I’ll get you the Epsom salts and some gentian violet. We’ll continue to burn all the dressings. Don’t touch people until you aren’t producing scabs or pus. In fact until you see the welt going down.”
“How long?”
“If this were a normal infection, I’d say three days will do the trick. I think, however, that there is a magical component on it. So, I don’t know. Will you try a spell?”
Tiphaine looked at her blankly. “Have somebody pray over me?” she asked, her voice rising.
“Ummm, if that’s what you want to call it? I was going to ask you to dance your healing; I’m sure praying isn’t your cuppa tea.”
Tiphaine swallowed. “I don’t believe… but something took over Mary Liu’s body and spoke to me. And it really wasn’t Mary Liu, though it was using her mind and memories and personality as some sort of.. . pattern. That wasn’t a psychological collywobbles. There was something there and it hated me. I think it hated everything.”
BD nodded. “So you do believe; you’re just not up to admitting it yet. Back to the healing part. You are running a fever. You have a persistent infection and you have a generalized irritation of the skin because of the very harsh methods you’ve been using to fight the infection. There’s going to be scarring.”
This time Tiphaine let the half-hysterical laughter out. “I’ve been getting cut and bashed and abraded for twenty-three years. Parts of me look like a mad seamstress used me for practice!”
“Internal scarring could weaken your sword-hand.”
That brought her up, though the buzzing was loud.
“We need you to do things that will enhance your immune system. Good food, good rest, freedom from worry. So I’m thinking that you should dance. I wish you did have a saint or patron or Goddess, I’d feel better if you petitioned for healing. When you get home, maybe Delia can help with that.”
“They all work?” Tiphaine said.
“Oh, yes. But They play favorites. So, you need to petition to an aspect you can believe in. Which I suppose is why you didn’t go to Doctor Robsvert, who’s assigned to your camp. He’s seventy, the most pre-Change man I’ve ever met, and if a stick turned into a snake in his hands, he’d claim it was paralyzed and he just didn’t notice the scales while he was whittling on it. Then there’s Doctor Methlin, who fights with Doctor Robsvert at the drop of a pin. He’s a faith healer; Church of God, Scientist, who thinks walking on water isn’t just possible but easy with a little positive thinking…”
Tiphaine tried to shake her head, but it was aching too much. “Neither sounds like a winner.”
“I’d send you into Portland, or Mount Angel, or down to the Mackenzies if I thought we had time, but I don’t think we do have time. When the infection’s brought down, go to Bethany Refuge outside Portland; by then things will be un-alarming enough for you to pass it off as an ordinary battlefield injury that needs treatment… like football players in the old days. The Sisters of Compassion will get you started on physiotherapy for the hand, get it back to strength. We’re going to need that strong right hand, Grand Constable. So now, rest.”
COUNTY OF THE EASTERMARK CHARTERED CITY OF WALLA WALLA CITY PALACE OF THE COUNTS PALANTINE PORTLAND PROTECTIVE ASSOCIATION (FORMERLY SOUTHEASTERN WASHINGTON STATE) HIGH KINGDOM OF MONTIVAL (FORMERLY WESTERN NORTH AMERICA) AUGUST 24, CHANGE YEAR 25/2023 AD
Tiphaine moved her hand again, looking at the white scar. The Countess cleared her throat. Felipe was looking at his hand. He spoke first. “The dog died? With green and yellow foam coming out of its nostrils? From swallowing the bandage?”
“Yes, my lord, it did. You can imagine how I felt about it. You’re getting help earlier; on the other hand, it’s an actual bite. Be cautious.”
Ermentrude said thoughtfully, “You went to a pious wisewoman, and she sent you to Bethany to the Sisters… and then you sought a spiritual patron to protect you against the evils of the CUT?”
Tiphaine smiled slightly. Evidently I’m keeping things general efficiently while also getting across the essentials they do need to know.
