§
Mireia and Melione missed lunch, due to once again touring the hospitals to treat battle casualties. Mireia had been doing so daily since she arrived in this city, and Melione had begun joining her on the first morning of my extended nap. But I learned from Ceria that today, eleven days after the demonic attack on Narses, would be their final round of the hospitals. No casualties remained to be treated, and the normal patients suffering from non-combat illnesses and the like were better treated by the experienced medical professionals.
[Healing] accesses guidance from the Sea of Knowledge, but one must have the ability to understand the knowledge coming back to you from the Beyond. That’s true whether you are a healer or an ordinary person using a healing potion to temporarily access the magic. And the cause and treatment of a wound or poison is much more straightforward than the cause and treatment of cancer or infectious disease. People without medical training are of great help on the battlefield or in an adventurer party, but not so useful in a hospital beyond the trauma center. If Mireia had been able to stay at the Royal Academy, she would have received the education of a medical healer, but that did not happen.
Naturally, Mireia had royal knights with her, at Rod’s orders, and Ryuu, Graham and Brigitte had gone as Melione’s bodyguard, so I had no reason to worry about their safety, but it still made me uncomfortable for them to be away from me in a city that I knew the demons were targeting.
Rhea was right. I had trouble trusting in the competence of others when it came to matters important to me. I felt a driving need to take care of it myself.
I wasn’t that talkative during lunch, so it is fortunate that Amelia can easily carry my part of the conversation as well as her own. Actually, Ceria was having to hold up Rod and Chiara’s ends, because neither of them were speaking much, either.
Lady Chiara was very possibly too shy to speak around so much royalty, or maybe she knew that Amelia was her lover’s fiancée and was too embarrassed. Rod, on the other hand… I didn’t know what his problem was. Just like earlier, he seemed to bitterly avoid saying anything to me.
I wanted to ask him exactly what the whole thing about an attack on Oto was. But it was as ridiculous as planning an attack on Cloud Cuckoo Land or the Big Rock Candy Mountain. And it was not the right venue. If my military aide didn’t have the right to hear the details, then the footmen and maids standing at the walls and waiting on us most certainly didn’t
My current silence was for a simpler reason, though. I was still a little number from the surprise over Pasrue’s almost inexplicable permanent life-altering choice.
She had been willing to sacrifice herself for Science… no, that didn’t seem to be the right explanation. Out of curiosity, she decided to find out for herself about the living power pill that is an Elder and his blood bond?
Also didn’t quite fit.
Apparently, Pasrue’s curiosity about Elders and Servants and their peculiar ties had driven her to conduct interviews of Melione and Ceria every time she encountered them. She had witnessed for herself more than once my powers, so far beyond those of a fairy my age, so she already knew I was something outside her knowledge. To learn more, she’d taken many opportunities while providing logistics for Orestania to ask my Servants about me.
Those discussions had turned quickly to the effect the blood bond had on them, and she’d grown equally interested in them. And they had found chances to show her directly how much stronger they had become.
As much as I didn’t want to think it of a woman so much older than me, I suspected the real reason was much simpler. She’d become envious, and wanted it for herself. And when she learned that Diur, the wounded fairy-like being whom she had transported from the Tabad to Relador, was a male of my species, she had visited him on her next trip to Tëan Tír. It seemed, as an esteemed disciple of the Fairy King’s son, she had a permanent pass into his Castle and the Royal Grove, so visiting him bore no difficulty.
I listened to the story with something like amazement. Back in the Elder Age, there had certainly been plenty of mortals lining up to become Servants. They attended schools for it and competed for bonds with the best Mistresses. But in the back of my mind, I still had Tiana’s negative concept of Blood Slavery and the idea of it as a thing to be regretted, that happened by accident.
As I sat having my lunch, I was still pondering the question. Women of this modern world could actively pursue the role? Was that truly possible?
Three elven maids in the Fairy King’s Castle had asked to be my Servants. I shouldn’t be surprised. Although the enticement of becoming Grandfather’s concubines as a reward had been their motivation, so I couldn’t see that as the same thing.
I touched my tummy. These two children would eventually need Servants of their own. I had no idea how I was going to arrange it for them, but I didn’t want them forcing the bond on their blood donors and creating new victims and harvesting guilt for themselves. I was going to have to work out a plan for actually training prospective Servants for them.
And for myself. Eventually, I would outlive the ones I have now, as sad as that thought might be. Even the three elves in Tëan Tír, if they ever became mine, would eventually die of old age.
“Tiana?” Amelia asked, breaking into my reverie when she finally noticed I wasn’t actually responding to her.
I looked up. “Yeah. Sorry.”
“Apologize to the cooks,” she sniffed. “You’re hardly touching their food. You’re eating for three now, remember?”
Checking my plate in order to prepare my defense, I instead confronted the awful truth.
It was Atian cuisine today. Currently we were in the savories course. I beheld an open face half-moon sandwich of smoked salmon with dill butter on dark bread, a closed sandwich sliced into fingers of sliced cucumber with mint butter on white bread, and a chicken curry salad in a miniature tart shell. Out of all of it, I had taken only a single bite from one cucumber sandwich finger.
