Chapter 28 The Slow Turn of the Knife
The Slow Turn of the Knife
Osric
When the bandages over Osric’s eyes were removed, he discovered that Wardens were in the beds next to him. They stared at him in hostile silence. He learned that their names were Verity and Haven. Xanthe and her team had regrown various damaged organs of theirs.
“Foul creature,” said Haven to Osric in a cracked voice. “And yet you were splendid. Why did you help?”
“I’m the world’s greatest idiot,” said Osric.
The Wardens accepted this without argument, which he found a bit offensive.
“A broken clock is right twice a day,” said the one called Verity. “And even a Fyren can do good.”
“Tristane came, too,” said Haven.
“Miracles upon miracles,” said Verity.
As soon as Osric’s eyes were healed, he left Swanstone. He did not wait for a formal discharge. He didn’t wish for Xanthe to call in Aurienne—Fairhrim—to help him out, or say goodbye, or any other wastes of time.
Through Xanthe’s skill, his eyes had been regenerated from, according to her, “two Cost-shrivelled raisins” to this—normalcy.
He blinked at the world in wonder. All of his other injuries were equally healed—the withered arm, the wound at his chest. No new scars marred him.
He had been exceptionally well treated at Swanstone.
He could find no fault in the Haelan Order.
He discovered his signet ring in the pocket of his cloak.
He could find fault in Fairhrim, and he did. He had given up his fortune, his seith to the last drop, almost his life, because of her. Because she couldn’t keep a bloody promise.
(He had never kept a promise to her, but still. This one had been important.)
He returned to Rosefell Hall. Tristane came to collect her payment. She called him a madman as she did so.
“Never put yourself in danger so recklessly again,” said Tristane. “I’ve invested a lot in you.”
“It won’t happen again,” said Osric.
He walked Tristane to the door. The corridors echoed strangely under his and Tristane’s boots. The house was nearly empty; he had had to sell most of his collections to make up her fee.
“All your pretty things are gone,” tutted Tristane.
Osric, his hands shoved into his pockets, said, “I’ll buy them back, one day.”
“What’s between you and this Haelan, exactly?” asked Tristane.
“Something doomed,” said Osric. “It’s over.”
“Was it at your bidding that she freed me from Tintagel?”
“No,” said Osric. “That was her own doing. She doesn’t take orders from me, even when her life depends on it. I’d rather not talk about this debacle. It’s an embarrassment to our Order’s tācn.”
“An embarrassment to hers, too,” said Tristane.
“Yes. We’ve cut ties.”
“So she said.”
“We’re nothing to each other.”
“Nothing?” Tristane made a moue. “She certainly protected you like you were something.”
“What do you mean?”
“She threw herself over you when that Dreor’s scythe was coming down.”
“What?”
“Yes. In her little Haelan dress. There was no backplate to take that hit. She knew it would kill her. You don’t remember?
” In the face of Osric’s confusion, she continued.
“Perhaps you had already fainted. It was quite tragic. An act of abnegation: absolute self-sacrifice. But do go on grandiosely about your severed ties. It entertains me.”
Osric was silent. In his final moments before passing out, he had lost sight in both eyes and stumbled towards where he knew Fairhrim stood, hoping to shield her to the last. But she had shielded him? The idiot. The perfect idiot.
He passed a hand through his hair.
Tristane regarded him with mingled amusement and disgust. “Hearts are such wretched things.”
After his last interaction with Fairhrim, Osric had not expected to hear from her for a long time—if not forever.
He planned, vaguely, to keep tabs on her at a distance and an ear out for rumours about any acts of vengeance planned by the three thwarted Tīendoms. Why?
Because he, stupidly, still cared about her. In spite of everything.
In spite of the returned ring.
It was a surprise when Fairhrim’s seith touched his tācn about a week after his departure from Xanthe’s ward. He was tempted to ignore her deofol—thought that it would be for the best—agreed with himself to ignore it, and promptly let it through.
“Interesting,” said Fairhrim’s deofol as it materialised upon the desk in Osric’s study. “I’m surprised you haven’t severed the link yet.”
“I’m surprised your mistress hasn’t severed it,” said Osric.
“She thought about it and decided against. Said it would feel too final.”
Osric, in private agreement with this sentiment, asked, “What do you want?”
The genet sat in the middle of the letters Osric had been leafing through. He was reproachful. “You left without saying goodbye to Aurienne.”
“We’ve already said our goodbyes.”
“Then why let me through?” asked the deofol.
Osric had no answer.
