“You have a month before Kalthorne,” a rough voice said. “You must be prepared.”
“He’s alive,” I said, voice raspy. “He will be for a while. I saw him with his chevalier in a wheat field.”
Were we going to war, or was that training? If we went to war, what would happen to my brother Macé? Varlets weren’t fighters, but they were always with their chevaliers.
I shook the image from my mind. We couldn’t go to war. The army was all country kids, and to fight Kalthorne, we’d need more soldiers. They’d have to offer up money for joining, and then most of them would still die and not get the payout, and everyone who was a hack would get called up to work. Emilie would be on the edge of the battles looking after the wounded. My brother Macé would be a varlet. They’d need them to replace the ones who died.
He’d die. I couldn’t let that happen again.
Laurel, I thought, eyes fluttering shut. I breathed in magic and channeled it into the bowl with an exhale. I have to help Laurel and all of us who’d die.
The nobles wouldn’t. They rarely did, even though it was only a king who could declare war.
I want to help Laurel stop Henry XII. I want to save us. I opened my eyes, face awash in moonlight, and an image, not in the bowl but in the glass of the skylight above me, ghostly and larger than life, shone. How do I find Laurel?
An older man in a soldier’s uniform. Wrinkled hands pinning a laurel leaf to a shirt collar. Worn boots walking the perimeter of the school at night, no one else nearby.
Thank you, Mistress Moon.
I let the vision die and turned to Isabelle. “I can’t see anything else. Just that.”
“Let’s get you to bed.” She pulled a cloth from her pocket, pressed it to my nose, and cupped my cheek. “You’re worn out.”
* * *
Late that night, it was easy to find the guard who’d given me the wooden laurel leaf pin and let me inside the day I’d swapped places with Emilie. I’d used the midnight arts to disguise my face. Still looked like me but more like Emilie than me, and it wasn’t like I was important. He’d not remember.
He was pacing before the servants’ gate, whistling a tune I didn’t know, and he stopped when I stepped from the garden path. He spun, fists up fast for his age. A proper soldier.
“I’m sorry for startling you.” I laughed like I was embarrassed. Vivienne said when girls did that, it took men so off guard, they were more likely to be quiet and listen. “I have a slightly odd question for you, if you would oblige me?”
He bowed at the waist, the low dip deep enough for a comtesse and too deep for me. As if it weren’t midnight and this weren’t odd. “Of course, Madame. I would be happy to be of assistance, but perhaps I should escort you back inside?”
“No,” I said, enjoying the taste of a word I had so rarely gotten to say. “We should have this conversation out here when no one’s around.”
He straightened, face in shadows. “Why is that, Madame?”
“Your laurel leaf pin,” I said. “It’s a lovely idea. I was wondering where you got it?”
Vivienne had taught me many things, but above all else, she had taught me how to speak to other people in compliments and half-truths.
“It’s one of a kind, I’m afraid.” His arms crossed behind his back. “How did you see it? I can’t recall having made your acquaintance, Madame.”
“I was scrying, and I saw something bad.” I clenched my hands in the folds of my skirt and dropped my voice. “In the midnight arts, it’s safer to share power than to hoard it. That’s probably true for other things too. Like information.”
“This is too risky,” he said.
I cut off whatever other complaints he had. “Some things are worth the risk, and I think things are about to get real risky.”
“Wait here.” He crossed the distance between us and stuck the laurel pin to my shoulder. There was a pause between him reaching out and him pinning it to me, as if he thought I’d run, but I was winter. I endured. “You scryed something bad?”
“Yes,” I said. “And I want to help stop it.”
“Don’t move,” he said. “You might have company soon.”
The guard slipped through the gate. The key clicked twice, locking behind him. I slunk back a bit, into the boughs of an apple tree, and the soft crack of underbrush behind me made me lean into the trunk. A tall shadow, backlit by the light from the estate, stepped into the clearing before the fence, and the familiar scents of yeast and sulfur drifted to me. Yvonne, hair covered in a dark hood, lifted her face to the gate and looked around. What good company to have.
Her shoulders tensed, lifting up to her ears. The soldier had told me I’d have company, and she was getting anxious. Talking to her couldn’t hurt.
“Yvonne?” I stepped into the clearing.
She spun, skirts a swirl of silver and dusk. “What?”
“Hi,” I said with a laugh. A real one. “I might’ve interrupted your meeting.”
“What are you doing here?” She crossed to me and fell short of touching my arm. “You can’t be here.”
“I have to help,” I said. She hadn’t touched me because I was Emilie des Marais to her. “I want to help, and I scryed something that led me here.”
She didn’t know me. Her head tilted to the side, the starlight flickering fires in her brown eyes. “Emilie…”
She didn’t even know my real name.
The gate creaked, and we both spun around. The guard had returned, and with him was a stout person, hood drawn so low I could see nothing of their face. The guard let them through the gate and nodded to Yvonne. She swallowed.
“They are who you want to talk to,” the guard told me. To the newcomer, he muttered, “This is Emilie des Marais.”
