Lucius first encountered Sera Lynnfield, graduated knight of the White Gold Order(1), as they were boarding the galleon for the south. The first thing that reached him was the rustling of packed ring mail. Heavy, confident strides jostling the package. It reminded him of Leomund first, enough that he paused his conversation to stand up and look for the source of the approaching noise. He nearly looked right past her, in pursuit of some armored hulk. Only when he did a double take on Lynnfield did he realize the noise was from the package thrown over her shoulder.

“Yo, is this the Solhart ship?” she called from the gangplank.

That caused a bit of consternation for the crew, but the first mate, an old hand hard to impress with these sorts of things, called back, “Aye, this is the ship graciously employed by the king himself to take the young Solhart south. What’s it to you?”

She tossed her bag onto the ship, nearly knocking a man over with it. “I’m coming with,” she declared, and marched aboard. She had on stirrup heels of a fashionable four inches or so, which meant when she squared up in front of the very confused Lucius, she was merely half a foot taller than him. She grinned down at him, brushing back hair the color of ship timber. “So you’re the one that convinced my little Sammy to sail off just as soon as he’d come back to me?”

Humans, like any animal, struggle to interpret an approach by such a physically larger member of their own species, and such a confrontation, as anything but a threat. I had been able to beat the fear out of him, but alas, she had the better of him in causing confusion. Lucius barely managed to say, “Yes,” under the freshly empowered gaze of Aisha.

The redhead’s personality had become more forthright after the two embraced, and a lover’s jealousy was unfamiliar ground for the boy.

What Lynnfield stuck out at him was not a sword, but her hand. “Then I’m coming too. I hear the pay is good and you don’t lose.”

At last the bridges of relationships connected within Lucius’ mind, but he still couldn’t reconcile the callouses pressed into his hand, pumping the shake like a butter churn. “You’re Sammy’s friend?”

Her grin grew even wider, her cheeks flushed. “Oh, please, we’re in love! We’re not just friends. You’re a man, don’t you understand?”

What Lucius understood was that the woman before him, despite being dressed in a modest white dress still pretending in fashion to resemble a toga, could have gone toe to toe with Erdro Karakale. Depending on her stigmata, she likely could have trounced the prince as well. She was also twice the size of the young doctor, a comparison which became eminently obvious when the boy charged across the deck and threw himself around her. The move perhaps might have been a tackle, if their weights weren’t so disparate. Instead, she laughed and pulled him off his feet and then the two of them were giggling and whispering to one another to the shock of everyone else aboard the ship.

Aisha’s jealousy, as much as she enjoyed getting to use it at last, dissipated. She took her place beside Lucius, so she could whisper to him, “I’m glad I didn’t take that bet that he was gay.” And I’m sad she didn’t. Would have been good coin for me, while I was off fixing their problems abroad.

Eventually, etiquette bubbled up from the boy’s head and out his lips. He faced Lucius with a grin and said, “This is Sera Lynnfield… but, I just call her Lynn. Anyways, you can trust her. I promise.”(2)

Lucius smiled and held out his hand to her once more. “Then, welcome to have you, Sera Lynnfield. We’re about to depart but I can see that you’ll be a great asset to fulfill the king’s command.” Through great prudence, his eyes were not on the woman’s chest, nor even on the defined curve of her neck and jaw, her smile, but up in her hair. Graduated knights are given a token of their order to authenticate them. Most keep it hidden in purse and wallet, secreted away on their body to make the reveal dramatic. I don’t blame them for this, as mentioned before, I do nearly the same thing with my own face. But such action reeks of fear, that it might be stolen.

Sera Lynnfield used hers as a hair pin to tie up her brunette locks for all to see. And several weeks later, the whole troop of Aliston guards saw her insignia as she marched over in full battle dress. “So you people are the clay? Because I’ve gotta make a sculpture outta ya,” Lynnfield said, fingering her sword. She was quick on the uptake though, and exchanged some glanced with Lexa. An instant later, rather than bare steel she had a training spear. “Hear me, I’m a knight of the White Gold Order, you hear that? Makes me a Sera, that’s woman for Sir, got that? It’s a bit of Drachish infusion, but I ain’t complaining. Gets me the respect I deserve so I don’t have to get it out of you by force. You make me crack your skull and go looking for it though, and I will.”

Lucius retreated a respectable distance. He grinned as she got the guards into a line, the trollkin excepted for his injury. The heat blazed and the insects bit, but he stood and he watched like stone. He needed to know how long it would take before he had men he could put into a shield formation. Even riskier, he needed to know how long it would be until they could fight pirates at sea.

“Now, listen up,” Lynnfield barked. “I don’t know what you’ve been getting away with so far. If you’re busy poking pigs and sticking your dicks in goats. I bet a sleepy little town like this can be kept in line with mean looks and strong thumps so long as you haven’t been drinking too much, yeah?” Somehow, she even had the men who couldn’t speak Vassish nodding along. “Well, if that’s the extent of your aspirations, I’ll put in a word with the steward and have your uniforms changed to include skirts. They’re quite comfortable, can attest to that myself. We’ll have to see what the townsfolk say about that though, won’t we? For me, I want warriors that can stand up to pirates, that can kill those damn Aillesterran slavers!”

