An Affair of Poisons

by Addie Thorley

  “That is precisely why we burned it.” Mother flings the curtain shut. “We are nothing like the former king, tucked away in a lavish country château where it’s impossible to see to the needs of our people. We shall live in the heart of the city. We will open the gates of the Louvre and welcome all to court. The worst has passed,” she says emphatically.

  I nod along with the others. Forcing myself to believe it. Willing her declaration to be true.

  Despite Mother’s promise, the nightmare continues.

  We sequester ourselves in the belly of the Louvre while battles rage in the outer baileys. Cannon fire shakes the great stone walls. I take a small measure of comfort knowing we aren’t attacking unsuspecting citizens this time. The ministers and courtiers residing at the Louvre surrendered as soon as they saw the host of Shadow Society rebels scaling the battlements, and the servants happily switched allegiance when Mother offered to double their pay. And the citizens of Paris voiced no objection. On the contrary. They cheered in the streets and stitched banners of emerald, cerise, and plum-colored rags in support of Mother, their champion.

  Our only opposition is the Paris Police. The officers are as relentless as roaches and just as impossible to kill: more skilled with the sword, more organized in their battalions, and more prepared with reserve armories scattered about the city. They have every advantage. Save for magic.

  “I need another draught,” Lesage says, bursting into my new laboratory. It is a cold subterranean chamber that used to be a dungeon. Menacing hooks and chains still dangle from the walls, and soiled rushes litter the floor. I could have chosen any of the gilded salons with velvet divans and marble mantelpieces abovestairs, but then I would have been forced to hear the clashing swords and earsplitting screams. My windows would have overlooked the carnage. Down here, it is muffled. Apart. If I close my eyes, I can pretend I’m back in the garden house—if I can ignore the stink.

  Lesage clips across the chamber and deposits himself on a stool. He has always been thin and sallow, but now he looks like a corpse brought to life. His tunic is spattered with gore, and dark bruises sag beneath his bloodshot eyes. I doubt he’s slept since Versailles. His fingers quiver as he rolls up his sleeve and lays his arm across the table. When I don’t spring for my lancet, he glares at me.

  I fold my arms and stand my ground. “I thought we agreed to fight by natural means? Mother said seizing the Louvre would be simple compared to—”

  “Does that sound simple to you?” He gestures wildly overhead. Even deep beneath the palace, the blasts shudder through the walls, rattling the phials. Grout crumbles from between the stones. Not for the first time, I gaze up at the ceiling and wonder how heavy it will be when it buckles and buries us.

  Gris gives me a gentle nudge. “Perhaps Lesage is right.” He shuffles across the room and offers me a porcelain bowl and lancet. “We are a society of alchemists and fortune-tellers. It’s foolish to think we can battle officers hand-to-hand.”

  I glare at Gris. Groveling to Mother is one thing, but to Lesage is another. I’ve done more than enough for the sorcerer, and I intend to remind Lesage of this, but another explosion groans through the ceiling. Shaking the cabinets. Rocking my stomach until it threatens to expel the few gulps of tea I choked down this morning.

  “Fine.” I take the equipment, Lesage makes a fist, and I nick the blue vein below his elbow. Rivulets of blood snake down his arm and drip into the porcelain bowl. I have to turn away, knowing the violence it will bring.

  Gris lays a hand on my shoulder. “The sooner we quell these dissenters, the sooner we can return to making curatives.”

  I nod and cast him a weak smile. I want to believe him, but trapped in this unfamiliar laboratory with the king’s death on my conscience, brewing naught but Lesage’s blood magic, it’s hard to believe I’m capable of anything beyond destruction.

  Gris prepares the cauldron while I grind stinging nettle, monkshood, and horehound and add them to the pot. Then I return to Lesage to collect the basin of blood. He coughs and collapses against the table, his face gray and his hair slick with sweat. His shallow breath rasps like stones.

  “You’re going to kill yourself if you keep this up,” I say over my shoulder as I incorporate his blood into the mixture.

