19
SHARING YOUR TRAGIC BACKSTORY WITH YOUR HOT
ENEMY
Osric
hen Osric next awoke, Fairhrim was beside him. She had returned toW her usual whites, but in the form of a soft, high-waisted dress. Her hair was in a loose, curling knot at the base of her neck. Her edges were still there, however—her posture was perfect; her shoulders were square beneath gauzy fabric.
Fairhrim saw that he was awake. With a surprising lack of edge, she said, “Someone once told me it’s rude to stare.”
“Not sure I’ve got the strength to turn my head,” said Osric. It was mostly
true. “Are we alone?”
“Yes.”
“What time is it?” asked Osric, his voice a weak rasp.
“Half past two, two days after. How are you?”
“In grand fettle,” said Osric.
“How’s your pain?”
“Feel like I got filleted.”
“You’ll have a new scar for your collection.”
“What’s all this I’m tied up with?” asked Osric, lifting a hand from which tubing emerged. “Why am I so tubey? Why am I entubed?”
“Plasma volume expanders. Intravenous antibiotics. I’ll take you off them soon.”
“Lucky your parents had all this handy.”
“They didn’t,” said Fairhrim. “I stole it from Swanstone.”
“You stole?”
“Don’t be smug.”
“You’re the common thief.”
Fairhrim gave him the sort of look that could skewer a man fifty paces out.
Osric ceased his teasing, given that he already suffered from one grievous injury.
He lifted his weak, entubed hand. “How long will I be this useless?”
“I’ll give you recommendations to shorten your convalescence,” said Fairhrim. “Abide by them and you may be ambulatory again within two or three days.”
“Two or three days? I haven’t got days.”
“Oh, yes, you have. Here.” Fairhrim handed Osric pills and a glass of
water.
“What are these?” asked Osric.
“A dose of reality.”
“You aren’t funny.”
“They’re for the pain. Also, a stool softener.”
“Brilliant,” said Osric. “I love the idea of you worrying about the softness of my stool.”
“I’m not worried about it; you’re on stool softeners.”
Osric swallowed the pills along with his dignity. Just what he wanted: Fairhrim’s solicitude over hard poos. He felt about where the blaecblade had
impaled him. “Am I all closed up?”
“Yes.”
“Are my guts where they should be?”
“Yes.”
“Thank you,” blurted Osric.
He didn’t like that. The blurting. He preferred his words, like his murders, nice and premeditated.
Fairhrim folded her hands together. Then she moved them to her thighs.
Then she brought them together again. She, who always decidedly knew how she felt and did not hesitate to express it, seemed to not know how to feel or how to express it.
Finally, she sat herself at the foot of the bed and said, “I’m the one who owes you thanks. My deofol told me what he saw. So—so thank you.”
She looked as uncomfortable as he had felt with thanks—only his had been expelled, like thanks-vomit, whereas hers had needed to be pushed, like thanks-constipation. He ought to propose a stool softener to her, for her mouth.
Anyway, Osric was gratified. “All in a day’s work.”
“You’re mad,” said Fairhrim. “You killed one of your own Order.”
“Fairhrim?”
“Yes?”
“Sometimes violence really is the answer.”
Fairhrim didn’t disagree with him. Perhaps she was being nice because he was still convalescing. She did have a weakness for invalids.
“Though, to be technical about it, he landed the finishing blow himself,” added Osric.
“Will you explain what happened, from the beginning?” asked Fairhrim.
She sat straight backed and attentive as Osric explained, starting with the gargling of the baubles, and ending with Brythe’s spiteful suicide.
Fairhrim stared at him for a long time, expressionless save for a new, peculiar gravity in her eyes.
“I will never reject your deofol again,” said Fairhrim. “And I’m sorry I did.”
Osric felt that he had won something—but what it was, he wasn’t sure.
Fairhrim looked at her hands, rather than at Osric, and said, “You almost died.”
“Am I detecting concern?” asked Osric, delighted.
