9
ROSEFELL HALL
Aurienne
aystone travel always left Aurienne feeling ill, and back-to-back dipsW into the waystone graticule made it even worse. It was a foul-tempered ride through the ley line.
The molecules that made Aurienne recongregated at Rosefell Hall, somewhere in Mercia. She felt clandestine, sick, and saturated by her own lies. She pressed her tācn to her forehead to quell her nausea as she took her bearings. She was next to a waystone at the edge of a broad, overgrown gravel drive.
The waning moon, cloud crossed, offered little in terms of light, so Aurienne walked towards the house with her tācn held aloft. The air was thick with the sound of night insects, punctuated by the crunch of her footsteps on the gravel.
Rosefell Hall came into view. The great house loomed black before Aurienne, a wide, rambling structure, with windows boarded up here and there, a roof missing half its shingles, and walls choked with vines. A weathervane in the shape of a running hound spun, though there was no wind.
Of course this was where the Fyren lived. It looked downright haunted. It was a lair.
Aurienne didn’t like vines. Vines were rat ladders.
The house’s great front doors were flanked by heraldic greyhounds holding petal-adorned shields. Upon the door hung a tarnished brass knocker in the shape of a sprig of wild roses. Aurienne pounded out three impatient knocks thereon, startling the night insects into silence.
She expected a dramatic opening of the doors, and perhaps a sinister butler, for whom she preemptively formulated a curt request to fetch his wretched master. However, there was no opening, and no butler. Instead, the handles rattled, accompanied by muffled swearing.
At length, Mordaunt’s gloved fingertips appeared in a crack between the doors, then his hands, then his face.
“Don’t get many visitors, do you?” asked Aurienne. (She did not assist with his struggle.) Mordaunt looked cross. “You took so long to come, the hinges bloody rusted.”
“I was unavoidably delayed. You’re lucky I came at all.”
Mordaunt did not care enough to ask why she had been delayed, which was fine; Aurienne was reserving that for some upcoming negotiations.
“Use the entrance round the back, by the kitchens, next time,” said Mordaunt.
Presumptuous of him to assume there would be a next time, but all right.
Mordaunt managed to drag one door open enough for Aurienne to slip through. “Get in.”
He wasn’t as well put together as usual. His collar wasn’t crisp; his shirt wanted ironing. His gaze was suspicious, bordering on wild. His silver-white hair, normally artfully windswept, was askew.
He jammed the door shut behind her. A bit of plaster fell on Aurienne.
Likewise a spider. Mordaunt brushed both off with a muttered apology for these disagreeable additions to her person.
“I don’t care,” said Aurienne. “I live in an attic.”
She followed Mordaunt into the house. Their footsteps echoed along the cavernous front hall’s flagged floor. The windows—those that remained unboarded—were stained with more heraldic greyhounds and roses. Great
beams ran across the ceilings, blackened with mould. Candles flickered here and there, shedding little light.
“Do you live alone in this great, empty house?” asked Aurienne.
“Yes,” said Mordaunt.
“You’re a misanthrope, then?”
“Why do you think I kill people?”
Mordaunt led her out of the front hall and through a series of high-vaulted corridors.
“What happened to your family?” asked Aurienne.
“Killed them all.”
“Ah.”
“Ate their hearts.”
“Oh.”
“You believe me?”
“Yes.”
“How dare you?”
“I thought you wanted me to trust you,” said Aurienne.
“Not when I’m obviously lying,” said Mordaunt.
“Where is your family, if you didn’t kill them all?”
“Well,” conceded Mordaunt, as one caught in a little white lie, “I did kill
my father. My mother died of—causes.”
“Not natural?”
“No.”
On either side of the corridor, dark rooms lay like mausoleums. Elegant furnishings decayed within, encased in their white winding-sheets. Wallpaper peeled. Curtains rotted. Floorboards creaked under their feet. All was faded grandeur.
It pleased Aurienne to see it. Let the Fyren rot.
A mild sneezing fit accompanied this uncharitable thought. Aurienne could not abide dust.
They came now to the back of the house, in an area that seemed a little more lived-in and, happily for Aurienne’s sinuses, less dusty. They passed a
grand piano, a room walled with portraits, another packed with silver vases and mirrors, and another full of marble sculptures.
