Page 79 of The Exquisite Torment of Loving Your Enemy
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 tacn, 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 tacn 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 tacn 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 tacn to her forearm.
