The Doctor looked away from the sunset, gazing up the road, which was lined with tall trees standing in sandy earth on both sides. An orange-brown haze hung in the air above the swaying tops of the grander carriages ahead. “Are we nearly there yet?”
“Very nearly, mistress. This is the longest day’s travel on either leg. The scouts should be in sight of the camp ground and the forward party ought to have the tents erected and the field kitchens set up. It is a long draw, but they say the way to look at it is as saving a day.”
Ahead of us on the road were the grand carriages and covered wagons of the royal household. Immediately in front of us were two hauls, their broad shoulders and rumps swaying from side to side. The Doctor had refused a driver. She wanted to take the whip herself (though she used it little). This meant that we had to feed and care for the beasts ourselves each evening. I did not appreciate this, though my fellow pages and apprentices certainly did. So far the Doctor had taken on a much higher proportion of this menial work than I’d expected, but I resented doing any of it at all, and found it hard to believe that she could not see she was exposing both of us to ridicule by taking on such a degrading task.
She was looking at the sunset again. The light caught the edge of her cheek, outlining it in a colour like that of red gold. Her hair, falling loose across her shoulders, was glossily radiant with highlights like spun ruby.
“Were you still in Drezen when the rocks fell from the sky, mistress?”
“Hmm? Oh. Yes. I didn’t leave until about two years later.” She seemed lost in thought, and her expression suddenly melancholy.
“Did you come by way of Cuskery, by any chance, mistress?”
“Why, Yes, Oelph, I did,” the Doctor said, her expression lightening as she turned to me. “You’ve heard of it?”
“Vaguely,” I said. My mouth had gone quite dry while I wondered whether to say anything about what I had heard from Walen’s page and Jollisce. “Umm, is it far from there to here?”
“The voyage is a good half a year,” the Doctor said, nodding. She smiled up at the sky. “A very hot place, lush and steamy and full of ruined temples and various odd animals that have the run of the place because they are held to be sacred by some ancient sect or another. The air is saturated with the smell of spices, and when I was there there was a full night, when Xamis and Seigen had both long set, almost together, and Gidulph, Jairly and Foy were in the day sky, and Iparine was eclipsed by the world itself and for a bell or so there was only the starlight to shine on the sea and the city, and the animals all howled into the darkness and the waves I could hear from my room sounded very loud, though it was not really dark, just silver. People stood in the streets, very quiet, looking at the stars, as though relieved to find their existence was not a myth. I wasn’t in the street just then, I was… I’d met a terribly nice Sea Company captain that day. Very handsome,” she said, and sighed.
In that instant she was like a young girl (and I a jealous youth).
“Did your ship go straight from there to here?”
“Oh no, there were four voyages after Cuskery: to Alyle on the Sea Company barquentine Face of Jairly,” she said, and smiled broadly, staring ahead. “Then from there to Fuollah on a trireme, of all things… a Farossi vessel, ex-Imperial navy, then overland to Osk, and from there to Illerne by an argosy out of Xinkspar, finally to Haspide on a galliot of the Mifeli clan traders.”
“It all sounds most romantic, mistress.”
She gave what looked like a sad smile. “It was not without its privations and indignities on occasion,” she said, tapping at the top of her hoot, “and once or twice this old dagger was drawn, but yes, looking back, it was. Very romantic.” She took a deep breath and let it out, then swivelled and looked up into the skies, shading her eyes from Seigen.
“Jairly has not yet risen, mistress,” I said quietly, and was surprised at the coldness I felt. She looked at me oddly.
Some sense returned to me. No matter that since my fever in the palace, when she had said that we ought to be friends, she was still my mistress and I was still her servant as well as her apprentice. And as well as a mistress, I had a Master. Probably nothing I could find out from the Doctor would be new to him, for he had many sources, but I could not be sure, and so I supposed I had an obligation to him to find out all I could from her, in case some small piece of it might prove useful.
“Was that — I mean taking the Mifeli clan ship from Illerne to Haspide — how you came to be employed by the Mifelis?”
“No, that was just coincidence. I helped around the seamen’s infirmary for a while after I first landed before one of the younger Mifelis needed treatment on a homebound ship — it had signalled ahead to the Sentry Isles. The Mifelis’ own doctor then suffered terribly from seasickness and would not go out on the cutter to meet the galleon. I was recommended to Prelis Mifeli by the infirmary’s head surgeon, so I went instead. The boy lived, the ship came in and I was made the Mifeli head-family doctor right there on the docks. Old man Mifeli doesn’t waste time making decisions.”
“And their old doctor?”
“Pensioned off.” She shrugged.
I watched the rear end of the two hauls for a while. One of them shat copiously. The steaming shit disappeared under our wagon, but not before wreathing us in its vapours.
“Dear me, what an awful smell,” the Doctor said. I bit my tongue. This was one of the reasons that people who were in a position to do so usually kept as much distance between themselves and beasts of burden as they could.
“Mistress, may I ask you a question?”
She hesitated for a moment. “You have been asking me various questions already, Oelph,” she said, and graced me with a sly, amused look. “I take it you mean may you ask me a question that may be impertinent?”
“Umm…”
“Ask away, young Oelph. I can always pretend I didn’t hear you.”
“I was just wondering, mistress,” I said, feeling most awkward, and very warm all of a sudden, “why you left Drezen?”
“Ah,” she said, and taking up the whip waggled it over the yokes of the two hauls, barely tickling their necks with the end of it. She looked briefly at me. “Partly the urge to have an adventure, Oelph. Just the desire to go somewhere nobody I knew had been before. And partly… partly to get away, to forget somebody.” She smiled brightly, dazzlingly at me for a moment before looking away up the road again. “I had an unhappy love affair, Oelph. And I am stubborn. And proud. Having made up my mind to leave and having announced that I would travel to the other ends of the world, I could not — I would not — back down. And so I hurt myself twice, once by falling for the wrong person, and then a second time by being too obstinate — even in a more temperate mood — to retreat from a commitment made in a fury of injured pride.”
“Was this the person who gave you the dagger, mistress?” I asked, already hating and envying the man.
“No,” she said, with a sort of snorting laugh which I thought was most unladylike. “I had been wounded by him quite enough without carrying such a token of his.” She gazed down at the dagger, sheathed as usual in the top of her right boot. “The dagger was a gift from… the state. Some of the decoration on the dagger was given to me by another friend. One I used to have terrible arguments with. A double-edged gift.”