Chapter 5 : Checkup

Location Wilderness near Waterless Shore, Blue Wave Territory
Time Pre-Dawn 1000 hours (5 hours before dawn)

Maiho scanned her surroundings as she ate her sandwich. Her shard mount Veuto was following the shard crab just as she told her to. Briefly she thought about the original Veuto, dead so many hundred-days before, before shying away from that terrible memory. She spotted Wendam and signaled him to come over.

“Kernan! Where is he?” she barked, her voice full of tension and frustration.

“And a good waking to you too,” replied Wendam.

“Wendam! Where is my Orock-judged boyfriend?”

“Half of the guard are on our back trail gathering Mana. Kernan is helping them.”

“Get off your shard mount and join me on the shard crab so I don’t have to shout at you,” Wendam leant down next to his mounts head out of the view of others, sang a short command, then leapt onto the shard crab wagon tray joining Maiho on the make shift bed Nargre had organized for Bardre. “Why does he have to pick now to be civic minded?” she asked in frustration.

“I think he is afraid you want to screw him.”

“Of course, I want to screw him. I sang two healing crystals dry. Much of that crystal energy is inside me now. It used to drain out of me naturally like a normal person. Now it bounces around inside me until I give it to someone.”

“I’m not sure I blame him. Did you know your eyes are glowing?”

“Going by the boasting and obsessing on the topic, most boyfriends would not have a problem satisfying me, glowing eyes or not.”

“Okay. Changing the topic. What is with the new rank necklace?”

“Bardre made me Mounted Maneuvers Drill Instructor.”

“That’s interesting. Looks like you got what you wanted and then some, but be careful of that woman, she is a bully, a sadist and far trickier than most people think. That promotion may be setting you up for something.”

“It was kind of creepy. She was trying to be nice to me.”

“Of course, she is being nice to you. You are keeping her alive. Also did I mention that your eyes are glowing and your hair is sticking out floating up in the air? Dis himself would piss in his breechclout if he saw you now.”

“Ha, Ha. Very funny, you do know, she is right there. She could be only pretending to be asleep.”

“Is she?”

“No.”

“How can you tell? You barely glanced at her.”

“It is easier with people who have more color, but this close I can still tell even with someone as faded as Bardre. Have you heard of any other Singer being able to sense people and their state of being?”

“I will ask Laivo but I don’t think there is anything like that in her records. Are you sure about this?”

“I can do things, that blues are not supposed be able to do. Sensing how alert someone is, and whether they are paying attention to you, is something a Diviner can do.”

“But you’re a Healer, not a Diviner.”

“I think I might be both, and a Hunt’s Mistress as well. I think it has to do with my time at the Village of Lost Souls.”

“How would you know if you have Hunt’s Mistress Skills? You don’t have a Hunter.”

“Hunt’s Mistress Skills work on any Artificia,” said Maiho avoiding mention of her Hunters. She closed her eyes and hummed. She had sung to most the guard’s shard crabs at one time or another. This formed a link with them and since all of their drivers used flutes, rather than their voices, those links only decayed very slowly. She felt for those links. She could feel the shard crab she was on and the ones ahead and behind. She let her senses rove farther back. There at some distance back, she felt several Artificia, and two talented people, clustered together a fair distance along their back track. She sang under her breath activating a link with a shard crab she had named Goina. She started to feel a headache as images from multiple eyes invaded her consciousness, she focused on one eye, swiveled it around until she picked out Kernan and Feibu on their shard mounts, leaning close and talking.

“How is Bardre?” asked Wendam breaking Maiho out of her trance.

“If we reach a healing alter, she will be fine. If she makes it until then,” said Maiho. She closed her eyes, hummed and reached out ahead. “We’re about two hours from the day nest,” she said.

“That sounds about right. So you think she might not last until then?”

“I did a lot of damage and her heart beat is irregular,” she said glancing at Bardre’s pale still figure.

“Despite her personal deficiencies she isn’t a bad captain.” Wendam twisted his face in a way that indicated that it caused him physical pain to admit this. “Can’t you do more for her?” he asked.

“Healing crystals can only do so much. I tried to give her vitality but I couldn’t. I don’t know whether it is because she doesn’t have enough color or whether it’s because I don’t like her.”

“Why would liking her matter?”

“It helps if you feel a connection. Why do you think I name the Artificia I sing to?” she asked. “Let me try something.” She placed a hand on his shoulder and willed vitality into him. It barely made a difference to the amount of vitality she was holding, her skin still itched and her nerves still buzzed. She did notice that it was easier if she touched him on his patterns rather than his unmarked skin. She tried the same thing with Bardre, but even she when touched her on her patterns she still couldn’t give her more than a tiny trickle of vitality.

Maiho tried touching Wendam again. She hummed trying to detect what was the difference between his patterns and his unmarked skin, sending her senses into his body. It almost felt as if there were crystals in the pattern. She focused sensing a similar feeling deeper inside his body. She sang the healing song and the faint points of light she was sensing flared into brilliance. She could how sense crystals throughout Wendam’s body and by attuning herself to those crystals she could sense what was happening inside Wendam with a clarity she had never managed before. “You have very bad bruising on your side, arms and chest,” she noted.

