Thirty-Nine
—From “Muscle Spasm Following the Novel Phantome: A Case Study” by Healer A. Caudotte
If they worked fast, they might have managed a practice run before the exam after all.
Clement said, “No,” as soon as Estiene floated the idea.
Perhaps the quick and the brilliant in this exam group, the ones Ysabel had chosen for that quickness and brilliance, would be able to leap into a new and unproven technique in full confidence that they could manage it first try, in time even more limited than they’d have in the real exam.
Initially Clement had thought that they were there because Ysabel wanted to involve them in her great discovery, as an act of friendship.
They had a better sense of what they were doing there, now. That real array, the one on the notebook paper, had been a revelation.
“They’re right,” said Moyna. “What if we rush it and then it falls apart? Nothing worse than trying to do something under pressure when you’ve already failed to do it once.”
And this array, even more than usual, required their unwavering belief that it would work.
“I don’t know if I could manage it anyway,” said Jehan, apologetic. “We’re going to be doing two versions of the array in the Theatre, and I’ve had to use some magic in the last few hours.”
Jehan was wearing last night’s clothes with a grey robe thrown on top, and was vibrating with emotion. It had been a hideously tense few hours for the rest of them, waiting while Estiene went to ask his family to rescue Jehan. It had no doubt been worse than that for Jehan himself.
The artificers had done a superb job of going on strike earlier than planned, and had come up with several obstructive things they could do elsewhere on campus, in addition to making the Rondelle’s second chamber unusable for the final exam slot.
Clement hoped they did end up with a raise, and whatever else they were asking for.
Secretary Lefer had looked very harassed about it all.
So they now waited outside one of the Academie Sieuxerr’s oldest halls: the Teaching Theatre.
There was a painting in the Chancellor’s office of one of the first demonstration arrays to ever take place in the Theatre: the healers and every watching scholar all dressed in houppelande gowns that looked very unwieldy, with the much-shorter hair and linen caps that had been worn at the time.
The Theatre itself was the size of one of the Hospital’s viewing theatres, lit by a domed skylight that had been artificer-enhanced to keep the light bright and crisp no matter the weather.
Unnecessary, now. It was a fine day and the afternoon sun was hot and bright. Clement’s palms slid with sweat and the burn scars on their upper arms itched as they stood waiting.
“We have this. We have this,” muttered Alys. She’d bitten a dent into the skin below her lower lip.
“You’re right,” Clement said. “We do.”
“Fuck,” said Alys, and grabbed for Clement’s hand.
“You’ll be fine. Ysabel knew you could do it,” said Clement. “And so do I.”
“Remember,” said Moyna, “not too long or too short a time putting the pieces together, or—”
A bell rang on the other side of the double doors. Not the high, magical bell of the Rondelle, but a smaller and more clanging one, which someone had clearly had to fetch from a desk.
“For Ysabel,” said Jehan.
Clement’s heart was in their mouth, so they only nodded, and opened the doors.
The timing clock had been mounted on an easel which also held chalk.
The patient was already seated on a chair in the middle of the space, holding the folded paper question.
Their footsteps echoed strangely; what Clement knew was a large, open space, with rows of viewing seats angled back from the treatment floor, had been muffled from view by illusion instead of physical curtains.
There was a dense wobbliness to the air, as if Clement had come down with a sudden and specific form of myopia.
Or as if the viewing seats had been submerged in opaque jelly.
“Well that’s fucking unnerving,” Jehan muttered.
There was no way to tell how many spectators had been invited to see Brodier and Ysabel’s piece of theatre, beyond Brodier herself and Healer Hilaret. But everyone up in the seats would be able to see and hear them, clear as light.
“Final case,” said Estiene. “Let’s get through it.”
The patient, who introduced themself as Perrin, gave Clement a feeling almost as unnerving as the illusion: a sense that they were looking at themself, two decades in the future.
Perrin had dark hair in looped braids and a purple birthmark splashed down the side of their neck—the sort of thing the rich might pay to have healed privately, but the Hospital wouldn’t waste healer time on if you were anyone else.
