Belle Révolte

by Linsey Miller

  There, in the crowd, was Annette. She was shackled, hands bloodied, and gagged. A guard held her with one arm around her throat to keep her still and staring at the execution. His other hand held a hood like mine. The spectacles around her eyes were so tight, the skin along her brows had broken.

  Another girl, blond and bruised, her hands bound, her mouth covered, and the guard at her back wearing two blackened eyes, struggled against her shackles. Annette didn’t struggle.

  Her gaze never left the face of the small, redheaded woman at her side.

  Estrel Charron, shorter than I had always pictured, had the same haughty beauty as Charles but worlds more confidence. Her red hair was tucked beneath a coif, her neck bared by the low collar of her green dress. Her mouth moved. Laurence smiled.

  He knelt, upright, and said his last words. I couldn’t hear.

  Monsieur du Ruse unsheathed the killing sword. He hefted the blade high, both hands tight about the grip. Laurence didn’t even flinch.

  It was a quick death.

  It was still death.

  The mirror went dark, and my mother gasped.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Yes,” I said, and found that I was. I wasn’t sad. I wasn’t angry. I just was. “You should leave.”

  “Emilie…” Her lips brushed my forehead. “You make me very proud but also very, terribly scared for you, and I don’t know what to do because I don’t understand you as I thought I would. The idea of you wearing down or at war fills me with dread. The weight of it makes my tongue clumsy. I love you. I am proud of you. I am scared for you.”

  The little threads stitching what was left of my control together snapped. I tucked my face into her neck and cried, soft and still, no gasps or heaving shoulders, no snot or choking. I was a constant storm, a drizzle in the autumn months that never poured but never quite let up, and all the sad, sorry feelings seeped from me.

  She was not lying.

  She did not understand me.

  She did not need to.

  “Please,” she whispered. “I cannot stay with you long. I must go back to court and make sure His Majesty holds true to the terms of Laurel’s deal, but do not put yourself in more danger. Once that is done, they will release you into my custody.”

  “What about my work?” I asked.

  They hadn’t been able to stop the war, and Laurence was dead. How many would die because of that?

  She shook her head.

  “I’ll be fine,” I said, and it was not a lie either.

  I would be fine because I had work to do.

  Twenty-Four

  Annette

  On the fifth day, we were in Serre. They questioned me the whole way there, promising food and water if I talked. They’d locked spectacles like Estrel’s over my eyes, tied a hood around my head, and shackled my hands behind my back, metal nipping into the divot between wrist and hand. I couldn’t move, I couldn’t see, I could barely hear through the thick fabric of the hood. There was no silver left on me, not after they had stripped me of anything shiny or sharp in the wagon on the way here. They’d taken my shoes off so I couldn’t run. Coline had had another knife.

  No, not Coline. Nicole, the Madame Royale of Demeine, had fought the whole way, and it made so much more sense. She wasn’t only noble. She was royalty. No wonder she was so angry.

  Life had never taught her that sometimes we just lose. That the world wasn’t fair.

  We did everything right and we died. The happenstance of death was that not even wealth made us immune to it.

  And I thought I was the biggest liar among us.

  They left me in a cell for days. I talked to myself. I screamed at Coline, so angry that she had so much power the whole time and used none of it. She had called that school a prison, but it was a blessing, and now it was dead. Vivienne was gone, and Isabelle had—

  “Who helped you?” a guard I hadn’t known was there asked.

  I sobbed and laughed and threw myself back against the wall. “I helped myself because no one who was supposed to would.”

  The questions blurred together like ink smeared by a left-handed writer.

  “How did you first get in contact with Laurel?”

  “I prayed and Mistress Moon sent them,” I said. “Do you think she would help you?”

  I couldn’t save Alaine, but I would protect everyone else come death or a different Demeine. Whichever freed me from this first.

  “Did Estrel Charron assist you?”

