The Everlasting Rose (Belles, The)

by Dhonielle Clayton

  “It’ll heal fast. I promise,” I say through a grimace. “Come closer, Fantôme.”

  The white teacup dragon trundles across the folds of my dress, then leans down to sniff the wound with her hot nose.

  “Go on,” I urge her.

  She licks the blood from my hand until the cut seals itself shut, my arcana proteins stitching me back together without hesitation.

  “And you’re sure she’ll go to Arabella?” Rémy asks.

  “They’re instinctual. They’ll find the person whose blood they’ve ingested first, then return to me once that’s passed. I fed her one of Arabella’s leeches earlier.”

  “And you trust it?” His eyes hold doubt.

  “I have to. I have to trust her.”

  He runs his dark brown fingers across her scales, and she nuzzles and licks his hand.

  “Can you prepare the invisible post-balloon since that woman gave you such specific instructions?” I look away from his penetrating gaze.

  He stands and unpacks the parcel on the small side table. “She told us both,” he says with his back turned.

  “She only wanted to talk to you. She liked you.”

  His shoulders tense.

  I bite my bottom lip, regretting saying that as the silence thickens around us.

  “I didn’t like her,” he replies.

  It makes me wonder if he could like me.

  “You ready?” He turns back around.

  I hand him the letter. He slides a charcoal candle inside the post-balloon. It flares briefly as it fills with air, floats up like a tiny cloud, then disappears.

  I wave a hand and graze its invisible form, then run my fingers down its base to discover its translucent ribbons. Once I have a grip on the balloon, I grab the night-lantern from the wall hook and hand it to Rémy, who holds it over me and Fantôme, so I can see where to tie the ribbons along the teacup dragon’s neck.

  Rémy opens the window.

  I set the dragon on the iron railing. “Little Fantôme, go straight to Arabella, then come to me in the Silk Isles.” I kiss her nose and inch her off the perch. “Be careful.”

  My heart squeezes as I watch her disappear in the thick snowy clouds.

  The street outside the Queen of Spades empties as the kingdom-wide curfew sets in. We have watched out the window for Edel all afternoon. Guards disperse in all directions, their coats shining beneath the night-lanterns like beetle shells. The laughter in the game rooms grows louder, pushing through the thin walls of our room.

  Rémy closes the window drapes. “We can go back now, check on Edel and the dragons, and pack to leave for the Silk Isles. Then I’ll go to the docks and see if they’re still scheduling the midnight ships. Many people are already making their way to the imperial island for the Coronation and Ascension. They’ve allowed a certain number of ships to continue to sail despite the curfew.”

  I nod and tuck Poivre into my waist-sash despite his protests, and pack the remaining invisible post-balloons. We dash across the street and into the salon. The house is a chaos of flipped-over furniture, shattered teacups, and crushed lanterns. Mud stains crisscross the plush carpets. The women cry as they clean, attempting to put everything back together again.

  Rémy and I try to remain calm as we walk upstairs.

  I slowly open the door. My heart thuds. I hold my breath and clench my body, bracing for the worst possible outcome.

  “Edel...” I say in a whisper.

  She is on her knees lifting the bedskirts.

  I dart over to her and hug her as tight as I can.

  “All right... all right,” she complains.

  “What happened?” I ask.

  “I’ll tell you when you stop choking me. But first, help me get the four dragons from under the bed.”

  I crouch down and spot the rest of the teacup dragons curled up, shivering in fear. I release Poivre from my waist-sash.

  “Come out from under there,” I call out. “All is well now.”

  They bat their eyes, then shuffle forward, stretching out their wings. Edel sighs with exhaustion. She plops herself in the nearest chair.

  “Tell me,” I say.

  “I used a glamour to throw the guards off,” Edel says.

  “A glamour?” Rémy replies with confusion.

  Edel grins like a cat who’s just caught a fish. Her hair changes from pale blond to cherry red, the straight strands twisting around each other in a storm as they turn into a mess of corkscrew curls.

  Rémy stumbles backward, knocking into a chair. “How... what...” he stammers out.

  Edel curtsies and her hair returns to its previous color and texture.