“You’re in my care. And you put yourself at great risk.”
“I hadn’t a choice. There was a chance that he might kill you—and if you
die, I die. Couldn’t let that happen.”
“I understand.”
“I’ve still got a use for you.”
“Of course.”
“It was pure self-interest.”
Fairhrim appeared to consider smiling. “There is no occasion in which I would imagine you acting out of anything other than pure self-interest.”
Satisfied that they had mutually established that they didn’t care about each other beyond professional necessity (her) and personal agenda (him), Osric said, “Can’t believe you were faffing off at the opera. Had no idea you weren’t at Swanstone. Could’ve spared myself the disembowelment.”
“There’s one less Fyren in the world,” said Fairhrim, looking pleased at the prospect.
“He was instructed to wring necks at Swanstone until he found an answer, only I don’t know what the question was.”
Fairhrim shifted on the bed. Osric felt her weight against his shin. Her seriousness returned. “Our Orders have their differences, but we never directly attack one another. We simply don’t. You know the Peace Accords.
It would destabilise things.”
“I know.”
“Do you think this has to do with the other infiltration attempt?”
“If it does, it means Wellesley was just a pawn. Whoever it is has moved on to another level if they’re hiring Fyren. They must be bloody flush. I don’t see how else they would’ve convinced Tristane to take it on.”
“Tristane?” asked Fairhrim.
“My warchief,” said Osric. “Also the most lethal Fyren in existence.
Might be Hel herself, walking among us.”
“How long have we got before Brythe’s death is discovered?”
“I didn’t leave a body. They’ll never know if he simply fucked off.
Tristane will start asking questions when he doesn’t report back. We’ve probably got a week or so before she realises something’s wrong.”
“What will she do?” asked Fairhrim.
“Rage. Send someone else. Go herself. I don’t know.”
“I’ve got to warn Xanthe,” said Fairhrim. “We’ll take additional protective measures.”
“Be careful with your measures,” said Osric. “It’ll be suspicious if Swanstone is suddenly swarming with Wardens and lit up like it’s Yule.
Tristane can’t suspect there was a leak.”
Fairhrim made a sound of agreement. She rose and fetched a sort of wrist
brace. “Let’s get this on you.”
“What’s it for?” asked Osric.
“To hide your tācn for now,” said Fairhrim, slipping the brace over his left hand. “We’ll say you injured your wrist when you fainted. It covers your
palm.”
“Ah.”
“We’ll have to get you new gloves. Yours are rather on the crusty side.”
“I’ll send my deofol to Mrs. Parson for clothes.”
“I’ve tucked your things under there,” said Fairhrim, pointing to a floorboard. “Including Brythe’s and your blaecblades. My mother mustn’t
know how close she is to real blaec.”
“Floorboard. Classic.”
“Gloriously predictable, as you once said. What’s the meaning behind the
gold threads?”
“Which?”
“The ones that wrap around the hilts of the blaecblades. I noticed yours and Brythe’s had different amounts.”
“Oh, those. They’re a marker of, erm—rank.”
“I thought they might be.” Fairhrim nodded. “Thought it could denote years of service, like Haelan wings, only you can’t have over eight hundred years of service, so what are they counting?”
Osric took too long to fabricate an answer. Fairhrim stared at him, then said, “Gods. It’s kills, isn’t it?”
“Ask me no questions and I shall tell you no lies.”
Fairhrim gave no answer but a resigned sigh. She cocked a hip against a sofa and shoved it over the floorboard. “Rest while you can. There’ll be a
stream of curious relatives itching to see you. I’ll do my best to stem the
flow.”
“Why are there so many relatives here?”
“The party.”
“What party?”
“My parents’ fortieth anniversary party is in a few days. They decided to make a Thing of it.” Fairhrim looked as though she had opinions on parties and Things. “Now, if you want to get better quickly, you need to rest. I’ll
leave you.”
“I’m sorry about your dress.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“At least it wasn’t one of your usual perfect white ones.”
