Duke Baird of Queenscove looked down on the now sleeping figure of Veralidaine Sarrasri, completely confident in his diagnosis. Drumming his fingers on a convenient windowsill, the chief palace healer turned to Alanna, who had been hovering at the bedside "You didn't need me to tell you that the lass had the fever! You’re an accomplished healer yourself - you do know the symptoms."
Alanna sighed, "I am not fond of diagnosing my friends Baird. Unusual as that may sound to you, I don't trust my judgment when it comes to diagnosing someone as close to me as my children."
"I never thought I'd see the day when you admitted that you didn't trust your judgement!" Duke Baird said wonderingly, shaking his head.
"Well, you won't see it again" Alanna retorted, nettled. The Healer's only response was a grin - which was only partially hidden by his left hand.
Daine stirred fretfully, blankets slipping. With a sigh Duke Baird straightened them; a task that didn't require thought, Baird had straightened more blankets in his time then most have had hot dinners. He now gave is professional judgement: "There isn't much anyone can do for the girl, she has a temperature hot enough to fry eggs on, a rapid pulse and the fever is giving her body merry hell. But it shouldn't be fatal - just leave her weak as a kitten for a few months."
"Afew months?" Alanna was incredulous.
"This is fever Alanna! No ordinary fever, a fever given by an immortal. The human body isn't equipped to deal with this sort of thing; it finds it hard enough to combat normal mortal diseases, let alone a foreign strain." The man said firmly. "Of course it would leave a victims body extremely weak."
Alanna only found one thing amiss with Baird's explanation, "If this fever is so hard for the body to fight - why isn't it fatal?"
"How am I supposed to know?" Duke Baird was feeling irritated now "I'm a healer, not a god - the human body is still a complete mystery to us. All I know is that - even though it can be fatal, it rarely is. Anyway - if Daine was going to die of unicorn fever, she would have died within five minutes of contracting the disease."
The Lioness flushed, temper flaring dangerously. "I only asked a question Baird, no need to go up on your high horse with me."
"Your high horse? You of all people telling me to…"
Baird was interrupted mid tirade by a worried face poking around the door.
"Excuse me Baird, Alanna?" Onua, her face a comical mixture of worry and amusement, walked into the room. "If you two have quite finished I recommend you tell Numair that Daine isn't on the brink of death. That hallucinating fit she had earlier…Well it 'unnerved' him somewhat. He's getting rather - "
" Irritated. I may go so far to say angry." A voice, drawling and sarcastic, permeated the room. "Angry enough that if Onua hadn't been restraining me I would have found some other means to enter this room. As it is, I have very decided thoughts and morals on the subject of knocking ones friends out of ones way, or blasting rooms open, so I have had to wait on your esteemed permission to enter. Which has taken it's own sweet time to come may I add." The voice now had a head, currently it was glaring at the realms chief healer. "I do have the right to know of my students wellbeing, Baird." Numair stalked into the healer's room, in a way, Alanna realised with a pang, that Daine would have described as extremely similar to an offended cat.
Baird, despairing, left the room. After far too many years then he cared to remember of medical practise among temperamental mages, Duke Baird of Queenscove knew when to back off.
~
From where I am standing, in the shadow of the doorframe, she looks calm. Just lying still, long curls contrasting sharply with the white pillow they are resting on. Lips slightly open, eyelashes caressing her face in sleep. But now I walk close; to the end of the bed, and I see glimpses of the turmoil her body is going through, trying to heal. Her breath is thin and ragged, face a myriad of scratches. Two bright pink patches cover the normally even surface of her cheeks - the fevers work. Sweat, a pearly sheen against her face gives me the impression that she is burning up, and yet she shivers as if caught in the fiercest of Scanran blizzards.
The blankets slip. I see blood soaking through the bandage on her right arm. The wound stubbornly refuses to heal. Like the rest of her. The cut on her abdomen - I shudder at the memory - will probably leave scars. I reach forward and cover her up again, allowing the fabric to hide - at least for a time - the things I can not bare to see. This effort appears to be in vain however, for she is tensing up and fretting before my very eyes, the blankets completely abandoning her slight frame and falling to the floor. To reveal…
To reveal a perfectly respectable white shift. Honestly, what was I expecting to see?
