Five
This belief that all fire is the same great fire, which contains all the “sparks” of the dead (or souls, to borrow a term from the Aenhyric church), is common across Rese, Palia, Matorra, and western Ystrath, and remains incorporated into many local belief systems. The Ferue sect are notable for their belief that the return of a spark to the fire can only happen when the body is burned, which should happen as soon as possible after death.
To the Ferue, the flesh is both inferior and irrelevant to the spark, and the use of healing magic—which can prevent or delay death—is an affront bordering on profanity.
—From “A Comparative Study of Modern Death-Traditions,” masterial dissertation of L. Giorgio, Università of Western Palia
There was a complete solar eclipse when Clement and Ysabel were ten years old.
Which was eight years before they entered the Academie Sieuxerr together, and perhaps half a year after the gendarmes had first come to the Savoye house in the Tenth Quarter, investigating reports of children kept inside all day and not allowed to attend school.
This was a crime taken very seriously in Sieuxerr, where every child had the potential to become a healer.
All children in Sieuxerr attended school. It was free. There were no excuses.
The first few times, Niesken Savoye lied that her four younger children were sick.
She lied that Agnes, the eldest, was fully eighteen and had completed her schooling, and was helping to look after them.
When that stopped working, Niesken threw an empty bottle at the gendarmes—missing, luckily—and cried that the Grand Duke had no respect for his people’s religions, that poison was being spread in those schools and that she had a right to teach her own children, the sparks of her spark, the truth.
The gendarmes muttered about bloody Ferue fundamentalists and confiscated every candle in the house to make a point, and Clement and their siblings went back to school.
They’d been out of school for two years by that point. Their parents had gotten away with it by moving to a new quarter and telling the old school that the Savoye children were attending somewhere closer to their new home.
Clement was desperately behind in everything but music and languages. They tried to hide in the back corner of the class and will themself into silent invisibility while they caught up, but that trick was harder to pull off in school than at home.
“Come and sit here next to Ysabel, Clement,” said the teacher.
Ysabel had a smile like a perfectly held vibrato C. None of the other children seemed to like her much, though they usually let her direct their games. It was easier than arguing with her. Ysabel loved to argue.
When the solar eclipse came, Ysabel and Clement sat in the garden of Ysabel’s house and watched it using pieces of paper with holes poked through. Ysabel explained how the moon was the source of that shadow moving over the sun, changing its shape and hiding its warmth.
Ysabel loved explaining even more than arguing.
She thought all of the awkward, shameful gaps in Clement’s knowledge were wonderful opportunities that her new friend had gifted to her.
She never mocked. She was never impatient.
She explained, every time, and she glowed with pleasure that Clement had given her the chance to do it.
“When I’m a great healer,” Ysabel said, “I will learn to do things nobody else can do, and then I’ll teach them to everyone else.”
She never doubted her future, their future: Ysabel would be a healer, and Clement would be a medic, and they would work together and do amazing things. And she was thrilled when Clement unexpectedly tested as a mage as well—they could be together for the Academie years, too! It was perfect!
At the time, sitting in the wake of the mage-tester’s announcement, Clement’s own thrill was mixed with a drop of automatic, fearful guilt.
This was quickly swallowed by defiant pride as they thought about Mathé the First Healer, who’d been genderfree just like Clement was, and who was a symbol of all that hateful body-magic that Clement had been told to despise.
All that they’d learned, through knowing Ysabel and Ysabel’s mothers, to love.
It had felt exactly right. Like a piece of a puzzle fitting gladly into place.
Now Ysabel was dead and Clement couldn’t stop thinking about that eclipse.
It wasn’t the obvious metaphor: the light of Ysabel gone and nothing left but unfriendly shadow. It was, Clement thought, rather worse than that.
A couple of third-year scholars were exiting the Academie’s library. One of them held the heavy front door open for Clement and then looked twice, gaze sticking to Clement’s face.
Clement flinched and dropped their own gaze forward through the open door.
Word about Ysabel had obviously spread. The proctor geas could hardly prevent that for long, especially once the body was removed from the Rondelle.
