Belle Révolte

by Linsey Miller

  “Once I get to you, hold out your hands.” Laurence did not look up from the book he was reading until he was at the gate. He handed the book to Charles. “I will inspect your magical capabilities. If necessary, I will question you about your education in the arts.”

  That was it? Hands?

  “You mean the noonday arts?” a person down the line asked.

  “Did I ask if there were questions?” Laurence, weary, looked to them. “Yes, the arts. Noonday, midnight—the arts are the arts are the arts.”

  I wiped my hands against my skirt again. My nails were trimmed and cleaned, wholly unlike the hands of the giant next to me or Rainier’s ink-stained, scalpel-scarred palms. Ladies of Demeine didn’t have scars.

  I had always had to hide my practicing on an arm or thigh. I could have paid one of the village kids to help, but the very thought of it left me nauseous. Some physicians did that, I knew; they hired people to serve as practice patients.

  Physicians were supposed to save people, not ensure they died young by hiring them as a hack and watching magic wear them down.

  Down the line, Laurence dismissed students one after another. I picked at the edges of my nails, peeling back the skin and healing it together again. Laurence directed Charles to inspect the giant’s hands, and I turned away to avoid the flare of magic in my sight. He too was sent away after Laurence asked who he practiced on if not himself.

  “Physician du Montimer.” I bowed my head and held out my hands.

  Laurence stooped to study them. Unlike Charles, he wore his coat, the dark scarlet of dried blood, open over a high-collared white shirt and wonderfully intricate doublet embroidered with silver. He had no insignia, no heirlooms, and no jewelry marking his rank as the male heir to the crown; only a golden artist’s band on his right first finger and an opal drop hung from a piercing in his ear. He threw one arm back and beckoned for Charles.

  “I spoke to her on the road.” Charles didn’t look at me. “It would be unfair.”

  We had barely spoken and hardly anything of import; was he trying to single me out?

  Laurence hummed deep in the back of his throat and took my hands in his. The hook of his artist’s band, designed to open skin and bleed the wearer for the trickiest, most costly of arts, dug into my palm. “Who are you?”

  “Emilie Boucher.” I bowed my head deeper than necessary. This was Laurence du Montimer, the man who had regrown a lung the moment it was needed—he had passed out for days, of course, but the patient had lived—when such speed of transformation was thought impossible. No one had been able to replicate it yet.

  “You’re from Côte Verte,” he said, still staring at my hands. Behind him, Charles’s gaze jerked to me. “Near the city of Marais, judging by the minerals in your bones.”

  I had seen him work no art.

  “You have practiced quite a lot.” He flattened my bare hand between his. His hands were a web of scars, most a shade darker than his brown skin but others burned in my sight, empty and yawning, as if the thin, sapped-of-color skin that had grown over wasn’t really there at all. Scars from channeling too much power. “You want to be a hack, yes?”

  “Physician, but hack for now.” The words were out of my mouth before I could think. It was what I had said for ages when people asked what I wanted.

  Laurence’s eyes flicked up to mine, expression inscrutable. “Admitted. Join Charles.”

  A rushing filled my ears. My chest ached. I rocked on my toes until I was Rainier’s height. “Thank you.”

  I joined Charles and the other hack admitted so far. My hands trembled, fingers clammy and sticking to my shirt. I stayed close to the line, and Madeline stared at me, brown eyes bright, until Rainier moved to join me, and Laurence turned to her. Charles glanced at me.

  “You’re not the first person to come here thinking that once you show them all how great you are, they’ll see the error of their ways and let you be a physician,” he whispered. “If that were anyone but Laurence you had said that to, being turned away would have been the kindest thing done to you.”

  I scoffed. “First person? Please. You can just say girl.”

  “I really can’t. Girls aren’t the only ones who have to prove they can be physicians.” Before Charles could say more, Laurence called him over to speak to Madeline.

  Laurence directed Madeline to the gate. Rainier whooped quietly, and she hid her face behind a hand.

