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  "What magic?" Kuriel said, ears flat. "All I see is that Nieve's dead, we're stuck in here and everyone's leaving. If there was magic, we'd all be healthy."

  "If we'd been healthy we wouldn't have met one another," Amaranth said. She crawled over to sit in front of Kuriel, to one side of Vasiht'h's forelegs. "Then you wouldn't know to miss us. Would you like that better?"

  Kuriel looked away, shoulders slumping. "No."

  "I'll tell you what's magic," Persy said. "Magic is deciding to help your friends. Magic is deciding we're going to get better. Magic is deciding we'll stick together afterward and do something for other kids like us, when we get older."

  "We are?" Kuriel asked.

  "We are?" Amaranth added, looking over at Persy.

  "Sure. Don't you think it would be nice? No one else has a Prince Jahir and Vasiht'h-Manylegs, and we only found them by accident, because they found us that day in the parking lot." Persy squared her shoulders. "Think of all the other kids like us who don't have someone like that. And we'd have gone through what they were going through. We could tell them it was going to work out okay."

  "Even when you die?" Kuriel said.

  "Nieve died happy," Amaranth said, quiet. "I don't know how she did that, but maybe we could help other people figure out how."

  "There's school for that, you know." His voice didn't tremble, though he didn't know how when he felt such a soaring pride in them. "For becoming a helpmeet to children like you. They'd prepare you for the job you're talking about."

  "Can you imagine us with degrees?" Kuriel said, distracted from her fears. "Like adults."

  "I never really imagine getting older," Amaranth confessed. "I kind of just believe we'll always be here, you know?"

  "Well, we won't," Persy said. "Either we'll die or we'll grow up, but either way we have to decide what to do with ourselves." She looked pleased with herself. "Right, Vasiht'h-alet?"

  "Exactly right," Vasiht'h said.

  "And what you have to do is leave," Amaranth said. She glanced at him. "Because you love him."

  Vasiht'h hesitated.

  "Do you?" Kuriel asked, curious. She looked up, ears flipping forward for the first time since his announcement.

  He started to speak, then closed his mouth. All three girls were waiting on him, though, and pinned by their artless attention he couldn't stay silent. "I do, yes. You can love friends enough to cross the worlds for them."

  Kuriel considered him a few moments longer, then dropped her gaze and petted his foreleg once. "Maybe there is magic in the world."

  He hugged her, and the others too when they tumbled into his lap. He was glad he had the extra limbs for it.

  Outside the room, Jill Berquist was waiting for him—for once standing, rather than sitting at her station with the cup of coffee their visits gave her the opportunity to savor. The human tilted her head. "How'd they take it?"

  "Surprisingly well," Vasiht'h said, and sighed. "Better than I'm taking it, honestly." His smile was rueful as he looked up at her. "Seersana was my first foreign destination, and as cosmopolitan as it is, I'm not sure how I feel about navigating Selnor."

  "You'll do fine," Jill said. "You Pelted, you're used to it. The melting pot of species, the multiculturalism, the busyness of it all. It'll be Seersana writ large, but you've got the Alliance in your bones. You'll find your feet. You've got a couple extra, it should help."

  He chuckled. "I hope so." Sobering, he said, "I never got to tell you how much I appreciated the chance to volunteer here. Thanks for letting us do it."

  She shook her head. "God, Vasiht'h. You did so much for them. I should be thanking you." She leaned down and wrapped her arms around him, squeezed. Surprised, he hugged her back, resting his nose against her shoulder, smelling antiseptic and coffee and some faint hint of lavender.

  Stepping back, Jill said, "Good luck, arii. Take care of him for us."

  "I will," Vasiht'h said, bemused.

  He didn't wonder, padding back to the apartment, how everyone could accept so easily that he'd become Jahir's keeper. He only wondered how everyone could have known before him. Including Jahir.

  It had been two weeks since his roommate's departure. Preparing for his own had taken much longer than he'd hoped. While he was glad it had given him time to say proper goodbyes to everyone, he was fretful at the delay. The trip to Selnor was going to take him longer than it had taken Jahir, who had found some lucky confluence of vessels, schedules and fares; another two weeks would elapse before he set foot on the capital world, and Goddess knew what could happen in that month.

