Something Becoming

Osric

When Osric had asked Fairhrim to dance, she had, at first, done nothing but stare at him. A very dark time in his life had followed, taking on the proportions of approximately ten years of agony and suspense, until her shrugged “Very well.”

That was where it should have ended. Osric had never intended to steal a kiss, and certainly never intended to linger along her neck. It was meant to be only a dance. But she had looked up at him, and he had discovered how her wet hair caught pentagrams of stars, and watched raindrops trickle down her throat and make a necklace of moon glitter there, and the kleptomaniac urge had risen, and he, weak-willed fool that he was, had yielded to it.

When he had asked her to put the poor bastard out of his misery, he hadn’t been referring to Perfect Aedan. He had been talking about himself.

He had played the smitten fool a little too well. Well enough to believe it.

Afterwards, Fairhrim had fled from him, and left him with an unfinished dance and a fear.

He wished he could unknow what she had tasted like. What it had felt like to hold her quivering stillness in his arms as he made his way down her neck.

Once again they had met upon a threshold, once again they had reached an Almost, and once again she had fled.

She would never cross over. And he was burdened now, with the memory of a swiftly beating heart, exhilaration and pleasure, and the weight of regret.

He wished he could unkiss her.

A few days after Osric’s stay with Fairhrim, Tristane’s ill-tempered polecat deofol summoned him to the Fyren HQ.

Thanks to Fairhrim’s attentions, he was by then able to walk normally, and not as though he had been stabbed in the gut by a fellow Fyren who was, incidentally, missing under mysterious circumstances.

The Fyren headquarters had moved to an abandoned abattoir. Osric had scouted the place out after one of Fairhrim’s more piquant remarks. It was perfect; there were exsanguination and blood-storage facilities on-site, and no one in the neighbourhood investigated if things got smelly. Fairhrim would no doubt be thrilled to know her input had had such an impact on Osric’s Order.

Upon the abattoir’s rusted gates lingered the cheerful slogan We kill so you don’t have to!

Below it was carved a rough rendition of the Order’s hellhound fangs.

Sacramore was in the abattoir’s dingy reception area, sorting through a diverse pile of contraband.

“Good luck, darling,” he said as Osric walked in. “The butcher is in a mood.”

Osric pondered Why That Could Be.

He followed a cracked-tile corridor to the killing floor, where Tristane stood, accompanied by Lady Windermere. Around them were enormous meat hooks, upon which recent victims of Tristane’s interrogations were hung upside down. A few of them were still alive. One wheezed aerosolised blood.

There was a sign on the wall indicating the days since the last injury: fourteen. Osric felt that it needed updating.

Tristane gestured him closer. She wore an enormous rubbery apron and yellow boots.

“Lovely outfit,” said Osric. “Crime-scene chic.”

“Thank you,” said Tristane. “It has pockets.”

“What are you doing with these fine gentlemen?”

“A bit of forensic accounting,” said Tristane. “Have you had any word from Brythe recently?”

Lady Windermere, who had been standing beside Tristane in silence, let out a staccato breath, and wiped away a tear.

Osric, with perfect innocent concern, said, “Brythe? Saw him last week at the Harmacy.”

“That’s the last time anyone saw him,” said Tristane.

“He’s missing.” Lady Windermere turned sunken eyes to Osric. “My deofol can’t get through—can’t even find a trace of his seith.”

“Neither can mine,” said Tristane. “Which means he unlinked us—”

“Brythe would never unlink me,” said Lady Windermere in a fierce hiss.

“—or he’s dead,” finished Tristane.

“Dead? Brythe?” Osric scoffed. “Impossible.”

Lady Windermere wrapped her arms around herself. Her thin form swayed. “Then where is he?”

“The alternatives are limited and unsatisfying,” said Tristane. “Few could kill Brythe. Perhaps des circonstances insolites—a freak accident of some kind.”

“I refuse to believe that,” said Lady Windermere. “But you’re right—few could kill him. If he’s dead, that will narrow down my list.” She gave both Tristane and Osric a look, and he knew that the two of them had just made it onto her list.

“Cast your suspicious gaze elsewhere,” said Tristane, pressing a warning fingertip to the hilt of her blaecblade. “Your lover may be dead, but I remind you that I’ve also lost one of my Fyren. And Osric a friend and colleague.”

Osric, who had been personally responsible for converting the dear friend and colleague into ash, nodded gravely.

Lady Windermere lowered her gaze to the floor.

One of the wheezing, upside-down men—a redheaded, skinny fellow—created a timely diversion by burbling for mercy. Tristane poked about through some crates, muttering about gags. She found a harmonica in her apron pocket, which she jammed into the man’s mouth.

“There,” she said, patting him on his upside-down chin. “You may do something useful with your breathing. Give us a bit of ambience.”

The harmonica’s discordant whistles filled the room.

“Kind of you,” said Osric. “This is cosy.”

“I know,” said Tristane. “I’m a real softie when it comes down to it. That’s my trouble.”

Amid the harmonica’s sepulchral melody, Osric asked, “Will you launch a search for Brythe?”

“Windermere will be leading it,” said Tristane. “Beaufort and Sacramore will help her.”

