Twenty-Three #3
She took Clement’s arm to direct them out of the way of a moving bed and over to one of the staff benches set up with water and snacks.
Today, of course, there were the ubiquitous sweetmice, looking stale and with their glaze gone sticky.
Clement was heartily sick of those pastries.
Still, they would normally have been famished after a healing, but their appetite turned to pebbles as they gathered their nerve.
This was an opportunity. And while their rational mind knew that asking more questions of Brodier was a reasonable investigative thing to do, they were also trying to listen to their gut.
It was hard. For years they’d worked on being critical of their body’s immediate reactions, rather than trusting them implicitly. Fire was not always an immediate threat requiring panic. Nor was a raised voice.
But this was a different kind of reaction. Slower. Surer.
This morning Clement had stepped between Brodier and Alys.
Right now their gut was saying, of Mathilde Brodier: You’re involved in this somehow, even if I don’t know how or—crucially—why.
And there were so many possible questions, all of which would reveal their own suspicions.
Why did you handpick our exam group? Was it really to help Estiene pass? What were you doing at lunchtime today?
No. Estiene was a distraction. This was about Ysabel, and always had been.
“Dean Brodier,” Clement said, “I’ve been wondering. Do you know what might have happened to Ysabel’s research notebook? Her mothers are going to want her belongings. And they know that she took it everywhere. It’s not in her carrel or her room in halls. I’ve looked.”
Brodier frowned. “Not in her room? You’re sure? I did notice it wasn’t with her, when— Well, actually, I’d rather assumed you might have it, Savoye. She trusted you completely.”
They were in this line of questioning now. Might as well continue. Clement picked up a sweetmouse and picked at its eyes and the overbaked pastry nose so they didn’t have to weather Brodier’s gaze. They let their voice dim.
“Not completely enough to tell me about her project before she was ready for the grand reveal. A new healing approach for echo headaches, you said?”
A small pause. Clement crushed a sugar eye between finger and thumb.
“It’s not a glamorous condition,” said Brodier, “but it’s a common scourge. To provide complete relief to all those people that Mathé’s art can currently only help halfway . . . of course I wish Ysabel were still alive, to complete the work. For everyone’s sake.”
Clement did look up, then, at the sincerity in Brodier’s voice. “I admit I was a bit surprised she chose that, with you as her supervisor,” they said. “It’s Dean Saige’s specialty area.”
An even longer pause. When Brodier spoke again, the sincerity was still there, coupled with a note of bitter exasperation.
“Ysabel knew as well as I do that Dean Saige, while a perfectly good healer, would not provide the level of academic oversight that a scholar of Ysabel’s calibre needed.
Healers like Saige manage to have enough things fall in their lap by shamelessly focusing on Academie politics and not on the work—do you see him here in the clinic, or doing more than the minimum of ward hours needed to keep himself competent?
—and frankly, the only reason he chairs the Admittance Committee is because it lets him look at the mage-testing scores, and then put his hand out to bond-sponsors and say he’ll encourage the powerful first-years to apply, for just a little extra—” She broke off, and drew herself straighter.
“Apologies. I shouldn’t be talking like this with you, Scholar.
As I said, it’s been . . . a very trying week. ”
Clement wondered what Saige would have to say about Ysabel Caudotte when Jehan went to talk to him.
And they wondered, again, about the link between a project on echo headaches and these strange, uniquely Ysabel letters that their exam group had been receiving.
Would it be their next case? You could get echo headaches in the wake of certain phantomes.
Ysabel’s mother Adala certainly had her share of them.
An idea surfaced like blood blooming in a hand basin. Then dissipated. Clement let it go.
“We’re all siblings in Mathé’s art,” they said, daring. They touched their fingers to the white band on their forehead, echoed by Brodier’s crown of pale braids. “This week of all weeks.”
“A nice thought, but you know that’s only true on the symbolic level, Savoye,” Brodier said dryly.
“There are older siblings in any family, and they have more experience and more responsibilities.” She gestured with her chin to where the chalked array had already been cleaned away, the space once again filling with people.
“Imagine if Healer Labaste hadn’t been there, today.
Imagine if the whole array had been filled with second-year scholars.
Healing only works if those with less experience allow themselves to be led by those who’ve put in the hours, the years, of work already.
And someone has to stand at the head, or it all falls apart. ”