Miane easily kept pace with the man as he led her up the road and to the Towers, trying to make note of everything he told her about the town and the school. When they finally stepped within one of the Halls, and he apologized for the state of the place, she just shook her head.
"I am lady of a keep," she told him. "And it is far smaller than this place, but still requires nearly a hundred people--soldiers and servants--in addition to myself to keep it running. The fact that you have kept this place from being plundered is practically miraculous. Please don't worry about the rest.
"And please,
Orion," she said with a soft smile, glad to finally have a name for him. "Just call me Miane. No 'miss.' I have very few people that I get to speak with on a first-name basis."
As Orion righted some chairs at the table in the middle of the room, Miane took the time to set up a chair near a window to serve as a perch for Akea while the talked. Once the owl was settled, she joined Orion at the table.
"Come, come. Let's sit and discuss further. Surely I can provide you some level of assistance in what you seek?"
"It is... a long story," Miane said, though she did not sit yet. Instead, she took off her cloak and settled it over the back of a chair, then removed the satchel slung about her shoulder, reaching inside of it and withdrawing a smaller pouch. "I will tell you while I tend to your wound."
She set the pouch down on the table, and put the satchel in the same chair with her cloak. From the pouch, she pulled out a small flask, an amber colored bottle, and a couple of clean rags.
"Tincture of yarrow," Miane said, holding up the amber bottle, and then pointing to the flask, "and water that was boiled."
She gestured for Orion to sit, beginning to speak as she waited for him to comply. Once he was seated, she would wet a rag to clean away the blood, and then use the other rag to dilute some of the tincture with the water and carefully dab it to the wound.
"My mother died when I was born," she began. "There were complications with the birth, and no doctor or midwife near enough to help her. My father told me the doctor--when he finally got my mother to him--was barely able to save
me."
Miane sighed then, wishing some things in her life had gone a little differently. "My father rarely talked about my mother. What little of I know of who she was I learned from the woman who had been my mother's maid. It wasn't until after he died that I found her journals, and I learned that my mother had been a witch. That nearly all the women in my family have been witches.
"I've always been able to communicate with animals," she explained. "That came completely naturally to me, with little effort, and as my father trained me in his own trade--falconry--I was able to easily hone that talent.
"But there are other things I've just... had to cobble together, with no knowledge. The protective warding runes around my family's land, for one. I think I have them functioning properly now, but I'm honestly not sure. I have to... renew them, every so often? I'm not sure that's the right term.
"But lately... there have been some other things too. Headaches and strange dreams during certain lunar and solar cycles. Sometimes I wake up in the night and it feels like there's energy crackling over my skin and through my fingers but I don't know what to
do with it."
She sighed again, and set aside the now-dirty cloths, and settled into a chair. "My keep is deep within
Shtakmat State territory. My family's presence there has only been tolerated because we were there before the Sahiyi were, and because in recent years, those in my family who had powers have hidden them."
Miane leaned back in her chair then, shaking her head a little with disbelief. "So that is why I'm here, a spinster witch with no training, looking for someone to teach me how to manage my magic."
Orion
