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Osric retrieved the scroll and placed it in a pouch. “You’ll have to tell your mistress that I can confirm the obscurity of anals.”

“What’s in the scroll?” asked the deofol, tilting its pointy head. “Other than giardiasis, I mean.”

Osric threw his soiled gloves into the fire that flickered in the dead man’s hearth. “Plans for Northumbrian fortifications, of interest to Strathclyde.”

“What did they pay you?”

“A very small fraction of the fortune I paid for the pleasure of Fairhrim’s assistance. What news have you got for me?”

“You’re to meet one hour before sunset the day of the Blædnes moon, at Muckle Flugga.”

“At what?” asked Osric, unsure if the deofol was clearing its throat.

“Muckle Flugga,” repeated the deofol. “In Fortriu. It’s the northernmost point of the Tiendoms.”

“Romantic appellation.”

“There’s a lighthouse there. The waystone is at the Woolf. Kindly bathe before you go. You smell like a latrine.”

With this concluding remark, the deofol disappeared.

A few days later, andvery much not smelling like a latrine, Osric burst into existence at the Woolf. The pub itself was long abandoned and consisted of a few crumbling walls. The waystone was so worn and low that it served as a passable seat, which Osric placed his buttocks (shapely, muscular) upon.

Before him stretched a lovely vista of rocky shore dissolving into sea, and there, at the end of an outcrop, the lighthouse. Save for a salty breeze and the wheeling of birds overhead, all was still.

Osric wished to take a moment to pause and appreciate the beauty—and so, of course, Fairhrim arrived with the gentleness of a small blizzard.

The waystone spat her into Osric’s lap. She rose in a swirl of skirts and things, in uncharacteristic disarray. She was in her stocking feet, her hair was unbound and flopped wetly over her shoulder, and she was only half-dressed.

“What—” began Osric.

“Hold this,” said Fairhrim, smacking her satchel into Osric’s chest. “And this”—she tossed her cloak over him—“and these,” she said, adding her boots to the pile.

With the help of a buttonhook, she worked her way up the long line of buttons of her dress. A round stone with a hole in its centre, usually hidden by her dress’s high neckline, hung at her clavicle. The hagstone and its worn leather cord were incongruous amid Fairhrim’s other adornments, which were all sharp and silver.

“Shocking,” said Osric, due to the fact that she had a throat.

Fairhrim did not deign to reply; his principal function, at that moment, was to prop her up as she pulled on a boot.

“Indecent,” said Osric, given that she had an ankle.

Fairhrim’s pinchy hand was at his shoulder. “Had to rush. Couldn’t miss the tide.”

Water from her sopping curls dripped onto Osric’s cloak. He smelled soap. “Might I ask why you look like you’ve just come out of the bath?”

“Because I have,” said Fairhrim.

“Why would you have a bath just before we climb up a lighthouse?”

“There was an incident with my last case.”

“An incident?”

“Draining an ulcer. It was…explosive. Remarkably purulent. Sprayed half a litre of pus into my hair. Do you want to know more?”

“No,” said Osric.

“I thought not.”