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Aurienne stared at the white nexus of scar tissue at the base of his neck with annoyance. She had already wasted seith once on him today. Additionally, she was breaking protocol by not sanitising her hands, but her hlutoform was in the basket, along with the rest of her belongings.

“Hello?” prompted Mordaunt.

“I should be using this seith to help someone worth it,” said Aurienne.

“I’m worth twenty million thrymsas and a Pox cure,” said Mordaunt.

“It’s an inoculation, not a cure,” said Aurienne. With many furtive looks around her, she activated her tacn. Somewhere above them, the Cúsc moon glowed. Her palm met the Fyren’s wet skin. Once again, she pushed her seith into him. Once again, she felt the deadness in the extremities of his seith system and the slow-creeping decay through the rest.

And once again, her seith could do nothing. What was dead stayed dead.

She pulled out.

She didn’t need to tell Mordaunt that nothing had happened. He knew. His quietfuckdissipated into the haze around them.

“I told you to expect failure,” said Aurienne.

Mordaunt faced her. Steam condensed upon his face and clung to the stubble at his jawline. “There’s something in your hypothesis. There’s something in that Stone, too.”

“There might be. But the Something could take years to establish. The right conjunction of time and place and—and who knows what other factors could be at play, that were simply not captured in the old accounts? For your immediate purposes, the Monafyll Stone is a dead end.”

“What was the name of the philologist?” asked Mordaunt. “The one who translated the unknown language on the Stone?”

“Disgracedphilologist,” corrected Aurienne. “Claimedto have translated. His name was Widdershins. His findings were retracted. He lost his position as a professor. He was put out to pasture. I can assure you that pursuing that line of enquiry is an even bigger waste of time.”

Aurienne wiped droplets from her face. “I’ll have another look at the data. I’m nursing an idea that certain times and places may be morepowerful than others. Or perhaps there’s a cumulative effect if you’ve got enough factors layered upon one another—the right place, the right time, the right weather, the right moon. I don’t know. It’s difficult to establish patterns when the stories only provide one or two circumstantial details—details which may themselves have shifted in the telling and retelling.”

Mordaunt looked pouty among the billowing steam.

Aurienne hadn’t the time or inclination to mollycoddle. “Don’t sulk. I’ve been up front about the absurdity of this endeavour from the beginning.”

“I’m not sulking,” said Mordaunt, sulkily.

“I told you this ad hoc approach wouldn’t do,” said Aurienne. “I’ll send word when I’ve worked out the next best conjunction, for April’s full moon. In the meantime, keep a firm grip on your expectations.”

“You can lecture me about firm grips when you can manage one on your towel.”

Aurienne looked down to discover that a breast had almost escaped confinement. She pushed the offender back into place.

Mordaunt’s sulkiness made way to smugness. Aurienne was overcome by a desire to step on his head and drown him.

The couple at the other end of the bath left and Aurienne and Mordaunt were able to give vent to their feelings. Mordaunt said that what Aurienne really wanted was a more Elastic Spirit; she was an unbearable combination of high-handed and small-minded. Aurienne said thank you; she would consult him next time she needed advice from an Abscess with inferior hair. Mordaunt, vexed, said, how dare she, when her bun looked like a perfect onion? Aurienne informed him, by the by, that she would never again offer a second healing at the full moon, and that he would be lucky if she showed up at all. Mordaunt said that he had paid for her services, and was she certain she wanted to make an enemy of him? Aurienne retorted, as though they weren’t enemiesalready? Mordaunt asked if she would stop waving her crook at him like a distraught Bo-Peep. Aurienne dropped her stick into his hands and declared that she was leaving. Mordaunt asked what he was meant to do with this stupid hook, other than strangle her with it. Aurienne said he could use it to hang himself if he wished.

These warm goodbyes exchanged, they parted.

6

Osric Wishes to Murder a Child

Osric

The Fyren Order took a rather more nomadic approach to headquartering than the Haelan. They shifted their base of operations every few months, which meant that Osric got to visit truly charming parts of the Tiendoms. Tonight, he strode down an alley lit by sputtering grease lamps in the picturesque town of Shanksby in Strathclyde, taking in the local sights (a rat nibbling upon a severed human head) and smells (piss, suffering).

Osric spared the severed head a quick glance to see if he knew whose it was—he did not—and proceeded among buildings in various stages of decomposition. His objective came into view at last: a long-abandoned pharmacy with boarded-up windows. The crude carving of hellhound fangs on its peeling door marked it as the current location of the Fyren HQ.

The sign above the pharmacy had lost a letter, and now proclaimed, with no less accuracy:

HARMACY