Chapter 6

Din returns to the Cat’s Eye Inn, where Zansay’s body remains and Ana waits. After hearing Din’s account of the forest and Castus’s fugue, Ana orders her pipes, proposing an older test requiring intact ears. She explains the drokha-cats’ conditioning by the guiding web fungus, which binds tasks to specific pitches.

Ana plays progressively higher notes on various instruments while Din watches Zansay. At first nothing happens. Ana outlines a theory: Zansay and Castus were infected and conditioned—Castus to mimic flensing work and to run, Zansay to stand still—creating a meticulously staged murder. She adds that the web, known as the revenant’s mist, can provoke limited responses after death.

On a piercing note, Zansay’s corpse convulses and sighs, confirming infection. Ana concludes Castus likely carries the web as well. She asks Din to fetch Princeps Seriv as an ally given the danger of the revelation.

Seriv arrives, witnesses the post-mortem reaction, and is shaken. Ana suggests the pattern of Armenta tragedies implies prior uses of the same method. Seriv fears the political detonation if the Armentas were systematically eliminated and a culprit implicated.

Pressed, Seriv discloses the crucial link: the guiding web was developed in Lacanthim by the Burav clan, specifically Burilis Burav, Zansay’s father. The disclosure reframes the case, pointing toward deliberate human orchestration with dire implications for the Burav–Armenta conflict.