  He turns to me. “Can you do that?”

  “Barely,” I answer.

  “Is it dangerous?” Rémy asks.

  “I haven’t experienced any issues so far,” Edel says.

  “It doesn’t mean there won’t be,” he says.

  Edel levels him with a glare.

  “Where did you go earlier?” I ask.

  “I went to check on the Spice Teahouse.”

  “What? Why would you do that?” I almost yell, anger slipping into every syllable.

  “All the teahouses are closed.” Rémy strides to the table and holds up one of the afternoon papers. The headlines of the National and the Orléans Globe scramble as he shakes it.

  SPICE ISLES TEAHOUSE CLOSED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE

  TRAVEL VOUCHERS TO THE IMPERIAL ISLAND

  FOR BEAUTY MAINTENANCE—COLLECT YOURS;

  ALL METAIRIE RESIDENTS ELIGIBLE

  “Yes, Rémy, thank you for pointing out the obvious as always.” She drapes her travel cloak around her shoulders.

  “Edel, they will assume we’ll try to go to the teahouses to find our sisters,” I say, trying to keep my voice low. “That was the most dangerous thing you could have done!”

  Edel’s eyes flash. “You want to find Charlotte, right? And I want to get to the palace. Moving around requires money. Amber squandered much of ours. I thought if I scoped out the teahouse, we could break in and take some of the Belle-products to sell. People are desperate to hide their gray until the teahouses reopen. The items would fetch us leas.”

  I blink at Edel, surprised. It’s actually not the worst plan. If we’re to go see the Fashion Minister, we’ll need to pay for tickets on the midnight ship to the Silk Isles, which will deplete what we have left, and I couldn’t bear to sell one of the teacup dragons, not even Arabella’s Ryra, who has folded into the pack.

  “Plus, we need more sangsues to hold glamours. Ours have become weak from overuse.”

  “I actually—”

  “I’m not going to argue about this with you,” Edel interjects. “It’s a good idea.”

  “If you’d let me finish, I was going to say that I agree with you. We need money for food, and also to buy tickets to the Bay of Silk.”

  “Why are we going there?”

  I hand her the crumpled picture of the Fashion Minister. The headline is no longer animated, the ink trapped in the wrinkles. “We’re going to go see him and ask for help.”

  “Oh no...”

  “Yes. He will help us. I know he will. And he’s one of the most well-connected men in Orléans. He must have some idea about where Charlotte might be. We can trust him.”

  “We can’t trust anyone.” She shoves the balled-up scrap of newsprint back into my hand.

  “He was good to me while at the palace,” I tell her. “He warned me about Sophia.”

  “No one in her cabinet is our friend.”

  “We have to try.”

  I start to pull off my scarf and coat.

  “Don’t,” Edel says. “We’re heading out now.”

  “We shouldn’t risk it,” Rémy adds. “There are more guards here than I anticipated. I never thought they’d be able to deploy so many and so quickly.”

  “In fact, you’d better get a second scarf, I can feel more snow coming,” she tells me, ignoring his warning.
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  Rémy gazes at her, exasperated. “You think it won’t be suspicious if the two of you march over there so close to curfew? You think you won’t be seen? You think they’re not monitoring the teahouses at all? It’s possible someone spotted you earlier and they’ve sent a whole platoon there to lie in wait for you to come back. This is a reckless errand.”

  “Didn’t you see my trick? We can appear however we want to,” Edel says. “Are you coming? Or do you want to go fetch our tickets on one of the midnight boats while we go do this?”

  He sighs and turns to the door.

  “Ready?” she asks me.

  “I need to practice the glamours more, Edel. I’ve only done it once,” I say. “I’ll just wear my mask.”

  “You’re a fast learner, little fox. Always have been.” She pats my shoulder and grins. “Masks on, hoods up, and scarves bunched around the base of our faces. Once we get close to the teahouse, we’ll change. I don’t want to waste a drop of energy on the walk over. I’m still recovering.”

  She leads the way out of the room. My mind is an unexpected whirlwind of worries with each step we take. What if I can’t hold the transformation? What would we do if caught? The poison bottle taps my leg like a swinging pendulum as we hustle down the stairs. It may kill my arcana, it may kill me, but either way, I won’t ever do Sophia’s bidding again. The reality is a small, terrifying comfort.

