Chapter 195: Carry Your Own

(Alash Vortex POV)

Elizabeth’s room was at the end of our corridor, with a window over the courtyard and a chair beside the bed that someone had clearly been sleeping in. I could guess who.

She was sitting up against her pillows. Her face was arranged. She looked better than she had in the sitting room two nights ago, and worse than she wanted to.

"Sit down," she said. "And close the door, please. I’d rather this wasn’t a corridor conversation."

I sat. I didn’t bring Dream Haven. It had seemed wrong, somehow, to arrive at a conversation about consent carrying a pillow.

Elizabeth didn’t waste time. She never does, and she had evidently been arranging this for a while.

"On the ridge," she said, "you told me four things before I said yes."

She counted them off on the fingers of her good hand.

"That it would make my body recover much faster, at its own rate, for one hour, and a little faster after that, for no one knew how long. That afterwards the connection would stay, and you knew no way to remove it. That it had let James train past the point where his body should have stopped him, and that it would only help me if I stopped. And that the Headmaster had forbidden it, personally, and that if I said yes, I was part of breaking that."

"Yes."

"I knew all four. I chose. I’d choose the same again, knowing those four. I’ve said so to Sorel, and I’ll say so to the Headmaster, and to anyone else who asks." She looked at me directly. "I’m not here to take it back."

"I know."

"I’m here because something else happened after I said yes, and I’d like an account of it. In order. From someone who was there and is a healer."

She folded her good hand back on the blanket.

It was the voice she uses for treaty clauses. I had last heard it on the balcony the night before the signing, when she told me she would like to know exactly what she was sealing. I had never heard her use it about herself.

So I gave her an account, in order.

"I activated the bond after you said yes," I said. "The gold came up the moment it formed. It spread to all five of us. Then the memories came. Then our cores went up, all of us, two stages. After that, the hour ran as I’d told you it would: you recovered faster, at your own rate, and so did I. Then the hour ended, and the strong part stopped. The bond itself left only the smaller part I’d warned you about."

"Did you know any of that would happen?"

"Not that." I made myself say the rest. "I’d seen gold like it before. Once at the Citadel, under the five of us on the seals. Once when I bonded James: it came up under him and was gone in a second and a half. Once in a dream, a week or so after that, which I can’t prove. And once in the Gallery, in the glass, where it didn’t stop. You were there for the seals and the Gallery. I didn’t know it could take our memories, or move our cores. But I knew something unexplained had happened before, and I didn’t mention James’s on the ridge."

"But you’d seen it."

"Yes. I should have told you. It wouldn’t have told you what was coming, because I didn’t know. But it was something I knew and you didn’t, and you were the one deciding."

She was quiet for a moment.

"Thank you for saying so," she said, and held my eyes a moment longer. "And now?"

"Now there’s an adaptation in all five of us that doesn’t stop when the hour stops," I said, "and Valerian says the bond doesn’t account for it on its own. Neither do I. I can’t explain it."

She heard can’t. I watched her hear it.

I waited for the next question. It was the question Daphne had asked me on a wall the morning before, and Renn had asked me across the foot of a bed. I didn’t know what I would say if Elizabeth asked it too.

She didn’t.

"I’m not going to ask you how you knew it was me on the ridge," she said. "Renn asked, and you told him you couldn’t say, and I believed you. I’m not going to ask what you can’t explain." She smoothed the blanket over her knee. "I’ve spent a long time across tables from people. I’ve learned not to spend questions I can’t get answered. It wastes the ones I can."

I didn’t know what to do with that. It was a kindness, and it was also a strategy, and with Elizabeth those are usually the same thing.

"What I’d like," she said, "is for it to be recorded correctly. I consented to an hour and a bond, with four risks attached, because those were the only things anyone offered me. I did not consent to the rest, because nobody knew there was a rest to consent to. That isn’t a complaint against you. It’s a fact, and I’d like it in my record as it happened, not tidied up by somebody later who wasn’t there."

"It should be."

"It will be. I’ll tell Sorel myself."

She looked toward the window for a moment.

"I’ve spent my whole life deciding who sees what of me," she said. "On that platform, I didn’t decide anything. Neither did any of us. I’m not going to talk about what they saw. It’s theirs as much as mine now, and I’d rather not hand it round a second time." She looked back at me. "But I’d like you to understand that I noticed."

"I did," I said. "I noticed too."

That was all either of us said about the memories, and it was enough.

"So," said Elizabeth. "From now on."

I waited.

"Anything anyone finds out about my condition, I want to hear directly, and soon, from whoever found it. Not second-hand from Renn, or the Foreign Office, or a relay that’s already gone. I know Sorel’s relays go to the Headmaster every day, and I know the Crown will read every word of them, because someone tried to kill me a day after a treaty. That’s their right, and I won’t stand in the way of it. I’m not asking to be told before everyone. I’m asking to be told. And nothing goes into a relay about me that isn’t true."

"I can’t promise what anyone else does," I said. "I can promise what I do. Any new change I find in your condition, anything that affects how you’re treated, you’ll hear from me the same day, and so will Sorel."

