Chapter 193: The Part That Hurts

Then he put his hand on my shoulder and left it there for a moment, as he used to at the end of a night on that field, when I was too tired to know whether I’d done well. He had never told me, then, whether I had. He didn’t tell me now. He took his hand away.

"You still have that thing," he said, looking at Dream Haven.

"It still has me."

"I see that." He reached into his coat. "From your father."

The note was small and folded once, addressed in my father’s hand. I broke the seal.

Do as Valerian tells you. He will tell me if you don’t.

Underneath, in slightly different ink, as if it had been added after the first line had dried: Write when you can.

I read it twice. My father writes the way he speaks, which is as little as possible, and he had still found room for a second line.

I put it inside my shirt.

"Izabella says she was right about sleeping after meals," said Valerian.

"She wasn’t."

"She said you’d say that." He looked past me into the infirmary. "Your reprimand is still on the training-room wall."

"Which one?"

"The siege drill. You were eleven."

"The camp’s moved twice."

"So I’ve moved it twice. Visitors ask about it."

"What do you tell them?"

"The truth," said Valerian. "They never believe me."

I wanted to laugh, and found I didn’t trust what my face would do if I started.

So I did what I do instead, which is find something useful to say.

"Elizabeth first," I said. "She lost a great deal of blood before I closed the shoulder. Her channels are overdrawn from palm to shoulder. James’s spatial channels were damaged before any of this, and the advancement hasn’t touched them. Sophie held Ice for..."

"I’ll read it."

"I can tell you faster."

"I’ll read the healer of record’s account first," said Valerian. "Then I’ll hear yours."

He went past me, into the infirmary, toward Sorel.

Sorel was standing by her table with her sleeves rolled up and her records stacked in five piles, one for each of us. She had clearly been expecting him, and had clearly decided she wasn’t going to look as though she had.

"Healer Sorel."

"Master Alzette."

"Your relay was the clearest I’ve read in a year."

"It was short."

"That’s why."

Sorel looked at him for a moment as if deciding what kind of compliment it was.

"I’ve kept them alive and still," she said. "I can tell you what they’re doing. I can’t tell you why."

"Neither can I, yet." He looked at the five piles. "The Headmaster’s order names you, and that stays as it is. I’ll examine and treat. Anything that changes what he ordered goes through you."

Sorel’s shoulders came down a little.

I had seen that happen before. I was ten, standing at the edge of a tent full of dying soldiers, and I had watched a room of exhausted healers turn toward this man as he walked in, and breathe out. I hadn’t understood it then.

I understood it now. For three days Sorel had been the healer of record for five patients nobody could explain, with one escort healer to help her and nobody above her to hand any of it to. She was very good. She hadn’t been able to put any of it down.

"Sit," said Valerian to me, without turning round, and pointed at the nearest empty bed.

I sat, and he read.

He read Elizabeth’s first, standing, all of it. Then he pulled a stool to the table and sat down, which I knew meant he had stopped expecting it to be simple.

"Her hands," he said.

"Warm since the first evening," said Sorel. "Colour coming back. She’s drinking what I give her."

"She’ll keep doing that?"

"She’s a princess with a treaty to defend. She’ll do whatever gets her out of bed fastest."

"Then tell her it’s the water."

He moved to James’s pile.

"These spatial channels were like this before Halden?"

"Before Halden. The Academy’s assessment says probably permanent. He’ll know properly when he’s thirty."

"Then until he’s thirty, nobody says permanent in front of him." He turned the page. "He’s not to touch Space."

"He knows."

"Knowing isn’t the problem with that kind of boy."

He knew James from a page. He was right anyway.

Sophie’s pile was thinner. He read it twice.

"She’ll want to prove she’s fine."

"She already has," said Sorel. "Twice. I’ve confiscated a cup."

He nearly smiled.

Then he reached Daphne’s, and stopped at a line near the end. I knew which one. I had read it upside down.

"Does Lady Spinster know I’ll see this?"

"She does," said Sorel. "She said anything else, you can ask her."

"Then I’ll wait for her to tell me."

He went on to the next page. He didn’t look at me. He didn’t ask me a single question about it, and I sat on that bed and understood that this was deliberate, and that it was for her.

He came to mine last.

I watched him read it. I knew where the line was, and I knew when he reached it, because his finger stopped moving down the page.

Used Healing Bond on HRH Elizabeth Aurelius in deliberate breach of the Headmaster’s personal instruction. Patient consented. Breach reported.

