he said. “And sooner than I’d like as well, as it will fall to my people to clean up the mess!” He saw my face and raised a hand. “Here, chap, listen. Here’s what we shall do. There is an Orbiis office in the city. I say ‘office’ but it is quite rudimentary—we mostly use it to check molting hens and the like. Have the girl’s body brought there and tell my folk to store it in thesecurearea. It should hopefully do. I’ll follow you as quick as I can.” He sighed deeply. “But I hope you’re right, Kol, and the web is truly in her!”

“Why, sir?”