We had a couple of quiet days after the Feast of Naigha. That lasted until we had more than twenty pupils to learn Semsin from us in our kitchen, every night of the week. Not always all the same people, either. I felt like Moyri and I were teaching the entire youth of Selday!

So we had the banquet for the Masters in the Guild of Anshen.

I’m afraid I lost it. They were talking about Dol Rayen, and what the demise of the Hand of Anshen meant for the structure and regulations of the Guild in Idanyas, and the necessity for keeping the Nameless and his servants out… And of sundry and various little feuds that needed to be discussed, and I just boiled over. I think Moyri noticed it coming, because I felt her bracing herself, but she didn’t do anything to stop me, so I guess it was all right?

I started with yelling a bit, which is always satisfying, a good yell now and then lubricates the throat, and then started giving them some numbers. We had thirty-five masters here, out of twenty-five hundred inhabitants of Selday. Maths suggest that we should have about five times as many masters… But then, if the stupid idiots were too dumb, too lazy, too preoccupied, too self-satisfied, too — too little!!! — to teach apprentices, then, of course there would be a dearth of masters! Oh sweet, kissing Anshen, what the —

And at that point, the sole midwife present, Selle, jumped up and began to yell, too. Fortunately, she agreed with me! She walked up to me, grabbed my elbow, and shouted, “I’ve been telling you all of this for years, you big sloths!” After that, she added a lot, mostly what I had already said.

Then Moyri took the chair, or rather, told me and Selle to pipe down, and announced that every gifted child was going to be assigned a proper master, no matter fishermen’s village, dockyard hand or “Selday proper”. At that, the assembled masters, who now realized there were accurate listings of everyone in Selday, including their craft, guild or profession, giftedness, age, marital status and home situation, started nodding.

Maybe a school should be started? Like in Turenay?

Well, fuck me with a pine cone. The problem is exactly this, and nothing else, that Moyri and I were having a school, in our spare time, in our evenings that would otherwise be given to love-making, fucking, kissing, cuddling and reading. A few apprentices — no problem. A class of twenty? Go away!

But still, if Selday can find the money and the teachers, a School for gifted children would not be wrong. Master Faran, one of the town’s painters actually proposed he’d found it. He used to be Cynla’s craft master.

But first, the people of Selday are going to get organized! They are going to help each other, and make sure that this is going to be a proper civic town, instead of a place where everybody acts like they’re invisible!

There are so many things we’ve set in train, and have organized. Just because I haven’t mentioned them, doesn’t mean we didn’t talk pigs with Fian (and piglets will be ordered), or that we haven’t sent and received Baronial Letters or baby runner letters. The hospital, the school, the regiment are getting in better and better shape. The fish-for-Essle plan is being carried out, which means more work for the dockyard hands. The people of Selday are hiring out-of-works from the dockyard, and Cynla tells me she’s got so many commissions for wedding portraits come Feast of Timoine, she’s taken two apprentices as well. The lemons are ready, but the army hasn’t passed us yet. And so on…

One thing is now coming to pass. The hospital is ready, and just in time, too. A big ship passed us by and told us that the army is coming. But the ship is big enough that it’s got an officer trained in the hospital in Veray, and he had found six hands with the clap. And they were ordered to the hospital.

And Varyn, realizing that this might make a good start of my hospital week (remember — if I did that, I would become a proper doctor), and she invited me up.

Well, clap. It’s something you get from fucking without checking your partner’s health, and the disease is mostly local to the private parts. At least in the initial stages, and since I had learned that they all had gone to the same brothel for a sailing-out party, I suspected that infection was only two weeks ago.

So, together with Jeran, who now eats at our place pretty much every night, and then is walked home by Maile, who is then walked home by Jeran, we went past the patients.

The captain had asked Doctor Varyn whether we could have her hands patched up in a day? Because otherwise they would be short-handed?

I know I’m not a grand master, but I guessed that the same principle as with leprosy, the silver sickness, would apply, but that given the locus of the infection, making the sickness come out could be achieved in a more simple, direct way.

Our first patient was a sailor, male, in his thirties. When I took off my clothes, he evidenced himself as obviously liking women, so I asked Jeran to stand ready with a bowl to catch the sickness, and with fire to kill it, and I smiled at him.

“So, my dear man, I’m going to jerk you off until you come; the sickness will come out, and you can go back to work!”

He answered, “But now I’ve seen you, I want to stay here!”

