Jourd’Muerta, 21 Novena
4019 of the Third Age

Midwinter Eve

Ghia had not entirely expected the busyness of the hospitalis today. Surely, Midwinter Eve did bring its own sort of bustle, a fevered energy that gripped the soul of the commonfolk no matter one’s age—but that didn’t always translate into a busy hospitalis, not the way a full moon did, or if someone invoked capricious Fortuna by saying the invocation, “It’s quiet tonight.”

So far as she knew no one had spoken the cursed words, and in the previous years she’d worked Midwinter Eve her domain had never been quite as bustley as it was today.

But then, in previous years they were not still dealing with an influx of wounded soldiers. Troops, returning home victorious from their latest campaign abroad, had come through the East Gate just over a sevenday past, and while the initial chaos had settled down considerably, the hospitalis did still have more patients abed than usual.

Yet it was more than just the added patients, some far less patient with their healing progress than others, that piled on the healers’ workload: one of the castle’s cooks came in with burns to his arms—something about a “pudding explosion”—severe enough he wasn’t going back to work today, or for several days. He wasn’t happy about it, and likely neither was the head cook, already stretched to the limit as it was preparing for tonight’s supper for the nobility and tomorrow’s even larger feast—but Ghia wouldn’t have been worth her healer’s smock if she’d cleared him for duty.

A pack of kids had gotten into some mischief in the bowels of the castle and sustained minor injuries—scrapes, cuts, bruises, a broken arm for the ringleader. It was lucky they hadn’t drowned. Ghia had patched them up with a good dose of scolding, though true to tell, she felt odd reprimanding children no more than a decade younger than she. Still, it had seemed to work; they’d looked frightened enough, at least, and had responded to her words appropriately.

Not that she thought that would put an end to their mischief-making; far from it. But maybe they’d choose a less dangerous place next time. She could hope.

Those alone had taken up her morning and into her afternoon, and the healers working under her had had their own share of drop-ins to deal with. Ghia had skipped her dinner, not even making it back to her mother’s office to sip from the cup of tea she’d managed to make herself in the late morning. It was room temperature now but that didn’t stop her from taking a moment to down the thing, letting it invigorate her and prepare her for the rest of her shift.

She’d barely finished draining her mug when Giselle popped into the head healer’s office, a smile on her face that set Ghia ill at ease.

“Jules is here,” Giselle said, her tone not helping. “Do you want me to see what he needs?”

Ghia allowed herself a minor frown at her oldest and closest friend. “Are you done with your rounds?”

Giselle shrugged, straightened the smock she wore over her peplos. She’d started wearing peploi to work several months ago, emboldened by Ghia’s tomboyishness, she’d said. So far, negative reactions had been minimal, or at least not voiced. If any were, Ghia was ready to go to war on her friend’s behalf.

“Not quite, but I’ve got a few minutes. I can take this, let you have a proper dinner break.”

Ghia reached out, a featherlight touch against her friend’s mind: an honest desire to let Ghia take a break, and—yes, there it was. Giselle’s ridiculous assumption that there was someting more to Ghia’s friendship with Jules than just…that. Friendship.

And not a particularly close one at that.

Now if Ghia insisted on dealing with Jules, she’d prove Giselle right. She should let her friend deal with the First Regiment’s Chief Medical Officer. Giselle was wrong, and Ghia had no idea where she’d even gotten the silly idea in the first place.

She opened her mouth to say just that, to tell Giselle to go ahead and see what the CMO needed and she would take a proper break, off her feet—and was promptly interruped by a knock on the open door of the office.

Jules leaned against the frame, hands in his pockets—he was wearing trousers today instead of his standard fustanella, Ghia noticed, though she wasn’t sure why she noticed that. His black hair was disheveled, his green eyes dull from their usual sparkle, and though he’d shaved the beard that had grown on the road home from Nucalif, a shadow of stubble graced his strong jawline.

The rest of it, she knew why she noticed; he looked like Muerta Herself had dragged him to the hospitalis door. If anything, he was more haggard than he’d been upon arriving home. She’d be a terrible healer indeed if she hadn’t noticed any of it.