“Yes. As I said, I’ve never been particularly pious. But I found a real expert to… guide my meditations. One I trusted implicitly. And I had quite a, ummm, change of heart.”
MONTINORE MANOR, BARONY ATH TUALATIN COUNTY, PORTLAND PROTECTIVE ASSOCIATION WILLAMETTE VALLEY (FORMERLY WESTERN OREGON) HIGH KINGDOM OF MONTIVAL (FORMERLY WESTERN NORTH AMERICA) AUGUST 15, CHANGE YEAR 24/2022 AD
It was late by the time Tiphaine d’Ath and Delia de Stafford waved good-bye to their guests from the verandah of the manor house, a warm summer’s night with bright stars and a great near-full moon rising over the forested Coast Range a little to the west, full of the scents of cut grass and roses and honeysuckle and a faint tinge of woodsmoke and fir sap. The steel wheels of the black carriage crunched on the crushed rock of the driveway, and then the lanterns at its rear faded down the long road that glittered white beneath the moon, flickering as they passed behind the wayside oaks. The lance heads of the escort swayed after them, until it all faded into the night. Moths battered against the big silver-framed lights above, and the wind moved quietly in the trees.
“My lady?” the house steward asked.
“Leave us,” Tiphaine said.
“That will be all, Terrin, for the night,” Lady Delia de Stafford added gently, with a smile. “And tell Goodwife Catrain that the Lord Chancellor Conrad said he’d weigh twice what he does if she ran the kitchens at Castle Odell, and the Lady Regent added that she had never eaten better slowcooked spring lamb, even in Todenangst or Portland.”
Tiphaine added a slight sideways jerk of the head. Young Terrin-his uncle-predecessor had retired last year- bowed and motioned the other servants away with his white wand and followed them.
And Delia managed to get all the ladies-in-waiting and pages and assorted highborn suchlike out of the house for the night, one way or another, without even offending them. A seldom-repeated miracle. Here I am, overlord of Ath in my own right, land and woods and water and villages and manors and a thousand families over whom I have the Low, Middle and High Justice, and I actually had more privacy when I was living in a two-bedroom apartment with my single-parent mom. Mind you, the wealth and power and land and so forth go a long way to compensate. Still.
Montinore had been a mansion before the Change, built long ago on mining profits as a country retreat and then the headquarters of a vineyard in the days of the Pinot Noir boom, a neoclassical house with white walls and tall pillars in front. Not many modifications had been necessary to make it the manor of the home estate at the core of the barony; adding a Great Hall at the rear, and outbuildings. The village a little to the east on the flats adjacent to the Five Great Fields was nearly all new, though. You could see the bell tower of the church, and a little of its red-tile roof, which was near enough for the outdoor servants to live there. The house faced southeast, but if she had walked out onto the lawn she could have seen the watch lights on the grim square towers of Castle Ath, on its hill half a mile west.
“Glad I finally talked you into moving down from the castle?” Delia said. “And it took a year.”
“You’re always right, sweetie. Though I have fond memories of the place; we met there, after all. And it was wartime.”
The gardens and rolling lawns were still here around the mansion; better, if anything, under Delia’s supervision. And the vineyards to the north that were the most valuable part of the manor’s demesne farm. Delia had always been good at keeping the reeves and bailiffs and castellans and stewards honest and up to the mark.
“Always nice to see Conrad and Sandra in a setting that isn’t entirely business,” Tiphaine said, looking after the coach.
Though they’d come out here with her partly precisely to occupy the traveling time with consultations.
Strictly speaking I should be going back with them. Damned if I’ll cut the flying visit that short, though. I’m going to spend at least forty-eight hours with my sweetie, after all this time in the field!
“I wish they could have stayed longer,” Delia said. “And that Conrad could have brought Valentinne and the children.”
“We’re all a little busy, right now,” Tiphaine said as they turned to go back in; she offered her arm, and Delia slid hers through it.