  Lesage lifts his head just enough to look at me. “Shouldn’t you be glad of that?”

  “I would be exceedingly glad. But Mother would not.” I place a tin cup before him and fill it with the crimson draught. “Pace yourself, magician.”

  Chuckling, he downs the potion like ale and wipes the bloody dregs on his wrist. “Would that I could, La Petite Voisin.” He pats the top of my head, specifically because he knows I despise it, and flashes a peevish grin. The same weaselly smile he wore two years ago when he first appeared in my laboratory, asking prying questions about my abilities, about Father’s death. I didn’t trust him from the first. He reminded me of a slippery, squirming leech, attaching to the plumpest vein. I told Mother as much, but she ignored me, as always. And she didn’t resist when he began courting her the very next week. She saw only a powerful man who looked on her as if she were a rare jewel, who bowed to her every whim, who kissed her knuckles and whispered pretty words. All the things Father never did.

  I watch Lesage totter away, so weak he can hardly make it abovestairs without aid, let alone vanquish the Paris Police. But the following morning, the palace is deathly quiet. The walls have stilled and the bellowing in the courtyards has ceased.

  Thankfully, I did not witness the massacre, but Marguerite flits down to relay every gory detail. How Lesage conjured beasts made of smoke that tore the officers limb from limb, sparing only the lieutenant general, whose head is now spiked on the Louvre’s curtain wall. A warning to anyone else who might challenge our rule.

  “You see? The worst has passed,” Gris says, echoing Mother.

  I am so desperate to believe him, for my life to return to some sense of normalcy, I agree to attend Mother’s victory banquet the following night.

  I glide down the Grand Galerie, my navy skirts whispering against the gleaming parquet, my hair parted down the center and curled on either side of my head. I’m tempted to peek at my reflection in the leaded window panes—I doubt I’d recognize myself, bedecked in all this finery like a proper courtier—but I do not look. I am an alchemist, first and always, and once Gris and I resume making curatives, everything will be as it was before. Only better, as our reach will extend a thousandfold with the Shadow Society controlling the city.

  The banquet hall is so bright with golden filigree, I squint as I step through the doors. Gilt roses and curling vines snake up the walls and pilasters, crisscrossing in a glittering canopy overhead. Intricate chandeliers spit flares of bronze candlelight, and sumptuous tapestries adorn the walls. The impossibly long table is littered with buttery yellow goblets and platters heaped high with sugar plums and pomegranate seeds, with roe deer and spiced sturgeon.

  “Isn’t this a dream?” Marguerite slides into the seat beside me. “Even the utensils are bejeweled.” She lifts a ruby encrusted fork like a scepter and uses it to point to the chair on my other side, at the head of the table where Mother will sit. I stand and trade her seats without complaint. I would rather not sit too close to Mother and Lesage anyway.

  The banquet begins, and I glut myself on strawberries with cream and duck confit, hoping the rich food will fill the wound festering inside my stomach. But everything tastes of ashes, and my appetite sours entirely when Fernand reenacts the king’s final moments, complete with wine frothing from his lips. There are irreverent toasts and boisterous laughter, but to my surprise, Mother and Lesage do not participate. They’re too consumed by their whispered conversation, looking up only to cast furtive glances down the table.

  When dessert arrives—pear tartlets and steaming bowls of persimmon pudding—the reason for their distraction becomes clear. As soon as Madame de Montespan finishes her pudding, she lurches in her seat. Her enorm
ous blue eyes double in size and beads of sweat pour down her cheeks, cutting runnels through her powder. She bursts into a fit of coughs and grips the table so hard that my goblet rattles.

  The hairs prickle down my neck. If I didn’t know better, I’d say she’d been …

  I push my plate away, wishing I hadn’t eaten so much. I expect the rest of the table to do the same, but none of the Society members shy away from the feast. Nor do they rise to assist the marquise.

  “Are you unwell?” Mother asks. Her voice is soft with concern, but her dark eyes are slitted like a serpent’s.

