Twenty-Six
Headache is a moderately common symptom in the lingering syndrome of the serrage.
Though the large muscle groups of the limbs are the most frequently affected, the smaller muscles of the head and neck can manifest a similar spasm, and the resulting headache has a lot in common with the patient-reported experience of echo headaches.
This has only served to complicate the central debate of the past few years: whether the serrage is due to the initial contagious phantome persisting, or whether it is an echo syndrome due to damage that resists isolation and healing.
Jehan had woken up in a nervous mood and it was only getting worse.
He regretted rising to Moyna’s goading and his own weakness for Estiene, the previous night; sparring with him had accomplished nothing except to remind Jehan vividly of what they’d had and what Estiene had managed to destroy, and also of Blavot and Jehan’s pressing need to leave the city.
And it hadn’t calmed Estiene down enough, or at all. Not that Jehan could blame him.
Copies of that morning’s Sieuxerr Gazette had been strewn all over the tables in the dining room at the fifth-year residence hall.
A gleefully speculative article about the arrest of Head Healer Marcelle’s son on suspicion of violent murder appeared on the second page.
It’d have been the first page, Jehan suspected, munching through a pile of buttered toast that had gone tasteless with the strength of his worry, except that someone was hedging their bets on the Head Healer emerging from this with some influence intact.
Estiene didn’t come to breakfast. Alys reported that she’d checked on him and he was fine, but not intending to do anything but study in his room until their exam case that afternoon.
“It doesn’t matter,” said Moyna. She tapped her fingers on the newspaper column. She seemed a mite less angry at Jehan today. “It’ll just look like he’s trying to save his own skin or shift the blame off his father, if he goes around asking questions about Ysabel’s death of anyone else.”
“His skin needs saving,” said Clement bluntly. “If we can’t come up with a better suspect, it’s going to be him.”
It should have been exactly what Jehan wanted.
With a clear and convenient suspect, the gendarmes probably wouldn’t bother to dig into the rest of the group and any less-than-legal activities.
If Jehan hadn’t been so bloody stupid and distractible, if he hadn’t allowed Guion Blavot to overhear his plans, he’d be two days away from escaping Sieuxerr blissfully consequence-free.
And Estiene’s freedom and future and happiness—which did not include Jehan, were never going to include him—would be the price.
Jehan grimaced and pushed away the rest of his toast.
“Let’s review the plan,” he said. “Clement’s confirmed that Thumery was at the Hospital when Decroy died.
Estiene said last night that he’s crossed Lysande off the list. My final thesis meeting with Dean Saige is this morning, and I’ll see what I can get from him.
Moyna’s going to drag some answers out of corpses, but not even she can make them sit up and helpfully spill the name of their murderer.
I vote we save the prospect of Captain Thoury until there are really no other options left.
And are we all ignoring Konrad Omeyer because none of us want to talk to him, or . . . ?”
Alys made a pained sound, face in her hands.
“I can try again,” she said, muffled. “It’ll feel like we’re ganging up on him from all sides if anyone else approaches him now.
And it was my mess.” She’d told them about asking Konrad about Ysabel’s death.
Jehan had pointed out that trying to make their accuser feel bad could just as easily indicate someone’s guilt as their innocence.
“Don’t push too hard,” said Moyna. “We don’t want you ending up dead too, Alys. It’d be better if you could get someone else to give him an alibi, if he has one.”
“It doesn’t seem like he spends much time with other people,” said Alys gloomily.
She set her hands back on the table. “I’ve been thinking about something he said, though, about Ysabel’s habit of roping people into wild techniques.
She got him to try something that nearly burned him out; yesterday’s case did the same for me.
She made you show her your new half-under technique, Jehan, and that was a vital part of the second case.
I haven’t forgotten about her research notebook.
There must be something we’re missing. Since Artificer Decroy was killed we’ve been focusing on the murder side of the mystery and not the letters-and-exam-cases side.
Maybe if we can get an answer to that one, it’ll lead us to the other? ”
Nobody argued with that. Jehan was impressed. He’d definitely been distracted by the second murder and Estiene’s endangered skin. Alys had nearly burned out and she was still managing to consider the bigger picture.