“Haelan whites are made of an impermeable polymer. They don’t stain.”
“Oh.”
“Sleep,” said Fairhrim.
She strode towards the door.
“Fairhrim?” called Osric.
“What?”
“What’s an episiotomy scissor?”
“It’s used in childbirth.”
“A scissor? In childbirth? What for?”
“Cutting the perineum, between the vagina and anus.”
Having delivered this newest eight-word horror story, Fairhrim quit the room, taking whatever was left of Osric’s innocence with her.
IT WAS GOOD FUN BEING Fairhrim’s ailing Friend. It obliged her to be kind to him whenever there were others present, which was a nice change, and one he took advantage of (it was unnatural, pleasurably novel). It also provided endless scope to annoy her, while forcing her to keep the most cutting of her remarks to herself.
She disbursed them liberally upon him whenever they were alone, however. That night, feeling considerably better, Osric asked for a Scotch, of the same bottle, preferably, as the one he had been served from the night of the opera. Fairhrim told him that if he was feeling well enough for a Scotch, he could go fetch it himself instead of lying there twitching his mandibles at her like some sort of larva.
Her childhood bedroom held a single bed, the sofa, and the spirit of young Fairhrim. On the walls were botanical plates and framed pages torn from medical texts—illustrations of humans and animals in various states of dissection. (“Yes,” said Fairhrim, when she saw Osric observing them, “I disappointed my mother early by being more interested in the biological sciences than the harder stuff. Too whimsical, she said.”) There was a balcony at the far end of the room, giving onto the back garden. The favourite activity of Osric’s guests was to come in and throw the curtains open with gasps about the salubriousness of the sun; he stumbled up after they were gone to draw them closed again.
For the benefit of Osric’s visitors, Fairhrim made up a complicated Syndrome that explained his collapse and long recovery. No one questioned her—she was a Haelan, after all—but Radia remarked with a sniff that they invented a new Syndrome every day. To explain his constant wearing of gloves to hide a rather telling tācn, Fairhrim declared that he had eczema.
Osric got to know Fairhrim’s parents through their visits to his suite.
Radia was a more outgoing version of Fairhrim—intelligent, wry, gleefully critical. She had come to the Tīendoms from the Rif region of Tamazgha as a teenager and earned her tācn—as well as a slight Dublin accent—from the Ingenaut Order a few years thereafter. Osric learned that she was the one responsible for the riche in nouveau riche; she had made her family’s fortune by inventing some sort of tube.
“A compression fitting,” specified Radia, when Osric called it a tube.
“Really, Aurienne, are we certain he hasn’t suffered brain damage from his Syndrome?”
Fairhrim’s response was a mere tightening of the mouth.
Anyway, the compression fitting was, apparently, now a part of the irrigation booms used by every farmer in the Tīendoms, and so the tube had made the family.
“Poor creature,” said Radia, standing at the foot of Osric’s bed. “And what about his eczema? Haven’t your lot at Swanstone worked out anything better than a salve and gloves?”
“Treatment takes time,” said Fairhrim. “Short of transplanting a new set of hands on him, there’s nothing to be done but wait.”
“That’s the problem with human beings,” said Radia. “Insufficient spare parts. I’ve noticed a bit of a limp when he walks, too. Have you looked into it?”
Was this what they were doing? Cataloguing what was wrong with him, and why Fairhrim hadn’t fixed it?
“It’s part of his flare-up,” said Fairhrim. “He’ll get better.”
“And mightn’t we do something about those scars?” asked Radia, pointing a dissatisfied finger towards Osric’s face. “Poor man could’ve been handsome if he didn’t have the blueprint for Carn Euny on his face.”
“Mum, kindly stop troubleshooting my guest,” said Fairhrim, steering her mother out of the room.
Fairhrim’s father was a professor of botany. He was a chatty, bookish sort of man, and the master of a large greenhouse that took over most of the back garden. When he discovered that Osric was possessed of moderate intelligence and was too infirm to run away, he adopted him as a personal companion for his afternoon teas, and spent many hours at his bedside discussing algal mats.
