by Beth Revis
I sat my bag down on the floor beside my desk. “Drop it,” I muttered.
“Does she even meet with Master Ostrum for her evening report?” Tomus was very aware that every student was listening to him.
“Of course,” I said, not mentioning that she often simply sat in while I gave my report, then was dismissed. Occasionally, she mentioned what she learned in a history study hall or a book she read outside of her private lessons.
“Of course.” Tomus emphasized the last word in a mocking tone. There was a tittering of laughter in the rows behind me.
The door at the front of the room swung open, and Master Ostrum stomped inside. “Pack up,” he growled at the class. Nedra was the first to move, standing and slinging her unopened bag over her shoulder. When most of the other students didn’t move, Master Ostrum glared at us. “I said, let’s go! We have a ferry to catch.”
Excitement washed over us, and we all hurried to follow his command. Master Ostrum’s class was the most advanced medicinal alchemy course at Yūgen, and his surgical laboratories were so renowned that sometimes even other professors would join the students to observe.
Master Ostrum led the way, not pausing to explain anything as he stomped down the quad and through the gate. No carriage awaited us, and Master Ostrum didn’t hesitate as he headed down the main road to Blackdocks.
Tomus fell into step beside me. “I hope there’s a carriage to carry us back up,” I said.
“A ferry means the quarantine hospital,” he answered, glowering at Master Ostrum’s back. “That place is for poor people. We should be going to the Governor’s Hospital, where there’s a chance we’ll meet the alchemists we’ll actually work for. None of us wants to dirty our hands at a slum like that.” His voice carried down the street, and I knew Master Ostrum heard him, but the old man didn’t even turn his head.
Nedra, however, had stopped so abruptly that the girl behind her almost ran into her. “You’re disgusting,” she snarled at Tomus.
Tomus laughed. The sound was not amused, but bitter, spiteful. Nedra strode away, a sense of pride in her step. I thought first of what Nedra had told me, about loyalty. But then I remembered the way Tomus had gotten his governess fired when he was seven because she’d dared to give him a subpar grade for his subpar work.
Master Ostrum had reserved a ferry just for our class. It cut across the water, a cool morning wind whipping up the girls’ hair. Nedra pushed through the crowd of students to the front of the boat, her cloak wrapped tightly around her.
She knew, I thought. Master Ostrum had told her that we would go on a ferry today; she knew to bring a cloak with her.
I thought for a moment that Nedra was watching me, but I realized her gaze was focused above my head. I turned, scanning the shoreline of the city behind us as the boat set off. A tall building stood out among the others, black curtains draped over every long window. A little down the street, another one, the same heavy black cloth. More factories closing. The news sheets didn’t call the sickness spreading in the poor district an epidemic, but it was only a matter of time. My eyes slipped back to Nedra. She knew about that, too, I thought. At the start of the semester, the sickness was a mild inconvenience in the factories, but it was spreading now.
The ferry rocked over a wave, and I stumbled.
“I don’t know how you stand it,” Tomus said. I hadn’t realized he was so close to me until he spoke. His gaze was on Nedra as well.
“She’s not so bad,” I said. “Actually, she’s really interesting. If you got to know her—”
“She’s a dumb hick who obviously can’t handle the course load. She’s not been to any of the decent lectures, and she never shows up to labs.”
“She does labs.”
Tomus raised his eyebrow.
“With Master Ostrum,” I said.
“Master Ostrum is giving her private labs?”
I shrugged, my gaze slipping to the waves. I hadn’t meant to say anything.
“I doubt they’re doing alchemy in those labs,” Tomus muttered. Behind us, I heard a girl giggle.
“Drop it,” I growled.
Tomus rolled his eyes. “She’s not smart enough to be here, Greggori, and you know it. Her scholarship must have been payment for services rendered, if you catch my drift.”
“Don’t be such a bastard,” I snapped.
I immediately regretted the words. “Bastard” was the insult Tomus’s father used when he wanted to humiliate both his wife and son, and he did it often enough in public to be a sore point for Tomus. It was a low blow, and I knew it.
“Sorry,” I said quickly, but it was too late.
Tomus moved toward the aft of the boat, and most of the students in the class followed him. I was left alone, the cold wind biting at me.
* * *
• • •
The ferry bumped against the stone steps at the base of the island. The skipper stabilized the boat, and we all disembarked, climbing up the steps toward the hospital. I turned back to look at Northface Harbor.
“Funny how a little bit of water makes the city seem so distant,” Nedra said, stepping beside me. We headed up the stairs, a little behind the others. “Thanks,” she muttered to me in a low voice. “I don’t know what Tomus said to you, but I saw the way he reacted when you replied. So thank you for whatever it was you told him.”
I bit my lip. I had tried to stand up for Nedra, but my efforts had potentially been more damaging than my silence could have been. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that, though.
“It really is like a castle,” Nedra said, staring up at the hospital’s brick façade as we reached a large plaza in front of the doors.
“Well, it was built from leftover materials from the actual castle,” I said. “Just like the administration building at Yūgen.”
“Really?”
I nudged her shoulder. “You’d know that if you attended an architecture lecture.”
