I snap myself back to the present. “Thank you for the book,” I say.
Cyril’s smile is lined and tired. “I hope it helps you sleep.”
“Merci.” I shuffle toward the door.
“Oh, Isda. One more thing before you go.” He crosses around to the front of his desk and leans back against it. A smile crinkles his eyes, and he fiddles excitedly with the envelope. “I have fantastic news. I’ve been promoted.”
“On the Council?”
“Yes!” He jumps up and bounds toward me, as joyous as a child on the anniversary of its naming day, brandishing the envelope to the sky like a holy scepter. “I found this letter on my doorstep as soon as I got home. It seems the King has decided to take notice of all that I have done for Channe over the past decades. He’s promoted me to the position of first advisor to Channe’s Council Head!”
“Congratulations!” I say. “Finally, you’re being rewarded for all of your hard work.”
“And all these late nights,” he agrees.
“Speaking of which...why did you come back? Surely you’re exhausted.”
“I am. But once I discovered the King’s message, I realized I left my Council notebook here, which I’ll need in order to write my acceptance letter. I tried to sleep, figuring I could do it tomorrow, but...”
“You couldn’t?”
“I haven’t been this excited in years.” He beams. “So I decided to come back and retrieve the notebook.” He slings an arm around my shoulders and pulls me in to plant a kiss on the top of my head. “I couldn’t have done it without you. My star, my gem, my lucky vial of magic. And, after what you accomplished earlier tonight, I daresay our luck will continue.”
I smile back and wrap my arms around his torso. “I’m so proud of you.”
We embrace for another moment longer before he releases me and nods toward the hallway. “Now, off to bed with you. I really can’t afford to have you falling asleep on the job tonight. The Council Head himself is coming to see the show, so you’ll need to take special care with his memories. I want him astounded and amazed.”
“Of course,” I murmur. “Bonne nuit. Thank you for the book.”
“De rien, my child.”
But my smile fades as soon as I shut the door. The book weighs heavy in my skirt, like an anchor of iron set to pin me to the floor and wrap me in chains.
If Cyril knew what I planned to do...if he knew all of the ways in which I’d already betrayed his trust and risked discovery...
I shake my head and force myself to trek downstairs with my chin held high.
“I will be careful, Cyril.” I whisper the promise over my shoulder as I walk. “And no matter what I do, I’ll make sure no harm ever comes to you. I swear it.”
Chapter Ten
I untie my boots and rip off my stockings, stretching my toes for the first time in what feels like years. Then I undo the buttons on my dress, pull the entire mess of fabric over my head, and unlace my corset.
Dressed in nothing but my undergarments, I flop onto my bed and pull the red book in front of me. Its spine crackles like grease spitting into a fire as I ease it open. The pages inside are yellowed and brittle, and I handle them with care.
The title page indicates that this book is the primary text used by the Institution des Fendoirs de Vaureille to teach the instructors there the basics of fendoir powers and how best to train their students.
I fan through the pages to the first chapter. It begins with a description of a typical fendoir face. The purplish skin and the twisted nose crop up in the several illustrations that follow, with small variations for race or skull structure depicted.
I trace my finger along the profile of one of the fendoirs. I’ve never seen a maskless one before. Law demands that they wear their silver masks at all times. A part of me has always wondered how much like my own face theirs might look.
I tear my gaze away from the drawing and turn the page.
I could almost be beautiful if my face were only as misshapen as a fendoir’s.
The following chapter describes how fendoirs are an uncommon mutation in an otherwise healthy human child.
Fendoirs have been recorded as part of the human race since the world’s oldest discernible records. Even prehistoric markings on rock walls include depictions of people with unusual faces and curious marks on their sternums. However, it seems that the discovery of the fendoir ability to extract memory elixir was not well-known or understood until later. Once fendoir magic was discovered and formally analyzed in the early tenth century, elixir started to be sold, bought, and traded in various capacities, finally becoming standardized and regulated in 1201.
I try to imagine a world without vials of memory elixir. The thought of Channe’s streets empty of the ambling, muttering Memoryless and the sobbing Forgotten Children is an entirely foreign idea to me.
The memory market has become a huge influence in the world’s economy—so inherent in our system that it’s difficult to fathom what it would be like without it. Selling one’s own memory elixir is mostly a last-resort course of action for those desperate enough to make the sacrifice.
Yet I’ve noticed in the memories I’ve watched from my perch in the theater that the memory market seems to have grown drastically in the last few years. Is it because there are more poor people in Channe now whose finances are so precarious that the risk has become more worth taking? Or has the allure of what ingesting memory elixir does to a person driven the price so high that selling the elixir has become an attractive option even to those not on the brink of ruin?
It is a lucrative market. The more elixir one has, the better one is at remembering things. I’ve even heard of people who have purchased so much of it, they’ve developed photographic memories and become brilliant in their fields; after all, the more a person is able to remember from schools, books, and experiences, the wiser that person becomes.
