Inversions

7. THE DOCTOR

“My master has a plan for your mistress. A little surprise.”

“I’ll bet!”

“More like a big one! Eh?”

“So would mine.”

There were various other comments and whistles from round the table, though nothing, in retrospect, that seemed much like wit.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

Feulecharo, apprentice to Duke Walen, just winked. He was a stocky fellow, with wild brown hair that resisted all attempts to control it save those employing shears. He was polishing a pair of boots while the rest of us tucked into our evening meal, in a tent on the Prospect Plain, one day into the 455th Circuition. On this first rest stop it was traditional for the senior pages and apprentices to dine together. Feulecharo had been allowed to join us by his master, but he was being punished for one of his regular misdemeanours with extra work, hence the boots, and a set of rustily ancient ceremonial armour he was supposed to polish before we set off the next day.

“What sort of plan?” I insisted. “What can the Duke want with the Doctor?”

“Let’s just say he’s suspicious,” Feulecharo said, tapping his nose with a polishing brush.

“Of what?”

“My master is suspicious, too,” Unoure said, breaking a piece of bread in half and smearing some gravy round his plate.

“How very true,” drawled Epline, page to Guard Commander Adlain.

“Well, he is,” Unoure insisted sullenly.

“Still testing out his new ideas on you, is he, Unoure?” one of the other pages called. He turned to the others. “We saw Unoure in the baths once—”

“Aye, it would be the once!”

“What year was that?”

“We did,” continued the page, “and you should see the lad’s scars! I tell you, Nolieti is a perfect beast to him!”

“He teaches me everything!” Unoure said, standing up, his eyes bright with tears.

“Shut up, Unoure,” Jollisce said. “Don’t let this rabble bait you so.” Slight but elegantly fair, and older than most of us, Jollisce was page to Duke Ormin, who was the Doctor’s employer after the Mifeli trading family and before the King commandeered her services. Unoure sat down again, muttering under his breath. “What plans, Feulecharo?” Jollisce asked.

“Never mind,” Feulecharo said. He started whistling and began to pay uncharacteristically close attention to the boots he was polishing, and soon started to talk to them, as though trying to persuade them to clean themselves.

“That boy is intolerable,” Jollisce said, and took up a pitcher of the watered wine which was the strongest drink we were allowed.

A little after supper, Jollisce and I wandered along one edge of the camp. Hills stretched ahead of us and on both sides. Behind us, past the lip of the Prospect Plain, Xamis was still slowly setting in a fiery riot of colour, somewhere far beyond the near-circle of Crater Lake, falling over the round edge of sea.

Clouds, caught half in Xamis’s dying light and half in the late morning glare of Seigen, were lit with gold on one side, and red, ochre, vermilion, orange, scarlet… a wide wilderness of colours. We walked amongst the settling animals as each was quieted. Some — the hauls, mostly — had a bag over their heads. The better mounts had elegant eye-muffs while the best had their own travelling stables and lesser beasts merely warranted a blindfold made of whatever rag came to hand. One by one they folded themselves to the ground and prepared to sleep. Jollisce and I walked among them, Jollisce smoking a long pipe. He was my oldest and best friend, from the time when I had briefly been in the service of the Duke before being sent to Haspide.

“Probably it’s nothing,” he said. “Feulecharo likes to listen to himself talk, and he likes to pretend he knows something everybody else doesn’t. I wouldn’t worry about it, but if you think you ought to report it to your mistress, then of course you must do so.”

“Hmm,” I said. I recall (looking back on that earlier self from this more mature vantage point) that I was not sure what to do. Duke Walen was a powerful man, and a schemer. He was not the sort of man somebody like the Doctor could afford to have as an enemy, and yet I had to think of my own, real Master, as well as my Mistress. Should I tell neither of them? Or one — if so, which? Or both?

“Listen,” Jollisce said, stopping and turning to me (and it seemed to me he’d waited until there was nobody else around before he divulged this last piece of intelligence). “If it’s any help, I have heard that Walen might have sent somebody to Equatorial Cuskery.”

“Cuskery?”

“Yes, do you know of it?”

“Sort of. It’s a port, isn’t it?”

