Ten
Healing magic is a movement of the body, its organs, and its systems back toward what is normal.
True: you will not be a week into your studies before you realise the vast expanse of states that fall under that concept of normal.
Healthy bodies vary vastly from one another.
They vary over their own lifespans. But when outsiders to Mathé’s profession nervously ask if it is possible for a healer to do real harm with their magic—even to kill—we can tell them with confidence that the answer is no.
A procedure may be painful, yes. But it will always be in the name of dragging the patient’s body farther in the direction of health.
Moyna hadn’t really expected that there would be another corpse in the exam gallery on the second day.
Some part of her mind must have disagreed, though, because her neck and shoulders relaxed as soon as they walked in.
No corpse. Just the empty chair in the centre of the room.
And, this time, a small box of chalk-sticks sitting atop it.
She still found herself avoiding the place where Ysabel’s body had been, when she went to pick up the chalk.
Estiene had the utter nerve to huff at Moyna as if she were the immature one.
“It’ll be a treatment array, then,” he said, nodding at the chalk.
“Or they want us to think so,” said Jehan.
The effort with which Estiene didn’t look at Jehan was as noticeable as the way the two of them had been glaring yesterday. Moyna was pretty sure they’d been hate-fucking for half of third year, but surely they were done stomping out the final embers by now.
“The Grand Exam isn’t designed to trick us,” said Clement. “It’s supposed to be a fair test of our abilities, or else what’s the point?” They looked better today: brittle, but composed.
They agreed amongst themselves that Alys would take the history and start diagnostics, and that Moyna—who held the chalk—would coordinate the healing unless it turned out to be something she was unfamiliar with.
A powerful position. Moyna would hold the exam case’s success or failure in her hands.
She swallowed hard and stared at the side of Estiene’s face, daring him to complain.
Today one of his ears held an ombré cascade of five crystal studs; the topmost one was the dark purple of their fifth-year belts, with the one down in the lobe a pale lavender.
Estiene’s insistence on ornament was as irritating as everything else about him, but even Moyna could admit the effect was lovely.
Their plan fell apart soon after the bell rang and the patient entered. So many plans did.
The beige-clad patient was a girl who couldn’t have been much older than eighteen, with a decided nose and dark hair tied simply back.
Pearl-pox scars dotted the brown skin of her cheeks and neck.
She hobbled in with the aid of a crutch, barefoot, and Moyna caught back a hiss at the sight of her ankle.
That fracture had been bad, and badly set—or not set at all—and could be years old.
Moyna took the paper from the girl’s hesitant hand. “Thank you. Have a seat. What’s your name?”
Another hesitation before she sat. And then a stream of faltering Matorran, of which Moyna understood only the word for sorry.
“Oh dear,” said Alys. “I can try, but my Matorran’s very basic. I took Palian for my main language.”
“Me too,” said Clement.
“Camarran,” said Moyna. “Though my Palian’s not bad.”
“And I’m bonded to Fenehaf, so no prizes for guessing what I took,” said Jehan. “Looks like you’re on history, Marcelle.”
“Her name’s Luisa and she’s very sorry to cause a fuss but her Resée is very bad,” said Estiene.
“Sorry,” Luisa agreed, thickly accented.
“Apprice?” said Estiene.
Moyna unfolded the exam case and read. “Heal this patient’s injury. You will not have access to sedation tonics.”
“That’s it?” said Alys, when Moyna didn’t continue.
Moyna showed them the nearly empty paper.
Jehan let out a descending whistle. “Shit.”
“Marcelle,” said Clement, “ask if the pox—”
“I know,” said Estiene, snippy as ever, but his voice gentled as he and Luisa began a rapid back-and-forth in Matorran.
If Luisa was one of the unlucky half of pearl-pox sufferers—especially if she’d had the disease somewhere lacking a healer, a reasonable assumption if it’d been allowed to get bad enough to scar—then they wouldn’t be able to block the nerves of her leg.
Pearl-pox damage interacted oddly with magic, and gave some people dreadful shooting pain instead of none at all.
“Why are we getting all the weird phantomes?” Moyna said. “I thought the Grand Exam was meant to test breadth of knowledge.”
“The ankle’s something different, at least. Ask her if I can do diagnostics while you’re talking,” said Jehan.
Estiene gestured at Jehan and said something that had Luisa nodding at once.
The girl’s eyes were large with hope, her hands tightly clasped in her lap.
