There Are a Lot of Sheryn in the Stables

Lady Snowpearl summoned an attorney named Brightwater once she regained her composure. Brightwater was an intimidating man with unusually pale green skin and silver-salted maroon hair, who took careful notes as Six explained what had happened at the hospital. After Sera prompted that it was a bad idea to surprise one's attorney, Six also informed him that Father Superior Starwind's attack had been an attempt to force Sera into a host more to his liking.

"But you didn't tell the constables this?" Brightwater asked, eyebrows raised.

"No," Six admitted. "Umm, Captain Nightfire has concerns about security if Sera's visit is made public."

"Hmm," said Brightwater. He tapped his pen on his notepad. "That is a valid concern. Also concerning--how did Father Superior Starwind know about the Honored Traveler? And, why did your own temple let you go? Or more to the point, why did it allow a traveler to leave?"

"It's not a matter of ALLOWING a traveler anything," Six pointed out sharply. "They are our guests. If a traveler wishes to leave the temple, then her host leaves the temple."

"I will rephrase," said Brightwater, with a slight nod. "Why did the Third Temple not do everything in its power to ensure the Honored Traveler remained under the temple's influence, thus ensuring the temple benefits from the prestige associated with her visit?"

"Oh," said Six. She frowned. "Well, they didn't know."

"They didn't know?" asked Brightwater.

"I told Sister Peach, but she didn't believe me and sent us off to do chores. I meant to tell the Mother Superior, but we flying and then we fell and Sera shoved Three off a branch and then my wing got broken and then the Father Superior tried to kill me and we ended up here," Six replied.

Numerous clarifying questions later, Brightwater summarized, "So no one knew you had a traveler, except this Sister Peach, who didn't believe you, the medical staff, and Master Oakbranch."

"I think Sister Peach actually did believe Six," Sera contributed, having spent most of Brightwater's interrogation reflecting on the brief interaction. She'd been more interested in admiring Six's wings and confirming her gender than in Sister Peach, but in retrospect the woman's scrutiny seemed telling. Sera and Six hadn't worked out how to share a body yet, and Sera had struggled with manipulating the wings.

Brightwater's eyes narrowed and he asked, "Why do you believe that, Honored Traveler?"

"Please call me Sera," she replied, impressed that he'd spotted the difference in who was speaking, and explained her reasoning.

"Hmm," the attorney said when she'd finished. He tapped his pen on his notes again. "So either you were betrayed by the medical staff, Sister Peach, or Master Oakbranch."

"What? Three? He would never!" Six gasped. Brightwater didn't argue the point, though Sera suspected he still considered it a viable possibility. Instead he instructed Six and Sera to continue as they had been, keeping Sera's presence quiet unless it became necessary. He left it up to them to decide what 'necessary' meant. After warning Six and Sera not to speak with the authorities or meet with any Temple representatives without him, he left to interview--or possibly interrogate--Three.

Six presented herself to Sunfeather promptly at eight the following morning, and was introduced again to the pink-haired woman they'd met at supper two days earlier, whose name turned out to be Hyacinthtourmaline.

"Hy," the pink-haired woman corrected immediately, earning a scowl from Sunfeather.

"Hyacinthtourmaline," said Sunfeather, drawing out the full name deliberately, "Will be your assistant. She will keep track of your schedule, ensure that you have the information you need for any appointments or meetings you attend, introduce you to those you need to know, and help you with your tasks. I do mean help. Not 'do them for you'."

This last was delivered with a warning frown at Six.

"Yes, ma'am," Six said. "No cheating on my assignments or I'll get detention."

Sunfeather rolled her eyes as Hy grinned. Allowing herself a smile, the elderly woman admitted, "I suppose that's accurate enough. Hyacinthtourmaline, show Six her office and get started."

Six's office was on the third floor, several doors down from the alcove where they'd met with the constables. It was just barely large enough to hold a partner desk and the attendant chairs, two bookcases, and a wide three-drawer filing cabinet. There was a coffeemaker and a potted plant on top of the filing cabinet, and the opposite wall had an enormous photograph of tree-covered mountains. The walls were a pale yellow, the ceiling was a painted blue with swirls of white like thin clouds, and the carpet was dark green. The office gave the impression of a space trying not to look like the enclosed, windowless room it was.

"We don't actually have to work in here," Hy said reassuringly, "But you should know where it is. That door--" she pointed to an exit Sera had managed to miss in the back wall, "Leads to a hallway. There's a bathroom to the left, and a door to Lady Snowpearl's office at the far end on the right. We'll meet the other neighbors later, most of them probably aren't in yet. Right now we're supposed to meet with Opalsky--the chatelaine--first. You'll want to brace yourself. She's . . . ."

As Hy trailed off, searching for the right words, Six said, "We've met."

"Ah. Hopefully you made a good impression," said Hy. She paused. "But there should be a couple folios in the file cabinet. We'll take those with us so that we look professional."

"Why are we meeting with Opalsky?" Six asked, and she took the leather folio Hy held out to her, and selected a pen from the the array on the desk.

'Make sure the pen works,' Sera warned, and Six flipped the folio open to reveal the notepad inside and write down 'Chatelaine Opalsky' at the top of the page. Or rather, she tried. The pen was dry, so she selected another.

"Because Lady Snowpearl is too busy. Officially. Unofficially, you're meeting with her because listening to the harridan complain about lazy staff who take vacations and don't thoroughly dust the rooms that are never used is relatively easy. And useful, because she'll also tell us about actual problems."

