Chapter 15 Brackenbury Asylum #2
Leofric, for no discernible reason, did a triple backflip out of the shadows.
The Agannor sniffed. “Fyren. Yes, I see that now. You oughtn’t be here. Your names, please, so that I might have the pleasure of knowing who I’m addressing?”
“Glunge,” said Leofric.
“Berb,” said Osric.
“Your real names,” said the Agannor.
“Furtus.”
“Snert.”
“Try again.”
Osric sighed. He pointed towards himself. “Hungwell.” He pointed to Leofric. “Maggot.”
“Maggot?” repeated the Agannor.
“It’s pronounced maggeau,” said Leofric. “It’s French.”
“And you are?” asked Osric.
“Stolther,” said the Agannor. He dabbed at his bloody nose with a silk handkerchief.
“What is this place?” asked Leofric. “What are you doing with these kids? Bit weird, if I’m honest, mate.”
“I don’t know and I don’t care,” said Stolther. “I’m paid to keep the nurses compliant, nothing more.”
“We were scouting out a location for our next headquarters,” said Osric. “We’ll be on our way. The place is clearly occupied.”
Stolther’s tācn glowed purple. The nurses tensed; their instruments flashed. The nosebleed began again in earnest.
“Tell the nurses to stand down,” said Osric.
“I’m not certain I can let you leave,” said Stolther. “This is a secret facility. You may have seen too much.”
“What are you going to do?” asked Leofric. “Did you miss the most recent lecture at the Stánrocc? We don’t attack other Orders.”
“We’re fellow walkers of the Dusken Path,” said Osric.
“I’m not attacking you. I need the two of you to have a nap while I work out what’s to be done with you.”
Stolther held his left hand aloft towards Osric and Leofric.
“That’s an act of aggression,” tutted Leofric.
“Point your tācn elsewhere before I sever your hand,” said Osric.
He did not look at Stolther’s tācn. He could nevertheless see its glow from the corner of his eye. Even at this distance, Osric found himself fascinated by the eye—it intrigued him, drew him in, made him dazed. He felt very much like having a nap.
“Sleep,” commanded Stolther in his euphonic voice. Osric’s eyelids drooped.
Both he and Leofric loosed their knives. The blades flew true: Osric’s hit the Agannor’s tācn; Leofric’s went into his eye. (Leofric was an idiot, but gods, the man could throw a knife.)
The Agannor screamed. The nurses, suddenly freed from the thrall of his tācn, slumped into dead faints.
Leofric’s knife had gone into Stolther’s brain. He did not scream much longer. Osric and Leofric studied his remains in silence. They plucked their knives out of the tācn and eye socket, respectively.
Osric said he felt they ought to vacate the premises. Leofric concurred.
At the Brackenbury waystone, Osric and Leofric mutually agreed to keep the small hiccough with the dead Agannor to themselves. They would merely report to Sacramore that the asylum wasn’t an option as it was presently in use by another party.
“You go first,” said Osric, shooing Leofric towards the waystone.
Leofric, who had a rudimentary set of scruples, looked back at the asylum. “What’s with all the kids, though?”
“I don’t know,” said Osric.
“Bit fucky,” said Leofric. “I don’t like it. Be seeing you, Os.”
He pressed his tācn to the waystone, and he and his grimace were swept into the ley line.
Osric did not immediately follow. He stared at the asylum. What he and Leofric had discovered there was critical intelligence for Fairhrim. A dormitory of Pox-riddled children and a heap of unconscious Swanstone nurses. Extremely valuable. Worth five million at least.
He should leverage it immediately.
He summoned Cinder.
When his deofol materialised, he said, “I’ve got something of great value to Fairhrim.”
“How would you like to proceed?” asked Cinder.
The answer should’ve been simple—send Cinder to Fairhrim and draw her and the Haelan Order into some sort of negotiation for the information.
But those children had been horrifically ill. To use them as fodder was—wrong.
Osric, unused to moral quandaries, stood in unpleasantly bewildered silence.
The breeze blew. He could feel it in his hair.
The fog dewed upon his cowl and ran down his neck in slow trickles.
He could feel it on his skin. Unimportant things to most people but, to Osric, of unspeakable worth. His torpraxia was receding.
And that was only possible because of Fairhrim’s healing.
Cinder floated before him like a piece of mutable darkness, awaiting her instructions.
“I merely wish to advise Fairhrim,” said Osric, “not negotiate.”
“You want to give something for nothing?” asked Cinder.
“Yes.”
He expected some sort of judgement from his deofol. Cinder merely studied him, serious and silent. Her ears—such as they could be seen through flickering black—were half back.
“I want to do things for her,” continued Osric. “Things that matter. I want to make her happy.”
“Happy ever after?” asked Cinder.
“Impossible,” said Osric.
“Then to what end?”
“None. She’s—she’s no longer a Means to an End.”
“What is she?”
Osric’s heart felt pent up, imprisoned. “Despair. Folly.”
It hurt to speak the truth.
Cinder’s eyes were two golden moons.
“Tell her I’d like to meet her here now, if she’ll come,” said Osric. “Brackenbury is the name of the waystone. I’ll wait.”
“Very well,” said Cinder, and she faded away.
Osric, with his tācn held aloft to read the shadows, paced. He really could use the money. But the thought of negotiating with Fairhrim was repulsive. He wanted to give.
He was going to do a good thing, consciously and willingly, with no benefit to himself.
What was the matter with him? Folly had drawn out all that was best in his disposition? Despair had made him generous? Could he really do good, pure good? Wasn’t it tainted by provenance?
He paused in his pacing. White moths gathered at his tācn. They made a flickering halo around its red glow. He felt the infinitesimally gentle brush of their wings upon his palm.
They cared not where the glow came from.
Light was light.