  The women share meals at long tables in the kitchen. Hunched over bowls of food and caught in heated conversations, no one notices us slink out the back door and into the falling snow. The street is empty aside from early-evening vendors selling warm ale and thick stews, before the curfew sets in.

  “The new year is coming. Make it sweet, be sure to build your candy house.”

  “Best stew! Get it here.”

  Edel makes sharp turns through Metairie’s Market Quartier. Plum market-lanterns fade to dark blue, then lighten to pale pinks as we cross into the aristocratic Rose Quartier of this city. It reminds me of Trianon. Du Barry taught us that every Orléansian city organizes itself similarly to receive blessings from the God of the Ground, who values order, symmetry, and the divine number four.

  Ominous news blimps float overhead, their banners bathing us in pockets of gloom. Street-sweepers brush away the fresh snow with long brooms and polish cobblestones so they glisten like pearls under the light. Carriages drop passengers at beautiful mansions that hug a square edged by the Bay of Croix. Ornate river coaches sit at house piers. Newsboats bob in the shallow canals, newsies frantically organizing navy story-balloons and black gossip post-balloons to send out for the night editions or attempting to grab portraits of well-dressed courtiers heading home with their light-boxes.

  The Spice Isles’ teahouse perches like a glass egg over the quartier. The wind jostles brown-and-red house-lanterns above a door emblazoned with the Belle-symbol. Bronze sill-lanterns sit in dark windows. Royal buildings flank its sides like a jeweled nest made of pearl, marble, and gold. A funicular rail sends empty golden chariots to an entry platform.

  “There’s no way we’re getting up there,” I say. “The porter station is closed.”

  Edel points to a small alley. “We’ll use the servant entrance—the stairs. I found them earlier.”

  Rémy gazes around. “The fewer people out on the street, the more likely we’ll be seen.”

  “You might be spotted since you refuse to let us change your looks,” Edel snaps at him. “So maybe you should stay down here and wait for us.”

  “Not happening,” Rémy replies. “I’m trained to not be seen, but you two are not.”

  “We’ll be fine,” Edel says, then pivots to me. “It’s time to change.”

  My hands quiver. The warnings we received all our lives about our gifts and the way they’re supposed to be used pile into a mountain that sits upon my chest.

  This is wrong.

  This is dangerous.

  This will have consequences.

  “I don’t know if I can,” I reply.

  “You have to. You have no choice.” Edel closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. Her skin darkens from milk white to the color of sand, and her hair knits itself into a long braid—a shiny rope hanging over her shoulder.

  “Hurry,” Edel says. “I don’t want to have to hold this for longer than necessary.”

  The arcana quiver just beneath my skin. My heart rattles in my chest.

  I close my eyes. I try to picture myself, but only darkness greets me. The noises in the square grow louder—newsies dropping the evening papers through mail slots, the light honk of river coaches approaching house piers, a sweet-vendor pushing a cart along the cobblestones, men and women laughing as they return home, the sounds of teacup animals squeaking at their owners.

  I tremble with doubt.

  A hand slides into mine; a little rough and a little warm but nice.

  Rémy’s hand.

  I take a deep breath. I think of Maman: her soft gaze, the rich red of her hair, and the curve of her cheekbones.

  A headache drums in my temples. I feel myself change, my limbs frosting over, my hair straightening and landing on my shoulders, my veins flooding with cold, my skin prickling with gooseflesh, and my legs stretching and lengthening.

  Edel jostles my shoulder. “You look just like Maman Linnea. And you’re taller. I haven’t tried changing my body size and height yet.”

  My eyes snap open. “I didn’t mean to.” I drop Rémy’s hand and finger my now red hair. I look around for the nearest reflective surface and spot myself in the window of a télétrope shop. My breath catches in my throat.

  I touch my face. I am almost her. The pain of wanting my mother back floods my heart, drowning it with sorrow, longing, and anger.

  Rémy gawks, his eyes bulging with a mix of curiosity and horror.

