"Here. He's been unconscious since they were dragged out," the Healer replied, mouth set in a hard line. "Look, Herald Pol, I'm not trying to cause trouble, but I don't like some of the things we've uncovered, or the way those other boys are acting; it seems to me that they want desperately to hide something, and it has to do with that younger boy. It's hard to tell, under the burns, but we think there's a lot of bruising all over him that doesn't look accidental, and it definitely looks as if he's been caned."
Pol hadn't been around the Court as long as he had without gathering a fair understanding of how "ordinary" children sometimes acted. "You think he's being bullied, knocked around—"
"I think he was being tortured," the Healer interrupted, icily. "That's what we'd call it in an adult, and I see no reason to call it by a lesser name in children. I've been trying to get the Guard to call in some of the other, younger children of the school to find out what those older boys could have been up to, but they haven't paid any attention to me. They keep saying that the younger children couldn't possibly know anything about it."
Pol eyed his physician with a lifted eyebrow. "You've had some... personal experience with bullies, I take it?"
The Healer's mouth twisted into a thin smile as ironic as Pol's own. "I was an incipient Healer—which means empathic and sensitive—in a Holderkin family. What do you think?"
Pol winced. He had taken one circuit in Holderkin lands; male children were raised to be manly men, autocratic rulers of their children and (multiple) wives, rough, taciturn, and without emotion, as warmhearted as granite. Females were expected to be subservient in all things, bowing to the will of any male older than ten. No child growing up with the Healer's Gifts could survive long in such an environment without becoming the target of attempts to "toughen him up," and "make a proper man of him."
"Well, the Guard has to listen to a Herald," he replied, deciding—as he was sure the Healer had intended he should—to take a personal interest in this case. After all, Haven was his circuit, in a sense. If the current Heralds assigned to the city hadn't seen the implications that this Healer pointed to, Pol could deal with it. "You'll have to get me fit for duty, though."
The Healer responded with a tight smile. "No fear of that," he replied. "The Guard has requested to be present when he wakes, to question him."
"Then I will tell the Guard that I need to be present as well." He paused. "Just what do you think the other boys were doing to him—exactly?"
The Healer lost his smile. "I think they were roughing him up, then went on to beating him, but were planning on doing something that involved fire—perhaps burning him with coals, or branding him. Something went wrong—perhaps one of them had long sleeves that caught fire—and they reacted in panic. The fire spread, and the ringleaders were killed. That leaves the followers and the victim, and the followers haven't got enough imagination or cohesion as a group to come up with a story to cover themselves. The problem is, if this takes too long, their parents are likely to concoct a story for them."
Pol nodded. "Right. I'll be asking the younger children about that. Meanwhile—" he gestured to his head. "Fix this, please, and I'll get to it when you judge me fit for duty."
*
THERE'S nothing like a Healer with private motivation, he thought a day and a half later, as he pulled out a seldom-used formal uniform from his wardrobe. It's amazing what can be done when your Healer really wants you on your feet.
:Is that why you never have so much as a sniffle?: Satiran teased. The Companion, so Pol had been told, had fretted so much during his period of unconsciousness that he'd lost a fair amount of weight. Now that Pol was awake and recovered, he was making up for that by stuffing himself, and no one begrudged him, least of all his Herald.
:Of course, but that's also self-interest,: Pol replied with a chuckle. :Ilea doesn't want to catch anything from me, after alclass="underline" He changed trews and shirt, and began lacing up the white, blue-and-silver-trimmed doeskin tunic. :Think you can be ready to go into Haven when I get done talking to the Guard in charge of this case?:
:I would be ready even if I wasn't ready,: Satiran replied instantly. :I do agree with that Healer of yours; something very rotten has been going on in that school, if bullies thought they could torment a victim inside the building and didn't worry about getting caught:
Pol nodded, as he made his way to the Guard barracks. That was another point that no one else had considered. Perhaps some might have dismissed it as irrelevant, but it bothered him. Taken with everything else, this school needed looking into. Just who, exactly, was in charge?
The Guard in Haven that stood sentry on the Palace and Collegia and patrolled the city itself had their barracks on the Palace grounds, connected to the Palace by a private entrance that only a few that were not of the Guard ever used. A clerk-Guardsman in the uniform of midnight-blue and silver on duty at a desk inside the main entrance directed him to the Captain in charge of city patrols and investigations.
The Captain was not anyone that Pol had worked with before, but Pol wasn't worried; people who were inflexible and difficult to reason with didn't last long posted to Haven. The King himself saw to that.
The Captain was in his own tiny office, hardly more than a cubicle crowded with records, and was hard at work on some other paperwork when Pol tapped on his door and entered his workspace. The Captain waved him to the only other seat in the room, absently scribbling down a few more lines.
Pol took a stack of documents off the chair and sat down. With a sigh of relief, the Captain signed and sealed the paper he was working on, and shoved it into a box with a dozen others like it. He was about the same age as Pol, and just as fit and trim as any active Herald, with a few streaks of gray in his thick, wavy brown hair, and intensely curious hazel eyes.
"What can I do for you, Herald—?" he asked.
"Pol. I'm going to be doing some investigation on that fire at the Merchants' School," he said—or rather, stated.
The Captain tilted his head to the side. "I would have thought that was fairly simple. An unruly lot of adolescent troublemakers started a fire and it got away from them. That's what the Schoolmaster thinks."
But Pol shook his head. "The Healers found marks of a beating and a caning on that boy who's still unconscious, and he was several years younger than all of the others. The rest were the same age, and very much larger and stronger than he is. They don't have a satisfactory explanation for why they were in that room, nor why they were there after hours, nor why they were with a boy they should have had no contact with. Taken with this Schoolmaster's story, I think there's a great deal that needs looking into, not only in the incident itself, but in the school."
"What if the Schoolmaster himself caned the boy as punishment?" the Captain countered.
"Wouldn't he have mentioned it?" Pol replied. "Wouldn't he have pointed to that specific boy as a troublemaker? I should think that would be the first thing he would have said; it would have given a logical place for the investigation to start, and a logical perpetrator."