Economics was never something Cyril spent much time teaching me, so I’m not quite sure what has changed.
I lean in closer to the page to read on.
Initially, we were not aware of what these disfigured children were capable of or how they would fundamentally change the way society functioned one day. We allowed them to grow up among their unmarked siblings as equals.
Fendoirs as equals? Nowadays, fendoirs are raised by the Institution and forced to work for Maisons des Souvenirs as little better than indentured servants until they die. While their extistence is permitted and protected by the King, they are loathed by the general population. Shunned as though they carry a disease. Only tolerated because of their contribution to a thriving economy.
My eyes snag on the word gravoirs a bit farther down the page, but I force myself to continue reading where I left off.
However, as the market drive for memory elixir grew, so, also, did corrupt practices to “water down” the elixir in order to sell less of it for the same price. As use of tainted elixir became commonplace among the lower class, new fendoirs began to crop up—but these ones were different. Their faces were much more misshapen, and their chests lacked the extraction birthmark.
Initially, these new fendoirs were treated like the others, especially once it was discovered that carving the mark into their skin allowed them to perform the same magic.
I blink down at the text. There it is, in black and white. If I carve the fendoir symbol into my skin, I’ll be able to extract elixir.
My nerves buzz, but I force myself to concentrate on the next passages.
In the late 1500s, three of these new fendoirs discovered that slicing different symbols into their skin gave them unprecedented control over others’ memories and, therefore, others’ lives. These three young women renamed their kind gravoirs to differentiate themselves from the fendoirs, whom they considered inferior due to the fact that carving symbols on a fendoir’s body did no
t result in further powers.
The three gravoirs rose quickly to dominion, and thus we entered the period of time now referred to as l’Age de l’Oubli—The Age of Oblivion.
“Les Trois,” as they soon became known, commenced a reign of terror. Fendoirs and gravoirs were recruited and trained as soldiers to enforce gravoir control. Any who resisted were put to death.
Their reign lasted for only two years, but during that time, tens of thousands of people were tortured and killed.
Rose’s fierce glare shimmers in my vision as though the painting upstairs lies before me now.
Of course I know about their reign—it would be impossible to not know of it. Not with the way I’ve had to hide from a society that fears and loathes me because of what Les Trois did during their time.
Part of me hates them for using their power in such a manner, for plunging the world into darkness, blood, and pain.
Yet another small, damnable part of me wonders what controlling all of creation in that way would feel like. Marguerite, Éloise, and Rose never wore masks, never hid what they were. Cowering in the shadows was not a behavior they would have known.
What would it be like to stand before the world, unashamed and unafraid like they did? They commanded a stage of their own making just like I do in my dreams.
There are dozens of variations in historical records regarding what happened with Saint Claudin, but the general consensus is that he was a lowly, unmarked servant working in the queens’ residence. Details surrounding the affair are vague and difficult to prove, but what we do know is that he and Rose were somehow romantically involved.
Rose’s weakness for him soon proved the downfall of Les Trois, however. One night, after sharing her bed, Claudin slaughtered Rose and her two fellow monarchs, who slept in neighboring rooms, in their sleep. When dawn broke over Vaureille and the three women were found dead, the unmarked humans and the fendoirs, the majority of whom had been working for the queens against their will, banded together to take the rest of the gravoirs by surprise, effectively slaughtering them all.
Once the unmarked humans had gained their victory, they set up an institution to train the fendoirs to use their powers solely for the good of the public and its market, and the King’s Imperial Council established protocols to monitor fendoir activity.
From then on, gravoirs were deemed too dangerous to continue to exist. To prevent anything like l’Age de l’Oubli from happening again, laws have been strictly upheld that a midwife attend each and every birth, and that those midwives see to it that if a gravoir child is born, it is immediately disposed of before it can become a threat. Additionally, in order to reduce the occurrence of such births in the first place, the King’s Council in each city keeps careful logs of the dealings of the fendoirs residing in their jurisdiction to ensure elixir remains pure. While illicit activities are impossible to entirely contain, the enforcement of this law has drastically reduced the number of gravoirs born each year.
I stare at the page. At the words, “immediately disposed of.”
The memory of my own birth is still as vivid as though I lived it moments ago. I close my eyes, and the emotions roiling in my chest pull me back seventeen years to a cold night in a dark cottage somewhere in the North.
My life began with pain and a white shock of light, but what haunts me to this day is the gasping sound my mother made when she saw my face for the first time.
Her gasp wasn’t one of relief or joy or surprise. It was one of horror. Of pain. Of soul-crushing despair.
The midwife’s words were garbled, as though caught away on a current of water. “I’m sorry, madame. Your daughter appears to be a—a gravoir.”
Mother’s gasps became sobs. “Take it away.”
I never knew her touch. Only saw her blurry outline for an instant before I was whisked out into the night.
And then I was falling. Falling. Falling.
A splash of cold water engulfed me, and then all was torture and all was pain until a strong pair of hands pulled me from the darkness.
“Disposed of” indeed.
