Chapter 33 #2
“He also had a plan for Velona, of course!” said Ana.
“It was playing out before your very eyes. Didn’t even need to use the web for it.
The old woman decided to move forward with fertility treatments—but it was up to the seneschal of the house, overseer of all family business, to select the people who would provide them.
Easy to choose the medikkers with a rather poor success rate, true?
He even went so far as to try to condition Din and myself, just in case we ever grew too near to him—and in this, he ensured his doom.
This was the mistake that tipped my thinking and sealed his fate. ”
At this, Ippeas collapsed and began to weep. Fotia held him tight and shot a poisonous glance at Ana. “Must you barrage him with these horrors? Can’t you even give him a moment to…to…I don’t know, to recover from this?”
“He needs to know,” said Ana coldly.
“Why? Can’t you see this is destroying him?”
“Perhaps. But he needs to know because I already requested records of any change in Velona’s inheritance filings.
Such things are carefully recorded with the gentry families.
So scrupulously observant of heritage and tradition, you see.
He needs to know all this, because his father’s plan has succeeded—Ippeas Armenta is now the sole living heir to Velona Armenta, and will inherit all the Armenta spreads the day she dies.
Old bat did it the very day after Castus perished.
” Ana picked something from her teeth. “Rather think she’d drafted up the paperwork after it looked like he was to be hanged, yes? ”
Ippeas stopped weeping. Both he and Fotia gazed at Ana, thunderstruck.
“What?” cried Fotia.
“Yes, wh-what?” said Ippeas.
“I thought I was perfectly clear,” said Ana.
“You, Ippeas Armenta, are inheritor to one of the wealthiest farming families in all the third ring. And I think it likely you shall inherit soon! For it seems quite feasible that Velona Armenta might die the instant someone tells her exactly what her brother did.”
“That can’t be,” said Ippeas. “It can’t…”
Again, Fotia buried her face in her hands. “By hell, yes. It could. Old Velona is bedridden now. She dwindles even now, locked up in her rooms.”
Ana turned to Ippeas, blindly peering down her nose at him. “Correct. So, Master Ippeas—I am most curious to hear how you shall react to all this.”
Ippeas sat on the floor, his solid, bearded face gazing into the vined rafters.
I watched his pupils dance about as he sorted through this thicket of revelations, alternatingly horrifying or stunning.
Fotia sat beside him, her fingers entwined with his, her eyes fixed on his countenance.
It was clear in that moment that neither of them had ever imagined this level of wealth: such a dream, such a wild desire, had never gotten within ten span of their thoughts.
Finally Ippeas spoke. “What of my father?” he croaked.
“He lives,” I said. “He is terribly weakened by the toxins of the lypi lance. We fear he might have had a brainstorm. But…”
“But?” asked Ippeas.
“He has asked to see you, I’m told. I am permitted to allow him visitors.”
Ippeas bowed his head and took a deep breath. “Well, then.”
—
The medikker’s ward had been transformed since the day Jalin Burav had made his mad escape: now there was a custodus in every hallway, and every door featured new locks.
Even for myself, navigating its corridors meant repeatedly asking permission to enter, to leave, to be accompanied, and so on.
Though I understood that Trikao Armenta had been gravely weakened by Ana’s thrust of the lance, the medikkers were taking no chances with him.
I entered his chamber. Trikao’s arrangements seemed to be a dark mirror of his sister’s: he lay trembling upon a medikker’s cradle, with many dark, glistening tubes entering his flesh, each one trailing down to another quivering creature in a glass pot.
How odd it was to heal his body but only so that he could be firm in flesh when he met the rope.
He cracked an eye as I approached. Though in the past he had pantomimed the state of a weary old man, this was no act: his face shook, and his eyes moved sluggishly, and his lips were thick and slow as he spoke to me.
“Who?” he murmured. “Oh. It’s you. But where…where is Ippeas? Where…”
“He will not come,” I said to him.
“N-no,” he whimpered. “He must. He must come.”
“He will not. He was clear.”
He swallowed, eyes swirling in his head as he thought. “Will you carry a message for him, then, Iudex? Tell him…” Again he swallowed, face wrinkling with pain. “Tell him it was…it was all for him. I did it for him. And it did work, yes? She has…she made him heir.”
I said nothing.
