“Pah!” Master Harin spat. “Cumbrael may have been forced into the Realm by the King’s sword but always she seeks to promote her blasphemy. I was approached many times by god worshipping clerics seeking my conversion. Even now she sends them across her borders to spread their heresy amongst the Faithful. I fear your Order and mine will have much work in Cumbrael in the years to come.” He shook his head sadly. “A pity, war was ever a terrible thing.”
They gave him a cell in the south wing, bare apart from a bed and a single chair. He undressed quickly and slipped into the bed, enjoying the unfamiliar but luxuriant feel of clean fresh linen. Despite the comfort, sleep was slow in coming; Master Harin’s talk of Cumbrael had disturbed him. War was ever a terrible thing. But there was something in the Master’s eyes that seemed almost eager for war to be visited on the heretical Fief.
Sister Sherin’s coldness was another concern. She clearly wanted little to do with him, which he found bothered him greatly, and had no regard for the Sixth Order, which he found bothered him not at all. He resolved to try harder to win her confidence in the morning. He would do everything she asked of him without question or complaint, he had a suspicion she would respect little else.
However, what kept him awake longest was Aspect Elera’s refusal to answer his questions. He had been so sure she would provide the answers he craved that the prospect of a refusal hadn’t even occurred to him. She knows, he thought with certainty. So why won’t she tell me?
He fell asleep with the questions tumbling through his mind, finding no answers in his dreams.
He forced himself out of bed at first light, washed thoroughly in the trough in the courtyard and reported for work a good measure before the fifth hour. Sherin was there before him. “Fetch bandages from the store room,” she said. “People will soon be at the gate seeking treatment.” She frowned as he moved past her. “You smell… better, at least.”
He borrowed a trick from Nortah and forced a smile. “Thank you sister.”
The first was an old man with stiff joints and endless tales of his time as a sailor. Sister Sherin listened politely to his stories as she massaged balm into his joints, giving him a jar of the substance to take home. The next was a thin young man with trembling hands and bloodshot eyes who complained of severe pains in the belly. Sister Sherin felt his stomach and the vein in his wrist, asked a few questions and told him that the Fifth Order did not give redflower to addicts.
“Up yours Order bitch!” the young man spat at her.
“Watch your mouth,” Vaelin said, stepping forward to throw him out but Sherin stopped him with a glare. She stood impassively as the young man swore at her viciously for a full minute whilst casting wary glances at Vaelin before storming out, his profanity echoing through the hallway.
“I don’t need a protector,” Sherin told Vaelin. “Your skills are not required here.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, teeth gritted, failing to summon another Nortah smile.
They came in all ages and sizes, men and women, mothers with children, sisters with brothers, all cut, bruised, pained or sick. Sherin seemed to know the nature of their ailments instinctively, working without pause or rest, tending to them all with equal care. Vaelin watched, fetched bandages or medicine when he was told, trying to learn but instead finding himself preoccupied with Sherin, fascinated by the way her face changed when she worked, the severity and wariness disappearing into compassion and humour as she joked and laughed with her charges, many of whom she clearly knew well. That’s why they come, he realised. She cares.
And so he tried as hard as he could to help, fetching, carrying, restraining the fearful and the panicked, offering awkward words of comfort to the wives or sisters or children who brought the wounded to be healed. Most were in need of little more than medicine or a few stitches, some, the ones Sherin knew so well, had prolonged sicknesses and took the longest time to treat as she asked numerous questions and offered advice or sympathy. Twice grievously wounded people came in. The first was a man with a crushed stomach who had walked into the path of a runaway cart. Sister Sherin felt the vein in his neck and began pumping at his chest with both fists clamped over his sternum.
“His heart stopped beating,” she explained. She kept at it until blood began to flow from the man’s mouth. “He’s gone.” She moved back from the bed. “Fetch a trolley from the store room and take him to the morgue. It’s in the south wing. And clean the blood from his face. The family don’t like to see that.”
Vaelin had seen death before but her coldness took him by surprise. “That’s all? There’s nothing else you can do?”
“A cart weighing half a ton ran over his stomach turning his guts to mush and his spine to powder. There is nothing else I can do.”
The second badly wounded man was brought in by the Realm Guard in the evening, a stocky fellow with a crossbow bolt through his shoulder.