Twelve #3
A knock came on the office door. Someone called, “Denise? That artificer wants to talk to you about the strike conditions again. I told her five minutes.”
“Complain about the strike conditions,” muttered Lefer, but she stuck the cork back in the jar.
“One last thing,” said Estiene hastily. They’d been sidetracked from their goal. “I’d been wondering if—my father’s request—is why Dean Brodier is one of our group’s examiners. If she’d been told to make sure it happened, as Dean of Assessment.”
Lefer sighed. “I expect so.”
“But we have two examiners. It’d be hard to force through a pass, especially with a high individual mark for one person, if the group performed badly.”
“I’m sure a case could be made,” said Lefer.
“A lot of people think we’re tying our own hands needlessly, sticking to Mathé’s dictums about a whole group passing or failing together.
And individual performance does still count toward rank.
Perhaps there’d be talk. But you are, in fact, a very competent healer.
It’d be harder to justify if . . .” She trailed off.
“If it was someone like me,” Alys said. “Could Brodier have handpicked our exam group? I don’t even know how they’re chosen.”
Estiene had the sense Lefer was regretting her eruption of honesty, though the grievances had clearly been bubbling close to the surface for so long that it wouldn’t have taken much for them to spill over.
She was herding them toward the door as she told them that the thirty-six exam groups were randomly chosen, yes, as were their time slots.
It was a name-draw done by Dean Brodier and one of the under-secretaries, who was sworn to secrecy and was responsible for writing up the lists to be pinned on the board.
It was usually done at some point in the last couple of days before the exam.
Asking exactly which under-secretary was privy to the lists in advance would have seemed a bit too strange on top of everything else, Estiene figured. But it was another potential thread to be pulled.
“Yes,” Alys agreed, when they were back down in the quad.
They sat on the low bench of stone that ran all the way around the open cloisters that ringed the grass.
“Whoever they are, they’d know whether it truly was random.
But it’s certainly possible that Brodier could create an exam group—or several—before doing the general draw.
An under-secretary wouldn’t argue with the Dean of Assessment if she said it was necessary.
Although,” she added, “Moyna and Jehan make sense, and Clement’s very sound, but I have to wonder why I was included.
If the point was tipping the scales to ensure you passed. Perhaps to make it less obvious?”
Estiene had been thinking exactly that, and felt guilty about it. “And now we know that both Saige and Brodier have a strong motive for proving their academic superiority over the other one, if nothing else.”
“Yes. One of them will lose their position after midsummer,” said Alys. “If Ysabel’s project really was that amazing and groundbreaking, Brodier doesn’t have time to hand it over to someone else to finish next year.”
“Saige has the best motive, then.”
Alys nodded. She hesitated and said, “I’m sorry you had to find out like that, about what your father did. I don’t know if you want to talk about it. We can if you like. Though it seems like you probably don’t.”
Estiene profoundly did not want to talk about it.
And yet . . . just like Lefer, he’d been simmering away, scalding himself with the unfair secret of it, ever since he found out.
Perhaps it was all right to let some of the bitter steam out here, with Alys, who at least was allowing him the dignity of not having to make eye contact.
They could sit side by side and talk to the parfunda, to the air, to the bluestone buildings that had trained them.
He still had to swallow twice before he could speak.
“I can’t stop wondering whether I should believe in myself and my abilities less, if he doesn’t believe in me. And you know how much of a difference belief makes in a healing.”
They sat there awhile. Estiene’s stomach gave a mutter of hunger. The thought of Jehan rose up from his guts, was acknowledged with a sharp ache, and then pushed down again, all within the space of a breath. The process was getting faster. Or so Estiene told himself.
“I think your father does believe in you,” Alys said, to Estiene’s surprise. “But not as much as he believes in himself. If that makes sense.”
It did. Estiene didn’t know if anyone had ever believed in themself as much as his father, with the possible exception of Ysabel Caudotte.
“Thank you,” he said. Something felt owing. “I . . .”
“It’s all right,” Alys said. “I know nobody believes in me.”
More guilt slapped Estiene smartly across the face. Alys was clearly observing a lot more than she was offering.
He said, “I bet Leon does, today.”
Alys’s gaze only met his for a second, but it was full of a startling light.