“Port, city-state, Sea Company sanctuary, lair of sea monsters if you believe some people… but the point is, it’s about the furthest north people come in any numbers from the Southern lands, and they supposedly have quite a number of embassies and legations there.”

“Yes?”

“Well, apparently one of Duke Walen’s men has been sent to Cuskery to look for somebody from Drezen.”

“From Drezen!” I said, then lowered my voice as Jollisce frowned and looked about us, over the sleeping bodies of the great animals. “But… why?”

“I can’t imagine,” Jollisce said.

“How long does it take to get to Cuskery?”

“It takes nearly a year to get there. The journey is somewhat quicker coming back, they say.” He shrugged. “The winds.”

“That’s a long way to send somebody,” I said, wondering.

“I know,” Jollisce said. He sucked on his pipe. “My man assumed it was some trade thing. You know, people are always expecting to make their fortunes from spices or potions or new fruits or something, if they can get stuff past the Sea Companies and avoid the storms, but, well, my master came by some information that indicated Walen’s fellow was looking for just one person.”

“Oh.”

“Hmm.” Jollisce stood and faced the Xamis-set, his face made ruddy by the glow of flame-coloured cloud in the west. “Good sunset,” he said, drawing deep on his pipe.

“Very,” I agreed, not really looking.

“Best ones were just around the time the Empire fell, of course. Didn’t you think?”

“Hmm? Oh yes, naturally.”

“Providence’s recompense for the sky falling in on us,” Jollisce mused, frowning into the bowl of his pipe.

“Hmm. Yes.” Who to tell? I thought. Who to tell…

Master, the Doctor attended the King in his tent each day during the Circuition from Haspide to Yvenir because our monarch was afflicted with an aching back.

The Doctor sat on the side of the bed King Quience lay upon. “If it’s really that sore, sir, you should rest it,” she told him.

“Rest?” the King said, turning over on to his front. “How can I rest? This is the Circuition, you idiot. If I rest so does everybody else, and then by the time we get to the Summer Palace it’ll be time to come back again.”

“Well,” the Doctor said, pulling the King’s shift up out of his riding breeches to expose his broad, muscled back. “You might lie on your back in a carriage, sir.”

“That would hurt too,” he said into his pillow.

“It might hurt a little, sir, but it would quickly become better. Sitting on a mount will only make it worse.”

“Those carts, they sway all over the place and the wheels bang down into holes and ruts. These roads are much worse than they were last year, I’m sure. Wiester?”

“Sir?” the fat chamberlain said, quickly stepping out of the shadows to the King’s side.

“Have somebody find out whose responsibility this bit of road is. Are the appropriate taxes being collected? If they are, are they being spent on it and if not where are they going?”

“At once, sir.” Wiester bustled off, leaving the tent.

“You can’t trust Dukes to levy taxes properly, Vosill,” the King sighed. “At any rate, you can’t trust their tax collectors. They have too damn much authority. Far too many tax collectors have bought themselves baronies for my liking.”

“Indeed, Sir,” the Doctor said.

“Yes. I’ve been thinking I might set up some sort of more… town- or city-sized, umm…”

“Authority, Sir?”

“Yes. Yes, authority. A council of responsible citizens. Perhaps just to oversee the roads and city walls and so on, at first. Things they might care about more than Dukes, who only bother about their own houses and how much game is in their parks.”

“I’m sure that’s a very good idea, sir.”

“Yes, I’m sure it is too.” The King looked round at the Doctor. “You have them, don’t you?”

“Councils, Sir?”

“Yes. I’m sure you’ve mentioned them. Probably comparing our own backward arrangements unfavourably, I don’t doubt.”

“Would I do that, sir?”

“Oh, I think you would, Vosill.”

“Our arrangements do seem to produce comfortable roads, I would certainly claim that.”

“But then,” the King said glumly, “if I take power from the barons, they’ll get upset.”

“Well, make them all arch-Dukes, sir, or give them some other awards.”

The King thought about this. “What other awards?”

“I don’t know, sir. You might invent some.”

“Yes, I might,” the King said. “But then, if I go giving power to the peasants or the tradespeople and so on, they’ll only want more.”

