Page 39 of The Dragon Queen Complete Series Collection

Chapter 39

“Pip, just go back to the room,” Ged told me as Brom lowered him down onto the infirmary bed, but as I saw him wince, I moved forward. Draven hadn’t made him bleed, but ugly red marks criss-crossed his back. “I won’t be down for long. The doc will make me up a brew and I’ll be right as rain tomorrow morning.”

“Lashes again?” an older man with a white beard said, approaching us then nodding sharply when he saw the evidence himself, before bustling over to a wall of shelves filled with bottles. He started mixing the required medicine up as I moved closer to Ged.

“No.”

“It’s a nasty business,” Soren started to say, “but it’s?—”

“No.”

It wasn’t a word ladies got to use often with men, but I found I liked the way the word felt in my mouth. I drew a chair over to Ged’s bed and sat down on it. The drill sergeant nodded and then removed a waterskin from his belt, handing it over to me.

“Drink that up. If you haven’t had it all by the time I return with dinner for you both and some food for yon dragon, you’ll be back in the suite tonight.”

I gave Soren a sharp salute, something that had him snorting.

“How’re you doing, lad?” Flynn asked Ged. “No broken skin, thank the gods. Want me to bring you up a beer?”

“No beer, no spirits,” the doctor said as both Ged and Flynn groaned. Instead, he held out a spoon brimming with the medicine.

“Gods above, this stuff is terrible.” Ged wrinkled up his nose and took the medicine, shuddering at the taste. “Couldn’t you put some honey in it or something?’

“Like I would a child? Perhaps I should provide you a little poppet to hold onto as well?” The doctor’s tone was acerbic but not unkind. “You’re a royal rider and you’ve seen worse than this in your life. Lay down on your stomach and rest. You’ll be much better in the morning.”

Ged nodded drowsily and then did just that.

I felt like I didn’t know where to look. I hadn’t seen that many bare male torsos to just not notice, but at the same time the evidence of what had been done to Ged was luridly displayed in this position. His arm hung over the side of the bed, his fingers limp. And mine? They twitched, wanting to reach out and?—

“I need to get back.” Brom stated this almost apologetically. “I need to find out… many things really.” He turned to the doctor. “I had intended to bring Lady Pippa down to see the apothecary for a consultation, but those plans went awry. While she’s down here, perhaps…”

It appeared the two men had already had a conversation, or had been informed of the orders. The doctor nodded to both of us.

“Of course. I’ll just let Madam Gilly know to expect you, Cadet Pippin. Don’t let him get up or start wandering around.” I nodded. “Patients sometimes think they’re healed when relieved of their pain.”

“I’m due to meet with the other drill sergeants,” Soren said with a shake of his head. “It’s a fine mess we have to clean up. Flynn, you’ve got duties to see to?”

The man himself lay sprawled across an adjoining bed, looking at the rest of the men with a mildly surprised expression.

“I hadn’t intended… Oh.”

At the meaningful looks from Brom and Soren, he threw himself off the bed, but not before shooting me a brilliant smile.

“Look after him for us,” he told me, eyes sparkling. “Though that might be another punishment. Ged was never a good patient. Remember when he caught the?—”

“Another time,” Soren said. “And you’re with me, if you’ve nothing to do.”

And so there I sat, in the company of a dragon and a man. There weren’t any other patients in the beds around us, each one of them sporting crisp white sheets. Perhaps that’s why my hand finally did move. Ged’s eyes were closed when I reached for him, but I touched his fingers with mine, then grasped them before my nerves got the better of me. As I did so, one eye flicked open.

His beard was crushed into the pillow, but that one eye, it seemed to see everything as he tightened our grip, holding me still when I went to pull away.

“You didn’t need to come,” he told me and when I went to disagree, he smiled. “I’m glad you did though. Feels good.” His eyes fell closed again. “Whatever Glimmer did…”

What did Glimmer do? As if summoned, she crawled down my arm and onto the bed, shooting me one long inscrutable look before coiling her body around his head and humming, much more quietly now.

I might not be getting answers to that any time soon. Ged’s breath evened out and deepened, his grip loosening by increments before his hand went limp again. The doctor returned, peering at my dragon and the rider and then nodding, directing me to follow him. I was taken down a long corridor and then we turned right into another room.

“Madam Gilly, this is Cadet Pippin.”

A plump woman with a riotous mane of reddish curls looked up and smiled broadly when she saw me.

“The lady dragon rider! Come in. Come in. Maggie, dear, put the kettle on, will you?”

Maggie? I turned and saw there was a small hob set up in an adjoining alcove and at the fire was the woman I’d met in the woman’s bathroom the day I’d arrived in the keep.

“I’ll leave the lady in your capable hands,”

“Lady Pippa.” Maggie dropped a neat little curtsey. “I apologise, I wasn’t aware of your rank when we first met.”

“You’ve already met?” Madam Gilly ushered me into the chair on the other side of her desk.

“In a way,” I said, flopping down into it and then grinning. “The day I arrived, Maggie and Hallin gave me an intensive lesson on the expectations of women in the keep.”

“Oh you and that boy…” Madam waved her hand in Maggie’s direction, then sat back as Maggie set a cup of tea before her. “Tea, milady?”

“Just Pippin,” I said, “and yes, please.”

A fine cup and saucer were set before me and then Maggie poured her own, taking the seat closest by the fire.

“Well then, just Pippin, the higher ups have sent you down to me for a reason. They made it clear they expect you to marry but…” Madam sat forward, cup in her hand. “These are good men, fighting men, but they are men with a realistic sense of what might happen between a fine lady and the men who might seek to court you. I’ve been asked to offer you access to some of our tinctures.”

