Aurienne compartmentalised the blushes away (neatly labelled Inappropriate) and focused on her morning, which began with a shift in the Pox ward. The little girl from last time was far better—able to see and able to speak; indeed, she was feeling so much better that she had asked Aurienne for an ice lolly. Aurienne, delighted, was quick to dispatch an apprentice to fulfil this important request.
Then it was time for rounds. Aurienne’s patients in the Centre for Seith Research were competing hard for her attention. A fellow Haelan was suffering from a triggered Cost without even using her seith. A kindly old lady from Cardiff was suddenly summoning other people’s deofols. The Ingenaut with the seith haemorrhages who had been discharged a few weeks ago was back. She had responded beautifully to Aurienne’s micro-occlusion treatment, but had got overexcited about, if Aurienne understood correctly, magnets, and her seith had surged out of control and set a leycraft on fire.
After lunch, Aurienne attended a Haelan robing ceremony. Four new Haelan were earning their wings, including Corinne and Nym. A crowd gathered in Swanstone’s largest courtyard, at the foot of a statue of Frīa flanked by two of the Aer in flight. Prendergast, one of the Haelan Order’s Heads, was presiding over the ceremony. The new graduates stood with their hands folded before them, listening to his address.
“I feel old,” whispered Cath to Aurienne and Élodie. “Look at their baby faces.”
“They’re no younger than we were when we received our tācn,” said Élodie.
“Please,” said Cath. “They’re legally infants.”
“The one on the left is one of yours, Cath, isn’t she?” asked Aurienne.
Cath nodded. “She’s good. Learned quickly that emergency medicine is the science of making it internal medicine’s problem. And the two on the far right are yours?”
“Corinne and Nym. They’ll outshine me in a few years.”
“Good,” said Cath. “You’ll need backup; you’ll be leading this place by then.”
“Never,” said Aurienne.
“I can see it,” said Cath.
“I can’t.”
“I know. You’ve got the imagination of an aubergine.”
After Prendergast’s address, there were the usual speeches about living the values of Harm to none, and always putting the interests of patients before one’s own, and professionalism, and compassion—each of which Aurienne received as a lecture addressed specifically to her. When research ethics were discussed, she began to look for exits.
Élodie nudged Aurienne. “Are you all right?”
“You’ve a hangdog look about you,” said Cath.
Aurienne wished very much to burst into an explanation of her flagrant disregard for everything her Order stood for, that she had done the opposite of everything these fine speakers advised, that it was almost worth it because she might have been nearing an incredible breakthrough, but it wasn’t worth it because she was working with a Fyren—and, worst of all, the Fyren had kissed her hand, and it gave her blushes instead of shudders of morbid disgust to think about it, and everything was Wrong.
Obviously, she said, “Indigestion.”
She was grateful for the ending of the speeches and the concurrent ending of the censure.
Next came the Marking: the Haelan-apparent knelt before the statue of Frīa and her benevolent open arms. They held out their right hands. Prendergast pressed a brand, sizzling with seith, in the shape of the Haelan tācn, to their open palms.
Aurienne, watching the anxious faces of the silver-robed figures, remembered her own time in that position. In spite of Xanthe’s assurances to the contrary, she had feared what every apprentice fears—that her years of apprenticeship wouldn’t have sufficiently developed her seith system and that the tācn wouldn’t take. But it had taken, of course—she had worked too hard, and practised too much, for it not to—and so, too, did the tācn of the four young Haelan kneeling in the courtyard today.
The assembled crowd applauded. The new Haelan held their raw tācn to their hearts, and were robed, for the first time, in the Order’s whites. Now their seith would be open to the world, far beyond the small, quotidian uses of civilians. Now they were members of an Order. They took their oaths for Harm to none and swore to be worthy of the privilege of bearing the title of Haelan. Shining silver epaulettes were placed upon their shoulders.
Someone tugged at Aurienne’s skirts.
“Beg your pardon,” said the apprentice who had done the tugging, bowing low. “You’re wanted urgently in Ward Fourteen. Seith transfer. It’s Haelan Xanthe.”
“Not again,” said Aurienne. She waved a rueful goodbye to Cath and Élodie, and followed the apprentice into the fortress.
Haelan sometimes drained their seith empty in succour of particularly challenging patients. Xanthe was notorious for it. Aurienne found her collapsed upon a bed among the sick children in Ward 14, surrounded by a handful of concerned Haelan from Paeds. She lay unconscious and drenched in sweat. She had triggered her Cost—gastroparesis—before fainting; there was a kidney dish on her lap containing the sloshy remains of her lunch.
Lorelei looked up as Aurienne approached. “One of the new arrivals took a turn for the worse this afternoon. He was hanging on by a thread. Xanthe refused to lose him. He’s all right. She isn’t.”
Aurienne was one of the few in her Order who had mastered seith transfers; the procedure required unusual control of seith even among the Haelan. She pressed her tācn to Xanthe’s clammy chest and, with great gentleness, infused her own seith into Xanthe’s reserves—enough to bring her back to consciousness and bypass another round of her Cost.
Xanthe came to with a muttered “ ’M fine.”
“You mustn’t take your system to the brink like this,” said Aurienne. “It’s hard on you.”
“Yes, well, a child will see another day, so it was worth the push.” Xanthe sat up with Aurienne’s help. She looked sadly at the remains of her lunch in the kidney dish. “Pity about the cheesecake. It was excellent.”
