One #3
Estiene my-father’s-the-Head-Healer-actually Marcelle—his black hair freshly cut to just above his shoulders, loose, with only two small braids pulled back from his temples to keep it out of his frowning face.
It was a style you almost never saw on healers.
Maybe he’d decided it was the best way to display the rings and studs gleaming down his ears from pinna-tip to lobe.
Moyna had been in a clinical group with Estiene in third year.
He was almost as good a healer as he thought he was; he’d be in the top five of the year if they passed, for sure.
He was also likely to turn around and immediately make a complaint to Dean Brodier if they failed, explaining why it was everyone else’s fault and he should be excused the indignity of repeating the year.
Currently, Estiene was gazing with undisguised concern at one of the only people in their cohort even richer and posher than him.
Alys Tixerrant didn’t look like the problem that she was.
She looked like an expensive dessert. Where most fifth-years looked wan, sallow, or outright unwell, coming out of a spring term spent indoors studying, she somehow managed to look sun-kissed.
Her hair was the true golden brown of a pastry fresh from the oven.
She had a round, vague, beautiful face which always managed to look worried, as if someone who was a second cousin to the Grand Duchesse of Sieuxerr had anything to be worried about.
Except for today, perhaps. Alys had been stuck in remediation after two major exams and was widely rumoured to have fucked her way out of several more failing grades. Playing to her strengths floated nastily through Moyna’s mind.
The third person was Ysabel Caudotte’s best friend.
A white band sat atop their dark brown hair.
Had it been there a month ago? Some healers adopted Mathé’s gender as a mark of respect during the feast week, then put it aside for the rest of the year.
But no, Moyna had a vague memory of seeing that band on—fuck, what was their surname?
Savoye. Clement Savoye. Good-looking enough, but with a lukewarm, vanishing manner, as if they’d just sidled into a bank of river-mist. Not someone you’d look at twice. Moyna certainly never had.
Greetings were exchanged. Nobody looked unhappy to see Moyna; her scholarly reputation was solid enough.
“This still makes only four of us,” said Alys. “The bell will sound any minute.”
“Sorry!” came a call. Their fifth member was approaching at a run.
“Oh of course,” muttered Estiene. His shoulders went back another inch. He was barely taller than Moyna, but held himself as if he expected to look down his nose at the world.
Jehan Fortier, tall enough to look down his nose with ease, acquired a sheepish, charming grin as he dashed up.
His robe was creased and the gathered neckline of his chemise uneven, the loose end of his purple belt untucked and his red-brown hair already coming out of its long single braid.
But he always looked like that, just as he was always late.
Moyna had done a rotation with Jehan in the children’s ward, and knew that about him. She knew a few more things too.
And of everyone in their cohort, Jehan knew Moyna’s magic and its capabilities well. It’d be a double-edged sword if she were going to do what she’d . . . halfway made up her mind to do.
Halfway there was a dangerous place to be, in their profession. Healing magic needed commitment. Belief.
“If there was one day of your life you could put some effort into glancing at a clock, Jehan—” Estiene started, ice in his voice, but before he could continue, the bell sounded.
Clement, standing closest, set their palm to the door. They took a visible breath and let it out. Then pushed the door open and led them all through, their soft boots hushing against the polished stone of the floor.
For exams, the Rondelle was divided like a cheese-and-leek tart into six slices; they had entered through the crust of their piece, and the wide tip held a large plain clock, both hands motionless on the twelve, above a door leading to the central staircase where their patient case would be waiting.
High above the clock and extending down the long sides of the room was a balconied gallery for the examiners, entirely obscured by dark gauzy curtains which would be artificer-spelled so that the examiners could discuss the scholars’ performance without being heard.
Clement was first into the room. But Alys, just behind them, was the first to make a sound: a short scream, stereotypically girlish.
In the middle of the floor was an unoccupied wooden chair. And just to one side of it was . . . something else. Moyna, last through the door and now behind a group of people who’d halted abruptly, couldn’t see. She stepped around Jehan.
Behind them, the exterior door swung shut with a bang. Estiene flinched.
Jehan swore. Someone’s breath caught with a choking sound.
And Moyna felt a single pulse of ugly and unexpected envy.
Well, she thought, staring at the sprawled, motionless body and blankly staring eyes of Ysabel Caudotte. Someone had the courage to miss their leap, after all.
Someone’s managed to escape.