The Doctor continued to massage the King’s back. “We do say that prevention is better than cure, sir,” she told him. “The time to look after the body is before there is anything wrong with it. The time to rest is before you feel too tired to do anything else, and the time to eat is before hunger consumes you.”

The King frowned as the Doctor’s hands moved over his body. “How I wish it was all so easy.” he said with a sigh. “I think the body must be a simple thing in comparison to a state if it can be maintained on the basis of such platitudes.”

The Doctor, I thought, looked a little hurt by this. “Then I am glad that my concern is for the health of your body, sir, not that of your country.”

“I am my country,” the King said sternly, though with an expression which belied his tone.

“Then be glad, sir, that your kingdom is in a better state than its king, who will not lie in a carriage like a sensible monarch would.”

“Don’t treat me like a child, Vosill!” the King said loudly, twisting round towards her. “Ow!” he said, grimacing, and collapsed back again. “What you don’t realise, Vosill,” he said, through gritted teeth, “being a woman, I suppose, is that in a carriage you have less room for manoeuvre. They take up the whole road, you see? A man on a mount, why, he can negotiate his way around all the irregularities on the road surface.”

“I see, sir. Nevertheless, it is a fact that you are spending the whole day in the saddle, bouncing up and down and compressing the small pads between your vertebrae and forcing them into the nerve. That’s what is making your spine hurt. Lying in a carriage, almost no matter how much it shakes and bounces, will certainly be better for you.”

“Look, Vosill,” the King said in an exasperated tone, levering himself up on one elbow and looking round at the Doctor. “How do you think it would look if the King took to a pleasuring couch and laid amongst the perfumed pillows of a ladies’ carriage like some porcelain-arsed concubine? What sort of monarch could do that? Eh? Don’t be ridiculous.” He laid carefully back on his front again.

“I take it your father never did such a thing, sir.”

“No, he…” the King began, then looked suspiciously back at the Doctor before continuing. “No, he didn’t. Of course not. He rode. And I will ride. I shall ride and make my back sore because that’s what’s expected of me. You shall make my back better because that’s what’s expected of you. Now, do your job, Doctor, and stop this damned prattling. Providence preserve me from the wittering of women! Aow! Will you be careful!”

“I have to find out where it hurts, sir.”

“Well, you’ve found it! Now do what you’re supposed to do, which is make it stop hurting. Wiester? Wiester!”

Another servant came forward. “He’s just stepped out, sir.”

“Music,” the King said. “I want music. Fetch the musicians.”

“Sir.” The servant turned to go.

The King snapped his fingers, bringing the servant back.

“Sir?”

“And wine.”

“Sir.”

“What a beautiful sunset, don’t you think, Oelph?”

“Yes, mistress. Providence’s recompense for the sky falling in upon us,” I said, recalling Jollisce’s phrase (I was sure it was one he’d heard from somebody else anyway).

“I suppose it’s something,” the Doctor agreed.

We were sitting on the broad front bench of the covered wagon which had become our home. I had been counting. I had slept in the carriage for eleven of the last sixteen days (the other five I had been billeted with the other senior pages and apprentices in buildings in one of the towns we had camped within) and I would probably sleep in it again for another seven days out of the next ten, until we reached the city of Lep-Skatacheis, where we would stop for half a moon. Thereafter the wagon would be my home for eighteen days out of twenty-one until we reached Yvenage. Perhaps nineteen out of twenty-two if we encountered difficulties on the hill roads and were delayed.

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.”

“What was it you argued about, mistress?”

“Lots of things, or lots of aspects of the same thing. Whether the might beyond might had a right to impose its values on others.” She looked at my puzzled expression and laughed. “We argued about here, for one thing.”

“Here, mistress?” I asked, looking around.

“About—” She seemed to catch herself, then said, “About Haspide, the Empire. About this whole other hemisphere.” She shrugged. “I won’t bore you with the details. In the end I left and he stayed, though I did hear later that he too sailed away, some time after I did.”

“Do you regret coming here now, mistress?”

“No,” she said, smiling. “For most of the voyage to Cuskery I did… but the equator signalled a change, as they say it often does, and since then, no. I still miss my family and friends, but I am not sorry now that I made the decision.”

