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“You’ll have a new scar for your collection.”

“What’s all this I’m tied up with?” asked Osric, lifting a hand from which tubing emerged. “Why am I so tubey? Why am I entubed?”

“Plasma volume expanders. Intravenous antibiotics. I’ll take you off them soon.”

“Lucky your parents had all this handy.”

“They didn’t,” said Fairhrim. “I stole it from Swanstone.”

“You stole?”

“Don’t be smug.”

“You’rethe common thief.”

Fairhrim gave him the sort of look that could skewer a man fifty paces out.

Osric ceased his teasing, given that he already suffered from one grievous injury.

He lifted his weak, entubed hand. “How long will I be this useless?”

“I’ll give you recommendations to shorten your convalescence,” said Fairhrim. “Abide by them and you may be ambulatory again within two or three days.”

“Two or three days? I haven’t gotdays.”

“Oh, yes, you have. Here.” Fairhrim handed Osric pills and a glass of water.

“What are these?” asked Osric.

“A dose of reality.”

“You aren’t funny.”

“They’re for the pain. Also, a stool softener.”

“Brilliant,” said Osric. “I love the idea of you worrying about the softness of my stool.”

“I’m not worried about it; you’re on stool softeners.”

Osric swallowed the pills along with his dignity. Just what he wanted: Fairhrim’s solicitude over hard poos. He felt about where the blaecblade had impaled him. “Am I all closed up?”

“Yes.”

“Are my guts where they should be?”

“Yes.”

“Thank you,” blurted Osric.

He didn’t like that. The blurting. He preferred his words, like his murders, nice and premeditated.

Fairhrim folded her hands together. Then she moved them to her thighs. Then she brought them together again. She, who always decidedly knew how she felt and did not hesitate to express it, seemed to not know how to feel or how to express it.

Finally, she sat herself at the foot of the bed and said, “I’m the one who owes you thanks. My deofol told me what he saw. So—so thankyou.”

She looked as uncomfortable as he had felt with thanks—only his had been expelled, like thanks-vomit, whereas hers had needed to be pushed, like thanks-constipation. He ought to propose a stool softener to her, for her mouth.

Anyway, Osric was gratified. “All in a day’s work.”