17
MR. HUNGWELL
Osric
n the end, Osric had to admit (to himself only, never to Fairhrim) that itI had been a grand idea to infiltrate Wellesley Keep. He made out brilliantly.
When he went to sell Wellesley’s intel to Kent, he took the opportunity to steal Kentish intel, and turned around and sold that to Wessex. Champion.
Now he was having Wellesley’s jewels appraised by Sacramore at the Harmacy.
“Quality, quality,” said Sacramore, examining them with a loupe.
“Lovely finds.” (It was always finds with Sacramore. As though Osric came across a ruby worth a hundred thousand thrymsas by pure happenstance. Found it in the soup.) The useless lug that was Brythe emerged from the corridor leading to Tristane’s office.
“Nice baubles, Os,” he commented as he passed.
“You can gargle my baubles,” said Osric.
“I’ll gargle your baubles,” said Sacramore to Osric.
“What about mine?” asked Brythe, grasping his balls through his trousers and lifting them in Sacramore’s direction.
Sacramore pointed his loupe towards Brythe’s crotch. “Show me what’s on offer.”
“No time for it,” said Brythe. “Got places to be. Answers to get. Necks to wring.”
“You joining us on the Carnegie job?” asked Osric.
“No. Off to the Danelaw on business.”
“What business?” asked Sacramore, his loupe trained on Brythe’s face.
“Secret.”
“What secret?” asked Osric.
“S’only for top Fyren to know about.” Brythe swung the door open. “Got to shower, shit, and shove off. See you povvos later.”
Brythe left. The Harmacy’s glass door clattered to a close behind him.
“What’s he wanking himself over?” asked Osric.
Sacramore stared at the door through his loupe. He turned it towards Tristane’s office. “She’s accepted, then.”
“Accepted what?”
“An ask I didn’t think she’d agree to take on. They must have offered a
bloody fortune.”
“They?”
There was vast disapproval in the squint of Sacramore’s eye in the loupe.
“Unorthodox. I don’t like it. We don’t take assignments that are a direct attack on other Orders. It could unbalance things.”
“Which Order?”
“I’ve already said too much,” said Sacramore. He turned his attention back to the gems, still disapproving.
It didn’t matter. Brythe had mentioned the Danelaw. There was only one Order headquartered in the Danelaw.
OSRIC MATERIALISED AT THE WAYSTONE of the Publish or Perish a few minutes later. The waystone was tucked against the east side of the pub, offering, in
the evening light, progressively deeper shadows of much convenience to a Fyren stalking another Fyren.
Osric summoned Cinder, his deofol, to his side. The she-wolf took partial form in the darkest shadows between the waystone and the pub’s stone wall.
“What is it?” asked her glinting teeth.
“Find Fairhrim,” said Osric. “Tell her to get somewhere safe. There’s a Fyren headed for Swanstone and I don’t know why.”
The deofol’s golden eyes blazed. “Immediately,” she said, disappearing even as she spoke.
Osric leaned against the wall and waited. Why had Brythe been sent to Swanstone? And, more importantly, whose necks had he been instructed to wring, and did Fairhrim’s number among them?
Had he been hired for a revenge kill for the carnage wrought by Osric and Fairhrim at Wellesley Keep? Impossible. They had been cleared and had left the Keep freely; Kent had borne the brunt of the blame. But if Fairhrim happened to be in the way of Brythe’s target? He would kill her without a second thought.
Could Brythe even get past Wardens? Osric had managed his intrusion of Swanstone through every inch of his skill and subtlety. Brythe was a
bumbling oaf.
But if he did make it past them?
For the next half hour, Osric watched a smattering of travellers pop out of the pub’s waystone—Haelan (but not his Haelan), Swanstone staffers, villagers, and even, to Osric’s sudden consternation, one of the Wardens— but not Brythe.
No one noticed the Fyren melted into the shadows mere feet away, his blaecblade pressed along his thigh.
Because, yes: after much internal debating, Osric had decided that Brythe was going to die today. Osric was going to interrogate him and kill him.
There was no other way to proceed. Brythe was working on something secret that he wouldn’t willingly share with Osric. Left alive, he would report Osric’s interest to Tristane, and Tristane would ask questions that Osric couldn’t answer, and so Brythe must die. Answer Osric, and then die.
