Twenty-Three
The second key principle in array design is hierarchy.
The reason for this will become obvious to any scholar when they first participate in a healing, but should also be apparent through pure reason.
(Chapter Sixteen, “The Healing Array,” will explore this in detail.) As a profession, healing itself must reflect the same hierarchies.
An uncertainty about precedent or whose will holds greatest sway could have disastrous results in any situation involving healers—or, indeed, any medical staff, though a well-trained nurse or medic will understand their position relative to a true healer.
Second corpse, third tangled ball of string; the centre of this all was still Ysabel.
Clement longed to see their best friend again.
They could feel themself tempted to make bargains with the spirits, or to light larger and larger fires in the hope of finding within the one true flame that single spark that had been Ysabel, if only because Ysabel had been the best person to talk to about anything.
If she hadn’t been the key to all of this, then she would have delighted in the puzzle of it.
She’d have been drawing diagrams on blackboards, and forgoing sleep in order to race around asking questions of every single person involved.
Clement would have followed in her wake.
Perhaps, in time, doing things on their own would feel more natural. For now, Clement had to use that grief as a rope cast out into the fog of questions, looped around invisible answers. One step at a time. One hand gripping fast and then the next.
Given their strange exam cases and the artificer’s death, it seemed increasingly unlikely that Crespin Thumery had anything to do with this, despite his affair with Ysabel.
His only connection with the Academie these days was conducting chorale.
He had no reason to care about the Grand Exam, Dux Scolaris, or Estiene.
But the only way they’d find the right answers would be to get rid of all the wrong ones.
So Clement went to the diagnostics ward of the Hospital to see if they’d have more luck than Jehan at finding Thumery.
They found the ward buzzing with the fact that city gendarmes had come and fetched Head Healer Marcelle away to be questioned about something, and they’d made a loud fuss about doing so.
The Head Healer had not returned to work since.
Clement declined to add to the theories about why, especially with the truth—that was the last thing Estiene needed—and seized the excuse to ask whether any of the other senior diagnosticians had been absent.
Or rather: if Thumery had the opportunity to be on the Academie campus earlier that day, to slit someone’s throat and lock Estiene in a room, in an attempt to throw suspicion onto the Marcelles.
“Thumery?” said Finvid Jonsson, a junior healer born of Etirran parents, who’d been two years ahead of Clement at the Academie.
“He did take the morning off, but he didn’t leave the Hospital.
Too much bother trying to get home and back, what with the tram delays.
He just napped on the staff room floor. I haven’t seen him since midday rounds—he’s senior on call for diagnostic problems in the free clinic this week, so I assume he’s down in the courtyard.
By the way, Clement, I heard about Ysabel. Horrible thing to happen. I’m sorry.”
Clement had been the one expressing that sympathy before—any healer had—and they’d always felt there was some combination of words which would make the whole thing less horrible and awkward, they just hadn’t found it yet.
No. When you were on the other side of it, you realised that absolutely nothing would be right, because everything in the world was wrong.
They said, “Thanks,” and left for the courtyard clinic.
The humidity left over from last night’s storm had been eased by the breeze, the sky now a warm and cloud-dotted blue, so the clinic was crowded to the point of absurdity. Bad weather or over-hot days prevented the less acute issues from turning up, because they knew to expect a long wait.
To an outsider it would have looked chaotic.
And it was. But to Clement, the Hospital Sieuxerr’s courtyard clinic represented everything that was great about the Blue City, and Mathé’s gifts, and the sincere privilege of being a healer.
Anyone could come, and nobody would have to pay or be turned away. The only cost was time.
If it was an emergency, you jumped the queue.
Or were supposed to. There was always a small crowd of shouting people with a very strong idea of what an emergency was, clustered to one side of the triage desk, and it didn’t help that the average hostility of this shouting had increased dramatically since the serrage.
Triage was a vital and prestigious job, having the glamour of diagnostics with the added thrill of life-and-death decisions being made very quickly.
Today it was in the hands of Healer Labaste, a solid woman with very long salt-and-pepper braids, a deep voice, and the ability to expand her own unflappable calm over a room.