Despite his clear illness, Jules managed a smile for both of them. “Healers Ghia, Giselle,” he said, and his voice was as rough as the rest of him. “Hope I’m not interrupting.”

Giselle recovered first. “Not at all, Chief,” she said, bobbing a quick curtsey to him. “I was just on my way to finish my rounds. I’ll leave you two alone,” she added, flitting away from the office—but not before giving Ghia a very pointed wink.

Ghia could have cheerfully strangled her friend, but she pushed the desire away. Jules clearly needed something only a healer could provide, and hunting down Giselle and making her pay for that wink would interfere.

“You look awful,” she said to him, before snapping her mouth shut so fast she almost bit her tongue. Not what she’d meant to say at all.

Jules chuckled. “There’s that sharp tongue. I missed your barbs the past four months.”

Ghia felt heat creep up her face and silently cursed the body that didn’t know she wasn’t kindling and didn’t need to be set on fire at the slightest provocation. “I shouldn’t have said that. Or not in that way. I meant—”

“I know what you meant,” he cut her off, tone gentle. “And I won’t tell your mother that you spoke to me as a friend instead of a patient.” He winked, and the flames on Ghia’s face intensified. “But I’d prefer you speak to me that way, even if I am, technically, your patient. I don’t want to be coddled.”

“Very well,” she said, clasping her hands in front of her in an effort to keep them from fidgeting. “Then as your friend, I’ll say you can’t be my patient—technically—if you haven’t even told me your chief complaint.”

Jules’ smile was brittle. “You can’t guess?”

“I can do better than that. I can diagnose.” She crossed her arms in front of her. “Are you sure you want me to start?”

She held his gaze, letting the diagnosis they both knew she’d make hang between them like a threat. Battle fatigue.

Was it premature? Perhaps, except Ghia didn’t just see it on Jules’ physical body; she could sense it in his surface thoughts. The exhaustion, the shock…the disillusionment.

Eventually Jules dropped her gaze and sighed heavily. “I can’t sleep. Feel as if I haven’t had a wink since….” He shook his head and cleared his throat. “Came to raid your tea stash. With permission, of course.”

“Of course,” she said, her tone gentle now. Relief seeped through her that he hadn’t called her bluff. She didn’t want to be the reason he was put on forced medical leave. Not if it was something he could work through without that step—and sometimes, one could.

If anyone could, she’d place a wager on Jules.

Ghia rummaged through the stash of herbs and tea kept along the back wall of the head healer’s office. Normally it was neat and tidy and well-stocked; she noted some things had been mis-shelved, and they were running low on several key medicines. Including the one she was hunting for, she realized as she closed her hand on the last box of medium strength sleep tea.

They still had some extra strength left, but she wouldn’t break that out for Jules unless the medium-strength didn’t work.

“I thought, at first, that you might have come by to check on your wounded,” she said as she rose from her crouch and turned back to face him.

Jules started and shook his head, as if he’d been klicks away, mentally if nothing else. He frowned in confusion at her. “Why would you think that?”

Ghia shrugged, trying to keep the motion light, as she handed over the box of tea. “I’ve seen more of Bellica Yarrow this past sevenday than I have the past year. She’s been in almost every day checking on her troops. Looking more like a worried hen than a seasoned warrior. Took me threatening to keep her here and drugged up for exhaustion and stress overload to stop her constant hovering.”

Ghia hadn’t missed how Jules’ jaw had tightened at the first mention of his bellica, but as she went on his face relaxed and he even let out a chuckle, though it was hollow-sounding. “I’d wager she didn’t like that.”

“Cursed my name to all the goddesses.”

An eyebrow raise. “She didn’t.”

“Well,” Ghia relented, “she definitely thought about doing so. If glares could kill, I’d be stone dead.”

“I’m very glad they can’t, then.” Jules’ gaze was a little too direct, a little too serious in reaction to what had been her jesting, and Ghia found herself out of sorts with it, her heart beating a little too fast, her face—again—heating to the approximate temperature of a forest fire.

