Thirty-Five
In my first year of study at the Academie Sieuxerr, one of our more radical lecturers stood up and said that the most instructive thing that could happen to any of us would be to have a serious disease or injury and not be healed right away.
We all laughed. In hindsight it was the laughter of deep discomfort.
But on the surface it seemed absurd. Healers were kept so safe, healed so quickly, trained to ward off attacks.
What in Mathé’s name were we to gain by being made lesser, and less productive, in any way?
Lesser. That’s how we’d been taught to think of it. And how most of us still do.
—From the memoirs of Healer P. Orlaint, unpublished
Clement tried not to guess what would be inside the envelope addressed to them.
Of course they found themself guessing anyway. The solution had been provided already, as part of Moyna’s letter. So would Ysabel’s letter to her best friend be full of gleeful mutual congratulations on having accomplished this incredible feat of healing?
Or perhaps just one line: I told you I’d change the world?
They did their braids with more care that morning, an intricate style that they’d done plenty of times on Ysabel’s lighter, wavier brown hair, but not often tried to pull off on themself.
Once they’d done that, it seemed only natural to take it further.
They wound a thread of blue glass beads through their white genderfree band before setting it on their head, and beneath the grey scholar’s robe they wore one of their nicest chemises, the one with red embroidery on the collar and no blood or ink stains on the folded-back sleeves.
It was only when the robe was on that they realised it was, possibly, the last time they’d wear it.
Possibly. In all probability, they’d be wearing it again.
Don’t think like that. Ysabel’s voice. Clement ached.
Instead of any of their own purple sashes, they picked up one that they’d taken from Ysabel’s room.
Ysabel had bought it secondhand, at the end of first year, when the fifth-year scholar she was currently idolising—and probably fucking, Clement couldn’t quite recall—graduated.
Ysabel had bought it off them directly instead of waiting for it to be donated to the uniform exchange.
It was slightly worn silk, soft and cool to touch, dyed in a marbled pattern of light and dark purple.
Ysabel had declared that this scholar’s luck and competence would be transferred to herself via the sash, when she was a fifth-year, and she too would graduate Dux Scolaris into her pick of jobs at the Hospital Sieuxerr.
It was the first and last time Clement had seen Ysabel rely on any kind of outside force for her accomplishments.
Clement regarded themself in the narrow, age-spotted mirror set inside one door of the wardrobe. The marbled sash sat well on their waist. Their eyes looked very dark and bright below the glass beads.
Alys Tixerrant was a beautiful woman who had grown up surrounded by rich and mage-enhanced beauty. Clement was nothing special, in comparison.
Nonsense. Alys Tixerrant would be lucky to have you, Clement. Anyone would.
“Thanks, Ysabel,” Clement said, and closed the door.
Standing outside the Rondelle, waiting for the letter, Clement returned helplessly to guessing at its contents.
The bell rang for the end of the first time slot, and the exam groups tumbled out with either enormous smiles or stressed frowns.
They were done now. All they could do was wait for the posting of results.
After a while, the second set of groups arrived and trooped inside. The external doors closed.
Clement stood at the entrance to Chamber Two. They scanned the path down from the quad for any sign of the Berthelmi’s livery.
They waited.
No messenger arrived.
Eventually the itching awareness of what else they had to do that morning, and the fear of being late to meet Alys, forced Clement away from the Rondelle. They would have gone to the Berthelmi’s posthouse and asked directly, only they hadn’t thought to ask Moyna for the address.
Every other letter had been delivered faithfully on time. Had they lost Clement’s? Or had Ysabel intended to deliver it herself? There was no way Ysabel would have missed being present at the grand unveiling of her serrage technique.
Clement took the tram to the Caudotte house. Tiphaine was at work, of course. Adala was home, as she usually was; Clement found her scowling down at a painstaking few rows of knitting as if she were a fire-mage contemplating violent arson.
Clement had rehearsed this in their mind on the tram. Now, faced with Adala’s beloved and pain-drawn face, exclaiming over Clement’s presence on the last day of the Grand Exam, it seemed nearly overwhelming. An impossible feat.
If all went as planned, it wouldn’t be their last one of those for the day.
“I have something to tell you,” they said. “It’s about Ysabel’s research project.”
Telling the story involved some awkward deviations around the proctor geas, but Clement was able to get most of it across: Ysabel’s project, the letters, the dead artificer, their suspicions about Brodier.
