Which she’d done. And was doing right now. Metaphorically, as Vivienne had taught me in our literature class.
“I’m not romancing anyone.” I knew what she meant—sex. People always meant sex when they said romance even though the two weren’t the same. “Don’t call her cook. She’s a chef and an alchemist.” I spun around. “Have you been spying on me?”
She let out a huge sigh and flopped back onto the bed. “I do love watching disasters unfold.”
I knew her well enough by now to not take it personally. She was prickly with everyone. She was only funny-prickly with people she liked.
“But really,” Coline said. “You’re her superior. That creates complications. And you pick now? When we’re on the cusp of war and revolt?”
“Like I could do it if I die tomorrow?” I scrunched up my face, hating the sensation but too furious to fix it. “You think you’re superior to everyone, so how’d you romance whoever’s hair that is in your locket?”
Coline didn’t move or speak for a whole minute, and then very softly said, “I romanced her like one picks a rose—carefully and with permission.”
“Is she the poet in the relationship because I don’t think that metaphor works.” She didn’t laugh like she normally would’ve, so I sat next to her and softened my words. “Thank you for trusting me with that.”
“I haven’t seen her in months. She was arrested in Segance during Madame Royale’s revolt. I’m living through you,” Coline muttered. “And Mistress bless, are you boring.” She rolled over to look up at me, her face as flat and emotionless as I’d ever seen it, and laced our fingers together. “We’re not the same, but we must be allies. We shouldn’t let the crown divide us. We’re stronger together.”
“We’ll survive together,” I said. “We will survive.”
I lay down next to her. “Did your parents understand?”
“Not even remotely.” She laughed and flipped over onto her stomach. “Yours?”
“I’m being merciful by letting her know now,” Maman had said, hands on her hips while Papa paced the room. I’d listened at the door. “She’ll have to learn to like it one way or another. She won’t always have a family who will put up with her, and she can’t make enough to survive living alone.”
I shuddered.
I wasn’t ever going back.
“No,” I said softly. “You know that feeling when you miss a day of lessons and come back to all the other students knowing something you don’t? Like you missed out on something everyone else learned and now you don’t understand it like they do? That’s how I feel about sex and attraction. Not that part of me is missing, but that my understanding isn’t the same as everyone else’s. I liked people in the past, wanted to romance them, but we had different meanings of romance.”
Sometimes I felt like I was giving Demeine what it wanted. Men were lustful and women were controlled, the frozen calm of Mistress Moon that tempered Lord Sun’s heat. But this wasn’t control. I still wanted. Just not as some folks thought of want.
“There’s nothing wrong with that.” Coline laid her cheek against my shoulder. “You should talk to Alchemist Yvonne about it.”
“Do you think if this works and Laurel does overthrow the king, things will change?”
“Yes. It’s not only about money or the war or magic. All of those things are pieces of Demeine, and if we change them, we can change Demeine. Even the parts of it that feel set in stone.” She glanced at me. “No matter what happens, we’re family now.”
“We’ll survive,” I said.
And Coline whispered, “We’ll thrive.”
Nineteen
Emilie
“Did Laurence teach you how to close sutures?” Charles asked, one hand still on a soldier’s leg from where he had been cleaning a wound. The soldier had been an apothecary once, and it was safer, when possible, to close small wounds with physical rather than ethereal means.
I nodded. “Yes, he taught me physical suturing in Delest with Rainier.”
His name pinched my heart.
“Good.” Charles stepped back, his hand brushing my shoulder. “You can finish this, and I will clean up because”—he grinned, kissed his fingers, and flicked them up to the sun—“we are done for today. And we managed to save the best patient for last.”
The soldier laughed and raised his flask to Charles.
“Of course, Apprentice du Ravine.” I dipped my head down, not far enough to miss the roll of his eyes, and sat where he had. Charles had already numbed the leg, and I could still feel the threads of his art in the nerves. I smiled at the soldier. “Please let me know if you can feel any of this. Otherwise, once it’s bandaged, you’ll have to keep it clean, dry, and watch out for rot like with anything else. The stitches I’ll transform with some quick noonday arts once the wound has healed a bit. It will be like they weren’t even there at all.”
On any other day, I would have been thrilled to stitch up a cut or dive into the complicated alchemical tapestry that was the human body, but in the abyss of this wound, all I saw was the breaking of Gabriel Choquet. It had been as if some invisible force had picked apart his muscles and bones piece by piece. A gnawing fear had opened in me.
This soldier’s skin did not peel back and vanish; the fat, muscle, and bone did not wear away; and he didn’t die, heart pumping blood that was no longer there.
I hadn’t been able to look at the posters of Gabriel’s death when they arrived this morning after dawn, and I had shoved the disguised posters into the lining of my sleeping roll.
“It’s very well done magically,” Madeline said softly. Her usually bright brown skin was ashen. “It’s like a nightmare trapped in paper and ink.”
Madeline had watched the illusion play out three times and tucked one of the posters into the bodice of her dress.
