Twenty-Seven #3
Hugo made some uneasy noises about how the Secretary really should be informed about all this business of investigating bodies, but Thoury made this objection go away with a handful of coins.
Artificer Decroy’s body did not give the impression of someone who might sit up and start talking.
Moyna had seen plenty of fresh injuries, but never a slit throat.
Even lacking the smell and seep of blood, the blue-white skin around the wound looked like a piece of frozen earth torn up by a river.
She barely bothered to send her magic to it except to confirm that there was no other magic to be found there: the work of a knife only.
And, with a surge of excitement— “Yes. It’s the same in the heart: magic around the atria.”
“The same healer’s magic?” asked Thoury sharply.
“I can’t tell that. Or exactly what they did. But it seems too close to be a coincidence. Why bother cutting his throat, in that case? If his heart had just been stopped?”
“All good questions,” said Thoury. “Now, in the interests of not renting one of these drawers for myself when I freeze to death—”
“Wait,” said Moyna. She too desperately wanted to be warm, but more than that, she wanted to do as much to solve this problem as she could.
“I want to do a comparison. I know it looks very likely that Ysabel was killed, but . . . the magic around her heart could have been her own. I still don’t think she would have killed herself, but burnout can affect any organ.
” She thought of Alys. “Master Hugo, you must have some healers who died of burnout.”
After fetching a thick folder, Hugo agreed that he did, and led them much farther back in the room, where the chill air was heavy and smelled of winter and old furniture.
The dead healer was young; probably not much older than Ysabel had been. They’d carried their precious gifts and their expensive education out into the world and joined the flame not long after. Moyna swallowed. “What’s their name?”
Healer Francessa Loile had been dead for several years.
The file noted that they’d died of burnout while attempting to heal two children pulled near-drowned from the sea, in one of the Palian coast-cities favoured by the ducal houses for summering.
The city of Loile’s body had streets thick with midnight fog, the cold absolute.
There was frozen blood in spaces where there should not have been blood; and there was magic, faint as a note hummed in another room, sticky as dust. It was strange and subtle and decayed.
It was everywhere. It made Moyna feel queasy where nothing else about this had.
Rivers and bones, she thought. The Camarran oath had never seemed so apt.
She pulled her magic back. The room had dimmed and the tall stacks of drawers were crowding close, blossoming spots of cold light filling her vision.
“Careful,” said Jehan, steadying her when she wobbled. “That’s enough. We need to get you something to eat, and you need to rest. Shit, Moyna, we have an exam in a few hours.”
Moyna had, somehow, almost forgotten the Grand Exam. She breathed until her vision was normal and quickly explained that burnout, going by Healer Loile, did seem to feel—different.
“So we’re back to the likelihood of a healer, or healers, killing two people using the same method,” said Thoury.
He looked pleased. Jehan, on the other hand, had a dismal cast to his mouth. Only then did the full implications crash over Moyna. Thoury already had two healers he was hoping to blame. She’d just added weight to his case against Estiene and Head Healer Marcelle.
Still. She’d found truths, and she’d told them. She wouldn’t apologise for that.
Back out in the bodykeeper’s office, the change in temperature was like stepping under a hot shower. Moyna felt even more wobbly. Master Hugo found them some chairs, and Thoury pulled one up next to Moyna’s with the air of someone at a dinner party.
“Scholar Fortier,” he said. “I need to speak privately with Scholar Apprice for a moment. Perhaps you could fetch her that something to eat that you mentioned.”
Jehan looked inclined to argue, but Moyna shook her head and he did as Thoury asked.
Moyna wriggled her toes in her boots and slumped in the uncomfortable chair.
She was too tired to be properly sharp, but she should be on her guard.
What was this about? Was Thoury going to wave coins at her, and ask her to formally accuse Estiene of murder?
Was he going to accuse her of lying about a special ability that no other healer seemed to have?
“What?” she asked, when Thoury had let the silence go obnoxiously long.
“Scholar Apprice,” said Gendarme Captain Thoury. “I was wondering—assuming, of course, that you graduate and that you don’t turn out to be a murderer or assistant to one—if you would like to come and work for me?”
Moyna’s effort-drained brain sifted through that.
After another silence, the best she could do was, again, “What?”
“I’m offering you,” said Thoury, “a job.”