Forty #2
“Ysabel’s technique will expand the workforce again.
The Committee is going to be ecstatic,” Alys said.
“You can probably ask them for anything you want, if you promise to heal the serrage as well as using your, um, skills for Thoury.” Another thought waved a flag.
“I’ll make some visits on your behalf. The current chair of the Committee is the Comtesse Verderonne, and I know her nephew is trying to get a play of his staged at the Theatre Splendid. ”
Moyna’s mouth twitched. “Bribery?”
“Influence,” said Alys firmly. “Between myself and the Marcelles, Moyna, we’ll manage to keep you here.”
This time it was a full, incredulous smile, and Alys found herself with an unexpected bony armful of Moyna, who hugged her for a fierce moment and then let go. “Sorry! Should have asked. But—thank you, Alys.”
“Keep you here? Here in Sieuxerr?” said a new voice.
It was a young man with Moyna’s Camarran colouring and sharp grey eyes, and a second-year yellow sash.
“Symon,” said Moyna, and flung herself at him too, as if she still had a double handful of nervous energy and needed to squeeze it into someone’s bones.
Symon shot Alys a surprised look over Moyna’s shoulder, and listened while Moyna told him about the job offer from Thoury and how she might, in fact, be able to take him up on it.
“And—the expectations will all be on you, then,” Moyna finished. Her voice had gained a faint Camarran tinge. “Oh, rivers and bones, our parents will drown me in the Sieuxerr.”
“So they’ll be angry,” said Symon, shrugging.
Moyna stared at him.
He went on, “From a distance. And you’ll be here, where you want to be. Do you want me to tell them for you? I’m going to look so good in comparison, Momo, they’ll never be able to tell me off for anything.”
Moyna muttered something in Camarran and hugged him again.
At that point a cluster of third-years headed by Genevieve Balenne clearly reached the threshold of courage and rushed exclaiming over to Alys, demanding the whole story and another explanation of the serrage cure.
And then suddenly the Secretary was ringing that bell again, demanding attention and silence, and firmly pointing out that the Academie’s scholars had to go and dine, wash and dress, as the evening concert of Mathé’s feast day would not wait for world-shaking discoveries.
Alys looked around for Clement, but they were lost in the chaos. Nor were they at dinner, which was sparsely attended in the residence hall; many fifth-years would be eating with their families.
In fact Alys didn’t see Clement again until the concert itself.
The wooden chorale hall had been divided into audience and stage, and the scholars were crammed into curtain-draped wings, waiting.
The entire scholarship of the Academie would open the concert with the Academie song and some folk songs from the earliest days of Sieuxerr, arranged in twelve parts and learned by heart in the very first term: their first training in holding harmony.
The fifth-years would close it with the Twilight Chorale for the First Healer.
On stage, Crespin Thumery and the other conductors were giving the introductory speech. Alys peered around the edge of the wing and wondered where her parents would be sitting. She wanted to know what her father would think of the music.
“There you are,” said Clement.
Alys turned. She was surrounded by busy, shifting preparation, and full of her own excited nerves. At the sight of Clement it all went still and quiet.
“Yes,” she said. “I lost you, I’m sorry.”
“I ran down to Berthelmi’s,” said Clement. “I needed to know if there was . . .” They shook their head. “No letter for me. But I do wish I could know what she would have said to me, afterward. Beyond Tell me how brilliant I am, Clement.” A small, fond smile.
For once, Alys knew precisely the right thing to say.
“She’d have told you how important you are,” Alys said. “That we needed you to give us our song and hold us to it. You’re the anchor, Clement.”
Clement’s face relaxed and opened, a luminous little.
“So,” they said. “Moyna’s been telling me a very impressive story about your plans for next year.”
“I want to know your plans. It seems like everyone’s been snapped up by something exciting.”
Clement smiled. “Don’t worry. I’m still not exciting.”
“Yes you are,” said Alys fiercely. “Um. I mean—”
A quick laugh. “I’ll see if the Littlebridge will take me as a generalist, as I’d always planned.
And I want to look through Ysabel’s notebook and use it as a starting point—we still have to find a cure that will work for non-healers, and I’m sure there’s scope for that circle array in other conditions as well.
And down the line, maybe teaching? I know we said no impossibilities, but I want to see if the system can be turned from something that produces a Brodier into something that produces more healers like you. ”
“Not exciting, they said,” said Alys, instead of responding directly to that. “It sounds like you’ll be busy.”
“Not too busy. And we have the summer, beforehand. I was thinking of an outing to one of the smallest and pokiest rooms in the Royal Gallery. Would you like to come?”
“I don’t want to be a bother—”
Clement laughed again. This time it was rich and assured. Bronze bells at midnight.
“Alys,” they said, and took her face in their hands, “you can bother me all you like.”
Hunger barely had time to build in Alys—dark, exciting hunger, a selfishness that wanted to shout and growl both at once—before it was met.
Met, and fed. Alys filled her lungs with the scent of blackcurrant, and kissed, and was kissed.
She went searching for the songs in Clement’s mouth so that she could curl her tongue over them and sing them back.
Clement’s fingers pressed hard against Alys’s cheeks and Clement’s lips sampled hers, dragged at them and bruised them, with a casual expertise and a low pleasured sound that made Alys go instantly tight and needy in her core.
She was a violin. She was a harp. She would sing when she was plucked.
Alys gathered all the longing of a strange, wild week and finally kissed that dark spot by the corner of Clement’s mouth, putting her fingers over the other one that marked the pulse—hearing a rushing in her own ears, rivers of blood alive and loud as the streets of the city.
And the rushing was music as well. A rising, joyful swell.
It was several seconds later that Alys realised the swell of song, and the goose bumps spreading joyfully over her skin, were not just her body reacting to the best and most promising kiss of her life.
Grey robes were filling the stage, singing as they went. They’d walked right past Clement and Alys and Alys had barely noticed.
“Come on,” said Clement. “The music’s starting.”