  “Please stop embarrassing me,” she said when she got to us, “before we even begin studying.”

  I laughed. The other accepted students chuckled behind me. There were six hacks total and several assistants. Laurence dismissed the last two applicants and, head cocked to the right, narrowed his eyes at Charles.

  “Did you lose my spot?” Laurence asked.

  Charles held up the book—The Anatomy of Self-Defense: A Physician’s Guide to Mortal Immunity and the Arts by Laurence du Montimer—and flicked the white ribbon hanging from the pages. Laurence sighed.

  “Good. Thank you.” He took the book back and flipped it open to the ribbon. “You all have an acceptable understanding of the arts to study and serve as hacks. Congratulations. Follow me.

  “For the next two weeks, you will be taught the basics of human anatomy, common injuries, the noonday arts, and what every physician’s hack needs to know. Your teachers will vary but the outcome will ideally be the same—you will be selected to work with one of us.” Laurence glided down the stone path, long legs doubling his stride, and Charles motioned for us to follow. “Those of you not interested in being medical hacks, I’ll hand over once we’re inside. I don’t know what they do with you these days. Any questions?”

  If anyone had one, they didn’t ask it.

  We crested the hill in the middle of the field, the university towers becoming clearer and clearer as we neared, and my heart stopped as the full sprawl of the school came into view. A second gate loomed over us—great and gold and gaping, students fluttering behind them from building to building with arms full of vials and glass etchings. Magic bubbled around me, swimming through the air and gathering in the palms of students with the heirloom rings of lesser children from noble families of robe and bell, and my foot crossed through this second border with a shuffle. Power coursed over my skin, warm and wanting.

  There was so much to learn, to do.

  Let me prove myself. Let me prove them wrong. I am home.

  And it hurt, burrowing deep in my bones till my teeth ached.

  Six

  Annette

  Breakfast the first morning was a disaster. There were three long tables full of girls, each one prettier and more poised than the last. The walls were papered white with flakes of silver, tapestries depicting the cycles of the moon and stars decorating the walls, and silver mirrors were spaced so that every girl in the room could see herself in one from where she sat. The midnight arts burned in every corner of the room too, stores of Mistress Moon’s power leaking from threads of silver running through the walls. Silver held the midnight arts well and could be used to save power for later. This was too much, though.

  Too much money. Too much magic.

  The excess made my head ache.

  “Sit where you please, everyone.” Vivienne stood behind her seat at the head of the center table. “Those of you who are joining us for the first time, please try to sit next to an older student. Our meals are, suffice it to say, unusual.”

  Isabelle picked a seat, and I grabbed the one next to her. Coline pinched me as she passed and took a seat across from me. It was easy to spot us, the new girls. We all shifted awkwardly and stared at the settings as if they were likely to bite us.

  “I was new once. What fun times!” A tall girl with short black hair brushed back in flowing waves and a soft purple dress that looked divine against her dark brown skin touched my arm. She took the place setting to
my left and nodded to another student wearing the same shade of periwinkle but their clothes were a fashionable pair of breeches beneath a long robe. “I’m Germaine and that’s Gisèle. We arrived here the year Vivienne decided to sort everyone into rooms based on their first name, but it worked out all right in the end. She’s not an artist either.”

  She winked at Gisèle and smiled, nose scrunching up in delight.

  I opened my mouth and had to pause to get my name right. “I’m Emilie. It’s nice to meet you.”

  We took our seats. I tried to sit as straight-backed and proper as the other girls. Germaine was gorgeous and smart, talking to Coline about politics I didn’t know or understand, and Gisèle carried on a conversation with Isabelle about some sort of merchant route. Germaine sipped water from her glass without so much as making a sound. When I picked mine up, it clinked against the plate. I didn’t belong here at all.

  Couldn’t even take a sip without being blinded by magic. It burned in the back of my eyes, so bright my vision was spotty long after I’d looked away from the water. A headache took hold.

