Chapter 19 I Can Make Her Worse #2
Osric withheld the urge to paw at her torn dress and check the integrity of the skin below. Fairhrim had almost died because of him, and here she sat, buttering toast. He wanted to shake her—hold her—crush her—lock her away somewhere safe. “You’re sure you’re all right?”
“I’ve healed it,” said Fairhrim, covering up with the shawl again. “Dealt with her before she could do much damage.”
“Dealt with her?” repeated Osric. “You popped her brain out of her eyes.”
Fairhrim winced. “I hoped you wouldn’t remember that.”
“I remember. To think I once thought Haelan useless pacifists. You gave death with the brush of a palm.”
“Time was of the essence.”
“There’s something I’d like to tell you,” said Osric.
“Yes?”
“You are wild enough for me.”
Fairhrim turned to him.
Had he been too forward? Had he reminded her of hurt? Had it been a mistake?
She smiled a smile that made his soul irrevocably hers.
(The thing—the comfortable, convenient thing—was that he could tell her heartfelt, gutting, vulnerable truths, and she thought they were jokes, and so they were both safe.)
“How long did I sleep?” asked Fairhrim.
“An hour or so.”
“Frīa. I’d better go. I’m going to be late.”
“Don’t go,” said Osric.
“What?”
“Skive off with me.”
“I’ve never skived off in my life,” said Fairhrim, scandalised. “Besides, I’ve got important meetings today.”
“What sort of meetings?”
“Admin,” said Fairhrim, with the slightest wrinkle of her nose.
“You worked all night. You triggered your Cost. And you were stabbed by a Fyren. Take a day off.”
Fairhrim was torn. “I’m already off tonight. I’m going to the opera.”
“Will the sky fall if you miss the admin?” asked Osric.
“That would take a greater sin. But it would be irresponsible.”
“Be irresponsible. Be irresponsible with me.”
Fairhrim thought about it. Calculated. Looked at her torn dress and its bloodstain. Ran a palm over her damaged fingers.
She held up her tācn and summoned her deofol.
The white genet materialised. It narrowed its eyes upon seeing Osric.
“Hullo, darling,” said Fairhrim.
“You were hurt,” said the genet, observing her dress.
“I’m fine.”
“You were only meant to be dropping off a present.”
“Things got—complicated. I’ve a few messages for Swanstone.”
“Is it to inform them that you successfully converted gift-giving into a blood sport?” The deofol turned to Osric. “This is your fault, isn’t it?”
Fairhrim launched into her instructions before Osric could admit his culpability.
“Tell Whitman to chair the Research Excellence Committee meeting for me. Tell Corinne and Nym that I’m putting them in charge of the lab today.
And tell Quincey to clear the rest of my schedule: I’m taking a day off to care for somebody. ”
“Who?” asked the genet, with a darkly suspicious look at Osric.
“Me,” said Fairhrim.
“Oh,” said the deofol. “That’s acceptable.”
It butted its forehead against Fairhrim’s and disappeared.
Fairhrim twisted her hands together. Squirmed. Looked up.
“The sky hasn’t fallen,” she said, in light of her sin.
“No,” said Osric.
“I’m skiving off,” said Fairhrim. She pressed a disbelieving hand to her mouth. Her eyes were wide. This was clearly the height of naughtiness.
Osric was thoroughly charmed.
Mrs. Parson came to clear away the breakfast things and offer Fairhrim a bath, which she gladly accepted.
Half an hour later, Fairhrim joined Osric in his study, wearing one of Mrs. Parson’s dressing gowns, overtopped by another of Mrs. Parson’s shawls.
“Mrs. Parson is washing my dress,” said Fairhrim. “She wants to sew up the torn bit, too. I told her not to bother, but she insisted.”
“She’s grateful to you,” said Osric. “So am I.”
Fairhrim pulled the shawl tighter around herself. “I don’t want praise for having killed someone.”
“This is a Fyren household,” said Osric. “We celebrate murders.”
“Stop it.”
“Besides, it was hardly your first one.”
Fairhrim punctured him with a glare.
Thus warned, Osric did not pursue the theme. Instead he said, “Mrs. Parson asked me about your necklace.”
“Did she?”
“She wanted to know where it was from.”
Fairhrim ran a finger under the worn leather at her neck. “Interesting that she would ask. It’s a hagstone. Amagris gave it to me. I wear it as a reminder.”
“A reminder for what?”
“To protect my heart.”
