Chapter 22 The Leyfarer
The Leyfarer
Osric
Osric panted under Fairhrim’s gown. His chin was soaked.
He breathed in sex. One hand was occupied with her; the other was on his cock.
She went over the edge. Wetness seeped around his fingers as she clamped them.
He barely needed to touch himself to finish.
He came hard, burrowing his face into her thigh to keep silent.
Waves of applause echoed through the opera house, muted by Fairhrim’s skirts. A standing ovation, by the sounds of it.
Osric’s legs were cramping. His kneecaps were shattered. His neck was broken. And he had just experienced the single most arousing thing of his life.
He stuffed his spent cock into his fly, where it proceeded to dribble come down the leg of his trousers. At least Fairhrim wouldn’t know about this indecency; she had been too busy having her own standing O.
He tasted her one last time—a goodbye kiss—her thighs quivered on either side of his face, and he shadow-walked from under her dress to the vestibule to the corridor.
Delicious. Naughty. Terrible. Kinky. Osric was going to remember this for a long time. He was going to fantasise about it. He was going to crave more of it.
This was bad. But also, he had no regrets. (He would have them later, he was certain, but that was Future Osric’s problem, not his.)
On his way out, wiping his chin with a handkerchief, Osric glanced back towards the box from the dark corridor. The players were still bowing onstage. Fairhrim was in the vestibule. Her face was impassive, but there was a radiant blush upon her cheek.
She was full of surprises. He had expected her to rend him for even touching her with a suggestive finger; he hadn’t expected her to straddle his face.
He heard Fairhrim call to Aedan that she was going to the loo. Osric melted into shadow as she stepped out of the vestibule and into the dark corridor.
To light her way she pulled out a torch, the buttons of which she pressed with impatience and with a mutter of “Typical Ingenaut overcomplications.”
The torch’s light strobed between red and white and an unusual grey-violet. It stuck upon the latter.
The torch beam illuminated a distinctive splatter down the side of Fairhrim’s skirt. Her eyebrows rose.
So much for Osric’s secret.
He thought it best to disappear.
In the days that followed, Osric’s tācn was remarkably quiet on the Fairhrim front. Did she think about him as much as he thought of her?
He bloody well hoped so.
She had looked like an ice queen in that dress, beautifully adorned by the frost of the pearls. What a sight to behold. Osric’s acquisitiveness shifted into wanting more of that. To adorn beauty with more beauty. To offer tribute.
Rosefell Hall was filled with room upon room of treasures. He had so many things to give.
His heart danced.
This was bad.
“Aurienne,” he said to himself. “Aurienne.”
Aurienne. Three syllables. The shortest love song.
This was very bad.
Things were less quiet on every other front.
There was a shudder of instability in the Tīendoms. Some of the Orders were making trouble.
The Head of the Wardens had apparently stormed up to the Dumnonian queen’s throne with her axe bared, accusing her of being responsible for the Pox.
The queen called the accusation treason.
The Warden Order pulled its members from keeps throughout Dumnonia and retreated to Tintagel Castle.
The neighbouring Tīendoms of Wessex and Dyfed observed with interest as the Dumnonian queen’s fortifications were suddenly manned by mere men, not Wardens.
The Kentish queen fell gravely ill. Kent housed the Hedgewitches.
These two points were discussed side by side in pubs all over the Tīendoms; few were brave enough to suggest a more explicit causal link.
Poor Kentish queen. It was a chest issue, apparently—a fungal infection.
Osric gleaned that the Kentish queen’s letters had made their way out of Fairhrim’s satchel and into the hands of the Hedgewitch Order.
He also gleaned that Hedgewitches oughtn’t be crossed.
In Kent, Dumnonia, and Mercia, ley lines grew spotty, and any engines that failed took ages to be fixed. Rumour had it that the Leyfarer and Ingenaut Orders had blacklisted those three Tīendoms, but no one knew why.
Pubs were also abuzz with a fresh tale of strife between the Agannor and Haelan Orders, who had apparently gone for each other’s throats at the Stánrocc.
A member of the Agannor Order had been found murdered in an abandoned asylum.
The asylum held over fifty Pox-infected children, kidnapped Swanstone nurses, and the remains of a Dreor.
The Haelan Order demanded an explanation.
The Dreor Order was absent. The Agannor Order claimed ignorance, but demanded justice for their dead member.
An autopsy revealed two wounds suggesting expert knife work, which in turn suggested the Fyren Order.
