Page 50

“Well,” said Osric, panting, “we are definitely Somewhere.”

“Right,” said Fairhrim. She, too, was breathless. She pointed her hands in opposite directions. “Sky above, earth below. The living and the dead. The present and the past. Winter turning to spring. And the Hara moon presiding over it all.”

“Sounds potent,” said Osric.

“Let’s give it a go.”

Osric pulled off his cloak and collar. Fairhrim dropped her satchel and removed her cloak. She consulted her pocket watch as midnight neared. The acrid, too-clean scent of hlutoform reached Osric’s nostrils as she spread it over her hands.

They waited. The pocket watch ticked to eleven fifty-nine. Two moon-gazey hares loped dreamily along cropped turf. The wind picked up. Fairhrim, with her white dress gusting around her, stood like a bride at some wild altar. Fescue and thistle danced upon barrows. The sea murmured a song that seemed melancholy.

They stood on the border between death and life; they stood on the bones of kings.

At ten seconds to midnight, Fairhrim tugged down the back of Osric’s shirt to expose his nape. This was the third time they were attempting this, and he had learned what to expect. There was the moment of silence when Fairhrim did nothing but study the back of his neck. Then came the brush of her palm and the shudder in the air when she activated her tacn. He felt the reluctance in her touch, her desire to flinch away, the force of her will keeping her hand against his skin.

As for Osric, he loathed having people behind him, and his own instincts desired him to pull away from this vulnerable position—but it was Fairhrim, so it was all right. Frankly, he could think of very few in his acquaintance whom he trusted more than her to stand behind him with a hand at his neck.

Strange thought, that.

Fairhrim’s cool palm pressed against his skin. Her seith, too, was cool. As during her previous attempts, Osric found himself impressed by her control over it. He would never tell her, of course—she was arrogant enough as it was—but he had never encountered such masterful command over seith. And as before, it felt salutary to have her seith flow through him. It was Goodness itself coursing into his system.

The moon hung above them, hard, pitted, bone white. And Osric, under Fairhrim’s palm, stood motionless in this place between sea and earth and winter and spring and the living and the dead, and he hoped. A translucent cloud passed the moon; the landscape grew insubstantial and twinkled unsteadily between pearl and black. In the stillness, the pace of time felt altered. A minute passed like an hour. The horizon felt wider.

Fairhrim followed Osric’s seith system to the very tips of his fingers, lingered there for an optimistic moment, and retreated.

There was an afterglow that came with her seith, even after she’d pulled her hand away. A humming through him, a burnishing.

But it wasn’t the healing Osric needed. He felt exactly the same as before. Once again, nothing had happened.

He was an idiot for insisting on this load of absolute malarkey. And she was an idiot for humouring him.

“Fuck,” said Osric.

Fairhrim’s exasperated sigh feathered the back of his neck. That surprised him; she was so convinced that this wouldn’t work that another failure should’ve been expected. Why the sigh of frustration? What other outcome was she anticipating?

Also surprising: how intimate it was to feel Fairhrim’s breath against his skin. Bit tingly. Bit pleasurable.

Bit disturbing. Nothing about Fairhrim was pleasurable.

For a moment they stood in silence made companionable by their mutual disappointment. But Osric didn’t want companionship. He wanted results.

He ignited war again between them by saying, accusatorily, “This isn’t bloody working.”

“Really?” came Fairhrim’s tart response. “Isn’t it? I hadn’t noticed.”

From the safety of renewed war (oxymoronic; it was fine), Osric replaced his collar.

Fairhrim left him to his dressing and paced. Her steps were quickened by aggravation. “I’m missing something.”

“Well, there’s a rather critical clue you refused to examine further,” said Osric.

Fairhrim turned. Her skirts whipped around her ankles before settling back into their crisp vertical lines. “Acritical clue? Please—enlighten me.”

“The writing on the Monafyll Stone. The bits in the fairy tongue.”

Fairhrim stared at Osric. Tension ran down the line of her jaw. “The hallucinations of a discredited philologist about a language that doesn’t exist? That’s my missing clue? Brilliant.”

“Why not? Our current approach clearly isn’t the answer.”