Mercedes Lackey - Phoenix and Ashes

Then she cut herself a generous slice of ham and a piece of buttered white bread to go with her soup, cut a little slice of the tart, and added milk and sugar to tea made with fresh leaves. And she had the first filling meal she had gotten since Mrs. Bennett left. She felt so good, and so sleepy with content, in fact, that she didn't bother to go up to her own room. Instead, she cleaned up every last trace of her illicit meal, and pulled the pallet she used in cold weather out of its cupboard, spreading it out in front of the fire.

And as she fell asleep, she smiled to think she saw sleepy eyes blinking with contented satisfaction back at her from the coals.

3

March 10, 1917

First London General Hospital

AT THIS TIME OF DAY, the ward was full of people; relatives hovering over their boys—though some of the boys were almost old enough to be Reggie's father, had Devlin Fenyx still been alive. Reggie was in the officer's wards, which meant that he had the luxury of being in the hospital building, and not outside in a tent as the enlisted men were. He usually didn't have any visitors, since his mother was afraid to travel alone and to her, "with a servant" qualified as "alone." Today, however, was different. Two of the men from 11 Squadron were on leave and had come to visit.

"Dashed handsome young fillies they've got hovering about you, Reg," said Lt. Steven Stewart, enviously. One of the "handsome young fillies"—a VAD called Ivy Grove—clearly overheard him. She blushed, bit her lip, and hurried off. Small wonder; almost any pilot got the hero-treatment from the women, and Steven was an infernally handsome fellow, who still hadn't shaken the "Oxford manner."

Reginald Fenyx could not have cared what the VAD nurses—or any others—looked like. All he cared about was that they were there, they talked to him, kept his mind on other things during the day—that they noticed when he was about to "go off," and came over on any pretext to keep the shakes away. Because when they were gone—

Tommy Arnolds, Reggie's flight mechanic and a wizard with the Bristol aircraft, wasn't nearly as subtle as Steven was; he stared after Ivy's trim figure with raw longing. He was a short, bandy-legged bloke, but what he could do with a plane was enough to make the pilot lucky enough to get him weep with joy when he took a bird that had been in Tommy's hands up. "Blimey," Tommy said contemplatively. "Wish they'd send a trim bit like that over, 'stead of those old 'orses—"

"They do send the trim bits over, Tommy," Steven said, fingering his trim moustache with a laugh. "But the old horses keep them out of your way. Your reputation precedes you, old man!"

Reggie managed a real smile, as Tommy preened a little, but his heart wasn't in it. They'd generously spent five hours of leave time here with him, but there was a limit to their generosity.

"And speaking of trim bits—" Steven tweaked the hem of his already perfect tunic. Steven, like Reggie, did not have to rely on the fifty-pound uniform allowance for his outfitting, and like Reggie had been before the crash, he was never less than impeccably turned out. "If Tommy and I are going to find ourselves a bit of company on this leave, we'd better push off. Can't have the PBIs showing up the Flying Corps, what?"

"Thanks for turning up, fellows," Reggie said, fervently. "Give my best to the rest of the lads. But not too soon."

"You can bet on that!" Steven laughed, and he and Tommy sketched salutes and sauntered out of the ward, winking at Ivy, the VAD girl, as they passed her, making her blush furiously.

Reggie lay back against his pillows, feeling exhausted by the effort to keep up the charade that he was perfectly all right, aside from being knocked about a bit. It was grand seeing the fellows, but—it was easier when people he knew weren't here and he didn't have to pretend. He had more in common with the lad in the next bed over, a mere second lieutenant by the name of William West, for all that West was FBI and Reggie was— had been —a pilot, a captain, and an ace at that. All the shellshock victims were in this end of the ward, together. Sometimes Reggie thought, cynically, it was so that their screaming in nightmares and their shaking fits by day wouldn't bother anyone else.

There weren't many shellshock cases in the Royal Flying Corps, anyway. The pilots and their support crew were well behind the lines, out of reach of the guns and the gas. That was the lot of the FBI—the "Poor Bloody Infantry," upon whose lines in the trenches the pilots looked down in remote pity, chattering and clattering through the sky.

Or we do just before Archie gets us, or the Huns shoot us down — Reggie amended, and then the first sight of that azure-winged Fokker interposed itself between him and the ward, and the shaking began—

He clawed at his bedside table for a glass of water, the paper the lads had brought him, anything to distract himself. But then, before he could go into a full-blown attack, something altogether out of the ordinary distracted him. Because, coming towards him down the aisle between the beds, accompanied by his usual medico, Dr. Walter Boyes, was another doctor, but this time it was someone he recognized.

"Captain Fenyx—" Boyes began, quietly, so as not to disturb West, who had subsided into a morphine-assisted sleep,"—I believe you already know my colleague."

"I should say so!" he exclaimed, sitting up straight. He had never been so pathetically glad to see anyone in his life. "Doctor Scott! Maya! I had no idea you were on the military wards!"

"I'm not," the handsome, dark-haired, dark-eyed woman said, with a smile. Her exotic beauty was more than enough to make even the stark white hospital coat and severe black skirt look out-of-the-ordinary. "Good heavens, Reggie, can you see the War Department unbending enough for that? Now, if I were unmarried and prepared to volunteer for Malta, they would take me, and they might even allow me to practice in Belgium or France, but here? Oh, they would accept me as a VAD aide, of course. But because I'm married, they won't take me any other way. Heaven forfend that Peter might have to supervise the household once in a while."

"Well—when you put it that way—" He shrugged. The War Department was full of idiots, everyone knew that. Unfortunately, they were the idiots in charge. Maya Scott and her fellow female doctors, few though they were, would have made a big difference to the wounded. And if they were worried about the morals of the patients being corrupted, or even those of the other military doctors, wouldn't a married doctor be "safer" rather than more dangerous? "But why are you here, then? Surely not just for me?"

"Entirely just for you; I've been sent by a higher power." A little smile curved her lips, suggesting that this was a joke. "Walter is a friend of mine; he worked in our charity clinics before the war," she continued. "I didn't know you were here until Lady Virginia got hold of me two days ago; she gave me your doctor's name, and that was when I went hunting for him and you."

Ah, that explained "higher power." His godmother was a force of nature.

"I would have been here sooner, but until I got hold of Walter, I wouldn't have been allowed near you." It was her turn to shrug. "I'm a female, not your relative, your fiancee, nor a nurse, you see. Never mind that I'm a doctor; evidently it is expected that you would immediately corrupt my morals, or I yours. Fortunately, Walter has made all smooth. He is allowed to bring in anyone he likes as a consulting physician, so long as I don't expect to be paid."

In the course of that exchange, Reggie and Maya communicated something more, wordlessly. A lift of an eyebrow on Reggie's part towards Dr. Boyes— does he know? The tiniest shake of the head from Maya, confirming his initial impression— no. So, Doctor Walter was neither an Elemental Mage himself, nor was he among the few who were not Mages that nevertheless knew of the existence of Mages and magic.