Belle Révolte
Page 18
I would. For Alaine. For Gabriel. For Macé. For Emilie. For all the rest I’d see.
For me.
Fifteen
Emilie
The Stareaters scattered first, a red stain against the blue sky. I looked up and paused, and Rainier stopped behind me. It was late afternoon, sunlight and shadows stretching across the field where we had newly camped at the western edge of Segance, and the noonday arts shifted around me, as if a great hole had opened and was draining them away. I followed the tug and turned east. Rainier touched my arm.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“You don’t feel that?” I gathered a bit of power, channeled it through my heart to get it used to the rhythm, and sent my awareness out with it through the air and over the hill of tall grass. “Someone is channeling a lot of power.”
Rainier and I were the only two at this edge of camp, save for the soldiers guarding it a little ways out. We had been in need of quiet, Sébastien and Charles tired and touchy after their days spent healing Waleran du Ferrant during fights so he could continue, and Rainier and I had a few free moments before our next shift in the infirmary. The shift in the noonday arts hummed in my bones, low and deep like distant thunder, and I shoved Rainier behind me. The hum built to a whistle, the air around us tight with power.
“Someone’s fighting,” I said. “Someone’s using the noonday arts near the camp line.”
“Fuck,” Rainier muttered and grabbed my hand. “Come on.”
We sprinted down the hill and into the thick patch of woods stretching before us, gathering power as we ran, and we crashed through a thin stream run through with blood and dirt. I hadn’t thought to bring my bangle for scrying. Rainier turned upstream, and I followed. Shouts echoed through the woods.
And died.
Ahead of us, power condensed. Rainier sidestepped and so did I. A volley of arrows gilded with the fighting arts cut through where we had been, and the trees they hit burned from the inside out, the fire contained to their outer bark. I could feel the world unsettling here, hearts speeding up, veins tearing open, and Rainer stumbled into a copse ahead of me. A group of twelve Thornish soldiers had attacked the squad of soldiers sent out to scout. They’d been chased into this clearing.
Rainier started healing the soldiers before taking cover. The magic hooked into the skin of the nearest soldier, transformed the arrow in his chest into clean water, and healed the wound. Rainier wiped the sweat from his forehead.
One of the Thornes whipped to us, their hands empty of weapons, and hurled a small bead. The magic Rainier had been gathering snapped.
We were used to it by now.
Rainier pulled himself to his feet and followed my lead. We both sucked in aching breaths. I threw out a web of power, found a cut on the Thorne’s hand, and sent him to sleep. The other soldiers, Deme and Thorne, finally noticed we were there. Rainier grabbed the nearest Deme soldier and dragged him away. His broken ankle snapped back into place.
“Go!” I waved Rainier on. Saving one was better than nothing, and he was already wearing out, the effort of fixing such a bad break burning through his hands. “Warn someone.”
He nodded and pulled a vial from his pocket, opening it with his teeth and dumping it all down the soldier’s throat. I gathered enough power to get the next nearest soldier up and walking. Pain ripped through my cheek.
The green glass vial in Rainier’s hand exploded. His mouth opened in a little gasp of shock, the breath bubbling in his throat. I stared at his eyes, unable to look down, and Rainier collapsed behind me. An arrow trembled in his throat, and another had pierced his hand. Another ripped under my arm and into his chest. I fell with him.
“No, no.” The arrow that had cut my cheek was in his throat, and I clung to the ethereal pieces of me in him. He was losing too much blood, but I was already in. I clotted the holes in his veins and arteries. I couldn’t keep it long. His brain needed blood flow. “Hang on.”
Rainier gagged and choked. Behind me, someone screamed. Horses broke through the underbrush, and magic poured over the field in a thick wave of the fighting arts. Demeine’s army had arrived, but how could they be so late?