From these conversations, Osric discovered that he was one of a series of occasional Friends whom Fairhrim’s parents had met over the years, and that it was expected that he would not be the last. These Friends inevitably made catastrophic errors, such as breathing too loudly, or blinking moistly, or existing, and Fairhrim swept them out of her life as swiftly as she had let them in.
“You’re different to Aurienne’s usual type, though,” said Rosbert. “Bit less tweed on you.”
“Oh?”
“Sugar?”
“Four lumps.”
“Madman.” Rosbert delivered the sugar. “I know you won’t trifle with her affections, if she is serious—there’s a decency about you.”
Osric wished to assure him that between himself and Fairhrim there was no affection to be trifled with whatsoever, but he choked on his tea, because decency.
“Don’t be modest,” said Rosbert. “She’s told us all about you. You’ve apparently saved her from a hostage situation. And you donate to paediatric disease research. And you rescue dogs.”
All of which was simultaneously true and strikingly inaccurate.
From her parents Osric saw where Fairhrim got her brains, but her sharpness was entirely her own invention. These were soft people. There was a purity in their hospitality and an innocence in their concern for Osric that felt foreign. There were no knives here—no plots, no backstabbing, no need to look over one’s shoulder.
On the second day of his convalescence, Osric took Fairhrim’s hint about ending his career as a mandible-twitching larva to heart, and began to make forays on his feet. His first was remarkable; he declared to Fairhrim that he was, in fact, ready to leave, then strode to the first available door, swung it open, and walked into the toilet.
“That’s the toilet,” said Fairhrim, unnecessarily.
The world spun and Osric almost cracked his head open on the toilet bowl, and so he lay back down and decided to try again later.
Exploring the house was an adventure. The mark of the Ingenaut was everywhere. Radia had equipped her home with all of her Order’s luxuries and combined them with the artistry of her homeland. Elaborately carved doors swung open as Osric approached. A lift that was a magnificent, soundless marvel of engineering carried him from floor to floor, all gleaming brass levers and bright buttons, decorated with seas and stars. Globes of light etched with geometric patterns recessed into the ceiling when they weren’t needed, and descended when required. The corridors used by the servants
were camouflaged with mirrors and paintings. Illuminated curio cabinets lined walls. Radia had an extensive collection of timepieces, beautifully polished, one or two of which caught Osric’s eye, but she also had an impressive alarm system, so Osric decided to let only his eye be caught, and not his hand.
Fairhrim could have lived a soft life here. She was generally a logical sort, but this was inexplicable: why did she toil and sacrifice at Swanstone and live in a spider-filled attic? Altruism? The toilets here had contraptions that washed one’s entire undercarriage. A French import. There was simply no way Swanstone had those. That was what altruism got you: spiders in your arsehole.
At night, Fairhrim slept on the sofa, wrapped in a spare blanket, and dressed in oversized flannel pyjamas that looked as though she’d borrowed them from her father. Osric liked to think that he had recovered from his blood-loss-induced delirium and ceased to find her stunning.
However.
However.
One night—when he was still, he would later tell himself, in the delirium of his recovery—there was one moment—he blamed it on the drugs in his system—one moment—he wasn’t himself yet—when he succumbed to a low, terrible weakness.
It was four in the morning. He woke up hard. The dream had involved a woman—possibly Fairhrim, but he preferred to tell himself that he didn’t remember.
In normal circumstances, he would have rubbed out a quick wank and gone back to bed, only he was in Fairhrim’s room, and Fairhrim was asleep right there.
He did not, in his defence, touch himself.
Not immediately, anyway.
He thought of unsexy things. He thought of disgusting things. He thought of episiotomy scissors. Gangrene. Torn nipples. Mathematics.
