Kaschar, Kingdom of Taruschkan
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3rd Awaiting, 678th Year of the Common Reckoning
“That was some performance,” Rosele whispered to Pedra as she followed him out the door of the city council chamber. She turned away from the men who remained inside, already certain of what they were muttering about around the table without needing to hear it for herself.
“Hmph,” her companion replied. “I half expected Johanne to fall from his seat in excitement. Have you ever seen him so animated?”
“Last Festival, perhaps, though you are no plate of roast boar with pear sauce.”
“If only!” Pedra remarked. The pair covered the space between the chamber and the stairs quickly, though not so much that it looked like that was their intention. “I should like some of that. Say, that reminds me. Would you care to join Lura and me at supper this evening? She made eel soup.”
They halted at the top of the stairs and for a moment, Rosele felt like she was falling, or else the floor below was rushing up to meet her. She reached out to steady herself on the banister and found Pedra’s hand on her shoulder. The great chandelier that hung between the staircases above the entrance to City Hall swayed back and forth before her like a dancer.
“Are you alright?” her companion asked, though the sound came to her as if through water. “Rosele?”
She blinked her eyes until the feeling had mostly subsided but stars remained at the edges of her vision.
“Yes,” she lied. “I just needed to… Catch my breath, I suppose.” By now, she could see that some stragglers from the council chamber had assembled behind them, gawking in silence. Master Henrik’s face was the clearest but still, the fog had not wholly crept away.
“No need to worry,” Pedra announced, dismissing them with a raised hand. “I have her.”
“Indeed,” came Henrik’s reply as he led the rest of his gaggle away down the stairs and out onto the cobblestone street beyond.
Pedra scoffed.
“Let them think what they will,” he said. “As long as you are safe.”
Nothing could be further from the truth, Rosele thought in reply but said nothing. There were many things that the other members of the city council could not ever think about her.
“You hear stories as a child,” she mused. “Of war, of sieges. Of Dorias Valatin, the Heron Lord. You think they will never come to you until they do.”
Pedra rested his hand on hers and caught her gaze.
“Join us for supper, Rosele. And bring Ayren along as well. Lura’s soup is exquisite.”
“So I recall.”
As much as she wanted to lie down and spend the rest of the day only in Ayren’s embrace, something about Pedra’s expression urged her to reconsider. What knowledge could he impart that might still the dread which grew in her belly like ice upon a river? She could not even say yet if she wanted to escape the city; only that she wished never to be confronted with such a choice at all.
But then again, who did?
Rosele took a deep breath and steeled herself.
“Tonight, then?” she asked.
“Yes, after ten bells. Until then.” Pedra gave her a short bow, then waited as she made her first tenuous steps down the staircase. When she waved him away with her other hand, he took to the stairs fleetly and was gone into the growing rush of bodies in the square outside.
They would all be going about important business: merchants, lawyers, clerks, diplomats, the sorts of men that made Kaschar one of the most prosperous in all of Taruschkan. But other cities had had similar shares of petty bureaucrats and still found themselves subjected to siege and conquest. What made Kaschar any different?
Or rather, what about the times had changed such that a city which had thus far escaped the wars of Reschanant pretenders must now face their wrath in full? The latter question seemed to her more important, if not for its imminence than for the elusiveness of its answer. If it was plunder they wanted, then easier targets than Kaschar presented themselves to the east. Not that she wished such a fate to befall some other city, but when the alternative was here…
Rosele reached the bottom of the stairs on feet that had grown much less uneasy, though the feeling remained in her heart. She traced two fingers along the bottom edge of her white cap to replace any hairs that had managed to escape from under it before leaving City Hall for the bustle of the square.
Before she left home this morning, not late but still long after Ayren herself had gone to the hospital, she had made for herself a list of errands that simply must be done today, even before the midday day meal if she could manage it. The parchment still sat in the pocket of her dress, rolled up neatly in anticipation of a day full of meaningful comings and goings. Fetching pigments, inquiring after a new supplier of canvas and linen, making final preparations for the apportionment of commissions for the Festival banners. Each seemed so pointless to her now, only silly little tasks that would have meant something had she not been faced with the likelihood of war and all that attended it.
First she had to warn Ayren.
She would be at the hospital, likely elbow-deep in someone else’s blood or otherwise occupied with work for which Rosele herself had no stomach but Ayren found strangely fulfilling. Once the woman had said that bleeding and stitching patients was as much an art as painting; Rosele was not so easily convinced. Still, it was the work’s dreadfulness that made it so important and would make it only more so if Pedra’s news was true.
Rosele followed the cobblestone streets of the Old City until she passed under the North Gate and into the Broad Way. Between here and the Mendolai Gate, as in most of the rest of Kaschar, no houses stood higher than the outer city wall. Even though the Way was wide enough for two carriages to pass with room enough to spare, everything around her seemed to falling inward, threatening to bury her and all she loved under its crushing weight.
She paused under the shadow of the inner wall to catch her breath. Was she still reeling from the stairs earlier or was this some new onset of fear? Or was this merely awareness? She shook her head once; rolled her shoulders until the tightness that had crept into her muscles during the council meeting began to abate.
This is no time for fear, she told herself, hoping that at least thinking would make it so, and carried on.
