“No.” Quick and flat and final. It was hard for even her to keep talking when he cut off the end of conversations, severed them like he’d doubtless severed a great many lives. Faol’s eyes flicked to her and back. After a grudging moment he said, “You will if you pass the Trial.”

Orfeus clapped her hands together. The motion would have sent out sparks, but there was just a tug of hollowness where her Blood-response should have been. “Excellent,” she said. “I’ll be a very well-armoured corpse.”

“But I will arm you,” Faol said, and stopped in front of a door. This one didn’t hiss open, and he entered a code, tapping swiftly. There was a beep of affirmation, and he hauled the door open, muscles straining against it, then nodded shortly into the room.

Orfeus walked into what looked like the weapons room of a whole small army, which she supposed, in a way, it was. She didn’t know the size of the Order, exactly. The complex seemed huge so far, but they’d passed no people walking through it.

Hung on netting on the walls was weaponry that ranged from the archaic to the downright frightening, axes and swords and studded maces. Cabinets nearer the centre of the room perhaps held more modern methods of incapacitating and killing enemies, in tidy drawers. A few spare sets of the tough black armour the Wild wore hung stiffly on mannequins in one corner, with loose pieces of the same jumbled together in a bin nearby. There were none of the distinctive helmets.

Faolan walked past the weapons wall, fingers trailing fondly against the hafts of spears and handles of axes. Orfeus’s back went rigid and she clenched her hands into fists, but bit back any fear or disgust she felt for this…creature. If Elders didn’t count as quite human, maybe Faolan didn’t either, or she hoped.

“Weapons aren’t made equal,” Faolan said. He patted the scabbard of a sword like it was a puppy, turning to her with his eyes staring seriously out of the snarl of his mask. “An axe is not a sword is not a stunner. Everyone has specialties. But…” And she could almost see him dismissing her. “You don’t have the advantage of formal training. Take whatever you can use.”

She wanted to ask how he was so sure, but he’d fought her twice. Or, mostly, he had hit her as she ran away. Orfeus had a scattering of knowledge about unarmed combat and a general idea of what parts she shouldn’t let get hit, but most of that had been about self-defence, not…

The axes glinted. Strange to see an axe that was made to part skin and not tree bark.

“Anything,” Faol said impatiently.