“I knew it would be so,” whispered Trikao. “And I knew my…my sister would not live long. I fade, yes. But I fade victorious, at least.”
“Your son will not come, sir,” I said. “But he has a message for you.”
“Oh? Please, t-tell me.”
“He says he intends to sell all the Armenta spread when he inherits.”
His eyes opened wide. A low, creaking cough came from deep within him.
“Wh-what?” spat Trikao.
“Ippeas will sell it all. He intends to sell it and leave this place. He will not sell it to one buyer, either. He intends to sell it to many different holders. Many families, many drovers, many operations. He shall split it all up into dozens if not hundreds of little farms and put an end to the house of Armenta.”
A weak, unhappy wheezing came creaking out of Trikao’s mouth. “But…no. No, I…I did it for him. Doesn’t he see that? I, I did it for him…”
“So you say,” I said. “But he wished me to tell you—I never asked for it.”
—
I limped back to the Green Drover, Ana gripping my arm tight.
“How did he take it?” she purred.
I shrugged.
“That bad, then? My, my. A black day, eh, Din?”
“Very.” I grunted as my pulled muscles complained. Navigating the leaning wooden walkways of muddy Lacanthim felt impossible after such strains. “I feel it’s a poor thing to leave my sister and Ippeas alone, even for a moment. They’ve had so much ill fate fall upon them, all at once.”
“Yes, yes,” said Ana. “But they shall recover quickly. The boy made a wise choice, and she embraced him when he made it. A good match, I think. They are in love, and to be loved is a great warding against many ills.”
I puzzled at that, as Ana almost never grew so sentimental: but then, the manner in which she spoke of it was as if she was clinically describing some biological process, like newts secreting poison through their glands.
I whimpered again as some obscure muscle in my back yowled in pain. “A question, ma’am,” I said.
“Ohh. Another? I feel I have answered enough today.”
“How is it you weren’t conditioned by Trikao?” I asked. “I’m sure you were in the tavern when he conditioned me. You would have heard the same tones, had the fungus awaken in you just as all the others.”
“Hm, yes,” said Ana quietly. “That is a sticky bit, isn’t it?”
A glint of gold hair glimmered on the porch of the Green Drover. Through all the pale blue cloaks of the milling custodi, I saw Tauri, standing on his tiptoes to peer over and see us coming.
“Tauri awaits us, ma’am,” I said.
“I figured he’d be here soon,” she sighed.
“For he shall demand answers of his own. Here. Let us get a story together, Din. Perhaps, let’s say, I predicted that the killer would try to condition me, and took the effort of plugging my ears with wax at night, much like Trikao did. How does that sound?”
“That…is, of course, a lie, ma’am.”
“Is it?” she snapped. “Why not try it on and walk about with it for a spell, and see how it fits?”
“Did you know it hadn’t worked on you, ma’am? Or…that it couldn’t?”
“Din, I say this to you very rarely,” she said. “So please mark that when I do, I mean it. But—shut up.”
We came to the porch. Tauri regarded us with cautious optimism. “So! I, ah, understand your plan worked rather perfectly, Dolabra?”
“Not quite perfectly. I was beset by some slight idiocies, but I managed to overcome it.”
I rolled my eyes.
“I see,” said Tauri. “And…are all answers accounted for?”
“Since your domain is the environment, Commander,” said Ana, “I presume you mean, did Trikao Armenta tell us where the hell the damned web actually came from? And why, of course, does it work upon humans in such a strange fashion? If that is your question, then the answer is no. We do not know.”
“No?”
“No. Trikao got the web from Jalin. Even if he could speak more, he wouldn’t know its origins any more than we do now.
” She turned her face to the sun above. “Burilis Burav found some form of the web in the ruins in the forest. He altered it to work upon the field cats. Jalin traced his father’s footsteps and found this mysterious web again, somewhere.
But whether he engineered it to work upon human beings—or if it always did so—I have no evidence either way. ”
“That is not satisfactory, then,” said Tauri. “I’m obliged to protect the lands of this canton. If I can’t account for how such a dangerous augmentation came to be used in every field of crops, then I am in a devilish position.”
“No fear!” said Ana, grinning. “We shall find out soon enough, once Din can walk without yelping like a kicked dog. And besides, good sir, it may take time for you to fetch your thuribles. We shall be bound back to the wood, you see. I believe I know where the web came from.”