His erection remained, achingly hard. His balls felt heavy. He was so aroused that the merest twitch of his hips upwards against the resistance of
the sheets made his cock jump. Small blessing: his torpraxia had not advanced to his cock; it could still feel perfectly. Was it a blessing? Perhaps not in this specific moment.
He knew what he wanted to do. He didn’t know if he was filthy enough to do it.
Fairhrim was right there. It would be wrong. It would be profane.
He was filthy enough to do it.
He watched her through half-lidded eyes, telling himself, at first, that it was to make sure that she wouldn’t wake up while he relieved himself. That was all he was doing: relieving himself. It had nothing to do with her.
He observed her hand, dangling from the sofa as she slept, her tācn half- visible. He—to his shame—imagined that hand running along his cock as he slipped his own hand under the sheets and stroked himself. He watched her breathe. He tightened and relaxed his grip upon himself in keeping with the rise and fall of her chest. He thought of the chapped roughness of her palm along the underside of his erection. Thought of her fingers swirling around his head as he mirrored the movement under the sheets. Thought of her lips next, kissing their way upwards, and then opening— Gods. He was disgusting. He was abhorrent. She had just saved his life, and slept exhausted next to him, and this was how he repaid her?
He continued his imaginings. Her lips—that tongue that she wielded so masterfully against him in their verbal spars—ran up his shaft. His cock jumped under the sheets; pre-come dribbled onto a knuckle. He was ashamed.
His cock throbbed. He imagined her breath feathering across his wet tip. His hips bucked. This was obscene. He should stop.
He tried to stop. Saw the outline of her hip in the dark. Stroked himself again. Slipped into a new phantasm. His mouth on her hip, kissing and biting its way to the delicious inside of a thigh, then dragging wet kisses upwards.
Pulling away her underthings. Delving into her, tasting her, intoxicating himself on her arousal, smearing it all over his mouth and chin. The press of thighs on either side of his head. Fairhrim sighed in her sleep. He imagined that her lips parted thus because of his tongue. Trembled. Gave himself a final stroke. His free hand gripped sheets, grasped at something—anything—
on the bedside table to catch his come. He found a bit of napkin. Held back a gasp. White light bloomed behind his eyelids.
His orgasm came in bursts of guilt and pleasure. He rode it out in silence as he spilled himself into the napkin. When the pleasure-guilt pulses twitched out their last in his fist, he stared at the ceiling. Recovered his breathing.
Found that his face was burning.
He wiped the evidence of his shame off his cock and noticed that the napkin was that napkin. He hoped that Fairhrim wouldn’t have need of her
diagram anymore.
Gods.
Her father had called him decent.
Gods.
It was all right. It would be fine. No one had witnessed his solitary indecency. No harm could come of it.
The only problem was that there now lived, in his head, visions of Fairhrim that should never have been there, and that he knew he wanted to see again.
FOUR DAYS AFTER OSRIC’S ILL-FATED arrival upon Radia and Rosbert’s doorstep, it was the night of the party. The back garden was turned into a green and gold arbour lit up with free-floating lamps. Fairhrim friends and relatives showed up en masse and ate, and drank, and danced. Over it all lay the scent of greenhouse blooms and the glamour of a perfect June evening.
Osric watched the goings-on from the shadows of the balcony. Fairhrim’s parents had invited him to attend, but she had flashed him a look that said Don’t you dare, and Osric had declined. They sent Tartiflette up with bites of food from the party, as well as a pity bottle of Scotch. Fairhrim had flashed Osric a second look, and warned him that he could have two drinks, and not more. It was a miracle that he hadn’t gone blind from all these flashes of hers.
She was a bloody heliograph.
It was a tranquil way to pass an evening, anyway: eyeballing the jewels on the hands of various aunts, watching Fairhrim, counting how many drinks Uncle Pilheard downed, watching Fairhrim, assessing the string quartet, watching Fairhrim… Why was he watching Fairhrim? Oh, many reasons. Because it was interesting to see her outside the usual context of dusty clinics. Because she danced unexpectedly well. Because there was nothing better to do. Because he actually had brain damage from the Syndrome.