“I have more important things to do than attend lectures,” Nedra said, her tone suddenly grave.
Like attend private lab sessions. I shook the thought away, disgusted at myself for lingering on Tomus’s insinuation.
“Wait until you go to the actual castle.” I grabbed Nedra’s hand, pulling her around and pointing to the governor’s residence back across the harbor, sparkling under the sunlight. The Emperor was still in residence, having extended his stay after the inauguration.
Nedra turned her back on the city. “I prefer this,” she said.
“Move it along,” Master Ostrum bellowed from the large mahogany doors that led into the hospital. We rushed to join the other students filing in.
The hospital’s foyer was just as beautiful as the outside, with marble floors, ornately trimmed windows, and an iron spiral staircase leading up into the clock tower. Against one wall hung an enormous painting of a man, his wife and son at his side. The woman’s hand was amputated at the left wrist, and the man held the residual limb reverently.
Bennum Wellebourne.
His statue at Yūgen had been destroyed, but Lunar Island could never truly escape his legacy. He had funded the building of the quarantine hospital himself, and despite his treason, the hospital still presented his family portrait proudly. People had to pay for better care at the Governor’s Hospital, and Whitesides was only available to factory workers who paid fees, so Wellebourne built this hospital and mandated that it be available to all, free of charge.
Master Ostrum led the class to Amphitheater C. Chairs with small desks attached to the armrests waited for us, all empty. Nedra and I sat in the front row, our feet on the surgery stage floor. A giant mirror hung from the ceiling over an operating table. Nedra leaned back in her chair, but she was still close to me, closer than she needed to be. I let my knee touch hers, and she didn’t pull away.
An air of excitement settle
d over the room as the rest of the students claimed their seats and waited for whatever operation Master Ostrum would be demonstrating for us. The clock struck the hour, the sound resonating throughout the hospital, and two aides wheeled in a gurney, positioning the patient beneath the mirror and in front of Master Ostrum.
I felt Nedra tense. Her eyes were glued to the body of the young girl on the metal gurney.
Master Ostrum picked up a scalpel, the silver gleaming under the bright lights.
ELEVEN
Nedra
“When dealing with a patient, first assess the symptoms.” Master Ostrum’s voice cut across the room.
I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. I couldn’t let emotions cloud my judgment. The patient was a girl a few years my junior, maybe thirteen or fourteen. Her skin was the same olive tone as mine, but it looked oddly grayed and shiny, as if someone had poured a thin layer of wax over her face. Her sleek black hair had been hastily cut. Her eyes were closed, and she gave no indication of waking anytime soon. Before anyone could attempt to give a diagnosis, Master Ostrum lifted away the white cloth covering the girl’s body.
Master Ostrum wheeled the gurney around, showing us the girl’s left leg. Her skin was inky black from the base of her heel to just above her ankle, with dark lines snaking up her leg like rivulets, and they didn’t fade until just above the knee. Her foot was withered, the toes twisting oddly, as if they’d spasmed and then frozen.
“Can anyone tell me what this girl’s illness is?” Master Ostrum asked, his eyes skimming the students in the amphitheater seats.
No one answered.
“It’s the Wasting Death.” My voice rang out across the silent room, and I felt all eyes turn to me. “And it’s a plague.”
“It’s not a plague.” Tomus sat several seats behind me, but I knew his voice without turning.
“She’s right.” Master Ostrum spoke calmly but with authority. “It is. As we speak, the governor is composing an address on the topic. By the time we’re back at Yūgen, it should be in all the news sheets.”
The rest of the students seemed shocked, but I felt relief. Finally. The official designation would help others see the threat we already knew in the north.
Master Ostrum looked down at the patient dispassionately. “Scientifically, it’s a disease that’s possibly both pneumonic and septicemic, and we’ve been unable to identify the specific strain of pathogen.” He turned to the rest of the class. “We’ve not been able to determine how the disease is transferred, but it spreads most often in tightly quartered areas, like the factories in Blackdocks, and it spreads quickly among the poor.”
“Maybe it has something to do with hygiene,” a girl near the back said.
“Or just bad blood.” Tomus’s voice was a sneer. I could feel his eyes watching me.
“We have ruled out both those causes,” Master Ostrum said. His voice was neutral, but my blood boiled. “It is neither a result of unclean conditions—although such conditions certainly don’t help—nor something inherited through bloodlines.”
“Maybe it came from the mainland,” Salis, the girl who led the history study group, said. “There were a lot of visitors for the governor’s inauguration, to say nothing of the mercantile ships.”
I shook my head. “The disease was here before the inauguration.”
“No one asked you,” a voice behind me sneered in a whisper. I turned to see who’d spoken, but all the students behind me stared blandly at Master Ostrum.
Master Ostrum continued his lecture. “This illness has proven difficult to study. It’s not easy to catch it when it first strikes. Patients feel achy, often with a fever and a headache. Common enough symptoms; everything from spotted fever to a regular cold starts this way. Soon, however, digits exhibit signs of necrosis.” Master Ostrum indicated the girl’s toes. “The disease seems to spread out from a certain point. No patient has lived long when the blackness starts in the torso, but some have survived when the disease starts in a hand or foot.”
