Page 69 of A Trade of Blood

“Is that permitted?” said Fotia. “I didn’t think Iudex could talk about investigations as if they were sotbar gossip. Or are you desperate?”

“Today?” I said, sitting at the table. “Desperate.”

—

I described the caseto them in detail: Ana’s suspicions, Tauri’s tremendous worries, and all the evidence that had piled up about us as we’d tried to glean a pattern within such slaughter. As I spoke, the more I realized how slight our story was: we had death, but no tangible sign of any killer, nor any concept of a motive.

At the end of it, I took Tauri’s wheel of testing parchment from my pocket and asked Fotia to put her tongue toit.

“Towhat?” she said. “Why?”

“A test,” I said, “to see if you’re infected. Please do so, Fo. For my and Ippeas’s sake, at least.”

Frowning, Fotia licked the parchment. I stared at it, my heart beating madly in my ears. To my relief, it stayed green.

“Thank Sanctum,” I whispered.

“For what?” said Fotia.

“Yes, for what?” said Ippeas. “My…my test didn’t stay green. Mine went all orange. You lot didn’t say what that meant.”

I glanced at Ippeas and cleared my throat. Yet before I could begin, Fotia cutin.

“Wait,” she said. “You…”

There was a wordless moment as we looked at one another.

“He’s infected?” she said in a quiet voice. “Ippeas…Ip has it in him?”

“Yes,” I said, as gently as I could. “He has tested positive. But he does not appear to be conditioned.”

Ippeas’s sun-browned skin turned a rather nasty porridge color. “Oh, titan’s taint…” he whispered. “Truly?”

“So what does this mean?” demanded Fotia. “What? Is he…is he going to kill himself? Will it kill him?”

“No, no,” I said. “We don’t think so. We don’t believe the fungus has been awoken in him, so it won’t spread throughout his…well, his…”

“His brain,” said Fotia flatly.

Ippeas flinched.

“True,” I said. “And we have medicines that can contain it. And the Orbiis and Apoths are working on a cure even now.”

“But heispoisoned. They didmeanto condition him, to kill him.”

“Well. We don’t know. But I don’t believe so.”

“Why not?”

I hesitated.

“Because if they did,” said Ippeas faintly, “I’d already be dead?”

“Thereabouts, yes,” I said.

“Fucking hell!” cried Fotia.

“I mean, the attempt on his life was profoundly clumsy!” I said. “They tried to lure him into a burning house! That’s far less effective than using the web.”