Cinder returned to Osric’s side. Her ears were back and flat; her voice was low. “The Haelan wouldn’t let me through.”
“Again?” snarled Osric, because this wasn’t the first time Fairhrim had rejected his deofol.
“I’ve been trying every few minutes. She might be in the company of others.”
“Go back. Push until she lets you. Hurt her if you must.”
Cinder vanished with an irritated growl.
Osric had just found his comfortable, one-legged lean against the wall— his favourite stakeout position—when a cloaked figure shimmered into existence at the waystone.
Brythe, materialising in a homely little village in the Danelaw, did not have his guard up. Osric took two strides forwards. His blaecblade found that favourite juncture between neck and shoulder and stabbed deliciously downwards.
A moment later, he was stabbing thin air; Brythe had shadow-walked.
Osric’s blade dripped red in the evening light. He held his tācn towards the shadow of an awning ahead—the place where he would’ve jumped to had he been stabbed—and moved there, and found Brythe bent over, holding his hand to his neck, gasping. Osric had, perhaps, been a little too enthusiastic.
The wound was fatal. They would have a few minutes for a brief interview and Brythe would be dead.
Brythe, still unaware that he was dealing with a Fyren, reached his tācn ahead of him and shadow-walked towards a dark garden.
Osric materialised behind him and, wishing him to stop running so that they could chitchat, severed both of his hamstrings.
Brythe shadow-dragged himself to an old stone wall abutting the courtyard of a massive glassworks. A desperate flurry of knives flew towards Osric—most of Brythe’s arsenal, by the look of it—but Brythe’s right hand hung useless, and so he used his left, and hit Osric with only a few glancing blows. Brythe clutched his maul where he lay, but it was a worthless threat without the momentum that made it deadly.
Osric sank his blaecblade into Brythe’s left arm, between his radius and
ulna.
The maul fell.
“Osric?” gasped Brythe, finally catching a glimpse of him. “Wh-what— why?”
Osric sat on his haunches and pressed a friendly hand to the uncontrolled haemorrhage at Brythe’s neck. “Who gave Tristane the Swanstone job?”
“F-fuck you,” said Brythe.
“Who were you sent to kill?”
Brythe’s words came with difficulty. “Fuck. You.”
Osric removed his blaecblade from Brythe’s arm with a tug. He pressed it
into Brythe’s tācn instead.
Brythe screamed.
“Who were you sent to kill?” asked Osric. His knifepoint pried into the eyehole of Brythe’s tācn.
“Never going to—you’re a traitor. Hel will curse you for this—”
“I’m Hel’s favourite.” Osric slipped the blade between two metacarpals in Brythe’s palm. “Answer me.”
The blood loss was hitting; Brythe was beginning to fade. Osric turned the blade. The delicate metacarpals in Brythe’s hand separated. He sprang back to screaming life as his tācn was destroyed.
“I will make your last moments a misery,” said Osric. “Who were you sent to kill?”
Brythe’s jaw was set. The death grimace was creeping upon him. He would rather spite Osric and die without giving him what he wanted.
Again Osric’s blade turned. Again Brythe screamed.
The sound attracted attention in the quiet village. People stood upon their stoops, asking one another what was happening.
Osric moved his blaecblade to Brythe’s neck. “Tell me.”
Brythe, full of spite, slumped forwards with the last of his strength.
Osric’s blade, honed to the sharpest edge, severed tissue, artery, and vein.
Brythe slouched against Osric’s arm, partially decapitated.
No last words, then.
It was time to go. The flames of the glassworks’ enormous forge provided a convenient place to dispose of the body.
Osric retreated to the safety of the sod roof of the Publish or Perish as villagers stepped out to investigate the source of the screams.
The coolness of Fairhrim’s seith was at his tācn. Her deofol was asking to come through.
“Finally,” spat Osric as the white genet took shape.
“What do you want?” hissed Fairhrim’s deofol, its ears so far back that they disappeared and made its head a flat triangle. “She’s busy; can’t your deofol take a bloody hint?”
“A Fyren was headed for Swanstone,” said Osric.
“What?”
Osric held up his wet blaecblade. “Threat extinguished. You’ll find him roasting in the glassworks forge.”
The deofol’s self-possession left it. The fur along its back stood on end.