“Do you think you will ever go back, mistress?”

“I have no idea, Oelph.” Her expression was troubled and hopeful at once. Then she produced another smile for me. “I am the doctor to the King, after all. I would consider that I have not done my job properly if he would let me leave. I may be forced to look after him until he’s an old man, or until he grows displeased with me because I grow whiskers on my lips and my hair thins on my head and my breath smells, and he has my head chopped off because I interrupt him once too often. Then you might have to become his doctor.”

“Oh, mistress,” was all I could say.

“I don’t know, Oelph,” she confided in me. “I’m not so sure about making plans. I’ll wait and see which way fate takes me. If Providence, or whatever we wish to call it, has me stay, then I’ll stay. If it somehow calls me back to Drezen, I’ll go.” She dipped her head towards me and with what she probably thought was a conspiratorial look said, “Who knows, my destiny might lead me back through Equatorial Cuskery. I might get to see my handsome Sea Company captain again.” She winked at me.

“Was the land of Drezen much affected by the rocks from the sky, mistress?” I asked.

She did not seem to heed my tone, which I had worried might seem excessively frosty. “More than here in Haspidus,” she said. “But much less than the Inlands of the Empire. One city on a far northern island was washed almost entirely away by a wave, killing ten or more thousand people, and some ships were lost, and of course the crop yields all over were down for a couple of growing seasons; so the farmers moaned, but then the farmers always do. No, we escaped relatively lightly.”

“Do you think it was the work of the gods, mistress? There are those who say that Providence was punishing us for something, or perhaps just punishing the Empire. Others hold that it was the work of the old gods, and that they are coming back. What do you think?”

“I think it could be any of those things, Oelph,” the Doctor said thoughtfully. “Though there are some people in Drezen — philosophers — who have a much more bleak explanation, mind you.”

“Which is what, mistress?”

“That such things happen for no reason at all.”

“No reason?”

“No reason beyond the workings of pure chance.”

I thought about this. “Do they not think that there is good and bad? And that one deserves to be emulated and the other not, but rather punished?”

“A very small number would say that there are no such entities. Most agree there are, but that they only exist in our minds. The world itself, without us, does not recognise such things, just because they are not things, they are ideas, and the world contained no ideas until people came along.”

“So they believe that Man was not created with the world?”

“That’s right. Or at least not people with wits.”

“Are they then Seigenists? Do they believe that the Lesser Sun created us?”

“Some would say it did. They would claim that people were once no more than animals and that we too used to fall asleep promptly when Xamis set, and rise when it rose. Some believe that all we are is light, that the light of Xamis holds the world together like an idea, like a hugely complicated dream, and the light of Seigen is the very expression of us as thinking beings.”

I tried to comprehend this curious concept, and was just starting to decide that it was not so different from normal beliefs when the Doctor asked suddenly, “What do you believe in, Oelph?”

Her face, turned to me, was the colour of the soft, tawny dusk. Seigen-light caught fallen wisps of her half-curled red hair.

“What? Why, what all other civil people believe, mistress,” I said, before thinking that perhaps she, coming from Drezen where they obviously had some odd ideas, might believe something quite different. “That is to say, what people hereabouts, that is in Haspidus…”

“Yes, but what do you personally believe?”

I frowned at her, an expression such a graceful, gentle face did not deserve to have directed at it. Did the Doctor really imagine that everybody went around believing different things? One believed what one was told to believe, what it made sense to believe. Unless one was a foreigner, of course, or a philosopher. “I believe in Providence, mistress.”

“But when you say Providence, do you really mean god?”

“No, mistress. I don’t believe in any of the old gods. No one does any more. No one of sense, at any rate. Providence is the rule of laws, mistress,” I said.

I was trying not to insult her by sounding as though I was talking to a child. I had experienced aspects of the Doctor’s naïveté before, and ascribed it to simple ignorance of the manner in which matters were organised in what was to her a foreign land, but even after the best part of a year it appeared there were still subjects that each of us assumed we viewed in a mutual light and from a similar perspective which in fact we saw quite differently. “The laws of Nature determine the ordering of the physical world and the laws of Man determine the ordering of society, mistress.”

