1st of Fall, 519
"Good morning, miss Craven."
"Doctor."
Madeira was sitting up in her bed at the Catholicon, her hands folded primly in her lap. She wore the linen hospital dress like a silk gown and the bandage on her head like a crown. The splint on her wrist could have been a wonderful bracelet, the bruises dark smoky jewels. She sat straight and tall, every inch a lady. She was a Craven after all. It was only her eyes, and that thunder behind them, that belied something much darker under that composed exterior.
Alessia Amaryllis closed the privacy curtain behind her and stood at the end of the bed, in her hands was a bundle of neatly folded clothes and a black cane. The two women eyed each other coolly.
"I was expecting a nurse to get my things", Madeira nodded to her possessions in Alessia's arms. As one of the few doctors in the busy healing center, her time must be much too precious to waste fetching patient's personal items.
"You were right to", the Symenestra answered bluntly, dropping the bundle at the end of the bed and siting uninvited in Madeira's one lonely bedside chair. "But I wanted to speak with you."
Madeira felt a fluttering of both annoyance and a dull, throbbing panic. Now what did she want? The Spiritist had explained exactly what had happened: she was soundly physically and spiritually beaten by an immensely powerful ghost. Given her profession nobody seemed very surprised when she told the staff this when she had stumbled in the day before, suffering from a concussion, a broken wrist, internal hemorrhaging and a case of overgiving, along with several hefty contusions and lacerations. What she didn't tell them was that the ghost's name was Jomi, and once apon a time she counted him among her most trusted servants.
Part of her was too ashamed to admit it. She had lost control over something both powerful and dangerous, something she had been so sure she was strong enough to tame. Part of her was too furious to speak of it. Jomi had betrayed her in the most unforgivable way, selling her every secret to the one man who could undo everything she was trying to build. To speak his name aloud felt like polluting the very air, and the sound of it was enough to make her reflexively clench her bow hand. And yet another, smaller but no less vocal part of her, was afraid. Jomi was the strongest piece on her side of the board, his very presence had hung over her like a threat against everybody who meant her harm. Without him she was just that much more vulnerable. She couldn't tell anyone that her pet monster had left his post.
"You have a habit of lying, Miss Craven", Alessia continued when Madeira didn't comment. "Every time you step into my hospital you have a new story: murderous rainbows and mysteriously vanishing monsters and miraculously survivable decapitations. So the moment you stepped in here with a logical, believable story I was immediately suspicious. You said this ghost was eventually removed, is that right?"
Madeira's lips had thinned out in a thin, bloodless line, but she wisely ignored the impulse to smack this woman. "Yes", she ground out.
"And you did not know who this spirit was?"
"No, I didn't."
Alessia's sharp red eyes seemed to cut straight through her. She shifted her position, crossing one long leg over the other. "See, a woman came in this morning, also seriously injured. She said she was attacked by a very violent, immensely powerful ghost as well. She also said this ghost was properly removed, and insists she didn't know who it was. Sound familiar?"
"Funnily enough, that's what violent ghosts tend to do", Madeira retorted, steadily meeting the Symenstra's gaze. "Having more than one in a city is neither unheard of nor unlikely."
Outwardly Madeira had molded her face into a steely countenance, but inside that fluttering in her chest had turned from butterflies to eagles. For all her bravado, things like that just didn't happen in Lhavit, and that did sound awfully familiar.
In the end she let Jomi go, and it was a moment of weakness she regretted ever since. She had assumed he would have fled to Edith, the love of his life, his newly reunited bondmate, and the reason he betrayed her. Did he meet trouble on the way? Did he attack someone in his rage? These questions surfaced unbidden into her mind before she remembered that she didn't care. Jomi was no longer her burden or her concern. Rothsam can enjoy his victory while he had it, but eventually he'll face the reality of the soul crushing effort needed to keep his new pet muzzled.
"I don't like coincidences, Madeira Craven. And if another incident like this wanders into the Catholicon you will hear from me again. Are we clear?"
"Crystal", Madeira smiled through clenched teeth.
"You are ready to check out. Get dressed and sign out at the front desk", Alessia stated clinically, getting to her feet without another word.
"Wait", Madeira demanded as the doctor was about to slip out from between the curtains. "Who was the woman that got attacked?", she asked before she could stop herself.
The doctor raised her sculpted brow. "Edith Bronwen."
WC:946