4. Irina

Chapter four

Irina

M y thirteenth summer began as my second year in Master Rist's apprenticeship trudged along. Time did not move differently; it still felt like wading barefoot through a pond of syrup. Each morning, I would meet him in his study, where he would give me a reading assignment. While he and the others tended patients, I studied alone. Every twenty or thirty minutes, Finn or Siena would appear in the doorway with instructions on which exam rooms needed cleaning. Near the end of each day, if the flow of patients allowed, the Master would return to his study and drill me on whatever lesson I was supposed to learn.

The whole thing felt more like self-study with some indentured servitude mixed in than tutelage.

I missed Colin, and that surprised me. The boy was afraid of his own shadow but could be funny, in his own way. He wasn't fortunate enough to have physiker parents, so his knowledge lagged far behind mine. Still, that had given me the opportunity to mentor him; and I recognized that nothing reinforces lessons like having to teach someone else.

More than anything, the boy had kept me company.

But I wasn't sad.

Learning to become a physiker was my dream—and what girl in this man's world got to live her dream? Most toiled in their homes beside bone-tired mothers—or worse, in a field with weathered fathers. I worked, but it was of an entirely different sort.

My labor was aimed at a goal.

My efforts would one day be rewarded with a life for which most could only wish.

Still, spending my days alone made them feel longer and far lonelier.

My third year was one of great change.

My studies shifted, and I spent only about half of each day with my nose in a book or scroll, while the rest was dedicated to observing either Master Rist or Siena caring for patents. Finn was still not allowed to see patients on his own, but he assisted in minor treatments while I stood in a corner and watched.

It felt so strange. I grew up watching Mother or Father tend to even serious wounds. The simple therapies I now observed were nothing compared to those of my formative years. And yet, there was something new and gratifying about standing by as Master Rist worked his art. The two-year hiatus from working with patients gave me a new appreciation—or perhaps a new understanding—of the preciousness of life and how it must be tended.

As much as I learned, and despite all I'd already known, watching one of the Kingdom's greatest physikers in action humbled me in ways no book or exam ever could. It didn't matter if the patient before our Master suffered from fevers or had broken a limb, he knew exactly what to do. He asked so many questions and listened attentively, but he never hesitated once a diagnosis was clear.

But it wasn't his knowledge or application of cures that brought wonder to my eyes; it was the very way of the man. It was his manner and how he wrapped each man or woman in the warmth of his presence. Rist's gentle touch, his easy smile, the way he joked or teased with the most guarded of children—he reminded me of my parents and how their voices could calm even the most anxious patient. Were all physikers so compassionate? Was their demeanor as vital as whatever elixir they prescribed?

Midway through that year, we were summoned to the Palace. No one would tell us why. Master Rist ordered our smocks cleaned and pressed, then instructed us to meet him outside the front door at noon. We watched in confusion as he bolted the door and hung a sign on a hook that read, "Away on His Majesty's Business."

We were ushered into the Throne Room, a long hall with majestic columns that climbed higher than I could see. On a three-tiered dais at the end of the room, the royal couple sat on ornate thrones. A flock of advisors and ladies in waiting flanked the monarchs on the steps below.

As the castellan halted a dozen feet before the bottom step, bowing deeply, I realized we were not called to attend some royal malady. This was an official audience.

No one spoke.

I could barely breathe.

The King glared down, his eyes impassive, his face stone.

Queen Asin ended the silence, releasing her husband's hand and rising. She was striking, standing as tall as the King but with the beauty and grace of a goddess.

"Master Bernard Rist, attend me," she said as she descended the first tier to stop on the second and extend her hand.

Master Rist waddled forward, his head bowed, until he struggled to his knees on the top step of the first tier. Taking the Queen's hand, he pressed his lips to her skin, then rested his forehead where his lips had been.

I could not hear the words they exchanged, but the Queen's smile deepened as they spoke, and I swear the King's lips quirked upward.

Then the Queen withdrew her hand. "Master Rist, rise and stand with me, please."