“I am a great appreciator of beauty,” said Mordaunt. In the face of Aurienne’s raised brow, he added, “You look as though you doubt me.”
“Killing is the ugliest thing there is.”
“One must fund the beauty somehow.”
Aurienne made no comment save a judgemental tut. They passed a small armoury glistening with weapons, and a gallery of paintings of dizzying sun-
filled landscapes.
“What are those?” asked Aurienne.
“Landscapes.”
“As seen in a malarial dream?”
“It’s called Impressionism.”
They passed a deep alcove. Immured by pink and mauve curtains, the alcove made a peculiar sort of tube.
“Is this meant to look like a colon?” asked Aurienne.
“A colon?” repeated Mordaunt.
Aurienne pointed at the pink frills and folds. “Villi. Mucosa. Submucosa.
These pockets make compelling intestinal crypts.”
Mordaunt was both pained and offended. “What? No. That was a part of the viewing experience for my beautiful de Beauveau. Dusk Roses. I had to sell it.”
Aurienne peered into the colon’s lumen. There was a bare frame at the end of it. “Why?”
“You,” said Mordaunt. The word was potent with accusation.
“Me?”
“Twenty million thrymsas.”
“Ah.”
“Should’ve gone with the kidnap,” said Mordaunt.
“You were wise not to,” said Aurienne.
Mordaunt did not look convinced. Aurienne didn’t argue the point. He needn’t know what ravages she could’ve laid on him. Harm to none held until it abutted with self-defence, at which point Aurienne could be—well,
rather harmful. A Haelan knew exactly how to keep people alive, and conversely, a few interesting ways to cause immediate death. There was a reason the Order’s tācn was an Aer.
“Also your fault,” said Mordaunt, with a gesture towards an arrangement of live vines, twining around a blank square of wall. “And that one, too,” he said, pointing at a trickling water feature framing nothing.
Aurienne made no apologies for the gaps in the opulence. In fact, she found them gratifying. She wished that she and Xanthe had pushed for thirty million. No, forty million and the entirety of Rosefell Hall. They could’ve used the property as an isolation unit after a bit of renovating.
As they walked, a small voice declared, “Cock boil.”
Aurienne looked at Mordaunt, who, for his part, grew freshly irritated.
“One of those damned critique crickets.”
“It followed you from the Downs?”
“Must’ve hitched a ride. It now lives here. I can’t find it to kill it.”
“Face like a bollock,” said the cricket.
“Fuck off,” said Mordaunt.
“Suck a fart out of my arse,” instructed the cricket.
“When I find you,” said Mordaunt, addressing the room at large, “I am going to make you suffer.”
“Perhaps you should deal with your daddy issues first,” said the cricket.
Mordaunt, looking grim, led Aurienne onwards.
They came to a sitting room abundant with ormolu, alabaster, and gilt.
There was bric-a-brac upon every surface: bronze figures in erotic poses, candlesticks in the shape of storks, jewelled inkwells, fine porcelain dogs, trinket boxes inlaid with precious stones, horses, clocks, globes, marble busts, an enormous golden lobster. The walls were covered in tapestries and a large map of the Tīendoms in finely beaten gold, silver, and copper.
Mordaunt ushered Aurienne into a high-backed chair and sat across from her in another.
Thanks to a fire lurking moodily in the hearth, this was the most well-lit room in the house. The fire burned low and gave off a fragrant, slightly bitter smoke. It lent a Gothic aspect to the scene, flickering against wood panelling
and touching Mordaunt’s scarred, fine-cut features. He was in only shirtsleeves tonight; they were pushed up to the elbows and showed off particularly vascular forearms. The veins seaming them were a phlebotomist’s dream.
A thought, unhallowed and unwelcome, sprang into Aurienne’s mind: Mordaunt, dishevelled, princely, bathed by the broody light of the fire, was genuinely attractive.
Discombobulating. Aurienne hadn’t found anyone truly attractive since— since her.
But it was fine. He had an unfortunate mouth and even more unfortunate morals, and so Aurienne was quite safe. She had better cheekbones, anyway.