  “It’s still me,” I say.

  He opens his mouth to comment.

  “No time to admire your brilliance.” Edel grabs my arm and yanks me forward.

  We hustle into the alleyway and climb the winding staircases to the teahouse’s side door. Rémy easily breaks the lock like it’s nothing more than a clockwork toy, and we tiptoe inside.

  The walls burst with violets and turquoises like an anxious sky tumbling into nightfall. The ceilings bloom in pinks and tangerines like a spice box of the gods. Doors inlaid with leaf-shaped jewels dot the long corridor that opens up into a grand foyer. Plush cold-season rugs stretch out beneath our feet, and bronze house-lanterns graze the floor like sunken rocks. It smells of burnt candlewicks and rancid honey and damp wood.

  None of my sisters were placed here after our Beauté Carnaval. The Belle from the previous generation, Anise, remained. Dark chandelier-lanterns hold her cameo portrait. The silkscreen flutters and ripples from the draft we let in. I wonder where Anise is now and how many other Belles had been secretly kept here. Were they chained? Were they overworked?

  “It looks so different from the Chrysanthemum Teahouse,” I whisper.

  “They’re all unique to the specific islands,” Edel says. “The Fire Teahouse always looked like it would burn down any minute with all the oranges and reds and yellows. If this teahouse is set up like the others, the storage rooms are in the back left corner nearest to the servant lifts.” She grabs a house-lantern from the floor. Rémy hands her a matchbook before she asks, and she lights the lantern, setting it afloat. Once it gathers enough air, she tugs its tail ribbons forward.

  We scramble up the stairs, tearing past treatment rooms, linen closets, and servants’ quarters until we locate the glass-walled storage room. Belle-products sit on cushioned shelves and in colorful cabinets ready to be plucked for use: complexion crème-cakes, mineral powders, kohl-ink bottles with jeweled lids, perfume blocks, beads and ointments, rose water, hand pallets, beeswax resins, pomatum boxes, rouge crayons, pumice stones, false brows made from mouse fur, tooth sponges, tinted wool pads, hair powder, and more. The products bear the Belle-emblems. I thumb each one
and suddenly feel a swell of homesickness.

  “I wonder why no one has broken in here yet,” Edel says.

  “They will if the teahouses don’t reopen. It’s only been a few days since the queen died,” I say, though it feels like a lifetime.

  “Desperation will set in soon,” Rémy adds.

  “You get the bei-powder bundles and as many skin-paste pots and complexion-crèmes as you can carry for us to sell them, Rémy,” Edel orders. “And, Camille, you get the Belle-rose leaves and some soap. I’ll search for the sangsues and see if they also have Belle-rose elixir. That’s all we really need.”

  Edel and I dig through drawers and cabinets, filling our dress pockets and satchels with the supplies. My mind unravels a series of memories—the glorious treatment rooms in the palace Belle-apartments, making women and men and children feel beautiful and their best, the clients I loved to work with the most, Queen Celeste trusting me to help Charlotte. Regret grips me. If only I’d healed Charlotte sooner, she might be on the throne right now. We might not be in this mess. Why did I resist for so long?

  I hold a skin-paste pot in my hands and think of Bree. I glance out the window overlooking the Bay of Croix. Bodies are bent over like question marks in the fields. Their gray hands pluck leaves and carry baskets. Wide-brimmed fur hats crest their heads and heat-lanterns nip at their backs as they navigate the rows. I wonder how late into the night they are forced to work. I wonder how much their lives mirror ours.

  “Camille, focus! Your glamour is wearing off,” Edel warns. “Your hair is frizzing.”

  I move away from the window and try to grasp the image of Maman once more. The cold pain cuts through me as the glamour resettles itself.

  A rush of footsteps echoes through the teahouse.

  We freeze.

  Rémy puts a hand up and motions for us to duck out of view. I press myself flat to the floor.

  A lady stalks past the room, seemingly frustrated, her long dress swishing back and forth like a pavilion bell. She’s hunched at the shoulders and ghastly white. Her black hair is swept into a bun similar to the one Du Barry always wore, and her mouth is painted so red you’d think her lips were coated with blood.