Nineteen
Nurses and medics trained in the Blue City can take classes at the Academie Sieuxerr, giving them an excellent grounding in the basics of anatomy, disease, and the nonmagical aspects of treatment.
But a short stint in a hospital elsewhere—indeed, the farther from Sieuxerr the more stark the contrast will be—is enough to show you that these more distant professionals outshine their fellows in even the great Hospital in skill and experience, simply because there are so few healers working alongside them.
They have to do more, so they have the chance to do more.
—From a draft statement paper from the Guild of Medics, Sieuxerr Chapter
Confirming the death of a patient in the Hospital Sieuxerr was a task usually fobbed off on the most junior scholar attached to the ward. Nobody who’d learned what death felt like was likely to get it wrong, and it never stopped being unpleasant.
Except, apparently, for Moyna. Who’d touched a cadaver in first year like everyone else, and had felt no need to yank her hand away in disgust.
“You couldn’t feel death?” Clement asked. They couldn’t imagine it. Even the least magically gifted among scholars and healers had that overwhelming aversion, and Moyna Apprice was by no means the least of anything.
“Of course I could feel something.” Moyna had reacted to everyone’s stares by expanding herself, raising her sharp chin high.
“It wasn’t pleasant, but it didn’t make me want to retch, or feel like I needed to stop immediately.
It was . . . interesting. But it was clear that I wasn’t feeling the same thing as everyone else, and I wasn’t keen to stand out as a freak in the second week of first year.
So I never said anything. And I didn’t think much of it until last year, when I was told to certify death on a patient, and I got curious.
I hadn’t had the chance to do any diagnostics while she was alive, and I wanted to know what really advanced wool-lung felt like.
” A shrug. “That didn’t work as well as I’d hoped.
Dead tissue doesn’t speak back to magic the same way living does.
But I could feel the residue of her healing team’s magic there, and everywhere she’d had some palliative healing done.
Just as if I’d been looking for it when she’d been alive. ”
“Oh, and don’t tell me,” said Jehan. “Ysabel knew this secret too.”
“I can’t think how she would have. I never told anyone. It wasn’t going to help me get through exams, or have any practical application. The work of a healer stops once a person’s dead.”
“And now we’ve found a practical application,” said Estiene. While Moyna spoke he’d drawn back, then leaned in again, as if he was feeling the same odd war as Clement: the natural distaste of a healer for death, set against the curiosity of something new. Or at least unknown.
And, yes, possibly useful.
Estiene went on, “You did touch Ysabel when we found her body. Could you tell anything then?”
“I wasn’t trying,” said Moyna.
“Do you think it would still work now?” asked Alys. “It’s been two, three days. And she’ll be . . . cold.”
“No idea,” said Moyna. “But I’m willing to try. I’ve somewhere to be right now, but I can try getting into the bodykeeping room this afternoon.”
“On what excuse?” asked Jehan.
“I’ll think of something. How much trouble can I really get into, now? I’m only a scholar until the end of the week.”
“Unless—” Alys closed her mouth, looking all over again like she wanted to vanish into the floor.
Unless we fail rang in the silence.
“I love this attitude to rule-breaking, Moyna,” said Jehan. “You might need someone to provide a distraction. Bring me along when you go. That’ll be our contribution to the investigation—how about the rest of you?”
“I still don’t know how we can try to find out if anyone—Saige, Brodier, Thumery—was on Academie grounds in the middle of the night without asking them,” said Estiene. “And anyone guilty would just lie.”
“If Moyna doesn’t need me until after lunch, I can go to the Hospital now and find Thumery,” said Jehan. “Let’s at least try and scrub him off the list.”
“What will you tell him?” Clement asked.
A grin at Moyna. “I’ll . . . think of something. Maybe Ysabel was sleeping with me, too, and now I’m distraught and want to know if he’d said anything to send our mutual lover over the edge.”
“Fantastic choice of words,” muttered Estiene.
“Jealousy’s a useful emotion.” Jehan’s smile flashed at Estiene like a scalpel. “I can demand to know if he was with her the night she died, and who can prove it if he wasn’t.”
Estiene’s glower matched him for sharpness. “Speaking of jealousy—I’ll talk to Lysande Coran. She’s as likely to be Dux Scolaris as I am now and everyone knows she wanted to outshine Ysabel.”
“And Alys and I will go and find Konrad Omeyer,” said Clement firmly, when Alys looked like she might threaten to volunteer for something even in her current state. “That was a good thought, Moyna. He might know some techniques that’ll help her recover faster.”
