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“You don’t need to know. I’m to meet him tonight. I’ll tell you if I discover anything worthwhile.”

“Can I come?” asked Fairhrim.

“What?”

“Can I come?” repeated Fairhrim. “Tonight? To meet this person?”

“Absolutely not,” said Osric.

“Why not?”

“For one, a prissy Haelan popping round to the Bunghole would raise far too many questions.”

“The—the Bunghole?” repeated Fairhrim in mild consternation.

“Dodgiest boozer in London. Rough crowd.”

Fairhrim digested this information before gathering herself and insisting anew. “I’d be in a better position to talk to them, to get to the bottom of this.”

“No. You’ll bodge it up.”

“I don’t trustyounot to bodge it up,” said Fairhrim. “This is important.”

“Let me do my job, and you do yours. We’ll reconvene when I’ve got the information and you’ve helped some invalids, or whatever it is you do with yourself.”

“Your job,” said Fairhrim, “is murder.”

“Espionage is one of my many areas of expertise. Besides, the threat of murder leads to interesting confessions.”

“That’s your plan?”

“No. My plan is to leave now and advise you of my findings later.” Osric considered patting Fairhrim on the head for maximum condescension; however, from the way she was looking at him, he thought she might bite him. “You stay put.”

“Find answers without coercion,” said Fairhrim.

“No.”

“I don’t care how you normally do it;thistime we need reliable information.”

“No.”

“I’ve reviewed the literature on the use of torture—”

“Spare me.”

“—and the overwhelming scientific consensus is that coercive techniques don’t work. It’s one of the most ineffective intelligence-gathering tools. You’ll get false confessions. People will admit to anything under duress. I need you to getrealinformation from this contact. And besides, I don’t want further deaths on my conscience—”

“Solution: stop having a conscience.”

Fairhrim regarded Osric with queenly hauteur, and Osric, reducedto peasanthood, saw that he had committed lèse-majesté in interrupting her.

“Thank you,” she said, “for that incisive recommendation.”

“Your alternative is to keep clutching at your pearls.”

Fairhrim looked as though, for once, she was wrestling with her temper. She flung up her hand. “I’m leaving.”

“Good. Go. Stop waving your stupid swan at me.”