Before she could find any words to say in response, Jules dropped his eyes to the box she’d handed him. “Thank you for this…medium strength?”

“You can have something stronger if this doesn’t work,” she said, finding her voice back.

“I will acquiesce to your greater wisdom in these matters.” His tone was wry, but she could feel the sincerity of his words. Part of her wanted to contest them, but he was right. She knew more about herbcraft than he did. Knew that the stronger cures could be habit-forming, and were to be saved for last resorts.

They stood for a moment, Jules’ eyes focusing on the middle distance in that way that only happened when one was truly past exhaustion and standing upright was a miracle. She reached out and gave his arm a gentle push. “Go get some sleep, Jules. Healer’s orders.”

He shook himself as if waking up, and gave her a bleary smile. “Yes, ma’am,” he said, giving her a salute, and before she could chide his improper use of formal address he was turning away, leaving her domain to hopefully find the blessings of Morphia.

Ghia let out her breath slowly, trying to find back the balance of even respiration, and flexed her fingers on the hand she’d used to push him. A tingling on the pads of flesh. That, and some flashes of imagery that made no sense to her, were all she’d gotten from him.

Jules was generally good at hiding his deeper thoughts from her. If she wanted, she could dig, and find whatever secrets he was keeping. But she wouldn’t. It would be a betrayal of trust, and moreover the results weren’t predictable.

Sometimes when she used her powers, she was fine after. Other times, there was a backlash—nausea, dizziness, even blacking out. One frightening time she’d almost died.

So she was circumspect with them, using only as much as was needed. Healing was generally easier than mindwalking, though often she didn’t even need to do the latter—most people were terrible at keeping their surface thoughts to themselves. A featherlight touch here or there, and she could see everything at the forefront of their minds.

Sometimes she didn’t even need to actively reach out—such as when the troops had returned home and there had been a ripple of emotion through the entire city. Ghia had felt that without seeking it.

And whatever Jules was hiding, she would not seek—not with her powers. He’d tell her when he was ready. Or he wouldn’t. She doubted their friendship was close enough for it.

Finally, she took a chance to sit down and get off her feet and almost groaned out loud at the bliss of it. It didn’t mean her work was done; she rolled her mother’s chair forward and pulled the logbook close to her. By the time she’d finished making notations of all that had transpired in the hospitalis since her last entry, Helene had returned from her very long morning away.

Helene smiled to see her daughter hard at work, and Ghia rose to greet her mother properly—with a hug and a kiss on the cheek. “How’s Aunt Kasandra?” she asked without preamble. She hadn’t seen her aunt in…goddesses, more than a sevenday at least—she’d been working nonstop shifts at the hospitalis since the regiments’ return.

Helene chuckled as she moved deeper into the office, setting her bags down and unpacking her purchases. Ghia automatically moved to help her with organizing and putting away supplies. “You won’t like this—she wants you to work tonight.”

Ghia tried and failed to suppress a groan. Normally, she didn’t mind having two jobs—healing was her calling, and being heir to her mother’s position of Head Healer for not only the hospitalis but the entire Healers’ Guild of Athering was her dream.

But it didn’t pay well enough for the hours it sucked out of you. Wenching in a tavern paid better, and Kasandra would rather pay that rate to her niece than anyone else. Even if I’m not exactly a wench.

So. Having two trades was fine—except when she had to work in one of the most popular taverns in Atherton on Midwinter Eve.

“Does she hate me?”

Helene laughed at her daughter’s grousing tone. “No. She wants you to make good tips. Anyway, Patrick’s ill, so she needs the extra help.”

Ghia muttered, slightly mollified by this new information. Still. She’d hoped to go wassailing with Giselle tonight.

Ghia finished putting away supplies while her mother stretched and moved to her desk, reading the notes left in the logbook. She took the opportunity to re-shelve some of the teas and herbs, fixing the disarray that had bothered her since she’d noticed it. Of course with the way things were going this tredecim, it wouldn’t be long before everything was disorganized again.

“Jules came in?” Helene’s voice held soft surprise.