The Fyren Order denied knowledge and asked in what possible circumstance they would murder a fellow Dusken Path walker in aid of the Haelan.
All had retreated in dissatisfaction from the Stánrocc.
Sacramore—and, in the shadows behind him, Tristane—handed out job after lucrative job to Osric and his colleagues.
Political instability made their Order rich.
The only Fyren who wasn’t profiting from the moment was Lady Windermere, who had disappeared.
Speculation ran rampant among the Fyren that she’d abandoned the Order entirely on her obsessive search for Brythe’s killer.
Or that she had died of a broken heart. Osric encouraged these rumours as though he hadn’t seen Windermere’s brains froth out of her head with his own eyes.
Aurienne—Fairhrim—broke the silence between their tācn about a week before August’s full moon.
Osric and Fairhrim’s deofol exchanged their usual greetings (“Gumboil,” said Osric; “Inbred he-goat,” said the deofol).
“My mistress says she forgives you for the latest crime of passion.” Fairhrim’s deofol looked grim. “I don’t know what that means, and I don’t want to know.”
“We discovered a shared enjoyment of the opera,” said Mordaunt.
“Right,” said the genet. “For the next healing, you’re to meet her at the Rummy Thing at sundown, the day of the Thunor moon.”
“The Rummy Thing? Again? We’ve already tried the South Downs. It was one of our first attempts—and a failure.”
He expected an aggressive explanation, but the genet was more serious and subdued than usual.
“It’s a launching point, actually. You’ll be going to the Isle of Stígr.
No waystones and no boats go that way. Aurienne has hired a Leyfarer for transport.
He’s got his own leycraft. He’ll be picking you two up at the pub. ”
“A Leyfarer with his own craft? That must’ve cost her a fortune.”
“No, he owes her. She preserved the use of his tācn after an accident. He was pleased to be called upon.”
“Ah.”
“The healing is to take place at midnight, on the island. Given the successes at the Begbéam and Hunig moons, Aurienne has high hopes. The Isle of Stígr is a potent location by all accounts. Five ley lines meet near it.” The deofol twitched its whiskers.
“Aurienne is pleased with your progress. For reasons that escape me, she genuinely cares about you.”
“I’ve done her a few good turns,” said Osric. “And she’s done the same for me.”
“She likes you,” said the deofol plainly. “I don’t know if the notion has made its way into what you call your brain.”
Osric could find nothing to say in response.
“Not that you deserve her regard,” continued the deofol, with a discontented sweep of its tail.
“Does anyone?” asked Osric, to mask the sudden swell in his heart.
“No,” said the genet. “But then again, I’m biased. We’ll be seeing less of each other after this. You should be pleased. This little game of reciprocities is coming to an end. Aurienne thinks that this may be the last healing.”
This should have been good news for Osric. Instead, it saddened him. There would be no more reasons for Fairhrim to see him, once she had upheld her end of the deal.
“It’ll be for the best for all parties,” he lied.
“Will it?” asked the genet. Its unblinking red eyes looked deep into his.
Osric made no answer.
The genet faded away.
On the day of August’s Thunor moon, Osric took a waystone to the Rummy Thing.
He and Fairhrim had last visited the place in April, during one of their early healing attempts.
The pub looked much the same, shack-like, choked with ferns.
Today its door was open, however, and light and voices streamed out of it.
The waystone at the Rummy Thing was a geological oddity.
Instead of a standard menhir, it was a large wide stone with a hole through the middle of it.
In form and proportion it was familiar. It took Osric a moment to place it: it looked like a large version of the stone Fairhrim wore around her neck.
Fairhrim materialised on the other side of the waystone a moment after Osric did. They saw each other through the hole in the waystone, Osric pulling on his gloves, Fairhrim straightening her skirts.
When they had last met, she had come on his tongue, and he had masturbated under her dress, so, naturally, they treated each other with inane formality instead of discussing it.
Osric found himself nervous. He managed a firm Hello.
“We’re to meet the Leyfarer inside,” said Fairhrim. “Shall we go in?”
“After you,” said Osric.
A Haelan and a Fyren walked into a pub. It was the start of a joke.
That the Fyren was a bit in love with the Haelan was the punch line, probably.
The Rummy Thing served a clientele consisting mostly of beautiful, curiously ageless individuals who blew in and out of the pub with gusts of sea air and bits of moss upon their boots.
Many of them seemed familiar with Fairhrim and greeted her with waves.
Osric was ignored, as one ignores something unpleasant on the pavement.