“If I hear anything through my contacts, I’ll let you both know immediately,” said Osric.

“Thank you,” said Lady Windermere.

She left. The harmonica turned melancholy.

“You said you last saw Brythe at the Harmacy?” asked Tristane when Lady Windermere was gone.

“Yes—Sacramore was there, too.”

Tristane sighed. “He was heading out on a job that day. I think he’s dead. He can’t be on the run. He had the payout of a lifetime coming his way.”

“What job was it?” asked Osric.

“One that it was imperative he not fail,” said Tristane.

“You’re sure you don’t want me to look for him?”

“No,” said Tristane. “That’s not the priority. The priority is completing the job.”

“Shall I take care of it? I do like a payout.”

Tristane listened to the sad harmonica. Her triangle of hair swayed mournfully. “It wasn’t a job I would normally agree that we would take on. It involves another Order.”

“Oh?”

“I made an exceptional decision on an exceptional basis.”

“What exceptional basis?”

“Money.”

“Well, obviously.”

Tristane’s hard eyes surveilled Osric. “Aren’t you going to query me about the advisability of attacking another Order?”

“Did Brythe?”

“No, but Brythe considers nothing beyond the money. It’s why I asked him in the first place. You’re just as rapacious, I know—but you’ve got a Particle of intelligence and political acumen.”

“An entire Particle?” said Osric. “You flatter me. Can the job be done without evidence of Fyren involvement?”

“That was, of course, the idea,” said Tristane. “Otherwise I’d be pulled up to the Stánrocc to explain myself to the Heads of every other Order, and probably sentenced to death.”

“What Order was the target?”

“That’s not for you to know,” said Tristane. “Sacramore was against my taking it on. Bit of a traditionalist. However, if no one knew our Order was responsible, his reservations would be moot.”

“Who’s the client?”

“Someone worth breaking a few rules for.” Tristane meandered through the hanging men as one would through a peaceful Zen garden, with her hands behind her back. “Some sombre idiot donated a substantial wodge—twenty million—to an Order when all other funding avenues had been strategically blocked by the client.”

This was a bit awkward for Osric, given that the sombre idiot was, you know, him.

“And now Brythe has disappeared,” continued Tristane. “He can’t have been caught—if they’d caught a Fyren, I’d have been dragged before the Stánrocc already to explain why I’ve broken two hundred years of Peace Accords.”

Osric gestured to their bloodied audience. “Haven’t this lot heard a little too much?”

“I suppose,” said Tristane. She paused. A knob on the wall caught her attention. “What do you think this does?”

“A mystery knob,” said Osric. “Pull it.”

“I have tugged a few mystery knobs in my lifetime,” said Tristane.

Tristane pulled the mystery knob. It severed the man next to her clean down the middle.

“Ah,” said Tristane, observing the result. “Very good. I wouldn’t go to a pie shop round here for a little while if I were you.”

“Thank you for the tip.”

“You’re dismissed,” said Tristane. “Come to me if you hear anything about Brythe. I will pass the information to Lady Windermere. You saw today that she’s…quite emotional about this.”

“Understood. And the job?”

“Leave the job to me.” Tristane walked pensively away from Osric, her boots squelching in fresh offal. “On n’est jamais si bien servi que par soi-même.”

Which, Osric understood from his rudimentary French, meant that she was going to do it—whatever it was—herself.

Which meant that Tristane was going to pick up where Brythe had left off, and go to Swanstone.

Which meant that Osric needed to see Fairhrim immediately.

A few other Fyren were milling about the reception area when Osric exited the killing floor. Sacramore asked him whether he’d join them at the Dog’s Bollocks for drinks. Osric, panicky, produced some sort of strangled gurgle from his larynx—he hoped it sounded like a viable excuse—and strode off.

Safely away from the abattoir, Osric summoned Cinder, his deofol, with instructions to find Fairhrim sharpish, and tell her they had to meet. Fairhrim had told Osric that she would never reject his deofol again—and yet, a few minutes later, Cinder returned, her ears pinned back, to report that she hadn’t got through.

“She’s either ignoring me or sound asleep,” said Cinder, her voice husky with displeasure.

“Sound asleep? At half two in the morning? Ridiculous,” said Osric.

“What do you want to do?” asked Cinder.

“You’re going to keep trying and I’m going to make my way to Swanstone. Come back to me if you get through.”

Cinder nodded and faded from existence in a smudge of smoke.

Osric took a waystone to the Publish or Perish, from whence he sped to Swanstone. The frozen waterways bordering the fortress during his February visit had melted into proper ponds and moats, populated now by flocks of drowsy swans. They were, like Fairhrim, pretty, foul tempered, and best appreciated from a distance. They detected something of him as he shadow-walked past and hissed in his direction.

The white fortress’s battlements loomed overhead. Osric slipped into shadow, awaiting the touch of the returning Cinder against his tācn. None came. Osric stared at the ramparts above him, glowing here and there with warding. Very well: he would be visiting Fairhrim in person once again.

Slowly, carefully, using his utmost finesse to dodge the Wardens’ trapping wards, he made his way to the roof of the highest tower of Swanstone.