Thirty-One
Not even a decade later, that midnight ritual of death-greeting had been folded neatly into the festival surrounding Mathé’s Feast Day.
The essence of reflection persisted in the dark hour before midnight, representing both the despair of pain and the inevitability of death.
And the single sombre lantern of each household became multiple handmade lights filling the sky, to celebrate Mathé’s gifts and the return of all human sparks to the great flame.
Today, Sieuxerrans treat Lantern Night as a time for making resolutions for the future: a pseudo year-turning, reflected more in hearts and practicalities than in calendars.
—From Oaths and Venerations: Mathé the First Healer in Modern Society, by O. Paral
Clement had always assumed the North Tower was off-limits, or at least reserved for private parties held by the Chancellor. It seemed you could glide through limits when you were a Tixerrant.
You could also get a long table and some chairs installed on the rooftop, and persuade your housekeeper’s niece, the cook in the third-year residence hall, to sneak out an impressive pile of summer-berry cakes.
Along with an even more impressive pile of other foods from your family’s kitchens.
Jehan had already managed to get a streak of honey on his collar, and now he was flicking nutshells over the side of the roof.
Up here you could see down into the quad, over the roofs of the surrounding buildings, and out across the wide paved road that climbed the grassy slope from the street and vanished at the great arch.
The North Tower was the highest point on the Academie campus.
They’d be able to see when all the other parties emerged on rooftops, handmade lanterns in hand, awaiting the dark hour and the brilliant midnight.
The summer-dusk city was awash with light: all the usual lanterns of Mathé’s feast week, plus the normal streetlights.
All lit, for now. As were the strings of fabric lanterns hanging here on the tower rooftop: part of Alys’s impeccable preparation.
The last gasps of sunlight hung at the horizon.
It was still and clear-skied and the world smelled of vanilla and magic, and stone and salt.
I miss you, Clement thought, staring out over the city. Please come back. It’s not fair. I miss you.
“You look gorgeous, Alys,” Jehan was saying. “Putting the rest of us to shame.”
Like Firstnight, Lantern Night was an excuse to dress up, so they’d all gone back to the residence hall to change out of their robes.
Alys wore an azure linen overdress with a chemise dyed a cheerful deep yellow; she looked like a golden moonrise in deep twilight.
Gazing at her was like a slow and sweet exhale.
Clement only let themself do it in small doses.
Clement had exactly one good festival garment, a filigree-knitted mantelet in ombre blue from palest sky to Sieuxerr-stone, a gift from Adala Caudotte, who used to be incapable of doing one thing at once and would knit steadily through most of her conversations. Not since the serrage, of course.
Now Clement stroked the net-like surface and thought of Adala’s persistent headaches and endlessly cramping limbs. Then they thought of Urzula.
The idea that had stirred in Brodier’s office poked its head up again. Clement inspected it uneasily and let it be. Time enough to be airing personal theories once the five of them had pooled all the meagre facts they could.
“Here,” said Moyna. “My name’s on the letter this time, so the last one must be for Clement.”
A superstitious part of Clement had wished Moyna had somehow kept Ysabel’s letter on her the whole day; they’d been anxiously convinced that it would vanish or be stolen, if left unattended. It would have been in keeping with how the week was going.
But no. The bulky envelope was duly pulled from Moyna’s satchel now, and Moyna laid it down on the table between a berry cake and a plate of thinly sliced smoked beef.
Estiene, who wore a double collar of seed-pearls as well as the decoration dripping from his ears, eyed Ysabel’s missive as if it might leap up and attack him.
“Open it, then,” he said.
“I,” said Moyna, “need a drink. We’ve got all night.”
“We’ve got all night to drink,” said Estiene. “And we shouldn’t overindulge with the drinking anyway. Our final exam case—”
“Estiene,” said Jehan, almost tenderly.
Estiene looked like he’d come close to biting his tongue. He sent Jehan a look of stubborn misery. “Don’t do that,” he said. “Don’t.”
“We could have a decade and we still wouldn’t have time for you two and your tragic little feelings,” said Moyna. “Drinks.”
Moyna appeared to know more than the rest of them about whatever Jehan and Estiene were feeling, or not feeling, or had previously been feeling. Clement was not immune to gossip; they’d just never had to go digging for it, because Ysabel had brought it all to them for dissection.
They did want to know. But Moyna was right; it was a distraction.
. . . Maybe later. After the drinks.
