Chapter 12: Raw Sheets

The form had a column headed Age first down, and Kael wrote twelve and stopped. He had the number. He did not have the day. The pencil stayed on the paper until the physician looked up, and then it moved off. Sixteen entrants stood stripped to the waist in a hall built for beds. The trials wing was a side of the Ash infirmary that shared its front hall with the General ward, and the only wall between them was a row of coughing. The physician went down the line with a stethoscope ward in one hand, a tired man who set the cold of it against each chest, listened to the ward and wrote one word. Quill stood ahead of Kael with the blue-striped shield at his feet. He looked once at the linen on Kael's hands, as he had looked at the dark seal, and found no more…