“For sleep tea. It’s all in the logbook,” Ghia replied in a neutral tone, wondering why she was feeling defensive all of a sudden.

Helene glanced at her daughter knowingly. “Not all.”

Ghia stole across the room and pulled the door closed, making sure no one was close by to overhear. The room was not soundproof, and the pane of glass that allowed the Head Healer to survey her domain while shut inside her office varied in thickness and transparency. They were not in complete privacy, not since the window had been installed last year.

“No, not all,” she agreed with her mother. “But I don’t know much more than what is written in there. I didn’t pry.”

“Still,” Helene went on, lowering herself into the chair with a groan, “you clearly saw enough to warrant your mention of battle fatigue.”

Ghia bit her lip. She regretted even entering that in, but it wasn’t an official diagnosis logged on a chart with Jules’ name. Just a healer’s observations in the logbook for the entire hospitalis—viewable only by the most senior healers in the guild.

“I’m not chiding, mija,” Helene went on. “Simply wondering. Didn’t think I’d ever see that term in relation to Jules.”

“You’ve known him a long time.” Ghia’s tone was lightly searching.

“Since he was younger than you are now,” Helene agreed. “Always knew he was destined to rise to the top of the Medicorps ranks, and he proved me right. He’s a career medic, that one, and stronger than most soldiers. If you think he has battle fatigue….” She let out a gusty sigh. “Well. I’d hate to think what he went through over there, to push him to his limits.”

“I don’t know that he does,” Ghia murmured, gazing out the window to the hospitalis beyond. Things seemed calmer than they had that morning. A small blessing. “He just seems…I don’t know. I don’t know him well enough to say for certain, but…not himself.”

Helene gave her an odd look. “You know him well enough. You’re friends, aren’t you?”

She shrugged. “Not close ones. Colleagues.”

“Hmph.” Helene’s face said exactly what she thought of that answer. “So. You sensed something off, enough to make you think perhaps battle fatigue, but not enough to make a diagnosis. And yet you didn’t pry for more answers? Who are you, and what have you done with my daughter?”

Ghia tried to glare at her mother, but the sparkle in Helene’s deep brown eyes made it impossible. A laugh burst through her facade, and soon Helene was joining in, mother and daughter sharing in a much needed bout of mirth.

“I promise I’m still your Ghia,” she said finally, wiping her eyes. “I’ve just gotten better at curbing my curiosity.”

“And it snowed in Tyvian yesterday.”

“I have!” Ghia felt like stamping her foot, but that certainly wouldn’t help make her case that she wasn’t a child anymore, hadn’t been for three years now.

Helene merely raised an eyebrow.

Ghia sighed and looked at the ceiling. “Fine. I confess: I am fairly dying to know exactly what I don’t. Not just with Jules; with everyone. But.” She fixed her gaze on her mother again, willing Helene to see her sincerity. “I have learned that in many cases it’s better to learn things the way everyone else does, rather than just…walking in and taking what I can. Or at the very least, to wait until it’s on the surface and not buried deep.”

This time Helene’s sigh was of relief, and she rose from the chair again to come face to face with Ghia, hands on her daughter’s arms. “And you don’t know how glad it makes my heart to hear that you’ve learned to be less reckless. You know me, mija. I can’t bear the thought of losing you. I’m just a nervous hen,” she added, her smile self-deprecating.

Ghia returned her mother’s smile, and wrapped her up in another hug. “Yes, you are, and I love you for it.” She gave Helene a squeeze and then stepped back, needing to breathe. “I can’t promise to do away with my curiosity, but I can promise to be more careful. And I will.”

“I know. Take the rest of your day off and then go to the Cauldron by seventeen-hundred hours.”

Ghia stopped at the door, her hand on the handle, and regarded her mother. “Thanks, Mama.” A moment later she groaned as she saw a far-too-familiar figure—even through the wavy glass—coming through the hospitalis entrance. “I’ll be off as soon as I deal with the bellica,” she amended, before opening the door and stalking towards her prey. Helene’s laughter followed her as she crossed the room to meet Yarrow.