"That’s the part you can promise," said Elizabeth. "It’s the part I wanted from you."

"What I tell people beyond that, about myself, I decide."

"Yes."

"And if you ever want to do anything to me again," said Elizabeth, "you tell me the risks you know, and you tell me which ones you don’t know, and then I decide."

"I will. And when there’s something I can’t explain, I’ll tell you that I can’t, instead of pretending I can."

She considered that for longer than I expected.

"That’s better than most of the people who brief me," she said.

Then, very slightly, her face stopped being arranged.

"You kept me alive," she said. "I want you to know I know that. I’m not grateful in spite of the rest. I’m grateful, and I’m also not satisfied with how little anyone understands about what happened to me afterwards. Both of those are true."

"Both of them are fair."

"I know they’re fair," said Elizabeth. "I’m a very fair person. It’s exhausting."

I laughed. It surprised both of us.

When I left, she was already reaching with her good hand for the pen on the table beside her bed. I suspected Sorel was about to receive a correction, in writing, in the voice Elizabeth uses for clauses.

***

Valerian found me on the inner wall at dusk, where I had gone because it was as far from the infirmary as Renn allowed and as close to the open air as I was going to get.

He leaned on the parapet beside me and looked out at the ridge, which was going purple in the last of the light, and at the lookout on top of it, where Renn’s guards still stood and where nobody else would set foot until the Crown’s officers had walked it.

"Now," he said. "Why?"

I had known it was coming since the morning. He had said later, and Valerian’s laters always arrive.

I told him.

I told him that Elizabeth’s channels had been overdrawn from palm to shoulder, and that nothing I had heals channels. That the bond doesn’t heal anything either; it only makes a body’s own recovery run faster for an hour. That I had seen what it did to James, and why: it hid the signs that should have stopped him, and he kept going. That Elizabeth wasn’t going anywhere. She had nothing left to keep going with.

"And that strain sets," I said. "You taught me that. I watched it on the border, in soldiers who rested a torn shoulder too late and carried it badly for the rest of their lives. I thought the first hours mattered more than anyone likes to admit. I thought channels might work the same way."

"Might."

"Might. I couldn’t prove it. I still can’t. And once we walked off that ridge, the answer would be no, because Sorel would have to say no. There was the platform, and Sophie’s ice, and me."

He was quiet for a while.

"You asked me once," he said, "what you do with a bone that set wrong ten years ago."

"You manage it. You tell the patient what they can’t do any more."

"I told you that to make you wait," said Valerian. "You were thirteen and you wanted to rush your own body. I was teaching you patience."

"You were teaching me what sets," I said. "For me, waiting was the safe thing. For her, I thought waiting was the danger. It’s the same lesson."

He turned his head and looked at me.

I had seen that look only once before, on the first night of my training, over a palm I had just closed without pouring power into it. It was the look of a teacher who has just heard his own words come back to him, changed by someone else’s hands, and isn’t sure whether to be proud or worried.

"It might be," he said. "And if you’d been wrong? If her body had taken the hour and used it the way Vellaroux’s did?"

"She’d promised to stop. She did stop."

"You decided that she would. On a ridge. Under an order you knew you were breaking."

"She decided too."

"She did," said Valerian. "Her Highness could have refused you, and she didn’t, and that was hers. But she couldn’t tell you whether the risk was worth taking. Nobody on that ridge could. That’s what a second healer is for, and you didn’t have one."

"No."

"Her consent was hers to give," said Valerian. "Theoran’s order wasn’t hers to waive. It wasn’t yours either."

"I know. I’ve told Sorel. I’ll tell Theoran. I’m not asking you to tell me it was right."

"Good," said Valerian. "Because I’m not going to."

He let that sit.

"If the Headmaster asks me for a medical opinion of the emergency, I’ll give him one. An honest one. I’ll tell him there was a real argument for acting, and that I can’t tell him whether you were right. What he does about the rest is his." He looked back at the ridge. "I can’t forgive you for him. I wouldn’t if I could."

"I’d think less of you if you did."

"You’d think less of me if I did," he agreed, "and you’d be relieved, and you’d hate that you were relieved. I’ve met you."

That was fair, and I didn’t argue with it.

The light was going. Somewhere below us, Renn’s men were changing the watch, with less shouting than the soldiers at Halden usually managed. Somebody had told them about the infirmary.

"I watched you today," said Valerian.

"I noticed."

"You asked Sorel about four people this morning before you’d let her look at you. You know how far Lady Trohan’s frost has travelled since the first day. You know when Lady Spinster’s wrappings were last changed. You told me about your own chest because I put my hand on it and made you." He didn’t look at me. "I wrote something about you in a report, once."

"That I never asked anyone for anything for myself," I said. "Theoran told me. Twice, actually."

There was a short silence.

"Did he," said Valerian.

"I laughed, the first time."

"And now?"

I looked at the ridge.

"Now I’m less sure it was funny."

