SBMS119
I woke up later that evening, splayed out on the back of another mare. Little Cup Cake was walking down the corridor past the burnt ruins of my foyer, talking to an angry-looking Carrot Cake. I looked up from her withers, half-hearing the conversation.
"-just left him there. I don't know, but he needs to go back where he ought to be."
"You don't owe him anything."
"Don't I? Don't you? Kindness isn't just a duty, Carrot. Won't take much."
"Thank you," I ground out. "Should still be a cot back there in the wards."
"Oh, look at that, awake again. Cherie was asking after you, Doctor."
"We're short-staffed in the medical section right now, can I borrow you from the commissary?"
"Yes, Sawbones, they can spare me."
And things went away then.
I told them to start giving me antibiotics and salicin, but it wasn't enough. Those damn burns took me out of commission, and I was dubiously coherent for much of the next week. Rye Daughter recovered much more quickly than I did. Later on, I found out that they had gotten Obscured Blade and the slumbering hulk of the Captain together, and he figured out how to wake Sleeping Beauty.
The Spirit disappeared from her long appearance as soon as the Captain's sleep was interrupted, of course. So we knew that much of whatever was going on between the two of them. We had been fairly certain that they hadn't been this exclusive before some time in the summer. But after that point, they had synchronized. Her refusal to acknowledge the supernatural essence of her own Company had hidden some sort of connection, sure enough.
Did the Spirit sleep in her reason? Well, only Cherie and the Spirit only really knew for sure, but neither one was talking. The rest of us could only speculate. Uncle Blade and my potions were to regulate this new-found relationship, mostly without my input, given my own incapacity in these days.
Feufollet came by, with Gibblets and Octavius, and they said something about my designated understudy being filled. I talked to her, but I don't remember much of the early conversations. I must have said something, but damned if I can tell you what. They put the chest by my sick-bed.
First conversation I could remember, was on the subject of languages. Feufollet was sitting there by the chest, and Rye Daughter was laying on her own sickbed, her left antler wrapped where the horn had been broken off. The Equestrian spy was puttering about somewhere else on the wards, taking up the slack left by poor wounded Rye and I.
"Equuish was the language of the Annals even back when the native language of our recruits and even the Annalists themselves had been Zebric or old Prancic. Later on, we took most of our ponies from worlds where they spoke Trottish or Slavish or Romancy or Sicari or a half-dozen other dialects and creoles. You'd be amazed how many ways ponies have found to lie to their loved ones and tell falsehoods about their enemies since the diasporas spread us across the Chain of Creation.
"No matter what the foaling-language was of the Company's current run of ponies, we kept the Annals in Equuish. It was a big part of what kept the Company the Company. It was established by horses speaking and writing Feresi, but they kept the chronicles in proper Equuish, no matter what they learned at their dams' teats."
I needed both the Lieutenant and the Captain present to conduct the binding ritual. I must have sent off Feufollet to collect the necessary ponies, because next thing I remember was the two ponies and the new understudy standing beside the chest and my sick-bed, waiting for me to become lucid again.
"OK, Captain, you remember this from when they made me the new Annalist? You were still Lieutenant then, right?"
"Yeah, Doc. I remember."
We went through the motions, and said the words. A little bit of drama, a little bit of fireworks. Rye Daughter watched wide-eyed from her own bed across the aisle. Feufollet glowed a bit from the after-effects.
"So that's that. I'm going to have you start your own chap-book, it won't go into the Annals, but it'll breed the right habits and reflexes in you, and leave you accustomed to recording the true account of what you see and hear." I sighed.
"Well, assuming that we don't find ourselves under the prying hooves of another deathless abomination, I suppose. You're the new understudy rather than Rye Daughter or somepony else because we think you're better able to defend yourself and your new access to the archives. Try it out, now."
Feufollet touched the ancient iron-wood and its metal fixtures. The old construct bloomed like a flower, opening up its private parts to the jenny, who was herself beginning to grow into her adulthood. I pointed out to her the compartments that held the writing implements and the spare paper and parchment, and the library shelving, with all of its complexities.
"I kept some weapons in the front compartment, for events like our late visit by the legate. That noise I'm trying to talk over is Mad Jack's work-ponies trying to patch together the damage done by said weapons. Last time I got caught out in the open with the chest and no real weapons to speak of, I decided that wasn't going to happen again. They say I have a little bit of magic in my alchemy and potioning, but it's never been anything I could use for the defense of me and mine. At best, I'm like the bowmares and swordsponies in the ranks - there's magic, and then there's you warlocks in the witches' coven. Time to bend the Annalship back towards those that can keep the archives safe, you know?"
I said this, looking in the eyes of Rye, who watched everything without a word, her black eyes gleaming with what I know not. She wouldn't talk about what had happened before we had broken into the office and interrupted the Marklaird. Things had happened, it was clear that Skinflint hadn't died quick or easy, and the two wounded we had found dead in the office had broken in ten minutes before the big push by the guard. The surviving wounded in the outer wards and the other three oxen had fallen back from the office when the blood had started to spray about.
I hadn't seen the full extent of the damage the legate had done to Rye, but Cup Cake and the other volunteers had looked pale when they changed her dressings.
I had Feufollet work the levers of the chest, and extract a copy of Fatinah's first volume. She collected her materials, and I told her to find a desk and start making a fair copy of Fatinah's book. It was how I taught myself when Bongo died.
While the jenny went into the other room to find a writing-desk, and the Lieutenant gone off to take care of other business, I looked over to the Captain, who was strikingly not asleep.
"Get a good rest, Captain?"
"Knew this was coming. Want to make any cunnannatu babbiari about Sleeping Beauty or merda like that?"
"Honestly? Now that you have to admit that the Spirit is a real thing, and that it's apparently set up a time share in your skull? I'm just a little happy."
She scoffed at me, more than a little mortified at her weakness before the mystical.
"Hay, it ain't much, but it's good to have something a little silly on days like today. What's the uncle say about your malediction?"
"Pretty much that, a kinda curse. I gotta sleep regular-like, and he's gonna make me a fetch to keep the dam' thing itself, and me myself."
"Does he think it'll do the trick, or does he know it? Old bokor knows his magic, I'll give him that, but I've never put much stock in his wisdom, if you understand me. Was Gibblets smiling or looking saturnine?"
"Lookin' what again, paisan? He looked down-mouthed, if that's what you're askin'. Wasn't exactly a happy conversation any which way, yeah?" She looked a little scared. "Am I gonna fall asleep and not wake up? Or with that thing behind my eyes?"
"Captain, none of us gets out of the Company, not alive. I just read that poor damn jenny into the inner circles, the dangerous core of this thing of ours. You've been here with the rest of us, since before I was in here. You gotta know now, it isn't just any little club, right? Make peace with the darkness, because it's right beside us, inside of us.
"Stop pretending it isn't there, and make friends with it. Walk long enough in the Spirit, and when she possesses you, maybe you'll be what possesses yourself. Last couple days proves anything, it proves that the Spirit and the Captain are closer than hoof and boot. She killed the last Captain, She didn't mean to, probably didn't even notice it, but She put him on and he tore like a sock with a weak weave. Be strong where you can, yield where you must. I think you've been shaping Her all unknowing. And hay - " I smiled at her.
"It's the adventure of a lifetime, you know?"
She sat there, and we watched the new understudy read her assignment, and make notes towards her copy of Fatinah.