Chapter Thirty-Eight Picking Up the Pieces
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Picking Up the Pieces
Once the confusion that followed the fight had subsided, the first thing I did was procure a change of clothes.
Half of my garments were so tattered they fell to shreds as soon as I unlaced them.
My good red cloak was in need of repair again, and my leggings had become so stiff with filth I had to cut and peel them off, like paring a fruit.
At some point during the process, I fell asleep.
I stayed on at the castle in the wake of the great battle, tending to Jack and other patients.
And fending off the chirurgeon, who remained adamant that bloodletting was the proper treatment for every ailment, including blood loss.
I tried to be as good a doctor as my parents.
And perhaps a little kinder to my patients than my mother might have been.
There were casualties among the knights and archers, but on the whole the defenders had gotten off rather lightly, all things considered.
Each of the hunters had an unlikely story of a hairbreadth escape from death, stories that grew more unlikely with each retelling.
Jack had been the most severely wounded, although none of them had escaped unscathed.
Harry’s reaction to her leg getting eaten took me by surprise. I sought her out the day after the fight and asked if she wanted my help acquiring and fitting a prosthesis to replace the limb that had been devoured by a tree.
She shrugged. “No, thanks. I’m used to it. I’ll just wait until I grow another one.” And then she hopped away.
My family embarked for Skalla after only a short rest. Calla needed to resume whatever quest she had been on when my plea for help had interrupted her, and Jonquil had duties as well. Not to mention they needed to return the seven-league boots, which were out on the briefest of temporary loans.
While Jonquil prepared the dragon for flight, Calla gave me a hug, the chipmunk curled up on her shoulder taking the opportunity to nibble on my hair.
“Take care of yourself,” she said. “And come home soon.”
“You don’t think I should run as far as I can, as fast as I can?” I asked. “Maybe cross the sea? Or find a nice deep cave to hide in?”
She considered. “The kingdom of rabbits is surprisingly well protected. But you’d have to marry a rabbit.”
“I’ll take a pass on that one, then.”
“We’ll talk to the queen,” Liam said. “Maybe we can convince her to go easy on you.”
“Maybe.” I wasn’t optimistic.
“I hope she kills you,” the mirror muttered from his belt.
“If she doesn’t, I will. I’ll shatter on your floor and stab your toes with my shards.
In death, I shall have my revenge.” Similar dire pronouncements had issued from it nonstop since the battle, so it had been generally agreed that the mirror should be taken to Skalla and added to my stepmother’s collection. I wished them joy of each other.
The dragon reared up, causing a minor panic on the castle walls. “Time to go before they start pelting us with arrows again,” Jonquil said. “No one wants a restless fire-breather lingering about.”
“I could stay here,” Gnoflwhogir offered. “In case anyone else wishes to murder Melilot. I can murder them first.”
“I couldn’t possibly part you from Jonquil for so long,” I insisted hastily. Fortunately, she acquiesced without further comment, and soon they all departed on dragonback.
In the weeks that followed, when not preoccupied with medical care, I spent much of my time with Sam, who had made a full recovery.
In fact, after enough time had passed that I judged my patients were all healing nicely and capable of surviving my absence, Sam and I sequestered ourselves in the first empty room we found.
I was pleased to discover that after everything we’d been through, whatever reservations he’d held about sharing a bed before marriage were long gone.
We did not emerge for a day and a half. Except once.
“Where are you going?” Sam asked when I started putting my clothes on.
“I’m going to filch a better mattress from the women’s wing. We’re going to want to sleep sometime, and straw bedding won’t make that easy for me.”
“There’s been little enough sleeping so far.”
I smiled. “We can’t keep doing this forever.”
“Hm.” He brushed his lips across my neck, and I considered taking my clothes right back off again. “We’ll see.”
When we came up for air, I was prepared for disapproval from the Tailliziani—I had a response ready involving peculiar foreign customs—but to my surprise, there weren’t any comments.
Well, none aside from Clem expressing surprise we hadn’t made ourselves too sore to walk.
I wondered if the pair of us were so far outside the local expectations that we had become effectively invisible—if they did not know what to make of us, so they elected not to make anything of us at all.
Change came slowly to Tailliz as the weeks turned into months.
The refugees began to decamp back to the village, one small boat at a time launched from the end of the broken bridge.
Meanwhile, stonemasons, engineers, and architects had assembled to begin repairs.
Preparations for the royal wedding were also underway, albeit with a different bride.
The wedding date was delayed to allow a suitable period of mourning for Princess Angelique.
Gervase donned black and spoke little of her.
No one discussed the fact that his bride-to-be had slain his sister.
The reforms Gervase introduced to fulfill his promise to Jack caused upheavals in the court.
But Jack had not been mistaken about the loyalties of the troops.
They would hear no word against her or the other hunters, and the nobles found themselves compelled to support the continued leadership of General Jacqueline, along with the knighting of the rest. Thus Detachable Leg became Sir Harriet, The Nose Blower became Sir Katherine, Hat On Ear became Sir Maxine, and so on.
