‘I would like to say something, please,’ said Tiffany. ‘It’s rather important.’ She could feel the impatient pain now, fighting to get free. Her hands felt clammy.
‘You were doing black magic, admit it!’
Tiffany took a deep breath. ‘I don’t know what that is,’ she said, ‘but I know I am holding just above my shoulder the last pain that the Baron will ever know, and I have to get rid of it soon, and I can’t get rid of it in here, what with all these people. Please? I need an open space right now!’ She pushed Miss Spruce out of the way and the guards swiftly stood aside for her, to the nurse’s extreme annoyance.
‘Don’t let her go! She will fly away! That’s what they do!’
Tiffany knew the layout of the castle very well; everybody did. There was a courtyard down some steps, and she headed there rapidly, feeling the pain stirring and unfolding. You had to think of it as a kind of animal that you could keep at bay, but that only worked for so long. About as long as … well, n
ow, in fact.
The sergeant appeared beside her, and she grabbed his arm. ‘Don’t ask me why,’ she managed to say through gritted teeth, ‘but throw your helmet in the air!’
He was bright enough to follow orders, and spun the helmet into the air like a soup plate. Tiffany hurled the pain after it, feeling its dreadful silkiness as it found its freedom. The helmet stopped in midair as if it had hit an invisible wall, and dropped onto the cobblestones in a cloud of steam and bent almost in half.
The sergeant picked it up and immediately dropped it again. ‘It’s bloody hot!’ He stared at Tiffany, who was leaning against the wall and trying to catch her breath. ‘And you’ve been taking away pain like that every day?’
She opened her eyes. ‘Yes, but I normally get plenty of time to find somewhere to dump it. Water and rock aren’t very good, but metal is quite reliable. Don’t ask me why. If I try to think about how it works, it doesn’t work.’
‘And I’ve heard that you can do all kinds of tricks with fire too?’ said Sergeant Brian admiringly.
‘Fire is easy to work with if you keep your mind clear, but pain … pain fights back. Pain is alive. Pain is the enemy.’
The sergeant gingerly attempted to reclaim his helmet, hoping that by now it was cool enough to hold. ‘I will have to make certain I knock the dent out of it before the boss sees it,’ he began. ‘You know what a stickler he is for smartness … Oh.’ He stared down at the ground.
‘Yes,’ said Tiffany, as kindly as she could. ‘It’s going to take a bit of getting used to, isn’t it?’ Wordlessly, she handed him her hand-kerchief, and he blew his nose.
‘But you can take away pain,’ he began, ‘so does that mean you can …?’
Tiffany held up a hand. ‘Stop right there,’ she said. ‘I know what you’re going to ask, and the answer is no. If you chopped your hand off I could probably make you forget about it until you tried to eat your dinner, but things like loss, grief and sadness? I can’t do that. I wouldn’t dare meddle with them. There is something called “the soothings”, and I know only one person in the world who can do that, and I’m not even going to ask her to teach me. It’s too deep.’
‘Tiff …’ Brian hesitated and looked around as though he expected the nurse to appear and prod him from behind again.
Tiffany waited. Please don’t ask, she thought. You’ve known me all your life. You can’t possibly think …
Brian looked at her pleadingly. ‘Did you … take anything?’ His voice tailed off.
‘No, of course not,’ Tiffany said. ‘What maggot’s got into your head? How could you think such a thing?’
‘Dunno,’ said Brian, flushing with embarrassment.
‘Well, that’s all right then.’
‘I suppose I had better make sure the young master knows,’ said Brian after another good nose-blow, ‘but all I know is that he’s gone to the big city with his—’ He stopped again, embarrassed.
‘With his fiancée,’ said Tiffany determinedly. ‘You can say it out loud, you know.’
Brian coughed. ‘Well, you see, we thought … well, we all thought that you and him were, well, you know …’
‘We have always been friends,’ said Tiffany, ‘and that’s all there is to it.’
She felt sorry for Brian, even though he too often opened his mouth before he got it attached to his brain, so she patted him on the shoulder. ‘Look, why don’t I fly down to the big city and find him?’
He almost melted with relief. ‘Would you do that?’
‘Of course. I can see you have a lot to do here, and it will take a load off your mind.’
Admittedly it will put the load on mine, she thought as she hurried away through the castle. The news had spread. People were standing around, crying or just looking bewildered. The cook ran up to her just as she was leaving. ‘What am I to do? I’ve got the poor soul’s dinner on the stove!’