Elsie could move her fingers again by the time they got her to the infirmary, which Julian described as a good sign and which she personally found insulting.
JUL: Try the left hand.
ELS: It works.
JUL: Try it anyway.
She tried it. It worked, mostly, with a delay between the instruction and the result that she disliked intensely.
JUL: That'll clear inside the hour. You've had a considerable current through you and your muscles are going to spend a while remembering how to take orders. Nothing's damaged.
ELS: My arm's burnt.
JUL: Your arm's burnt, yes. That one's actually an injury, unlike the rest of it, which is simply your body being sulky. Hold still.
He worked on the burn with the same unhurried competence he brought to everything, and Elsie lay back against the pillow and stared at the ceiling and did not say anything for a while.
ELS: I lost badly.
JUL: You lost. I don't know that badly is the correct measure.
ELS: I was on the ground in a puddle unable to move.
JUL: You were. You were also, according to the two students I've already treated who watched it, inside her guard twice, which nobody else has managed all tournament.
He said it without looking up from the burn.
JUL: I'm not consoling you. I'm reporting what came through that door before you did.
Mira arrived twenty minutes later. She came in quietly, the way she came into most rooms, and sat down in the chair beside the bed without asking whether she was welcome, which Elsie appreciated more than she could have explained.
MRA: You're conscious.
ELS: Barely.
MRA: You were extraordinary.
ELS: Mira.
MRA: I'm not being kind. I'm stating an assessment. I watched the entire match and I have thought about very little else since, and I have concluded that you were extraordinary and that you also lost, and I don't think those two things are in conflict.
Elsie laughed, which hurt.
ELS: You're the only person who could say that and have it land as a compliment.
MRA: I'm aware of how I sound. I've stopped trying to correct it.
ELS: Is Arthur fighting?
MRA: He started about ten minutes ago.
ELS: Against Whitlock?
MRA: Against Whitlock.
Elsie pushed herself up on her elbows, which went badly, and Julian, without turning around, spoke from across the room.
JUL: No.
ELS: I haven't done anything.
JUL: You've thought about it very loudly. Lie down.
She lay down.
ELS: What's happening?
Mira was quiet for a moment, and Elsie recognized the particular quality of the pause, which was not reluctance but genuine difficulty.
MRA: I don't know how to describe it.
ELS: Try.
MRA: I've been trying for ten minutes. It's why I came down here. I couldn't keep watching it and I couldn't work out why.
She folded her hands in her lap.
MRA: Arthur is losing. I want to say that first, because everything else I'm going to say might sound otherwise. He is losing, comprehensively, and he has been losing since the first fifteen seconds.
ELS: How?
MRA: I don't know.
ELS: Mira.
MRA: I'm not being evasive. I genuinely do not know what Whitlock's ability is, and I have watched him win four matches now, and I have paid closer attention than anyone in that arena, and I cannot describe what he does.
She frowned.
MRA: Arthur closes distance and arrives slower than he left. Not blocked. Not deflected. He simply arrives with less of himself than he started with, and it gets worse the nearer he gets. His strikes land like someone reaching underwater. Whitlock doesn't dodge. He doesn't guard. He stands there and lets Arthur come and by the time Arthur arrives there's nothing behind the arm anymore.
ELS: That's not possible.
MRA: I agree. I watched it happen eleven times.
Julian had stopped working. Elsie noticed it before Mira did, the particular change in the room's quality when someone who has been busy stops being busy, and turned her head to find him standing entirely still at the counter with a roll of bandage in one hand.
ELS: Julian?
JUL: How long has the match been running?
MRA: Fifteen minutes now. Perhaps sixteen.
Julian said nothing for a moment.
JUL: And Lyerm is still upright.
MRA: He is.
JUL: After sixteen minutes of arriving with less of himself than he started with.
MRA: Yes.
Julian set the bandage down.
JUL: Right.
He said it flatly, and returned to Elsie's arm, and did not offer anything further, and Elsie, watching him, had the distinct impression of a man filing something away rather than dismissing it.
ELS: Do you know what Whitlock does?
JUL: I'm the academy physician, not a scholar of soul abilities.
ELS: That isn't an answer.
JUL: No. It isn't.
The arena noise reached them, distantly, through two walls and a corridor. It was not the noise of a crowd enjoying itself. Elsie had heard that noise all morning, the bright rolling roar of people watching something impressive, and this was something else entirely, thinner and more uncertain, rising and falling in a way that suggested several hundred people who could not agree on what they were watching.
MRA: They don't understand it either.
ELS: You said he's losing.
MRA: He is.
ELS: Then why haven't they called it?
Mira looked at the wall for a long moment, in the direction of a fight neither of them could see.
MRA: Because he keeps getting up.
ELS: That's not a reason.
MRA: No. It isn't.
She was quiet.
MRA: Elsie, I have watched Arthur Lyerm run twenty-seven circuits and I have watched him fight three matches today and I have known him for a year, and I do not understand what he is doing out there. He should have been finished at four minutes. He was finished at four minutes. He simply hasn't stopped.
The noise from the arena rose again, and fell, and rose.
ELS: I want to see it.
JUL: Absolutely not.
ELS: Julian-
JUL: You have a burn, a current-shocked nervous system, and a delay between your intentions and your limbs. You are not walking to the arena.
He tied off the bandage.
JUL: You may, however, sit up. Slowly. And if you make it to the corridor without falling over, I will consider the question of the doorway. I wouldn't hurry if I were you, though, since the match will be decided solely by the matter of Arthurs' ability to get up once more.