The surgeon left with Byford, and Henry lay in the huge four-poster bed stewing in his guilt and anger. He raked his memories for something that could have been done differently, some way that the mission could have been salvaged, but it felt as if as soon as he had allowed himself to be pulled across the courtyard things had spun out of his control. Without Sybille on the landing, there would have been no warning. Maggie would almost certainly have died in Sybille’s place, and as guilty as Henry felt, he was pathetically grateful that Maggie was still alive.

The next few days were filled with grinding monotony, punctuated with searing pain. Byford dropped by every day to transfuse Henry with power, a process that involves Byford cutting Henry with a black iron knife, fastening his hand over the wound and then channeling blood-magic directly into him. It was exhilarating for a few moments, but then turned into a burning pressure in his chest as he forced the older man’s power to heal his injured body. The experience gave Henry an awareness of his own body's workings that he’d never had before, of the interplay of muscles and bones, the delicate relationships they had with one another, and with the nerves and blood vessels. Realisation dawns on him that everything he thought he knew about the meat of him was false, the balance of the humours as origins of illness. The soul as the pilot of the body. It raised a hundred questions, but Byford just shook his head and refused to engage Henry in any conversation.

In addition, his body changed in a way he couldn’t quite understand. It was most noticeable in his bones. When he looked at his left wrist, or his ankles, and turned them just right to stretch the thin skin tight across the bones, he could see a spiderweb of black infiltrating and binding the white shards of his broken joints together.

When Henry was finally allowed to return to the training dormitory, he found the atmosphere there had changed as well. His classmates refuse even to look at him, and Maggie was still absent, her bunk stripped and belongings packed into a trunk at the foot of the bed. Training resumed immediately, but the camaraderie was gone.

In Charnock’s training hall, the students were quiet when Henry entered. They wouldn’t even look at him.

He took his seat in one lecture room or another, and the students didn’t speak amongst themselves, nor did they focus on the lecture. There was something dark hanging over the class now. Henry had not much felt a part of this new family before, but he didn’t doubt that it was one. Now, they seemed as strangers do, uncomfortable in their closeness.

Even Thomas and his small court, once jovial and ribald to the point of obnoxiousness, were silent, not even speaking among themselves except to ask terse questions or give even shorter responses.

Eventually, Henry couldn’t stand it any more. He cornered Thomas by the wash basins.

“I’m sorry, alright?”

“Sorry?” Thomas sneered.

“About Sybille.”

“ You’re sorry about Sybille?”

“I am. I’m sorry about Sybille. But I didn’t make her do anything. We even told her to leave. She stayed because she wanted to. And I know that doesn’t make it alright. And maybe I do deserve to be treated like a leper, but Maggie will be back sooner or later, and she will not deserve this. None of this was her fault.”

Thomas regarded him blankly.

“If nobody wants to talk to me ever again, then that’s fine. But that had better stop with me.”

“Ah. You think the guild’s new mood is because of you and your stupid stunt.”

“I’m supposed to believe it isn’t?”

Thomas’s smile was a slow, cruel twist of the lips. “Stupid, self-centred orphan boy. No one is even giving you a spare thought. While you were off having your little adventure and your well deserved rest, an order received in a royal missive. We’re going to war.”