Sister Elizabeta doesn’t ask me how the Performing went. She knows I’m required to make reports on her, so she never speaks of Elene or events outside the hospital. Here, I am a healer, a penitent who comes to serve the quartet with her song. Here, for a little while at least, I can pretend.
I follow the nun down the dimly lit hall. They use tallow candles to mask the smell of death, but even the scent of burning fat can’t drown out the decay. Grand, old carpets are rolled up against the skirting boards. Nail holes dot the walls where picture frames once hung. The nuns decorate with shelves filled with medical books on anatomy and spells, vats of alcohol to sterilize instruments and clean linen. The low, constant murmur of pain accompanies our steps.
Elizabeta leads me up the staircase into a private room at the rear of the old house. A small blond girl lies on a cot near the window wearing only a ragged brown shift. She can’t be older than ten. Her skeletal chest rises and falls too slowly. Mercedes sits in the chair next to her, singing softly against the pain, but it doesn’t seem to be doing any good. The girl tosses in her bed, twisting the sheets in her small hands.
At first, I balk in the doorway, thinking she might be an Expelled, but there is no telltale cut along her throat. She is simply one of Cannis’s many, many poor. Like I once was.
When she notices me, Mercedes stands and offers me her chair. I sit next to the girl and brush a sweaty lock of hair back off her face. She doesn’t have a fever. The pain alone is making her sweat.
“Where is it?” I ask Mercedes. Even if she isn’t skilled enough to treat the tumor, she should be able to find its location.
“Her head,” Mercedes whispers. “Behind her left eye.”
I take a deep breath. Precise magic taxes me even more than targeting an entire room. Causing pain is easy. Healing is much harder. Brains are nothing like the soles of feet. Any error, any puncture, and the girl could die. With my healing at the Performing, I could afford not to be perfect. Now I can’t be anything else.
“Can you bring me a glass of water?” I ask Sister Elizabeta.
The nun nods and scurries from the room. I tremble all over. When I stood onstage, the light of the Opera Hall chandelier blinded me. My magic developed a picture of the audience’s life force, but I couldn’t see their faces. I can see this little girl all too clearly.
Skilled corporeal mages used to study anatomy and travel abroad to the great universities in Solidad and Osara, where they learned surgical arts to enhance their magical craft. I don’t have any such training. The new university in Cannis, opened by Elene for the common folk, does not teach such things. And even if crossing the border were still possible, Elene would never allow me to travel so far away from her. I’m not skilled or confident enough to cut into the child’s head and remove the tumor outright. So I have perfected a different method. I target the cancer and kill its tissues from within, so that it withers and dies. The girl’s body will then destroy it in time.
Elizabeta returns with a mug of water. I take a long drink, then put it aside. My empty stomach grumbles.
I start to hum softly, taking a profile of the girl’s body. In addition to the nearly fist-sized tumor that grows behind her eye, she has a badly healed fracture along a metatarsal bone in her foot. She couldn’t have been walking very well, even before the cancer struck.
The freezing song is difficult to sing and outside my comfortable natural range. I’m better versed in heat songs and binding spells, but cold is easier to control than heat for precise work, and less likely to damage the tissue around the tumor. Human tissue, I learned early at the academy, can freeze for short periods and recover. It isn’t always so with heat.
I begin hesitantly, trying to keep the image of the tumor in my mind as I sing. My voice is shaky and unsure—Elene would never allow me to sing like this in public—but the magic works the same. My song wraps its icy tendrils around the tumor and freezes it. The little girl whimpers, her small frame trembling.
For a terrifying moment, I wonder if I have infused my song with too much power. But if I stop now, the incomplete healing might damage her brain. So I sing on. I let myself get lost in the magic and melody of the song. My reserve of power is almost gone, and my throat is on fire. If I’m able to speak at all in the morning, it will be a miracle.
The tumor grows colder than metal left in the snow. My song lifts higher and higher. I feel the cancer contracting, dying.
“I think it’s working,” Mercedes whispers from the corner.
The little girl watches me with clearer eyes. I stop singing and press my hand to my flaming throat. Mercedes hums a different tune to lull the child to sleep. She will need to rest now so her body can fight.
I smooth a hand over the girl’s forehead. The corners of her mouth twitch upward. Something like happiness flutters in my chest. Thank you, I think to her as she sleeps, for letting my song bring more than pain.
CHAPTER 6
REMI
I SPEND MOST OF the next week in the stables, hiding from my parents.
When Papa and I first arrived home, Mama waited in the atrium to hug me, her fingers stained with ink from scribbling in the estate ledgers, but as soon as I disappeared upstairs, my parents started fighting again.
Mama wants to spare me the Opera Hall, to take her place at the Performing again, even if she knows it might kill her. Papa won’t allow it. For him, to subject me to the Opera Hall is a grave sacrifice, but the thought of losing Mama is beyond his endurance.
After that first night, Papa sequesters himself in his study on the third floor. Mama embroiders in her parlor, her needle stabbing furiously through the fabric of her sampler.
The barn, with its calming, earthy-sweet smell of hay and leather, is my refuge. I steal sugar from the kitchen, dust my palms with the powder, and wander from stall to stall, letting the horses lick my hands clean. The stable boys sense my mood and make themselves scarce.
I have two horses of my own: a stocky black-and-white cob called Chance, whom I adore, and an elegant, long-limbed chestnut palfrey named Eloise, whom Papa approves of. I purchased Chance myself from a traveling market that set up on the outskirts of our estate. He’s built like a small draft horse, with a broad back, a thick mane that hangs to his knees, and sturdy, feathered legs.
Papa told me not to buy him—ladies do not ride cobs—but his expressive, white-rimmed blue eyes captured my heart. I paid for him myself, so he’s mine in a way Eloise isn’t. He was trained to pull a wagon, not to be ridden, but he’s slowly getting better with practice.
I save a whole pocketful of sugar for Chance. I let him delicately lip it from my palm, his long whiskers tickling the skin of my wrist. While he focuses on licking sugar from his teeth, I slide my saddle into place and tighten the girth. Then I lift each of his hooves in turn and carefully pick out the stones.
“Ahem.” A cleared throat makes me straighten and look up. Papa stands outside Chance’s stall, holding a black saddlebag in his hands.
“Lunch,” he says, raising the pack. “I thought we might ride for the city today.” He reaches into the stable to pat Chance’s chubby neck. “I’ll even let you ride this guy.”
My brow wrinkles with suspicion. It’s faster to ride than travel by carriage, but it’s still at least a three-hour journey to Cannis. It’s midday already, so we won’t be able to return before nightfall. Papa wouldn’t plan such a journey on a whim.