“So,” they said, lifting their head and not pushing back their hood. They’d a wide nose and hooded eyes, blue a softer shade than spring skies, and their clothes were the slightly worn of someone who worked every day in a shop. Dust and wrinkles, a few good tears, but mostly just ink stains at the wrists. “You’re a comtesse who wants to help?”
Their tone was not promising.
“Laurel,” Yvonne said quickly. “She’s noble, but she’s all right.”
“That’s the best compliment anyone’s ever given me,” I said. “You’re Laurel?”
“We are all the laurels because our king and his nobles rest on us,” said Laurel. They brought their hands up, their leather gloves the sort embroiderers and tailors wore with thimbles in the tips. “What did you see?”
“War,” I said, and Yvonne stiffened. “A chevalier with a hack, but they were in all their armor and in a field fighting. Didn’t look like normal training.”
“That’s fair specific for divination,” they said. “Sounds like a lie.”
“Scrying; I can’t divine. The chevalier told their hacks they had to be prepared by the end of the month. I’m not the best midnight artist, but I’m not sitting by while people die.” Emilie hadn’t written back after I’d asked what to do if Estrel found me out. If I was getting hanged, might as well make it for something bigger than impersonation or thievery. “I can’t divine or leave school, but I can scry. I can be useful.”
“You could hear them speaking?” Laurel asked.
I nodded.
Yvonne cleared her throat. “She can see arts after they’re done. She’s the one who wrote that note to the apothecary. We’ve only got you and me in Bosquet. We could use someone who can scry.”
“We could.” Laurel gestured between us, their mouth twisted up. “Yvonne, this is very dangerous.”
“The world is dangerous,” said Yvonne. “And I’m done of waiting for it to get less so.”
“Then you listen to me.” They grabbed my chin with one hand, fingers digging into my cheeks. “You don’t put either of these two in
danger, or I’ll send you to the pyre myself. Scry what you can about this war, Henry XII, his court, his chevaliers—anything that comes to you whether you think it’s the future we’re heading toward or not—and tell Yvonne anything you overhear while here. You’re our spy now, Emilie des Marais, and you answer to Laurel. Understood?”
I nodded. Couldn’t talk with their grip so tight.
“Good,” they said and let go. “Anything you tell us that seems false, we’ll make sure you take the fall with Henry XII for anything that happens, comtesse or not.” They turned to Yvonne now, stance softening, and touched her cheek. “We need to get you better friends.”
She glanced at me. “I like mine fine. Here—red vial bad, blue vial good. Don’t mix it up, and don’t take the blue one on an empty stomach.”
Yvonne pulled two glass vials from her pockets, their tops sealed with a thick crust of wax, and handed them to Laurel. Laurel held them, gently testing their weight. The guard whistled.
“Time’s up,” he said, and the distant toll of a bell marking one in the morning echoed across the garden. “We’re all good?”
Laurel nodded. The guard escorted them to the gate, glancing back at me once. I mouthed thank you, and Yvonne touched my forearm, her fingers cold despite the heat. We walked to the main building, mostly silent, and she held me back at the path that led to the kitchen. It took a moment for the words to come.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“What I want for once,” I said. “I’m tired of people telling me what to do.”
Her brows came together, the little line between them new but deep. I shook my head.
“I’ll tell you one day what I mean, but for now, I just want to change me or the world or something. Does that make sense?”
“It does.” She pulled her hood down and took a step onto the path to the kitchens. “I’ll see you tomorrow?”
I nodded.
She almost left, but I couldn’t hold it in any longer. “Was that the real Laurel?”
“No.” Yvonne turned back to me. “Every city has one now, and the first Laurel sends out letters to them. Divinations and advice, news from court, and the like. But that one you met tonight is my friend, and if you betray them, I will never forgive you.”
She said it softly, surely, with so much care that the shake of her voice only made the threat more real. I nodded.
“If I ever betray you, please don’t.”
Nine
Emilie
We did not see Florice again. He died in the night, at peace I hoped, and was moved by the time we woke. Rainier was quiet, Madeline was too, but in a determined way, and we met early in our lecture hall two days later for our exam to determine if we had learned enough. Nearly all the hacks staggered in with the tired eyes of people thinking too much. If I were home, Mother would have demanded I illusion them away. I was wearing mine today, though.
“Late night?” Pièrre du Guay, here to oversee our test, said to me as I entered.
He did not say it to anyone else.
I was tired—this place had made me tired—and that was the kindest thing it had done to anyone here. I wasn’t hiding my truth to make him comfortable.
“A productive one,” I said, head bowed. “How was yours, Physician?”
Sometimes, Mother had taught me, we had to bear the storm.
“Restful.” He clapped his hands together and gestured to the rest of the room as I took my seat in the back near Madeline. “I do love a good exam!”
The board at the front of the room was covered with a cloth, gold and gilded as if it had been pulled from a table in the physicians’ dining hall and not meant for us.
