Garden of Embers: Beneath Devouring Eyes #2

Chapter 10, Part C

One hour and a great deal of promenia later, Aix's new alumna was out of danger and resting peacefully in true slumber instead of a fevered delirium.

He straightened from their bedside, back popping in protest, and nodded at the five youths seated on the floor along the far wall. "Questions, young lifeholders?" he asked.

Cithara, his oldest alumna from the Garden Group, frowned. "Shouldn't we go to another room to talk, Aedificanti? They need to rest undisturbed, right?"

Aix smiled. "You have an instinct for patient needs," he praised. "However, I have placed our young friend here in a deep healing sleep. They will not rouse even if we invite the entire Regum Chorici  to rehearse in this bedchamber." He patted his sleeping alumna's hand--as promised, Radix did not stir--then glanced back at his other students, lifting his brows.

The children glanced at each other. Cithara offered an encouraging nod to Bacca, the Princeps Lifeholder's granddaughter. The girl darted to her feet in eagerness, folding her hands behind her back and rocking on her heels. "Aedilis, why did you use so much promenia?" she asked.

"That is a good question," Aix said. The girl beamed and sat back down. "Does anyone know the answer?"

Bacca's older brother shoved his hand in the air, eager as always to compete with his sister.

"Yes, Messio?" Aix encouraged. He pulled the coverlet up to Radix's shoulders.

"The patient's body can't fight off illnesses the way a Lightholder's can. So you needed to use more promenia to make up for what their immune system cannot handle by itself."

"Very good," Aix praised. As a precaution, he passed another wave of promenia through Radix, seeking lingering traces of the illness he'd just purged; the virus, smaller than promenia, could sometimes escape notice. It liked to lurk within cells, sometimes shedding its protein coating and hiding within the body's hereditary mechanisms.

The students dutifully observed, their promenia trailing his own like ducklings.

"Why is a Pyrrhaeus not able to fight off illnesses as we do?" Vitis, an Empowered from the Princeps Forgeholder's Epulae Factorum curia, asked.

"Because--" Messio began, breaking off as Aix held up a hand.

"Let's allow others to have a chance," he said as he withdrew his promenia from the dark dampness of Radix's lungs and, having seen no trace of the virus that had sickened them, released the particles back to their unkeyed state. The bedchamber hummed with the silent golden hymn of pure possibility as the young lifeholders did likewise. "Does anyone else have an idea?"

The Empowered nonbinary youth from the Rex's Curia Regis flung an arm into the air, their angular face full of exaggerated boredom.

Aix sighed. "Yes, Vinealis?"

Their lip curled. "The Pyrrhaei can't fight off illnesses like we can because they can't do anything as we can. They're Pyrrhaeus. Worse than Lightless. Worse than sub-Lightless. Inferior. Defective."

Aix restrained the urge to scowl. Vinealis was likely just parroting something they'd heard their elders say, but Aix would give no space to such bigotry in his classroom. He met the youth's brown eyes with his steel-gray gaze. "You will not say that again," he said firmly, ignoring the child's dropping jaw. The youth had likely not been spoken to in such a manner before. Aedilis Nubila had been quite low ranking compared to her pupils; Aix was not.

He turned aside and allowed the shocked child space to process their chastisement, nodding instead for Bacca to speak as the youth once again darted to her feet.