“How did you know who I was?” said Tess when she could speak.
“I wasn’t sure until you confirmed it, but it seemed possible,” said Philomela. “Your case stuck with me. Your parents, when they learned you’d gone, were like characters in a bad play, overacted and overwrought. They were embarrassed to have brought me out for nothing. It didn’t have to be for nothing; I might’ve counseled them on handling the loss of you, or how to improve themselves for your eventual return. They weren’t interested. Underneath the huffing and puffing, I suspect they were relieved.”
This made Tess feel no better. “What about my sister? Not Seraphina, but—”
“Your twin?” Old Philomela’s memory hadn’t dulled a bit. “I met her, and her softhearted husband. I won’t lie: you cut her. She’s got walking and uncurling of her own to do, and without the boots and stubbornness. She’ll find her way. If she can’t, it isn’t your fault.”
Tess felt cut herself; a lukewarm wash of guilt made it sting. “But how did you come to be all the way out here?” she asked, feeling about for a less painful subject.
Mother Philomela laughed. “Would you believe, your departure got me thinking. I’ve never gone far afield myself, and I haven’t many years left. I’m on a farewell tour to as many hospices as I can reach upon my own ass.” Her eyes twinkled; Tess remembered her donkey. “Three down, and I feel hale as a cowherd. I may get all the way to Samsam before I’m done.”
Mother Philomela turned to Griss and laid hands upon his woolly head. “As for you, old friend: Annie chose that hilltop,” she said. “The dragon was an unlucky happenstance. You didn’t kill her. You each wanted to do right, and it all went wrong.”
“Wait, you knew his story?” said Tess. “It happened the way he said?”
“More or less,” said the old nun sadly. “I was born and raised in Trowebridge. Everyone of my generation knew the tale. It became a popular ballad.” She began to sing:
Then Johnny ran off, ne’er did repent,
And left his brother’s poor heart rent,
Left him there to rant and rave
At Annie’s nonexistent grave.
Griss perked up at the sound of her singing and joined in:
The years roll on, the worms fly by,
Our Annie’s tomb is in the sky.
Mother Philomela smiled wanly. “When the rest of the mind has fled, sometimes there’s music left. We’ll take care of him, daughter. But what do you intend to do next?”
Tess glanced back. Rain still drummed on the roof, but the outlines of the windows were becoming visible; behind a quilt of clouds, the sun was rising. “It almost feels like a sign from Heaven, finding you here,” she said. “I almost feel like I should stay.”
“Almost isn’t good enough,” said Philomela. “Just like guilt isn’t good enough.”
She was right, and Tess felt a weight come off her heart. She threw her arms around Griss and held him a moment. He smelled terrible, but Tess, friend to quigutl, didn’t mind such things. “You’ll be safe here,” she said, “away from Wreck and Ruin. I’ll miss you, though.”
Griss was weeping. “Oh, Annie, goodbye,” he sobbed. “I never said goodbye.”
“You just did. Goodbye, old love,” said Tess. She kissed his forehead, wiped her eyes, and was ready to go. The novices resumed spooning soup (the old man was a bottomless hole). Mother Philomela led Tess out to the courtyard, through drizzle and gloam, toward the front gates. It was still noisy outside, even though the thunder had ceased.
“You could stay and rest until the sun’s properly up,” said the nun, slowing her steps.
“Thank you, but I have promises to keep,” said Tess, although the noise was beginning to concern her as well. It had begun as thuds and clatters, but now there was shouting and snarling.
Mother Philomela detoured to one side of the courtyard and knocked on a door. “Sister Mishell,” she said, her voice light and calm, “ring the bell. Now, please.” Philomela gestured for Tess to keep still. A bright bell tolled, whereupon Mother Philomela took up a rusty fire poker that had been left near the gates, unbarred the doors, and swung them slowly inward.
At the gates of the hospice, Reg and Rowan battled two quigutl. The first quigutl leaped at Reg and got a frying pan to the face. It sprawled out cold on the ground. The second quigutl dodged left, feinted right, and then clamped its jaws upon Rowan’s meaty thigh.
His scream tore the air like lightning.
It was Pathka who’d fallen to the ground.
Tess fell to her knees in the mud beside him, scrabbling for the hot pulse at his throat, praying to every Saint she knew (except her sister) that he wasn’t dead. He shuddered and then took an enormous breath, but his eyes didn’t focus. His throat pouch had a three-inch gash in it that bled copiously.
Tess shielded him with her body from the mayhem that continued on all sides. Reg was shouting obscenities, Philomela was brandishing her poker, and Rowan was screaming incoherently. Then villagers descended in a flock, summoned by the bell, waving hay forks.
Mother Philomela ordered the villagers to seize Reg and haul him to the stocks, crying, “I will see him later, and he will be sorry to see me.” She approached Rowan cautiously, as if he were a roaring, thrashing bear with a quigutl clamped to his thigh. “Be still, or I’ll have to knock you out,” she said in a voice of unassailable authority. Rowan struggled to hold his roar to a whimper and his thrashing to a violent shudder.
“Little neighbor,” Mother Philomela said to the second quigutl, “if you release your grip, will his femoral artery gush and kill him? Hang on, if so.”
The quigutl carefully opened her mouth and moved away, leaving Rowan’s leg in the grip of a steel contraption, a set of false jaws as strong and spiky as a wolf trap.
“Teth,” said Kikiu, “tell her that he will bleed out as soon as anyone unclamps him.”
“What is that thing?” cried Tess. “And what are you doing here?”
“Bite enhancer,” said Kikiu mildly, as if it were not some heinous contraption of death. She drew nearer and pressed her hollow tongue to each of Pathka’s eyes, checking some unknown quigutl vital sign. “And my story can wait. My mother-utl needs care most urgently.”
Nuns bundled Pathka and Rowan onto portable cots and fetched them into the hospice. Tess helped as she could, keeping one eye on Kikiu. Why would the hatchling have come back with a steel trap in her mouth unless she intended to bite Pathka again?
Kikiu, as if she could read Tess’s suspicions, cocked her head spines sarcastically and gave Tess a fthep around the knees with her tail as she turned to follow the nuns inside.
* * *
The sisters specialized in palliative care, but they knew their way around surgery. Rowan was easy; they had him stitched and locked up with his companion in the village pillory by the end of the day. “Conspiring to commit violence against nuns” was the official charge. Reg and Rowan would be tried at the local lord’s convenience; the entire village of Muddle-on-the-Fussy was ready and eager to testify.
Pathka required more extensive interventions. In addition to his throat pouch perforation, he had a concussion and a dislocated dorsal arm. “It could be weeks before he can travel,” said Philomela, never one to honey-coat things. “But you’re welcome to stay until he’s fit.”