“Why was he going to Swanstone?”
“He killed himself before I could finish enquiring,” said Osric.
“Do you know you’re bleeding?” asked the deofol.
“A few scratches,” said Osric, looking down to take stock.
“That’s a substantial sort of scratch,” said the deofol.
Brythe’s blaecblade was sticking out of Osric’s side. So advanced was his torpraxia that he hadn’t even noticed; there was no pain, only a dull ache that grew more acute now that he was aware of the injury.
“Fuck,” said Osric.
He did not need the deofol’s advice to know that this was Not Good, but the deofol nevertheless said, “That’s Not Good.”
“No. Really?”
“You need a Haelan,” said the deofol.
“I do happen to know one,” said Osric. He strode across the roof, in the direction of Swanstone’s high-turreted silhouette.
Fairhrim’s deofol scampered in front of him. “No—wait—Aurienne isn’t
at Swanstone.”
“She’s not at—what? Where is she?”
“The opera,” said the deofol. “That’s why she couldn’t let your deofol through—bit awkward to have a great bloody wolf materialise in the middle of the third act—”
“The opera? The opera? That’s where she is, and I’ve just got myself gutted for her?”
The deofol’s whiskers twitched in consternation. It was doing some quick thinking. “Take the waystone to the Higgledy-Piggledy in London. Go to number three, just across the way. It’s her parents’ house. She’ll be on her way there shortly, if she isn’t already. I shall try to warn her that you’re coming, but she’s surrounded by people. Your timing is appalling, as usual.
Don’t pull out the knife, whatever you do—hide the wound. To the waystone,
go.”
The deofol disappeared.
The little village of Swanstone-on-Sea was lit with torches as its inhabitants searched for the source of the screams. Someone discovered the puddle of Brythe’s blood under the awning.
Osric descended from the pub’s roof to the waystone and pressed his tācn to it. Down into the ley line towards London he went. He whirled back into himself upon shining cobblestones. This London was different to the London in which Osric normally conducted his business—it was a London of wide, leafy streets illuminated by electric globes instead of gas lamps, and bordered by elegant, if narrow, homes. No soot, no fumes, no reek of boiled fish and cheap spirits. Osric moved towards number three, catching glimpses of soft- lit drawing rooms as he passed.
His preference would have been to shadow-walk the house until he found Fairhrim, but, given the rather urgent state of affairs, he went directly to the front door.
Osric climbed the dozen white marble stairs, an exercise that ought to have been excruciating, given his injury, only the torpraxia-induced numbness made the knife feel like an unfriendly poke more than anything else. He drew his cloak around himself to cover the worst of his state, including the hilt protruding from his side. He made sure that his crisp collar was visible, and pulled on his gloves to hide his tācn.
A serving girl opened the door. Osric had a general impression of glittering bustle behind her—many voices, trays being conveyed to and fro
by harried servants.
“Yes?” prompted the girl.
“Who is it, Tartiflette?” asked a voice, unknown and yet, with its intonations of authority and impatience, familiar. “Did we leave someone behind?”
“I’m a friend of Fair—erm, of Aurienne’s,” said Osric to the serving girl.
A woman popped over the serving girl’s shoulder and observed Osric coolly. “Oh? Aurienne didn’t mention that she had invited anyone.”
The woman was unmistakably Fairhrim’s mother. She had the same brown skin and masses of hair (though white at the temples)—and, more intimidatingly, the same darkly flashing, intelligent eyes.
She turned towards the well-dressed crowd behind her. “Aurienne! Your guest is here. Kindly make introductions.” She turned back to Osric. “Do come in and forgive the chaos—we’ve just got home. You must join us for a drink.”
Osric entered the foyer. Tartiflette, who had fallen in love with him immediately—because who didn’t?—blushingly offered to take his cloak.
Osric made a polite refusal, claiming to have caught a chill. He did feel chilled—it probably had to do with the half litre of blood he had left at the waystone.
Fairhrim’s mother tutted. “Cold? On such a fine evening? Turn up the furnaces, Tartiflette.”
A figure emerged from the crowd behind Fairhrim’s mother. Fairhrim’s voice, resplendent with annoyance, preceded her. “Mum, did you say a guest of mine had—”
“Yes, your Friend,” said Fairhrim’s mother.