  Madame de Montespan doubles over, hands clutched to her stomach, and when she tries to speak, droplets of blood spatter her golden plate. I scream as she collapses into her bowl. Poison. Undoubtedly. But why would Mother poison her ally? And where did she get it? I think of the Aqua Tofana intended for the Duc de Barra, and my insides go cold. Who knows if any of my draughts are ever delivered into the proper hands?

  Mother stands and raises her goblet. “To loyalty,” she bellows. The other members of the Shadow Society echo her and drink. “If anyone else feels compelled to pen letters to the royal army or encourage the Duc de Vendôme to organize the former nobility to rise against us, this will be your fate.” She waves a hand at Madame de Montespan, then looks meaningfully from the Duc de Luxembourg to the Duchesse de Bouillon to the Marquis de Cessac, continuing down the line of her highest-ranking clients. Her features are painted with disgust, but I notice the slightest tremble of her arm, how she cannot bring herself to look at Madame de Montespan’s face.

  “Fortunately, we’ve no cause to worry,” she says, forging on. “Thanks to the magical wards Lesage wove around the city, no one can come or go without my express consent. Which means the royal army never received word their king is dead. And if the Duc de Vendôme rises against us from within the city, we will quell his attack long before he breaches the Louvre—through poisonous means, if necessary.”

  The others shout their approval and bang their goblets against the table, but I shove backwards. Out of my seat. The ground sways, and I barely manage to steady my balance on the table.

  “Is there a problem?” Mother demands.

  Yes. You promised the worst had passed. You promised this was for the greater good, yet we continue poisoning people.

  I attempt to speak, but my thoughts are thicker than an overboiled draught. I’m trying to trust Mother, but she must see this has gone too far.

  Irritation flickers in her eyes. When I remain standing, she glares as if she will wring my neck. “Excuse us for a moment,” she says to the table, finding a radiant smile for her guests. Then she grips my forearm and drags me to the corner. “What the devil is wrong with you?”

  “Why must we poison Vendôme and his men? Surely our numbers are great enough—”

  “Our numbers may be greater, but we’re trained in tarot cards and tea leaves. And our followers are farmers and tinkerers, not soldiers. You know what happened when we battled the officers, and Lesage is still too weak to use his magic. The task falls to you, Mirabelle. If the duc and his men refuse to stand down, we will poison them.”

  “No.” The word slips out before I can stop it. Not loud, by any means, but loud enough. Several heads turn to peer at us. Whispers tangle down the table.

  Mother grips my wrist, her nails slicing half-moon cuts into my skin. “Do you think I enjoy this? Do you think I am any less horrified? My dearest friend lies dead on the table.” Her voice warbles and she draws a deep breath. “But in order to serve the people how we ought, we must squash these rebellions and establish a government that prioritizes the common men and women. So you will do as I say and make my poison, or I will find you other duties. Away from Gris and your precious laboratory. Do you understand?”

  I curtsy on wobbly legs and sprint for the doors, falling to my knees as soon as I reach the hall.

  I do not understand.

  And I won’t do this.

  All night I stew. Pacing my chamber, crying into my pillow, and screaming until my throat tastes of blood. By the time the sun rises, I am delirious and more than a little unhinged, but I have a plan. Mother requested poison, but she never specified what type of poison, so I brew a simple sleep poison made from mushroom spores and blue vitriol. It slows the heart and causes paralysis, but the effect is painless. Vendôme and his men will simply drift off to sleep and never awaken. It’s the best death I can give them.

  Unfortunately, Mother anticipates my scheme. As soon as I deliver the poison to her salon, she administers a few droplets to a pair of doves she keeps in a gilded cage. Her lips flatten and her fingers tap with increased speed and agitation against her dressing table as the birds drop from their perch without a sound.

  “Do it again,” she snaps, overturning the tray so the remaining phials of poison shatter across the floor. “And this time, make Viper’s Venom.”

  “But—” Viper’s Venom is horrendous. The most violent of poisons. Victims suffer brutal trembling fits, their backs arching and twisting until the bones break, and then the hallucinations and vomiting set in. The torment lasts for hours.

