Forty
They’re not the only five healers in the world who could do it, of course, or this’d all be pointless. But they’re the best combination from the cohort. A model for all those who should be asked to do it in future.
And a fun combination of personalities, but that’s just an added extra.
It’s real. It’s going to work. I’d been prepared to wait longer than this to change the world, but if you set a thousand stones rolling in a thousand directions, each one of them can make a change, too. And I’ll always be the one who made that first push and got them moving.
I can’t wait. For Mama’s face when she realises. For Clement’s.
I can’t wait.
Let’s begin.
—From the research notebook of Scholar Ysabel Caudotte
Nobody moved. For a moment they were frozen in oils like the famous painting of the Theatre: avid onlookers, a group on the floor, and someone prone.
Brodier wasn’t in the beige robe of a patient. But she was not moving.
Alys swallowed hard. Suddenly the noise of the Theatre was a scarf being wrapped tight around her head. She forced herself to breathe.
The two gendarmes looked to Thoury for guidance. The healer-patient Perrin, who in the confusion had ended up closest to where Brodier was standing, went to their knees in what looked like a healer’s automatic response. They snatched their hand back as soon as it touched Brodier’s, with a hiss.
“Let me,” said Moyna, suddenly there.
Remove the noise and the crowds and it could have been four days ago. Their whole exam group standing around perplexed and horrified, and Moyna going to her knees and sending magic through a corpse.
A body. A body. Not a corpse yet. You could bring a person back from the brink of death if you were lucky and fast.
The world seemed to bend around Moyna Apprice.
She stood up again and shook her head.
“Too late,” said Moyna. “She didn’t just stop her heart, she ripped the muscle fibres apart. It wouldn’t just be a matter of rekindling the beat. I can diagnose the dead, but I can’t heal them.”
After another ponderous, time-bending pause the Chancellor said, in the tones of someone at the very end of their tether: “Apprice, did you say you can diagnose the dead?”
The painting’s canvas burst. Everyone started moving at once.
Alys stayed looking at Moyna, wondering.
Not knowing why she was wondering, beyond an instinct.
It was easy to make a claim, wasn’t it, when nobody would gainsay you?
It was less easy to decide, when the choice had to be made in seconds, whether or not you would respect someone’s decision to flee into the flame, if you had the power to pull them back.
Flee. Alys made a face at herself. She didn’t know if she had the courage or the cowardice—whichever it was—to do what Brodier had done.
She didn’t know what she’d have done in Moyna’s place.
So much of her life would be spent dealing with unforeseen situations and hoping that she didn’t mess them up too badly.
Casting judgement on other people wouldn’t help.
“Healer Tixerrant?”
It was Healer Hilaret, their second examiner. The poor man. He didn’t deserve to have been sucked into this mess.
“Scholar, not Healer,” said Alys automatically.
“Hm,” said Hilaret. “I know the circumstances are—um—but I do believe the Dean of Assessment granted your group an exemption to try a second time?”
“Yes?”
“Well, you did try. And it seems you succeeded.”
Yes. That incredible, indescribable sense of falling and being caught, of diving deep into the well of her magic and knowing that she was firmly tethered by the circle she found herself in.
Healing had always been a privilege, but in that array, healing Perrin and helping them heal themself, aware of the enormity of the implications .
. . it had been a pleasure. Alys smiled just thinking of it.
“Wait, wait.” Jehan reeled in from the side and grabbed Alys’s arm. He had Estiene in tow. “Are you saying we didn’t fail after all?”
Hilaret hesitated. He’d seen, everyone had seen, that the group had known the answer in advance; that Ysabel had helped them to it, and they’d chosen to expose Brodier rather than keep up the pretence that they’d figured it out themselves under exam conditions.
He could accuse them of cheating and he’d be correct.
He looked at Brodier’s body, then the Chancellor. His fingers brushed his generalist’s belt and Alys could see the moment when his resolve firmed. Sometimes you were the recognised authority; sometimes you were simply the person in the room at the time. You did your best anyway.
“Only one failed case out of five,” he said. “Obviously your final scores and rankings will be determined later, but as far as I’m concerned—congratulations, Healers. You’ll be graduating.”
“Oh, Mathé’s arse,” said Estiene weakly, and sat down hard on the floor.