Fairhrim came into view. She froze when she saw Osric.
He froze when he saw her, too. This was Fairhrim off duty, nigh unrecognisable in a flowing mauve gown, elbow-length white gloves, and hair off the side of her neck in a soft wave. She was stunning—a disturbing development, and one that Osric set aside to cope with at a later moment.
Fairhrim’s surprise at the sight of Osric was such that it was clear her deofol hadn’t been able to get her somewhere private to explain. Her impassivity was challenged—her fingers gripped at the stem of a glass of wine; her jaw clenched. In the press of her lips Osric saw her fury: that he had harassed her all evening with his deofol, that he had the gall not only to come to her but to enter her parents’ home—that he dared to call himself her friend.
Osric would have to get her alone as soon as possible to explain.
Also to help with the small matter of the knife.
Fairhrim’s mother, whose attention was mercifully on a tray of champagne being whisked by, did not see their mutual gawping. “You might’ve mentioned, Aurienne. You are so forgetful sometimes—just like your father—but no matter; the more, the merrier.”
Fairhrim, who had, in Osric’s experience, a mind like a steel trap, said, “I’m sorry. I forgot to mention.”
An older man joined them, tall, white skinned, slightly stooped about the shoulders. “What am I accused of this time?”
“Forgetfulness, among your many sins,” said Fairhrim’s mother.
“Aurienne invited her newest Friend for drinks and neglected to tell me—an inherited trait.”
Fairhrim looked as though she wished to strangle Osric with his own collar. “Yes. This is my—Friend,” she said, having never sounded so constipated around a word.
“Osric Hungwell,” said Osric, offering his hand to Fairhrim’s parents.
Fairhrim took his alias in her stride, though twitchily. “May I introduce my mother, Radia, and my father, Rosbert?”
“Pleasure,” said Osric, shaking hands with both.
The father’s handshake was firm; the mother’s was pinchy. Radia’s eyes ran down his ensemble, which, though dusty (and bloodstained, if she approached enough to observe it), was obviously quality, and seemed to satisfy her. Fairhrim’s father regarded Osric with mild curiosity, as though his daughter had brought in a stray dog and he wished to make friends with it.
They had a definite whiff of the nouveau riche: the earrings in the mother’s ears, the cane in the father’s hand, the house—no, they were not old money. Osric continued to feel superior to Fairhrim, and all was well in the world, except for the knife in his guts, and the fact that she might, after all, be prettier than him.
He wanted a quick word with her to inform her that he was actively in the process of dying, but they were swept into the crowd and deposited in a reception room. Fairhrim recovered her composure from her initial shock and was glassy and restrained as Osric was introduced to various other Fairhrims whom he did not care about.
“Might I have a word—” began Osric, but Aunt Plectrude drew him into conversation about the state of the roads. Had he heard of the tragic accident that had befallen those Mercians? (He had, actually.) “If we could step out a moment—” tried Fairhrim, but she was asked for an update on the Pox, and made some curt, generally optimistic pronouncements, only many of the poor surviving children were not quite right; the Pox inflamed the brain—there was a general consensus that this was a pity.
Osric nodded, then said again, “Perhaps we could, just for a minute—”
A drink was pushed into his hand by Fairhrim’s father. Scotch. Very good Scotch. Osric drank the Scotch. Would it pour out of his perforated intestine? He felt this would be difficult to explain. He was made to try bits of food. Some of it was unusual—salads with no salad but, rather, tomatoes, cucumbers, and onion; beans marinated in something called chermoula. All exceptionally good; he could not appreciate it fully, however, because he was dying.
“You’re pale,” said Fairhrim. “Your hands are shaking. What’s the matter?”
“He said he was cold,” said Radia. “Poor thing. Tartiflette! The furnaces.”
“I’ve turned them up, madam,” said Tartiflette. “Shall I go higher? What setting?”
Radia, wild-eyed and imperious, said, “Inferno.”
The world grew distant. Osric didn’t wish to overreact, but he thought this might be getting urgent. “I—”
“So, tell us, Mr. Hungwell,” came Rosbert’s friendly enquiry, “how did you and Aurienne meet?”
Osric cleared his throat in a pained sort of way. He had very little blood in his brain to fabricate an answer, given that much of it was presently soaking through his shirt and waistcoat. “Well—erm—that’s an interesting story—”
Fairhrim, bless her, immediately took over the tale. “He’s a consultant.