Rainier needed new blood. I channeled more power into him. If I removed the arrow, he would bleed out, but his neck was so damaged that I was certain he would need a new trachea. His body replenished his blood, using the alchemistry of mine to do it, and I sunk into my channeling. What parts of me made up a trachea? What could I take to make him a new one?
He let out a wheezing gasp. Stopped breathing.
No, no, no. I was fine. I just needed a lung. I could live with one lung if I—
“No!” A pair of arms hooked under my armpits and hoisted me up. “He’s dead. Stop.”
The magic I had been channeling broke. My grip on Rainier loosened. Laurence dragged me away from the fight, and I dug my heels into the earth. He lifted me higher.
A man in gold armor atop a golden horse raised his hands and killed every Thornish soldier with a single sweep of the fighting arts, magic turning the air in their lungs to ash. My shriek tasted like funeral pyres.
“I can fix him,” I said. “No, no, Laurence, you can fix him. You have to. His trachea and his lungs and his hand. You can fix them.”
He yanked me back a final few paces and kept one arm firmly around my shoulders. “I can’t fix death. It nicked his heart, Emilie.”
“We’ll get him a new one.” I clawed at Laurence’s arm, and still he didn’t drop me. “We can make him a new one.”
“No,” Laurence said softly, “the price for that is something Rainier would not want us to pay.”
I sobbed. Laurence swung me up and carried me back to camp. It was alive with shouting and cheers, and he tucked me into a bed at the end of the infirmary. My hand was red and bloodied, the skin worn away, and an odd wound like that from an arrow in my palm. Laurence healed it and made me promise not to channel for a day. I only nodded.
A sharp, breath-stealing ache burned in my throat. Sébastien and Charles sprinted into the tent and skidded to a stop near my bed. Sébastien, eyes narrowed at me, slowed and opened his mouth. Laurence shook his head.
Rainier was the first hack to die in this new war against Kalthorne.
Sébastien sucked in a breath and turned to Charles who wrapped him in a hug. Both of them were worse for wear, hands twitching and skin raw from channeling. Laurence made them leave to recover Rainier’s body and make sure he was cared for. I stared at the Stareaters above.
“Emilie,” Laurence said, “listen to me—you cannot break your body down like that to save others. It will only leave you dead.”
“Rainier’s dead. What’s the difference?”
He sighed and rubbed his temples.
A shout went up from the beds near the opening of the infirmary tent. Henry XII was certainly as handsome as a king was meant to be, and he spoke like he expected us to watch his face and not listen to his words. His hair was a sunny gold held back loosely with a gold tie, and his expressive mouth was easy to get distracted by. Each emotion, each scowl and triumph smile, rippled across his face like river water. Ice-blue eyes flickered from face to face. He spoke to each patient in turn, largely ignoring the hacks. His gaze glided over them the same way it glanced over scalpels or potentially interesting salves. He would have ignored Rainier.
He had. It had been so easy for him to stop that attack. Why hadn’t he done so sooner? We shouldn’t even be here.
Laurence clamped a hand over my mouth. “Do not say what you are thinking to him.”
“Rainer and a lot of others are dead because of him,” I whispered into Laurence’s palm. “More will die.”
“And saying so now will help nothing but your pride.” Laurence removed his hand. “Why do you think I never talk politics?”
“Because you don’t care.”
“Because when I did, my uncle didn’t like my politics, and I’m not fool enough to think he doesn’t have scryers listening to me now.” He set one hand on my shoulder. “If you move against the king, he will crush you, and he will crush anyone he thinks agrees with you. He will gain popularity. Do you understand?”
I nodded.
Laurence hated politics. He avoided it, driving his peers to postpone passing laws as he missed court dates and ignored summonses, and I couldn’t understand him saying this to me.
His Majesty spoke to everyone injured but me. When he looked up and saw Laurence, he threw up his arms.
“You were supposed to be healing Waleran,” said His Most Bright Majesty Henry XII, King of Demeine. “You deserted your orders.”
