Thirty-Seven
“Do you deny it?” roared the lumbering gendarme. “You arranged to meet the girl in secret, and now look!”
Chambely looked. Blood spread like a field of watery roses beneath the motionless body of a woman.
Dead?! Julietta, dead!?! Chambely closed his hand around the promise-ring in his pocket, now a mocking shackle for his hopes.
Another gendarme’s knee slipped in the grisly ocean as he knelt to turn the corpse. Chambely wanted to cry out—Be careful! You have in your hand a thing more precious than rubies and more fragile than a child’s whisper!
The corpse was righted. It was a woman, dark-haired, and lovely even in death—but it was not his Julietta.
—From Chambely Accused!, book 9 in the Chambely series by La Royne
Most of the thoughts Moyna had had about the Sieuxerr Royal Duchy Gendarmerie over the years had been far from complimentary.
Her parents had told her exactly two things: Don’t attract their attention, and don’t bother to argue with them.
The Apprice family wanted to glide through life in Sieuxerr as smoothly as possible, so they could slip just as smoothly away when the time came to leave for Camar.
And the gendarmerie had a reputation for both resenting healers and for being unable to take that resentment out on healers, and so picking other groups to bear the brunt of it.
Gendarmes didn’t much bother with “solving” robberies in Moyna’s quarter; perhaps in Alys’s it was different.
One assumed they did solve murders. Stage-plays and books seemed to think so.
The only murder to take place in Moyna’s street had been followed by the man’s husband instantly complaining to anyone who’d listen that the ungrateful cheating fuckwit had deserved it, so it hadn’t exactly taken a genius of criminal behaviour for the gendarmes to lay hands on the culprit.
Once Moyna entered the Academie she stopped thinking about the gendarmes unless forced to. They could be patients, after all, and at least some of them were grateful or able to act like it.
And now here she was, accepting a job offer.
She might have accepted a live snake if it had promised her a way to stay in Sieuxerr. She would still have had realistic feelings about her likelihood of being bitten.
She shifted on her seat. Gendarme Captain Thoury had been out at a meeting when she arrived at the high city commissariat, and it had taken all of Moyna’s scowling stubbornness and the power of her grey robe to insist on not being turned away. But he’d returned, and here they were.
Thoury sipped coffee from a surprisingly pretty and dainty cup.
Moyna had refused hers; she was jittery enough.
She’d explained that she couldn’t take up his offer immediately unless he could wave a hand and make her Academie contract with Greteford disappear.
She didn’t bother to tell him how horrible it would be to abandon her parents and come back to Sieuxerr after five years, forever branded a disgraceful lark and a disappointment.
She was beginning to see why Jehan was so fond of ignoring and delaying unpleasant things.
Thoury said, “Healers,” with tired dislike.
“I swear the lot of you enjoy building obstacle courses and forcing yourself through them for no reason at all.” Moyna bit her tongue against the urge to agree.
“It’s not as though I propose to remove a healer from the workforce for no purpose.
You’ll be a valuable asset to the Grand Duchy, and I can think of three Resée cities alone whose gendarmerie would pay a handsome contract fee for someone who can interrogate a murder victim. Oh, you know what I mean, Apprice.”
Moyna had the image of herself being loaned out like a library book across the world.
It wasn’t . . . unpleasant. Really, she had no idea how this new-shaped future would look—if it was a step down when it came to living a worthwhile life, or simply a sideways one.
If she’d enjoy it as much as she hoped, or if working with the gendarmes would harden her; if the snakebite would poison her slowly against her fellow healers.
She’d already wondered guiltily if Thoury had recognised her dread of the profession, and offered her an escape he knew she was weak enough to take.
It was a choice. That was what she’d wanted.
It was a chance at a future not set in stone but malleable: the wet clay of a riverbank.
She could shape it herself. She was strong enough.
And if she and Thoury’s nephew could do it, there’d be other scholars who could send their magic into the dead and listen to what came back.
Moyna could find them. She could give them a choice.
Finally, she asked Thoury to come along to the Teaching Theatre at the time of their exam. An Academie artificer would meet him, and take him to a place where he could observe the whole thing.
“I fully intend to be there,” said Thoury. “The Marcelles are expecting me. I’d hate to disappoint them.”
“All right,” said Moyna. “Just, please—keep an open mind. I know you don’t like the Head Healer, and I can’t say I blame you, but his son’s . . . mostly different. And he didn’t kill anyone.”
Arguing for Estiene. She’d not expected to find herself in that position.
At least she no longer had to worry that the unmagical Thoury might be a murderer; not that she’d ever really believed it.
He had the calm, fastidious air of someone who’d exert only the exact amount of effort needed to accomplish his goals, and much preferred seizing opportunities. No risk. No mess.
He’d seized quite handily at Moyna, after all.
“And you say you’re going to prove it.” Thoury sounded amused. Not at all like he believed her.
“Yes,” said Moyna.
That was her small part done. Clement and Alys, for theirs, were visiting the artificers one last time.
They knew from the first exam day that the artificers had already put the necessary mechanisms in place for exam cases to be held in the Academie’s grand, ancient Teaching Theatre: curtain illusions, timekeeper, proctor geas, and all.
Not that the geas would be needed regardless. It would lift from every scholar, examiner, and patient the moment the bell rang for the end of the last exam slot.
Their exam slot.
The artificers, Moyna had pointed out, were not pleased with their conditions of employment and how they were undervalued. They had agreed to hold off on participating in the general strike until next week out of respect for the Grand Exam and not wanting to disrupt it.
But the point of a strike was disruption—so what if they did disrupt the exam? Just a little? Just enough to make a point?
Just for one group in the final exam slot of the final day, by stepping in and making their chamber of the Rondelle inaccessible.