We hired him a few months ago. He’s an expert in—”
“Knife,” blurted Osric.
“Y-yes,” said Fairhrim. “He’s reviewing our surgical-instrument inventory at Swanstone.”
Osric made a mild recovery and said, “Metallurgy is one of my areas of speciality.”
“He’s produced some truly remarkable dissecting and dressing sets.
Artery forceps to die for. And the episiotomy scissors, frankly gorgeous— they keep their edge like nothing else—”
“Metallurgy!” said Radia. She removed her glove and showed her right palm to Osric. The tācn there consisted of golden gears. “I’m an Ingenaut.
Am I in the company of a fellow member of the Order?”
So Fairhrim’s mother was a brain, too. Good to know, but also, at the moment, he didn’t care.
“Er—sorry to disappoint, but no,” said Osric.
“Oh, well, never mind,” said Radia, replacing her glove with obvious disappointment. “What are your thoughts on the ecgium alloy that’s making such waves?”
“Some interesting applications,” said Osric, “but it’s got nothing on blaec, of course.”
Radia blinked at him. “Well, blaec isn’t exactly widely available, is it?”
“Right. No.”
“What’s blaec?” asked Rosbert.
“A wonder metal,” said Radia, “whose secrets are kept by that awful, obscure little Order—what’s-their-name, the murdery sorts—”
“The Fyren,” bit out Fairhrim.
Dimly, through the black fuzz encroaching on his vision, Osric was aware that he was an idiot for talking about blaec. Fairhrim reaffirmed this by bayonetting him with her eyes. He should definitely not open his cloak to show Fairhrim’s mum the blaecblade jutting from his side, then; his brain, gurgling through what remained of his blood, was certain of this, at least.
Osric tucked a hand into his cloak. Things felt rather wet and sticky even through his glove, and not in a sexy way. He realised that he couldn’t remove his hand, lest everyone see the blood.
“Fair—er—Aurienne, might I steal you away for a moment?” he asked,
feeble voiced.
“Yes,” said Fairhrim.
“Are you quite all right, Mr. Hungwell?” asked Rosbert.
“Of course. Just need to talk business for a moment—scalpel order— wouldn’t want to bore the party.”
“Excuse us,” said Fairhrim. “We’ll be back in a minute.”
Osric followed Fairhrim to the foyer, mercifully devoid of people.
When Fairhrim had ascertained that they were alone, she let Osric see the full brunt of her wrath in the form of flared nostrils. “What is going on?
You’d better have a good explanation for coming to my parents’ home and
inviting yourself in—”
“Fairhrim.”
“What?”
“I’m bleeding out.”
“You’re—what?”
Osric pulled his dripping glove out of his cloak. “But I hate to interrupt— quite a lovely party, if it wasn’t for you perforating me with your eyes every few seconds. Going to leave me bloodier than the knife—”
“The knife?” repeated Fairhrim. “Show me.”
Osric fumbled with the clasp of his cloak. His hands shook; his fine motor skills were shot. In light of his futile attempts with the clasp, Fairhrim
made an impatient click of the tongue and reached for it herself. She tugged at it with brisk movements, threw it open, gasped, and flung it closed again.
“Mother, would you give us a bit of privacy?” she called over Osric’s shoulder. Osric was pleased that he wasn’t the only one in the world towards whom she could direct that precise, Fairhrimish ring of Supreme Irritation.
“I was just coming to see if everything was all right, but I see that it is,” said Radia, shimmering into existence next to her daughter. “Might we refrain from getting handsy just before we serve the sweets?”
There was something martyred in Fairhrim’s expression—that her own mother would suggest such antics with a known Murdery Sort… “Mum, please,” said Fairhrim, holding Osric’s cloak shut, as Osric stuffed his blood-soaked glove into a pocket. “He’s unwell. I’d like to examine him in private.”
Radia grew serious. “Oh? Shall we have him lie down? Take him upstairs —oh, but the guest rooms are all taken—”
Aunt Plectrude hobbled out into the foyer. “Where is Aurienne’s young man? I was just going to tell him about my collection of taxidermised bits.”
“No one wants to hear about your bits,” said Radia.