Heal this patient. So there’d be a different patient for every exam group.
The case’s focus was probably the healing of old fractures; enough of those turned up at the courtyard clinic that they’d be able to muster up plenty and save them for this week.
The pox was just a casual impossibility thrown in for fun.
Estiene relayed that yes, Luisa had the pearl-pox as an infant, and knew to tell healers about it.
The ankle had been badly broken three years ago in a fall from a tree, and had taken a long time to mend.
It was still painful and rigid, and her family couldn’t afford the private healers in the nearest Matorran city.
So they’d made the journey to Sieuxerr in the hope of help.
When they arrived two weeks ago, she was assessed in the clinic and then given lodgings to await the Grand Exam.
Jehan, after diagnostics, said that both tibia and fibula had fragmented and everything had slowly meshed again at a bad angle. He gently moved Luisa’s inward-twisted ankle back and forth. It could manage only a few degrees in any direction.
“Fixable, but it’ll hurt like fire wasps if she’s awake for it,” he said. “And even with the world’s most gritted teeth, she’d tense up too much for us to heal the tendons properly.”
“So we have to take her under,” said Clement, uneasily. “There’s five of us, but . . .”
But consciousness was a mystery that generations of healers still hadn’t properly penetrated. Tonics worked far better than magic. You could do without them, but it usually took an experienced theatre specialist or two, and close monitoring of the heart and lungs.
Moyna remembered something. It lay on her tongue with the last few bitter drops of indecision—but she’d woken up with her selfish idea of sabotage halfway ebbed, and in the face of Luisa’s fragile hope it had dried up further.
Another plan that hadn’t survived contact with a patient. Mathé’s arse, Moyna hated this work.
But it appeared she was going to do it anyway.
So she said, “Jehan? Is this the sort of thing that you could do?”
“Sort of. Yes.” Jehan glanced between Clement and Alys and explained, “My research project is on a new technique for taking someone—halfway under, I suppose. When you don’t have tonics but need to get an injury stabilised fast.”
“That’s fascinating,” said Alys. “Does it, ah. Does it . . . work? Sorry.”
Jehan laughed. “Short answer is yes. Long answer is, it’s great for hauling a dislocated shoulder into place, because the muscles relax and aren’t fighting you. But I’ve never tried to hold it for the length of time you’d need to heal something this old and complicated.”
“If you had one of us monitoring, like in a theatre, would that help?” Moyna glanced up at the silent viewing gallery. Mathé only knew what sort of marks they’d get if the patient surfaced into full sensation halfway through a painful healing, and screamed the place down.
“I’d sure feel better about it,” said Jehan. “Well. This is the time for any of you to speak up if you have a better idea.”
Nobody spoke except, after a while, Luisa. She directed a clear query to Estiene, her brow furrowed. Her grip was white-knuckled now. Estiene touched her shoulder and spoke at length, and then finally looked right at Jehan.
“I’ve told her that we’re going to do our very best to fix her foot, and that I’ll be the one working directly on her bones,” he said.
His eyes were tense at the edges, and his voice was his father’s voice: brisk and brooking no argument.
“And that you’re a very good healer who will keep her relaxed and feeling no pain, like she’s halfway asleep on a sunny afternoon. ”
“Afraid I’ll make a liar of you?” said Jehan.
“No.”
There was an uneven pause. Moyna held out the chalk to Jehan. “All yours, Fortier.”
The array was simple. Jehan sketched the wide circle and then the place for Luisa to lie at the centre, with himself at her head and Estiene at her foot.
He insisted that having a support in his own radial wouldn’t make a difference, given none of them knew the technique.
It’d be better for Estiene to have the extra stability and power so that he could work as fast as possible.
Alys volunteered at once to take the monitoring position.
Jehan sketched out the radial of the array behind Estiene: Clement, then Moyna.
There was no bed, so they all sat cross-legged on the floor. Moyna’s pulse thrummed in her fingers where they rested on Clement’s shoulder.
Jehan cleared his throat.
“I’ll do it,” said Clement. And sang a single note.
The unexpected purity of their voice, soaring in the high-ceilinged space, raised goose bumps on Moyna’s skin.
Her magic rose and strove to meet it. She hummed the same note, pulling herself into tune, and after a moment Estiene’s quieter voice joined in.
There was a beauty to this part of healing; not even Moyna could deny that.
To diagnostic magic, disease or injury gave back sensations of every kind: tastes, textures, colours.