Five #4
And which seemed, nobody knew why, to be particularly bad in healers.
It had stymied all the attempts to find a decent cure.
A healer-patient’s own magic tried to fight the healing, and in the process made the spasm worse.
No other illnesses were known to do that.
When that detail leaked into public consciousness—and the press—it only doubled the volume of talk that the serrage was some sort of spirit-drawn punishment for the hubris of healers.
The Caudottes had been lucky, comparatively.
Only one of them was affected; Tiphaine stayed well, and so they’d refused the pension.
Tiphaine reluctantly left the Hospital to go into private generalist work, where the money was good.
Especially good since the population of working healers had shrunk sharply.
Clement and their fellow scholars had already seen the impact of this on the workforce they were about to join.
Long hospital shifts had become even longer.
Healers sick with any other illness got their fellows to patch up their symptoms, and kept going, because there was nobody to cover them.
The retirement age for healers had been raised to seventy.
And the Academie, as everyone knew, had lowered the threshold of magical strength that they’d accept in a prospective mage-scholar.
It’s the challenge of our time, Ysabel had said, full of those stubborn embers. Mathé calls us to meet it.
“You really should be getting back,” Tiphaine said to Clement. “Ysabel will—”
The silence screwed tight. Adala’s expression went closed-off and grey.
The gendarmes had told the Caudottes only that their daughter had been found dead in the Rondelle, and that the geas had delayed any kind of investigation for a week.
Clement had said, the futility of it like a barb in their throat, that they couldn’t pass on any details either.
Not that they ever intended to tell Ysabel’s mothers how Ysabel’s corpse had looked. Let them remember her alive.
“Ysabel would want me to find out what happened to her,” said Clement now. “And I will. I promise.”
“What happened?” Adala ran a thin hand over her hair, worn like Dean Brodier’s in the crown-style of the feast week.
She had the look of a raven or a starling: tough and dark.
“How can they tell us? Nobody can. If we—if we put too much pressure on her—or kept quiet while she put all that pressure on herself—Mathé’s spark, it’s too much for one girl, no matter how brilliant. ”
Her voice was hoarse and sodden with what Clement realised was guilt. It was unbearable all over again.
“That wasn’t who Ysabel was,” Clement said. “Why is everyone so ready to believe she was cracking? Someone killed her.”
The Caudottes exchanged a glance. “Clement, love,” said Tiphaine. “I can’t imagine how you’re feeling—”
Sunburned, thought Clement. Out of tune.
“—and perhaps it seems easier to lay the blame elsewhere. But who would ever want to kill Ysabel? You’ve worked in the Hospital. You know that terrible, senseless accidents happen. And that healers as determined as our Ysabel—push themselves.”
So very forgiving and sensible, even as her voice thickened with a fresh wave of grief.
It was impossible that Tiphaine and Adala could believe this.
That, like Brodier, they should be whipping their own backs over an imaginary version of Ysabel who struggled bravely and silently on through misery.
These were Ysabel’s parents—and they were loving and involved and ready to delight in their child’s blossoming, far beyond what Clement had thought was normal for parents back when they’d first been welcomed into this home as Ysabel’s friend.
How could they not understand what kind of person they’d raised?
Ysabel had her stresses and frustrations like everyone else. Ysabel was full of ideas for the future, always talking of what she intended to see change in ten years. Twenty years. She would never have quit the stage early if she had the slightest choice in the matter.
But then, Ysabel brought her stresses and frustrations to Clement.
She would fling herself onto Clement’s bed and complain about how her monthly flow was horrible and she was sure being forced to sit through Healer Renault’s pedantic approach to diagnostics was making it worse.
If she was having trouble mastering a healing technique then she would pick up Clement’s pillow and yell into it.
Ysabel had been brilliant. Ysabel had been flawed and human. Ysabel had been the first and best of Clement’s friends, more of a sister in many ways than the Savoye sisters that Clement had left behind in that Tenth Quarter house.
Clement wanted to swear to Adala and Tiphaine, aloud, that they would uncover Ysabel’s murderer and drag them to be punished.
Like an ancient knight’s fealty: a promise of service in return for the years and years of kindness, the home the Caudottes had given a child who so desperately needed an escape from their own.
They made the promise in silence instead.