Truth & Tonic [ Eragos ]
The old wooden chair creaked and whined as Vera shifted her weight, leaning back slightly on the loose legs. A healthy fire roared in the hearth but she was the only soul in the kitchen with the exception of the healer who passed through for hot water and the occasional herb Vera could name but didn't. The healer needed these things for the wound as much as the potential sickness hovering over Eragos like a shadow. A local mage and medicine man was the only one Vera could bribe to help them. Holy magic, for some reason, did not work on Eragos. The first temple they visited, a temple of Lorien, refused to help him at all. One of the priests cursed and spit at her for bringing him there.
"Don't you know what those markings mean?" the priest shouted at her, pointing at Eragos arms. "Get out."
Vera probably hadn't helped the situation when she called the priest's religion a collection of superstitions and hypocritical oaths. Eragos hadn't seemed particularly charmed with her then. Lady Cithia had been horrified. She thought she'd done well. She could have fought the priest for spitting at her, a daughter of a powerful lord. She should have. Her childhood teachers would have named her weak for walking away. But the tattoos were none of her business. Vera didn't know why they should inspire a holy man to abandon a good man and didn't care to.
Instead of retaliating, Vera added that anger to the rest she carried along and led them here. A shack in the middle of the forest that she learned about from threatening a local with one of her knives. Normally she had a more diplomatic mind, but Eragos had been running low on time. He hadn't been harmed in the battle with Sir Galatin, as the King suspected, but he had managed to tear open the stitches she'd done. Vera saw the blood after Eragos got to his feet. He was bleeding far too long by the time they'd reached this medicine man. Lady Cithia and her father slept in the side room as the healer did his work. Vera sat at a table by the hearth.
For a White Rider there was no better place to rest than a kitchen.
"You shouldn't lean that way," the healer muttered from the doorway.
"I won't fall over," Vera replied, not looking at him.
There was a small hmph from the old man. "I'm more worried about my chair."
"You should be worried about my friend."
The healer scowled at her and went back into the room. Vera counted it as a blessing. There was one less person she was tempted to point a knife at in this world.