  There was no help for it, though. Vasiht'h looked up into the summer sky, inhaled, and went home to finish his preparations.

  "You didn't have to do this," he said later to Luci.

  "Don't be ridiculous," the Harat-Shar said. "Of course I did." She stared at the short red vest and then folded it into a neat square. "Besides, it's not like packing for you is difficult. You barely have any clothes."

  "I don't mean the packing for me," Vasiht'h said, tucking his grooming kit into the bag. "I mean packing the apartment."

  Luci shook her head. "Don't bother yourself over it, arii. I'll get the quadmates to help me. We'll bring food, make a party of it. The four of us will be able to do it in far less time than you could alone, and you need to get going." She glanced at him. "Any idea how you're going to handle everything once you arrive?"

  "A little," Vasiht'h said. "I'll still be enrolled here, but I'll be taking classes remotely. Professor Palland arranged that for me. But they've extended that offer for one semester only because the classes are mostly lectures; I'll be taking the business electives on running a practice, so I don't actually have to be here." He drew in a deep breath, started folding his sari. The fabric shimmered as it slid over his fingers. "After this semester, they're going to evaluate whether it's working out and either give me another extension, or I'll have to transfer to one of Selnor's schools."

  "Where are you going to stay while doing all this?" Luci asked.

  "Goddess, I hope with Jahir," Vasiht'h said. "Because my budget is a little too modest to live alone. I'll figure something out, even if I have to borrow money from my parents."

  "Have you told them yet?" she asked, sitting on the couch to watch him finish.

  "My parents?" He shook his head. "I figured I'd call them once everything was settled. They'll worry less that way. It's not like their calls won't find me just because I'm in transit." His sister, though, he'd have to talk to first, or she might never forgive him.

  Luci studied him with dark eyes in her boldly striped face. She flicked her ears out and said, "Worried about what they'll say?"

  "No," Vasiht'h answered, sighed. "Not in the way you're thinking, anyway." He closed his carry-on. "Tea?"

  "Chocolate if you have it."

  He went to the kitchen and set out two cups. "This is going to sound ridiculous."

  Luci twisted to loop her arm over the back of the couch and look at him. "Try me anyway."

  "I'm a little afraid that if I talk about it to them, I might... make it come apart." Vasiht'h measured out the shaved chocolate for her cup, brown flakes tumbling into ivory ceramic. "Like it's not real yet. And delicate, and if I point too many people at it, it might never be realized." He glanced at her. "Does that sound as silly as it does in my head?"

  "You're the therapist," Luci said. "What would you tell yourself?"

  "That it doesn't matter if I'm right or not, if I make myself feel a certain way because of my beliefs," Vasiht'h said slowly. He put a pan of cream to warm for both their drinks. "I guess I'm just afraid."

  "That you won't be able to make it work?"

  "That I'll get there and he'll wonder why I came," Vasiht'h said, his ears flattening.

  Luci snorted. "That's the one thing that won't happen. Trust me, arii. You show up at the door? He'll let you in."

  "I hope you're right," he murmured.

  That night, he curled up in his r
oom on the bolsters and pillows that served as his bed. Months ago he'd had cause to give thanks to the Goddess and had folded a paper effigy of her that he'd decided to keep. He'd placed it on a pillow at eye-level before settling for the night.

  "This is it," he told Her. "My last night. I can't turn back now."

  She said nothing—it wasn't Her way—but he thought the way the starlight fell on Her face made Her look like She was smiling.

  Chapter 2

  Jahir's new supervisor was human, male, and vibrated with a tension even a non-esper could have felt from the threshold of the room. His agitation was powerful enough to give Jahir pause, and that after the arduous walk from his new residence to the sixth floor of the hospital, where the orientation was being conducted in a conference room. That walk had acquainted him with the size of Mercy, and it had staggered him to realize that the only building that could have rivaled it on his homeworld was Ontine, the royal palace. He'd been familiar with Seersana's All Children's and General Hospitals, but they had to be half the size of Mercy, if he was any judge... maybe even smaller.