The bellica of the first regiment towered over Ghia, standing two metres high as she did, but the healer did not quail at facing down the woman nor the man who stood beside her, Major Caelum, though both dwarfed Ghia in years and centimetres. The head-healer-apparent stood with her hands on her hips and glared up at them, sparing neither her ire.

“Did you doubt me when I said I’d drug you up on valerian myself if you came back? Are you here to test my will? I promise you will be unhappy with the results.”

Yarrow glared back at her with the same killing force as last time, but Ghia had already proved herself immune to it. The bellica grabbed Caelum by the arm and moved him in front of her like a shield. “It’s his fault I’m here.”

Caelum’s eyes flicked to the ceiling momentarily before he grabbed Yarrow’s other hand, bringing it closer so Ghia could see. It was wrapped loosely with a white cloth, blood seeping around the edges. “Cut herself open doing something stupid.”

Somehow Ghia kept her face a mask of professionalism despite her longing to let out a smirk. “I’ll take a look at it,” she said, reaching for the bellica’s hand.

Yarrow snatched her limb back. “It’s just a fecking scratch. Leave it.” She held her hand close to her chest, daring the two of them to contradict her.

Caelum did. Ghia let him. He was the only person able to subdue Yarrow at all, physically or socially. Or the only one who would dare try.

He put his arm around Yarrow’s shoulders and guided the bellica after Ghia, already heading to an empty workstation for ambulatory care. “Listen, Princess. I don’t care if you think it’s just a fecking scratch. Your hands are important. Ghia’s taking a look at it. That’s final.” He pushed her solidly down onto the chair intended for patients.

Yarrow kicked him in the leg, her large military-grade boot making a solid thunk against him. He didn’t even flinch. “Call me Princess one more time, Caelum. See where it lands you.”

Ghia tuned out the rest of their bickering as she finished getting her supplies ready: mortar and pestle to grind the darkshade and some water to make the paste; linen to wrap the wound; a bottle of antiseptic to clean it. She hadn’t seen the wound, so didn’t know if she would need the sinew or karyowort salve; she grabbed them just in case.

When she was done, she grabbed Yarrow’s injured hand with no gentleness or ceremony, yanking the bellica’s limb across the table so she could do her work. Yarrow made a sound of protest and continued to glare at the two of them, though it was now so divided it lost some of its heat.

Ghia unwrapped the hasty bandage, but she already knew what had happened. As soon as her skin had touched Yarrow’s, she’d seen the whole story in her head, like a play on stage at the theatre: the shrine in the West Tower to Queen Zameera, untouched by any save the bellica. The rusted, broken sword that had once belonged to Zameera, a bellica herself before she was queen. The ritual of remembrance Yarrow did without fail each year on Midwinter Eve, the anniversary of her mother’s death.

The dust causing such a mighty sneeze that she had doubled over, landing against the shrine roughly and nearly concussing herself in the process before falling to her knees. Using her hand to get up, and somehow managing to grip the sword and cut herself open.

Something stupid, indeed.

“What’s this?” Ghia let an imperious tone sink into her voice. “A run-in with a rusty sword?”

Yarrow’s eyes narrowed, suspicion lining her face. “How did you—”

“I’m a healer. I know everything.” Ghia washed the cut with the antiseptic and Yarrow snarled, doing a rather good treecat impression. “Major Caelum is correct. You should be more careful with your hands. This isn’t the first time you’ve come in with injuries to them.”

Yarrow gritted her teeth at the sting of the darkshade paste, glaring at the cut and Ghia’s ministrations to it as if she could stop the discomfort through sheer force of will. “I daresay the first time was a bit more serious. Though I’m surprised you remember. You were barely out of swaddling cloth then.”

Dismissal had come to join the bellica’s former suspicion and the two mingled in her tone. Ghia took in a deep breath through her nostrils and attempted to calm her first instinct in response to Yarrow’s dismissal of her, which was to grab the sinew and needle and jab it angrily through the woman’s flesh.

Though she might give the cut stitches anyway, just to make a point.

