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“They weren’t. There was money behind them.”

“I don’t like it.”

“Don’t worry, Halean.” Verity clasped Aurienne’s shoulder with a heavy, steel-clad hand. “If more come, they’ll meet the same fate. They didn’t even have a tacn.”

“I suppose few things must really worry you when you’re stationed at Swanstone.”

“Few.”

“What would?”

“The Agannor Order making a move.” Verity’s helmet took on a thoughtful tilt. “Imagine having to fight your own spear-sister because she’s possessed by one of those fiends. Or perhaps an onslaught of Dreor. Unlikely in this day and age.”

Aurienne found it interesting that the Fyren Order didn’t make Verity’s list. Mordaunt would doubtlessly be offended.

“But this is idle talk,” said Verity. “The Peace Accords forbid such foulness among the Orders.”

“I’ve never met either an Agannor or a Dreor,” said Aurienne.

“Good,” said Verity. “I hope you never do. We had a Dreor attack once at Tintagel. It was terrorising the village outside our walls. It took two of us to bring it down. Like fighting a rabid dog, only the dog had plate armour and a scythe, and was bigger even than me.”

“What happened?” asked Aurienne.

“We captured it. Dinadan—the Head of the Wardens—convened the other Orders to the Stánrocc to come to an agreement on what to do with the creature. Our position was that the Dreor had committed an act of aggression against the Warden Order and should be executed, in keeping with the Peace Accords. The Bright Paths all voted in favour; the Fyren and Agannor voted against; the Hedgewitches abstained. The Dreor Order didn’t send a representative. So the Bright Paths won. When we got back to Tintagel, we got a ward on each of the Dreor’s boots and split it in half. Then we burned it. It was laughing the entire time.”

“Are they all mad?” asked Aurienne.

“No. They’ve got different—well, I suppose you could call them ranks. Some take the tacn and carry on as you or I did after we received ours. Some take the tacn and lose their minds. Apparently, the weaker the will, the greater the risk. So I’ve heard, anyway. I don’t know much. One oughtn’t know much about the Dusken Paths.”

At the Publish or Perish, Aurienne tapped a coin on the window to get the attention of Grette, the publican, and left it on the sill.

Verity stood by as Aurienne pressed seith into the runes for the pub near her parents’ home in London.

“Thank you for the escort,” said Aurienne. “And the reassurance. I hope the rest of the night is less eventful. Wes hal—be well.”

Verity gave Aurienne a sharp salute as she was drawn into the waystone graticule.

Then it was time for more Mordaunt-inspired fun; upon materialising at the waystone in London, Aurienne ran into one of her parents’ neighbours, and had to fabricate another story to make her getaway from him.

She took the waystone to a random pub, and from there was finally able to reach her destination: Rosefell Hall, the Mordaunt family seat.

9

Rosefell Hall

Aurienne

Waystone travel always left Aurienne feeling ill, and back-to-back dips into the waystone graticule made it even worse. It was a foul-tempered ride through the ley line.

The molecules that made Aurienne recongregated at Rosefell Hall, somewhere in Mercia. She felt clandestine, sick, and saturated by her own lies. She pressed her tacn to her forehead to quell her nausea as she took her bearings. She was next to a waystone at the edge of a broad, overgrown gravel drive.

The waning moon, cloud crossed, offered little in terms of light, so Aurienne walked towards the house with her tacn held aloft. The air was thick with the sound of night insects, punctuated by the crunch of her footsteps on the gravel.

Rosefell Hall came into view. The great house loomed black before Aurienne, a wide, rambling structure, with windows boarded up here and there, a roof missing half its shingles, and walls choked with vines.A weathervane in the shape of a running hound spun, though there was no wind.

Of course this was where the Fyren lived. It looked downright haunted. It was a lair.

Aurienne didn’t like vines. Vines were rat ladders.