Physicians were supposed to save people, not ensure they died young by hiring them as a hack and watching magic wear them down.
Down the line, Laurence dismissed students one after another. I picked at the edges of my nails, peeling back the skin and healing it together again. Laurence directed Charles to inspect the giant’s hands, and I turned away to avoid the flare of magic in my sight. He too was sent away after Laurence asked who he practiced on if not himself.
“Physician du Montimer.” I bowed my head and held out my hands.
Laurence stooped to study them. Unlike Charles, he wore his coat, the dark scarlet of dried blood, open over a high-collared white shirt and wonderfully intricate doublet embroidered with silver. He had no insignia, no heirlooms, and no jewelry marking his rank as the male heir to the crown; only a golden artist’s band on his right first finger and an opal drop hung from a piercing in his ear. He threw one arm back and beckoned for Charles.
“I spoke to her on the road.” Charles didn’t look at me. “It would be unfair.”
We had barely spoken and hardly anything of import; was he trying to single me out?
Laurence hummed deep in the back of his throat and took my hands in his. The hook of his artist’s band, designed to open skin and bleed the wearer for the trickiest, most costly of arts, dug into my palm. “Who are you?”
“Emilie Boucher.” I bowed my head deeper than necessary. This was Laurence du Montimer, the man who had regrown a lung the moment it was needed—he had passed out for days, of course, but the patient had lived—when such speed of transformation was thought impossible. No one had been able to replicate it yet.
“You’re from Côte Verte,” he said, still staring at my hands. Behind him, Charles’s gaze jerked to me. “Near the city of Marais, judging by the minerals in your bones.”
I had seen him work no art.
“You have practiced quite a lot.” He flattened my bare hand between his. His hands were a web of scars, most a shade darker than his brown skin but others burned in my sight, empty and yawning, as if the thin, sapped-of-color skin that had grown over wasn’t really there at all. Scars from channeling too much power. “You want to be a hack, yes?”
“Physician, but hack for now.” The words were out of my mouth before I could think. It was what I had said for ages when people asked what I wanted.
Laurence’s eyes flicked up to mine, expression inscrutable. “Admitted. Join Charles.”
A rushing filled my ears. My chest ached. I rocked on my toes until I was Rainier’s height. “Thank you.”
I joined Charles and the other hack admitted so far. My hands trembled, fingers clammy and sticking to my shirt. I stayed close to the line, and Madeline stared at me, brown eyes bright, until Rainier moved to join me, and Laurence turned to her. Charles glanced at me.
“You’re not the first person to come here thinking that once you show them all how great you are, they’ll see the error of their ways and let you be a physician,” he whispered. “If that were anyone but Laurence you had said that to, being turned away would have been the kindest thing done to you.”
I scoffed. “First person? Please. You can just say girl.”
“I really can’t. Girls aren’t the only ones who have to prove they can be physicians.” Before Charles could say more, Laurence called him over to speak to Madeline.
Laurence directed Madeline to the gate. Rainier whooped quietly, and she hid her face behind a hand.
“Please stop embarrassing me,” she said when she got to us, “before we even begin studying.”
I laughed. The other accepted students chuckled behind me. There were six hacks total and several assistants. Laurence dismissed the last two applicants and, head cocked to the right, narrowed his eyes at Charles.
“Did you lose my spot?” Laurence asked.
Charles held up the book—The Anatomy of Self-Defense: A Physician’s Guide to Mortal Immunity and the Arts by Laurence du Montimer—and flicked the white ribbon hanging from the pages. Laurence sighed.
“Good. Thank you.” He took the book back and flipped it open to the ribbon. “You all have an acceptable understanding of the arts to study and serve as hacks. Congratulations. Follow me.
“For the next two weeks, you will be taught the basics of human anatomy, common injuries, the