Chapter 13 #2
“Well. Do you not consume rice, and lentils, and flesh? How do they become you? For they surely do—that’s the point of eating, to make more of yourself.
You’re just not aware of it. Our lungs and minds, however, are augmented to permit us to do so—to peer inward, while others peer out.
The experience does make us rather…squiddly, so to speak.
As I am sure you noticed. But with it, we can build maps, and charts, and plans—for most of us are spatiasts, you see.
” He turned to me, smiling beatifically.
“But we’re not here to discuss such bureaucratic fuss, are we?
The guiding web. What is it you wish to know? ”
“Mostly, sir, I would like to learn how it is administered to subjects. As well as any effects it might have on them, including unusual symptoms.”
He watched me for a long while. “Mm. That’s rather odd. The Iudex manages human justice. It is most uninterested in the justice of animals, and plants, yes? They are voiceless to you.”
“Well, y—”
“And the guiding web was bred for livestock. Some ninety percent of the fungal species of qaytatin tuman—more popularly known as guiding web, or revenant’s mist—in all the Empire is used for the drokha-cats, who work the fields.
For it to have any effect on human specimens, you’d have to consume, oh, about a bucketful of the stuff.
Which is quite a feat. Tastes like shit, you see.
” He absently twirled a flaxen hair about a finger.
“So I now ponder—why is the Iudex here, in this field, talking to me now about the guiding web? How might it be used in human criminality?”
“I did not claim it did, sir,” I said. “I am merely asking to learn more about it.”
“Yes, but that’s odd, too.” Commander Tauri sat down in the fields, plucked off a leaf from a bean plant, and began idly rolling it about in his fingers.
“Why come to me, of all people? There are many cat herders and local Apoths and animal tenders who deal with the web. They can tell you all about it. So. Why not go to them?”
“I wanted to speak to someone from outside Lacanthim,” I said.
“Outside Lacanthim.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You mean, someone not in service to the Buravs or the Armentas.”
I found I did not enjoy speaking to someone who could read so much into me. “You could interpret it that way, sir.”
“Could I? How pleasant, Signum Kol, for you to grant me that permission.” He cocked his head. “Tell me. Has it shown up in a human?”
I hesitated. “Yes.”
“Hm. Has someone used the guiding web to condition a human being’s behavior?”
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 to expect it, 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 did that?”
“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 are more people 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 want me to 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 was Burilis Burav who’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 will fruit. 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 the secure area.
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?”
“Well, I haven’t had to operate upon a human cadaver since my Apoth initiations.
It’s quite likely I’ll make a frightful fucking mess of it.
” A lazy, dreamy smile. “So if I’m really going to butcher a gentryman’s daughter, chap, it’s best if the corpse is infected—that way I can burn it and hide my clumsy craftsmanship, eh? ”
—
Evening began falling when I was halfway back to Lacanthim proper.
I cursed myself for my insistence on hiring the cheapest of horses, as the poor nag couldn’t carry me at a full gallop for longer than a half league, and I did not encounter any faster carriages or destriers who could return me quicker.
And though I needed to act swiftly now, I was unwilling to cause a poor creature suffering on account of it. Thus we trundled on together.
The road turned and we climbed a long, low, shallow hill. Then I looked north and saw it.
“Whoa!” I whispered to the nag. “Whoa! Stop there…”
The little horse gladly halted, huffing and snorting. I squinted to ensure I was truly seeing this.
The dark, old forest stretched out before me.
I was some miles away from the tree line, so I didn’t feel the discomfiting buzz of its pheromones.
But under the darkening skies the white boles of those trees had the look of bones to me, cast amid a purple ocean—and there, in one of the deepest, highest stretches, one tree was glowing.
No, not just glowing. Flashing. Fluttering.
I stared at it, incredulous, yet it seemed to be true: the tree some two leagues north of me was shimmering with a spectral, pale, yellow-green light that shone from deep within it.
The light flickered in a curious, rhythmic pattern, on again and off again, as if mai-worms were lining every branch—but I had never seen mai-worms give off such luminescence, or light up an entire tree.
“By hell,” I murmured. “Seriv was right.”
I watched the flickering, spectral light for a long while, and sniffed at my vial to engrave the memory carefully.
For some reason the silence of the landscape was what disturbed me most: how unsettling it was to see such a phenomenon, and yet the dark, rolling world about me did nothing. I was alone, a tiny speck in the night.
Then, abruptly, the flashing stopped. The tree became one of many, lost in the shadows.
I watched the forest. There was no other flashing, no flickering of light. Yet here and there I could spy the tips of statues within the trees, and stranger monuments I couldn’t identify. I disliked how they looked in the starlight: it tricked the eye into thinking they were moving.
I patted the neck of my old nag, and we continued down the road to Lacanthim. She stepped a little faster now, as if she, too, was glad to put such sights behind us.