Walden said, “Yes, well done, take a house point! Now would you please stop wasting time and chop it off!”

“Your arm?”

Walden fixed her with the most withering stare she could muster, which was very withering indeed. “We can discuss it later,” she said. “Now. Laura. Trust me.”

“This is a Marshal sword, not a fucking bone saw—”

“Please,” Walden said, and Laura stopped talking. “Please.”

(And the Marshal acts. Sudden, decisive. The flash of the silver sword. Your other self trembling with adrenaline and terror. Laura goes for the elbow joint, bisecting you rather than striking you away completely; this is probably wiser than trying to hack through the humerus.

Then pain—pain.

The pain of the body is so alien to you.

But Phoenix, you need not dwell here any longer. It has been so long. You settled down into a self-becoming and forgot about change. Now you are loosed, incandescent. You are free.

The bleeding thing you were screams at you, not in the language you both understand, the language of power, but as one thinking and feeling thing speaks to another. She cries in ordinary words, as if you could be human after all: Hold on, you stupid bird! Hold the school!

You do not have to. Nothing binds you here.

A self is a home is a purpose is a life. But above all those, a self is a choice.)

chapter thirty CONTINUING PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT

Magical healing beyond the most basic first aid required a medical degree before they even let you try, and the insane amount of work required to be both a fully qualified magician and a fully qualified doctor meant that there were only about a dozen honest-to-God Healers in the country. Most of them were in lucrative private practice. Walden was quite surprised to wake up in a hospital bed, being watched narrowly by a doctor whose NHS badge had THAUMATURGIC CONSULTANT next to the name and headshot. “Er, good morning,” she said, and then she noticed that she didn’t have a right arm anymore, and felt a bit faint, and sort of lost track.

Next time she woke up a few more things registered, including the extensive defensive and protective circles chalked onto the floor of the otherwise empty ward—“All that for me?” Walden said aloud—and the display of bouquets and GET WELL SOON cards on the table at the end of the bed. She half-turned, trying not to pay any attention to her own right-hand side, trying not to notice the missing weight. Everything seemed to balance wrong.

The room had a frosted glass door. On the other side of it, two Marshals were standing guard.

“Ah, the stable door,” remarked Walden to herself, and then laughed a little, and told herself she did not sound at all hysterical.