  Coline muttered something under her breath, fingers moving along the tabletop as if she were gathering wool, and Germaine made a motion as if snipping thread.

  “This room is designed to bombard you with visions,” Germaine said. “Vivienne wants you to learn to avoid revealing that you’re using the midnight arts, and silver is so popular in most places, you can’t avoid it. If you get used to the visions here, you’ll be used to them elsewhere.”

  Magic wasn’t physical like us. We didn’t have to coax it out using soft words and gentle motions, but it helped.

  “My new students, you have by now noticed that the contents of this room are designed to draw out your divining and scrying abilities.” Vivienne rang a bell. “It has long been considered rude to react to the futures of those you are dining with for fear of revealing some horrible truth. Those of you with an aptitude in the midnight arts must learn not to react, to be as sturdy as the ice atop the rushing waters of the Verglas. Those of you without an aptitude must learn to help hide any reactions from prying eyes. Remember—”

  She set down the bell and raised her hands, and from the corner of my eyes, I saw Germaine wink at Gisèle. Gisèle signed something with her hands that made Germaine snicker into her napkin. Down the table, another girl signed a response.

  It must have been a common occurrence because several people laughed, and Vivienne’s stoic expression nearly gave way to a smile. She made a motion for them to pay attention.

  “Help those you can,” the girls said in time with Vivienne. “Hold them not in debt but in heart.”

  “Though it does help if you need a favor later on,” Gisèle whispered to us.

  Germaine picked up my cup of water without looking and drank all of it as if it were her own. “Oh! How terrible of me. Let me get you another drink.”

  Even though it was in her hands and away from me, I could still see the ripples of power in the water dregs.

  A black hack’s coat, sleeves rolled up to the elbows. Sunburned skin. Worn-down hands grasping at a bloody neck. I blinked, and all that was here was a polished silver tea set, tall and thin and too reflective to be normal, set at the center of a mirror-topped tray. Another vision, great clots of old blood, dripped down the back of a silver spoon. The taste of ash clogged my throat.

  “Here.” Germaine poured me a cup of cloudy, steaming tea, too dark and unsettled to show me a vision in the surface. “Drink up.”

  I took a sip, hands shaking. “Thank you.”

  I’d been starving once, but now my appetite had fled as fast and far as Emilie. Didn’t help when a line of servants entered with trays and started serving us. I didn’t know what to do with my hands. Or eyes. None of the other girls looked at the servants, not even when they placed cloth napkins in their laps. I jumped.

  There were too many knives and too many spoons, and the smell of oysters mixed with the faint taste of ash stuck in my throat. I drank tea and didn’t eat. The gossipy puddle of leaves at the bottom were bad omens, and the silver rim was nothing but staring eyes. So this was what we were—visions in polished silver and sweet tea overflowing with portents of disaster.

  I had to channel the midnight arts into silver, usually, and then focus on what I wanted to scry, but here the images were endless—flashing through the water and silver and mirror and broths so fast, it made me sick to my stomach. I focused on Vivienne instead.

  “Mademoiselle Charron, unfortunately, foresaw a quite dangerous accident occurring on the road during her charity work in Bosquet, and she will sadly not be able to join us for several days as she helps to prevent the event and subsequent issues from the change.” Vivienne held up her hands at the disappointed whispers. “Don’t fret, dears. She will be joining us for several days still, and those of you who excel in the midnight arts may attend those sessions instead of your other classes.”

  I slumped. I didn’t excel. I couldn’t even stand to be in this room, and I’d need weeks to get better.

  When supper ended, Gisèle slipped me a soft, slightly squished roll, her spectacles hiding most of her worried expression. The light caught her glasses—green lace lapping at a pale white neck and the shadow of a thick blade—and I cringed. Coline and Isabelle helped me back to our room.

  Most of me felt guilty for being so needful.