The genet was seated with all four paws tucked neatly below him, but he was unsettled. His tail drew out broad, discontented sweeps. “Will you ever see her again?”
“To what end?” asked Osric.
“She’s unhappy,” said the deofol. Osric hadn’t ever seen the creature worried, but it certainly looked worried now. “This affair was meant to be only a business transaction. But—you became more to her.”
Osric pulled his signet ring off and dropped it in front of the deofol. It landed with a clunk on the desk. “She returned this to me. She has made her feelings known.”
The genet fixed his red gaze on the ring. “She was doing what she thought was the right thing for both you and her. The sane thing.”
“Shouldn’t you be glad it’s over? You detest me.”
“She doesn’t detest you, which matters more,” said the deofol. “I don’t think it’s time for this to be over yet. That’s why I came.”
“She didn’t send you?”
“No. I’m here of my own volition.”
Osric raised an eyebrow. A deofol rarely acted without the knowledge of its master. “Why?”
“I know where she’ll be at the next full moon,” said the deofol.
“Why would that matter to me?”
“You can choose to go or not go,” said the deofol. “She’ll be at the Fairy Glen in Fortriu. Nearest pub is the Slumbering Fern. She’ll be there at dusk.”
“What for?”
“A healing.”
Osric irritated himself by being immediately concerned. “Is she sick?”
“Something like it,” said the deofol. “I don’t expect an answer from you.”
“Good. You’re not getting one.”
Normally such a reply would merit a biting retort from the deofol, but he merely said, “I hope you go.”
“Why?”
“She’s so unhappy,” said the deofol.
“I’m not sure I’m the right person to help her with that, Hellrat.”
“You are, or I wouldn’t have come.” The deofol faded away. As it disappeared, it said, “My name is Cíele.”
Osric stared at the spot where it had sat. A deofol’s name was a private thing, shared only with one’s nearest and dearest. It was like learning the name of a piece of someone’s soul. And Fairhrim’s deofol had just given Osric his.
And she was going to be out at the next full moon? For healing? What ailed her? Was it serious? Why wouldn’t her competent crew at Swanstone assist?
He didn’t owe her anything.
She had thrown herself between him and a Dreor’s scythe.
“I’ve got thinking to do,” sighed Osric.
“Must you do it out loud, at inconvenient times?” came the voice of the critique cricket. “I’m trying to sleep.”
“Why does Fairhrim’s deofol want her to see me?” asked Osric. “Why isn’t he making this easy?”
“It’s clear that she’s suffering, too,” said the cricket.
“I’m trying to reconstruct the thresholds,” said Osric. “The lines. The divisions. So that we can both move on. There’s no point in anything else.”
“Why?” asked the cricket.
“Because—because it’s impossible. We can’t have forever.”
“You’d rather have nothing than a little?”
“…Yes.”
“That’s stupid,” said the cricket. “You could die tomorrow. So could she. Make the most of the time you’ve got.”
The breeze blew over the hlutoform bottle at the window and filled the study. It smelled like Fairhrim was right behind him. Osric’s heart skipped a beat. His arms wished to embrace her; his eyes wished to behold her.
He rested his forehead on his hands. “I just want peace.”
“You won’t find it like this.”
The cricket was right. Fairhrim had lit something in him that he couldn’t put out. And now her deofol had come, and sparked it into greater hope.
Osric pulled out the heart-shaped pocket watch. He consulted it to see when the next full moon was.
Only to see.
Movement caught his eye. There was something in the narrow box of ink pen nibs on his desk.
From it emerged, to his surprise, the cricket.
He had never seen it before; it had always kept itself hidden and manifested as a disembodied voice with poor timing.
It looked like an ordinary cricket, perhaps a bit larger.
“You’ve been living there the whole time?” asked Osric.
“You can’t see what’s in front of your very eyes,” said the cricket. “There’s a reason your Cost is what it is.”
“Aren’t you worried I’m going to kill you?” asked Osric.
“You can.” The cricket walked slowly across the desk towards Osric. “I’m very tired. I think I’m going to die soon.”
“Die?”
“Crickets don’t live very long.”
This made Osric, for some unaccountable reason, sad.
“Will you miss me?” asked the cricket.
“I’ve come to enjoy you upbraiding me.”
“You’ve learned a lot,” said the cricket. “You don’t need me anymore.”
“You’re wrong. I don’t know what to do. I can’t change what I am.”
“She knows what you are,” said the cricket. “Now, hush: I’m going back to sleep.”
It climbed stiffly back into the box of nibs.
Osric checked on the cricket the day after, and the day after that, but he never saw it or heard it again.