If they were doing a standard Atian luncheon, I had two courses left to get through. And I had to admit, I hadn’t finished the soup course where we had started.
“Lady hasn’t even eaten enough for one,” Ceria retorted, piling on.
“Lady Ceria,” Amelia began lecturing, “I’ve already told you, now that you are a Lady yourself, you should stop referring to her that way. Properly call her ‘Lady Tiana’ from now on. And please remember to call her ladyship ‘Her Grace’ once my brother properly makes her his bride at last.”
I colored. “Phrasing, Your Highness! You said that as if we’ve been living in sin or something!”
Her eyebrow arched. “Which of us at this table is the woman currently pregnant with twins out of wedlock?”
Rod did a slight spit-take with his tea, then hurriedly fished for his napkin.
Ceria waved it off for me. “It’s nothing unusual for adventurers to get pregnant before marriage, Yer Highness. Lady’s no different than my mother that way.”
You’re not helping, Ceria. Your mother is the Baron’s Bloody Daughter.
To shut them up, I picked up the salmon sandwich and took a generous bite.
Mission accomplished, and detecting that they had perhaps pushed too hard, the princess and the current baroness’s daughter looked at each other and giggled.
“Please be more mindful of your nutrition,” Amelia simply stated in closing.
As Syl, who was still the one on duty as my maid, replaced my still-full but cooling cup with a new one and filled it, Amelia asked her, “This tea is lovely. May I ask what you’re serving today?”
Syl placed the pot back on the service, folded her hands before her apron, bowed deeply and stated, “Your Highness, this is the first flush of this year’s offering from Gray Mountain Plantation.”
Amelia blinked. “I don’t believe I’m familiar with that grower.”
The maid bowed again and stated, “It is a Reladorian fairy tea, Your Highness. Her Grace held it in high regard, but the owner only allowed her to bring it to Pendor if she refrained from serving it anywhere else but here at the castle. She was unable to bring it to Atius.”
My foster sister’s eyes had grown about double in size when Syl said the words, ‘fairy tea’.
I realized while Syl was speaking why the name ‘Gray Mountain’ was familiar. So fairies really did grow it, or at least own the plantation where it grew.
Amelia glanced over to me with shaded eyes. “Is it safe for us to drink this?”
A slight ‘pfft’ escaped my lips before I controlled my expression. “I don’t detect anything that would be harmful to mortals in it. I’m pretty sure it’s ‘fairy tea’ because a fairy owns the plantation. ‘Gray Mountain’ is the name of Lady Serera’s clan, so I suspect it is owned by her father, their lord.”
I looked up at Syl for confirmation, and she took another bow, this time to me. “That is correct, My Lady. However, there is more. Although fairy tea must grow in a mana spring, the mana accumulated in the plant is lost in the drying process, rendering it harmless to humans and only leaving behind the delicious flavor.”
Rod had been silent, more or less, since we sat down for our meal, but he finally spoke now. “As a trained mage, you can’t be harmed by most magic plants anyway, Your Highness. You would just absorb the mana and then release it as excess, as a reflex. It’s only untrained humans who need to avoid eating mana-bearing foods.”
Weirdly, none of this was anywhere in my knowledge. Apparently, nobody thought Tiana would ever need to know.
I nodded to the maid, who was still waiting to be dismissed. “Thank you, Syl.”
She bowed yet again and retreated with the tea service. I took an experimental sip of the new tea she had just poured.
Amelia tapped the table to get my attention, then pointed at my plate.
I gave out a sigh. “Anyone watching would think you’re my big sister.”
“I am,” she answered sternly. “I’m two months older than you, remember? Eat.”
Seeing her trying her best to assert her seniority caused me to start laughing gently instead. I stifled it, smiled and nodded, then I set down my cup, and picked up the chicken curry tart. I had to take at least one bite out of each of the savories, or they wouldn’t proceed to the sweet pastry course.
“Big Brother, don’t forget that the tailor will be visiting you this afternoon,” she directed, finally satisfied with my behavior and turning to Rod.
As he answered, “Yes, of course,” I swallowed, savoring the aftertaste of the distinctly British curry flavor that I had just discovered I could still enjoy in this world. I decided to take a second bite.
In quiet tones, my super-powered fairy vampire hearing picked up the comment of one footman to another. “Her ladyship likes the tart. Make sure to tell the chef.”
“You already stood him up once, Big Brother!” Amelia scolded.
“Do you think she didn’t like the sandwiches?” the other footman wondered.
“That was an emergency,” Rod protested. “It couldn’t be helped!”
“We’ll have to see,” the first replied. “If she doesn’t eat any more, maybe he shouldn’t serve them again.”
The salmon had been delicious, and there had been nothing wrong with the cucumber sandwich. A little alarmed at the thought that the chef might not make it again, I firmly told myself to finish all three.