And the one thing everyone knew about Clement was that they were Ysabel Caudotte’s best friend.
For thirteen years Ysabel had been the moon that stood between Clement and the dreadful light of being noticed.
Ysabel was so good at being noticed herself.
She basked in it. And Clement, in the shade, had been able to breathe, to slowly and painstakingly learn that it was safe to be seen and heard.
They could step forward with confidence on the wards or in an exam, and ask questions of a patient or take their place in a healing array.
Now Ysabel was dead, and it was as if those years had vanished with her. There was no shield and no shadow. Clement was sunburned all over again.
They walked fast across the ground floor of the library, keeping their gaze down the whole time. It didn’t help. Every stare and every whisper stung on their skin.
The enormous grid of study carrels on the top floor was full of scholars with red belts and red trim on their robes.
Up here, the weight of attention eased. The fourth-years had their dreaded written exams this week.
Clement passed three sets of shoulders slumped over their notes in exhausted sleep, and another scholar who might not have noticed if Clement had slapped them clean across the face; they sat blankly turning their white headband through their fingers as if trying to identify it from touch alone, their body a bruise of tension.
Fourth year. If you survived it, you’d probably make it to the end.
Ysabel’s carrel was in a corner. She’d rushed up and claimed it on the first day of first year, acting on advice from her mothers.
Clement had a spare key to the wooden cover of the desk, which rattled back in grudging jerks when unlocked.
The desks were old and battered, carved and nicked with years upon years of boredom and frustration and I-was-here impulse.
In one corner of the revealed desk sat inkpot, blotter, a neat set of pencils and pens, and a small knife for sharpening them.
Ysabel had never carved her name, or anything at all, on her library carrel.
She’d always intended to leave larger marks on the world than that.
Clement sat down and searched the carrel thoroughly. There wasn’t much to go through. Ysabel kept her notes and textbooks organised. There was no sign anywhere of the battered, yellow-covered notebook that Clement was searching for.
They relocked the desk. Then, after a moment, unlocked it again and reached in to remove the penknife. It had a good blade and a handle of comfortable green leather, and had been a birthday gift from Clement themself.
They chose a spot at eye level on the inner side of the carrel, exactly where the gaze would stray when one was tired of gazing at notes.
Beneath the faded surface the wood was bright and blond.
Clement blew away the meagre shavings and looked at the fresh initials, YC, for a few moments, before closing the desk cover again.
Clement was not one of the strongest mages in their cohort, nor one of the most dedicated scholars. But they were a healer. When faced with a problem a healer gathered information.
Sometimes Ysabel had carried her research notebook absently tucked into her arm as if it were part of her body.
Sometimes in a satchel. What she didn’t do was leave it behind where it could be read by anyone else.
If she’d been working at the Rondelle last night, for whatever reason, then she would have taken it there.
Clement should have demanded to see if Ysabel had left anything up in the gallery, this morning, instead of trusting that the examiners would have noticed it. They should have spoken up more vehemently when the gendarmes tried to brush Ysabel’s death away like so many wood shavings. Should, should.
Outside the library the wind had picked up.
Butter-blossom petals, bruised and browned since this morning’s ritual, danced in eddies on the ground.
It seemed years ago that Clement had walked beneath the arch and the handfuls of tossed petals, their heart beating hard with pleasure and anxiety at the prospect of the Grand Exams.
Clement had deliberately waited until the final exam time slot would be over and the Rondelle empty.
They tried the outer door to Chamber Two and were unsurprised to find it locked.
Who might be prepared to open it for them?
Or perhaps they should go and find Healer Hilaret, and ask him if he’d seen anything up in the gallery, though communication with your examiners was frowned upon, if not outright forbidden.
Mathé’s luck was with them for the moment, however, because at that moment a stout young man in townie clothes, single dark braid heavy enough to barely twitch in the wind, came out of the next door along and turned to lock it behind him. Clement hurried over.
“Excuse me. Can I— I think I might have left something in there, during the exam.”