  I hadn’t answered that for a long, long time. Long enough for their boots to grow heavy above my hands and my bones to crack. Long enough for them to call a physician. Long enough for them to forget the question.

  And me.

  They didn’t come back for days. Then they did. A guard dragged me down a hall of stone, his arm locked around my throat. He carried me through the cool halls of a vast building and out into the bright heat of the sun. The stone floor burned against my bare feet, and I shrieked. The guard shoved a cloth in my mouth.

  “This is a state function,” he said, still dragging me. “Behave.”

  We were at the top of a tower, a crowd of nobles, gilded and dour, hung around the edges, and in the center was a raised scaffold. On it stood a stout man I didn’t know in the golden armors of a chevalier, and behind him stood Henry XII, King of Demeine. Coline was at his side.

  She screamed when she saw me. Her gag muffled the sound, and her bonds made her stumble, the shackles on her wrists padded but tight. She looked worse for wear, and her gray eyes were wide with wild fear. His Majesty didn’t even look at her. Her guard yanked her back by her hair.

  “The deal was she’s not harmed, and that includes her feet.” Estrel’s rough voice sunk into me, and I turned. “Annette?”

  She was wearing her favorite dress. Her skin was soft pink from being recently hurt and healed, the dark circles under her eyes deep as night. She sucked in a deep breath when she saw me.

  “It’ll be all right,” she whispered and kissed my cheek. She slipped off her shoes and made me step into them. “Don’t watch. You don’t have to, and I don’t want you to.”

  I tried to speak, but the gag held my tongue.

  Estrel was on my left. She kept her chin up, the shackles around her hands clanking as she fidgeted. Laurence stood next her, looming, the bored expression on his face angering His Majesty until the end of his speech was pitchy and fast. Estrel leaned down once while His Majesty was distracted and kissed my crown.

  “They’re not killing you today. They’re not allowed to,” she whispered. “But this is very, very important—never feel guilty for this. It was my choice, and if it were not you, it would still be my choice. I made it years ago. Don’t feel guilty. Promise me that.”

  I stared up at her, crying, and nodded.

  Laurence went first, and his last words were in a language I didn’t know, the rhythm of Estrel’s name between unfamiliar words all I recognized.

  I stared at Estrel. There was a sound like ice cracking. Estrel flinched.

  I did what she asked.

  I didn’t watch.

  “See what happens when you move against Demeine?” the guard asked.

  He turned my head to see, and I closed my eyes. Safe in the dark.

  They put the hood back on me, and they carted me back down the stairs, into the depths of Serre until I didn’t know where I had come from or where I was going, and only knew that I was in the dark and the dark was in me. They sent no one else to me. Days slipped away.

  Alone, in the dark of the hood and cell, I stayed. Estrel’s shoes were too big, but I kept them on my feet. They were soft and simple, thin leather that knotted around the ankles, and I didn’t tie them. I couldn’t with my hands shackled behind me. Whatever deal she had made had saved me.

  “I have to get out o
f here.” Yvonne might have been in danger. There was no telling what His Majesty would do to Coline. What if they had caught Isabelle? The war with Kalthorne wasn’t over. We, the country kids who became soldiers and hacks and varlets because we had no other way to survive, would die in a war we’d no business being in. The crown wore us down like magic—surely, slowly, till death. “I have to get out of here.”

  The hood scratched my lips, fabric catching on the tears, and I walked the walls of the cell. Three of stones, one of bars, none of them more than three paces. What would Estrel do?

  Die.

  I shuddered. I couldn’t be sad. I couldn’t give in.

  She was dead. She was dead. She was dead.

  “They’re underestimating you.” Estrel’s voice was a distant whisper, broken, stuttering, but hers nonetheless, and the midnight arts trembled as she spoke. “What do we do to the people who underestimate us?”

  “You’re dead,” I whispered.

  She laughed. “You’re not. So do something.”

