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A waiting room gave onto examination rooms. Along the wall was a painted mural of bubbles entitledDid you know?Each bubble contained a factoid for the edification of those waiting. Osric read the bubbles as he passed:

Early in our history,seithwas a collective term for powers ranging from protective warding to battle magicks.

Everyone has a seith system. It is composed of specialised structures (seith channels and nodes) that run alongside your nervous system.

Seith has many uses. In day-to-day life, you probably use it to send deofols or use waystones. Specialised study allows us to manipulate seith for more complex applications, such as healing.

Those who wish to achieve these levels of manipulation must earn a tacn. A tacn is a brand seared into your palm that opens your seith system to the world. Tacn are earned by members of an Order after many years of study.

Overusing seith comes with a Cost. How one’s Cost is determined is still under study. Current research suggests that it is an amplification of certain physiological or genetic predispositions.

Outside Fairhrim’s office door was a desk at which sat an owlish little man clattering upon a brass writing ball. He was in Osric’s way, but Osric did not kill him. He wished to make a decent first impression on Fairhrim, after all, and so he merely concussed the man and tucked him neatly under his own desk.

Fairhrim’s office was locked. Osric removed his glove and pressed his left palm to the lock. His tacn glowed red as he pushed his seith into it, reading the shadows within as he picked it. Child’s play, obviously. After a few soft clicks, the door opened.

Aurienne Fairhrim was not within. Osric therefore made himself at home.

Fairhrim’s furnishings were as austere as the rest of Swanstone, an unpleasant mix of functional and sparse. Osric chose a chair. The chair forced him into a straight-backed pose instead of his usual sprawl; he found himself sitting like some sort of spod eagerly awaiting Teacher’s arrival.

On his right stood a bookcase bursting with tomes with such encouraging titles asCrushing It: Rehabilitation of Seith ChannelCompression InjuriesandSeith Fibre Ruptures and Avulsions: Protocols for Clinical TreatmentandReversible Interruption of Seith Flow: An In Vitro StudyandSeith Channel Transection Injuries.

An auspicious collection, given what he was here for. Good to see that Fairhrim was studious.

Then, with a whispered “Ah,” Osric noticed that the works had all been authored by Fairhrim herself.

On Osric’s left, a series of slender windows swept upwards, following the curve of the tower. Fairhrim might’ve had a view of the sea, but the windows were thickened by ice, and let in light rather than scenery.

Posters of individuals with various layers of skin and muscle peeled off decorated the walls. Osric had flayed a few people in the course of his career—his clients had to pay an additional fee for the service; it was messy work—but Fairhrim appeared to have her own sort of expertise in the field.

Adding to this jolly decor was a skeleton that grinned at Osric from a back corner. Thin copper wires, representing, he supposed, the seith system, wound through and around the skeleton’s dusty bones. A pair of pink heart-shaped sunglasses rested upon its skull.

The sharpclack-clackof footsteps echoed in the corridor. Osric positioned his hood so that his face was in shadow (if he had to sit like a spod, he would, at least, look sinister while he did it) and settled into his chair to wait.

He did not wait long. The door opened and a woman entered the office, if an irritated tornado could be said to enter an office.

It was Aurienne Fairhrim. The daguerreotype had captured her features—the light brown complexion and black eyes; the dark hair pulled into a bun—but not her height, or the haughtiness in her bearing.

She radiated restrained aggravation as she strode in. Gleaming wing-shaped epaulettes at her shoulders confirmed her rank as a fully fledged Haelan. She was clad in her Order’s whites—a dress rustlingwith heavy skirts, fastened with a double row of buttons all the way up to the throat. In her arms she juggled a tumbling vortex of items: a satchel, documents, multipacks of lancets, and, most incongruously of all, an enormous sack of onions.

Fairhrim spotted Osric. Instead of looking surprised at his intrusion, she grew even more irritated. There was no stammered enquiry about who Osric was, or how he had got in, or what he wanted.

Rather, Fairhrim said, “A bit early, aren’t we?”

She marched up to Osric and dropped the sack of onions into his lap.

“Erm,” said Osric.

Fairhrim dusted onion peels from her palms. They fell on Osric’s newly shined boots. She snatched his gloved hand in her bare one and gave it a brisk shake.

“Haelan Fairhrim,” she said. “But you must call me Aurienne. Pleasure. Welcome to our hallowed halls, et cetera. I hope we won’t be sending too much business your way, but, well…the occasional loss is unavoidable. I know you’re inundated with the Pox cases. I’ll strive to keep my unit’s contributions to a minimum. And yes—I told the family that you lot hardly use onions anymore, but they were insistent. They hadn’t any other form of payment. Hopefully you can find some use for them. If nothing else, soup, I suppose.”

This speech was delivered with a voice curt and precise. Having decided that the conversation was over, Fairhrim gestured towards the door with the snap of a wrist. “I won’t keep you longer. It was nice to meet you. Wes hal—be well.”

She seated herself at her desk, arranged her skirts round her feet, and, with a mutter of “Bloody admin,” began to sort through paperwork.

Osric was annoyed; the onions had spoiled his aura of menace.

“I’m not here for onions,” said Osric.