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Mordaunt did not bother to greet Aurienne but rather carried on a muttered commentary as he squelched towards her: “Why isn’t there a road? Has anyone been here since the fall of Byzantium? This is gooier than Woden’s eye socket.”

More whinging than Aurienne had expected from a Fyren. Weren’t they meant to be rugged killers? This specimen had the fortitude of wet quiche.

Though the weather was fine, Mordaunt kept his hood up. Aurienne had no objections. She knew what lay underneath—a caustic eye and a vexatious mouth—and missed the sight of neither.

Mordaunt plucked down his cowl, sniffed in her direction, and said, “You smell like death.”

“I’ve been experimenting on seith fibres extracted from human cadavers,” said Aurienne.

“I knew it,” said Mordaunt, followed by the lofty pronouncement: “I have an extraordinary sense of smell.”

It seemed too facile to point out that, indeed, this seemed to be the only sense he had.

“Is that blood?” asked Aurienne.

“Just a bit of battle sweat,” said Mordaunt.

“Yours?” asked Aurienne, with a moderate effort to keep the hope from her voice.

“No,” scoffed Mordaunt. “What a stupid question.”

“Is it? You’ve taken a few stabs in the course of your career. I’ve seen the evidence.”

Mordaunt waved a hand. “Memories of bygone days. I’m nigh untouchable now. My mark today did make a stabbing attempt—but he only had a spoon.”

“A spoon?”

“He was eating yoghurt,” said Mordaunt, by way of explanation.

“You—you killed someone while they were eating yoghurt?” asked Aurienne.

“Yes. It was good yoghurt, too.”

“Youatethe yoghurt?”

“After he was dead, yes. He’d hardly touched it. What? What’s the matter? Have you mistaken me for someone respectable?”

“Have you any sense of honour whatsoever?”

“No,” said Mordaunt. “Anyway, I came here for a healing, not an assessment of my morals. Can we get on with it?”

Aurienne stared at Mordaunt. The shadow under the hood stared back at her.

He was well on his way to dying. There would be one less of him in the world. It would all work out in the end.

It was time to continue this farce of a healing exercise.

Aurienne made a curt gesture to their surroundings. “So—a thin place.”

“Does it feel thin to you?” asked Mordaunt.

Aurienne looked around. The sun glinted on the pool. Water gurgled down a smallish waterfall at its far end. Swallows dipped and swooped. Tender grass peeped from black earth. A fat bumblebee investigated her bun.

“No,” said Aurienne. “It feels ordinary.”

“I thought so, too,” said Mordaunt.

“We’re here because a fragment of Cumbrian theology mentions a wondrous healing on this very spot, two hundred years ago, at sunset on the day of the Cúsc moon. It’s one of few sources that offered the triumvirate of time, place, and moon, and so here we are.”