Belle Révolte

by Linsey Miller

  There would be no safety while His Majesty and his court ruled, and this apprentice wasn’t assuaging those fears.

  “I was du Montimer’s hack, you know.” I focused on the parts of me in charge of panic and fear. Stopping my body from recognizing pain would be too much, given how tired I was now, and this would hurt. If I was in shock, my reaction would be dulled. That would be enough. “I would bet you were one of the soldiers I healed with him.”

  My heart sped up, my palms began to sweat, and a little tug of fear took hold of my stomach. A light-headed flutter filled me.

  The apprentice shifted again, rocking from foot to foot. “I was very appreciative of our physicians while I was there.”

  I bit down hard on the collar of my shirt and dislocated my thumbs. Pain shot through me. The shackles clattered together as my hands, sweat-slicked, slipped from them. The apprentice glanced back at me.

  “What are you doing?” he asked, stalking toward me.

  I raised my hands, free and crooked, and channeled enough magic to slam my thumbs back into place and leave welts down my skin. He stopped.

  I didn’t need to do magic to know what had been done to him. The way his scar had healed, the way his bones felt strong and repaired beneath my prodding, was all Rainier. I pulled the spectacles from my face and threw them aside. He drew his sword.

  I channeled magic without a care, drawing it through my fingers and twisting them, sending it out to the muscles in the apprentice’s mouth where Rainier had healed a fractured jaw. I didn’t need a way into this boy’s body. Rainier was familiar enough. The muscles seized. The apprentice clawed at his mouth.

  No wonder physicians and chevaliers used hacks. I could do anything—for a price. Already, my hands shook and thin strips of skin peeled away from my nails where the magic had channeled. My thumbs were black and old-blood brown with bruises.

  “You got stabbed.” I peeled away the old healing of Rainier’s artistry from beneath this soldier’s shirt. Bone fractured, vessels tore, flesh ripped open as if it had never been healed at all. “My friend Rainier healed it, but he’s dead, and you don’t get to reap the rewards of letting your people die for you.”

  A dark, dark strain seeped across his shirt, the linen gathering blood like I gathered magic, and he groaned. His sword hit the ground. Then his knees did.

  “My mother didn’t have to gift me anything,” I said, staring down at him. “I have all I have ever had, and it will always be enough.”

  Me, alone.

  * * *

  I left him bleeding on the ground in Monts Lance. He wouldn’t die; I didn’t undo enough of the wound for that. There had been others guarding me, but they weren’t artists, and it was easy to put them to sleep. There was no need to hold back now. I rode one of their horses east for three days.

  No one questioned someone riding toward a war, and if the soldiers I left behind gave chase, they never caught up.

  Laurence and Estrel had made a deal, but I doubted they were the true originators of Laurel. They were simply the ones who had agreed to take the fall when trouble came. There was little to do but think while traveling, and my time with Laurence repeated over and over in my mind. Of course he was one of the Laurels, and now His Majesty thought he had taken out the biggest threat. If we attacked Kalthorne, there would be no going back.

  Chevalier Waleran du Ferrant and Physician Pièrre du Guay would have no mercy for the soldiers and hacks who refused to fight, and how many would die in the fights with Kalthorne that came after? They had to be stopped.

  Smoke rose over the large military camp at Segance. I rode my stolen horse until I was close enough to see the line of soldiers walking the western border. Everyone would surely know what had happened by now, my name and what had happened all over, and there was no way I would be allowed to simply walk back into camp. I stayed on the edge and watched, timing the soldiers as they paced and kept watch. I couldn’t handle all of them.

  They came in twos. I crept closer, low to the ground and channeling as much magic as I could so I was ready. Two soldiers approached, laughing and chatting. I altered the alchemistry of the one nearest to me. They slumped and snored.

  I slipped into the flesh of the other one, my mind melting away as theirs filled my head, and tried to prod their body to sleep. Their head jerked up to me, and I reared back. They tackled me.

  Their knees hit my chest, their hands grabbed my throat. I gagged and flailed. They shoved me hard into the dirt. Their nails cut into my skin.

