We thought we’d start something else, but the GM wasn’t quite ready so we had a bit of fun on the ice. For some values of fun, anyway. It was really winter now, though it was only a couple of weeks after the Feast of Mizran. It didn’t get dark early, because Tylenay wasn’t far north like Rizenay (Jeran explained that, and he also said that this was the first time he’d seen anything that looked like real winter since he left home! Except perhaps on the frozen plain when we were travelling, but it’s different when you’re living somewhere) but it was cold and grey and sometimes it snowed and the streets got wet and slippery. One day a whole bunch of clerks from the craft guilds came to arrange the guild heads’ meeting. “We used to have it in the black house,” they said, “with the town council attending. But–” “The black house is occupied and there’s no town council any more,” we said. “How many people will there be, do they fit at our kitchen table?” About twenty, they said, and the large table would do perfectly. “Ahem,” Radan said, “there is a town council!” He pointed […]

Well, that escalated quickly. We could have had a winding-down session after this but we all felt it would be better just to let these people go on with their lives without us. But I’ll miss them! We really had to hold a guild meeting before it started to snow. It was in our kitchen, of course: the largest room anyone of the doctors’ and midwives’ guild had. First we did the ordinary things: new journeymen, new apprentices. Halla was going to be apprenticed to either the apothecary, Perain, or the herbalist, Faran: she wanted to do both, and we wanted to sponsor her to do both, but it was hard to figure out which was best to do first. “You can brew already, and make herb tinctures, I think you’d do best to be apprenticed to Faran first, and to Perain after!” I said. She concurred; I don’t know if she had any opinion of her own about it. Then it was the uncomfortable part. Who would sit in the council of heads of guilds? None of us really wanted it. Then Perain asked Aine for a jar, which every master would put a piece of paper in with […]

That was hard. About as hard as they’d thought but in different ways. And possibly more dangerous than they were aware of. (But the new guy is a very good guy!) We’d really have to go to the workers’ camp now, something we weren’t looking forward to at all! We needed a guard, but no way would we take Rava; instead, we called Nisha’s brothers (at least the gifted one) and asked them to come with us. We’ll be there in the morning! And indeed, when we got up at the crack of dawn they were already in the kitchen, dressed in impressive Ishey finery, eating Aine’s porridge. “Can I come?” Nisha asked. “Of course not!” Amre said. “Anyway, school starts again today.” Who did come was Halla, who knew the way, but mostly she was curious if it was really as bad as she remembered. “The road’s not suited for carts,” she said, “we have to take the donkey.” The donkey wasn’t convinced. She’d been mostly pulling the cart, not carrying loads as heavy as the one we put on her. Doctoring stuff, lots of clean linen because Halla said nothing was clean in the camp, two rolled-up stretchers. […]

A bit of a holiday. Amre had to make an effort not to work. The next day was the Day of Anshen and we were off to the village — not only had we promised the children that we’d go, but we wanted to be there ourselves and see what the Ishey had done to the house. Never mind that it would be another day, perhaps two days, without practice: the town had done without us for all these years and it could do without us for another couple of days. “Then I’ll go to the farm to get in some more winter supplies,” Aine said, “with all those extra people we won’t have enough otherwise!” And Halla wanted to go with her to talk about barley. “Do you want me to come?” Rava asked. “Do you want to come?” “I’d rather stay here,” she said. Not to protect the house, it turned out, but to catch up on sleep! And Serla was staying to look after the hospital, with Jeran, Hylse and Erian standing by. Our own Jeran –perhaps Serla’s own Jeran by now– had to drive the donkey-cart, because nobody else was a good enough driver to handle […]

Not two weddings, like the children wanted, but as Arni said, one is quite enough. The moment Hylse and Jeran appeared in the kitchen, Halla took them away. It took them a while to come back: they’d been to Jeran’s mother, too. There were congratulations all round, and then we claimed both of the newlyweds for the lesson for apprentice doctors and nurses. This first lesson was mostly about keeping things clean, and how to protect yourself from everything that could make you sick. Serla was good enough at protecting her hands with a seal that she could teach Hylse and Jeran, and Cynla –one of the new girls– could actually see it so she’d need some extra teaching too. When Ardyth and Arieth got up to see to the patients and took Halla with them to show her the ropes, the gifted people stayed behind and we gave them another lesson in the basics of semsin. “Do you need me?” Serla asked. “Yes!” we said, “you and Hylse learned in a different tradition and it’s useful to address both!” Then it was time to see our patients ourselves. We found a strange woman at Doryn’s bed: her secretary, who […]

