Chapter 16 Date Night #2
A deformed death’s head tācn swung towards her. It met Mordaunt’s blaecblade instead.
“Get out of here,” he said. “You’re worth too much to deal with these ambulatory corpses, you lunatic—”
Aurienne stepped around him to blow out another wightling’s cervical spine. “I’m going to protect these children.”
“Are you mad?” asked Mordaunt as the wightling’s head rolled past his feet. “You’re a Haelan. You don’t know how to fight. And you can’t kill members of another Order.”
“Can’t kill what’s already dead.”
“Hel’s blood,” said Mordaunt, and he lopped off an arm reaching for Aurienne’s throat.
He came into the fray with her. He had no seith, but he had his blaecblade, and he made excellent use of it. There was a strange synergy to their movements—to the way they fought back-to-back, to both of them mutilating in their own ways, to Harm to all.
The six wightlings were reduced to squirming on the floor. The last one fell to its hands and knees in front of Aurienne. She pressed her tācn to its head and blew out its atlantoaxial joint. It collapsed into a quivering pile.
She and Mordaunt stood in silence, breathing hard.
Mordaunt looked at her, flabbergasted. “How did you do that?”
“Blew out their joints. Easy to manipulate synovial fluid with seith,” panted Aurienne. “The consistency is perfect. Your arm—quickly. The embolus. I told you your system was still fragile—you’re not healed yet—you must be careful.”
Mordaunt held his left arm out. Aurienne pressed her tācn to his skin. She found her concentration lapsing. Her heart raced. Somewhere in this building, there was a Dreor, and they had just wrecked that Dreor’s personal retinue of wightlings.
She found the embolus—a smaller one than last time, which was promising—and, with a gentle push of her seith, dissolved it.
“Cleared,” she said.
“Yes,” said Mordaunt as his tācn flamed back into life.
“Hello,” came a voice at the door.
It was the Dreor.
He loomed, as tall as one of the Wardens, and as broad. His helmet, adorned with twisting horns, made him faceless; there were only slits for eyes. Black plate armour creaked as he took in the mess of wightlings on the floor.
“What have you done with my little friends?” asked the Dreor.
He slid the palm of his gauntlet open on its hinge.
His tācn gleamed black. A tingling heaviness took over Aurienne’s limbs.
She, with horror, felt her own hands make their way to her throat and start to squeeze, and saw Mordaunt do the same.
The haemokinesis—he was controlling them through their own blood.
Blue seith shimmered behind the Dreor, crept up his greaves, and pulled him to his knees.
A platinum-white spear emerged from his neck.
The heaviness in Aurienne’s limbs released.
Verity and Haven stepped into the dormitory, their Warden tācn alight. Each had a ward on the Dreor’s legs. With a brusque tug, they split him in half.
“Frīa,” said Aurienne as black-red offal gushed on the floor.
Haelan piled into the dormitory after the Wardens—Xanthe, Lorelei, and her team from Paeds; Cath and élodie; Corinne and Nym from Aurienne’s team; and, behind them, nurses and apprentices bearing stretchers.
Aurienne, assailed by concerned colleagues, gasped that she was all right.
That loss of control had been utterly terrifying—the Dreor had been about to make her throttle herself.
“Is this your idea of a date?” asked Cath.
“What’s this you’re soaked with?” asked Xanthe, looking at her hands, sticky with wightling gore after touching Aurienne.
“I’m fine,” breathed Aurienne. “I’ll explain later. Breage and the nurses are in an office down the corridor, unconscious. Someone help them.”
“On it,” said Cath.
She and élodie, accompanied by the Warden called Ataraxia, disappeared. There was a flurry of activity as the other Haelan spread out to the beds.
“Wasn’t there someone in here with you?” asked Verity.
Aurienne looked over her shoulder. Mordaunt was gone.
“My informant,” said Aurienne. “He tipped me off about this place. He needs to keep his identity secret.”
“Why in Woden’s name is there a Dreor here?” asked Haven. “What have they got to do with the kids?”
Xanthe exchanged a look with Aurienne. “I think it’s time.”
“We’ve been speculating that the Dreor Order is linked to the Pox resurgence,” said Aurienne. “Speculation that we can now begin to substantiate with evidence.”
Verity pushed up her visor. “You’re joking.”
“I wish we were.”
“We’ll convene a meeting of the leaders of the Bright Paths,” said Xanthe. “This isn’t the place to discuss it.”
“We’ve got to do something about that,” said Haven.
That was the pile of wightlings, some still twitching where Aurienne had dropped them.
Verity threw a netting ward over them. Aurienne thought it was just to restrain them, but Verity held her blue tācn high above the mass and pressed the wards downwards, and the wards compressed the wightlings until they squirmed no more. A dark red pulp was all that remained of them.
The door to the dormitory swung open to reveal Breage leaning on Cath’s arm, along with the missing nurses from Paeds, supported by élodie and Ataraxia. The nurses limped into the room to the sound of cheering. Xanthe ordered them back to Swanstone immediately for care and rest.
“There was the body of one of the Agannor with the nurses,” said Cath, joining Xanthe and Aurienne at a bedside. “Stabbed to death. The nurses can’t remember what happened. What should we do with him?”
“Preserve him in as intact a state as possible,” said Xanthe. “He’s evidence.”