Chapter 15 Brackenbury Asylum
Brackenbury Asylum
Osric
Much to his annoyance, Osric had been partnered with Leofric to scout out a potential location for the Fyren Order’s next HQ. Leofric showed up at Rosefell Hall the night of their meetup rather strangely attired.
“Why are you in a straitjacket?” asked Osric.
“We’ve been assigned an abandoned asylum.” Leofric spun in place, lost his balance, and then, because his arms were restrained, fell upon the ground. “I wanted to get in the mood.”
He followed Osric into the house and briefed him on the place.
Leofric without the use of his arms was even more annoying than Leofric with.
He clapped the soles of his feet together.
He pointed his toes for emphasis. Osric irascibly stripped him of his straitjacket when he attempted to pour himself a drink with his stockinged foot.
The potential headquarters location was Brackenbury Asylum near Norwich, vacant for several decades and believed to be haunted.
The screams of the Fyren Order’s occasional torture victims would therefore go ignored.
There was a convenient graveyard, cells with restraints, and even a direct waystone, which Osric and Leofric made use of to get there.
They materialised at Brackenbury Asylum into a mild summer night.
Since Fairhrim’s last healing, Osric’s torpraxia had receded to the point that he could once again feel the wind in his hair and the rubbing of his clothes against his skin.
He appreciated it all, down to the blister forming at his left heel in his boots. He was becoming alive again.
Leofric had, fortunately, agreed to abandon his straitjacket for his Fyren cowl and cloak.
The two of them shadow-walked towards the asylum in the dark.
Well, Osric shadow-walked. Leofric, always accompanied by an air of irresponsibility and frolic, shadow-skipped.
He chitchatted about recent jobs: a lord, a banker, the entire board of directors of a Slihtrock mine.
Brackenbury Asylum’s principal building, steep-roofed and ornamented by crumbling chimneys, was surrounded by walls topped with iron spikes. Osric was pleased; it satisfied his expectations when it came to abandoned asylums, with just the right amount of broken windows and rust.
An overgrown tree permitted Osric and Leofric to shadow-walk up and over the wall and enter the precinct.
The asylum smelled of decay. Dust motes drew out the atmosphere in the beams of moonlight that penetrated the grimy windows. Eerie memories of pain lingered: brown-black bloodstains were smeared upon skirting boards; patches of hair were caught at corners; nail marks scored walls.
Of the asylum’s four wings, three were empty, and quickly run through by Osric and Leofric. The fourth, at the back of the edifice, revealed an enormous dormitory, perhaps for the less violent patients not requiring individual cells.
Osric and Leofric held their tācn aloft as they navigated the shadows. They passed row upon row of beds heaped with mouldering blankets.
The silence in the other parts of the asylum had been echoing and empty; here, it was oppressive.
Osric realised, as they walked the length of the dormitory, and a sour smell permeated the air, that some of the beds were not empty. There were the bodies of children in them.
“Kids?” whispered Leofric in confusion, having made the same discovery on his side of the room.
“Fuck me,” said Osric.
“Language,” tutted Leofric. “Don’t set a bad example to the children.”
“Are they even alive?”
Osric held his tācn over child after motionless child.
If they were not dead yet, they were near it.
Some of them were strapped down to their mattresses.
He had seen enough of the Haelan Order’s posters to recognise that these were Platt’s Pox victims. The scabbed-over eyes.
The pus. Bloody grim. Bloody tragic. Osric found a great rarity—pity—swelling in his chest. These children didn’t deserve this.
“What is this?” whispered Leofric. “An orphanage? A hospital?”
The far end of the dormitory gave onto a corridor. Osric and Leofric flattened themselves into shadowy nooks at the approach of light and movement.
Nurses. Their uniforms were dirty and, instead of a nurse’s brisk step, they walked with lumbering purpose. One passed close enough for Osric to notice her eyes—glassy, staring straight ahead.
In the light of the lantern she bore, he spotted a film over her eyes. It gleamed mauve.
These nurses were not here of their own volition. They were being controlled by one of the Agannor. Only the most skilled of that Order could make the telltale mauve gleam completely disappear. Whichever one was here was quite competent—Osric had almost missed it.
Most interesting of all, embroidered upon the nurse’s breast pocket was a rather familiar swan.
The nurse disappeared into the dormitory.
“The Agannor at work,” whispered Osric to Leofric. “Did you see her eyes?”
“Shit,” said Leofric. “We’d better be careful. I don’t want to be possessed and wake up gilding my own balls.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Haven’t I told you that story?”