She was surprised to find a quantity of old dogs limping about or sleeping in the sitting room. They were a skittish lot; most of them fled as soon as she entered the room. The only one brave enough to remain, an arthritic terrier, did not have a voice. It huffed out aggressive breaths of air that commanded her to leave or perish. Aurienne stared at it. It stared at her. The terrier, satisfied by her courage in the face of its ferocity, returned to its cushion.
On a low table sat a pot of tea and some biscuits, which Mordaunt made a vaguely invitational gesture towards.
“No, thank you,” said Aurienne, who remembered Mordaunt’s claim about his steward’s paramnesiac teas and did not wish to test their potency.
“Your deofol said your seith wouldn’t come to your tācn.”
For the first time since her arrival, Aurienne could make out Mordaunt’s face properly. Beneath the scruff of day-old stubble, he looked harrowed.
“Noticed a fluctuation in the middle of a job today,” he said. “I was able to finish it, but haven’t been able to properly summon my seith since.”
He pulled off his glove and raised his tācn to Aurienne. The detestable hellhound’s skull flickered a faint red, then faded back to maroon. Mordaunt swore and focused on it again, but his tācn did not respond, and remained as inert as a bloodstain upon his palm.
“Let’s have a look,” said Aurienne. She put her satchel on the floor and found her feet. “Shirt off, please.”
Mordaunt rose and unbuttoned his shirt. “Is this it, then?” he asked in a voice that wanted to be casual, but sounded choked. “Has the rot finally advanced to those—those nodes you pointed out?”
“I don’t know,” said Aurienne. “We’re going to find out.”
The terrier sniffed the air and sneezed in objection as Aurienne sprayed her hands with hlutoform.
“Why have you got so many dogs?” she asked.
“I find them, or they find me.”
“And why do you keep them?”
“Why not?”
“Everything else in here is rare or beautiful or expensive.”
Mordaunt covered the ears of the terrier and told it, “Don’t listen to her.”
He turned to Aurienne. “What’s wrong with you? They are expensive, anyway; have you any idea what it costs to bring the vet in for eight dogs?”
Aurienne gave up on understanding his logic; it didn’t appear that there was any at play. “Right. Turn around. Let’s see what’s going on.”
She rubbed the froth of the hlutoform off her palms and fell into that pre- flow state of calm curiosity, of pleasant problem-solving anticipation. As a Haelan, these moments of discovery were what she lived for—the patient being a Fyren notwithstanding. One could, she supposed, get used to anything.
Mordaunt was anxious. His shield of glibness slipped; his eyes were a clouded, worried grey. The hollows under his cheekbones deepened with the clench of his jaw. The scar across his lips whitened. He half tore his collar as he removed it. He had undone his buttons, but forgotten to take off his braces, which got in the way of removing his shirt. He pushed the straps off his shoulders with jerky hands. He made no eye contact with Aurienne, favouring the unlit chandelier above, as a doomed man might eye the sun one last time, waiting to be hanged.
“I’d be surprised if it was the rot,” said Aurienne. “The fact that you can still make your tācn flicker makes me think it’s something else.”
Mordaunt did not answer. Now shirtless, he continued his gallows stare upwards.
“Right,” said Aurienne. “I’ve had a long day and I didn’t conserve my seith. I didn’t expect to need any more before bed. I may be slow.”
Mordaunt gave her a tense nod.
Aurienne pressed her palm to the spot under his clavicle and activated her tācn. As expected, instead of bursting out of her, as it did in the freshness of the morning, her seith verged on the sluggish. She flowed into Mordaunt.
Most of their previous healing sessions had him facing away from her.
This time, she could see his face. His mouth, normally broad with insufferable smiles, was pressed into an unhappy line. Inch by exploratory inch, Aurienne trickled her way through his decaying seith channels.
“Am I done for?” asked Mordaunt.
“Be quiet,” said Aurienne.
Mordaunt fell into silence. Aurienne’s focus was on her seith, but she could feel him watching her. His breathing was slow and deliberate, but his pulse told the truth and skittered along anxiously under her palm.
In this moment, Mordaunt was devoid of the one thing that gave him power—that made him untouchable—that made him a Fyren.
In this moment, he was mortal.