Moyna did say dubiously, “You want to go asking everyone in the Academie whether Ysabel Caudotte ever did anything weird and risky with them? How much time do you have?”
“I know who I can start with,” Alys said. “If it goes nowhere, then I’ll focus on Konrad.”
“Good,” said Jehan. “What else? Should we try the artificers again, see if Decroy might have told any of his fellows who he was meeting and why?”
Clement said, abruptly, “I think it was Brodier.”
Since the start of this week, Clement’s voice in conversation had been becoming firmer. Now it was a struck bell: serious, undeniable, demanding space.
It had space. Then Moyna said, in what was for Moyna fairly kind tones, “On the basis of what, though? Ysabel’s mystery project? A notebook?”
“I asked her about the notebook, and she denied any knowledge, but I didn’t believe her. I don’t know. It’s a feeling,” said Clement. “I’m trying to trust it.”
“All right,” said Alys at once. “We’ll consider Brodier more seriously. Still—to kill two people. For a healer, that needs an incredible motive, and we still don’t have one.”
“We only really need motive for Ysabel,” Jehan pointed out.
“For a healer, the artificer’s death was only upping the stakes on a bet.
The punishment would be the same for two murders as for one, and if the second one allowed you to get away with the first, for someone else to take the blame—why not?
At least we know Konrad had a reason to hate Ysabel. ”
“Ask Saige about Brodier,” Clement said to Jehan.
“Alys is right. We’re missing a piece here.
And the way Brodier talked about him—she thinks he’s all about politics, and not actually doing the real work of a healer, and she even implied he takes bribes to steer scholars into particular scholarships.
She wants to beat him out and keep her job. She wants it very badly.”
“I can’t think why,” Moyna said with a sour face. “I know it’s prestigious, but the Academie faculty are all overworked as it is. Folding two major workloads into one seems like a contest with a rotten apple as a prize.”
After breakfast, Moyna and Clement left to go and linger outside the Rondelle until the end of the first exam time slot and the arrival of Ysabel’s letter. Moyna agreed that she and Jehan would go to the bodykeeping room over the lunch break.
For now, Jehan went to meet his research supervisor.
He’d dropped off the final version of his research thesis with Dean Saige the previous week; this meeting was a formality, given how vague he’d been about every progress report, but Jehan did need the man’s signature on the thing even if he hadn’t read a word.
On the way, he mulled over what Clement had said. Had it been Saige who first told Jehan that the Mostau scholarship had become available, and that he should consider applying? He couldn’t remember. Possibly it had.
He was late, as usual, but still had to kick his heels outside Saige’s office in the North Tower as Saige finished up a meeting with one of his other innumerable research scholars.
When she exited she proved to be a tall, graceful redhead with third-year orange trim on her robes, who made a wry face at Jehan.
“He’s in a mood,” she said in an undertone. “Don’t know what the equivalent will be for you, but if the next meeting after you’s a girl, tell her he’s pushier than usual today.”
Earlier in the week Moyna had filled Jehan in on some rumours, after what Alys had said about Saige’s supervision style.
He felt obscurely guilty for never noticing, but there wasn’t much to notice, one-on-one with the man.
It was easy to assume that someone was more or less like you, in the absence of direct evidence, wasn’t it?
Jehan was one of the most notorious flirts in their cohort, but he hoped he’d never been pushy in that way.
He rather tended to prefer being pushed.
“Fortier,” Saige greeted, waving him into the squashy seat crammed between desk and bookshelf.
He inspected a stack of papers and fished out Jehan’s painstakingly handwritten thesis, which he pushed over the desk.
“All looking good, really. And it’s novel enough that you shouldn’t have any problems getting a summary published. Do you need suggestions for journals?”
“No, I’ve made a list,” said Jehan. He sat.
He and Estiene had made the list, months ago when Estiene, who’d completed his thesis early, was fretting about getting his own research published.
Probably the editors had seen the name Marcelle and not even bothered to review it, Jehan told himself, but couldn’t muster the usual bite through the ache of worry.
He gathered his scattered thoughts.
“I appreciate all your input and support,” he said. “I can’t wait to get out in the world beyond the Academie and start working. And . . . Mathé’s spark, it feels weird to pretend everything’s normal, doesn’t it? Ysabel Caudotte, and now . . .”