  “Stay down,” the soldier said, blinking back the sleep I tried to settle over them.

  Insomnia.

  I gathered magic and channeled through my neck, into their hands. They shrieked and smacked me. My vision went black.

  Then they were gone. I coughed and rolled out of the way, sight coming back slowly. A blurry figure approached.

  “Are you trying to die?”

  I coughed again and rubbed my eyes.

  Charles—lip busted and a purple bruise blossoming across the corner of his mouth, shirtsleeve torn and smoldering where fire had lapped at his skin, and hair a crown of bloodred tangles—kneeled before me. His arm curled around my waist and the other touched my throat, healing the worn-out flesh and crushed cartilage there. I leaned against his side and sobbed. His magic felt like spring.

  “Emilie?” He tapped my cheek. “You’re worn out.”

  “I’m fine,” I said, voice rough. “We have to go before they get up. Chevalier du Ferrant and the phys—”

  “One step ahead of you.” Charles hooked his other arm beneath my knees and hoisted me up. “A lot’s happened. Madeline is well. Laurence is dead.”

  “I know.” My head lolled against his chest, the steady thump of his heart heavy in my ears, and I licked my lips. “I saw.”

  A few steps from the fight and after adjusting my alchemistry enough to keep me walking, Charles set my feet on the ground. “The other camps are refusing to attack Kalthorne, but Chevalier du Ferrant has Physician du Guay backing him up with a few apprentices and soldiers. They could kill us all, but then they would have no one and no power left to attack Kalthorne. We’re in a standstill now.”

  I hummed. “How can I help?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, sighing and failing to blow his sweat-heavy hair from his eyes. “It’s a mess.”

  “Well,” I said, brushing his hair from his eyes, “this might be the concussion speaking, but saving lives looks good on you. Thank you for saving me.”

  “Those were some of our dear chevalier’s people.” He laughed. “You’re lucky I was over here.”

  “We need to get rid of him and Pièrre.” I leaned against Charles as we walked. Each step, each breath, filled me with a renewed sense of purpose. “If we kill them, we remove their threat to the camp and prevent the attack on Kalthorne.”

  They were two of His Majesty’s staunchest supports, and without control of his army, how much power did a king really have?

  “I don’t know how we didn’t assume you were Madame des Marais. Such arrogance,” muttered Charles. “Madeline nearly laughed herself to death when she heard.”

  “I know you’re teasing me.” I tilted my chin up and grinned. “However, I much prefer confidence. Nicer connotations.”

  We broke through the thin line of trees. The camp was oddly quiet, soldiers clumped in groups and whispering to each other. No one paid us much mind, most turned the moment they saw us, and Charles murmured that there had been several fights earlier. He led me to the infirmary tent, and inside, the hacks were busy. Soldiers with bloody noses sat to be healed. Madeline and Physician Allard’s hack Louis ordered everyone around.

  “Physician Allard’s dead,” Charles whispered. “He had an argument with Physician Pièrre du Guay. The soldiers broke up the fight.”

  Physician Allard wasn’t nobl
e. He had been one of the few common boys to rise from hack to physician.

  “Sit here,” Charles said, one hand on my shoulder holding me down and the other cupping my cheek. “Do not move. Do not channel anything. Rest for once in your life.”

  He joined Louis near the opening of the tent. They chatted and flipped through a journal that might have been Laurence’s, and Charles started directing other hacks and a handful of apprentices on what to do. Power fit him well, his panicked expression calming as he and Louis counted up how many were here. Charles frowned, and I sighed. He had so much left he wanted to do, none of it killing.

  He shouldn’t have been burdened with stopping this war and getting blood on his hands.

  “You know,” a familiar, drawling voice said, “I was going to say all sorts of mean things to you for leaving with no hint of a note and then getting arrested, Madame.”

  Madeline sat next to me. A green silk scarf was wrapped around her hair, and smoke stained the collar of her dress. A new scar split her chin.

  “Did you hear me, Madame?” she asked, my title on her tongue very much an insult. At least she was smiling as she said it. “But watching you pine might be better.”

