Chapter 12 Sage
Sage
I woke tired and achy with my head stuffed with fae court etiquette and worries about the High Priestess demanding I make a public appearance.
Zinnia and I had talked for hours before I couldn’t stop yawning and she told me to go to bed where I’d tossed and turned, knowing Sir West was staring at me.
Now it was morning, I was back in the Gray, and I needed to shove all that information to the back of my mind and remember who I was pretending to be and what I was doing.
And what I was doing was dreading the day.
My body still hurt from running the trail until I threw up and from where Mikel and his friends — as well as Wells — had hit me, and I was terrified about what they planned for me.
Of course, another part of me, a part that was slowly growing in strength, was angry that I was afraid.
I was stronger than this.
I was stronger than them.
I had to be. Because if I wasn’t, my only remaining family member would die in the Gray like our horrible stepfather wanted. And that was unacceptable.
With a groan, I got out of bed and splashed water on my face. I just needed to pay attention to my surroundings and not be caught alone with them.
The memory of them ambushing me just before the log bridge on the running trail shuddered through me and I swallowed back my nausea.
Without a doubt Lord Rider would make us run the trail and I had to be ready for another attack.
Father, was this the attack I’d seen? The one where I was dead in the Gray?
I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to remember the vision. There’d been two attackers, I’d heard them, but I’d only partially seen the one…
And his boots had been brown. His pants as well. He hadn’t been wearing a Black Guard uniform.
That didn’t necessarily mean that Mikel and his friends wouldn’t be the ones to kill me, just that they wouldn’t be killing me while on duty. It also didn’t mean that I’d be safe on the trail, only that I wouldn’t die while running it with the other novices.
And there wasn’t anything I could do about it.
I couldn’t hide in my room and I didn’t want to. For however long it lasted, I was Sawyer Herstind. I didn’t have to bow to everyone and be meek.
I straightened my fresh uniform — having picked up two new clean ones from the quartermaster’s office yesterday afternoon — and stepped out into the hall with the other guardsmen on their way to the great hall for breakfast.
And while I was Sawyer Herstind, a man, I also wasn’t stupid. I made an easy-to-carry sandwich for breakfast and took it back to my room to eat.
Without allies, mealtime was just awkward and uncomfortable.
There was no one to watch my back or glare down anyone who might want to try anything.
Sure, no one had even tried to trip me since my first lieu day and the oranges had even come back, but I wasn’t foolish enough to assume that was a permanent change.
I also wasn’t foolish enough to assume Tyon was an ally.
I might have come across him again yesterday afternoon and spent another few hours teaching him to read, but that didn’t make us friends.
Even if we were, Tyon was probably the weakest of the novices, and I refused to put him in a position where the others would pick on him.
My breakfast done, I headed down to the infirmary.
Yesterday, when I’d gone to the quartermaster’s office and gotten my clean uniforms for the new rotation — as well as confirmed that I wouldn’t receive clean bedding until after the next rotation — I’d learned that my morning duties for the rotation would be in the infirmary…
and that Mikel and Durand were on “scrub work,” whatever that was, while Bramwell, Hamelin, and Ambrose were on scullery duty.
I was grateful I wasn’t back in the stables or assigned to the laundry, but I was also disappointed that none of the men who’d threatened me had been assigned there instead.
But of course, life wasn’t fair, and I shouldn’t have expected any of them to be punished for what they did, especially since I hadn’t told anyone and I doubted any of them had confessed.
At least with being assigned infirmary duty I’d have Payne, as well as Kit and Lewin if they were awake, to keep me company.
Flint also had been kind to me compared to everyone else, so with luck, my morning duties would be a relatively calm reprieve to what I expected the rest of my days were going to be, and maybe I’d learn some useful healing skills.
Except when I pushed open the infirmary door, a different fae wearing a pale blue doublet stood in the middle of the room. And unlike Flint, this fae also wore a longsword at his hip.