Only a short walk from the North Gate, a squat stone building sat nestled in between a pair of wattle-and-daub houses. The familiar rising star of the Global Church entwined with roots and vines over the entryway marked it for a hospital built under the sponsorship of some Testator of Kaschar now long dead. Ayren would be here nearly until midday, depending on how many patients she needed to see. A city as large as Kaschar already had its share of wounds and illnesses, but with a royal army on the march…
Rosele pushed open the dark wooden door and stepped inside. The hospital was neither large nor small, about the size of one of the merchant’s warehouses that lined the inside of the eastern wall of the city. Perhaps it had once been one.
Inside the hospital were two rows of beds: the ambulatory on the left and those with graver illnesses on the right. Ayren always found herself on the right.
Before Rosele could even glance around for her, a voice boomed at the far end of the hall.
“How many times must I tell you?” Ayren called, her face ever redder than her hair. “Egg whites! How can I set these bandages with no egg whites?” A young monk in a gray hooded robe darted into the storeroom at once.
“Scare him any more than that and you will have to treat him next,” Rosele said. Ayren’s head snapped around with fury still in her eyes that all disappeared at the sight of Rosele.
“Don’t you have a city to govern?” Ayren asked.
“Only by the grace of our good citizens,” Rosele replied as she made her way through the beds toward Ayren. “And have you run out of sufferers to exsanguinate?”
Sweat burst forth on the face of the young man who lay abed between them. His right arm was swaddled in strips of bloody linen in the process of being exchanged for fresh.
“Not yet,” Ayren said, eyeing him with a smirk. “But Loren here is a strong lad. He can stand a few more leeches.”
Loren turned then to Rosele, his eyes wide as if appealing for mercy.
“No need to worry,” she told him. “Ayren is the most skilled surgeon I know.”
“A short ledger indeed,” Ayren scoffed, then spun about ready to raise her voice again only to find the monk had returned with a large wooden bowl full of egg whites. Ayren peered over it, searching for bits of shell.
“Hmmm,” the surgeon retorted. “Just remember it next time, eh?” With that, the monk nodded as best as he could despite his shaking and vanished once more on light feet.
Ayren sat beside the bed next to a short table which held another smaller bowl of lime. With all the practice of a master baker, she poured the white powder into the egg whites and beat them together with a bundle of birch twigs until the mixture was smooth.
Ayren made quick work of the old bandages on Loren’s forearm, peeling them away and tossing them to the stone floor in a heap. Next came a cloth soaked in deep red wine, which caused the boy to wince. He made to pull his arm back but found himself trapped in Ayren’s firm grip instead.
Rosele knelt by his bedside. He could not have been more than fifteen years old; his brown hair was slicked back on his head with sweat. She placed her hand on his left elbow and his tense body went nearly limp at her touch.
So young, she thought. And no more ready than the rest of us for what was coming. It pained her to think that he must be saved now only to be impressed into service once the enemy arrived at the walls.
Rosele wanted to laugh at the idea that she must distract herself from thoughts of war with wounds. Once Ayren had washed the dried blood on Loren’s arm away, all that remained was a large purple bruise and a finger-length gash at its center, halfway between his wrist and elbow. If not for such urgent news as she had from the council meeting, Rosele would have wanted nothing more than to watch the procedure in great detail, at least after a cup of wine to calm her stomach.
After all, the study of anatomy may be of great utility to the artist but that did not mean that every ghastly sight was equally enlightening regardless of the occasion. And soon all of Kaschar may see more such sights than they had ever anticipated.
Across the bed from Rosele, Ayren dipped Loren’s new bandages in the bowl of egg whites mixed with lime, ensuring that they were soaked through before removing them. Dextrous fingers twined linen around the boy’s forearm arm until it was wrapped entirely in wet bandages.
“Don’t move around until these harden,” Ayren commanded, nodding at the bandages. “Otherwise I’ll have to frighten Brother Marcus again and you wouldn’t want that, would you?” She stood and ruffled the boy’s hair with a meaty hand, then looked down at Rosele. “Now what is it, dear?”
Rosele cleared her throat.
“In private?” she offered.
Ayren’s eyes widened first in disbelief, then her lips spread into a broad and crooked smile.
“Here?” the surgeon mouthed silently. It took Rosele a moment to realize what Ayren must have meant and then she felt herself blushing.
“No, no,” she whispered, waving her hand dismissively. “I have news.”
With that, the other woman’s aspect hardened.
“Come this way,” Ayren said.
She led them both into the storeroom where Brother Marcus had retreated previously. Wooden shelves and cabinets lined the walls with an impressive array of dried herbs in glass jars, rolls of clean linens, and bottles of cheap wine. At the far end of the room sat a table with the familiar leather bundle of knives and other surgical implements that Ayren always carried with her.
Rosele peeked around the corner once to make sure no one else was close enough to overhear.
“If this is all some jest…” Ayren started softly.
Rosele shook her head, then trailed her fingers down the surgeon’s forearm, over the thick bones of her wrist, and into her calloused palm. The other woman must have felt Rosele trembling because she soon found both her hands enveloped in only one of Ayren’s.
“What is it?” Ayren asked.
Rosele took in a deep breath and wished for better words to say.
David Gowey 