"Forgive my knees, Majesty," he said just loud enough for us to hear, and my jaw nearly hit the marble stones when Queen Asin reached out and braced the Master as he straightened and took his place one step down and to her right.

"Senior Apprentice Siena Clera, attend me," Queen Asin said.

I snuck a glance to find Siena and Finn gaping as openly as I had only a moment before.

Siena stood frozen so long the Queen had to lift a brow to move her from her spot. When the apprentice kneeled before her Queen, Asin did not release her hand or allow her to stand, but spoke in a clear voice for all to hear.

"Siena Clera, the Crown has learned of your deeds."

"Your Majesty—?" Siena looked up.

The Queen silenced her with a glare.

"You have been apprenticed in the Medica for a decade. You have studied diligently and served your Master with distinction. In this, you have served the Crown and our Kingdom, as well." It felt as though the Throne Room breathed beneath those words. Siena's shoulders relaxed, and Master Rist broke into a wide smile. The light of the braziers was spotty where he stood, but I caught a hint of moisture in his eyes, too.

"By order of His Majesty, from this day forth, you are apprentice no longer."

A page appeared beside the Queen and handed her a bundle. She unfurled a beautiful blue smock with the royal crest stitched on the upper left.

"Rise, Physiker Siena Clera, and take on the mantle of a healer of the realm."

For the first time in the years I'd known her, Siena's hands shook, and I saw something other than loathing cross her face. If I hadn't known her so well, I would've thought the girl felt joy—or whatever came closest to that emotion in her dim heart.

The Queen helped Siena remove her white smock and don her Blues.

Rist lost his battle with the moisture.

Finn muttered, "Well, bugger me."

And, despite the gulf that forever widened between Siena and me each time we stepped into the same room, pride swelled in my chest. She might have been cold as the stones beneath our feet, but Siena was one of us—and she was the first to graduate to the level of physiker in many years.

I turned sixteen in my fourth year.

I worked eleven hours by Master Rist's side, seeing one patient after the next. Spring might bring flowers and renew life, but it also brought a wave of seasonal illness that kept every physiker west of the Spires running at a hectic pace.

The Master instructed me to clear down our work area before he raced a few blocks away to make one last call. We had yet to take on any younger apprentices, so the task of resetting exam rooms still fell to me.

I pulled stretchy gloves up to my elbows and began pouring the pungent cleaning liquid onto a rag. After so many years working in the infirmary, I thought I might be used to the smell, but my nose still wrinkled every time I opened the brown bottle.

I startled as thunder clapped in the distance and the shudders rattled. Cleaner splashed onto the floor. I looked up to see a deluge of rain battering the window's panes, blowing sideways on the angry wind. I clucked my tongue at my own skittishness, calmed myself, and returned to scrubbing.

A few moments later, a voice screamed above the storm's wrath.

"Help! Somebody, come quick! It's Master Rist. Spirits, help me, please!"

The Master?

My mind tore free from the day's mundane tasks as white-hot fear shot up my spine.

I tossed the rag onto the exam table, tore off my gloves, and raced down the hallway as fast as I could run. When I burst into the receiving room, I could barely process what I saw. Master Rist lay sprawled on the floor, his light blue smock now a quilt of crimson, blue, and black splayed around his body. Blood seeped from a gash on his forehead, and a sea of the stuff pooled on the cold stone beneath.

A piece of jagged wood jutted out of his torso.

"What happened?" I barked, biting back the panic that strummed within, desperate for the physiker's calm to claim me.

A water-logged Constable spoke in rapid, clipped words that pricked my skin like briars in a wood. "We were headed back from his last call. The storm grew bad. Several wagons blew into each other on the road nearby, and that wood broke free. The Master was crossing the street when it all happened." The man gaped in wide-eyed wonder as he pointed to the wood jutting out of Rist's chest. "What do we do with that ?"

I threw myself to the ground, my knees cracking painfully against the tile, and pointed down the hallway. "Go get my bag from the last exam room on the right. We need cloth and cleaning liquids for his head. And call for Siena and Finn."

