Twenty-Six #2
“A very troubling business,” Saige agreed. “I won’t soon forget walking into the knocking room and seeing . . . well.”
“You saw it?” Jehan said. It. The spectacle created deliberately to be seen.
“The whole senior faculty committee saw,” said Saige dryly.
Which meant the whole senior faculty committee had been close enough that any of them could have locked the door behind Estiene and then snuck away again.
But most of them had offices here, on the floor just below the knocking room.
And all of them plus most of the administration team would know that the weekly meeting was scheduled for that time and place.
Saige didn’t seem very disturbed by the memory, but it took a great deal of blood and disaster to disturb an experienced healer.
Jehan fiddled with the end of his braid. “Ysabel Caudotte, though. I can’t say I liked her much, but it’s odd to think of her being in the flame. She was determined to be someone.”
“I didn’t know the girl well,” said Saige. “Anyway, Mathé’s luck for your career, Fortier—you’re off somewhere bonded, aren’t you?”
“You know, I heard her research project was on some sort of fantastic new approach to echo headaches?” Jehan prodded.
Fuck the danger. They had less than two days until the end of the Grand Exam—they couldn’t keep dancing around, trying to avoid suspicion.
Prodding was the only way they were going to get anywhere now.
Saige looked amused and leaned back in his own chair. His blue robes were worn loose, open at the front to show his chemise in a way that they never would be when healing or lecturing, and his two silver braids swept down over his shoulders.
“Is that so? She did come and ask for some advanced tutoring, earlier this year,” said Saige.
“Said she was interested in echo symptoms in general. I told her there’s a reason it’s not a popular area of healing—you need a great deal of courage to grope through the dark and heal when there’s no obvious damage to heal, just the body sounding the alarm long after the cause is gone. ”
That was word for word from one of Saige’s own lectures, Jehan remembered.
“But she never asked you to supervise her?”
“No. And, with all respect to her intelligence,” said Saige, sounding as if all meant not much, “I doubt her ideas were as groundbreaking as she thought they were. If a mere scholar was hoping to outdo me in my own field, she’d have been disappointed.”
“Then so would Dean Brodier, who was her supervisor,” said Jehan, abandoning subtlety altogether.
He mimicked Saige’s posture and tried for a confidential smirk.
“Everyone knows they’re combining your jobs next year.
When you’re Dean of Assessment as well as Curriculum, I suppose you’ll be too busy to supervise so many scholars. ”
“I’ve already signed the thing, Fortier, there’s no need for flattery.
” But Saige looked pleased regardless. He ran a preening finger down the centre of a braid.
“Not to tempt the spirits, but I do feel confident in the outcome, and my wide research interests are a large reason why. Along with my teaching and my dedication to maintaining the public sympathy toward healers,” he added; an offhand rub of virtue.
“Mathilde Brodier is a fine healer,” in the same tone as Ysabel had been intelligent, yes, “but her snobbish strategy of only picking a few scholars to work with isn’t going to reflect well on her.
Not when her own research record is hardly enough to justify such a narrow use of her time. ”
Jehan turned that around for a moment. At their first meeting Saige had glanced over Jehan’s nervously worded proposal and said, “Yes, yes, I’m sure that’ll be fine,” without bothering to change a word.
Jehan could probably have proposed trying to turn cows into sheep through Mathé’s art and Saige would have had the same response.
“Even if one of her few scholars is doing something great?” Jehan said.
It might have been an act, but Saige certainly didn’t seem threatened enough that he’d resort to murder.
Trying to outright ask about an alibi was going to seem ridiculous.
Motive was a missing piece, and Jehan was fumbling around the edges of it.
“The reflected shine of a breakthrough is still only a reflection.” Saige waved at Jehan’s thesis.
He had the easy calm of someone who enjoyed talking about himself.
He’d probably do very well, arguing his case for the job.
“This half-under technique you’ve come across is excellent.
I can recognise that. And nobody is ever going to speak of me when it’s applied.
But I can show the Chancellor and the Academie board that this year alone I have thirty grateful scholars who looked to me for guidance and support in their studies.
Brodier took one scholar out of your whole cohort, didn’t she?
It’s very tragic, what happened to Caudotte.
But even if she were alive and well and about to publish something extraordinary, she would still not be an argument for Brodier as someone who can juggle the workload of Curriculum and Assessment. ”
Motive deflated and flopped into Jehan’s lap. He tried not to sigh. He thought of what Moyna had said about rotten apples and asked, curious: “I’m sorry, Dean, but even if it’s a prestigious post, why would you want to juggle it?”
“You’re a fifth-year,” said Saige. “Of course you don’t want to spend any more time at a desk for a while.
But you’ll learn. Even the biggest load of this kind of work is still less draining than working the same hours at the Hospital.
” A flicker of discomfort, for the first time.
“It’s a privilege to practice Mathé’s art.
But it’s a difficult life and we all have to find a way to survive it.
And the wisest of us find a way that we can take some pleasure in as well. ”
Pleasure like being admired and flattered by scholars, and taking your pick of the pretty ones to fuck, Jehan supposed.
Saige added, “You seem a sensible sort, Fortier. Learn to play the game. It’ll take you far.”
“And Brodier’s problem is she won’t play?”
An expressive gesture. “The Dean of Assessment is kicking up a fuss about the Grand Exam pass rate, just when it’d be in her best interests to nod and go along. No instincts at all.”
“I heard everyone passes this year,” Jehan ventured. “Barring disaster.”
“Did you?” Saige laughed. “I suppose it was bound to leak out. I don’t know why Mathilde’s so bothered. The world needs all the healers it can get, even the mediocre ones.”
And the Dean of Assessment would have been put in charge of carrying out that demand, Jehan thought.
Any potential major failure went to the Dean of Assessment for discussion; she’d be able to overrule the two examiners, and nobody else would know it ever happened.
Any scholar who benefited would be so happy to pass that they’d never complain.
Jehan murmured some more general thanks, and took his thesis and left. Whomever Saige’s next meeting was, they hadn’t arrived yet, so he was spared trying to pass on a secondhand warning.
There was another note in his pigeonhole in halls when he got back. It wasn’t until he was opening it and seeing unfamiliar blocky writing that he remembered Estiene’s tale from yesterday; his danger had started with a mysterious unsigned summons of a note, hadn’t it?
This was a summons. It was not unsigned. Master Guion Blavot required the presence of Scholar Jehan Fortier at the usual gathering that evening. Punctuality appreciated. If opened and read by anyone else, it would look like an invitation to a Lantern Night party.
It was not Jehan’s usual night to be at Blavot’s fighting ring. And it was Lantern Night. Nobody decent would drag a healer or scholar away from their celebrations of the First Healer.
Jehan’s skin prickled with outright fear and he made himself feel it, acknowledge it, and then ignore it.
This was a test, and Jehan was extremely sick of tests.
He also had far more sense than to deliberately put himself back in Blavot’s grasp.
No—he needed to get through the next two Grand Exam cases, clear Estiene’s name so he could go back to not thinking about Estiene, and then fuck off to Mostau where he could not-think about Estiene from a lovely safe distance.
He crumpled the note into a tight ball and shoved it into his pocket, and continued on to the stairs.