“You’ve got a job, my man, and I’ve got a wife!”

“Don’t you like men?”

“I love men, but only when they’re healthy, and besides, I’m your doctor, so stop chatting me up, and let me jerk you off.”

I have to admit I rather enjoyed it. Doctor Cora is right. Having a desirable, nubile body and a pretty face is a great asset to a doctor. Most men are susceptible, and few women are completely immune, and if their attention is occupied by your tits, what you do with the rest of them barely registers.

There were four men, and I made them all come clean, and Jeran destroyed the sickness that came out of their bodies. Tomorrow they can board ship again!

The next patient was a woman. This was a bit of a poser. Sure, I can make a woman come just as well as I can make a man come, but it usually means I have to put my fingers between their cunt lips, and that would mean touching all the wetness — which is exactly what contains the sickness. The same problem would hold for Jeran as well, and besides, he’s not exactly at ease with touching private parts as I am.

The first woman I told to squat, and I made her come by only touching, rubbing and kneading her outer cunt lips, but while that works, and is great fun if you’ve got the time, it took a lot of time, done that way, it always does, and that’s when I noticed that our last patient also was a woman. I was also getting a bit tired, because, of course, I also had to use semsin, to get the disease to be in the expelled wetness, that was the point.

So when we came to the last patient, a younger woman, probably half Iss-Valdyan, half harbour from everywhere, I was a bit desperate. But Jeran had a good plan! He proposed to make an impermeable seal between the woman’s bits and my fingers, to catch everything in the bowl, and so make short work of a difficult problem.

And then we hit a snag…

The woman didn’t come. She got more and more frightened, as if she had something on her mind, and I asked her whether it was a problem for her that I was doing this, and whether she would prefer to do it herself, together with me? Or whether she needed it to be a man to do this? But no…

She wanted to be hit, slapped and beaten… It took a lot of gentle listening and asking to get that out of her. I don’t mind a bit of holding and locking, and sometimes a nibble, but she, she really wanted bruises. I asked her why she had gone with her mates to the brothel, and she said, “Well, then I just fake it. No whore minds if their customer comes or not, after all.”

This made Jeran really, really sick to his mind. He’s only a year younger than me, but I’ve been doing sums, and I thing I must have had at least a hundred, maybe two hundred lovers, and he’s had none — yet. Maile is working on that. But I sent him to fetch Varyn, and then to absent himself.

I told Varyn how I had healed the others, and that this was quicker and more effective than copper salve (of which we had plenty, of course), and what was I to do?

She thought a bit, checked on my other patients, and then asked me, “Khushi, you have found a rather unorthodox cure. It works very well, but in this case — is there a reason not to go for the copper salve?”

And I answered, “Well, that takes longer and is less sure — and I don’t really have a problem giving her what she wants, we’ve talked about it for an hour now.”

“You seem to be very good at talking to people who have problems in their souls…” was the answer.

Well, I wanted to talk to her about the problems in my soul, but skipped that for a bit.

“If we move her into a separate room, I can heal her. I am an expert on beatings, after all!”

At that point, Varyn asked me to leave the room, and when I left she was talking to the patient herself. Rusla, she’s called.

When I was outside, I reached out to Moyri. “Hey, love! How are you doing? I’ve jerked off four men today, and diddled one woman! But all in the interests of medicine!”

I felt her grin, and reach out to my crotch, with her mind.

“You’re not even moderately squishy! So, there was nothing in it for you!”

“No… But the next patient is going to be difficult. But I’ll tell you when I get home, at the end of the week.”

Because, of course, I had a bed in the nurse’s dormitory for the week.

At that point, two priestesses of Naigha brought my patient into the small operating theatre.

“Doctor Khushi,” my patient said, “Please fix me up? I promise I won’t fall in love with you!”

I hadn’t even thought of that…

So, with Varyn present to bring fire to the filthy effluents, I made Jeran’s seal, and started diddling and beating Rusla. I didn’t like it one bit, but it did work, and she came, and was cleaned — but dear Dayati, this is not fun. She even wanted me to call her things I have been called by my Father.

Doctor Varyn has convinced the captain that Rusla is too sick to join the ship’s company, and she’s going to send her to Turenay. To doctor Airath in Turenay. Jilan will take her, when he goes there after the Feast of Timoine.

If Jilan goes, he’s making stay-in-Selday-and-see-the-School-happen noises. Apparently, he likes our cooking.