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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 waystoneof 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 hedidmake 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 tacn 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 tacn 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?”