“Hmm,” she said, with an expression that might have been simply thoughtful or tinged with scepticism.

“One set of laws grows out of the other as do plants from the common clay,” I added, remembering something I’d been taught in Natural Philosophy (my determined and strenuous endeavours to take in absolutely nothing of what I had regarded as entirely the most irrelevant part of my schooling had patently not met with total success).

“Which is not so dissimilar to the light of Xamis ordering the major part of the world, and that of Seigen illuminating the human,” she mused, staring towards the sunset again.

“I suppose not, mistress,” I agreed, struggling to follow.

“Ha,” she said. “All very interesting.”

“Yes, mistress,” I said, dutifully.

Adlain: Duke Walen. A pleasure, as ever. Welcome to my humble tent. Please.

Walen: Adlain.

A: Some wine? What about food? Have you eaten?

W: A glass, thank you.

A: Wine. I’ll take some too. Thank you, Epline. So, you are well?

W: Well enough. You?

A: Fine.

W: I wonder, could you…?

A: What, Epline? Yes, of course. Epline, would you…? I’ll call… Now then, Walen?… There is nobody else here.

W: Hmm. Very well. This doctor. Vosill.

A: Still her, eh, dear Duke? This is becoming an obsession. Do you really find her that interesting? Perhaps you ought to tell her. She may prefer older men.

W: Mocking the wisdom that comes with age is a fit sport only for those who expect never to attain much of it themselves, Adlain. You know the substance of my complaint.

A: I regret I don’t, Duke.

W: But you have told me of your own doubts. Did you not have her writing checked in case it was a code or something similar?

A: I thought about it. I decided not to, directly.

W: Well, perhaps you should, directly. She is a witch. Or a spy. One of the two.

A: I see. And what strange old gods or other demons do you think she serves? Or which master?

W: I do not know. We will not know, unless we put her to the question.

A: Ah-ha. Would you like to see that happen?

W: I know it is unlikely while she retains the King’s favour, though that might not last for ever. In any event, there are ways. She might simply disappear and be questioned… informally, as it were.

A: Nolieti?

W: I have… not discussed this with him as such, but I have already ascertained most reliably that he would be more than happy to oblige. He suspects strongly that she released through death one of those he was questioning.

A: Yes, he mentioned that to me.

W: Did you think to do anything?

A: I told him he should be more careful.

W: Hmm. At any rate, she might be discovered in such a manner, though that would be somewhat risky, and she would have to be killed thereafter anyway. Working to force her from the King’s favour might take longer and could, pressing the matter as one may have to, entail risks which were hardly less than those attached to the former course of action.

A: Obviously you have given the matter considerable thought.

W: Of course. But if she was to be taken, without the King’s knowledge, the help of the guard commander might be crucial.

A: It might, mightn’t it?

W: So? Would you help?

A: In what way?

W: Provide the men, perhaps?

A: I think not. We might have one lot of the palace guard fighting their fellows, and that would never do.

W: Well then, otherwise?

A: Otherwise?

W: Damn it, man! You know what I must mean!

A: Blind eyes? Gaps in rosters? That sort of thing?

W: Yes, that.

A: Sins of omission rather than commission.

W: Expressed however you wish. It is the acts, or lack of them I would know about.

A: Then, perhaps.

W: No more? Merely, “perhaps”?

A: Were you thinking of doing this in close proximity to the present, dear Duke?

W: Perhaps.

A: Ha. Now, you see, unless you—

W: I don’t mean today, or tomorrow. I am looking for an understanding that should it become necessary, such a plan might be put into effect with as little delay as possible.

A: Then, if I was convinced of the urgency of the cause, it might.

W: Good. That is better. At last. Providence, you are the most—

A: But I would have to believe that the safety of the monarch was threatened. Doctor Vosill is a personal appointee of the King. To move against her might be seen as moving against our beloved Quience himself. His health is in her hands, perhaps as much as it is in mine. I do my modest best to keep at bay assassins and others who might wish the King ill, while she combats the illnesses that come from within.

W: Yes, yes, I know. She is close. He depends on her. It is already too late to act before her influence achieves its zenith. We might only work to hasten the descent. But by then it might be too late.