They’d inform the Secretary and the other Academie staff in advance, of course. Alternate arrangements could be made. Such as using the Theatre, which had been such a bitch of a job for them to prepare, instead.
“Brodier will know something’s up,” Jehan had said. “Surely.”
“Her and Ysabel’s plan is all about drama,” said Alys. “I don’t doubt that Brodier has already arranged to have more than just Healer Hilaret there to watch us perform. She might be a bit suspicious, but we’re handing her a larger stage and we’re agreeing to step onto it.”
Moyna wasn’t so confident. But what was Brodier going to do about it? She couldn’t undo artificer sabotage, and she could hardly refuse to examine.
They met just before lunch in one of the private study rooms of the library.
Ysabel’s mother Adala expressed polite delight to meet them all, and Moyna’s diagnostic eye ran dismayed over the taut, twitching muscles of her arms and the betraying dullness of her skin.
The woman was clearly in pain and just as clearly accustomed to it.
She was rubbing her fingers together and her eyes were bright.
Hope and fear in equal measure, was Moyna’s diagnosis. Similar to what she was feeling herself.
Alys, Clement, and Estiene had already been there when Moyna arrived, going over the array for the fifth time.
Jehan was late. That was normal.
Then he was late enough that it stopped being normal and started being concerning.
“Has anyone seen him at all today?” Alys asked. “He wasn’t at breakfast.”
“Estiene?” said Clement. Their tone was completely mild.
Estiene stopped playing with his hair. “Not since two in the morning.”
“Snuck out on you, did he?” said Moyna.
“Up your arse,” said Estiene. A smile, sudden and unbearably soppy, sprang onto his face.
Well. Good for Jehan, Moyna supposed. It was his own lookout if he was going to let Estiene Marcelle have the keeping of his heart, or at least his dick.
Time passed. Jehan continued to be late.
“He could have fallen asleep?” Alys suggested. “Especially if he was. Busy. Last night.”
“Mathé’s spark, you’re all going to be unbearable about this, aren’t you,” said Estiene, getting to his feet. “I’ll go back to the residence hall and check his room. If he arrives in the meantime, tell him he’s an idiot.”
Clement saluted solemnly. They went back to waiting. Moyna wanted to say something to Adala, who was poring over Ysabel’s thesis with interest—but what? I’ve sent magic through your daughter in life and in death. I wish she’d had better. I wish she were here.
Useless. Of course Adala wished Ysabel were here. The only thing Moyna could do for her was fight to get Ysabel’s brilliant truth out into the world.
Something small eased in Moyna, thinking about the job she’d accepted from Thoury.
She could do her best, even if the place she was doing it in was less than ideal.
The dead didn’t have anyone else. She could act for people whose sparks were in the flame and whose bodies were cities with no one to call home.
For the first time in her Academie career Moyna felt that the gift she’d been given might actually have been a gift, and not a weight around her neck.
Estiene returned without Jehan and with a strange, tense look.
“Not there,” he said. “I talked the hallmaster into unlocking the door for me. I don’t think he even slept in his bed. For one thing, it was neat.”
“Fuck,” said Moyna. “Where could he be?”
“He’s already started to pack,” said Estiene. “I know he doesn’t plan to stick around the city for long after graduation. There wasn’t anything on his desk but a few pencils and—this.” He held up a small piece of densely creased paper. “A note from Guion Blavot.”
“Why would any scholar be corresponding with him?” said Adala Caudotte sharply.
Since last night, all of them knew the answer to that. Moyna snatched the note and read.
“The fucking idiot,” she said.
Estiene, who’d just used that exact word, sprang immediately to Jehan’s defence. “As if you didn’t do anything stupid when you were a first-year, Moyna Apprice.”
“Ahem,” said Adala, like a theatre specialist calling an unruly array into line.
Estiene explained quickly: Jehan stealing from the Academie, Jehan being blackmailed into doing illegal enhancements for fighters at Blavot’s gym, and having accidentally let slip to this criminal that he was planning on leaving Sieuxerr and no longer being available and useful.
And now this note, requiring Jehan’s presence on Lantern Night.
“Do you think Jehan went to see him today, to try and explain?” Alys said.
“Maybe?” said Estiene. “But I also think that if this man wanted Jehan to turn up last night and Jehan refused . . .”
“So what do we do about it?” Moyna demanded. “Say he’s gone and—gotten himself abducted, or something like that?”
Estiene blanched. He looked more upset now than when he’d been arrested for murder. Something like that could hold all sorts of nastiness when it came to criminals with, one assumed, a severe congenital deficit in normal human morals.
Moyna plunged on. “How do we get him back? Not to point out the obvious, but we need him for the exam.”
“We can’t even do a trial run without him,” said Clement. “I’m sorry, Adala.”
“No, of course you can’t,” said Adala; she’d studied the array too.
“I know where Blavot’s training gym is,” said Estiene. “I’ve been to the warehouse that’s next to it. If Jehan’s anywhere else at all, then we’re stuck, but it’s surely worth a try.”
“And if he’s there, you call the gendarmes,” said Adala. “Kidnapping a healer and being caught at it? From what I hear, they’d be delighted to have a clear crime and clear evidence when it comes to Master Blavot. He’s elusive.”
“No!” said Estiene. “Do you know who else would be delighted? The Committee for Healer Workforce, when they hear about what Jehan’s been doing and they bond him for years as punishment, and sell him to the highest bidder!”
“Shit. Estiene’s right,” said Moyna.
“Is there any chance we can get anyone involved to just . . . ignore that part?” said Clement.
“Who has that level of influence?” said Alys gloomily.
“Fuck,” said Estiene. “Oh— Fuck. All right. I have an idea.”