“I want to hear about Aunt Plectrude’s bits,” said Osric.
The delirium of blood loss was upon him. Everything seemed funny.
Also, he was about to faint.
“Let’s get him to my room,” said Fairhrim. “Stairs. The lift is too far.”
She was looking at Osric with something very much like worry. Her glove was off. Her tācn glowed with readied seith. She snatched his hand.
A serving boy scuttled past with some kind of steamed pudding.
“Oh,” said Radia, “let’s send up something sweet with him—bring that here, Arthur. Have a look, Mr. Hungwell. May we tempt you into something naughty?”
Osric wished to say something witty about how the woman holding his hand and dragging him to her bedchamber was the only thing tempting him into Something Naughty. Gods, he was cold. Everyone had their collars open and glistened with a sheen of sweat, and he was frozen. Was this how he was going to die? Hand in hand with Fairhrim on her mother’s polished floor?
“Not now,” said Fairhrim. “He needs rest. Come on, Mor—er, Osric.”
It was lovely to be fussed over, Osric thought. Tartiflette was sent to set a warming pan in Fairhrim’s bed. The serving boy held up the pudding for Osric’s inspection. Fairhrim’s hand squeezed his. He took a step towards her.
She was a dreamlike blur in his fading vision. In spite of all her finery, she smelled like herself, like hlutoform and soap. Her eyes were dark with concern, only she hated him, so they weren’t, but it was lovely to pretend.
So very lovely.
He fainted face-first into the pudding.
OSRIC FADED IN AND OUT of awareness. Something new happened every time he opened his eyes—he was carried into a bedchamber by Fairhrim’s relatives— Fairhrim chased everybody out—blackness—sharp pain at his side, followed by coolness—a gentle hand in his hair—blackness again.
Osric came to in a soft-lit room. It was Fairhrim’s hands he saw first in his blurred, queasy return to consciousness. She washed them in a basin beside the bed. She scrubbed carefully along fingers, across palms, around nails, up and around wrists. She had overused her seith and triggered her Cost —her knuckles were red and cracked; her fingertips had blistered open; long wounds ran up her wrists. Between his gutting and her hands, this had been a real orgy of self-sacrifice.
Osric watched the glitter of water and the slow, frothy drip of bloody soap, backlit by a yellow lamp. The swan on Fairhrim’s palm tilted towards him; its blank, triangular eye observed him between sweeps of white towel.
Then came a spray of hlutoform. Fairhrim didn’t flinch as she applied it directly to her wounds.
The soft glow came from diagnostic images floating above him.
“Dress—ruined,” pointed out Osric.
“Don’t talk,” said Fairhrim.
“Have I got custard in my hair?”
“You’re an idiot,” said Fairhrim. Her voice was tight and clipped; she was withholding a high-pressure torrent of further opinions.
“Answer me about the custard.”
Fairhrim’s withheld torrent found a crack. “Do you know how lucky you are that your bowels weren’t perforated? I’m still not certain whether or not I
need to involve Cath—”
“Who’s Cath?”
“A trauma specialist.”
“Short for Catheter, I suppose.”
“No. Stop talking.” The crack widened; Fairhrim’s torrent gushed forth.
“What were you thinking? What was the operative theory here, Mr. I’m- Nigh-Untouchable? Well, you certainly got touched. And then what? You thought you’d just…hold the blood in? Keep your guts braced through sheer force of will? Flirt with Aunt Plectrude with a knife thrust into you? Find death in a pudding?”
Osric raised a feeble finger. “It seems unfair to tell me to stop talking and then ask questions.”
“The questions are rhetorical. Honestly, what’s in your head? Close your eyes. Can you manage that? I’ll happily sedate you if you can’t.”
Fairhrim’s palm was at his side. The torpraxia didn’t affect his ability to feel her seith; it swept into him in cool, controlled pushes. Unlike his seith degeneration, Osric had, this time, presented Fairhrim with a problem that was enormous but solvable—and she solved. He had known that she was brilliant, but he truly understood now what that brilliance meant. Her seith surged into him in a curative wash, impossibly knitting him closed from the inside out.
He was going to be all right, thought Osric as he sank back into unconsciousness and Fairhrim’s seith flowed through him.
Blood on her cheek and sharpness on her tongue, she was going to save him.