"It wasn’t a joke when I wrote it," said Valerian. "You were fourteen. In five years I never once saw you wake anybody for help. You’d sit up with a patient all night rather than knock on my tent, and in the morning you’d tell me it had been a quiet night."

I couldn’t argue with that. I had told him it was a quiet night more often than there had been quiet nights.

"On that ridge," he said, "there was nobody else who could have done what you did. I believe that. I’ve read Sorel’s notes and I’ve seen the girl’s channels. I believe you had to decide alone."

"Thank you."

"I’m not finished." He turned, finally, and looked at me. "That was the ridge. This is Halden. Sorel is here. Renn is here. Her Highness can speak for herself, rather well, as you’ve no doubt discovered. Lady Spinster speaks for herself whether anyone wants her to or not. And I’m here." He said the last part as he says everything, without any weight on it at all, as if it were a fact about the weather. "You don’t have to carry their recovery. That’s mine now, and Sorel’s. You’ll carry your own."

I opened my mouth, and he went on before I could use it.

"Here’s what that means. The rehabilitation is ours. You’ll follow it like the others. When you notice something about one of them that we need to know, you’ll tell us, and then you’ll let us do it. And you’ll report your own chest as carefully as you just reported Lady Trohan’s window frame."

"That’s a lot of conditions."

"It’s three. You used to run until morning."

I thought about it. I thought about James on the end of the bed with his hand closed, and Sophie on his feet, and Elizabeth reaching for a pen, and Daphne in the chair by the door. They all had healers. They all had their own mouths.

It was harder than it should have been.

"Yes," I said.

He nodded once, as though I’d agreed to something more than three conditions, which I suppose I had.

Then he said, quite mildly, "Why does a year frighten you so much?"

I had not expected that. I should have. He had been asking it, one way or another, since I was thirteen.

"Efficiency," I said.

"You said that at thirteen."

"It’s still the answer you’re getting."

He looked at me for a long moment with those calm brown eyes that always seemed to be measuring something other than the thing I’d actually said. I let him look. I had nothing else I could give him, and he knew it, and he didn’t ask again.

"Then I’ll wait for a better one," he said.

***

Renn came to the infirmary after supper, with Valerian, and stood at Sorel’s table with his hands behind his back while Valerian asked him, properly, whether the convoy would take one more healer east.

"The western command agrees, for the journey," said Valerian. "Their answer to my request came an hour ago. My camp stays under Healer Izabella for as long as I’m away. Your Foreign Office official has countersigned the request on the Crown’s behalf."

"He’ll have enjoyed that," said Renn. "It’s the first thing he’s been allowed to sign since the treaty that wasn’t about the treaty." He looked at the papers. "You’ll travel as part of the medical escort. Under my security arrangements, like everyone else."

"I’d expect nothing else."

"And we don’t move until the Crown’s officers have walked that ridge and Healer Sorel says Her Highness can sit a horse. Your arrival doesn’t change either of those."

"I’d be worried if it did."

Renn looked at him for a moment, and something that was very nearly approval passed across his face and was filed away.

"At Zenith," said Renn, "what you do is the Headmaster’s business, not mine."

"At Zenith, the Headmaster decides whether he wants me at all," said Valerian. "If he does, I’ll answer to him, and to Professor Selene where cores are concerned. I’m a healer. I’ll look after their bodies. I won’t teach anyone how to cultivate, and I won’t sign anything the Headmaster hasn’t."

Renn nodded and went out. He didn’t count us on his way, which I think was the first time since the ridge.

***

Sorel did her evening round at the usual hour, with Valerian a step behind her, writing.

She came to my bed last. That was my fault. I had been last on her list every evening for three days, because I had always asked her to see the others first.

"Chest," she said.

I could have said it was fine. It was the answer I had given every evening, and it had been mostly true every time, which is how the things I say are usually true.

"It pulled when I climbed the steps to the wall this evening," I said. "Harder than this morning. For about ten breaths. I held my breath twice. It eased when I sat down on the parapet, but it was still there an hour later, and it’s there now, about the same as at noon."

Sorel stopped writing and looked at me.

Behind her, Valerian didn’t look up. He just turned to a new page in his own notes and wrote it down, all of it, in the small careful hand.

"Then no stairs tomorrow," said Sorel. "The wall can manage without you for a day. If it’s worse in the morning, I want to hear it before breakfast, not after."

"And I’ll look at it again before you go back up there," said Valerian.

"The wall’s the only place in Halden I’m allowed to be outside."

"It’ll still be there when your chest is ready for it," said Sorel.

I thought about arguing. Yesterday I would have, and I would have won, because I would have told her it was fine.

"Yes," I said.

"Is that going in a report?" I said.

"Everything goes in a report."

"Theoran says you sent seventeen pages a season."

"Theoran," said Valerian, "talks too much for a man who claims to dislike conversation."

"He said you included sketches."

"He was joking."

"I know he was joking." I lay back on Dream Haven. "Were there sketches?"

Valerian finished his line, closed the notebook, and put it away in his coat.

He didn’t answer. I decided that was an answer.