“You don’t have to—”
“Yes, I do,” Clement said.
Yes, they did. A swell of guilt at prioritising something over their answer-seeking was gone as quickly as it rose. Ysabel was in the flame, and Alys was alive and needed help now.
Besides—they had a niggling memory of Ysabel telling them something once about Konrad Omeyer’s disastrous near-burnout.
Another of her cherished secrets. What was it?
She’d known exactly what he’d been attempting when it happened, perhaps?
Ysabel’s fingers were everywhere, muddling the threads, leaving invisible traces that invited Clement to follow.
“Try the self-defence gym, if you can’t find him in halls,” said Jehan. “He was haunting it on Firstnight.”
“And I’ll go and talk more with Brodier about Ysabel’s research, this afternoon,” Clement said. “As you’ve all kindly pointed out, it’s believable that Ysabel might have told me, of anyone, more about it. So I can try to get more out of Brodier. See if I can catch her in a lie or a contradiction.”
“I’ll take Saige as well,” said Jehan. “I’m seeing him tomorrow, to get his sign-off on the final version of my own research thesis.”
“Look at that,” said Moyna dryly. “A diagnostic plan, and everyone with their assigned role. We’re almost that harmonious group you wanted, Estiene.”
The almost-harmonious group broke up and most of them left, leaving Alys sitting where she was and Clement wondering if they were being presumptuous, attaching themself to Alys like this.
But they’d promised to keep an eye on her, and if Alys Tixerrant collapsed from some sort of mysterious near-burnout condition and nobody was there to help . . . Clement didn’t know Alys well, but had the strong sense that she’d curl into herself and not want to bother anyone.
Sure enough: “It really was kind of you to offer, Clement,” said Alys presently, “but you don’t have to—”
“Yes, I do,” said Clement again. “You look like half-baked shit, Alys. How are you feeling?”
That got Alys’s head all the way up. Her meticulous braids had gone slightly wispy, and the dappled sunlight caught in them like gold dust. Clement, because they were looking for it, saw the moment when Alys was going to say Fine, and the moment after that, when she changed her mind.
Alys’s gaze rested on Clement’s cheek, off-centre.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Awful? I don’t know— It’s silly, but I don’t know if I can trust my body to tell me what’s wrong.” Her mouth gave an intriguing, bitter little moue that softened at once.
That didn’t sound silly at all. Clement tapped a finger under their own eye, and Alys winced.
“Can you see with it?”
“It’s blurry. Throbbing a little.”
Which translated through politeness and reserve probably meant a dreadful headache. Clement would offer to try to heal it right now, but they had no experience with what it was, and messing around with headaches when you weren’t sure of their mechanism was a dangerous game.
They offered Alys a hand up. She took it without hesitation; her fingers were clammy, her nails healer-short and with the rough corners of habitual biting. Clement tried not to be charmed. It was a lost cause. Up close, Alys’s charm was a perfumed breeze.
Alys gripped Clement’s hand longer than necessary. Clement was about to melt into the charm of that, too—but realised that Alys was swaying on her feet, nearly green with pallor after the postural shift. And still trying to smile through it.
“We’re going to find Konrad right now,” said Clement. “And if you feel any worse, you tell me, and we’ll get a horse-cab right to the Hospital. We’ll ask the Head Healer himself, if need be.”
Alys gave a tiny, weak giggle. “Oh, he’d love that. He’d hold it over my mother for months.”
The two of them went and checked the exam lists on the fifth-year corkboard. If Konrad were in the second time slot, it’d just be a matter of waiting for him to emerge from the Rondelle. But he was also in a group with the first exam slot, so he’d be done for the day.
Clement’s gaze slid to the C column and caught like a burr on Ysabel’s name.
Right there with everyone else, where she was supposed to be.
Exam Chamber Five, third time slot. Clement swallowed a lumpen swell of grief.
Surely diagnostic magic sent through them right now would see that grief, a dense and choking clot forming a perfect cast of Clement’s airways.
They skimmed the lists for the rest of Ysabel’s group.
She’d been in one of the handful of six-person groups caused by slightly odd cohort numbers, so her group would at least have been able to sit the Grand Exam without disadvantage.
Well. Without the clear advantage that Ysabel would have been, if she were here.
“Shall we try halls first?” Alys said. “It’s closer than the gym. And I suppose we try the library after that.”