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“Make a note of it,” said Aurienne. She turned to the young apprentices. “You’ve observed this study from the beginning. Any thoughts on limitations we ought to highlight?”

The apprentices shrank away from her until they hit the worktop, where they coagulated into a petrified blob.

“There are loads worth mentioning,” said Aurienne encouragingly, and suggesting, she hoped, that she ascribed their silence to a surfeit of ideas rather than a dearth.

The coagulated apprentices were incapable of voicing opinions onlimitations, focusing their efforts instead on looking exactly like young owls. Aurienne turned her enquiring gaze to Corinne and Nym, and it was their turn to coagulate.

“Erm—perhaps I would suggest that our stretch test doesn’t accurately mimic real-life injury scenarios,” suggested Nym. Nym had the peculiar quality of being always uncertain and yet always right. “Also, we’ve focused the study on seith fibres extracted from forearms. Seith fibres from other areas may have different biomechanics.”

“Very good,” said Aurienne. “Include those. I’d also like you to add the boilerplate about any histologic evaluation risking artefacts from handling the tissue. Also indicate that the seith fibres were not in a living organism when subjected to the injury—which, as we know, affects elastance.”

While Nym and Corinne scribbled, Aurienne dismissed the younger apprentices. They bowed vigorously with their hands on their hearts and scuttled out.

“How are you two progressing on seith transfers?” asked Aurienne. “I’d like to move on to cadaver workshops in the autumn; I’ll have to make the arrangements soon.”

“Not well,” said Nym.

“I blew up a cantaloupe,” said Corinne.

“You’ve been doing daily practice?” asked Aurienne.

“Yes,” said Corinne. (Nym nodded and looked tearful.)

“You mustn’t be discouraged,” said Aurienne. “You haven’t yet got your tacn. Few of us can achieve the required level of seith control without one. I want you both to have a break. No more practice. Two weeks off. We’ll start fresh from the basics afterwards.”

“Yes, Haelan Fairhrim,” came Corrine and Nym’s relieved responses.

They made their bows and left.

So much for the rational portion of Aurienne’s day. Now for the mad portion: tonight was the full moon, and it was time to meet the Fyren.

Aurienne took a waystone tothe Shaggy Chimera for the evening’s rendezvous. The pub had long shut down; its door swung in the breeze, accompanied by forlorn squeaking.

A hirsute chimera wound its way across the pub’s faded sign, which had lost several letters, and advised Aurienne thus:

SHAG

HIM

Aurienne received the instruction with hostility.

In the continuing comedy of errors that was her life, she squelched off into the muck at the edge of the nearby pool, and waited for a murderer.

Her data for March’s full moon—when the tales were good enough to specify—favoured the edges of pools or ponds when it came to place (eighty-nine percent), and sunset when it came to time (seventy-seven percent). This particular pool, the Wasdale fairy pool, had been mentioned by name in a work of Cumbrian theology: some archdruid had managed to cure an ovate of the black fever with nothing but a touch and a push of seith right where Aurienne stood. It had happened two centuries ago, on the day of the Cúsc moon, as the sun set.

A lovely tale. Not at all sound science, however, and Aurienne, hanging about among quagwort and frogbit, felt like a fool. A frazzled, slightly moist fool.

But it was the day of the Cúsc moon, and the sun was beginning to dip, and, fool that she was, she would be giving the thing a real go, per Xanthe’s instructions. How had she gone from her lab’s rigorous science to this? She must take care not to injure herself due to methodological whiplash. (Limitations in the current study: Everyone Has Gone Mad.)

Time ticked on. The Fyren was late, which was, somehow, not a surprise.

Finally, there was movement near the waystone across the pond, and there he was: the murderer.

Spring had sprung in floods of mud. The Fyren picked his way through it with obvious disgust. Aurienne watched his progress without advising him that a path ran the other way round the pool.

The Haelan maxim wasHarm to none, but private fantasies couldn’t be policed, and Aurienne indulged in one involving the Fyren slipping and drowning, and thus putting an end to both of their miseries.

He was regrettably sure-footed.