Adala’s face went tight when Clement revealed that Ysabel had been working on the serrage, and pale when Clement named Ysabel’s likely murderer, but she stayed silent.
It was only when Clement finished that they realised stoic, crabby Adala had tears brimming in her eyes.
“A cure,” Adala said. “She kept reassuring me that someday someone would find one, but she never— Oh, the slippery, brilliant little thing.” Her voice broke, the tears finally spilling down her cheeks.
“Maybe she didn’t want to get your hopes up, if it didn’t end up working,” said Clement, trying to ignore the fact that they might be doing exactly that.
“No, she wanted to spring it on me,” said Adala. “I know my daughter. And so do you. Did. Oh, Mathé’s sacred spark, I can’t believe she actually did it.”
“There’s a bit more,” said Clement, and explained the exam group’s plan.
Adala agreed to her part in it at once. Walking was difficult due to the spasms in her legs and a tendency to tire easily, but there was a close tram stop— “And I would drag myself through the streets by my fingertips rather than miss this,” Adala said.
She swiped a thin hand over her face, clearing the tears, and said with most of her Hospital-trained authority: “Clement, dear, fetch me one of my robes.”
Adala hadn’t worn a healer’s robe since her last day of work. Seeing her in it now, even if it hung loosely on her thinner frame, lit a lamp of gladness in Clement.
Ysabel, they thought. Slippery and brilliant thing that you are. This had better work, or I’ll be piling a second heartbreak onto your mothers to no purpose.
Adala was quieter with pain by the time they arrived at the Academie, but she insisted on walking up the wide main approach, letting Clement take half her weight. At the main arch she lifted her face and inhaled.
“Parfunda for exam season,” she said. “Funny how our memories hold on to the beautiful parts of the Academie and decide to forget all the horrid bits. I’ve heard some healers call it the best years of their life, without any detectable irony.
Masochists, one can only assume. Well, I’ve been cured of that.
” She rubbed firmly at her thigh. Clement wanted to ease some of her pain, but they’d need all their strength and magic for the exam ahead.
It was already a risk that they were doing a practice round.
“I thought I’d leave you in the library,” Clement said. “They still have those armchairs on the ground floor, beneath the leadlight windows.”
And the library was only a short distance from the main quad. Adala was wobbling badly as they entered, and collapsed into one of the old armchairs with a sigh. She caught hold of Clement’s robe and spoke with that same authority.
“Thank you—for coming back to us. We’re still yours, Clement. We always will be. I know you know that, but it’s worth saying.”
“I do know that.” Clement was not going to cry. Not until this day was done.
Adala gestured around. “Even the beautiful parts of the Academie are designed to isolate you, and your junior healer years try to finish the job, so you don’t have any distractions left—so you let the work squeeze all the juice out of you.
Only some of us escape that. Family is protection, my dear. Love is protection. Hold on to it.”
Clement took Adala’s hand for a wordless moment. Adala herself had been squeezed dry by something other than the work itself, but the love—yes, she had that. The Caudotte house was alight with it. Ysabel had been loved unreservedly. Clement still was.
Then Adala recognised one of the elderly senior librarians as having been around even in her time at the Academie, and insisted on calling her over for a gossip session.
Already she looked more alive than she had in months.
Clement and Ysabel should have been dragging her out of the house more often.
Alys came to meet them at the appointed time, and Clement introduced her to Adala.
She was as socially gracious and sunny as ever, though she tucked invisible bits of hair behind her ear and her gaze kept sliding sideways.
Clement would be a nervous wreck if they were meeting the patient on whom they had to expend a great deal of semi-controlled magic, in an untried technique, after nearly burning out two days ago.
Alys was a miracle of self-possession, all things considered.
This was also a risk of practice, and it had been impossible to talk frankly about Alys’s recent failure, given the geas. But Clement was not going to let anything happen to either of these women today.
“Mathé’s luck to the both of us, Scholar Tixerrant,” said Adala.
Her glance at Clement said, Aren’t we moving in exalted circles?
Thankfully Adala, though a keen crafter, thought the Royal Gallery was duller than dust and never stepped foot in it, so the glance said nothing about what Alys might look like without her clothes on.
“Call me Alys,” said Alys. “Please. Clement, we should . . .”
“You two run along,” said Adala. “I’m quite comfortable.”
She wasn’t. That was obvious. But they were going to fix that before lunchtime, and at the thought of it Clement felt happiness brush the hem of their robe, closer than it had come since they sat down at Alys’s piano.