She touched the stone. It made her shudder like a reflex. So it was the gift of her former lover, carried like a millstone around her neck.
“Most people camouflage their points of vulnerability,” said Osric.
“I’d rather remember.” In a transparent change of subject, she gestured to Osric’s desk, where two letters lay side by side. “What are you working on?”
“A mystery,” said Osric. “You’ll recall that when we went to Wellesley Keep, I took a few mementos…”
“Mementos,” repeated Fairhrim, immensely sardonic.
“Including Wellesley’s correspondence with his various mistresses,” continued Osric.
“I investigated them all for blackmailing purposes. There was only one whose identity I couldn’t work out.
Interestingly, I found a letter in an identical hand in the Agannor’s coat at the asylum.
It contains instructions to sedate the children. ”
Osric placed both letters, written in a flowing hand, before Fairhrim. One was perfumed and flowery, the other was crumpled and dirtied by bits of lint from the Agannor’s pocket. Both were unsigned.
At first Fairhrim studied them with a frown. Then her eyes hardened. Her countenance shifted. Her neck straightened. A low rage quickened in her. “I know this hand.”
Osric wasn’t certain whether he was talking to a woman or an impending storm.
“Whose is it?” he asked.
When she looked up, her gaze was chilled iron. “The Kentish queen’s.”
“What?”
Fairhrim plucked lint off the Agannor’s letter as a cat might tear feathers from a bird. Her jaw was tense.
“How in Hel’s name do you know the Kentish queen’s hand?” asked Osric.
“The Tīendoms sometimes send my Order requests for Haelan assistance. May I take these with me?”
There was no scenario in which Osric would have said no. She was freezing his blood. Besides, she had just saved his life—again.
“They’re yours,” said Osric.
He placed both letters in a thick envelope and handed it to Fairhrim.
She visibly relaxed afterwards, even deigning to sit upon one of the chairs across from Osric’s desk.
“If Wellesley was the Kentish queen’s lover, that would explain why he was helping her store the Pox.
And if we have her writing to the Agannor—well, I don’t think we could ask for more solid proof. You’re brilliant.”
“I am brilliant,” said Osric modestly.
Fairhrim extracted something from the dressing gown’s pocket.
“Without all due ceremony,” she said, placing the thing—a shimmery white pouch—on Osric’s desk. “Circumstances are never quite right to give it to you, but I’d like you to have it.”
“For me?” blinked Osric.
“It’s what I came to drop off yesterday, before everything got so exceptionally derailed.”
“No one ever gives me things,” said Osric as he unfastened the pouch and opened the velvet box within.
“You’re hard to buy for. You’ve got everything. But—”
An elegant pocket watch, shaped like a heart, twinkled in Osric’s hands.
“But you told me once that you haven’t a heart, so I got you one.
I had it made by my mother’s preferred ma?tre horloger.
I thought gold would be your preference.
I hope I was right. I had it customised a bit.
It runs a quarter of an hour fast, to keep you from being late.
And there’s a lunar calendar integrated into it. ”
Delicately, confusedly, Osric held the thing as though, instead of a ticking pocket watch, she had given him her beating heart. He couldn’t remember the last time anyone had given him a present.
“I know it’s just a trinket to you,” continued Fairhrim. “I know you can buy whatever you want. But consider it a thank-you, for the asylum—and now these letters—and many other things besides…”
She leaned over and pressed a kiss, light as a petal, to his cheek. Then she looked away, flustered. Fairhrim made a lovely picture when she was flustered.
Osric’s throat felt thickish. He cleared it. “Thank you.”
In her blush he found the small hurt of hope.
He wanted to say something deeper, graver, than thank you. The pocket watch ticked against his palm, instants and aeons, a chronometry of longing. Tick, tock, tell her, don’t tell her. Tick, tock, yes, no. There is still time. It’s already too late. You must. You cannot.
“What’s down there?” asked Fairhrim.
Osric was jostled from the threshold. He looked where she pointed: rusted structures below the terrace. “What remains of Rosefell’s pleasure grounds. A fernery. An aviary. Hothouses—or what’s left of them, anyway.”
“Hothouses? May I see?”
“Now? You really ought to rest.”
“I always do what I ought,” said Fairhrim.
“I always do what I oughtn’t, and look where it gets me,” said Osric.
She gave him one of her almost smiles. “Is there a middle ground?”
“Shall we go see if we can find it?”
Osric extended his arm. Fairhrim reached for it. She thought it courtesy. It wasn’t. It was an excuse to touch her.