~
Numair picked up the fallen blankets, feeling in dire need for a cold shower. But he had no time for such contemplation, as Daine suddenly sat bold upright and started to scream.
"Ma? Get up! I'll find another healer - you goin' t'be 'right soon. Ma!" Daine's voice had gone back to a Gallan brogue - almost four years of vocal coaching forgotten in her delirious state. Numair, with all compromising thoughts pushed firmly to the back of his mind, held the girl firmly by the shoulders, rocking her gently.
"I'm sorry, Ma - I wouldna have gone to Lori's if I'd known. Honest to Gods. You should've come to Lori's with me, the babe was fair gorgeous! An' you like em' more then me. I'm so sorry Ma…"
"Hush, Magelet," said Numair, gently. "It's alright, it'd just a dream, just your brain deciding to overheat and making you remember things. You're safe now, it's alright…" He kept this up for some time, holding her hand and being the ideal bed-sitter, whilst inwardly thinking how pleasant it would be to sew Perin's lips together. By the time Numair had the lovely idea of coating the thread in hydrochloric acid before using it for the purpose mentioned above, Daine had gone to sleep.
Numair, wincing slightly, stood up. He had been thinking of other things aside a clerks torturing session during the time it took for his muscles to stiffen in the chair.
It was time to visit Volney Rain.
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6. VOLNEY RAIN
No one ever knew quite what to make of the Middle City.
Wedged like an afterthought between the slums and the gentry, it was an odd combination of the pretentious and the un-ambitious. Those of the hard working breed who just wanted to provide for their un-ambitious, hard working wife and family - and those who longed for other people to do it for them. People who didn't know or care about anything besides their work and their own, reasonably comfortable, lives - and those who did know - and care - using crude imitation of airs, education, and graces to give themselves some twisted comfort. Often resulting in rather alarming identity crisis's.
But Numair Salmalìn, in a quiet way, liked the Middle City. Its eccentricities, it's quirks, were both entertaining and interesting. It also lacked the dance of manners and diplomacy, the never ceasing whirl of words and cryptic messages which was as common - and important - as breathing in the Palace.
Thoughts on the Middle city, however, were not in the Mage's mind as he jostled his way through the crowded streets; politely but firmly refusing to by a bushel of Poor Man's Oranges (sold at a Rich Man's Prices.) No, his thoughts were a quarter of a mile behind him. In the chair near Daine's bed, and three streets ahead of him. In Filagree Lane: where - between the brewery and the apothecary - a small man of Tyranian origan and formidable Carthaki business sense was currently staring at the remnants of his lunch.
It had been a good lunch, too.
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Volney Rain passed a hand through his hair and surveyed the canvas in front of him. Reaching from dilapidated floor to leaky ceiling, it had been a costly thing. A costly thing which now had delicate pattern of glutinous rice (with sesame oil) and slightly charred cloud-ear mushrooms with bok-choi and honey-soy splattered across its surface. If the man had been even remotely religious he probably would've been thinking that even Shakith wouldn't be able See a way to turn a canvas covered in what had once been his lunch into a portrait of Lord Genlith's wife. As it was, Volney Rain simply thought that his attempt at a more complicated branch of cookery had ruined a new, expensive, canvas. And he had no chance in hell of ordering another one, then painting a Noble on it, within a week.
Although, you had to admit - the artisan took a step backwards - there was a noticeable and rather alarming resemblance to his subject in the thing. Maybe if I join this splotch here, mmph-hmph…Volney stopped, shaking his head. He liked breathing to much to present the Lady Venezia of Genlith a portrait drawn with even a hint of accuracy.
"Who or what is that, Rain?" A long, familiar shadow made its appearance on the wall, across the culinary Lady Genlith. "Venezia?"
"Mmph-hmph. I had just, mmph, finished making that observation, Numair." Volney turned around, an expression of deep chagrin upon his neat, dark features. "But, my friend, what you see before you was never meant to adorn a sheet of canvas. Mmph-hmph. Its purpose was to - mmph - fill my stomach.
"Well, whatever you were making to fill your stomach obviously desired to be elsewhere." Numair stepped into the little room, stooping slightly to accommodate his size. "Mithros and Minos! That really is the spitting image of her ladyship."
"Neither Mithros nor Minos had anything to do with it!" The artist snapped. "I left the fire unattended, mmph-hmph!"