I felt tension coiling in my stomach, like a snake weaving through my intestines.
“This is Cyntha. She’s from the Simmina factory in Blackdocks, one of the few who worked there and is still alive. We’ve not yet traced a source or a way to combat the symptoms, but I think you, our brightest students, can surmise what experimental surgery we’re going to perform today.”
I stared at the sick girl, my eyes roving over her body. Her foot was blackened. Necrosis, Master Ostrum had said. The flesh was dead.
“Amputation.” The word felt like poison.
Master Ostrum nodded. “I think here,” he said, indicating a spot on Cyntha’s leg above the knee, where there was no blackness creeping under her skin.
The two aides returned to the surgical stage, wheeling a cart of tools toward Master Ostrum. The professor ignored us, using ink to mark where the girl’s leg was going to be amputated mid-thigh. We all watched silently. No one expected this on the first day of surgical observation. This was far more intense than any of our other hands-on training.
Master Ostrum positioned his scalpel.
“Sir?” I asked, hoping no one else heard the quiver.
Master Ostrum paused.
“Sir, where is the alchemist?”
In surgeries, alchemists used the gold crucibles to cipher pain from the patient into a lesser creature, such as a rat. But there was no alchemist here to help with Master Ostrum’s surgery, no golden crucible. No pain relief for the girl’s amputation.
“As you have learned from your books,” Master Ostrum said, “the alchemist must filter the pain between the patient and the crucible. An amputation is obviously a very difficult process, and the pain is immense.”
“But you also taught us that the alchemist feels the pain only temporarily as they push it into the crucible,” I protested. I shoved aside my notebook, my hands trembling. Grey reached out for me, but I shook him off as I stood.
Master Ostrum waved his hand dismissively. “The patient has entered a sleeplike state; I’ve seen it with other late-stage victims of this disease,” he said. “This won’t wake her.” He pressed the blade against the girl’s leg, and red burst through her skin.
“Sir!” I shouted.
Master Ostrum didn’t look up from his work as he sliced the girl’s skin. “If you cannot restrain yourself, you can leave.” He paused. “Unless you’d like to be acting alchemist on this surgery?”
“Nedra, don’t,” Grey whispered, but I ignored him. I had only used rats in my experiments with Master Ostrum, but I knew that I had a high tolerance for pain. This, however, would be excruciating.
But brief.
I marched to the stage, stopping in front of Master Ostrum, bloody scalpel still in his hand. “Where is your crucible?” I asked.
“A medicinal alchemist is never without her own crucible,” Master Ostrum said, his voice low, just for me, as one of the aides fetched a generic golden crucible and pressed it into my hands.
“I won’t make that mistake again,” I promised my master.
There was a scrabbling, squeaking noise inside the vessel; a rat already curled up at the bottom of the vase, awaiting the pain that would be pushed into it.
I sat down on the floor beside the patient, one hand wrapped around the sleeping girl’s palm, the other clutching the golden crucible. The vase lit up with runes as the power connection was established.
Master Ostrum ignored me for the rest of the surgery. He sliced away at the sleeping girl’s flesh as if he were bored and wanted to be done with the task. Her body didn’t move—the sleep stage was deathlike—but the aides held her leg steady when Master Ostrum reached for the bone saw.
The girl on the gurney slept through it all, and she didn’t feel a thing.
I felt it for her.
* * *
• • •
After a long, long time, Master Ostrum touched my shoulder, removing the blood-soaked apron he’d donned before the surgery.
“It’s done,” he said.
I shook my head, not understanding. Part of the girl’s leg was still attached; the amputation was incomplete. Master Ostrum bent down, prying my fingers from the girl’s and helping me to stand. I dropped the golden crucible on the floor, and the rat that had been inside it thudded lifeless onto the tiles. Master Ostrum held my arm politely, leading me to my seat and making sure I was settled there. Then he turned back to the girl on the gurney.
The amputation had become an autopsy.
TWELVE
Nedra
The ferry was quieter on the return to Blackdocks than it had been this morning when we left. The wind had died down, too, and the waves were more like gentle hills than choppy cliffs. I let the boat rock away all my dark thoughts. This must be what wealth is like, I thought, being able to slip away from the bad things others can’t escape.
As we drew farther and farther away from the quarantine hospital, I could see the worry sliding from my fellow students’ faces. Their shoulders straightened. They looked toward Northface Harbor, not the hospital.
They talked about what they were going to get for lunch.
Grey and I were among the last to disembark from the ferry. He held his hand out for me to steady myself as I stepped onto the dock. His face turned toward the street winding up to Yūgen Academy. But I looked back.
I wanted to go home.
The longing of it hit me like a punch in the stomach. I missed my family, my friends. I missed being in a place and knowing that I was a part of it. I missed the church hall, I missed singing. I missed belonging.
“Ned?” Grey asked when I didn’t move.
I turned around, my eyes searching past the small island where the quarantine hospital was, farther, across the bay, to the northern shore. The coastline curved in a crescent, and I imagined picking out the spot where my village was.