“No.”
“Met a bloke,” whispered Leofric. “Goldsmith. Got on the wrong side of one of the Agannor. Woke up dipping the old boys in plating solution.”
“That must’ve been distressing.”
“Yeah. Nasty slap across the tits. They fell off, afterwards. His balls, not his tits. He carried them around in a little sachet. I won them off him at cards—use them as door chimes.”
Their conversation was cut short by another nurse coming down the corridor. Osric and Leofric vanished into shadow.
They found a locked office, which Leofric broke into, eager to find something to make the visit worthwhile.
Someone had been preparing to eat. There was a tray with foodstuffs on the desk. Leofric helped himself to a biscuit. “Don’t mind if I diddly-do.”
Osric went through two desks and found, by the red light of his tācn, Pox infection reports, maps, letters, clippings from newspapers covering Swanstone’s immunisation programme. When Leofric wasn’t looking, he slipped what seemed interesting into his pockets.
“Nothing of value. Not a single thrymsa,” said Leofric, rifling impatiently through shelves. “Let’s get out of here. I don’t want to catch whatever is eating those kids.”
There came the distinct sound of a key being inserted into a lock. Osric and Leofric squeezed themselves into the shadows between bookcases.
They had been working in the dark. The person entering the office carried a gas lamp. It was a man dressed in a fine indigo suit. The lamplight flickered against his left palm, upon which there was a tācn in the shape of an eye.
Osric let a throwing knife fall from his sleeve into his fingers. Leofric’s arm twitched next to his and told him he had just done the same. It wouldn’t be acceptable to murder one of the Agannor Order, but it would be even less acceptable to make chimes of one’s balls.
One of the glassy-eyed nurses came into the office behind the Agannor. Even under the Agannor’s influence, there was authority in her bearing.
“Make arrangements if we’re running low on those sedatives,” said the Agannor in a voice deep and melodious. “We want at least another six months’ worth.”
“Yes, sir,” said the nurse.
“Things have been much more pleasant round here now that we’ve begun dosing the brats.”
The mauve gleam in the nurse’s eyes flickered. “I’ve warned you that paediatric sedation has adverse effects. There aren’t enough of us to monitor them appropriately and we haven’t the right equipment—”
The Agannor held his tācn to the nurse’s face. She subsided into silence.
“Poor creature, you do fight me so,” said the Agannor with a shake of his head. “I shall have you drown yourself in a ditch when I’m done with you.”
“Yes, sir,” said the nurse.
“I was hired to control you and your do-gooding colleagues, not to give a damn about the survival rates of the Poxies.”
“Of course,” said the nurse.
The Agannor flicked through the papers on the desk. Osric and Leofric had been careful in their rifling. Things were still in order, save for a missing biscuit and the documents Osric had stolen.
At length, the Agannor turned to the nurse and said, “I’ve a special task for you,” but instead of voicing the task, he pressed his tācn to her forearm.
“Yes, sir,” said the nurse.
She stepped out of the room. The Agannor settled at the desk.
Osric and Leofric relaxed in their positions.
They were Fyren, used to stakeouts, and happily able to wait him out.
The Agannor rustled through his papers, humming.
It took Osric a moment to recognise the tune: it was “A-Hunting We Will Go.”
The nurse returned, accompanied by her purple-eyed colleagues. They clustered behind the Agannor’s desk.
“Thank you,” he said. “You know I don’t like getting my hands dirty.”
To Osric’s surprise, he gestured towards him and Leofric. “Our visitors are in that corner. I’d like to know how we can help them.”
The Agannor turned the flame of the gas lamp high, illuminating Osric and Leofric in their hoods and cowls. The nurses raised their hands. All bore sharp and shiny things—scalpels, a surgeon’s drill, an amputation saw.
“Step out,” said the Agannor with that euphonious voice. “Don’t be coy. I’d be pleased to make your acquaintance.”
Osric hadn’t encountered many of the Agannor, but those he had met were characterised by calmness, by a sense of control.
This was control in a different sense to Fairhrim’s, whose control was over herself and her seith—and different to Tristane’s, born of the confidence of ending every encounter in a win.
In the Agannor it was the simple knowledge that, thanks to their tācn, they would be obeyed.
This Agannor was tired. A trickle of blood ran out of his nose as he commanded the nurses in his thrall: his Cost.
“No?” The Agannor sighed. “Courtesy gets one nowhere these days.”
“Pax,” said Osric, stepping out. “We’re Fyren. We didn’t know another from the Dusken Path was here.”