Aurienne ought to have found his vulnerability enjoyable. She wished she did. She found it merely pathetic.
Seith degeneration could cause excess deposition of extracellular matrix proteins in seith channels. In Mordaunt’s left forearm, Aurienne found exactly that: an obstruction where his decayed lines met the healthy. A lovely, juicy textbook seith embolus, impeding the flow to his tācn.
Aurienne withdrew her hand from his chest.
“And?” he asked in a half whisper. He took a twitchy step towards her, then backed off.
Aurienne wasn’t cruel. She did not keep him suspended in his agonies.
“You’ll be all right. A cluster of dead cells has caked up one of your seith channels.”
Mordaunt let out a sigh of relief. He clutched at Aurienne’s wrists, released them immediately, as though burned, and took quick steps around
the room. He swung his arms about, hooked them behind his head, and stared at the ceiling.
These vigours expended, he approached Aurienne again. “Like a clot?”
“Exactly like a clot.” Aurienne nodded. “A seith embolus.”
“What do we do?” asked Mordaunt.
“We don’t do anything,” said Aurienne. “I clear it.”
“Thank the gods for you,” said Mordaunt.
“Me in particular, yes. This would normally require an embolectomy—an unpleasant procedure with high risk of permanent damage.”
Aurienne waited to be told that she was arrogant. The comment did not come. Instead, Mordaunt observed her with a conflicted expression of unwilling regard, of reluctant appreciation.
“So you can fix it?” he asked. “Now?”
“I could,” said Aurienne.
“Could?” repeated Mordaunt.
“You didn’t ask me why I’d been delayed today,” said Aurienne.
Mordaunt, demonstrating a heretofore unsuspected modicum of intelligence, grew cautious. He was right to; at this moment, Aurienne had Leverage.
“I should’ve asked,” said Mordaunt, with sudden, and insincere, politeness. “Why were you delayed, dear Haelan?”
“In your dealings with the criminal underworld”—Aurienne flung her hand towards an imaginary slag heap—“have you heard of anyone targeting
Swanstone?”
“No,” said Mordaunt. “Why?”
There was no hesitation in his answer, but that told Aurienne little about whether or not he was lying.
“The Wardens caught four intruders tonight,” said Aurienne. “They weren’t our usual sorts of trespassers. We get the occasional thief wanting to get into our garden, or addicts breaking into the apothecary’s storeroom. But this crew was armed to the teeth—with incendiary devices, if you please—
and well funded.”
“Any tācn?” asked Mordaunt.
“No.”
“Idiots. Bypassing Wardens is near impossible, unless you’re me. And civvies, at that? They had a death wish.”
“Or they were desperate,” said Aurienne. “Or they were being coerced into it. Or they’re after something or someone in particular, and it was
important enough to risk their lives.”
“Interesting,” said Mordaunt.
“Will you see what you can find out?” asked Aurienne.
“Are you going to withhold healing this embolus until I agree?” asked
Mordaunt.
“Yes,” said Aurienne.
The Fyren crossed his arms over his bare chest, which pushed together his pectorals. Aurienne noted in passing that he had more cleavage than she
did.
“Well?” prompted Aurienne.
Just as Mordaunt opened his mouth to answer, something banged in a distant part of the house.
There was a cry of “Hallo! Anyone home?”
The voiceless terrier barked. Mordaunt whipped around. Aurienne froze.
“Shit,” said Mordaunt.
The next thing she knew, Aurienne had been dragged across the room and stuffed into a wardrobe.
“Stay there,” said Mordaunt above her muffled objections. “Don’t move.”
There was more banging, as of someone running into furniture. Uneven footsteps stomped along the corridor.
The wardrobe’s door was ajar. Aurienne could see a sliver of the sitting room. Mordaunt kicked her Haelan satchel under the sofa.
The owner of the uneven footsteps meandered into the room. Judging by his cloak and hood, he, too, was a Fyren. Like Mordaunt, he had a surfeit of weapon holsters strapped to his person, but among knives and swords, his contained a pair of pink safety scissors and a rolling pin.
Mordaunt, still shirtless, strode towards the intruder and hissed, “Leofric.
What are you doing here?”