He read it twice. He didn’t look up.

"Later," he said.

"Yes, Master."

He laid the five records side by side.

"Five cores," he said. "Two stages each, the same afternoon. Walls stable, every one of them."

"Yes," said Sorel.

"It’s the stable walls I don’t like."

"That’s what I said."

"Then we agree, which will save us time." He tapped the page. "Force one stage early and the walls usually crack. I’ve seen it more times than I’d like. Two stages in an afternoon, five times over, and not a crack among them, with channels underneath that still can’t carry what’s on top. Something held those walls together. I can’t see what. I don’t like relying on what I can’t see."

He put one finger on Elizabeth’s record, and another on mine.

"Your notes say these two had an hour of faster recovery, and then the hour’s effect ended. Whatever the bond leaves behind after that is small, and you can’t separate it from everything else. That’s the bond, as you’ve described it. That part’s accounted for."

He moved his hand across all five.

"This didn’t end. And it happened to all of them, three of whom were never bonded that afternoon at all."

"No," said Sorel.

"Then the bond doesn’t account for it," said Valerian. "Not on its own. Whatever started it, we don’t know what this is. So we treat what’s in front of us, and nobody uses it, tests it or pushes it until we do."

He said it plainly, without apology, and I felt something in my chest I hadn’t felt for a long time. There was finally someone in the room who could say we don’t know and still be the most useful person there.

They worked out the rest between them in a few minutes, in the shorthand of two people who had each spent years doing this alone.

Every restriction stayed exactly where it was. Each of us would be examined separately, on our own, not as a set of five, beginning with Her Highness after noon. Nobody would test what the new rank could do, not with a spark, not to see. Sorel’s relay to Theoran would go every day as before, and would carry both their names.

"I’ll start with Her Highness," said Valerian. "Then the others in whatever order you think best."

Sorel looked at her piles. "Vortex last," she said. "He’ll want to be."

I opened my mouth.

"No," said Valerian, without looking up. "Second."

They went on talking. I stopped listening to the words after a while and listened to the sound of it instead: two healers going over a list, unhurried, as though there would be time.

"And you sleep first," said Sorel.

Valerian looked up. "I’ve slept on horses."

"Not well enough to put your hands on a princess. Two hours. There’s a bed in the back room."

He looked at her for a moment. Then he closed the record in front of him.

"Two hours," he said.

In five years I had never once seen anybody send Valerian to bed. I had certainly never seen him go.

It occurred to me that Elizabeth’s hands had been warm since the first evening, but I hadn’t seen her since the sitting room, two nights ago. And Sophie had been frosting cups. And I could at least go and look.

I stood up and tucked Dream Haven under my arm.

"I’ll just look in on Elizabeth while you..."

"Lie down," said Valerian.

"I’m only going to..."

"Her Highness has a healer. She’ll have two once I’ve slept. So do you." He squared the last record on top of the others. "Lie down, or I make that pillow heavier, the way I used to."

"You wouldn’t."

"Try me."

He had said exactly that to me on a moonlit field when I was ten, with my pillow doubled in my arms and my legs shaking under it. He had meant it then.

I didn’t know whether it would even work on Dream Haven. I suspected he didn’t know either, and that he would enjoy finding out.

I stood there with the pillow under my arm and looked at the two of them. Sorel, with her sleeves rolled up and her five piles squared. Valerian, who had ridden all night and had just let her send him to bed without a word of argument.

Elizabeth was lying down under orders from two healers. James had his hand off his chest, mostly. Sophie’s cup had been confiscated. Daphne would tell anyone who asked exactly as much as she chose, and not a word more. None of them needed me to walk down a corridor and look at them.

I had known that for about a minute. It was surprisingly hard to put down.

I lay down.

[You lay down without being made to.]

’I negotiated first.’

[Briefly.]

The bed was hard, and the infirmary smelled of vinegar, and across the room the two of them were arranging, in low voices, how each of us would be taken apart and put back together over the next few days. I was second on the list.

My master was back. That meant there was someone in Halden who knew more about damaged channels than anyone I had ever met. It also meant there was no longer anyone in Halden who would believe me when I said I was fine.

I hadn’t decided yet which of those I minded more.

On his way to the back room, Valerian stopped beside my bed. He looked at me, and at Dream Haven under my head, which he hadn’t touched.

"Good," he said.

Then he went to sleep, and after a while, so did I.