If it wasn’t for the fact that it was Fairhrim whom he was observing so attentively, he could almost think he fancied her. What a joke that would be.
What a celestial irony.
It was clear, from Fairhrim’s spinning about the garden in the arms of others, and kissing cheeks, and laughing, that she was well liked, even well loved.
Fairhrim bestowed swift smiles on all who asked her to dance (point of interest: she never bestowed swift smiles on Osric) and left behind her a trail of discarded adorers as she moved from one to the next. They were all underbred youngbloods with nothing to recommend them; Osric was far more handsome. And richer.
Poor Tartiflette kept coming upstairs with offerings for Osric. This time she joined him on the balcony with oblong brown things on a plate, like some
sort of poo sommelier.
“Thank you,” said Osric.
The brown things were chocolates. Tartiflette gurgled in an agony of lovestruck shyness and left again.
Osric watched Fairhrim release the chinless wonder she was dancing with and move on to another. This one was tall. Admittedly good-looking. Love- light in his eyes. Presently dancing with Fairhrim for a third time. Osric was
taken over by a savage jealousy.
It was the Season of Betrayal.
No. One couldn’t get possessive over a thing that wasn’t one’s to begin with—and that one had no desire to possess anyway. That would be ridiculous. Osric went back to watching the aunts to decide if anything was
worth stealing, due to a sudden, unrelated-to-Fairhrim, urge to join the party.
A solid gold torc caught his eye, as did a jewelled lorgnette.
He stress-ate chocolate.
Where had Fairhrim got to?
There she was—at the door of the bedroom, rapping her distinct knock.
Osric had known, of course, having watched her below, that she was wearing a lovely champagne gown, and had gathered her dark hair in a crown braid with orchids tucked into it, but it didn’t lessen the shock when she came in looking not at all like the Haelan and looking, instead, fresh, sylphidine,
and very much beautiful.
Not beautiful. Just pretty.
Just pretty.
Osric did not want Fairhrim to be beautiful. He was susceptible to beauty.
He was an Appreciator of beautiful things. He wanted to acquire them. He wanted them to be his. Now, as Fairhrim neared, he fought a momentary panic that his beauty-loving heart would want Fairhrim in any way, that her loveliness tonight would trigger some latent kleptomaniac urge.
He hated Fairhrim. Ergo, she was not beautiful. This was the only solution; the cognitive dissonance would be unbearable otherwise.
He conceded a vast prettiness that took her to the very edge of beauty.
Besides, this was temporary. Soon the night would be over, and Fairhrim would return to the choke of her high-necked dress and her usual froideur, and be the Haelan again. This was a moment as ephemeral as the orchids in her hair.
Also—also—he wouldn’t be attracted to her because she wasn’t attracted to him. One-sided attraction was a power differential he used to his advantage, and he did not wish to be on the receiving end of any such thing from Fairhrim.
There was a totter in Fairhrim’s step. She was loose limbed from a few drinks. The flush of the dance was on her cheeks. (Most certainly the dance, and not the influence of the Tall Good-Looking Other Man.) She joined Osric at the railing and, with unlooked-for familiarity, put a hand on his arm to hold herself up as she took off her shoes.
It struck him; it threw him off-kilter; it made him daring; it made him stupid.
He found himself torn between saying things ugly and beautiful, between
lies and truth.
“You look—you look—” he began.
“Not objectionable?” came the breezy suggestion.
“Yes.”
“I saw you lurking up here,” said Fairhrim, her voice still warm with whatever she had been smiling about with the Tall Other Man. “Pleased you’ve been able to stand for so long. How are you feeling?”
“Lonely.”
“Lonely? You? You hate everyone.”
“Do I?”
“Don’t you?”
“You’re right—I do.”
Fairhrim adjusted long gloves that went past her elbows. “I suppose we look like we’re having too much fun. You can come down if you wish, only promise you won’t exert yourself—and keep the bloody tācn covered.”