  His entrance caused the only other person in the room to turn and look at him—an Asanii, one of the more humanoid felid races—and her movement caught the attention of the man. "You're not late," was the first thing he said. "But you're not early either."

  "My apologies," Jahir said. "I'll endeavor to be earlier in the future."

  "Sit." The man pointed to a chair with his stylus. "You look like you need it. You up too late seeing the sights or are you—" He stopped abruptly, frowning. "You sick?"

  "No," Jahir said, and took one of the empty chairs, glad of it. His heart was racing; it made him feel uncomfortably fragile. "I am merely not acclimated to the gravity here."

  "Oh hell. How bad is it?" The man raked him from foot to face with a glance. "Bad, from your build."

  The woman was looking at him with interest, white ears pricked toward him. He ignored her and said, "I am under the care of Healer Gillespie."

  "Already? Good. Glad you were proactive about that instead of trying to keep it hidden. We don't have time for that kind of thing. We're going to ask for everything—our patients need it—but it's your responsibility to tell us when you don't have it to give. Got that?" At Jahir's slight nod, the man continued, "I'm Griffin Jiron. Yes, that's really my name. I'm one of the advanced practice nursing team in the psychiatric department here, and you two have been generously assigned to me for the length of your stays. While you're here, you report to me. I set your schedules, I do your evaluations, I sign off on your stipends. You have trouble of any kind, or any questions, you come to me." He paused. "Questions so far?"

  "How many times have you given this speech?" the Asanii asked with a grin.

  Jiron snorted. "Not as often as it must sound. Which is something you'll have to learn while you're here: you have to think on your feet. Anything else?" He glanced at Jahir, accepted the silence and went on. "All right. Let's talk about Mercy. This is the biggest hospital on the planet. The planet that's also the capital world for the entire Alliance. There's no other facility to rival us for general practice in the Core and probably out of it. Before you ask—" Glancing at the woman, who'd opened her mouth, "No, not even in the summer capital. That would be because Fleet bases most of its ground offices in Terracentrus, including their medical center. They get a lot more Fleet people in residence over there, so a good part of their population reports to the military hospital. Terracentrus's largest hospital doesn't serve as big a percentage of the city's residents. So. Back to us?" He paused until she nodded, ears perked, and continued, "Five thousand beds. Nearly forty thousand permanent staff and any number of transients. And before the year is out we'll see almost six million visits, of which about six hundred thousand will be to our crisis care center."

  The numbers beggared the imagination. Jahir remembered his incredulity at reading that Seersana University's student population hovered between fifty and sixty thousand people a year; for someone whose homeworld probably barely supported enough people to fill one small Alliance city, the thought of so many people in one place had been beyond his ability to imagine. Finding himself working at a hospital with a staff the size of that student body...

  Jiron was continuing. "Psychiatry is Mercy's smallest department because we don't do dedicated psychiatric care. That's a cultural thing locally. Most people here prefer to handle psychiatric issues through religious ministries, community support or other species-specific outlets. We do see some dedicated cases, but most of our work involves supporting the rest of the hospital with patients who need someone but don't want to avail themselves of the on-site volunteer corps. Miss Valani, you did a specialty in physiological support of psychological health, so we'll put you to work in the nutrition, exercise and health support group under Healer Parkenfields." He paused. "That name's not a joke either."

  "Lot of that going around," the Asanii observed, grinning.

  "You have no idea," Jiron said. "Mister Jahir, you have a chemistry specialty, so we'll be assigning you to Doctor Levine. Her group handles the urgent crashes—what we call people coming into the crisis care system or coming out of operations."

  "Understood."

  "As one of the advanced nursing team, I rotate through all the groups within psychiatry," Jiron said. "I'll be starting out in yours, Valani-alet, before moving to crisis care." He glanced at Jahir. "Gillespie presumably set you up with a treatment program?"