  Mother presses her fingers against her temples. “Do you know what the Duc de Vendôme is claiming? That the dauphin and princesses live, since we have yet to produce their bodies. He wants them returned to the throne.”

  “You said the royal children perished in the fire.”

  “They did,” Mother says forcefully. “Which is why we must send a message. All of France must know the consequences of rising against the Shadow Society, and drifting off to sleep is hardly fear-inducing.”

  I close my eyes and try to take a breath, but the lump in my throat feels like a cannonball. “What happened to caring for the people?” I say in a small voice. “I know you would never do anything that wasn’t in their best interest,” I add quickly when Mother stiffens, “but doesn’t this seem extreme?”

  Mother takes my hand. Her cold fingers coil around my knuckles like snakes. “We shall care for the people. We would be already, were it not for these rebellious nobles. Now stop acting like your father and distill my order. This is the only way.”

  Stop acting like your father. She means it as a slight. A cutting remark to cow me into submission. But a seedling of an idea takes root in my mind. Perhaps Father is exactly who I should be channeling.

  Late that night, while the rest of the household sleeps, I scurry down to the laboratory like a clever kitchen mouse and pry open every crate brought over from the garden house. I comb through decaying ledgers and scrolls, digging for something I swore I destroyed two years prior.

  In the bottom of the third dusty trunk, I find it: Father’s grimoire. The red leather flashes in the torchlight and my hands hesitate on the binding, years of Mother’s warnings ringing in my ears.

  He loved alchemy more than he ever loved us. He was reckless and obsessed, and it killed him in the end.

  She isn’t wrong. Father was so consumed by his experiments, we fell into financial ruin and would have starved to death had Mother not resorted to palm reading and selling love potions—the beginnings of the Shadow Society. And he perished in an explosion that could have been avoided had he heeded Mother’s plea to brew only the safe, familiar recipes she required for her customers. But Father brewed what pleased him. The potions he deemed most important. I still remember how Mother cried at night after Marguerite and I were tucked in bed, begging him to be more careful. Begging him to come in for supper and be a father to us. Begging him to love her.

  But Father loved only his alchemy, and unlike Mother, I didn’t mind that he treated me more like a laboratory assistant than a daughter. I was glad to have even a measure of his attention. And I had learned to love alchemy nearly as much as he did.

  I run a tentative finger along the spine of Father’s grimoire. What if his convictions weren’t as preposterous as Mother claimed? Perhaps he was onto something—trusting his own instincts over her commands.
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  You will be a great alchemist one day, he used to tell me. Greater even than I.

  I pry the grimoire from its hiding place and clutch it to my chest, inhaling the sweet scent of sage that wafts from the paper—the same scent that always clung to Father’s doublet. “What would you do?” I whisper, but I already know the answer.

  Experiment. Innovate.

  My mind immediately goes to the Viper’s Venom, and I spend the next three hours poring over Father’s notes, determined to distill a compound that will nullify the poison’s horrendous effects. But the curative is extremely temperamental. Too much stirring, and the ingredients separate. And it boils over with even the smallest amount of heat. After five failed attempts, dawn is beginning to seep through the curtains and I want something to show for a whole night’s work. So I close Father’s grimoire and focus on counteracting one of my own recipes instead—one in particular that I wish I’d never invented: Lesage’s désintégrer.

  After scribbling four pages of notes and checking my calculations twice, I tip two parts ambergris and one part periwinkle into a pot. The petals wilt into the foul-smelling paste, and I stir continuously until bubbles swell and pop across the surface. When it turns a deep pearl gray, I siphon it into a large phial and hold it up to the light, watching the liquid churn and eddy. The next time Lesage shoots his fire bolts, I will attempt to reverse the effects.

  Smiling, I skitter across the chamber to hide the curative, but the door swings open.

  Merde.

  My heart slams to a halt and my feet follow suit. I quickly slip the phial into my apron pocket. Then I whirl around, fanning my face to draw attention away from the telltale bulge. “Prop that door open. It’s hotter than hell in here,” I say dramatically.