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“I’m just a Point of Leverage, am I?”

“I’m just a Means to an End, aren’t I?”

Mordaunt looked sullen in light of this response. But something shifted when his eyes caught Aurienne’s—he looked more deeply; he searched her out; he questioned. She met him front on in this interrogation; that was what this was, wasn’t it? A purely utilitarian exchange between a Haelan and a Fyren. Nothing lay beyond the transaction. Nothing lay beyond the dichotomy. Did it?

The questions hung unspoken in the indifferent air.

Mordaunt gave her a smile, forced, theatrical. “You’re right, Haelan Fairhrim. And so we must remain to one another—Leverage and Means, on this side of eternity.”

“We must only endure one another a little longer.”

“The dose makes the poison.”

“One day it’ll be over and we can forget each other.”

“You’re going to forget me?” asked Mordaunt.

“I hope so,” said Aurienne.

“I’m heartbroken.”

“You haven’t a heart,” said Aurienne. “Besides, isn’t forgetting you preferable to continuing to hate you?”

“I’d rather you hate me than not think of me at all.”

No reply suggested itself in light of this confession, so Aurienne made none. She rearranged her skirts—it was unnecessary; they were irreproachable—and looked into the hearth.

Mordaunt took in a sharp breath, in the way one does when one wishes to make a sudden change in subject. “I suppose you wouldn’t even run a diagnostic on me now, to see if an embolus looks to be building up.”

“Certainly not,” said Aurienne. “You’ve got to infiltrate Wellesley Keep. You heard Xanthe’s deofol; I’m not to grant you favours.”

“And you always do as you’re told?”

“I’d need an excellent reason to contravene a direct order from Xanthe.”

“Me asking nicely isn’t an excellent reason?”

“You asking anything nicely is an excellent reason to not do a thing.”

“I won’t do Wellesley Keep. There’s too little benefit to me.”

“Too little benefit?” repeated Aurienne. “To have me on hand for your next blockage?”

Mordaunt, seeing from Aurienne’s sudden straightening of the spine that he had insulted her, backpedalled: “Well—I mean to say—”

“Little benefit?Me? A Haelan who specialises in seith?”

“When you put it like that—obviously, yes, there is a benefit. I meantmonetarybenefits—I’m usually well compensated for assignments of this nature.”

Aurienne rose amid the stuttering. With calmness born of searing irritation, she said, “Your compensation is access to me. If that’s not good enough, it’s not a problem. We’ll stick to our original agreement. I’d put a chirurgeon on retainer if I were you. I can recommend a few who’ve conducted seith embolectomies with minimal butchery. They usually have trouble finding the clot, of course, so they have to make a few incisions and fish about. You’re a big, tough Fyren, though—you’ll be all right. Your torpraxia is so advanced, you’ll hardly feel it. I just hope they don’t accidentally sever your seith lines while they’re in there. You’ve got so few left intact.”

Mordaunt looked perturbed. “You needn’t go. I spoke without thinking.”

“You do that as a matter of course,” said Aurienne. “I’m off. Thank Mrs.Parson for the tea.”

Her satchel over one shoulder and Cerys’ boots over the other, Aurienne strode out of the house. The critique cricket called her a gnu as she left.

Little benefit? Years of work, decades of education and practice, tobe calledlittle benefitby a feckless, blistering ulcer of a man? He could take his next embolus and choke on it.