Page 81 of The Exquisite Torment of Loving Your Enemy

“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 tacn elsewhere before I sever your hand,” said Osric.

He did not look at Stolther’s tacn. 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 tacn; 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 tacn, 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 tacn 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 tacn 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.Extremelyvaluable. 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.