Chapter 16 Date Night
Date Night
Aurienne
Aurienne was deep in study of Mordaunt’s books on the Dreor Order when his deofol pulsed at her tācn.
“My master wishes to meet with you,” said the wolf. “Tonight.”
“It’s late.”
The deofol wasn’t in one of her grinning moods. She hung low, a sullen cloud at Aurienne’s feet. “He’s waiting for you. Will you come?”
There was a time when Aurienne would have refused this sort of contextless summons point-blank—she was not one of Mordaunt’s dogs, to be whistled to when convenient.
There was a time.
Aurienne sighed and asked, “What’s this about?”
“You’ll see,” said the deofol. With gravity, as though she was sharing something profoundly disturbing, the wolf added, “It’s to make you happy.”
“Happy?”
“He wants to do things for you, apparently.”
“Do things?”
“Things that matter.” A shrug rippled through the deofol, or it might have been a shudder.
Aurienne, intrigued, asked, “Is he at Rosefell?”
“No. The waystone is called Brackenbury.”
“Tell him I’m on the way.”
The wolf vanished in a dissatisfied puff of smoke.
Aurienne, who had already changed into her sleeping things, stood at her wardrobe with her hands on her hips, unsure whether to wear her Haelan garb or something else in response to this enigmatic invitation.
What was this meeting, exactly? Was it to do with Mordaunt’s condition?
His deofol would’ve said something, if so.
Aurienne dared not think it could be some sort of romantic rendezvous. And yet the notion, once considered, began to take hold, and make a bit of sense—the lateness of the hour, the mystery, the it’s to make you happy.
Her collection of skulls, lined up on a shelf with the animal’s Latin name on a plaque, stared at her. In the dark, they all looked like hellhounds, observing with fathomless eyes.
Aurienne held one of her Haelan dresses to her chest. Then a dark green floor-length one. Then one in tender pink. Should she go with the Haelan whites? Keep up the veneer of professionalism?
Counsel came in the form of Cath and élodie, knocking upon the door. Cath was a trauma specialist, élodie a virologist; both knew of the existence of Mordaunt, but only as one of Aurienne’s Occasional Men—not that he was, gods help her, a Fyren.
Aurienne opened the door and found herself newly in possession of a pineapple. Cath had been given an enormous fruit basket by a grateful family and was distributing the contents to Swanstone’s denizens.
“Er—thank you,” said Aurienne.
élodie spotted the silken mess on Aurienne’s bed. “Dresses,” she gasped.
“Are you going out?” asked Cath.
Aurienne’s mumbled nonanswer resulted in Cath and élodie barging in to opine on the dresses.
Acts of Warranted Brutality was perched on the windowsill. She hissed fiercely at the intruders.
“Behave yourself,” said Aurienne.
The cat hissed at Aurienne, too.
“Please,” said Aurienne.
The cat gave her a look full of judgement, then laid herself with great finality on Aurienne’s most delicate orchid.
“Are you meeting Tit Wank Man?” asked élodie.
“Yes,” said Aurienne. “Is the pink too much?”
“No such thing as too much,” said élodie as she and Cath riffled through the options.
“The pink,” concluded Cath. “Torture him a bit.”
“I do like to see him suffer,” said Aurienne.
She slipped on the soft pink dress. Her bun gave way to a romantic French side braid, courtesy of élodie.
She dabbed on a bit of lip rouge.
“Steady on,” said Cath. “Are you planning to annihilate the man?”
“At a minimum.”
“What shoes?” asked élodie.
Aurienne presented options. “Ridiculous ones or only partially ridiculous ones?”
“Where are you going?” asked Cath.
“I don’t know yet.”
“Partially ridiculous,” said Cath. “Hedge your bets.”
Aurienne accordingly slipped on boots with a low heel. Then, with the blessings of Cath and élodie, and with her mouth full of a fig that élodie popped in at the last minute (“An ancient aphrodisiac”), she headed to the waystone.
It wasn’t a date.
That was the conclusion Aurienne was forced to reach when Mordaunt shadow-walked her into an abandoned asylum and presented her with a dormitory full of dying children.
She stared in shock. “What is this place?”
“Leofric and I were scouting it as a headquarters location, but we found it occupied,” said Mordaunt. “I thought you’d want to see.”
“Frīa.” Aurienne stepped from bed to bed, pressing her tācn to the children’s clammy foreheads. “Mordaunt—I think this is—I think this is a Dreor incubator.”
“Why are you so dressed up?” asked Mordaunt. “Were you out somewhere?”
“I—yes. I was out somewhere,” lied Aurienne. “I’m going to call in my Order. We’re going to have to get this lot transferred to Swanstone immediately. Their vitals are abnormal—very worrisome, actually.”
“The Agannor had ordered them to be sedated.”
“The who?”
“I’ll show you,” said Mordaunt.
