Four #3
They made it the rest of the way in silence.
It was an almost unclouded day, and the Hospital in Sieuxerr of Mathé the First Healer—what a mouthful, no one called it that except at ceremonies—loomed and sang in the sun.
A high, huge building of street-blue stone, its central structure and main wings stretched like vast uncut gems to form three sides of Hospital Square.
Parfunda perfume from fence-ringed trees mingled with food smells from the carts and stalls that fed patients, visitors, and staff alike.
Jehan looked firmly away from the cart selling cumin-studded cheese melted across toast, already braced for Estiene to make a teasing remark about having counted those pieces of tart Jehan ate at lunch, and had they definitely ruled out a metabolic condition?
But Estiene said nothing. Jehan set his jaw and took the stairs up to the entrance two at a time, to be a bitch.
The Hospital was an H-shape, narrow everywhere.
The dark blue bricks were either wood-panelled or painted white on the inside for more light, depending on when that particular part of the centuries-old building had last been refreshed.
In winter the huge arched windows lining the wards were kept snugly closed by shutters, and air-mages were brought in to breathe the wind through, with artificer-lights for the dark mornings and dusks and nights.
Now, in summer, the windows were flung open and the air streamed in, so the wards were dotted here and there with pungent candles to turn away insects.
Soft-soled feet moved from bed to bed and trolleys rattled beneath raised voices.
The healers in this ward had the white belts of diagnosticians, eye-catching dots of dark blue in an ocean of green-robed medics and nurses.
Jehan danced aside to avoid a medicine trolley, and realised he’d been distracted enough by furiously imagining some properly cutting responses for his half of the argument that Estiene had not even started that he’d kept following Estiene, automatically, up the west staircase and down through the full length of the diagnostics ward to the Head Healer’s office.
Where, because it was that kind of day, they discovered that his mother and Estiene’s father were having a raging fight.
It probably didn’t look like a raging fight to the casual observer, but Jehan’s mother only put her hands on her hips like that when she was infuriated, and only lowered her piercing ward-medic’s voice when there was anger in it.
And Head Healer Marcelle had his own arms crossed in a way that his only son had inherited.
On Estiene it created the impression of a threatened creature trying to make themself smaller.
On Healer Marcelle, who had a habit of slowly exhaling from puffed cheeks like a release valve for his vast self-importance, the posture made Jehan long for a punching bag.
Jehan’s mother was emitting a long stream of complaint which appeared to be about nurses and medics having to clean up after mistakes made by the most junior healers, again.
Marcelle puffed. “Don’t you ever get tired of looking for things to complain about, Fortier? We accept the cream of the graduating crop to work in the Hospital—”
“Horseshit. We get the ones who can afford not to take bonded scholarships. And everyone knows that since the serrage the Academie has been lowering the threshold of magic needed to be accepted as a scholar in the first place.”
An infuriating smile. “You’re always speaking up in committee meetings about how the strength of their magic is not what makes a good healer.”
“It certainly makes them dangerous when they think they can do more than they can!”
“Estiene,” said Marcelle, who had noticed them hovering in the doorway.
He touched a hand to his own waist-long, immaculate black braid as if concerned that it might have suddenly vanished in sympathy with his son’s.
“Do come in. And—Fortier, good afternoon. Medic Fortier and I were just finishing up here.”
“We’re nowhere near finished,” said Jehan’s mother.
There was a smudge of blood on her pale green medic’s robe.
Jehan raised his fingers in a little wave.
Much as she loved him, her younger child’s existence was a source of constant embarrassment to Colette Fortier, Senior Medic of the Hospital Sieuxerr and loudest of all the loud voices when it came to the way medics were systematically undervalued and healers were a group of overcoddled, overpaid babies with superiority complexes.
It had made for some very awkward dinner conversations when Jehan turned out to be one.
“I’m so sorry— If we’re interrupting—” Estiene actually did sound sorry, and his face had somehow both brightened and drawn into more anxious lines. “I just thought, now we’re done with the first exam . . .”