  The hood was easy. I dragged my face down the wall, ripping it off. The shackles were sharp in my skin, the edges tight, and I stared at Estrel’s shoes, the magic in me gathering. It was night, the magic in the air too weak for what I wanted to do, so I channeled it until my nose bled and clotted, till my skin stung, till it hurt even to turn my head. Everything, I pushed into the shackles.

  They shattered.

  Power, unchecked, corrupted.

  I yanked Estrel’s shoes from my feet and clutched them to my chest.

  See what happens when you move against Demeine?

  I set her shoes in front of me. In the left, in blood, was one word, and in the right was a time.

  Scry. 4 morn.

  I laughed. Of course she wouldn’t leave me alone, not like this. All I needed was a surface, a reflection, and I could see her again. I reached up and tore the spectacles from my eyes, yanking out hair and bits of pinched skin with them, and the thick, dark yellow lenses glinted in the dim light from my one narrow window.

  I held the spectacles up to the light, metal arms gold, and carefully channeled as much power as I could bear into the metal.

  “Well, this is fitting.” It was Estrel’s voice, but the vision was blurred, slanted like light in rippling water. I pulled more power and refocused. Her familiar hands curled around the bars of a cell like mine. Her knuckles were bloody and bruised. Two fingers were broken. “If he still thinks we’re the biggest threats and the Laurels are weak without us, he has another think coming.”

  “What else was there for us to do?” a deep voice raspy with exhaustion asked. “Let them die so we could carry on? What is a country and its leader if they let children die?”

  “Let us not have our last conversation be about philosophy.” Estrel pulled herself up until she was on her knees and leaning against the bars. Her red hair hung in knots stuck to her freckled face with sweat and blood, and one eye was completely swollen shut. She licked her lips. “Laurence, can you move?”

  A hand, equally as broken and shackled as Estrel’s, covered hers. “I can. The real question is will my broken ribs pierce anything important when I do?”

  “I know we left out the don’t-torture-us part on purpose to sweeten the deal,” Estrel said and groaned. “I’m regretting it.”

  “He was so excited, he didn’t question that wage clause, though.” Laurence grunted. “No, can’t sit up. Ribs are all over the place.”

  Estrel knelt down, so her cheek was to the floor and her face was near his. Her hand slipped between the bars and brushed his hair from his face. She twirled a strand around her fingers. He kissed her palm.

  “I’m sorry you won’t get to talk to Annette.” Laurence’s eyes fluttered shut. “I had to say goodbye to Charles. He said I was ‘a very annoying older sibling he didn’t ask for with a lot of advice he definitely never asked for but cherished.’” He chuckled and turned his face to her. “I named him my heir in my will, for my books and research if the title and holdings are disbanded.”

  I swallowed. The vision wavered, the power I was channeling rising up in my skin as welts.

  “That has given me a lovely idea.” Estrel sat up, kicked off her shoes, and gnawed open the wound on her hand until it bled.

  “What are you doing?” he asked. “Take pity—it hurts too much for me to look.”

  “Annette is going to scry me, and I’m going to have my last words with her.” Estrel scribbled in the bottoms of her shoes and let them dry. She tucked herself back up against the gate. Her forehead pressed to the bars. “I agreed not to speak with her. Me talking to nothing and her scrying me doesn’t count.”

  Laurence laughed and turned his head so his nose was against hers. “You could’ve written a normal letter in your will. I did. It was very cathartic.”

  “There wasn’t time,” she said. “I didn’t realize… It doesn’t matter.”

  “You are such an exquisite pain,” he muttered. “Have your conversation. It’s not as if I can leave, though.”

  Estrel rolled up into a sitting position. She looked horrible and wonderful, everything I wanted but not here. She narrowed her eyes and glanced around. Then, as if I had really been there, her eyes stared straight at mine.

  “Right, there you are, Annette,” she whispered, tears in her eyes. “I’m sorry, darling, but I’m going to die tomorrow. Luckily, that’s part of the plan. Unluckily, it happened sooner than I thought it would. I hope you didn’t watch.”