Sam simply became Sir Sam, and Clem insisted on being Sir Clem and said she would put an arrow “richt in th’ lug” of anyone who called her Clementine.
I hoped it would not be long before any ill feelings about them were overcome by the obvious benefits they offered.
Tailliziani shipping would surely profit from a knight who could generate wind at will, and the kingdom’s architecture was already demonstrating the advantages of somewhat larger windows.
But prejudice is not subject to common sense, so I supposed only time would determine which of the two would win out.
If I were a betting woman, though, I’d have wagered on the outcome that favored the hunters.
One holdout for the old ways of Tailliz was, unsurprisingly, the lion.
His complaints were relentless, and he interrupted every council meeting to air them.
Which meant the few I was invited to, as a sort of general consultant on magic, dragged on endlessly.
At least I was permitted to attend. The ban on women in the Great Hall had been one of the first rules to be disposed of.
“Haven’t you read chapter fifty-seven?” he moaned for what must have been the twentieth time. “This proposal is directly contradicted by footnote seventeen!”
After several weeks of this, Gervase had reached the limit of his patience. “Then your book is in need of revision!” he snapped.
The lion tottered up to the throne, one of his forelegs still wrapped in a cast that smelled of piss and onions; he insisted on being treated by the chirurgeon. “In need of revision?” He peered at the king. His lost spectacles had not yet been replaced, so he thrust his muzzle close.
Gervase drew back from the lion’s breath as politely as possible. “If reality opposes your book, then clearly it is your book that—”
“Are you,” the lion rumbled, “commissioning a second edition?”
The king paused. “I…suppose?”
“Well, I don’t know if I really have the time.
” The lion’s eyes were agleam with excitement.
“That would require a great deal of work. But I have accumulated new material over the years, and I suppose theories must be reexamined now and again. Perhaps I was overhasty in declaring humans a species of spider. They may be somewhat closer to frogs….” With a three-legged leap, he sprang past the astonished nobles, presumably to begin work immediately.
“Frogs,” I said. “Why? Because the humans who croak the loudest receive the greatest rewards?”
“I have no idea,” the queen-to-be remarked from Gervase’s side. She shifted uncomfortably in her chair; her wound was infection-free and mending well, but it still pained her. “Honestly, that went better than I expected.”
“I’m not sure I’d agree,” the king said. “We’re going to have to read it once he’s done.”
Another pocket of resistance to change was much more surprising to me—the Yvettes and Yvonnes.
A few of the younger ones came out of the women’s wing to mingle with society, but most of them remained cloistered in spite of their newly inaugurated freedoms. Toward the end of my stay at the castle, I began to wonder why, so I made my way to the sewing circle to find out.
“Oh, you’re back,” Eldest Yvette said when I arrived, acting for all the world as if I had been gone for no more than a few unremarkable days. “I’ve heard tell you’re a princess.”
“Yes,” I admitted. “I’m sorry for the deception.”
She glowered at me. “You should have said. Princesses have no business using a spinning wheel.”
So saying, she thrust a half-finished bonnet into my hands with the clear expectation that I would sit in my accustomed spot and commence chain stitching. So I did. And before I had a chance to ask any questions, one of the Yvonnes started a story.
“Once upon a time,” she said, “when the world was younger and the air smelled a little sweeter, there was a young girl who lived in a village near a forest. Her grandmother, who loved the girl dearly, had given her a hooded cape of red velvet and warned her always to be wary of wolves….”
I attended for a number of days, sewing and listening to folktales, before I gleaned what the difficulty was from snatches of conversation.
“All very well to say we can go,” one grumbled on the third day, “but go where? And do what?”
“I don’t think it’s safe,” said another.
“Princess Angelique could have told us whether—”
This last comment was silenced with a sharp glance.
“We are not to speak of her,” said Eldest Yvette, “by royal command.”
That caught me by surprise. I had noticed Angelique was seldom spoken of after her death, but I hadn’t been aware Gervase had ordered silence.
The Yvettes and Yvonnes, I realized, had been cast adrift.
No one had told them anything more than that they were free to leave the women’s wing.
No provision had been made to ease their departure or explain what was expected of them.
The person they would have trusted to lead them had been cut down with a sword and accused of murder, and now they couldn’t even discuss it.
I resolved to talk to Jack about helping them find their place in the kingdom; she wasn’t from Tailliz, and I didn’t think she’d realized there was any need for it. I certainly hadn’t.
For my own part, I could, perhaps, do one thing for them—explain what Angelique had done and why. I was not one of Gervase’s subjects, so I decided his decree did not apply to me.
And I had heard the tale from the princess herself.
“Once upon a time,” I began. It was the first time I had joined the storytelling there.
A head or two turned in my direction, but most of them continued spinning or sewing.
No one stopped me, though, so I went on.
“Once upon a time, when the world was younger and the laws were a little crueler, a child was born to a king and a queen. This was a great disappointment to the king and was considered a terrible waste of time and effort by most everyone in the land. The queen, you see, was getting on in years. So was the king, but no one really cared about that….”