A: You think that she means to kill the King? Or influence him? Or does she merely spy, reporting to another power?

W: Her brief might include all of those, depending.

A: Or none.

W: You seem less concerned in this than I imagined, Adlain. She has come from the ends of the world, entered the city barely two years ago, doctored to one merchant and one noble — both briefly — and then suddenly she’s closer to our King than anybody else! Providence, a wife would spend less time with him!

A: Yes. One might wonder whether she performs any of the more intimate duties of a wife.

W: Hmm. I think not. To bed one’s physician is unusual, but that only arises from the unnaturalness of having a woman claiming to be a doctor in the first place. But, no, I have seen no sign. Why, do you know?

A: I merely wondered if you knew.

W: Hmm.

A: Of course, she does seem to be a rather good doctor. At the very least she has done the King no obvious harm, and that in my experience is far more than one might reasonably expect from a court physician. Perhaps we should leave her alone for now, while we have nothing more definite than your suspicions, however reliable they have proved in the past.

W: We might. Will you have her watched?

A: Well, no more than at present.

W: Hmm. And besides, I have another investment in the truth or otherwise of her story that may yet yield her.

A: You do? How so?

W: I shall not trouble you with the details, but I have my doubts concerning certain of her claims and hope presently to bring before the King one who can discredit her and show her to have borne false witness to him. It is a long-term investment but it should bear interest during our time at the Summer Palace or, if not, then shortly thereafter.

A: I see. Well, we must hope that you do not lose your capital. Can you tell me what form it takes?

W: Oh, it is the coin of man. And land, and tongue. But I must hold mine. I’ll say no more.

A: I think I shall have more wine. Will you join me?

W: Thank you, no. I have other matters to attend to.

A: Allow me…

W: Thank you. Ah. My old bones… at least I am able to ride, though next year I may take carriage. I thank Providence the way back is easier. And that we are not far from Lep now.

A: I’m sure in the hunt you can out-jump men half your age, Duke.

W: I am sure I cannot, but your flattery is still gratifying. Good day.

A: Good day, Duke… Epline!

All this I copied — with a few deletions to make the narrative less tedious — from the part of the Doctor’s journal written in Imperial. I never did show it to my Master.

Could she have overheard all this? It seems inconceivable. The guard commander Adlain had his own physician and I’m sure he never once called upon the Doctor’s services. What would she have been doing anywhere near his tent?

Could they have been lovers and she was hiding under some bed covers all the time? That seems no more likely. I was with her almost all of the time, every single day. Also, she confided in me, sincerely, I am convinced. She simply did not like Adlain. Indeed she felt threatened by him. How could she suddenly have tumbled into bed with a man she feared, never giving the remotest sign before that she desired to, or afterwards that she had? I know that illicit lovers can be ingenious in the extreme and suddenly find within themselves reserves of guile and the ability to act that even they did not until then know they possessed, but to imagine the Doctor and the guard commander in such a sexual conspiracy is surely to draw the bow one notch too far.

Was Epline the source? Did she have some sort of hold over him? I do not know. They seemed not really to know each other, but who can tell? They may have been lovers, but the same unlikeliness attaches to that liaison as does to that of her and Adlain.

I cannot think who else could have heard all of this. It did occur to me that she might have made it all up, that what she wrote here constituted her darkest imaginings regarding what others in the Court might be planning for her, yet somehow that too does not feel right either. In the end I am left with something that I am certain reflects a genuine conversation, but with no clear idea how the Doctor came by it.

But there we are. Some things never do make perfect sense. There must be some explanation, and it is perhaps a little like the Doctrine of the Perfect Partner. We must be content to know that she exists, somewhere in the world, and try not to care overmuch that we will probably never meet her.

We arrived without incident at the city of Lep-Skatacheis. On the morning after we arrived the Doctor and I went to the King’s chambers before the business of the day was due to start. As usual on such occasions, the King’s business — and much of the Court’s — comprised of hearing certain legal disputes which had been deemed too complicated or too important for the city authorities and the Marshal to decide upon. According to my experience, gained during the three previous years I had travelled this way, such sitting in judgment was not a function of his responsibilities the King relished.