The other apprentices had left after the last patient, intent on enjoying a pint or three before the sun slept. Hoping either might hear the Constable's cries was foolish, but I had little else with which to work than desperate hope.

The Constable stood frozen. "But that wood—"

"Go!" I shouted, mustering the command I'd heard so often in my father's voice.

The man's storm-soaked shoes squished down the hall as I turned back to Rist. Gripping scissors in my shaking hand, I cut away his precious smock, tossing the fabric aside to better see the spear jutting out of his flesh. The wood was about the width of my wrist. The jagged shard rising from his chest had splintered, and I worried how many fragments now lodged inside my Master and what parts they might have pierced.

I reached under him, probing his back, but couldn't feel an exit wound.

Rist groaned as I removed my hand.

"Master, can you hear me?"

His eyes fluttered open, but they roamed past my face, unseeing through a haze of pain and delirium. He passed out as quickly as he'd woken.

"Hurry up!" I shouted, my own panic rising.

"I'm coming," I heard from down the hall.

As I looked closer at the wound, I realized this was far more complex than any injury I'd treated. If something like this came in the door, Rist might let me observe, but I would not be allowed to so much as assist with treatment. Siena, in her freshly minted Blues, might not have been allowed to touch such a patient.

My mind raced.

I had no idea where to begin.

If I pulled the wood out, he could bleed out.

But I couldn't just leave a spike inside a man. He'd die just as easily from that.

I probed the skin around the entry, and blood raced to the surface and coated my fingers. My teacher was dying in front of my eyes, and I had no clue how to save him.

In that moment of terror, two things happened.

First, the Constable returned and dumped the bag of bottles, cloths, and equipment to the floor beside me with a loud thud. I barely heard it over my own thundering heartbeat and the raging storm outside.

Then, an uncontrollable heat rose within me. It felt like the sun rising above the Spires, a dim glow at first that grew into a blazing heat that warmed all it touched.

Light blossomed in my palms.

The Constable staggered back and yelled something.

The Light was blinding—and beautiful. It begged to . . . to be released.

Without a thought, I did the last thing any physiker should do: I gripped the wood with one hand, pulled it free from Rist's chest, and tossed it aside. Blood exploded from the gaping wound. What stones lay untouched were drenched. My smock turned from white to red in an instant. I tasted bitter copper on my tongue.

Rist's face lost all color, as though the blood spurting out had stolen his very life.

The glow from my other palm flared, and Light surged into the wound, a river undammed and raging toward the sea. Rist's body lurched, his chest arched high, and he moaned so loudly I was sure the whole city heard his cry.

I gaped.

Was I helping or killing him?

I couldn't tell—but the Light didn't care. It thundered out of me, untamed, uncontrolled.

Everywhere blood marred skin, the Light flowed.

Master Rist began to glow.

Time froze, yet somehow crept forward. I hovered over Rist's limp form, magic coursing out of my spirit into his. I had no idea how to use whatever power flowed through me, so I squeezed my eyes shut and uttered a prayer to the Spirits for guidance.

As if in celestial reply, an image formed in my mind, a vision of the inside of a man's chest. Desperate, I imagined my hands moving from one injury to the next. I cleaned, mended, sewed, and drained, over and over in my mind's eye, until the cavity appeared as perfect and whole as was illustrated in Rist's books. Then I drew the skin across the chest and sewed it closed with threads of glistening Light.

My eyes opened wide, and I gasped as the wound on Rist's forehead sealed, leaving no trace of any injury save the blood staining his skin. When the glow faded, the gash in Rist's chest was replaced by a pink line of newly formed skin.

I had no idea how long the Light had consumed me. It had felt like only moments—and lifetimes, as well.

I looked up to find the Constable slumped against the far wall, his eyes wide and mouth agape. Finn sat beside him, his expression the same. Siena stood opposite, arms crossed, glaring down, her face an unreadable mask.

Exhaustion overtook every other sensation.

I slumped to the floor, and unconsciousness took me.