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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 tacn 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 spiteof 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 outof 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.