“They stop a woman from having a child?” Madam nodded. “And they are what the women in the keep take?”

“No babies.” Maggie said the words with a smile, but there was a sad twist to her lips. “Symbolic really. No future in being with a dragon rider.”

“Except for Pippin,” Madam gently corrected.

“Yes, of course.” Maggie plastered a smile across her face. “A marriage in the corps. Won’t that be grand!”

“And if my husband was Hallin?”

I didn’t ask the question to be cruel, but I needed to know. I watched Maggie’s face closely, catching the moment it fell before she recovered.

“Hallin is a good man. He’d make any woman a fine husband?—”

“Even you.” My focus shifted to Madam Gilly. “Why not Maggie? If an attachment has been made?—”

“Attachments aren’t made, according to the brass,” Gilly said, settling back in her chair. “They used to cycle the girls in and out of the keep for that reason, to try and stop them from forming any, but…” She shrugged. “It’s hard enough to get competent people without constantly whisking them away to be replaced by others. So everyone pretends.” Her eyes slid to Maggie. “They all pretend that they are not human, that they aren’t seeking warmth and love and pleasure, just like every other citizen of Nevermere does.”

“Hallin has made no overtures towards me,” I reassured Maggie. “Nor would I entertain them if he did so out a sense of desperation. Just because I appear to be the only legitimate option?—”

“You’re more than that.” Gilly’s brown eyes stared into mine, into me, for a long moment before she nodded. “Now, to your purpose. Have you chosen yon Ged as your most likely choice?”

“Does he have a connection to any of the women here?” I asked, not sure I wanted to know the answer.

“None that I know of,” Maggie replied. “Ged has always been the fun one, moving from one lass to the next without too much care, but…” Her smile was somewhat tentative. “Well, there’s been talk since you came. There always is talk about anything new or interesting, mind you.”

“And more gossip comes from the men than the women, if you can believe it,” Gilly said.

“He’s different around you,” Maggie continued. “There were some fears when it was assumed you were queen-in-waiting; that he was nursing an infatuation for the prince’s own intended, but… But there are no barriers now, are there?”

Were there?

The two women watched me suck in a breath, my eyes widening as I considered Maggie’s words. Husband… Ged… His hand down the front of my pants as he told me in short furtive words how my body worked. There would definitely be worse people to spend my life with but… My memories of him were all tumbled up in moments with the others.

Soren’s bark of a voice as he ordered us around the training room, contrasting with the gentle burr of it in my ear as he massaged my body. Flynn’s lazy grin and heated eyes contrasting to the feel of his arms around me as I sobbed. Then Brom’s hand slamming down onto the stone by my head as that cool mask of control broke, for just one moment.

“Oh ho, she’s going to lead them on a merry chase,” Madam Gilly said with a wide grin, then took a sip of her tea. “Well, then, my lass, you’ve got a luxury here that most high-born ladies are deprived of. I assume your father had plans to set you up with one of the local lords’ sons?”

“I’m sure he would have. He died before he could do anything about that.”

“Well, with these...” She got up and plucked a box off the shelves and pushed it towards me, revealing vial after vial of a dark liquid. “You can avoid pregnancy until such time you are ready to bear your husband a child. More time to… practise the act, if you catch my meaning.”

My eyes were like saucers again as I stared dumbly at the vials.

“Are you untouched? If you are, that makes things easier. Wait for seven days after taking the first vial before you let a man release inside you and you’ll be protected for as long as you keep taking the herbs. Just come down here when you’re close to running out and I’ll fill the box up again.”

“Just like that?”

I stared at Madam Gilly then, the worldview she presented to me so very different to the one I’d been brought up with that my mind struggled to keep up. Your maidenhood was a gift you kept safe, ready to give to your husband. I asked her if that was not the same here.

“Maidenhood?” Gilly’s expression softened then, the woman reaching across the table to pat my hand. “That’s just a small membrane that may already have been stretched or broken if you ride horses or were an active girl. But that’s not what you’re asking.”

She squeezed my hand and then pulled back.

“The lads never come here to ask me about that, their first time, putting all this import into it. They just ask me furtive little questions about diseases and pregnancy, most of them with no more knowledge about how a woman’s body works than they do how to fly to the moon.”

Both women considered me closely, but there was a warmth to their gaze.

“They are anxious to get their ends in, to prove they are a man, as if humping away for a scant few seconds has any bearing on that. Just as having sex for the first time has no bearing on you as a woman. If you wish to wait for your husband, you should. Like everyone in this keep, you should be free to pursue the matters of your body and heart in the way that works for you.”

My focus settled on Maggie then.

“Except you can’t,” I said. She stiffened slightly, as if she knew what was coming. “You’d have become Hallin’s wife some time ago, if it was allowed, wouldn’t you?”

Maggie’s lips moved, ready to give me the pat response, the only one that was allowed, but I shook my head slowly. Her lips thinned, then her eyes brightened, her already pretty face becoming radiant before she nodded too.

“If he’d have me, then yes. I’d make him a good wife, keeping him from getting involved with the fool schemes of some of his rider mates.”

I felt like I was seeing Maggie properly for the first time. And while in a lot of ways I had less power than her right now, something strong in me started to rise. Because if I did gain any power, I’d use it to try and make some changes. I realised that one didn’t need to be queen-in-waiting to help change the world.

I returned to Ged’s side with the box burning a hole in my pocket and when I sat down, his eye opened a crack.

“Everything alright?”

So, so very much rushed up in me in response to his words, but I smiled my lady-like smile instead, just as I’d been taught. I nodded and took his hand.

“Rest. Everything is fine.”