The recently returned Axel had to lean over to Lucius to ask, “What is a skirt?”

“Think of a feminine loincloth.”

“My lord, I don’t think any of these men are so endowed as that would be an–”

“She’s threatening to call them women.”

“But she is a woman. Indeed, they also listen to my sister.”

Lucius shook his head. “And I’m not paying to change their uniforms for something stupid either. Sera Lynnfield is a proper knight. She’d go into battle naked if she had to. It’s just theatrics.” By then, she had gotten the guards into a line and told them to come at her one at a time. The first three men were already sprawled across the ground. Lucius didn’t stick around to watch the rest of her inspection. “Thank you kindly!”

Lynnfield spared a glance over her shoulder as she was dealing with two of the locals at once. “Pay me back with some nice wine tonight! Enough for two.”

In due time, Lucius found her other half. Sammy laid sprawled across a sand dune before the ocean, in a half-awake stupor of heat and overwork. He seemed in as rough of shape as the harbor below him, and that had a shipwreck rotting in the middle of it. Lucius had to pour some water onto him to wake him up and ask, “The hospital is that bad then?”

“Pretty bad, yeah,” Sammy said, tugging some sand from his hair before accepting the water skin. “I think I performed… seventeen amputations today. My saw is going to go dull at this rate.”

“Well, keep a sharp one for me.”

“Yeah, yeah, but like, the people here. There’s something weird. They think the doctors here are trying to hurt them. I was expecting that, but this time it’s because of the bandages.”

Lucius arched an eyebrow at Sammy, then back at the building that passed for a hospital. It was as large as a temple, but entirely for the listless sick. The previous governor had set it up to help with the amount of elderly people bereft of children, but now it was filled with working age people. “Explain.”

“As stupid as this sounds, it’s like they don’t change their bandages… which is in fact worse than not wearing bandages at all. Their injuries rot and for lots of these people, the only thing to be done is cut the only limb off because of a small cut they didn’t take care of. Shit, one person had maggots eating their flesh and they didn’t even notice. They had no feeling in their leg!”

“Well, that’s disgusting. Good thing we only have dinner ahead of us.”

“Eh, you get used to these kinds of things. But, this place is a bit worse than anything I’ve seen.”

“How come I don’t hear it?” Lucius asked, still looking at the hospital.

“Hear what?”

“People in pain. Even drunks with a bad wound will whimper and cry. This place is as quiet as a cemetery.”

“Oh.” Sammy shrugged. “There’s a local painkiller. Takes the edge off, puts them to sleep. I’m trying to figure out dosing. Got some nursing staff helping with that right now, until I get convinced of the method. But, it’s strong stuff, this kuku plant. We might want to start exporting it–”

“No. It’s poison.”

Sammy frowned at him. “Most medicine is poison. That’s why you have to take so much training to be any good as an apothecary.”

“Wrong kind of poison. Give me a few days and I’ll prove it. These people too lazy to change their bandages? Blaming you doctors? I’ll wager right now they were smoking the stuff.”

Sammy frowned harder and crossed his arms. “How exactly are you going to prove that? And if you do, what are you going to do about it?”

“Well.” He turned his back to the hospital and looked to the sea. Aliston was on the north of the Misty Isles. Sheltered by breakwaters, but almost close enough to Rackvidd to see it, if the mist cleared and the sun burned bright. All the mines and plantations were behind him, mingled with he knew not what else. “I figure if there’s all this plant moving around and not getting exported, there’s some kind of detached economy. Might explain why we still don’t have a chart of the sea lanes between the islands. Not sure who many people I’m going to have to kill to get a decent cartographer, but we’ll have to see.”

The doctor rose and dusted his backside off as Lucius spoke. He glanced back at the manor, mind evidently thinking about his lady. Subjugating the isles wasn’t his problem after all. As though it might bring the conversation to a close quicker, he asked again, “But how are you going to prove it?”

“Obviously, I’m going to smoke the stuff and see what it does. Just kill me if it doesn’t clear up, yeah?”

To be graduated from an order means you have served your duty in exchange for your apprenticeship, and are allowed to take contracts as you see fit while keeping the name of the order. The process is rather akin to the journeyman phase of a craftsman’s career. It also happens to be the most profitable phase, if they survive it. Typically, they end up injured and/or fat and return to humbly request a more bureaucratic position at the order. Those that made a particular name for their swordsmanship might be paid handsomely to return for instruction purposes. Such graduated knights are both the stuff of legends as well as highly sought after by merchants and nobles. They have accreditation to their skills beyond what a mere burly thug has. A promise such as this, made by Dr. Samson, was still influenced by the oath given to and sealed by Golden. Such a statement couldn’t be made if he was attempting to disabuse Lucius of his secrets.