"Whatever the case, do you have a chair buried somewhere under all these products of the artistic temperament? It's a pain in the back looking down at you."
"And, mmph-hmph, it's a pain in the neck looking up at you." Volney said tiredly, dragging out a chair. The Mage sat down, gratefully. He spread his hands.
"Rain, I've come to beg a favour off of you…"
"Of course! Why else you grace me with your lengthy presence, mmph-hmph?"
" Please, let me finish. You know how when I asked you whether you could paint a miniature of Daine without needing her to sit for you?
"Mmph-hmph."
"Well, could you do it now?
"It's already done." Volney gave a self-satisfied smile, his short-sighted black eyes dancing behind their copper-framed glasses.
"I thought you were giftless!" Numair stared incredulously at the elderly, miraculous, paint and soy streaked, wonderful little man in front of him.
"It doesn't take your sort of gift to paint the portrait of a friend, lad." Volney said quietly. "Especially one who has prettiness and presence enough to make an old man like me wish I was a good deal younger. Mmph-hmph." Numair blushed.
Let's see it then." He said, gruffly, feeling a fool. Volney 'tetched' wearily at him and stood up.
"Patience, Numair! Do you expect me to have the thing permanently on my person, mmph-hmph?"
I would. Numair thought to himself, though he gave his friend - who was 'tetching' all the more - an apologetic half-smile as he bustled around the shop. Eventually, with a muffled cry of "Mmph-hmph!" Volney Rain held out a small, oval shaped canvas.
It was the most beautiful thing Numair had ever seen.
Every plain and rise of her face, the stubborn chin and small - almost childlike - curve of her cheek. The tiny scar at the corner of one blue-grey eye. Given to her by a sky-blue dragonet a year before. The far off, almost sombre expression - as if she was thinking of something on another plain of existence. To which only she, and only she, had the key to enter. The smoky brown curls which fell, even in a painting, about her face as if tossed the wind. To Numair she was as wonderful as any divinity. He looked up, an expression of gratitude in his dark eyes so heartfelt as to be almost painful, at the artist who had painted her. The little main with the neatly brushed white hair and the neat, copper framed spectacles and the neat little face as brown and wrinkled as a walnut. The little man with the small, neat, childlike hands. The small, wonderful, neat hands - slightly spattered with age and paint - which had somehow created this small, wonderful image of his student. The small, neat little man with the sharp - glaring - black eyes and the educated voice. The educated voice which was stating - loudly - that if he didn't stop gawping than he'd give his precious miniature the same treatment as Lady Venezia. (Mmph-hmph!)
"I'm sorry, Volney." Numair said at last, passing his tongue over his suddenly dry lips. "It's just…How am I ever going to repay you, my friend? Name your price and you can have it. Except if it includes giving back this superlative work of yours, if it does - then I'll be heading for the hills." Volney laughed, his own voice catching slightly in his throat.
"No payment is necessary, Numair. Just think of it as your Midwinter gift a few weeks early. A gift for the two of you."
"Oh come on, Rain," Numair interjected, imploringly, "there must be something?"
"We-eel." Volney said thoughtfully, gazing intently at Lady Venezia, "Come to think of it, I could do with another canvas. Mmph-hmph" He gave a mock shudder. "I, hmph, don't fancy courting the Genlith's reaction if I bring this modern beauty in."
"Done!" Numair, eyes aflame once again with that overwhelming expression of gratitude, leaned down and wordlessly gave the artists shoulder a hard squeeze, then - portrait tucked safely in his shirt - strode out of the room.
Volney Rain watched him go.
It was touching to see Numair Salmalìn, a man who had drifted from woman to woman over the years, falling in and out of love with them as frequently and methodically as the sun rose and fell, so obviously besotted with the girl with the grey-blue eyes and stubborn chin whom he had painted completely and faultlessly from memory. It wasn't as if Veralidaine Sarrasri was the most beautiful creature that he had ever painted, far from it. There had been many a remarkable woman (and many a remarkable man, if it came to it,) whom he considered far superior in looks to the girl. Nor was he the genius some seemed to think of him as. Like Daine, there were many superior to him. "But, mmph-hmph," he ruminated, examining Lady Venezia once again. "If I can make even one being look at me the way the Salmalìn lad looked at me today… Well, I must be doing something right."
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