  But part of me liked it, the anxious looks and oddly comforting pat Coline gave my shoulder when she didn’t know what to do.

  I had to get better. I had to meet Estrel.

  But after that first night, I barely got better.

  We spent the evenings after supper on improvement and associating. I’d followed Coline and Isabelle and prayed they’d known what it was. We’d just ended up back in our room.

  Least the baths were as rich as the rest of the place—great stone pools dug into the earth and pumped full of hot water that filled the room with steam. I’d not known what most of Emilie’s belongings were, but soap was soap was soap even when it had lavender petals in it, and I’d made do with only it. There weren’t maids to look after us, thank Mistress for that, and I was more than happy to comb out Isabelle’s hair after she combed out mine. She’d laughed and said she used to do it for her brother when he was little and they were alone. Maman had always done Macé’s. I was too tender-headed and cried when she tugged, so she’d stopped combing mine.

  I was too hungry to sleep, but fear kept me in bed. They’d know. They’d all know.

  Couldn’t divine. Couldn’t sleep. Couldn’t even make it through a meal.

  They’d find me out, arrest me, and send me to the gallows, surely.

  We woke to a bell at dawn. I woke up bleary, eyes stuck together with the crunchy leftovers of sleep. We ate in the silver room, quiet and focused, and my headache returned after two sips of tea and a piece of pastry slathered in butter. I survived three bites before giving up. Least no one noticed.

  Gisèle had taken to slipping me rolls every morning, though, and whenever Vivienne questioned it, Gisèle only repeated her words back to her.

  “Help those you can,” she said, hand over her heart. “What sort of person would I be if I refused that call?”

  We had to be allies, all of us as one, in order to survive.

  Or, as Gisèle said one evening during associating, “We are our own.”

  Two days out of the week, I joined Vivienne and most of the other students in the small church on the Gardinier estate. We stood in the vast, empty hall, the altar of Mistress Moon and Lord Sun rising at the front of the church, and I let myself fade off as the priest spoke. Mistress Moon surely understood—the water spilling from her cupped hands still showed my scryings when I kneeled at the feet of her statue. I kissed her talons, and she didn’t strike me down.

  Every day, we ate breakfast, and then the entire new grou
p was herded to mathematics. There were twelve of us, the other students as skittish as we were. Numbers were the same no matter how much money someone had, and the teacher, an older white woman with black hair knotted up in a tight bun, let us work quietly for the start of class. The problems were easy, and my headache lifted. Returned in time for history where I knew nothing and couldn’t keep up. Coline could recite every Deme king and what they were best known for two hundred years. I could name the current one.

  Couldn’t say what he was known for.

  Would’ve given me away instantly.

  After a light meal at noon, Vivienne rounded up Coline, Isabelle, and I for an etiquette lesson that melted into a class on hosting and conversation with the other nine of our earlier classes after two hours. We practiced sitting and smiling and saying the right thing. Apparently, I couldn’t even sit right.

  But the worst class was bookkeeping and home management. We spent the afternoon going over accounts and prices and the “delicate art of negotiation” with Madame Robine Bisset, who I couldn’t take seriously. The numbers in the books, fake but still close enough to the real thing, were so high, so absurd, and so long that I couldn’t comprehend them. This was how rich people ruined nations.

  They saw 2.000 gold sols on a ledger, didn’t realize how much money that truly was to most folks, and ran us all into the red.

  The weekly cost of dress fabric for my fake household was three hundred silver lunes. I’d never even seen more than ten in one place. We didn’t even pay that much to Waleran du Ferrant for our land in Vaser.

  My fake household spent more on the horses and hunting hounds than the servants.

  I crossed the hounds from the list and added the money to the wages.

  “But how will you entertain guests?” Vivienne asked. “Do not sacrifice your own financial security for such foibles. You need not give in to such demands as higher wages like has become the fashion for certain peoples these days. There are many who would be more than happy to take the job. Hard work pays heartily. A good employee will understand that.”