Chapter 112: Being Noticed Is a Medical Condition

The infirmary ceiling at Zenith had two hundred and eleven tiles.

I counted them twice, because Lena had confiscated my ability to leave and there was very little else available.

"You’re counting."

"I’m resting."

"You’re counting out loud."

"That’s a separate problem."

Lena did not look up from whatever she was writing, which was now on its fourth page and showed no signs of slowing.

"Three ribs," she said. "Not four. The fourth one is bruised and pretending."

"That’s what I said."

"You said possibly four."

"I was being generous to the fourth one."

She made a note.

I had been in the infirmary for nine hours.

Most of that had involved lying still, which under normal circumstances I consider an excellent use of time, and which had become insufferable within about forty minutes because I could not stop thinking.

Gold.

Not green.

Green is what healing looks like.

Green is what every healing spell I have ever cast has looked like, from a border tent at eleven years old to a training hall yesterday.

The light in that hall had been gold, and it had spread across the floor in lines, and I had seen those lines before with five people standing on five stones inside an illusion.

’System.’

[Yes.]

’Have you finished looking.’

[No.]

’It has been nine hours.’

[Yes.]

That was all it said.

The System had been like this since the moment it happened.

Not silent, which would have been worse.

Present, responsive, and entirely unwilling to discuss the one subject I needed discussed, which is a specific kind of unhelpfulness that requires effort.

***

Penelope arrived at the tenth hour with a bag, a flat expression, and the particular walk she uses when she has decided something and is waiting to see whether I will make it difficult.

"You stood in front of it."

"Hello to you too."

"Alash."

"Six people were in the blast line. I was closer than Darius."

"That isn’t an answer to what I said."

"It’s an answer to the question underneath it."

She sat down.

For a while she didn’t say anything, which from Penelope is a warning rather than a rest.

"Everyone is talking about the light," she said finally.

"I assumed."

"Not about you almost dying. About the light."

"That’s Zenith for you. Priorities."

"Alash."

I stopped.

She was not doing the exasperated thing.

She was doing the other thing, the one from when we were ten and she had asked whether the engagement meant we were friends and I had made a joke instead of answering.

"What was it?" she said.

And here is the part I have been managing badly for five years.

I could have told her that I didn’t know.

That would have been true.

But it would also have been the fourth time this year I have answered a real question from Penelope Declair with something technically accurate and deliberately hollow, and she has started counting, and I have started noticing that she counts.

"I don’t know," I said. "That’s not a deflection. I have no idea what that was, the System has no idea what that was, and the not-knowing is significantly worse than the ribs."

Penelope studied me.

"The System."

Ah.

"The what?"

"You said the System."

"I said the system. Lowercase. The academy’s system. The healing system."

"You did not say it like that."

"I’m concussed."

"Lena said you weren’t concussed."

"Lena is being pessimistic."

Penelope looked at me for a long, flat moment, and then chose, visibly and deliberately, not to pull the thread.

Which was somehow worse than if she had.

"Fine," she said.

"Penelope."

"I said fine." She stood, put the bag on the table, and did not look at me. "There are clothes in there. You’ll want them, because you’re not going to be allowed to hide in here much longer."

"I’m injured."

"You’re famous."

***

She was, unfortunately, correct.

I discovered the extent of it the next morning, on a walk from the infirmary to Sanctuary that should have taken six minutes and took twenty-four.

The first group stopped talking when I came around the corner.

That happens. People stop talking for all sorts of reasons.

The second group stopped talking, and then one of them said something, and then all of them looked.

By the fourth group I had accepted the situation, and by the sixth I had started evaluating alternative routes.

"Is it true you glowed?"

"No."

"My cousin says the floor glowed."

"The floor did not glow."

This was technically true in the sense that the floor had not produced light on its own initiative.

"Did you really block a Force detonation with one barrier?"

"It was a small detonation."

"Marren said the sound cracked the observation glass."

Marren, I decided, was going to be a problem.

I made it past the east hall before someone asked the question I had been dreading, which was not about the blast at all.

"Is it true you’re doing something to the class leaders?"

I stopped.

"What?"

The student, a Class Four boy who looked immediately as though he regretted every choice that had led him to this corridor, tried to retreat inside his own collar.

"There’s a thing going around. That you’ve been... doing something. To Trohan, and now Vellaroux. Some kind of healing thing that isn’t healing."

"Who told you that?"

"Everyone’s saying it."

Which meant no one had started it, and everyone was continuing it, which is the only kind of rumour that cannot be stopped.

’System.’

[Yes.]

’How bad is this.’

[You used an unexplained skill on two of the five most closely observed students in this building, in public, twice in one week, and the second time it produced a light nobody has a category for.]

’That was not a number.’

[There is no number. It is simply bad.]

***

Cedric was waiting outside Sanctuary.

He had clearly been waiting for some time, in the way people wait when they have rehearsed something and are now watching the rehearsal fall apart in real time.