From memory because I didn’t take any notes — things were too exciting to break the flow by writing. (I admit that Venla was unconscious part of the time, but it was too exciting even then.) We woke up late, and the first thing we heard was the sound of people arguing in the passage outside the wards. We thought it must be the large man and his even larger wife, but we couldn’t have been more wrong: it was Orin and Doryn! It hadn’t quite come to blows yet, but their words were hard enough. “You couldn’t do anything for me, you quack! And these young women did! It’s time you faced facts.” Orin was calling us fake doctors again, and then he went for Doryn’s throat. I tried to throw myself between them but stumbled and fell, and Arieth who had come to help me fell right across me. While we were picking ourselves up from the floor the large man came and grabbed Orin by the arms, and the large woman did the same with Doryn. They were taken back to their wards, still shouting invective at each other. “Doryn kicked him in the balls!” Serla said […]

But we thought it was, or at least it was going to be. The GM said we’ll have to count on life being this hectic every day for the rest of our lives, and if we don’t take time out for ourselves those lives might be shorter than we’d like. So we were home. It was still weather to sit outside at the trestle tables, and the moment we sat down our laps were full of children and cats. The garden smelled of lavender. “Halla can make excellent soap,” Aine remarked. “If she’d had the chance to learn earlier she could have been an apothecary!” “Well, use all the lavender you need, and if it’s not enough I dare say we can find some more!” I said. Perhaps we’d even make an apothecary of her yet, or at least let her use all her skills in our stillroom and learn some more. “There’s a field up the hill full of–” and Halla said a word I didn’t recognise, but it sounded like the name of a herb. “The farmers make ointment from it, for rough skin.” “We’ll investigate that, ointment for rough skin is a good thing!” And then I […]

The village is all right — more than all right. But now we’ve got a dozen bandits on our hands. Rava asked (probably after the night in the temple) either how to start with semsin or to talk to the gods, but I don’t remember any details! Will edit when I do. We woke up because a cockerel was searching for worms in Amre’s ear and made her shriek. “Do that again and you’re soup!” Amre cried, and I tried to catch the bird but it fluttered out of reach and scratched in the hay. We were still tired but it was day, so we went down to wash at the well. There were more people there than the villagers: a man who was clearly of Anshen, and more men and women, with laden donkeys. The man introduced himself as Geran. “We saw the waterspout,” he said, “and we thought you might need some supplies!” There was enough food for everyone, and clothes and household things that would serve until everything was cleaned up. Old Jarn put an arm around Geran. “Cousin, you’re an excellent man, in spite of our differences.” Now we were going to have the name-giving first. […]

We’re not done with the village yet, nor it with us. But right now we’re too tired to do anything except sleep. We woke up because there were cats and chickens walking over us, I suppose. Or perhaps it was just the chickens, because there was a cat asleep on top of me that I hadn’t even noticed (just like at home, after all, though this cat was quite a lot larger). And a girl a bit older than Hinla who was noisily chasing the chickens out. “There’s breakfast!” she said when she saw we were awake. She bounced up and down. “And we’re going to have my little cousin’s name-giving! I’m not the smallest any more!” “I think we’ll have to do some more healing before we have the name-giving,” I said, “your cousin’s mother will want to be able to stand up for it!” There was a long trestle table in the village square — well, the open space between the houses where the well was, with people sitting around it. This must be the whole village, except Caille and her baby. Most people looked somewhat Velihan, two women (one old, one middle-aged) looked completely Velihan. And more […]

On the road again. It’s not the same without the children! Hinla and Nisha had taken it on themselves to teach Rava her letters, but Nisha’s set of letters didn’t include ‘r’ or ‘v’ yet so it was hard to even teach her to read her name. The school was open but there were no lessons: the old couple were looking after the children whose parents were working. The children there might want to play with the letters so it wasn’t a good idea to borrow all of them, but we might borrow a couple at a time to have the carpenter’s apprentices copy them. The Ishey boys who had made the letters that Nisha already had, were all in the village! We sent Jeran to take care of it: the only Ishey boy (well, not couting Yulao) who was still here. I don’t know how we came to agree that this was a good time to go to Silver Village, but if we didn’t do it now we’d probably keep putting it off. It was hard to make a plan! Amre wanted to take all the children, I only the little ones, but both of us were uncertain about […]