Osric, however, had no reason to go down, now that Fairhrim was up here. “Who was your overly handsome partner?”
“Which?” Fairhrim looked over the balcony. “Oh—Aedan?”
“Is it?”
“Sweet Aedan,” said Fairhrim. She propped her elbows upon the railing.
“My mother’s still not forgiven me for not marrying him; he’s caring, and wealthy, and an Ingenaut.”
Osric made some calculations and concluded that he hit a solid one out of three on Fairhrim’s mum’s marking scheme for desirable husbands. Not that he had any wish to be a desirable husband; it was simply good to know where one stood.
Tartiflette’s timorous knock rang and she brought in a single trembling flute of champagne. Osric, still working on his Scotch, declined. Fairhrim took the flute with a pitying look at Tartiflette as she left.
“If only she knew what you are,” said Fairhrim.
“Wouldn’t matter,” said Osric. “I’m irresistible.”
Fairhrim, with offensive tranquillity, said, “Load of rot.”
She watched Sweet Aedan below with a gaze that was remote. At least when she looked at Osric, there was a spark of something there—vast irritation, usually, but still, something. This detachment would kill him.
“Sweet Aedan looks as though he still carries a flame for you,” said Osric.
“I’ve told him I have a new Friend—a Friend at this very party. And yet…”
“I suppose this is but a small sample of your prospects,” said Osric with a gesture to the adorers.
“There are no prospects,” said Fairhrim. “I loved once. It was a mistake.
It will never happen again.”
“I’m intrigued.”
“I won’t tell you what orifice to stuff your intrigue into,” said Fairhrim.
“Stop prying, or I shall pry at you in return.”
“I haven’t anything to hide,” said Osric.
“No? No tales of past heartbreaks?”
“No heart to break,” said Osric. “I’m safe.”
Fairhrim sipped at her drink. She touched her neck, tense jawed. “Wise of you.”
“What happened between you and Perfect Aedan?” asked Osric. Before Fairhrim could snarl at him for his continued curiosity, he made a sweeping invitational gesture towards himself. “And yes—you may pry at me in return.
You may even go first.”
“May I? So kind.”
“Ask me whatever you’d like.”
“Anything?”
“Anything.”
Fairhrim pondered her question, one finger running up and down the stem of her champagne flute. Osric prepared to discuss the details of his most lurid affairs in such a way as to spotlight his prowess as a lover.
Then Fairhrim asked: “Why did you kill your father?”
Which was not at all where Osric had wanted this to go.
“I had hoped,” said Osric, “that we could confine the conversation to our lovers.”
“You said anything,” pointed out Fairhrim, as though Osric weren’t suddenly and acutely aware of his strategic misstep. “But we needn’t see this through. We can withdraw our pryings by mutual agreement.”
“My father was a bastard,” said Osric.
“In which sense of the term?” enquired Fairhrim.
“Metaphorical. I, however, am a bastard in the literal sense.”
Fairhrim was strong; he offered her an overture to indicate that she thought he fit both definitions quite neatly, but she made no comment.
“My father, of the great Mordaunt line, refused to marry my mother when she fell pregnant. Said I wasn’t his. Her family—minor nobility, Wessexian —disowned her. We lived in absolute poverty while father had thirty rooms at Rosefell in which he got drunk every night. His lowliest under-housemaid ate more in a day than we did in a week. The housekeeper snuck food to us
on her off days.”
“Mrs. Parson?” asked Fairhrim.
“Yes. My mother brought me to my father every few years to ask him to recognise me as his son—he never did, even as I grew into his spitting image —and to get a few thrymsas out of him. He gave us beatings along with the thrymsas. The very last time he tried to beat us, I had begun to apprentice with Tristane. He didn’t know. Neither did my mother, for that matter. I hadn’t yet earned my blaecblade or my tācn, but I had learned to handle a knife. He had just thrown my mother into a wall. He went for my throat; I went for his. Mother never woke up. Father died by my hand. I was fourteen years old.”
