Someone in passing mentioned Elizabeth Anne Scarborough's _The Healer's War_ here, and I had never heard of it, and it made me get the book and read it.
And I recommend others do as well.

In some ways this is just a typical war story, if a very well-written war story, with a single fantastic element to it. And that fantastic element
isn't really very fantastic. It's not fantastic enough to change the
world, but it's fantastic enough to change the life of the protagonist and
some of those around her a little. Something like this could be overdone
with the magic token changing the outcome of the war, but that doesn't
happen and it is treated with grace and subtlety.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

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