Lady Severine announced him the way she announces everything: as the next item on a list.
"Lord Felix Aquilan, of Bellonia. He will join this class for general studies and for Dame Valeria's battle class." She looked up over her spectacles. "Lord Felix will sit where there is a desk."
There was one empty desk in the room. It was the one beside mine.
I'd suspected it would be. I'd watched two maids carry it in that morning.
Felix came in grinning, as if the classroom had been built as a surprise for him. His dark coat was fastened at the throat with a small bronze pin: a black eagle with its wings spread, a bronze lightning bolt in its claws. His two escorts followed him, tall women in plain dark armor with the same bronze eagle at the shoulder, who looked as though they hadn't smiled since they left Bellonia, and possibly not before. They took the plain desks beside his without a word.
Felix sat down, looked at me, looked past me at Ambrose, and beamed.
"Neighbors," he said.
"Neighbors," I agreed.
He leaned forward. "Hello. I'm Felix."
Ambrose looked up from his book. "Ambrose."
"What are you reading?"
"Ditches."
Felix waited. Ambrose went back to his book.
"Does he always talk like that?" Felix whispered to me.
"Yes," said Ambrose, without looking up.
Felix's whole face lit up, as though someone had handed him a present.
Three men in one row. I don't think the girls behind us heard a word about the trade roads all morning. I started counting how many times someone turned around to look at our row, and stopped at forty, because Lady Severine looked at me.
Felix asked a question about nearly every road on the map. Most of them were jokes. Lady Severine answered every single one as though it weren't, exactly and completely, with distances, and I think that confused him more than anything had since he'd crossed the border.
Halfway through the morning, she set us to copying a map in silence. And Ambrose, as he did every hour, took the tin out of his coat.
It was the one with the dent in the lid. He opened it, looked at the gel, wrote something in his notebook, and was about to close it again when Felix leaned over my desk.
"What's that?"
"Gel," said Ambrose.
I closed my eyes.
The headmistress had never told us to keep it secret. She'd never told us not to, either. Ambrose had taken the first as permission. I had taken the second as a warning.
"What does it do?"
"Heals."
Felix stopped smiling.
Not for long. Just for one breath, the way you stop walking when you hear your name in a crowd. Then the grin came back, exactly where it had been.
"Heals what?"
"Small things," said Ambrose. "So far."
"So far," Felix repeated. He looked at me. "Is this you? The Saint thing?"
"Some of it," I said, carefully. "Lord Ambrose does the rest."
"Water," said Ambrose.
"Water," said Felix, as though it were the most marvelous word he'd ever heard. "How long does it last?"
"Midnight."
"Only midnight?"
He said it too fast. It was the only question he'd asked all morning that didn't have a joke on the end of it.
Ambrose considered him. Ambrose considers everything before he does it; it's why everything he does looks sudden. Then he slid the tin across my desk.
"Look."
Felix picked it up as if it might break. He tilted it and watched the gel not move. He held it up to the window, where the faint green circle inside caught the light. Then, very gently, he touched it with one fingertip.
There was a small, sharp crackle, like a twig snapping in a fire. A thread of white light ran across the top of the gel and was gone.
"Sorry!" Felix snatched his hand back, laughing. "Sorry. It does that. When I'm—" He waved the hand. "It just does that."
"Excited," I said.
"Exactly."
He grinned at me, slid the tin back to Ambrose, and went back to copying his map. Beside him, one of his escorts laid her hand flat on her desk for a moment, the way you'd steady a cup on a moving cart.
Ambrose wiped the rim of the tin, put the lid back on, and wrote in his notebook. I leaned over to read it.
Touched. Spark. Nothing.
Nobody thought anything of it. Not even Ambrose.
Felix was reported before supper.
Lady Severine found us on the path back to the residence, with a sheet of paper and her spectacles exactly as far down her nose as they always are.
"Lord Felix. You have been reported."
"Already?" said Felix, delighted. "What for?"
"Laughing. Four times."
Felix laughed.
"Five," said Lady Severine.
Her pen went to the paper, the way it does when she writes Usual. It stayed there for a moment. Then she put the pen away without writing anything at all, and walked on.
I don't think Felix noticed. I'm not sure Lady Severine noticed either. I did.
That evening, I paid my debt.
Hana's six eggs, and a seventh I'd begged from the cook, who gave it to me along with a cabbage, because there is always a cabbage. The first time, I'd made six cakes out of one egg, because one egg was all I owned. This time I wanted an egg for every cake. Flour, honey, butter, the copper pots from my little kitchen, and Liesel sitting on the counter, which I'd asked her not to do, watching every step like a creditor. Wren stood by the door and hummed three busy notes.
"You're doing it wrong," said Liesel.
"You don't know how to make them."
"I know how they're supposed to taste. That's the important part."