Fairhrim studied Osric for a long time in silence. “I suppose I didn’t expect it to be a happy story.”
“Does the tragedy of it all absolve me of my sins?”
“An explanation isn’t an excuse.”
Classic Fairhrim rationalism. “It is a happy story, anyway,” continued Osric. “I’m happy now.”
“Your poor mother.”
“Avenged and not forgotten.”
“This explains why some of your scars are so old,” said Fairhrim. “Old enough to precede your career, I mean.”
“He did have a knack for decorating us both,” said Osric.
“How did you end up with Rosefell Hall if you were a bastard?”
“Terrorised father’s legal man into forging documents legitimising my birth. Killed him later to be safe. Hired tutors and masters to learn how to be a nobleman’s son—whatever my mother hadn’t been able to teach me. Father had pissed away most of the family fortune; I’ve been rebuilding it ever since. Until you. Now I’m basically destitute.”
Fairhrim was not as pity struck as he would have hoped. She served him a look tinctured with criticism rather than sympathy. “You’re far from
destitute.”
“I’m far from as rich as I was, too.”
“Sell your collections.”
“Unmerciful creature,” said Osric.
“I’ll buy the De humani off you.”
“You couldn’t afford it,” said Osric.
“Try me.”
“Another time. It’s your turn now. You must tell me what happened between you and Sweet Aedan.”
“Between me and Sweet Aedan,” repeated Fairhrim, with a look towards the man in question, who danced below. “Nothing happened. That was, perhaps, the problem. There was no quarrel; there was no explosion. Aedan is too perfect. He has no faults to love him by.”
“You require faults in your lovers?”
“One or two, judiciously chosen.”
“Hah,” said Osric, who had many to choose from. Not that he wished to be her lover; it was simply a fact.
An enquiring eyebrow curved Osric’s way over a bare shoulder.
“Never mind,” said Osric. “A joke that was funnier in my head.”
“I think they’re all funnier in your head, but thank you for showing restraint.” Fairhrim was still looking at Too-Perfect Aedan. “It doesn’t matter. We’re still friends. At least, I’m friends with him.”
“One of your many Friends, I’m given to understand.”
A measure of Fairhrim’s usual rigidity returned to her neck. “And who would’ve told you that?”
“The last source I shared with you wound up dead, so I shan’t disclose,” said Osric. “I suppose you haven’t quite found the balance of desirable faults.”
“Not that it’s any of your business, but—yes, the correct ratio is difficult to achieve. And, of course, they must find my faults palatable.” To Osric’s annoyance, she preempted him and added, “I’ve got a few.”
“Name them,” said Osric.
“Low tolerance for Fyren continuing to pry about my personal life,” said Fairhrim.
“I’ll constrain my prying to your professional affairs.”
Fairhrim shifted into a sweeping contrapposto. “Constrain it, full stop.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“No.”
Annoyance accumulated on Fairhrim like a patina—the pinched nostrils, the tightened jaw, the majestic drawing upwards as she prepared to unleash
some trenchant remark.
Then she saw his smirk.
“You’re winding me up,” said Fairhrim.
“You really are delicious.”
Fairhrim never troubled to flirt with him, but her dark look, the amused press of her lips, and the brush of her elbow against his all had much the same effect on Osric; all mingled with the drink, was more potent than the drink, warmed his blood, threatened to heat his face. He thought forbidden thoughts about her lips again, what they had done in his imaginings, what he would like to do to them.
She was a thing between desire and impossibility.
Was he becoming one of those pathetic men who found a woman more desirable in direct proportion to how unattainable she was?
She held up her glass and said, “Well done.”
Thank you, and I would like to die suffocated by your thighs did not seem an appropriate response at this time.
Osric said, “I serve at your pleasure,” and held up his glass to hers.
She pressed her flute of champagne to his Scotch with a smile hidden in the corner of her mouth.
No, there was nothing worth stealing at the party below. But up here?
It occurred to him that he would like to steal a dance.