“How could I forget?” she said, forcing her tone to be light. “I was on shift that night, after all. Not every day you get to see a princess laid low by a treecat.”

Yarrow’s glare intensified and Ghia could hear the grinding of the woman’s teeth from across the table. The two stared daggers at each other for a long moment before a low chuckle interrupted them. Yarrow broke the stare to glare up at her major, leaning against the workstation and clearly very amused by the battle of wills between the two women.

“Something to say, Major?”

Caelum shrugged nonchalantly, his blue eyes flicking between them in amusement. “Just thinking you may have finally met your match, Bellica. Not in a treecat but a healer.”

The rage in Yarrow found a new target with her second-in-command, and Ghia used the distraction to focus on finishing her work. She did not voice what was at the tip of her tongue, that Yarrow should be thanking all the goddesses that it had been Ghia—just out of swaddling cloths, indeed!—on shift that night, or she wouldn’t have survived her injuries.

It was anger at Yarrow’s dismissal of her abilities, her age, that was causing such a desire for recklessness. She wouldn’t give in.

And despite Yarrow’s apparent ability to find Ghia’s sore spots, insert a knife, and twist, she did not regret the healing she’d done for the bellica that night many years ago. Yarrow had been brought in from her lieutenant’s survival course, where an encounter with a treecat had left her hand and back ripped to shreds, muscle bone and tendons exposed to the world.

She’d been near death. An honest miracle she’d survived long enough to be brought back to the hospitalis.

And Ghia had saved her.

Helene had been furious, of course. The healing had almost killed Ghia—she’d had to go beyond encouraging the body’s ability to heal, had to regrow muscle and tendon and bone that simply wasn’t there anymore, not just heal it. She hadn’t even thought she could do it; she’d only been driven by a need to try, no matter the cost.

When she’d waked from her coma a tredicem later with a pounding headache, dry mouth, nausea and aches and pains all over, she hadn’t been sure the cost was worth it.

But of course it had been. It was always worth saving whoever she could, whatever it took. Once she’d recovered, she saw that clearly—and hadn’t wavered from it.

“Done,” she said, finishing wrapping up the bandages on Yarrow’s hand. “I spared you stitches, but I expect you back in here in two days to get the wound looked at and bandages changed.”

Yarrow gave her new bandage a cursory examination and then stood, once again towering over Ghia. “Thank you,” she said, sounding less moved by gratitude than social niceties, and glared at Caelum anew. “May we go spar now? As I wanted to before?”

“No, you may not,” Ghia answered for the major, realizing anew why there was so much turnover in the healing profession. “Sparring will undoubtedly undo all the hard work I just expended on you, so you are to avoid it until I say you can participate again.”

Yarrow looked fit to kill. Caelum was having trouble holding in laughter, though he made a valiant attempt.

“If you two truly need to unwind,” Ghia went on, finishing the cleaning of her workstation and finally taking off her healer’s smock, “Circe’s Cauldron is having its annual Midwinter Eve festivities. Live music. Drink sales. A feast fit for a queen. Not so good as sparring, I’m sure, but entertaining enough.”

She softened the last with a smile and a wink and let the invitation hang in the air, though she knew Yarrow would never accept. The woman hadn’t celebrated Midwinter in almost two decades; that was common fact.

Caelum grinned at the healer. “We’ll be there.” His pronouncement was met with a smack against the arm from Yarrow. He raised his eyebrows at his superior. “It would be rude to refuse Healer Ghia’s invitation, Yarrow. Besides,” he went on, that grin coming back, “you’ve been no fun for months now. Time to remedy that, don’t you think?”

Yarrow looked at him like she couldn’t believe what she was hearing. A moment later her face abrupty cleared, and she turned back to Ghia. “As the major says, healer. We’ll be there. Thanks again.”

She nodded, the action as stiff as her voice had been, and then grabbed Caelum by the arm and stormed out of the hospitalis, dragging her amused major behind her.

Ghia finally let the humour that had bubbled up in her out with a small laugh. She wondered if Caelum would be alive to see the tavern tonight.

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