“Yes? Graduating? Hah!” Jehan made a sole attempt at hauling Estiene to his feet again, gave up, sat down next to him, and dropped a jubilant smacking kiss on his forehead.
“You can help me practice my Fenehafen all summer, before I leave. Did you know they have a sport where they do archery while standing on little sailboards controlled by the air-mages? And three words for coffee?”
“You did mention,” said Estiene, and smiled up at him. Alys hadn’t known Estiene’s face could look that way.
“Estiene,” said Jourdain Marcelle loudly.
The Head Healer had swept down onto the theatre floor.
Despite having been publicly accused of corruption, he had the pleased air of someone who was going to accept plenty of the credit for his son’s performance; and also, Alys thought, a senior Hospital administrator who was about to potentially regain a huge amount of lost healing staff.
“Papa,” said Estiene, and got to his feet.
His own hand locked around Jehan’s arm. Alys was torn between staying to overhear what was no doubt going to be a fascinating conversation, and going to find out what was happening in the knot of healers and scholars crowded around Clement.
They should be told that they’d passed the Grand Exam, as well.
Brodier’s body was still where it fell. Moyna had taken off her grey scholar’s robe and laid it over the Dean; Alys had a pulse of gratitude and guilt, and grief. Now Moyna stood talking to Officer Thoury, looking small and neat in her chausses and pale chemise.
There was a tap on Alys’s shoulder. She turned to see Healer Danisy, the Head of Complex Intervention at the Hospital. Hilaret was at his shoulder, and he sent Alys an encouraging smile.
“Tixerrant, isn’t it?” Danisy said. “I listened with great interest to your colleague’s description of that technique.
It seems to rely on there being at least one healer with extraordinary strength of magic, in order to ensure a complete eradication of the serrage symptoms from the entire body.
Healer Hilaret here tells me that you filled that role.
I was wondering why this gift of yours never came to my attention?
The Deans know I like to keep an eye on powerful scholars who might need a bit of extra guidance. ”
Danisy himself was one of the strongest mages of his generation. No doubt he would be in great demand for this technique himself, over the next few weeks and months. His deep, considering voice had a hint of accusation in it, and Alys tried not to squirm.
“Nobody knew until this week. My magic came late, I was never any good at controlling it, and it scared me too much to try,” Alys said. “And I didn’t—didn’t want to bother anyone.”
Danisy considered her, his round dark face taking on a faint frown.
“We can fix that. I’ll put in a word with the Hospital committee when they’re looking at job assignments, and request an extra junior on the interventionist track.”
“I’m really not all that good,” Alys said hopelessly. “I can barely use it properly, I won’t be any help with the basics until I’ve practiced a lot more and gotten used to it—”
“I’d prefer raw material willing to work hard to someone who just scraped into the Academie and has now graduated thinking they know everything,” said Danisy.
Alys thought about Sab Lavalle and swallowed an inappropriate giggle.
“I can work hard,” she said.
Danisy nodded as if that was all settled, and made a line for the Chancellor, who had managed to corral Clement and was making an obvious fuss of them.
Alys had a few precious moments to look down at her hands and breathe deeply, like Clement had shown her.
At sixteen her future had been dislocated from its assumed position.
Now, just as suddenly, it had happened again.
Tentatively she let herself imagine the career that Ysabel had claimed for her, one where she could take all of her magic and do large things with it—good things, real things, like the healing that was done on her as a child.
“Look at you, Alys,” said Moyna, coming up. “Interventionist track! Konrad Omeyer’s going to burst a blood vessel from jealousy.”
“I . . .” Alys swallowed. “My parents don’t think I’m going to work at the Hospital at all. I suppose I’ll have to tell them otherwise, tonight.”
“You’re not the only one,” said Moyna. “I wonder if I can make Thoury tell my parents for me.”
“You are staying?” asked Alys. “And you’re going to go off and be the first healer to diagnose mysterious dead bodies? Someone will have to write a stage-play about you.”
“I didn’t think I could,” said Moyna. “But Thoury just pointed out that all five of us will be in demand for this technique now, and he’ll have leverage to ask for my bond-contract to be bought out.
Besides—I used my unique skills,” with a wiggle of her fingers, “to help solve two murders. Proof of concept, I guess.”
They would all be in demand. Alys wondered if someone would mysteriously decide to buy out Jehan’s contract as well. And—