“Kernan was pretty rough in drill this waking.”

“There is no excuse for this. Let me try something,” she said, finding yet another reason to feel annoyed with Kernan. Maiho restarted the healing song, trying to coax the crystals inside Wendam into healing his body. To her amazement it seemed to partially work. It also seemed to drain a little of her vitality.

“It tingles, but I actually feel better.”

Maiho switched to Bardre and sung trying to find the same crystals in her. There were far fewer crystals and when Maiho tried to command them to heal. Bardre’s breath became short, her face darkened and she moaned. Maiho felt Bardre’s heart flutter and struggle. Maiho grabbed her bag and riffled though it, until found a red vial. She unstopped it, and placed one drop from the vial on Bardre’s tongue. Bardre’s distress subsided. Maiho clasped her hands together to stop them shaking.

“I almost killed her. I tried to heal her the way I healed you and I nearly killed her,” she said when she got the shakes under control.

“Is it because she is so ill?”

“No, it’s because she has almost no color. I knew it was harder to heal someone the less color they had, but now I am starting to understand why.”

“Yeah, Bardre and Nargre are both from the Shambles. You can tell from their names as well as other things. The entire Shambles has less than a thimble full of talent between the lot of them. It probably explains some of Bardre’s attitudes as well. The Shambles is not a forgiving section of the nest. What did you give her?” Wendam asked.

“A stimulant. It strengthens the heart.”

“So there is nothing more you can do for her?”

“Not unless I can give her more color,” Maiho said sadly. Maiho had gained color as she had gotten older. She started singing, turning her focus inwards, placing her hands on her stomach. She had far more crystals inside her than Wendam, but she noticed something else, something felt wrong inside her.

Maiho started to untie Wendam breechclout. “You know I usually prefer a little foreplay, before I get down to business,” complained Wendam.

“Raise yourself up. I want to check something.”

“I doubt my equipment is that different from Kernan’s.”

“Just relax I am a healer. I do this all the time,” Maiho said.

“Somehow I doubt it. Hey! Your hands are cold,” he complained. Maiho sang focusing on the delicate sack in her hand. It was the same.

“Wendam, do you want to have children?”

“Naedri’s tits! Maiho, there is no reason to threaten me. You know I would do anything for you.”

“I’m not threatening you. I’m offering to heal you,” she said exasperated.

“Of what?”

“I think I have figured out why singers have such a hard time having children. I think I can fix it.”

“You think you know? No thanks. I don’t want to be your little experimental night rat.” he said.

Maiho sensed the driver’s attention focus on them. Wendam had been too loud. “I know what I am doing. You will be fine,” she whispered.

“I trust you with my life. I just don’t trust you with my balls. I am kind of attached to them.”

“Do you want to have children or not?” she asked.

“I think I will try the old fashioned method. After all it was good enough for my parents and it was good enough for yours,” he said. Maiho couldn’t understand why he had so much difficulty with this, everybody knew that the singer caste and especially active Singers had a difficult time conceiving. Surely what she was trying to tell him was not far from what he already knew. Then she realized that to Wendam, difficult meant that you had to try really hard, it didn’t mean that you might not succeed however hard you tried.

“How long have you and Laivo been trying?”

“Slightly longer than you and Kernan.”

“You two have been at it like night hares since you were both 15 hundred-days. That’s at least a hundred-day sooner than Kernan arrived. Plus I was never under the delusion that I would get pregnant. I have sung too much crystal. I always believed I would be childless like my Great Aunt Viune. Now however - “, she paused uncertain how to end the sentence. Did she want children?

“That can’t be right. If that were true the singers couldn’t have children at all, you would never have been born.”

“My father hasn’t sung since his lessons with the Song Master as a child and my mother had just been made junior healer when I was conceived, and from all accounts she did all she could to avoid singing. She still does. You notice I don’t have any brothers or sisters. Wendam, how often do you sing?”

“I am not a Singer, I am not allowed to sing,” denied Wendam.

“How often do you sing?” she asked with an edge in her voice.

There was a long silence before Wendam finally admitted, “Now and again, quietly, when people can’t hear me.”

“It’s more than now and again, I can see the color in you. Laivo sings to her books all the time, in the sound proof consulting rooms or in her little greeter’s box. I am going to have to fix her as well.”

“You are not touching Laivo.”

“You mean without experimenting on someone else first? I wonder where I would get a volunteer? You know what she is going to say when I offer. She really wants children.” she threatened.

“You can be a real manipulative razor-claw sometimes. Just make it quick,” he said, giving in.

Maiho grasped his ball sack and sang, focusing on shifting the crystals to other parts of his body. Wendam suppressed a yelp. She healed and tweaked until the sense of wrongness disappeared.

“How do you feel?”

“You can see how I feel. And by the way you can let go any time.”