  "She did, though I am not to meet with the physical therapist until tomorrow."

  "All right. Valani-alet, think you're up to finding your group on your own?"

  "I have my data tablet and a map, sir, I think I can manage."

  Jiron tapped the name badge on his loose, shapeless shirt. "It's Griffin. If you need to be formal, Griffin-alet."

  "Griffin," she said.

  "But call the doctors Doctor or Healer, depending on how they introduce themselves," Jiron said. "And in front of patients, Jiron-alet or Nurse Jiron is fine. I am Nurse, not Hea; I didn't go through healer-assist training in the Alliance. I don't know how strict they were about that in your graduate programs, but enough people here will be irritated if you get it wrong, so get it right."

  "Yes, Griffin!"

  He laughed. "All right. Go. If you have any trouble, ping me. And tell Healer Parkenfields to set you up with the hospital hardware and uniform."

  "Got it," she said, and added to Jahir on the way out, "Nice to meet you, and hope we have a chance to talk more soon."

  "Likewise," he said, bemused at her energy level. When he looked away from the door he found his supervisor studying him. The human's agitation had become a laser-like focus that might have been unsettling had Jahir simply not had the physical energy to feel nervous. In that state of calm, he saw the spark of compassion in Jiron's dark eyes he might otherwise have missed.

  "How bad is it?"

  Jahir said, "Not enough for me to leave, if that is the real question you're asking."

  "That's part of why I'm asking, yes," Jiron said, sitting back. "But not all."

  "Then may I ask what motivated the question?"

  That bought him another few moments of the human's regard, which he weathered in weary silence.

  "You came very highly recommended, Mister Galare."

  "Jahir," he murmured, because while he did not expect most non-Eldritch to understand how to use his name, he could not continue to listen to this particular mangling of it.

  "Jahir-alet." Jiron reached for his tablet and swiped through it before pausing. "You had no less than nine letters. Did you know that?"

  "Nine?" Jahir said, startled.

  "Nine," Jiron said. "Very glowing ones." He thumbed down one and said with the air of someone quoting, "'It may be that the isolation of his species has given him the opportunity to develop a perspective external to the Alliance's multiculturalism, one that allows him to observe it more clearly than those of us within it. He does not waste that adva
ntage, and his insights are often as uncanny as they are fresh.' A Professor Sheldan." He looked up. "Fan of yours, I'm guessing."

  "I would never have imagined him to write anything of the sort," Jahir said, startled, for he and Sheldan had had a less than amicable relationship.

  "Let's say the list of your admirers is pretty long, even for someone good enough to get into our student residency program," Jiron said. "What I want to know is whether you really are that good... because otherwise, someone with your physical health problems—or at least, the ones you seem to be having—would probably wash out within three or four weeks."

  Jahir had never thought of himself as a stubborn personality. Certainly he'd had his moments of intransigence, but for the most part, he tried to remain flexible. Hearing his fate set out so cavalierly by a man who was probably a tenth his age, though, made him want, very passionately, to prove him wrong.

  "You seem very certain of that," he said at last.

  "What's your normal resting heart rate?" Jiron asked. He lifted his brows, then flipped his data tablet to display the pulse rate racing on it, a series of flashes above a number. "Because this would be an aerobic ceiling for someone humanoid, and that's what the sensors are reporting from you."

  "Your tablet's sensors can detect medical data with useful specificity without access to a halo-arch?" Jahir said, unable to hide his interest.

  "Yours will too when we issue you one." Jiron pointed at the number. "How far off from normal is this?"

  Jahir glanced at it. "Far enough."

  The human sighed. "You know we can't cut you any slack."

  "With five thousand beds to manage, I can't imagine so, no."

  "And you're still determined to go through with this."

  Jahir met his eyes. "You will have my best effort."

  "And if that's not good enough?"

  "Then," Jahir said, quiet, "you will do what you must, for the good of the hospital's patients. I would not expect anything less."

  That earned him another long look, and then a lifted brow. "All right. I'll talk to Gillespie and get your schedule to you tonight. We brought you in. We might as well see if we can make it work."