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“Wellesley had entire crates of those bottles in his cellar.”

Fairhrim sat up with a sudden combativeness. “Every bottle will soon be useless. Élodie is rolling out an immunisation programme. Our lead virologist,” she added, in the face of Osric’s blank look. “It explains so much about the virulence of the Pox outbreak to know that it was deliberately being unleashed. But it also raises a thousand more questions, such as, you know—whyanyone would do such a thing. Why would Wellesley trigger an outbreak of an obscure disease that had all but disappeared? To what end? To what possible benefit? And if what Tristane told you is true, it means Wellesley was working for someone else. Someone even more powerful, who blocked all the funding avenues for researchers seeking to stop the spread of the Pox—and who is now furious that my Order sidestepped those blockages. Someone who has now paid millions upon millions to have Tristane herself involved. Do you know how mad that is? Incomprehensible. Absurd. What’s worth this much money?”

“The only thing ever worth this much money—this many expenditures, this many resources—is war,” said Osric.

“What war? Whose war? Wessex and Kent?”

“I know your Order is apolitical, but you need to step outside of your ivory tower occasionally,” said Osric. “Take your pick of any two of the Tiendoms sharing a land border. Actually, sharing a border is optional. Throw two darts at a map.”

“What war is fought by brain-dead children?” asked Fairhrim.

“I don’t know,” said Osric.

“I couldn’t think of worse soldiers,” said Fairhrim. “Of what possible utility…? They’ve no souls left, the poor things—they’re just shells whose biological functions are continuing to—”

Fairhrim cut herself off.

A slow horror dawned on her face. “Mordaunt?”

“What?”

“How—how are Dreor made?”

There was a long silence.

Osric said, “Fuck.”

Fairhrim pressed her damaged hands to cheeks gone pale.

It was a night of breath-held, uncanny stillness. The moon, waxing, drew a white path over the flat black sea. There wasn’t the slightest shiver of a breeze. Only their talk disturbed the silence, strange whispers passing to and fro, bridging two loyalties; the soft, portentous whispers of something becoming.

“I owe you—we owe you—so many thanks,” said Fairhrim. “The only reason Élodie could work on her inoculation project was because of you. We only discovered the Pox bottles because of you. You killed one of your own for the protection of my Order—”

“For you” was Osric’s swift correction.

“—and you’ve just helped me work out, possibly, the why behind this awful plague.”

She regarded Osric with a gaze full of wonder.

(Such witchery, such witchery in a pair of bright eyes.)

“Why are you helping me?” asked Fairhrim.

“Someone is going to die at Swanstone, and I can’t have it be you,” said Osric.

Fairhrim, who could pass the ward at the window unhindered, pressed her fingers to his arm, which sent, as always, a rush through him. There was a time when she had flinched away from touching him at all. “Thank you—truly.”

Then, more exhilarating still, she asked, “Are you free Friday next?”

“Why?”

“It’s the full moon. And we’re going to break into the Færwundor.”

Osric stared at her in shock. She had been categorical in her refusal. “You—you’re going to do it?”

“You won’t let us get caught,” said Fairhrim. After a beat, she added, “I trust you.”

The words landed heavily on Osric’s chest, ran deep, heightened the exhilaration.