I joined Charles at the back of the infirmary when I was done. He had gotten dressed for the party—such an abominable term for it—early and wandered the infirmary tent with me, pointing out things I might need to know. Everything in this tent was Laurence’s responsibility, and we had made sure it was perfect. We could give no one reason to suspect us, which had necessitated telling Sébastien. He hadn’t taken it well.
He had taken our plan better after seeing the placard this morning.
Charles ran a hand through his hair for a fifth time in the last minute as we pretended to work in the back of the infirmary.
“Stop messing with it,” I said softly. “You look very nice.”
“Thank you. For you to compliment me, I must look much more than nice.” He dropped his hands and grinned. “That was even a very in there.”
“Don’t flatter yourself.” I ducked and fiddled with my unbuttoned sleeve. “Words are cheap.”
He snorted. “This suit was not, though.”
He had foregone his orange apprentice coat for an evergreen suit with white shirt that brought out the freckles along his collarbone and didn’t clash spectacularly with his red hair. Sébastien had told me it was the first thing Charles bought when he had been paid for his work as an apprentice. He had also demanded I not mock Charles for it. As if I would be so ill-mannered as to resort to insulting appearances.
“Yes,” I said. “I don’t think anyone could feel less than nice in it, though; even in the nicest dresses, I always feel more like a turnip pretending to be a person.”
“And here I always thought carrot.” Charles tucked a small journal into his coat pocket. He scowled when I laughed. “I have to have something to do during this, and you will not be able to convince me you wouldn’t do the same thing.”
I had done the same thing many times, much to my mother’s chagrin.
I smoothed out the lines of his coat. “Translating ancient Deme anatomy texts during a party?”
“Sébastien and I make a game of it,” he
said and swallowed.
I leaned away from him and nodded. It was much better than that orange coat. “May I read it when you’re done?”
“Why? Going to correct my translation?”
“Only if yours is very bad.” I smiled and handed him a small vial of orange water I carried to clear my head after work. “Here—no one wants to talk to someone who smells like an infirmary.”
He laughed, openmouthed, and tipped a few drops onto his fingers.
“You’re late!” Laurence burst into the infirmary, words a hissing whisper, and beckoned for Charles to join him. “You are not getting out of this if I’m not.”
Laurence du Montimer wore red velvet so dark, I might have mistaken it for black had I thought him inconsiderate enough to wear mourning colors to a celebration. The opal earring was not alone tonight—a collection of heirlooms glittered on his fingers in golds and reds, and a pair of dark brown leather gloves hid his hands.
Charles hummed. “If there are not at least two books hidden somewhere on his person…”
“Only two?” I laughed. It was nice, pretending I wasn’t about to commit treason and maybe die. I whispered, “Be careful.”
“You too,” he whispered back and touched two fingers to his heart.
Madeline, grave-faced, found me in the infirmary several minutes later. We were not leaving a poster in the infirmary. We had only three—one for His Majesty’s tent, one for the tent where the chevaliers held their meetings, and one for the post that nearly everyone passed every morning when walking about the camp. Our additions to this rebellion were mostly fear tactics since so many here were noble. It was the other camps that were crucial.
However, His Majesty had designed this war to tear us apart and stop us from working together. To stop him and this war, the soldiers would have to all agree not to fight. Only then could we hope to beat the chevaliers.
Luckily, though, Laurence’s tent was near the edge, and we stopped in there and lit a few lanterns. Neither of us had any experience with the illusionary arts, and so we set up two coats to make it look as if we were studying. The setup cast two us-shaped shadows against the tent side.
We slunk out the back of the tent when no one was around.
The posters were heavy in my coat pocket. I had clipped the seam and slid them between the two panels of fabric for the coat, so they were hidden and easy to pull out. It was well after dusk, the darkness seeping across the horizon bleak and complete in this new moon night, and I walked with Madeline to the edge of camp toward where Gabriel had died. We stopped every now and then when people passed, pausing to look busy. There weren’t many people on this side of camp. It was closer to Kalthorne.
A fly, young and golden, landed on my arm. I slapped it away, shuddering.
“We’re close,” I whispered.
It was almost comical—two hacks in black coats creeping through the bushes on bent knees, gilded flies flickering through the trees like hungry lightning bugs—the two of us crawling through the dark bushes toward a cloth tent of gold and silver. There were five guards now, and we stopped on the outskirts. They paced around the tent.
“This complicates matters,” I whispered. I had expected three.
Part of our job here was to scare the king, but the other part was proof. Gabriel’s body was rotting in the earth, the process accelerated and contained to prevent anyone from noticing. Somewhere, the metallic sun that bore his name was resting amongst his rotting uniform and degraded body. We had to find it.
Partly for Laurel. Partly for his sister. Annette had said her name was Isabelle, and I couldn’t comprehend that grief. I couldn’t comprehend how she could paint the posters.
“Here,” I said, pointing. Two guards were circling the perimeter of the tent, avoiding the stretch of grass and ill-looking white growths between us. “I’ll take care of them, but we won’t have long.”
“I’ll get the name tag.” Madeline sniffed. “Let’s go.”