Leofric pulled his hood off to reveal a pale complexion and masses of fluffy red hair springing incongruously upwards.
The ancient dogs surged back into the room and creaked and limped their way around him with wagging tails. Leofric exchanged saliva with the dogs through vigorous kisses (Aurienne shuddered) and flung himself towards Mordaunt for a sloppy hug. Mordaunt countered it with a stiff arm against his
shoulder.
“I’ve got a Concern,” declared Leofric.
He went limp and fell into Mordaunt’s arms.
“You’re smashed off your tits,” said Mordaunt.
“Yep,” hiccoughed Leofric. He squinted towards the table. “Ooh. Are those choccy biscuits?”
Leofric lurched towards the biscuits, but was unable to muster the coordination to put them in his mouth. Mordaunt crammed a few in for him.
“What do you want?” asked Mordaunt. “What’s the Concern?”
Leofric closed his eyes to concentrate upon chewing. Mordaunt glanced downwards, saw that the strap of Aurienne’s satchel was still protruding from under the sofa, and nudged it farther in.
“I need to show you something, b-because I trust you,” said Leofric.
“What is it?” asked Mordaunt.
Aurienne didn’t know what she had expected Leofric to show Mordaunt, but it certainly hadn’t involved the removal of his trousers and underthings.
The same went for Mordaunt. “What are you doing?”
“H-have you got one ball that hangs lower than the other?” asked Leofric, pointing to the testicle in question.
“Pull your trousers back up, you great oaf.”
“Have you, though?”
“I don’t know,” said Mordaunt. “I’ve never inspected them for symmetry.”
“Show us yours, then,” said Leofric, gesturing towards Mordaunt’s
crotch.
“Fuck off,” said Mordaunt.
“W-what should I do?” asked Leofric. “Should I get it looked at?”
“I don’t know.”
“Slap it, maybe? Pinch it? Might retract it?”
“You need to leave.”
Leofric grew philosophical. “D’you know, I don’t think my pubes are curly enough. What do you think? Be honest.”
Mordaunt was out of view of Aurienne’s narrow field of vision, but she heard his exasperated snarl. “Leave.”
“Why?” asked Leofric, wounded and pouty. “What are you doing that’s so important? Why’re you half naked, anyway?”
“None of your fucking business.”
Leofric looked sly. “ ’Bout to slap your own balls, I bet.”
“No,” said Mordaunt.
“ ’Bout to play with them, then. Let me tell you a thing about that.”
Leofric pointed a finger in Mordaunt’s face, as though he were about to impart some profound advice. Then he said, “Don’t get your fingers caught in your pubes.”
Mordaunt sounded offended. “How long do you think my pubes are?”
“Dunno. Bet you plait them.”
“Fuck off.”
“Pube-plait boy.”
“I’m not asking you again. Leave.”
Leofric grew truculent. “Or what?”
“I’ll garrote you with my pube plait.”
Leofric tilted his head back and let out a high-pitched giggle.
Mordaunt, losing patience with the proceedings, hitched up Leofric’s trousers, grasped him by the shoulders, and steered him towards the door.
“Go home.”
“Pube plait,” whinnied Leofric.
“To the waystone, and I never want to hear about your pubic hair again,” said Mordaunt, wrestling him towards the door.
Leofric let out a soul-rending wail about his uneven balls.
There was silence, broken by the occasional thump of Leofric running into furniture, as Mordaunt pushed him out. Finally, there was the slam of a
door and the slide and click of several dead bolts.
Mordaunt reentered the room, exasperation wafting off him. He opened the wardrobe, at the bottom of which lay Aurienne, in absolute bits, trying to recover from a fit of silent laughter.
Mordaunt reached a hand down to help her to her feet. The movement was brusque; the grasp was gentler. Aurienne regained her feet, wiped at her eyes, and found her usual seriousness. More or less.
How tragic that she wouldn’t be able to share this story with Élodie and
Cath.
“That was—” began Aurienne.
“Let’s never speak of it again,” said Mordaunt. He looked irritated to the extreme. There was a flush of embarrassment across his cheekbones.
“Your friend is—”
“Not a friend,” said Mordaunt.
“Who is he?”