  “I’m not pining.” I scowled.

  I wasn’t—Charles and I were friends and colleagues, and half of our relationship was a lie, the other half stained with death.

  I couldn’t ruin my friendship with Charles. He was important to me. Our jobs were important to both of us. To have neither him nor medicine in my life would be a tragedy I couldn’t accept.

  “We have more important things to worry about anyway,” I said.

  Though, even if we had the time, Charles had no reason to like me. I was selfish. It wasn’t a secret and I wasn’t unaware, but it had never been an issue. It had been a blessing.

  Cauterization.

  It didn’t hurt to be disliked if I didn’t care about anyone else.

  “Yes, but you look sad, and I’ll be damned if I let that physician and his chevalier make me feel sad,” said Madeline. “And looking at the mess you are right now makes me feel sad. So for my sake, please stop.”

  I glanced at her. “I’m sorry I lied, but I’m glad that lying led me to you. I wish I had told you the truth.”

  Her head tilted, as if the world were crooked, and she laced her fingers through mine. “Don’t leave without saying goodbye ever again.”

  I dropped my head to her shoulder. “I got arrested. I didn’t leave.”

  “I don’t care,” she said. “Figure it out.”

  I laughed and shook my head, and Charles approached again.

  “What’s the plan?” I asked.

  He took a deep breath. “Subdue the soldiers and hacks coerced by Chevalier Waleran du Ferrant and Physician Pièrre du Guay. Then, kill them before they can attack Kalthorne.”

  So, we only had to kill the best fighters in Demeine.

  “Lovely,” I said. “Where do we start?”

  Twenty-Six

  Annette

  Make them regret it.

  The words burned in me, cold and hot and all the pain between, like a portent I couldn’t quite read. There was another guard outside the door to the cell block, and the spectacles seared my hand. Divination without limits was a whole new kind of knowing. I didn’t even need to look.

  “You’re going to survive this,” I said. “And you’re going to change your name.”

  The guard spun, hands empty, and I ducked a full second before he swung. I got in close. Grabbed his arm.

  His mind was a map of his fears, and the illusion seeped from my skin like sweat.

  “You used to have nightmares about disappearing.” Beneath my fingers, his arm began to disappear. His shoulder, his chest. “That was me.”

  He screamed and screamed and screamed, a flare of power in my sight that only someone with magic could see. Blood trickled down my arm.

  The hallway I turned down was pitted with cells. Most were empty, the doors ajar and dust a thick carpet on the floor. These halls were underground, the thin windows running along the top of each cell half-covered in earth, and at the end of the hall was a soldier in the sunrise-red stitched with fiery-blue uniform of the Serre royal guards. A bend in the hall kept the final cell out of sight and muffled the voices beyond. I crept forward.

  “Don’t breathe it in. Don’t touch it either.”

  The voice nearly froze me.

  I rounded the bend. Yvonne, spectacles shattered and dangling from one ear, smoking vial clasped in her hands, scarf pulled across the lower half of her face like a mask, dripped something dark and burning onto the lock of a cell. Aaliz and someone else were backed up against the opposite wall. Aaliz’s gaze jerked to me.

  “Yvonne,” they said, pointing.

  Yvonne glanced back. Her hands stilled, whatever alchemical mixture she was pouring eating all the way through the metal beneath them. She corked the vial and slipped it into her pocket.

  “What have you done?” Yvonne lunged and stopped. Her gloved hands fluttered near my face. “You’re hurt.”

  I wiped my face with the back of my hand. “I’m fine. You’re hurt. What are you doing here?”

  “I got your note.” Yvonne touched her pocket. “Bosquet’s tearing itself apart over Vivienne’s death, and we weren’t sure what they were going to do with you. I have might have gone through your room looking for anything that could help.”

  I reached out and straightened her spectacles. “So you threatened to kill me if I ever betrayed you and Laurel, something about me being noble and playing at generosity.”

  From the cell, Aaliz and their companion laughed.

  “About that,” Yvonne said, and I shook my head. “Fine, then about this.”