“You are? Good, good. I know you can’t tell me anything about it,” said Marcelle, “but I’m sure you performed admirably.”
It didn’t sound like a question to Jehan. Apparently it was, because Estiene’s face fell just enough to be an answer.
Marcelle frowned. “Hmm? Well. Four more days to make up for it. I suppose you’re wanting to observe that healing that Danisy is conducting? It’ll be starting soon, you should head up to theatres. I’m sure they’ll let you in too, Fortier, if you tell them I agreed.”
Jehan was tempted to hurl the unasked favour back at him, but in-utero healings were fiendishly rare, and Healer Danisy was a one-man masterclass. Jehan would have begged and flirted and chopped off his own bloody hair to see this, if he’d heard about it through any other means.
“Thank you,” he said.
“We will pick this up later, Healer Marcelle,” Jehan’s mother said. “But some of us have work to get back to.”
“I— Mama, I wanted to ask you about something,” Jehan said quickly.
She paused on her way out the door to look him in the eye.
They were much of a height, and her untidy hair was the true, uncommon red that Jehan’s was only feinting at.
She looked tired, Jehan thought; as tired as she’d been at the height of the serrage, when Jehan was an obnoxious twelve-year-old demanding energy she didn’t have left over from her work.
In the last few years she’d become thinner, and dark circles backgrounded the freckles beneath her eyes.
She still gave the impression of a strong piece of machinery set in motion by an artificer: a tram humming uphill without swerving or pause.
She paused for him, though. She always had.
“Of course. Come and find me when you’re done watching, dear,” she said, and strode away.
“Watch?” Estiene said. “I thought you said I might . . .”
“I said there was a small chance it’d be possible,” said Marcelle. “But Healer Aubin needs the experience, and it is a rare event, after all—it wouldn’t look good for me to be taking up a slot with a mere scholar, even a gifted one.” He winked at Jehan. Jehan bit down on his own tongue.
They were dismissed from the Head Healer’s office and found themselves back in the ward.
Someone was crying behind a curtain in the bay to their left.
An elderly woman lay in a patch of glaring sunlight while a healer sat at the bedside, eyes closed in concentration, and laid their bare hands on her skin, which was blotchy with welts.
A phantome rash? An allergic reaction? No, you didn’t end up in the advanced diagnostics ward with anything so simple as—
“Don’t say anything, Jehan,” said Estiene. “I mean it.”
“When have I ever?” said Jehan.
Estiene’s look could have cauterised a wound.
“You already know that your darling Papa’s an unfeeling shithead with all the warmth of a hypothermic attack, you don’t need me to—”
Halfway through the sentence Estiene had a fist in the front of Jehan’s robe and was dragging him toward the mouth of the nearest storage room. Ah, yes. Estiene hated nothing more than making a scene in public. What if Papa heard about it?
There were two of these rooms per ward, and given their varied usages, all of them had a rubber stopper for the door set at eye level on one of the shelves.
Estiene managed in an impressively short span of heartbeats to shove Jehan through the door, locate the stopper, jam the door closed, and then shove Jehan again—up against a linen cupboard, this time, if Jehan was any judge.
Which he was. He was a connoisseur of the places in the Hospital in which one might want some privacy to let off steam.
In fact, he rather thought he’d been shoved up against this specific cupboard before.
“What is your problem?” Estiene hissed.
“My problem with you, Scholar Marcelle? I have an extensive list.”
Jehan’s body had dangerous memories of its own. For example: It had taken the dark enclosed space and the interested racing of his own heart as a signal to send blood to his cock, and to place his hands on Estiene’s hips to drag him close.
Estiene’s breath, catching, was loud. And then hot against Jehan’s neck. And then nothing at all compared to the sensation of Estiene’s mouth, almost clumsily searing in the same spot as Estiene let out a groan against Jehan’s skin.
“I know you do,” Estiene said, indistinct. “No redeeming qualities at all, I think you said once.”