“Leofric. He’s only got one brain cell, and he uses it to not shit on his
own head.”
“He seemed nice—”
“He’s an imbecile with a perfect instinct for chaos. Impossible to say whether he’s the harbinger or the cause. I hate him.”
“You know, his pubic hair was unusually straight,” said Aurienne.
“Rigid, like.”
“I don’t care about Leofric’s pubic hair.”
“He could take out someone’s eye.”
Mordaunt shut the wardrobe behind Aurienne with a snap. With an air of immense suffering, he asked, “Must we belabour this subject?”
Aurienne belaboured. “Is his deofol a porcupine?”
“I see we’re going for the low-hanging fruit.”
“Only one of them was low,” said Aurienne. “Is it a porcupine?”
“Sea urchin.”
Instead of disintegrating into a shriek of laughter, as she wished to, Aurienne said, “A sea urchin. Naturally.”
“Naturally.”
“Do advise him that testicular asymmetry is normal. However, he ought to see someone if he’s in pain, or if he notices any new lumps.”
“I will not be telling him any of that. Can we carry on with your primitive coercion attempt?”
Aurienne recovered her self-possession in the face of this condescension.
Primitive? How dare he?
“It’s a negotiation,” she said. “And I’m keeping the terms basic, given my interlocutor’s limited capabilities. I help you with your embolus; you help me find out what those people wanted.”
In the face of this—in Aurienne’s opinion—eminently fair exchange, Mordaunt let out a dramatic sigh. “If they were as well funded as you say, and bold enough to attempt Swanstone, anyone could be behind it. This could take ages. And be exceptionally risky.”
“May I remind you that you’re an expert at intelligence gathering?” asked Aurienne.
“May I remind you that I’m paid handsomely for that particular skill set?”
“Is healing your embolus not handsome enough a payment?”
Mordaunt looked provoked. Aurienne blinked at him with all the innocence in the world.
“You’re lucky I need you,” said Mordaunt.
“So we have an agreement?”
“Yes, but it’s a shit agreement and I’m not happy about it.”
“I’m familiar with the feeling,” said Aurienne.
Mordaunt narrowed his eyes at her. “Let’s get on with it, then.”
They resumed their positions in front of the fire.
Aurienne paused before pressing her tācn to Mordaunt’s chest. “I should note—simply because I don’t trust you—that, as your condition progresses, you’ll have a significant risk of recurrence for more blockages like this one. I hope you’ll keep your word, otherwise I won’t help you next time this happens.”
“Oh?” said Mordaunt. “It’s threats now, is it?”
“You may blame yourself and your noxious influence.”
“Congratulate myself, rather,” said Mordaunt, like a smug earwig.
Aurienne pressed her tācn to the spot just under Mordaunt’s clavicle and drifted back down his seith lines towards the blockage. She was fatigued, and her seith flowed slowly, but this particular procedure required finesse over force. She sank into him until she found the blockage again. With an infinitesimally gentle push of her seith, she broke up the embolus.
The effect was immediate. Mordaunt held out his hand. His hellhound tācn glowed red in all its dead-eyed glory.
“You did it.” Mordaunt’s smile was back, swift, wide, bright. “Hel’s tits, you made that look easy. I thought I was done for. You’re brilliant.”
The red glow of his tācn left Aurienne torn between satisfaction at seeing the thing work as it should and dismay that she had just put an out-of-order Fyren back in order. He’d had a Murder-Suppression Clot and she had removed it.
The dismay outweighed the satisfaction. That tācn was an instrument of slaughter. Her spirits plummeted lower than Leofric’s ball. She wasn’t certain, suddenly, that she had made the right call. It was one thing to play along with a deluded moon ritual that would never work; it was another to actually heal him.
Mordaunt noticed her discomfort. His smile disappeared. “You’re
positively dripping with regret.”
“I’ve put a killer back in business.”
Mordaunt pulled his gloves on to hide his tācn, as though Aurienne were a sort of ostrich that would forget which Path he walked if she couldn’t see it.
“I’m grateful that it worked, even if you aren’t,” said Mordaunt. He offered a low, courteous bow that felt wrong to receive. “Thank you, Haelan Fairhrim.”
Aurienne didn’t say You’re welcome, because he wasn’t.
