Chương 164: CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTY-FOUR: THE PREPARATION

They had nine days of riding and five days of margin, which meant preparation had to happen in three days and then continue on the road. Marcus spent the three days doing what he had learned to do when someone else was going to carry a thing: removing every obstacle he could remove and then getting out of the way.

He wrote to Yara through the heliograph and asked for everything her eastern network could produce on Vellenmoor — the township's political structure, the prior's relationship with the magistrate, the identity and reputation of the deceased patient's family, anything about the local mood. He wrote to Chung and asked for the same from the capital's records — Vellenmoor's charter history, any recorded capital proceedings in the past twenty years, anything about how the township had behaved under scrutiny.

He wrote to Torres. That one he thought about for an hour before writing. Torres was inside the Church. The charge was ecclesiastical-adjacent. Involving Torres meant involving the Church's internal politics in a matter that the march was already entering delicately. He wrote it anyway, because the alternative was leaving a resource unused for reasons of caution when a woman had fourteen days. He wrote: Vellenmoor township. Capital proceeding, unauthorized healing resulting in death.

Accused is one of ours — unconfirmed but strongly indicated. Local prior sits advisory on the case. I am not asking you to intervene. I am asking whether there is anything you can tell me about how a prior in that region would approach such a case, and whether there is any consideration that would move a prior toward mercy rather than severity. The response came in two days, faster than the merchant road usually managed, which meant Torres had prioritized it. The prior at Vellenmoor is named Bertrand.

I know of him. He is old — near seventy — and has held the position for thirty years. He is not severe by temperament. He is, however, deeply committed to the position that healing without sanction is dangerous to the person healed, because it is unaccountable. His concern is not doctrinal territory. It is that an unsanctioned healer answers to no one. The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

The consideration that would move him: evidence that the accused is accountable to something. Not to the Church — he will not expect that. But to some structure that reviews her practice and holds her to a standard. In his framework, the danger of unsanctioned healing is not the healing. It is the absence of anyone watching. If she has been practicing alone for nine years with no oversight, he will find that genuinely alarming, and he will be right to. I am sorry. I wish this were more helpful.

Marcus read it three times and then went to find Okafor. He found her in the clinic's back room, where she still kept a desk even though Rue had been running the clinic for two years. She was writing — the documentation of her conversations with Confluix, which she had been compiling for eighteen months and which was, Marcus suspected, going to be one of the strangest and most valuable documents the organization ever produced. He read her Torres's message. She listened. When he finished, she set down her pen.

"He's right," she said.

"Which part?"

"All of it. Bertrand's concern is legitimate." She paused.

"A practitioner working alone for nine years with no review, no peer consultation, no accountability structure — that is dangerous. Not because she's incompetent. Because everyone is incompetent sometimes, and the function of oversight is to catch it before someone dies." She paused again.

"I practiced alone for eleven months in my first year here. I made two decisions in that period that I would not have made if there had been anyone to talk to. One of them cost a patient." Marcus had not known this.

"You never told me," he said.

"It's in the mortality record," she said.

"Year one, third quarter. I documented it. I didn't discuss it because discussing it wouldn't have changed it and because I was managing." She paused.

"That's what she's been doing for nine years. Managing. Alone."

"So what do we tell the prior?" Marcus said. Okafor was quiet for a moment. Then she pulled a fresh sheet toward her.

"We tell him the truth," she said.

"That she has been practicing without oversight, that this is dangerous, that we agree with him that it is dangerous — and that we are prepared to provide the oversight. Formally. In writing. With a structure he can inspect."

"An offer," Marcus said.

"An offer that addresses his actual concern," Okafor said.

"He doesn't want her dead. He wants unaccountable practice to stop. We can stop it without killing her." She began writing.

"I'll draft it tonight. Rue should co-sign — she runs the clinic, she'd be the reviewing practitioner. And it should go under the march's medical protocol seal, not under my name. It needs to look like an institution, not a favor."

"Can you have it by tomorrow?"

"I'll have it in three hours," she said, already writing.