The King’s chambers were on a corner of the City-Marshal’s palace, overlooking the reflecting terraces of the pools which led down towards the distant river. Swifts and darts played in the warm air outside, wheeling and tumbling beyond the cool stone of the balcony balustrades. The chamberlain Wiester let us in, fussing as usual.

“Oh. Are you on time? Was there the bell? Or a cannon? I did not hear the bell. Did you?”

“A few moments ago,” the Doctor told him, following him across the reception room to the King’s dressing chamber.

“Providence!” he said, and opened the doors.

“Ah, the good Doctor Vosill!” the King exclaimed. He was standing on a small stool in the centre of the great dressing chamber, being dressed in his ceremonial judicial robes by four servants. One wall of plaster windows, south facing, flooded the room with soft, creamy light. Duke Ormin stood nearby, tall and slightly stooped and dressed in judicial robes. “How are you today?” the King asked.

“I am well, your majesty.”

“A very good morning to you, Doctor Vosill,” Duke Ormin said, smiling. Duke Ormin was ten or so years older than the King. He was a lanky-legged sort of a fellow with a very broad head and a surprisingly large torso which always looked, to me at least, stuffed, as though he had a couple of pillows forced up his shirt. An odd-looking fellow, then, but most civil and kind, as I knew myself, having been briefly in his employ, though at a fairly menial level. The Doctor, too, had been retained by him, more recently, when she had been his personal physician before she had become the King’s.

“Duke Ormin,” the Doctor said, bowing.

“Ah!” the King said. “And I was favoured with a ‘your majesty’! Usually I am lucky to escape with a ‘sir’.”

“I beg the King’s pardon,” the Doctor said, bowing now to him.

“Granted,” Quience said, putting back his head and letting a couple of servants gather his blond curls together and pin a skull cap in place. “I am obviously in a magnanimous mood this morning. Wiester?”

“Sire?”

“Inform the good lord judges I shall be joining that I am in such a good mood they will have to be certain to be at their most sourly pitiless in court this morning to provide a balance for my irrepressible leniency. Take heed, Ormin.”

Duke Ormin beamed, his eyes almost disappearing as his face screwed up in a grin.

Wiester hesitated, then started to make for the door. “At once, sire.”

“Wiester.”

“Sire?”

“I was joking.”

“Ah. Ha ha.” The chamberlain laughed.

The Doctor put her bag down on a seat near the door.

“Yes, Doctor?” the King asked.

The Doctor blinked. “You asked me to attend you this morning, sir.”

“Did I?” The King looked mystified.

“Yes, last night.” (This was true.)

“Oh, so I did.” The King looked surprised as his arms were raised and a sleeveless black robe edged in some shiningly white fur was placed over his shoulders and fastened. He flexed, shifting his weight from stockinged foot to stockinged foot, clenching his fists, executing a sort of rolling motion with his shoulders and his head and then declaring, “You see, Ormin? I am becoming quite forgetful in my old age.”

“Why now, sir, you have barely left your youth,” the Duke told him. “If you go calling yourself old as though by royal decree, what must we think who are significantly older than you and yet who still fondly harbour the belief that we are not yet old? Have mercy, please.”

“Very well,” the King agreed, with a roll of the hand. “I declare myself young again. And well,” he added, with a renewed look of surprise as he glanced at the Doctor and me. “Why, I seem to be quite bereft of any aches and pains for you to treat this morning, Doctor.”

“Oh.” The Doctor shrugged. “Well, that’s good news,” she said, picking up her bag and turning for the door. “I’ll bid you good day then, sir.”

“Ah!” the King said suddenly. We each turned again.

“Sir?”

The King looked most thoughtful for a moment, then shook his head. “No, Doctor, I can think of nothing with which to detain you. You may go. I shall call you when I need you next.”

“Of course, sir.”

Wiester opened the doors for us.

“Doctor?” the King said as we were in the doorway. “Duke Ormin and I go hunting this afternoon. I usually fall off my mount or get torn up by a barb bush, so I may well have something for you to treat later.”

Duke Ormin laughed politely and shook his head.

“I shall start to prepare the relevant potions now,” the Doctor said. “Your majesty.”

“Providence, twice.”