“Now, despite the unpleasantness of yesterday, I find myself hopeful that you are all on the road to becoming excellent hacks, one of the most necessary parts of our great institution.” He cleared his throat and touched the table at the front, his fingers tapping along the glass tablets that were our exams. “Our physicians are the best minds of Demeine, and you are to be their hands. Several fully qualified physicians are in immediate need of hacks—me included, given the events of yesterday—and while this examination has been set by us to test for what we consider integral knowledge, it is by no means the deciding factor. Our apprentices observed and taught you. We do take their opinions into account, so I do hope you were nice.”
He paused, and some of the others in the room laughed.
“There are fifty questions on the board behind me. Once you have been handed a tablet and pen and the board has been uncovered, you have two hours to impress us, and I am certain you will.” He smiled, lips pursed, and clapped again. “And I encourage those of you more inclined to stoicism to let go of your coldness and embrace the necessary impromptu problem solving and creativity medicine requires.”
I didn’t gag, which as far as I was concerned was enough to warrant making me king, considering Mother had often declared me as indomitable as a puddle.
I pulled the glass tablet passed back to me into my lap, fingernails clicking against the words and a faint red stain shining from my hands through the glass. My brush shook, and my signature was crooked. These were easy questions with my education but would have been hard if all I knew was what they had taught me this week. The last question would have been easy, too, before I came here.
Is there a physician you wish to serve?
I glanced around the room—Pièrre du Guay had slipped outside a while ago, and none of the other students seemed to be having issues. I whispered “good luck” to Madeline and Rainier and stood. The water clock I passed on my way out said it had only been an hour.
Outside, Pièrre and Laurence were in the midst of an argument, du Montimer trapped in the corner of the hall across from me. Pièrre, back to me, readjusted his stance every time du Montimer attempted to leave.
“You had no authority over him,” Pièrre whispered through clenched teeth. “He was an example.”
“He was a corpse in the courtyard, and you neglected to mention what you wanted to do with him. Of course I had him moved.” Laurence waved his hand as if to banish the conversation. “It is a child’s game. It will be fine.”
“It is treason, and you would be wise to pay attention to it, considering it is your uncle they wish to depose.” Pièrre grabbed Laurence’s arm. “You cannot stare down such a threat with passivity. You have let them fester in Monts Lance for too long, and now you allow them funeral rites? Take action. Be a man!”
“I’d rather not,” said Laurence. “You know I loathe politics, but if you had denied his family funeral rites, it would have come out as another slight against us. Laurel’s desperate. He’ll cling to anything after that last debacle.”
Laurel had tried to rob a storehouse last week in a city north of Serre—two guards and five traitors had died. No one had come forward to claim them, and the news of the deaths had started a whirlwind of rumors.
Laurence lifted his head and spotted me. I studied my tablet as if it were the only thing of interest. Laurence patted Pièrre’s hand.
“So really, my absentminded mistake is a blessing in disguise,” said Laurence. “Go. I will watch our intrepid hacks.”
Pièrre stormed down the hallway, red coat a blood stain in my vision when I blinked, and through the haze of my glass tablet, I saw Laurence raise his hand to me.
“Oh.” I feigned shock and bowed. So Laurence du Montimer had seen Florice dead and shipped his body back to his family. He was notoriously oblivious to anything not a patient or his research, but at least the results were good. “Physician du Montimer, I—”
“Didn’t see me here?” he said with one huff of a laugh. “Do you have a question, Emilie?”
“The last question,” I said. “What if there’s a physician we don’t want to work with?”
He held out his hand. “Leave it. No reason
to offend his sensibilities.”
I handed over the tablet.
“You’re free until the morning, then.” He tested the ink with a finger and tucked it under his arm. “Personally, I would go into Delest for the day. You won’t have time soon. There’s a lovely place with wine. Enjoy your time before the work begins.”
He smiled, and I mimicked the expression, but I could feel my lips sticking to my teeth, mouth suddenly dry.
Madeline, Rainier, everyone behind me—we would be worked to near death and then left for dead eventually.
No, they would. I had options. It was unfair of me to forget what I had, even if I wanted desperately to forget it.
“Thank you for the advice.” I bowed again, not as deep, and left.
Florice had told us to go to Bloodletters at noon, so I would. I pinned a note about where I was to Madeline’s bed. They would join me or they wouldn’t; it was their decision. I wouldn’t blame them for avoiding Laurel and his plots. Madeline had told me one night when we were worried about the exam that I didn’t know fear, and I had laughed.
I didn’t know fear. Even now, I had a net woven from my family name and money to catch me if I fell. They didn’t.
Leaving the university held none of the awe that entering it had. The gold fence and fluttering willow trees felt vulgar next to the squat wooden plots that made up Delest. The city looked nice, polished wood buildings and raised stone streets full of vendors and open-air stores selling all sorts of finds, but the prices were all wrong. They were too high. The fruit was too pretty. The people were too involved. It was a stage play of a city.
I found Bloodletters at the end of a crooked alley in the northernmost tip of the city. It was a bar, a single server inside with four guests working their way through glasses of pale wine. I ordered a glass, which was good, and a bowl of soup, which was not, and with an hour and a half until noon, waited for Madeline and Rainier. The other patrons glanced at me every now and then, and the server checked on me once. They asked if I wanted to leave or order more.
Belle Révolte Page 10