  Yvonne kissed my cheek, softly, quickly, closer to my lips than to my ear, and I returned the gesture. I pressed my forehead to her shoulder.

  “So, you’re not killing me,” I said. “How do you feel about killing the king?”

  She blinked down at me, lips quirked up on one side. “That’s the first time someone’s suggested assassination in response to me kissing them.”

  Aaliz cleared their throat. “I’m really happy for you two and all, but I would like to leave now.”

  Yvonne and I knocked the lock from the cell door and pulled it open. Aaliz was worse for wear, a bit thinner, a bit older. Their companion I’d never seen before.

  “Brigitte,” she said, clapping me on the back. “The Laurel in Delest.”

  She was pretty, the same way forest fires were—hooded brown eyes beneath thick black brows, a square jaw with a bruise the size of a fist blossoming across the bottom half, old scars and new wounds running through her white skin. Her short nose had been broken once. She pulled two sickles from the guard and hooked them on to a leather harness beneath her coat. Aaliz took the guard’s coat and short sword. They looked good in red.

  “What are you all doing here?” I asked. “How’d you get caught?”

  “Easily and on purpose,” said Brigitte. “We needed to get in, so we could find our dear Madame Royale.”

  I scowled. “Right, Coline. How come you put up posters with her signature? Told everyone where she was.”

  “People like knowing someone powerful is on their side.” Aaliz pointed to Brigitte. “And we’d been looking for her since she got caught working with us.”

  “They were plotting to overthrow His Majesty with the Madame Royale,” Yvonne said to me. “Apparently we’re all out of the loop.”

  Aaliz nodded. “It’s a very small loop.”

  “You want to do it now?” I asked. Aaliz and Yvonne glimmered, the magic they could store as alchemists collected in their hands. Brigitte was blank. “We get Coline and kill them? We’d be breaking Estrel’s deal, but—”

  “If Estrel Charron and La
urence du Montimer made that deal thinking it would stick, they weren’t half as smart as anyone thought.” Aaliz sucked on their teeth and shook their head. “They made sure His Majesty couldn’t touch us for now. The court probably knows it too. They were just buying time.”

  “Great,” I said, clapping my hands together once. “Let’s kill them.”

  Aaliz and Brigitte glanced at each other.

  “We were going to wait for reinforcements,” Brigitte said. “What’s your plan?”

  “Them sickles decoration?” I pointed to the weapons she’d hidden under her coat. “I can tell you when to dodge and when to swing, and none of them will touch you.”

  The future was mine, and they could not take it away from me.

  Yvonne sucked in a breath, and Aaliz shook their head again.

  “No one could keep up with that much channeling.” Their brow furrowed. “Even if you could, it could kill you. You’d wear down faster than we could fight.”

  “There’s only one chevalier here, and that’s the executioner,” I said. “Henry XII was one, but I’ll bet I can survive longer divining than he can fighting.”

  Brigitte laughed. “You’re—”

  “She is that good,” a soft voice said. “She is very good.”

  I turned to the little nook my back had been facing this whole time. Isabelle ducked when I looked at her, shoulders rolled in. She was smaller and paler and sadder than I’d ever seen her, and the distance she’d put between us hurt. I sniffed.

  Yvonne pulled me back. “She’s the one who told Aaliz and I what happened, and she helped me get in here.”

  “I’m still angry,” I said. “But you’ll help, right?”

  “Yes.” Isabelle came to us. A mottling of bruises speckled her arms and neck, and paint stained her hands. “Anything. I’m so sorry.”

  “Right,” Brigitte said quickly. “Reunions when we survive. Let’s go get our queen.”

  Aaliz stopped us at the stairs out of the cell block.

  “I need to find the others and make sure there isn’t a massacre in Serre. People are still angry, and they’re not backing down. The court holds power because they have power, martial and magical, and they’ll kill every Laurel supporter in Serre if things go badly.” Aaliz sighed, the light catching in all the wrinkles of their face, and I realized they weren’t that much older than me. Only tired. “Can you kill the king alone?”