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Blood on her cheek and sharpness on her tongue, she was going to save him.

18

Aurienne the Criminal

Aurienne

After two hours of work, Aurienne, lightheaded from seith depletion, her hands a mess of livid wounds, her neck aching, her favourite dress a blood-splattered disaster, sat back, satisfied; Mordaunt was stable.

Cíele had told her what he’d seen and thus converted her frightened anger into confused gratitude.

Her deofol hovered above Mordaunt’s face. His tail swept about restlessly. “I haven’t got to get Cath?”

“He’ll be fine,” said Aurienne. “By some miracle, the blade avoided his intestines.”

Mordaunt had been lucky—and therefore she’d been lucky. The complications of a bowel perforation would’ve been far beyond her scope of practice; if he’d presented with a perforated viscus, she wouldn’t have had a choice but to call in Cath.

Cíele ceased his hovering and perched his near-imperceptible weight upon Aurienne’s shoulder. “Thank Fria. Would’ve been rather difficultto explain to Cath why you’ve got a wounded Fyren in your childhood bedroom.”

“I’m not entirely sure I can explain to myself why I’ve got a wounded Fyren in my childhood bedroom,” said Aurienne.

“Everything happened so fast. He said something about a Fyren headed for Swanstone. He thought you were there. And, given that he didn’t know what the other Fyren wanted, he killed him. The Fyren—our Fyren, I mean—didn’t even realise he’d been stabbed.”

Aurienne contemplated the man, drifting somewhere between unconsciousness and true sleep, lying on her bed. His face was ashen, his hair—she had rinsed off the custard—soaked with new sweat. His left hand, in a blood-crusted glove, lay on his chest. Aurienne had left the glove on, lest any visitors spot his tacn.

“This is mad,” said Aurienne.

“I know,” said Cíele.

“He’smad. He killed one of his own Order.”

“And roasted the corpse,” added Cíele.

“I find him far more disturbing when he’s quiet.”

“D’you think it matters to him? Having murdered one of his own?” asked Cíele. “Do you think it’s normal for Fyren to kill each other?”

“I don’t know how far this strays beyond whatever their code is—if they’ve even got one.”

Cíele fixed Mordaunt with a searching look. Aurienne did the same.

The deofol voiced the question Aurienne hadn’t dared ask: “Should we have let him die?”

The answer came more readily than the question had. “I couldn’t have.”

“I saw,” said Cíele. “You saved him before you even knew what he’d done.”

“Seeing him so hurt was—it was—”

Aurienne stopped trying to describe it, because words were insufficient. No utterance could capture the fear she’d felt when she had pulledoff his blood-soaked cloak and understood how close he was to Hel’s final embrace. The touch of his fevered hands had no grammar; there was no orthography to the pain of her heart squeeze.

At the edges of all this emotion lapped, as always, little waves of reason. She owed him healing only for the seith rot; he was a Fyren; hundreds had died because of him, and now, because of her, he would go on to kill hundreds more. Had she done Right? Had she done Good?

Cíele’s red eyes were on Aurienne. He sat with all four paws gathered below him, unusually still.

“He’s more important to me than I would wish him to be,” said Aurienne.

“For what it’s worth, I think you’re more important to him than he’d like you to be, too.”