Clement had wanted to be Johanna Labaste from about two minutes into their first clinic session as a nervous first-year.
One of the shouting people at triage was managing to combine loud demands that the healers see his wife now with even louder distrust of healers in general, and the information that he would be watching all of you greedy, lazy, blue-robed gits like a hawk.
Beneath the yelling, which Labaste was weathering with an unimpressed look, Clement heard the familiar music of Thumery’s voice.
They followed it to one of the narrow, fabric-divided bed spaces that tightly lined both sides of the courtyard.
The back was reserved for those awaiting a bed in a ward, and the centre was where people waited.
Thumery was explaining something to a patient.
When Clement caught his eye and waved, his eyebrows shot up but he nodded, and a minute later stepped out of the cubicle to join them.
His chemise was creased and his eyes pink with fatigue, but his braids had their usual glossy appearance, as if carved in expensive wood.
Up close Clement could smell the faint anise of the oil he must use to keep them that way.
“Scholar Savoye,” he said. “I hadn’t thought to see any fifth-years in clinic this week.
Though I’m not surprised that Ysabel—” He cut himself off with a shake of the head.
“Oh, Mathé’s bones. It’s been a hectic day and— It’s just that I’m so used to seeing the two of you together— I’m sorry. How are you holding up?”
Used to seeing Clement alongside Ysabel, certainly. If Moyna was right then he was entirely used to seeing Ysabel on her own.
Nobody was in immediate earshot except for staff hurrying past with tasks of their own.
Clement made themself hold Thumery’s gaze and ignore his question.
Now that a second person was dead and word had clearly reached the murderer—assuming that one single person was responsible—that their exam group was looking into Ysabel’s death, there didn’t seem to be much point in trying to be subtle about it.
And after the amount of self-control they’d exerted today, there was a small part of them that yearned to behave more like Jehan, and toss a handful of thumbtacks into someone’s path just to see what would happen.
“I know you were sleeping with Ysabel,” they said. “Did your wife know too?”
Crespin Thumery’s eyes nearly bulged. He looked from side to side and hastily ushered Clement behind a tall trolley stacked with linen, where he proceeded to emit a feeble venous flow of excuses.
No, his wife didn’t know. Ysabel had, once, threatened to tell her everything, when he’d first heroically tried to break it off.
He’d been meaning to be definite with her about it, the next time, but it was—difficult. Ysabel had been like that, hadn’t she?
“Sure,” said Clement. They were not unsympathetic. Ysabel had indeed been like that.
However— “Were either you or your wife on the Academie campus the night before the Grand Exam?”
“The night before Firstnight? No, we were at home.” Thumery sounded frazzled. “No rehearsals that night. And Helene is— Wait.” He drew himself together and demanded, “Are you accusing me of something?”
Surely, if he were the murderer, he’d not have dropped that interesting fact about Ysabel threatening to tell Helene. That was motive. Alys would have seized on it at once.
“I’m trying to make sense of things,” said Clement. “Two more questions.”
“Savoye—”
“Do you know the Academie artificer Floris Decroy?”
No tension at all. Either that was a genuinely puzzled look or Thumery was a superb actor. “No? I don’t believe I know any of the artificers by name. What does this—”
“And have you been here in the Hospital all day today?”
Thumery began to puff up, looking like the Head Healer at his most pompous, but then he cast another guilty look around and deflated again. Clement hadn’t threatened him with their knowledge of the affair, but they supposed they didn’t have to.
“I’ve been here since yesterday bloody morning.
Ducking out for chorale last night was the closest thing I had to a break.
Then I had to take Illia’s overnight shift, as her kid’s in the paediatric ward, and I crashed in the staff room afterward.
They woke me just before midday rounds and it’s been nonstop since then.
Every diagnostic puzzle in the south half of the continent has decided to arrive in Sieuxerr in time for Mathé’s Feast and turn up on our doorstep today. ”
It’d be easy enough to check the times noted in his patient files; Clement was on the verge of going to do that when a loud shout came from across the courtyard.
“Hands!” It was Labaste’s voice, audible over the din. “Hands!”