Disclaimer: I don't own Star Wars.
I ventured into the infirmary, looking for my sister. Moteé was a healer, an aspiring one at least, and after the battle I knew that this would be where she was, attending to the sick and the injured.
The lighting was dim; the lighting wasn't particularly good anywhere in the earthen mound we called a base, and the flickering light bulbs cast an almost dirty yellow light around the room.
I ran my hand over the rough-hewn stone wall and looked up at the wooden beams—Gods only knew how those who built this mound got them in here—smooth to contrast with the harsh cool of the stone.
The beds were mostly empty; there had been few casualties during today's battle. We were lucky. I see Moteé in the back, talking to a man sitting on one of the small austere cots. He's coughing; he's probably sick rather than injured.
"Moteé," I called to her, slipping between the rows of white-sheeted cots to get to my sister.
Moteé's starched white apron rustled with an almost antiseptic air as she walked. "What do you want, Cordé?" It had been a long night for her. "Alright," she murmured to the man, her voice slightly less sharp, "tell me your symptoms."
I waited for the man to stop. "I'm cold, my nose is running and my sinuses feel like they're full of sand."
"I think Edmund's coming down with something." Edmund was our little brother, four years younger than Moteé and three years younger than me; he was small and slight for his age, with inky black hair, brilliant cornflower blue eyes and milky, slightly freckled skin.
Moteé's lips thinned after hearing the man list his symptoms, and I wondered if she had heard me at all. "You have a cold. Stay under any blanket you have and drink plenty of fluids—no alcohol!" She turned to me, the shadows under her eyes expressing how little she had slept. "I'll see to him in the morning."
"Are you sure it isn't the flu?" the man asked her, his muddy eyes growing wide with fear at the thought.
I winced; Gods save the man from his own stupidity. I had lived around Moteé long enough to know when her almost inexhaustible patience was about to run out. My sister's lips thinned even further as she muttered through gritted teeth, "Yes, I'm quite sure." She looked at me again, her anger spilling over into our conversation. "It's past midnight; you should be asleep."
I rolled my eyes. "Who sleeps anymore?" The cynicism of that statement felt strange and bitter on my tongue, like ham that's been left too long curing in a salt wash.
"No kidding. Listen, you really should go; I don't want you catching anything. Like I said, I'll see to Edmund in the morning."
As I hopped out of the infirmary, I heard, "What do you mean, 'what do you mean'?! It's a cold, you idiot! What, do you want the flu?", and smiled. Moteé at her worst sounded suspiciously like our sister Alumé at her best.
I only ended up sleeping for about three hours, give or take. My dreams were punctuated with less than pleasant memories of the day and of my past, mainly the sounds of screaming and the raucous, almost nauseating smells of blood, sweat, smoke and leather, accompanied by the memories of getting my hand slapped every time I misspelled a letter at my lessons. When I woke up, my hand was stinging, and I didn't know why.
I woke up hearing the soft clattering murmur of voices outside the room. Quietly, I pulled my leather shoes back on, and slipped into the shadows so I could see the speakers without being seen myself.
It was my eldest brother Derek and my cousin Sabé. Sabé was one of the Queen's handmaidens, on assignment here to send back reports as a sort of royal observer in the conflict with the rebels. Sabé was much older than me and Moteé; I was fourteen, Moteé a year older, and Sabé was twenty or maybe twenty-one. I'd be lying if I said I didn't look up to her.
"I don't like waiting like this," she muttered softly. Frustration thrummed in her tightly compacted frame; all of her muscles were tense as she leaned on a pillar, watching the sky outside.
Derek shook his golden-haired head, conceding to his younger cousin's acknowledgment. "We have to regroup, Sabé. The forces from the south will be here by nightfall tomorrow; then we'll move."
"And by nightfall tomorrow we might all be murdered in our beds by that kesha Stanley and his men." I flinched. She brought up a very good point, my cousin did.
Sabé folded her arms tightly around her small chest, the skirt of her high-collared black dress billowing slightly, her wild, nearly black hair doing the same. She glared out in the wilderness.
People have said that I look a lot like Sabé; still more (myself included) have said that Moteé looks more like her. But looking at her, tall, lean, her face as dark and stormy as the skies outside, I couldn't help but think she didn't resemble anyone so much at the moment as she did her father the Duke. I was sure she wouldn't appreciate the comparison.
My uncle gave Sabé a great deal of grief (still does), and when Uncle dear finally went to rest with the cockroaches I hoped my cousin wouldn't any longer be so…so…
Never mind. Gods only knew what Sabé was, deep down.
"Is this because your father's here?" Derek piped up suddenly. Even he had a hard time taking Sabé's unusually snappish behavior.
Sabé's thin lips tightened (you see why I said she looked like Moteé, if much taller), and despite myself, I had to restrain a giggle. Getting Sabé to talk about a subject when she didn't want to talk was like trying to get blood out of a stone when it didn't want to bleed. Completely and utterly impossible. I wondered if she looked at would-be assassins of the Queen like that before she killed them.
But, surprise of surprises, she did talk. "How's your wife?" My sister-in-law Morna (a pretty, pleasant, opinionated black-haired girl from a mercer's family; horrors of horrors according to my stuck-up and bratty sister Alumé, also mercifully married to a nobleman several hundred miles away) and Sabé were the same age, and got along reasonably well.
Derek was diverted, a fairly easy thing to do in matters not concerning battle or politics. "She's well."
"Good. And Edward?" Edward was my nephew, Derek's three-year-old son and his pride and joy. He looked a lot like Edmund, except his eyes were a darker shade of blue, like the sky on a clear and cloudless night.
Derek smiled. "Quite well. He finally started to talk a few weeks ago." Edward was slow to start speaking.
Sabé nodded softly, then bit her lip and whispered as if in a frenzy, "An áit tá sé?"
Derek smiled gently, and put a hand on my cousin's shoulder to reassure her. "Sé dearóu bod ebwrydd, chær."
She nodded, and began to sweep down the hall back inside the earthen mound where we had made our base. As she passed my hiding place, she looked me square in the eye, and I gulped, because I realized that Sabé had known I was there the whole time. "You can come out now, Cordé." Her gaze was, as always, penetrating.
I sheepishly stepped into the guttering light of the torches as Sabé swept passed me. Derek looked at me for a moment, and then, deciding that it wasn't any use asking me what I had heard, followed our cousin in.
I sighed, and sat on the carved steps. The slightly humid wind, carrying the wet smell of thunder and rain, hit my face with a whispering hihhh. The sky grew a dark, ruddy orange a few shades darker than an orange rind to contrast with the gunpowder-gray clouds gathering like a band of men with rifles across the horizon and above our heads.
I sat back, and watched the sun rise.
kesha—traitor
An áit tá sé?—Where is he?
Sé dearóu bod ebwrydd, chær—He will be here soon, sister.