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“Fine?” repeated Mordaunt.

“Yes. I’ll do it.”

Mordaunt, suspicious, asked, “Why did you change your mind?”

“Your argument was so thoughtful. So well reflected.”

Mordaunt tapped a gloved finger against a thigh. “Was that sarcasm?”

Aurienne waved the query away. “If we’re going to do this, I need to examine you properly, with the right instruments—andnotin a byre.”

“Where, then?” asked Mordaunt. “We can’t be seen.”

“So you’ve said. How have you kept the physickers silent?”

“My steward is adept at the brewing of paramnesiac teas,” saidMordaunt. “Though, given their exaggeration of your research, I’m wondering if I oughtn’t have killed the physickers outright.”

“Please don’t. We’ve already got a dearth of physickers.”

Mordaunt did not look as though he was considering Aurienne’s wishes in this matter. He replaced his collar and knotted his cravat. His gestures were oddly elegant, the movements of a sophisticate, rather than a murderer. Everything about him was polished, actually—his clothes, his mannerisms, his speech. And then there were the scars—and the profession—marring it all. Strange contradictions.

Aurienne didn’t care enough about him to ponder them further.

“My Order hosts clinics in rural areas,” said Aurienne. “I should be able to find a quiet facility that isn’t knee-deep in manure.”

“You exaggerate,” said Mordaunt. “This was ankle-deep at worst. No Wardens at these clinics?”

“I’m usually accompanied by, at the very least, a Swanstone guard when out in the community. Xanthe and I will concoct a pretext for me to go alone.”

Mordaunt drew his hood over his head and became the thing of shadow again. The sight of his cloaked silhouette, so knavish, so Dusken, sparked fresh animosity in Aurienne.

In a patronising tone, of the sort one might take with one’s domestic staff, Mordaunt said, “See that you do. I expect your deofol shortly.”

This served only to reaffirm Aurienne’s opinion that he was not only a hateful Fyren but also a monumental twat.

“It won’t be shortly,” said Aurienne. “You’ve asked me to apply a hypothesis that doesn’t exist to cure a condition that can’t be cured. I’m going to spend hours sorting through archival material to piece together whatever I preserved of that project, and even more hours preparing some sort of treatment protocol based entirely on fairy stories. You’ll hear from me when you hear from me.”

Mordaunt made no indication that he had been chastened. Instead,he gave Aurienne a bow, and said, “I await your deofol at your pleasure, then.”

“I can assure you there is no pleasure involved,” said Aurienne.

“I do agree with you there,” said Mordaunt.

Aurienne’s next meeting with Xanthebegan with a request for an update on Mordaunt, whom Xanthe had taken to calling Onion Boy.

“That’s what he wants you to do?” said Xanthe when Aurienne had explained the substance of her exchanges with the Fyren. “Heal seith rot? Who does he think you are? The goddess Fria herself? I thought he merely had a blocked node, or something else nice and treatable.”

“His degeneration is extensive,” said Aurienne. “And, of course, he’s a Fyren, so he’s rejected all the usual management protocols, because the loss of his seith represents the loss of his livelihood and his life.”

“You told him it was impossible?”

Aurienne nodded. “Repeatedly. Unfortunately, he got wind of an old investigation of mine. Do you remember my work on the Monafyll Stone?”

Xanthe clasped her hands before her. “Idorecall that project. One of your first forays as a principal investigator after earning your Haelan wings. I always thought it was a pity you’d abandoned that line of enquiry. There was something hopeful about it. Quaint.”

“Disastrous, rather,” said Aurienne. “An impossible dataset, a methodology best described as madness, experimental design so poor that I would’ve been rejected by every board from here to Pednathise Head, zero reproducibility—anyway, that’s what he wants me to try on him.”

“The man is bonkers.” Xanthe’s mouth, so wrinkled that it almost disappeared into itself, widened as she cackled.