Page 85 of The Exquisite Torment of Loving Your Enemy
“He raised his tacn to Leofric and me. We objected.”
“Is the Agannor Order involved in this conspiracy, too?”
“Don’t think so,” said Mordaunt, nudging the dead body with his boot. “He sounded like a lone operative. He was to keep the nurses cooperative, working on the children.”
Aurienne, satisfied that the nurses were in no immediate danger, pushed them into more comfortable positions and said, “Let’s get back to that dormitory. I’ll help the worst off until the others arrive.”
They returned to the horrid dormitory full of children in heartbreaking condition. The most horrific part of all this was that Aurienne knew that it was intentional. Their poor eyes. Their sores. Their little bodies. All for wars among kings. She hated, violently, monarchies and suddenly understood the French.
Amid her anger she identified the most critical patient, a little boy so laden with sedatives that he was almost apnoeic.
Cíele returned. “I got through to Xanthe. Paeds has been mobilised. Every available Haelan will come. Wardens, too.”
Cíele popped out of existence.
A moment later, Mordaunt said, “It sounds like the reinforcements have already arrived.”
Aurienne, relieved, turned towards the door.
But it wasn’t reinforcements.
A half dozen gaunt, pale creatures shuffled into the room. Corpses with the ragged remains of clothes hanging from skeletal frames. Of those that still had eyes, none had a spark of intelligence or humanity.
“What in Hel’s name are these ugly fucks?” asked Mordaunt.
Aurienne hadn’t expected to put her learnings on the Dreor Order into practice so quickly. Upon their left palms she spotted distorted, smeared death’s heads.
“Wightlings,” she gasped.
“What?”
“Failed Dreor. Dreor whose tacn didn’t take. And if there are wightlings, there’s a Dreor somewhere nearby.”
“We need to get out of here,” said Mordaunt. He reached for Aurienne as though to sweep her into the shadow-walk.
Aurienne backed away. “We can’t leave. When we fled from the Færwundor, they blew it up. They might blow this place up, too—kids included.”
The wightlings turned their horrid, half-decayed faces towards Aurienne and Mordaunt. Exposed jawbones and teeth glistened. They limped and shuffled into the dormitory, reeking of death.
Mordaunt’s reflexes were impeccable. His aim was gorgeous. Six throwing knives found their mark with a satisfying thud; six blades sank to the hilt into the wightlings’ soft flesh.
There was some wheezing—expected, because he had hit the wightlings right at the throat.
The problem was that the wheezing was laughter. Horrible, breathy cackles.
“They’re already dead,” said Aurienne.
“Bugger,” said Mordaunt. “Right: we’re leaving.”
He snatched Aurienne against himself and stepped into the shadow-walk.
Triedto step into the shadow-walk. His tacn remained inert. They did not move. Mordaunt stared uncomprehendingly at his tacn.
“Seith embolus,” said Aurienne, disentangling herself from him. “I told you it would happen again. Itoldyou—”
Mordaunt had no seith. He was defenceless.
The little boy that Aurienne had been working on gasped a laboured breath. He was also defenceless.