“My apologies. Two of mine were injured in the fight, and I didn’t think you would require my assistance given your returned prowess.” Laurence bowed, graceful as ever, and smiled at his uncle. “Congratulations on your victory, Your Majesty.”
Returned? I glanced up, but Laurence’s eyes were focused on His Majesty’s feet. Henry XII, King of Demeine, had been a great noonday artist in his youth, his battle arts renowned, but he had worn out his body past repair during the war with Vertgana twenty years ago. So how had he channeled all that power today without his body collapsing? There had been no hacks with him.
“Come here, boy.” His Majesty Henry XII opened his arms and let Laurence embrace him. He did not hug him back. Laurence hugged him quickly and stepped back. Next to each other, with Laurence not bowed, he towered over Henry’s wiry frame, and Henry reached up to touch Laurence’s cheek. “You’ve got so much of your father in you.”
They were so different that I had forgotten Laurence was His Majesty’s nephew.
“Thank you,” said Laurence, but he stiffened and slouched so they were the same height. “How did you find this morning?”
“Refreshing.” Henry gestured for Laurence to leave and started walking away. “I expected more of them, but they put up an enjoyable fight.”
At that, Laurence did look at me.
Trust me, he had said.
But what had he done?
* * *
I stayed in the infirmary that night. One of Allard’s hacks, Louis, tended to my injured hand and throat. He was nice, clever, and if Rainier had lived, he might have been like Louis someday. It made the ache in my chest hurt all the more.
But the worst was when Madeline arrived. She wailed, the pitch of it digging into my soul and burrowing into my bones, and a shuddering, aching wrongness filled the air. I could hear her all the way across camp. I heard her sobs in my sleep, long after she had stopped. His death would hurt so many people.
It should have been me.
Laurence made me take a day off, forcing me to stay in my tent and sleep. He got in trouble for not healing Waleran during the fight, and even Sébastien had scowled at that. Madeline could not be moved from Rainier’s corpse, and it hurt worse that she was not the only one grieving. A dozen had died. Sébastien brought her food. I brought her nothing.
I had let Rainier die. What could I possibly offer?
* * *
I didn’t sleep. The nobles of camp took on a haughty, anxious air, as if impalpable armor had been slipped over their shoulders in the night. I wandered about when others fled to the safety of dreams and listened to what the chevaliers talked about—the attack that had left Rainier dead was the start of a real war with Kalthorne. It was as if the last days had been nothing more than rehearsal for a play, and the rest of the army was being transported here. Laurence had no siblings or children, and if he died, his title would revert to His Majesty’s family once his mother passed. His Majesty seemed to have no problem having him on the front line, though.
Charles, too, had no siblings, and his parents had somehow already written him. Sébastien was the youngest of three.
“I’m the spare,” he said, sneering, as he watched Charles fold up his letter. “They’re much more worried about my older brother, the chevalier.”
He said it the way most people said no, thank you, and I had never related to him more.
We were gathered in Laurence’s small tent awaiting our briefing now that the war had changed. I stood alone where Rainier and I might have leaned against each other for support once upon a time. Charles, the only one of us who had been working for a full day nonstop after one of his soldiers collapsed a lung, was in the only chair. His red hair was stuck to his face in serpentine strands. Half of it covered his eyes.
“My parents and I will be very sad if you die,” Charles said, hair fluttering with each word. “Laurence certainly will be as well.”
I clasped my hands together to keep from pushing his hair back. Usually, he kept it in a knot while working.
“If it helps, Sébastien,” I said, and it was the first time I had called him by his name and not his title, “if my mother knew I was here, she would be furious, but because I’m an only child and not because she likes me.”
Sébastien laughed through his nose. “I should have known—you have the same brand of self-preservation Charles does. No one ever taught you how not to get trounced.”