"Leader."

"Cedric."

"I need to..."

"No."

"You don’t know what I was going to say."

"You were going to apologise."

He stopped.

"...Yes."

"Then no."

"That’s not how apologising works."

"It’s how this one works." I sat down on the low wall by the door, mostly because standing had become a negotiation again. "What happened?"

Cedric’s jaw tightened.

"I pushed both attributes at once against a sealed barrier. That’s a first-year mistake. That’s a mistake they warn you about in the first lesson. I knew that and I did it anyway because I wanted to break it in one hit, in front of Class Two, because I’m the only S in this class and I keep..."

He stopped.

"You keep needing people to see it," I said.

He looked at the ground.

"Yes."

"Good."

"...Good?"

"You just explained exactly why you did it, without excuses, forty seconds after I asked. Most people take years to get there. Some never do." I shifted, found an angle that did not involve ribs, and failed. "The apology is worthless to me. That was worth something."

Cedric was quiet.

"You almost died."

"Yes."

"Because of me."

"Partly. Also because seventy-five people were in a reinforced room with attributes, which is a category of accident that was going to happen to somebody eventually." I looked at him. "You’ll carry it either way. I can’t take that off you and I’m not going to pretend I can. What I can do is give you something to do with it."

"What?"

"You’re training coordinator. Write the safety rules for Sanctuary’s sessions. Real ones, not the academy’s. The ones that would have stopped you."

Cedric stared at me.

"That’s not a punishment."

"No."

"It’s worse."

"Considerably."

***

Roland found me before I made it up the stairs, which by now I had accepted as simply how Roland functions.

"Leader."

"Don’t."

"Sorry, Leader." He fell into step beside me, slowing without being asked, which he did not comment on and which I noticed. "I’m calling in the favour."

"You said you’d think of something."

"I thought of something."

"That was two days ago."

"I think quickly."

We reached the landing. He stopped.

"I want you to tell me what you’re doing."

I looked at him.

"Doing."

"Lena. Then Trohan, in front of two classes. Then me, right after you handed me a job. Then Ellowen, that same week. Then Vellaroux, in a training hall, in front of everyone, and the floor lit up." He counted them off without any particular drama, the way his family presumably counted bolts of cloth. "Five people in six days. That’s not a healer being helpful. That’s a list."

The corridor was, thankfully, empty.

"It’s practice," I said. "New skills need use."

"That’s the same answer you gave me two days ago."

"It’s still the same answer."

"It was a bad answer then."

Roland did not look angry. That was the worst part. He looked like a man conducting a transaction he had already priced.

"I’m not going to tell anyone," he said. "I want to be clear about that. Whatever it is, I’m not selling it, and if someone asks me I’ll say something boring and they’ll believe it because I’m good at that."

"Then why ask."

"Because I’d rather hear it from you than work it out on my own." He shrugged. "I’m going to work it out on my own. I’d just prefer not to."

I thought about that for longer than I should have.

"Not yet," I said.

Roland nodded slowly.

"That’s not a no."

"No."

"Better than the last one."

He went up the stairs.

*** 𝒻𝘳ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝒷𝘯ℴ𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝑐ℴ𝑚

The message arrived that evening, delivered by an academy assistant who did not wait for a response, which told me most of what I needed to know before I read it.

---

ZENITH ACADEMY

OFFICE OF THE HEADMASTER

Alash Vortex, Class Five.

Attend at the ninth bell tomorrow.

Bring nothing.

---

I read it three times.

"Bring nothing" is not a normal instruction. "Bring nothing" means someone has anticipated that you might want to bring something, and has decided in advance that you will not be permitted to.

Penelope read it over my shoulder, because of course she did.

"That’s the Headmaster."

"Yes."

"About the light."

"Almost certainly."

"What are you going to tell him?"

Which was an excellent question, and one I had been avoiding for a full day, and which I now had approximately fourteen hours to answer.

Theoran Vale was eighty-one years old. He had run this academy for longer than my father had held a title. He had watched five thousand students lie to him about smaller things than this, and in the one conversation I had properly had with him, he had looked at me for about four seconds and correctly identified the exact thing I was trying not to say.

’System.’

[Yes.]

’You have until the ninth bell.’

[To do what.]

’To finish looking.’

A pause.

[I am aware of the deadline.]

’That’s not a yes.’

[No.]

I put the message down.

Outside, Sanctuary was doing what Sanctuary did in the evenings, which was generate an enormous amount of noise about nothing, and somewhere in the middle of it Cedric was reading his safety rules aloud to people who had not asked to hear them.

Fourteen hours.

I had spent five years being carefully, deliberately overlooked. Lazy enough to be dismissed. Useful enough to be left alone. It had been the single most successful strategy of my entire mortal life, and it had lasted exactly until the moment a training hall floor lit up gold underneath me.

I picked up Dream Haven.

Held it slightly tighter than necessary.

Preventive measure.