The man’s golden eyes narrowed. “You’re as small as everyone says you are.”
He didn’t sound pleased to see me.
Then his attention shifted to above and behind me and he huffed. “Good. You’re both early.”
I glanced behind me to see one of the other novices, Garridan, step into the doorway behind me.
The man was almost as bad as Tyon when it came to fighting, but from the snippets of conversation I’d overheard that made sense since before his name had been drawn in the lottery, he’d led a relatively sheltered life and had just taken his vows to be a priest of the Great Father.
“I’m Reef,” the fae said. “I’m the healer at the Black Tower for this rotation, but I’m also a guardsman. I completed my fifty-year service and have stayed on as a healer.”
Which explained why he had a sword. He’d trained as a warrior as well as a healer.
“Garridan, you’re with me. Sawyer—” the fae leveled his hard golden stare on me.
“The last room at the end of the patient rooms is a cleaning room. The water has magical cleansing properties. I want you to wipe down every surface in this main room then scrub the floor.” His eyes narrowed.
“Don’t drink the water. It will kill you. ”
Cleaning duty? Well at least it was better than mucking out stalls and hauling wheelbarrows of soiled hay to a manure pile on the other side of the Tower’s walls.
Reef gestured to Garridan to follow him and headed down a second hall, away from the patient rooms. “Do you have any healing knowledge, Garridan?”
“No,” Garridan said as he hurried after the fae.
“No worries. We’ll get you started on the basics.”
My throat tightened and a bitter taste filled my mouth. I knew I shouldn’t have been disappointed, but it still stung to know that I was relegated to cleaning duties while the other novice was going to learn a new skill.
Sure, I knew some basic healing, having helped my mother, Udara, and the other maids tend to our family’s wounded men when they returned from a bandit hunt, but Reef didn’t know that. No one did.
And I knew right away it was foolish to think Reef would assign Garridan cleaning duties tomorrow and teach me. This was part of my punishment and I had to accept that.
With a sigh, I headed down the hall with the patient rooms. Lewin’s door was partially open, but the man was still asleep. Next to him, Kit and Payne were talking quietly with each other and I didn’t want to disturb them — there’d be time later, even if it was at the beginning of my lunch break.
The room at the end of the hall was about the same size as the patient rooms without the attached bathing room, and I touched the fae stone by the door to brighten the light inside.
Along the right-hand side was a pump and basin like in my room and large counter.
Three buckets were neatly stacked beside the counter, and above them was a rack with four rungs holding various sized cloths and towels.
To the left were a few shelves with bedding and other supplies, a couple of the rolling tables I’d seen Flint use to hold his medical equipment when he’d worked on Kit, and a collection of dusters, brooms, and mops.
There weren’t any medical supplies, so the cloths and towels were probably used exclusively for cleaning, and anything that touched a patient was probably in another room — probably the room Reef was showing Garridan right now.
I half filled one of the buckets with water and stared at the strange shimmering blue glow emanating from the liquid. It also gave off a sharp sour smell that made me wrinkle my nose in disgust.
It was definitely magical and not something I’d want to drink.
How many times had someone tried to drink it before Reef felt it was necessary to include the warning not to consume it? Which meant there were either a number of really stupid men in the guard or that Reef thought I was stupid.
Probably the later.
I grabbed three of the cloths hanging on the rack, hooked them in my belt for when I needed them, and carried the bucket back down the hall to the main room. With my sore muscles, even the half full bucket was almost too heavy for me, but I managed to get it into the room without spilling.
I started in the corner closest to the hall with the patient rooms and got to work wiping down every flat surface and every area where I thought someone might put their hands or fingers.
My medical knowledge was pretty basic: keep things clean and bandage tightly.
But it made sense that if you wanted to keep wounds clean, you needed to keep your hands clean, and since Reef hadn’t given me more detailed instructions than that, I had to hope whatever I was doing met whatever his cleaning standards were.