“We’ll get you another piece,” said Lorelei. She called to an apprentice. “You—off to the kitchens. Get her the whole bloody cake.”
“More of us need to add seith transfers to our competencies,” said one of the other Haelan from Paeds.
“Corinne and Nym have been making progress,” said Aurienne. “I think Corinne’s got it. Nym’s technical competence is excellent; it’s her confidence that’s low. They both earned their tācn today.”
“Oh, bravo,” said Lorelei.
“Yes—improvements will follow thick and fast now.”
“Have they moved on to cadavers?” asked Xanthe.
“No. Still in the lab. But they will soon.”
Colour returned to Xanthe’s lips as Aurienne’s seith replenished her reserves. Aurienne pulled her tācn away. “Feeling better?”
“Much. Back to your duties, all of you,” said Xanthe to the Haelan assembled around her bed. “Those children need you more than I do.”
Lorelei and the Haelan from Paeds dispersed. Aurienne took advantage of her tête-à-tête with Xanthe to discuss the Fyren’s investigation of Wellesley. She explained Mordaunt’s current, unpromising position.
“Let me make sure I’ve got this straight,” said Xanthe, in an exhausted whisper. “The break-in we want the Fyren to do, he can’t do, and the break-in we don’t want him to do, he can do.”
“Correct,” said Aurienne. “He can’t sneak into Wellesley Keep because of these anti-Fyren measures. But he is happy to break into the Færwundor for his next healing, which I strenuously object to.”
“Fantastic,” croaked Xanthe.
“But please, Haelan Xanthe, let’s talk later. You’ve got to rest.”
“Pish tosh—let’s talk now. I’m not actively vomiting.”
“I do hope that next time you’ll—”
“Spare me the lecture,” cut in Xanthe. “I know the risks. Go fish about in that heap over there; there’s something I want to show you.”
Aurienne swallowed her gentle, respectful nonlecture, and proceeded towards the indicated heap: Xanthe’s satchel and cloak, dropped beside the bed.
“The yellow file,” said Xanthe.
Aurienne recognised the loose-leaf file as the register of requests received for Haelan services. She occasionally assisted Xanthe in prioritising the asks, which ranged from requests for Haelan aid in dysentery-infested villages to overwhelmed hospitals. A single Haelan and her seith could change the tide in any of these circumstances—though, given the Pox, all recent requests had been rejected.
Among the letters in the file were the usual suspects; Aurienne recognised the scrawl of the Northumbrian king, the angular script of the king of the Danelaw, the elegant hand of the Kentish queen (always envied by Aurienne, whose writing looked like the abstract blobs of stool culture in a petri dish).
Xanthe extracted a letter from the file. She studied it with her sparse brows knotted into a frown. “Throwing you to the dogs, possibly,” she muttered. “But you’d have a wolf with you, so perhaps…?”
Aurienne cast her a look of polite enquiry, but Xanthe didn’t see fit to explain herself to anyone at the best of times, and she was particularly deep in thought now.
“I think you’ve got the coconuts to do it,” said Xanthe. “The real question is whether I want to risk you.”
“The—the coconuts?”
“The cobblers. The bollocks.”
“Ah.”
Xanthe carried on an inarticulate dissertation on the relative size of Aurienne’s bollocks, their propensity to drag on the pavement, their potential to serve as blimps in times of need.
Snapping out of her reverie, she tapped an age-bent finger upon the file. “We may have the bugger.”
“Which bugger?” asked Aurienne, given that there were so many.
“Wellesley,” said Xanthe.
“How have we got him?”
“Wellesley requested Haelan assistance for a sick child a few months ago,” said Xanthe, passing Aurienne the letter. “Paeds was drowning in Pox cases, obviously, so we declined. I know your source on Wellesley’s involvement was questionable, but it’s an interesting coincidence.”
“Do you think the incursion on Swanstone might’ve been linked to his child?” asked Aurienne.
“A desperate father, wishing to find a healer for his ailing daughter?”
“Why do you sound cynical?” asked Aurienne, skimming through the letter. “Doesn’t he seem sincere?”
“He seems a touch melodramatic. And there were about a hundred courses of action he could’ve taken before leaping to ingress of Swanstone—if it was him—with incendiary devices, at that. But if we wanted a door into Wellesley Keep, and a neat way to bypass his anti-Fyren measures, that letter is it. I could make the arrangements.”
“Right,” said Aurienne. “But if Wellesley wants a Haelan for as-yet-unknown nefarious purposes, we’d be handing her over on a silver platter.”
“Right,” said Xanthe. “But the Haelan could explode his heart with the touch of her tācn, should the situation call for it. And if she was accompanied by a Swanstone guard, as is the usual protocol, who was actually a Fyren assassin, then the two of them could discover something of use, and keep her shielded in the meantime.”
“Right,” said Aurienne. “And Wellesley wouldn’t be stupid enough to harm a Haelan. He’d be incurring the wrath of almost every Order.”
“Right,” said Xanthe. “And the Wardens would only be a deofol away, should Wellesley be stupid enough.”
“Right.”
“Right.”
Aurienne eyed Xanthe. Xanthe eyed Aurienne.
“Good thing about my blimp-sized bollocks,” said Aurienne.
“May they carry you swiftly, and may the winds be fair,” said Xanthe.