The lightest sheen of sweat dampened her brow. She had pushed the limit of her seith a bit tonight, though not enough to trigger her Cost.
Mordaunt buttoned up his shirt—an awkward affair, given the gloves— and flung his cloak on with a jovial swish. The harrowed, pathetic man from earlier became the Fyren again: prepossessing, self-assured, gleeful.
“Fordyce and Shuttleworth were right about you after all,” he said. “You
are a Phenomenon.”
“Don’t compliment me,” said Aurienne.
“Does it make you uncomfortable?”
“Yes.”
“Good. I like to see you suffer.”
This was accompanied by a wink.
Odious.
“I’ll sniff around about your well-funded friends,” continued Mordaunt.
“Fair warning, though—it could take months to discover anything useful.”
He went to a looking glass, of which the room had an abundance, to make some final adjustments to his collar and hair. Aurienne considered the exercise futile; a pustule with good hair is still a pustule.
“I’ll walk you back to the waystone,” said Mordaunt.
“Not necessary,” said Aurienne.
“Yes, necessary,” said Mordaunt. “Leofric might still be staggering about out there. I’ll go first. You’ve got enough seith to get to Swanstone?”
A gallant enquiry; Mordaunt had fine manners when he decided to apply them.
“I’ll be fine,” said Aurienne, who would never drain herself that low on his account.
Mordaunt walked her through the dark kitchens. Like most of the house, they gave off a general impression of disuse, save a section of the worktop where bright copper pots dried under a hanging herb garden.
“Wait here,” said Mordaunt. “I’ll call you when it’s safe.”
He disappeared from view in the darkness. Aurienne stood under the crumbling lintel and took in the prospect from this side of the house. The moon remained enshrouded and offered only a veiled suggestion of herself through clouds. Green-black moorland drifted into the horizon under her uncertain light, in ripples of heather and cotton grass, pinned to earth here
and there by a stunted tree.
“Come along,” came Mordaunt’s voice.
Aurienne joined Mordaunt round the corner, on the gravel drive.
The night air was damp with late-spring cold and, after the mouldering house, exquisite to breathe.
They walked in silence until Mordaunt, incapable of peace, broke into chatter.
“I’ve been thinking about Widdershins and his blackened sun,” he said.
“Have you?” asked Aurienne, in a tone suggesting that Mordaunt’s inputs thereon were of limited interest.
Mordaunt did not take the hint. He was both clingy and thick, like a tenacious mucus.
“Yes,” he said. “For May’s Blædnes moon. I’d thought it might be a reference to an eclipse, only there aren’t any eclipses, solar or lunar, predicted for months.” He gave her a look. “But I see that you already knew
that.”
“Of course,” said Aurienne.
“So what does the blackened sun at land’s end mean?” asked Mordaunt.
“Clouds? Smoke?”
“It means that Widdershins’ entire translation was a fabrication,” said Aurienne. “I don’t know about the blackened sun, but if we suspend our disbelief—which this entire treatment plan requires anyway—we might find interesting intersections with the data on places at land’s end. Peninsulas.
Headlands. Capes. There’s an obscure annal from Fortriu focusing on instances of— Erm, I’m sorry—what’s funny?”
“Aren’t most instances of anal obscure?”
“Annal. Not anal. One is a written record. The other has to do with the anus.”
“Both can be obscure, then,” said Mordaunt.
“Yes.”
“Bit darkish in there.”
Aurienne gave the Fyren a long look. He certainly giggled a lot about anuses for a thing that had crawled out of one.
“Have you finished?” asked Aurienne.
“Yes.”
“I’ll send my deofol with instructions when I’ve worked out where we should meet for May’s full moon.”
“I hate that little hellrat,” said Mordaunt.
“The feeling is mutual. He refers to you as ‘the Parasite.’ ”
The clouds broke as they reached the waystone. Moonlight fell like hoarfrost around them. The gravel drive ribboned into the black moorlands, a striation of white.
Under the pewter light, everything was distinct, crisp, separate. Shadows mirrored their subjects in livid detail. Light sharpened dark; dark amplified light.
Aurienne pressed her tācn to the waystone.
They did not say good night.