I tug the pendant from my shift and twirl it around and around. The glass reflects slivers of light as it spins, projecting sparkling squares on the wall that dart back and forth. Its light reminds me of memory elixir, so brilliant and shining and pure.
Rolling onto my back, I drop the pendant and hold the book above me, flipping to the following page. The next chapter contains a short section on what is known about gravoirs, which isn’t much. There are a lot of phrases like, “extremely dangerous,” and “deceitful,” and “kill immediately,” but not a lot of explanation as to why.
But it is clear that gravoirs are not a separate type of being from fendoirs; they are a further mutation of them. Apparently we are able to do the elixir extraction that fendoirs do, as well as view people’s memories, manipulate them, and erase them from existence. My gaze pauses on one particular section:
If a gravoir is in possession of a catalyseur, as Les Trois were, the results for mankind would once again be catastrophic. When coupled with the correct symbols carved into the palms, catalyseurs augment the reach of a gravoir’s power, which would allow that gravoir to view or manipulate memories and extract elixir from anyone in the immediate vicinity, whether they are singing or not.
I flip through to the next page, but there is nothing further on catalyseurs. It does not specify what they are or how to find one.
The rest of the book describes the function of fendoirs in the economy, with pages and pages of dull explanations on the flow of vials and the necessity of each city’s King’s Council to keep detailed records of fendoir dealings.
The final section’s title makes me sit up and pull the hair away from my face so I can see it clearer. Fendoir Power: Methods.
I spend the next several hours poring through the instructions, a thrumming like a distant drumbeat buzzing in my veins. Louder and louder it grows, until the clock on the mantel strikes seven o’clock, and I reach the end of the book.
Flipping back to the page with the detailed depiction of the fendoirs’ Extraction Mark, I leap from my bed to retrieve the dagger on my bookshelf.
The book says that in order for the mark to work for a gravoir, it must be carved in the skin at the top of the chest, just below the place where the collarbones meet. If I were to cut the symbol there, Cyril would see it and know I’m up to something immediately. Turning the dagger over and over in my hands, I grimace down at the book.
Rose’s fierce glare in the painting upstairs comes to my mind, and I imagine the bloodied symbols etched into every inch of her exposed skin. The Extraction Mark was nowhere to be found.
Is it possible that a gravoir might be able to inscribe the mark in another location? Maybe one that is less visible?
It’s worth a shot.
I hike up the skirt of my slip and shove aside my undergarments to reveal the smooth skin of my thigh. Gritting my teeth, I ease the tip of the knife into my skin. Blood pools, hot and dark, dribbling down my leg and dropping like a stream of shining garnets to the stone floor as I etch the spiral into my flesh. The pain is sharp, but my hand remains steady.
Cyril has always erred on the side of caution when it comes to allowing me to use my powers, but with the words from his book and the images from Emeric’s memories flooding my mind, I’m not so sure anymore that caution has been for the best. If I am to ever find my way out of the shadows, I’ll need to know for sure exactly what my power can do.
So I’m going to try my hand at elixir extraction.
Tonight.
On Emeric Rodin.
Chapter Eleven
Emeric meets me in the catacombs outside my door just as I’m about to head up to retrieve him from the lobby.
“I’m sorry,” he says when I run into him. “I was up there waiting, and I... I was worried. I
wanted to make sure you were all right. I was a fool to leave you like that last night.”
I shake my head. “Don’t. I asked you to.”
He licks his lips, scanning the planes of my mask as though he might be able to peer through it to assess my health. “So...are you all right?”
“Yes. I needed rest, like I said.” I gesture into my crypt. “Ready to begin?”
He nods and steps forward, pausing to tip his hat to the skull on his way in. “Evening, Albert.”
Biting down a laugh, I follow him inside, making sure not to wince when the new symbol carved into my leg stings from the movement.
“So... I kind of left all of the books you lent me here last night. I tried to practice without them—the breathing with my diaphragm and all that.”
“Perfect.” I cross to the organ, trying not to let him see the way my eagerness to get him singing again has me twitchy. “After we warm up, you can show me your progress.”
We begin. Hearing his voice again is like drinking cool water after a long, hot, arduous day. The tension in my shoulders eases. Even the excitement in my belly slows to a gentle simmer.
As he runs through warm-ups and then sings an aria for me to watch his breathing technique, I consider what would be the best way to extract his elixir.
An empty glass vial I lifted from Cyril’s office an hour ago is jammed into the sash of my dress, uncorked and ready to be filled. Its presence weighs heavy against my hip bone, a constant reminder of my potential. Of my power. Of what I plan to do.
I need to make sure his eyes are closed when I do it. Even then, I’m taking a risk. If he sees the elixir coming out of him, he might report me to the authorities. No matter what, he’ll at least not want to continue working with me. Which means I’d lose my chance to learn more from Arlette. And, though I tell myself I don’t care, the idea that the kindness I see in his eyes when he looks at me might fade makes my stomach twist.
Sing Me Forgotten Page 9