  “I didn’t,” I said to the ghost of her that couldn’t hear me. Couldn’t know I’d ever see this.

  “I don’t have a title or land to offer you.” She wiped her cheeks clean and closed her eyes. “I don’t remember my family. I don’t know if I had siblings, but I know that, if you wanted, I would have been very happy to think of you as one. And if nothing else, you were my apprentice, Annette Boucher. You are brilliant, and you are enough. You always were. They’re probably going to attempt to go back on the deal we made with them, and that’s fine. We expected that. They’re going to underestimate you and the rest of the people, though. They think removing the instigators will remove the problem because they’re shortsighted. Make them regret it. Make them acknowledge you. I love you.”

  The metal cracked. My magic broke, channeling slowing to a creep. I sobbed and bowed my head into my lap, face wet, throat tight. I couldn’t say the words.

  What did it matter? There was no one left to hear them.

  “Mistress,” I whispered. “We deserve better than this.”

  I sunk into my power like I always did. No water. No bowls. No quicksilver. Down and down and down to the little bits of me too small to be tangible, to where power flickered between my pieces, and I searched for other bodies, other people. A soldier guarded the door outside this block of cells, and his body was nothing but flickering parts. Illusions work by tricking the brain, laying down a blanket of magic and covering it over with what the artist want to show them. We believe so easily what the world shows us.

  I dredged up the guard’s memories of home. I made the world seem dark to him, like evening at shift change. The hallway to this cell block became the twisting roads and alleys of Serre, and he stumbled down them as if drunk. The keys in his pocket were to the room he rented. He opened my cell.

  “Thank you,” I said, standing to meet him.

  He whistled and didn’t hear me because I was in his mind and didn’t want him to. He dropped the keys into my hands, thinking they were the table by his door. I pulled the cell shut behind him. He froze.

  “What?” He spun, frantic, and shook the bars. “What did you do to me?”

  I leaned against the wall across from them. Behind my back, my hands trembled. Everything hurt. Every part of me was alive.

  “Nothing,” I said. “Less than you did to me.”

  I didn’t
know I could be so cold.

  The soldier laughed, deep and dragging out of his throat with a rasp. Alaine’s silver necklace glittered at his wrist. “Do you know what they’re going to do to you? You go out that door, you’re dead.”

  It had taught me many things, this nation called Demeine.

  “Yes, I know very well what they’ll try to do.” I ripped her necklace from him and tied Estrel’s shoes. “They’re going to underestimate me, and I’m going to teach them not to do it again.”

  To any of us.

  Twenty-Five

  Emilie

  My mother left, and the soldiers—Chevalier Waleran du Ferrant’s apprentice and two hacks—checked me over to make sure she hadn’t slipped me anything.

  “That’s very insulting,” I said to the apprentice. “Have you no respect for my mother or our name?”

  This apprentice was my age, some younger son from one of the newer families, and he followed the orders Chevalier du Ferrant had left to the letter.

  “It’s not an insult, Madame,” he said, head ducked. Even with me in shackles, he clung to the rules of polite society. “It’s standard.”

  After an hour, he was still guarding me, and my mother was most likely far enough away.

  “Are we still going to war with Kalthorne?” I asked him, sighing as if I were bored.

  He glanced back, eyes narrowed. “Of course. And your needless outrage at His Majesty means we will be fighting ourselves as well as Kalthorne. Chevalier du Ferrant is having to focus on rousing up soldiers instead of preparing for those Thornes.”

  “Needless?” I stretched out my legs. “But not false?”

  “His Majesty is more necessary than some hack,” he said, but he shifted and looked toward the door. Neither of the hacks he worked with was here. “Without him, we are nothing.”

  My mother had left me with a deep, unsettling certainty that Demeine was going to crumble if this continued. A lot of people were going to die, and there was no need for it. Without the chevaliers, the nobles leading the charge, would the army fight? They hadn’t wanted to, certainly. Kalthorne hadn’t either.