“Just a moment,” said Aurienne. “Let me get word to Swanstone.”
She summoned Cíele with instructions to go to Xanthe as quickly as possible and activate Swanstone’s disaster medicine protocols. “Bring all available Haelan and nurses. Wardens, if they’ll come. We’re going to need every bit of help we can get.”
Cíele looked around the ward with his whiskery brows raised. “Frīa. There are at least fifty beds in here.”
“I know. To Xanthe—go quickly. If you can’t get through to her, try Prendergast or Abercorn.”
“Understood,” said Cíele, and he disappeared.
Aurienne followed Mordaunt down half-rotted corridors. The asylum was harrowing. Its blood-smeared walls were a chronology of a double timeline of suffering—those from decades past and those of its recent inmates.
They reached an office. There they found the cadaver of a man, but more importantly—
“Breage,” gasped Aurienne, recognising the Paediatrics matron slumped over on the floor. And near her, the three other missing nurses from Paeds.
“I thought you’d be pleased to see them,” said Mordaunt.
Aurienne rushed to the nurses—thank the gods for the only partially ridiculous shoes—and fell to her knees beside them. She pressed her tācn to their foreheads and was relieved to find them unconscious, but otherwise stable.
“The dead bloke is the Agannor,” said Mordaunt. “The nurses collapsed after he died. He might not have been letting them eat or sleep.”
“What happened with the Agannor?”
“He raised his tācn to Leofric and me. We objected.”
“Is the Agannor Order involved in this conspiracy, too?”
“Don’t think so,” said Mordaunt, nudging the dead body with his boot. “He sounded like a lone operative. He was to keep the nurses cooperative, working on the children.”
Aurienne, satisfied that the nurses were in no immediate danger, pushed them into more comfortable positions and said, “Let’s get back to that dormitory. I’ll help the worst off until the others arrive.”
They returned to the horrid dormitory full of children in heartbreaking condition.
The most horrific part of all this was that Aurienne knew that it was intentional.
Their poor eyes. Their sores. Their little bodies.
All for wars among kings. She hated, violently, monarchies and suddenly understood the French.
Amid her anger she identified the most critical patient, a little boy so laden with sedatives that he was almost apnoeic.
Cíele returned. “I got through to Xanthe. Paeds has been mobilised. Every available Haelan will come. Wardens, too.”
Cíele popped out of existence.
A moment later, Mordaunt said, “It sounds like the reinforcements have already arrived.”
Aurienne, relieved, turned towards the door.
But it wasn’t reinforcements.
A half dozen gaunt, pale creatures shuffled into the room. Corpses with the ragged remains of clothes hanging from skeletal frames. Of those that still had eyes, none had a spark of intelligence or humanity.
“What in Hel’s name are these ugly fucks?” asked Mordaunt.
Aurienne hadn’t expected to put her learnings on the Dreor Order into practice so quickly. Upon their left palms she spotted distorted, smeared death’s heads.
“Wightlings,” she gasped.
“What?”
“Failed Dreor. Dreor whose tācn didn’t take. And if there are wightlings, there’s a Dreor somewhere nearby.”
“We need to get out of here,” said Mordaunt. He reached for Aurienne as though to sweep her into the shadow-walk.
Aurienne backed away. “We can’t leave. When we fled from the Faerwundor, they blew it up. They might blow this place up, too—kids included.”
The wightlings turned their horrid, half-decayed faces towards Aurienne and Mordaunt. Exposed jawbones and teeth glistened. They limped and shuffled into the dormitory, reeking of death.
Mordaunt’s reflexes were impeccable. His aim was gorgeous. Six throwing knives found their mark with a satisfying thud; six blades sank to the hilt into the wightlings’ soft flesh.
There was some wheezing—expected, because he had hit the wightlings right at the throat.
The problem was that the wheezing was laughter. Horrible, breathy cackles.
“They’re already dead,” said Aurienne.
“Bugger,” said Mordaunt. “Right: we’re leaving.”
He snatched Aurienne against himself and stepped into the shadow-walk.
Tried to step into the shadow-walk. His tācn remained inert. They did not move. Mordaunt stared uncomprehendingly at his tācn.
“Seith embolus,” said Aurienne, disentangling herself from him. “I told you it would happen again. I told you—”
Mordaunt had no seith. He was defenceless.
The little boy that Aurienne had been working on gasped a laboured breath. He was also defenceless.
Aurienne’s rage fell upon her, cold, dispassionate.
No: neither was defenceless. She was here.
The wightlings identified Mordaunt as the greater threat. They lurched towards him.
Their mistake.
Tonight, Aurienne did not care about Harm to none.
She walked into the group of wightlings with her tācn alight. She pressed it to every bit of exposed flesh she could reach and blew out their synovial joints. The floor was splattered with yellowy fluid and black blood. Wightlings fell to their obliterated knees.