Alys was pouring five glasses from a bottle of wine. It was time for Clement to speak. They’d not wanted to stir everyone up with their findings when they were about to sit an exam case, but there were no excuses now. This was important.
No way to ease in. Just say it.
“Brodier has Ysabel’s research notebook locked in her desk. She was lying about not having it, and she’s been lying all along.”
Alys fumbled a glass. It fell to the table but didn’t shatter.
“How do you know that?” Estiene demanded.
Clement explained. It didn’t calm Estiene down any; he was on his feet, urgent.
“So what are we doing here? We need to go back and get it! Or take Moyna’s new best friend Captain Thoury there, to show him!”
Moyna said, “And who’s to say that we didn’t plant the notebook there, to get you out of trouble? Or that Ysabel didn’t entrust it to Brodier in the first place? And do you want to tell him that we found it because Clement broke in with a key they shouldn’t have had?”
“He found us trying to get answers from Ysabel’s corpse!” said Jehan. “He wouldn’t be surprised.”
“Fuck. No, Moyna’s right.” Estiene deflated. “Thoury wants it to have been me or my father. We’re only going to change his mind if we find proof that can’t be argued with.”
Alys finished pouring and slid Moyna’s wineglass to nudge the envelope. “Shall we see if Ysabel’s given us any proof, then?” she said.
Clement’s nerves wrung inside them like laundry. They put their nose to the wine in their own glass. They didn’t know anything about wine. It was from Alys’s house and so probably excellent.
Moyna unwound the string on the envelope’s fastener and slid out a thick bundle of handwritten sheets.
The top one was recognisably a letter like the other letters; the rest, Clement could only recognise as Ysabel’s own handwriting, spaced like an assignment.
As Moyna flicked through, Clement could see the occasional diagram of a healing array.
“Well now I’m either insulted or flattered,” said Jehan. “Did she think that we were going to heal that patient’s entire traitor illness in an hour?”
“Shut up, Jehan,” said Moyna absently. She read the letter aloud: once again a breakdown of the case, specific enough to Urzula that Ysabel must have been fully aware of the woman’s condition and which body parts it affected.
Clement wondered how long Urzula had been waiting for their impromptu, exam-rushed treatment; exam cases were saved for the exam, but ideally they were lined up only the week before.
None of them had asked Urzula when she arrived in Sieuxerr.
Ysabel had assumed they’d focus on the muscle spasm. Or if not, she wrote, they should have.
Clement’s mouth was dry. They wet it with another mouthful of wine.
Moyna paused and read a bit ahead. Her face changed. She touched her hairline, an echo of where Ysabel’s skull had been broken.
She read, voice odd, “Moyna. You told me once that the way exams are held at the Academie is artificial, ill-conceived, and unfair. You were right, I think. So, here. If you haven’t guessed it already, the fifth and final case of your Grand Exam will be to come up with—”
“Hey,” said Jehan, alarmed, “don’t—”
“It’s the serrage,” said Clement. “Isn’t it?”
Silence. Moyna stared at the letter and then at Clement.
“Yes,” she said. “How did you know that?”
Clement breathed in. Breathed out. Not magic, but useful nonetheless.
The challenge of our time. Mathé calls us to meet it.
And Ysabel had met it. She’d strode forth boldly and grasped it in both hands.
“Because I know Ysabel. I know how her mind worked. But you’d probably work it out too, if you thought about it.”
“Fuck,” said Jehan. “Fuck, all those fucking phantomes—”
Moyna cleared her throat and waved the letter, and finished: “To come up with a treatment plan to cure a patient affected by the serrage, and to administer the first stage of that treatment. You should have most of the answer already. I designed it that way. But there is a key piece you might be missing, and you’ll find it enclosed here.
I’m also attaching a full copy of my research thesis.
Nobody else has read this yet; I’m not submitting until next week, so I can write up your group’s performance of it as the last chapter.
I’ll see you tomorrow. Ysabel Caudotte.”
I’ll see you tomorrow. Clement’s head and chest rang as if it were midnight already and they were a bell ushering in the future.
“She designed it that way,” said Jehan. “Of course she fucking did.”
“Our exam is her research project,” said Clement. “Or—the demonstration of it. The final proof.”
“Are you all drunk already? It’s impossible,” said Estiene. “Not even Ysabel—I mean, the best healers in the world tried for years.”
Moyna was looking at a page laid out like a table of contents, muttering. “Case one, case two— Clement, come on then, how did you know?”