I settled against the tree, back to the rough bark, and focused on the two walking soldiers. No magic flowed through them or any of the other three guarding the tent. It was easier to alter a person’s alchemistry when touching them, but Laurence’s lessons had been about necessity and not ease. I would not always be able to spare a hand.
The first guard was easy enough; his body was already upset with him. I channeled my power through me and flicked it to him like a whip. The lifeline between us burst to life, and I tightened my fingers into a fist against my stomach and twisted. His stomach gurgled.
“Well,” Madeline said, “he’s running. I don’t know what you did, but he’s running real fast.”
“Good.” I licked my lips, mouth dry, and focused on the second one. His laughter echoed in my head as if I were actually standing close enough to hear it. I had never met these guards, didn’t know anything about them, and figuring out the right amount of nudging for his bodily alchemistry was difficult. He wasn’t already ill. My own stomach ached. My ribs burned.
“Here.” Madeline took my hands in hers and channeled more magic, so I could focus on the alchemistry while she controlled the power. “Let me help.”
Madeline’s channeling was a blessing. It was perfectly controlled and calculated, letting me slip back into the guard’s body. My own nausea lessened. The guard heaved.
Madeline tugged me toward the tent, tearing through the grass in a rustle of skirts and fly wings, and I followed. I felt the tug of her magic lead her away, and I looked into the tent through the mesh vent. There was no one. I ripped up the spikes keeping the tent wall in the ground. She searched the field for Gabriel.
On the inside, the tent was even nicer. A thick flooring of reed mats had been laid down. The cot was wider and had a proper mattress, even if it was straw, and the sleep area was separated from the rest of the tent by a thick curtain of sunrise-red velvet. I pulled the poster from my pocket, folding and unfolding without looking at it, and walked around the tent. There was the table where Gabriel had been paralyzed. Here was the cot where His Majesty had sat while having a hack killed to save his arts.
It was like hiring a hack normally, except death had been faster and the exchange clear.
I felt sick for ever thinking it was fair.
“I want to scare you,” I said softly, trailing my fingers along the wooden top of a desk. “You deserve to know Gabriel’s fear.”
He couldn’t know it, not really. He would only be scared for a moment whereas Gabriel had had a whole life of living in the shadow of noble whims.
I unfolded the poster, crawled onto the king’s bed, and broke down the roof of the tent above. It was easy; canvas was simpler than flesh and bone. They wouldn’t be able to remove the poster bearing Gabriel’s death. It was part of the fabric now.
An appropriate gilding.
The words were in the scarlet red of a physician’s coat, and I could not bear to read the description of what had been done to him. Whoever had written this account had left nothing out. Every cut, every hurt, every horror was written out in exquisite detail. There was even a drawing of Gabriel with Physician du Guay leaning over him. Then at the bottom with Laurel’s crown around the words:
The war is a DISTRACTION
Kalthorne wanted PEACE
HIS MAJESTY wanted POWER and
to KILL the people opposing him
This is what they do to hacks
This is what will they do to us
UNITE—ORGANIZE—FIGHT
We are not our own
But we are NOT theirs for the taking
I swayed and stepped from the bed. I raced back outside and redid the tent spikes. Madeline held up Gabriel’s name tag.
“Did we actually get away with this?” she asked.
I grabbed her arm. “We’ll find out in the morning.”
We snuck back to Lauren
ce’s tent, broke the illusion on the walls, and settled down with texts on the noonday arts and anatomy. By midnight, the others had not returned. Madeline slept with her head on Rainier’s bundled-up coat. She took it everywhere now. I nodded off with my back to Laurence’s cot.
I woke up to Charles kneeling before me and tapping my foot. I blinked, sitting up.
“I’m assuming you weren’t caught,” he said, “and you need to go back to your tent, but you’ll want to see this.”
He pulled me to the door of the tent where Laurence and Pièrre were arguing several paces away. I narrowed my eyes. There was nothing unusual.
Charles leaned down and whispered in my ear, “Look for magic, not a poster. It’s too dark to see here and probably until tomorrow.”
There, stuck to Physician Pièrre du Guay’s back, was one of Laurel’s posters.
I had never thought Charles so bold.
I had never thought Charles so reckless.
“Lord, you didn’t.” Except here I was staring at it, and he had plainly done it. “He’ll find out the moment he takes it off.”
“Doubtful. His varlet may panic, but Physician du Guay is far too proud to let anyone know he was targeted,” Charles said, dropping the tent flap and offering me his arm. “I hope the embarrassment doesn’t kill him, though. Someone else deserves that honor.”
Twenty
Annette
Vivienne had given the maids sent with us strict instructions on how each girl was to dress and appear for the party—I still wanted to vomit every time I thought about some comte somewhere tossing Gabriel aside and then getting dressed for a party.
Even Estrel wasn’t exempt from Vivienne’s instructions.
“I’m sorry, Mademoiselle,” the maid said, slicking back Estrel’s hair into a tight twist at the back of her neck. “Mademoiselle Gardinier left me very specific instructions.”
Estrel scowled. “Yes, I got her note.”
Belle Révolte Page 22