We all laughed at everything now. Sébastien had paid to have Rainier returned home, offering Madeline a seat in the wagon if she wanted. She had refused, according to him, and gone back to work with Pièrre du Guay. I hadn’t talked to her yet.
I couldn’t.
“We’ll save so many more,” Annette had said, but what was the point when Rainier was dead?
Laurence threw open the tent flap and slouched inside, a touch too tall for his own space. “We’re leading a full-out assault on Kalthorne as of now. Segance was the start, and since it wasn’t heavily guarded, His Majesty has taken it as a good omen.”
All of us fell silent.
“Does that mean their artists are here?” I asked. A war with Kalthorne would last for years. His Majesty had made his name and set himself apart from his father as a war hero, and now he would be one again.
“Let’s be honest for once with each other, Emilie,” Laurence said, tone far more sarcastic than I had ever heard, and yet I still felt as if I were missing something. “We’re going to try and conquer Kalthorne because it’s a convenient distraction, and no one can overthrow the king when everyone is fighting, dying, or barely surviving.”
Sébastien frowned. “How can you say that?”
“Easily because I am the premier prince du sang and duc des Monts Lance,” said Laurence, the old Deme words for his rank making Sébastien flinch. “I can’t get in trouble for saying so like others would; however, considering we’re at war, I imagine all punishments will be rather grim.”
He had, as Charles had once put it, gone full duc since his last meeting with Pièrre du Guay. His curly black hair was plaited back from his face, little spirals feathering out around his cheeks in asymmetrical strands as was popular, and his clothes were so well made that my understanding of envy had changed. His scarlet coat was open over a gray vest and white shirt, and for the first time, I could see the black lining was embroidered with little silver stars and red planets. The family rings had been hung from a fine gold chain around his neck. Even his gloves, supple black leather, had been branded with the Demeine crest.
“I would, of course, prefer not dying,” Laurence said quickly, “but the people of Demeine and Kalthorne are worth my death if it comes to that.”
“You’re talking about treason,” Sébastien said quietly, suddenly. “Our names would mean nothing for us or our families.”
“And a lot of people would live.” Charles tilted his head to Sébastien. “Do you want your legacy as a physician to be one of death or life?”
“There’s no reas
on for this,” I said, “so we’re clear. This is a way to distract Demeine from Laurel?”
Rainier and I had sent word to the girl in the bar about everything we had and hadn’t discovered, but we had heard nothing back from Laurel.
“Yes.” Laurence laced his fingers together and held his hands before his mouth. “Keep with your jobs for now. As we move into Kalthorne, are we all agreed that our goal is to preserve life?”
We all nodded, and Laurence dismissed us. Sébastien returned to his tent, muttering that he needed to sleep before tonight. Charles and I returned to the infirmary. He had been working for far too long, and I went over his patients with him, doing any work that needed to be done. He followed, flipping his hair out of his face every now and then. His instructions were delightfully detailed without being condescending. By the time we were done, the back corner of the infirmary was empty.
I held out the ribbon I had used in my hair earlier to Charles. He glanced at it, wild-eyed, and then looked at me. I sighed.
“For your hair,” I said. “You keep pushing it back.”
“Thank you,” he said, laughing, “but I held my arms in the same position for three hours and cannot lift them that high.”
“Do you want me to do it?”
“Do you want to?” He raised one eyebrow at me, arch perfect. The ass. “If you would be so kind. Sébastien is terrible at it.”
I stepped behind him. We were the same height, and he slumped a bit to give me access. I gathered up his hair in my hands, dragged my nails along the back of his neck to get the sweat-sticky strands, and pulled his hair into a loose knot. I tucked one of the too-short bunches of hair behind his ear. Charles leaned his head back to stare up at me.
“You’re being nice,” he said. His cheeks were pink as if from a sunburn.
I shrugged. “Perhaps I’m a nice person.”
“Even you don’t sound like you believe that.” He yawned. “I don’t hate you, you know. Not anymore. I always trusted you, but you were so…”