"Like what?" Six asked, as she handed Hy a second pen after confirming it worked and followed the other woman out of the office.

"Delayed deliveries, the on-going war between housekeeping and maintenance, the rooms that got trashed by partying kids--and usually which kids it was--injuries and illnesses among the staff. Those things will be our job to fix," answered Hy.

Opalsky gave Six a chilly greeting, followed by an icy statement of, "I do not approve of mocking the constabulary."

As Hy winced, Six squared her shoulders and said with only a slight quiver in her voice, "Perhaps there was a better way, but in the moment I could not see it. The orders the constables were attempting to execute had terrible errors, and I pointed them out. It is not my fault if those errors made them look silly."

The chatelaine sniffed in disapproval but said nothing.

"You do not have to approve of me, ma'am," Six said, after several minutes of silence. "But you do have a great deal of work to do, and we have been delegated to assist you. I would prefer not to waste your time. Please tell us what you need."

And she opened her folio, uncapped her pen, and looked expectantly at the chatelaine. Who started coldly for several more minutes, until Six's determinedly pleasant smile began to feel strained, before finally looking at a point over Six's head and rattling off a long list of complaints. It began, as Hy had said it would, with employees daring to request time off, and ended with disclosure of a hole in one of the exterior walls apparently large enough to fly a sheryn through.

Also, the sheryn in question was still in the room, because it had bit the staff who'd tried to remove it. Six looked up from her notes with interest. "Is it Prince?" At Opalsky's blank expression she clarified, "A large black stallion?"

"I do not care. I merely require that it be removed," Opalsky said icily.

"We'll see to it immediately," Six promised. "Is there anything else?"

There wasn't, so after extracting the location of the room with the sheryn in it, Six and Hy left.

"I'll send a message to the stables--" Hy began.

"No, let's go deal with this ourselves," Six said. "Please?"

"I'm . . . not good with sheryns," Hy said uneasily.

"Don't worry, Hy. I'm a farm girl. I can handle one sheryn," Six assured her. And then flashed a grin. "And if I'm wrong, THEN you can call the stable."

The sheryn was, indeed, Prince, and he was not at all pleased to be in a sitting room with no feed, water, or comfortable straw. A handful of bleary-eyed young men and women were attempting to shoo him out of the hole in the wall, but the beast refused to do it, and kept chasing them away with teeth and hooves, swats from his wings. Large as the hole was, it wasn't large enough to allow Prince to pass through with his wings extended. Unsurprisingly, he was unwilling to leap out the hole with his wings closed.

Six immediately ripped into the youngsters, corralling them into a corner and berating them for their stupidity. Not one of them noticed that she was quiet possibly younger than they were. Prince paced behind her as she scolded his tormenters, slowly calming now that no one was trying to push him out a hole in the wall. By the time she'd finished her lecture the stallion was sniffing curiously at her bandaged wing. Six turned it away, scratching the stallion's neck, and asked Hy, "What is an appropriate punishment for breaching the manor walls, the damage to the interior and exterior, and the mistreatment of poor Prince?"

"Err . . . we should ask Lady Snowpearl?"

Six nodded, and several of the culprits blanched. "Alright. We'll do that. And in the meantime, they can clean up the mess in here. There's absolutely no reason why housekeeping should have to deal with this sort of thing. Hy, could you ask the chatelaine to send someone with cleaning supplies? Preferably someone she trusts to supervise and ensure the clean up is done to her standards? And I suppose we need to call maintenance to fix the hole."

The rest of the culprits had gone pale at the mention of the chatelaine, others started babbling excuses or claims they were urgently needed elsewhere. Six fixed them with an impressively stern stare and said, "You should have thought of that before you did something this stupid, then, shouldn't you? Just tell us where you're supposed to be, and we'll send a message explaining the delay."

Fifteen minutes later Opalsky appeared with two maids and an assortment of cleaning supplies. She scowled upon seeing the sheryn still present, and said stiffly. "Get the beast out of here. These others can go as well. We will handle the clean up."

"They will stay," Six said flatly, as she led Prince towards the sitting room's doors. "And they will clean up their own mess. I imagine it will take all day, since they will probably do everything wrong. But they WILL stay here until this room's cleanliness meets your standards." As the chatelain's eyes narrowed and she drew breath in to protest, Six leaned in to say quietly, "There are a lot of sheryn in the stables, ma'am. If I find out you sent these brats away after I leave, I will put one in each of their bedrooms. Your staff has more than enough to do without cleaning up after this kind of . . . ."

'Bulls**t,' Sera supplied.

"Bullsh*t," Six repeated in satisfaction. She met Opalsky's cold gaze with a determined one of her own. "My job is to make yours simpler. I will do that by making it clear there are consequences when things like this happen. I suggest you let that lesson be learned here, where it minimizes the additional work for you and yours. Have I made myself clear?"

The chatelaine nodded stiffly, her expression absolutely glacial.

"Come on, Prince, let's get you back to your comfy stable, shall we?" Six said, with a pat for the sheryn, who followed her calmly through the doors and into the hallway beyond.

'What are you thinking?' Six asked silently a few moments later, as Hy murmured into some sort of communications device on her wrist.

Sera allowed her amusement and approval to show fully as she answered, 'That you vastly underrate your talents. You'll make an excellent Lady Llinn.'

Six gave a squawk of protest that started Prince into a run, prompting a strangled scream from Hy, and a flurry of shrieks as the beast scrambled around a corner and startled the people in the new hallway. Muttering a curse, Six ran after Prince.