They came out of the oven golden and a little lopsided. I counted them twice. Seven.
I'd just set them on the table when someone knocked, and the door opened before anyone answered it. Felix stood there with his escorts behind him, his nose in the air like a hound's.
"What is that smell?" He saw the plate. He saw the flour on my sleeves. He saw the pots. "Are you— were you cooking?"
"Yes."
"Men can cook?"
"Only when he owes someone," said Liesel.
Felix sat down at my table without being asked, which I was beginning to understand is how he sits down everywhere. His escorts stayed in the doorway beside Wren. Wren looked at them. They looked at Wren. Nobody said anything, very loudly.
"Can I have one?" said Felix.
"No," said Liesel.
"One?"
"They're mine. All seven."
"Why seven?"
"Interest."
Felix looked at me. "What does that mean?"
"It's a long story," I said. "It involves an egg."
I made tea, because Hana would have. Felix didn't drink his. He talked instead: about the road, about the dust, about the very small cheese someone had thrown into his carriage at the third ring, which he'd kept, because it seemed rude not to. I liked him. That was the strange part. I'd known him a day, and I liked him the way you like a fire in a cold room, without having to decide to.
"What's Bellonia like?" I asked.
"Oh, you'd hate it," said Felix. "Next question."
"What would I hate about it?"
"Everything. Next question."
"Why did you come?"
"To see the famous Saint, obviously." He grinned. "And the princess who said yes very loudly."
Liesel threw a dishcloth at him. He caught it, laughing.
I turned my cup around on the table. I'd been thinking about it since the balcony. I'm a healer. It seemed wrong not to say it.
"I heard your mother's unwell," I said. "I'm sorry."
The kitchen went quiet.
Felix's hand was resting on the table beside one of my copper pots. A spark jumped from his fingertips to the pot with a small, bright tink, and the pot rang very faintly, like a bell somebody had touched by mistake.
Then the grin came back.
"She's very stubborn," said Felix. "She'll be fine."
"If there's anything I can—"
"You're sweet." He turned to Liesel. "Is he always this sweet?"
"Yes," said Liesel.
"How do you stand it?"
Liesel didn't answer. She looked at him for a long moment, the way she looks at things she's decided are true. Then she took one honey cake off the plate and slid it across the table to him.
Felix looked at it.
"Interest," said Liesel. "Now you owe me."
For a second, his face did something that wasn't a grin.
Then he picked up the cake, bit into it, closed his eyes, and said with his mouth full, "Oh, that's unfair. Men shouldn't be allowed to do this."
"Six," I said, counting the plate.
"Six is fine," said Liesel.
Ambrose knocked on my door at dawn.
Ambrose never knocks at dawn. Ambrose never knocks at all. He just appears at our table by the infirmary window when it's time to work, as though he grew there.
"Look," said Ambrose.
He held out the tin. The one with the dent in the lid.
I looked at it. Then I looked past him at the window, where the sky over the garden was only just going gray.
"That was made yesterday morning."
"Yes."
"It should be water."
"Yes."
He opened the lid.
The gel sat there, clear and still, exactly as firm as it had been in class. The green circle was still in it. And running through it, so faint I had to hold my breath to see them, were tiny threads of white light, like frost cracking across a window. They were moving.
When I put my finger near it, the hairs on my knuckles stood up.
Ambrose took out his penknife.
"Please stop cutting yourself," I said.
He cut his thumb. A thread of yellow came up in his light, bright and annoyed. He scooped a little of the gel onto the cut, and flinched.
Ambrose doesn't flinch.
"...Prickly," he said.
"Prickly?"
He held up his thumb and studied it with deep interest. "Like a foot. Asleep."
The yellow faded. Slowly, the way it always does with the gel, but it faded, until the cut was a thin pink line and his light was white all the way through. The tin had sat on his desk all night, by itself, doing something nobody had asked it to do.
Ambrose opened his notebook to yesterday's page, found Touched. Spark. Nothing., and crossed out the last word. Underneath, he wrote: Morning. Not water. Prickly.
Then he underlined Spark twice.
"Touched," said Ambrose. "Spark."
We both looked up at the ceiling.
Somewhere above it, in the quarters over mine, Felix Aquilan was singing in his bath: loudly, cheerfully, and very badly.
"Ask," said Ambrose.
I thought about a question that didn't have a joke on the end of it. Only midnight? About a mother who was very stubborn and would be fine. About a spark jumping from a hand to a copper pot, and the pot ringing like a bell nobody meant to touch.
If we asked him, we'd have to tell him. Not everything. But enough. And before that, the headmistress would have to know. And Naomi. And Naomi would say No before I'd finished the sentence.
"Yes," I said. "But not first."
Above us, the singing stopped, just for a moment, as though someone had remembered something.
Then it started again, louder.