And they wore the beige gown of any patient, but Clement knew—the whole group knew—that Perrin must be a healer themself. Like Adala. Like so many of the victims of the serrage.
The exam question was short.
Determine this patient’s diagnosis and current symptoms through any means at your disposal. Then heal them. In order to do this, you will need to use all the techniques you have so far demonstrated during your Grand Exam.
So there was a hint in the question after all. It’d be embarrassing for Brodier if they all stood around scratching their heads and failed to understand the stepwise process that Ysabel had so carefully put them through.
Perrin blinked hard at the word heal, and frowned at Estiene as if he might have misread. They hadn’t been expecting that, any more than the exam group were supposed to have been expecting it. Perhaps Perrin had assumed they were simply a case of diagnostics or symptom intervention.
There was a pause. The others were looking at Clement, and it didn’t make them want to shrink away. They wanted to expand into the expectation, the faith. Clement would take the lead.
“Tixerrant,” said Clement. “Why don’t you take history?”
It was a short history, absolutely classic for the serrage.
Estiene took diagnostics and confirmed what Perrin had described as their worst symptoms: shoulder girdle and abdominal wall muscle spasms, which sounded dreadful.
They had a more sporadic version of the symptoms than Adala, and were currently only tired and tense, but held themself like someone braced to be hit from any direction.
“Read the question again,” said Clement, partly for show. Partly to give themself another moment. Estiene did so.
“Heal in the absence of modifiers means cure,” said Jehan helpfully. “In any exam.”
They looked at one another. Someone’s line was probably That’s impossible. But they’d impossibled themselves out last night, and Clement felt as though they’d be daring the spirits if they said it now.
It was possible. Ysabel had said so. Clement believed.
“Well, let’s start where we’re told,” they said. “All the other cases this week, and how we solved them.”
And so they did. Jehan and Estiene used the chalk to sketch out on the floor the same process they’d used last night, and worked their way to the same conclusion with occasional interjections.
It felt jerky and artificial, pretending to work it out from first principles, but Clement didn’t care.
Moyna was right; they had to move slowly enough to make the process clear to onlookers, and yet fast enough that they’d have time to implement it.
And who would accuse them of cheating? Brodier didn’t know about Ysabel’s letters. Brodier had to believe they were exactly as capable as they needed to be; she could scarcely complain if they were too capable.
“I still think we must be missing something,” said Jehan. He’d embraced the play-acting part of this with relish. “Surely we’d know, if there were a cure that worked.”
“Do you want to start over?” Moyna said acidly, nodding at the clock. Twenty minutes remained. “It’s what we’ve got.”
Day one: detecting a diffuse phantome by its negative space, and focusing on what could be done rather than what couldn’t.
Day two: Jehan’s half-under technique, and a phantome which played badly with magic. Jehan had been the one to make the leap here: that using his technique on a healer with the serrage might prevent the patient’s own magic from fighting the healing process.
Day three: the sheer, brutal amount of magic needed to actually heal some illnesses. There were still only five of them, and it seemed they would need almost all of what Alys had to offer. But at least she wouldn’t have to do it alone.
And day four: fighting muscle tension that the body wanted desperately to maintain, because it had fooled itself into accepting it as normal.
Combined, in a single healing array, it looked—difficult. But like it might, theoretically, work. And it was within the scope of five young healers in the freshness of their training.
Moyna chalked the array and they took their positions. Perrin had watched them construct the solution looking desperately as if they wanted to leap in and contribute. Now they had colour in their cheeks. They’d begun to hope as well.
Clement found themself as excited as if they really had worked it out on the spot. They sat cross-legged at Perrin’s left hand, the monitoring post, and forced themself to stop thinking about whatever conversations might be taking place in the viewing seats.
Jehan had the head, putting him in charge. Alys and Moyna sat in the treatment radial behind Estiene.
“Let’s begin,” said Jehan.