When he reaches the intersection, he quickly checks over his shoulder, then continues down the adjacent street walking much faster than he had been moments before—all vestiges of drunkenness gone.
“Hurry!” I nudge Josse. “Follow him.”
“Why would we follow a drunkard home from the tavern?”
“Because that drunkard is my sister’s fiancé, and I suspect he isn’t drunk at all. He’s up to something.” I scurry out from behind the casks and Josse follows without complaint. Miracle of miracles!
The streets are winding and narrow, and by the time we reach the intersection, Fernand is vanishing down another. I clench my fists and break into a jog. We turn and turn again, leaving the crowded city center behind and entering the bourgeois neighborhoods. Lemon yellow and sage green villas line the road, each with a walled garden, dainty cast-iron balcony, and hanging plants.
Josse shoots me a meaningful look and we quicken our pace.
A dark, streaking shadow vaults over the wall surrounding the largest château at the end of the road. Fernand’s so light-footed, I would have thought him a stray cat or a cloud passing in front of the moon if I didn’t know to look for a man.
Josse and I hurry to the château and flatten ourselves against the wall. “Give me a leg up,” I whisper. Josse cups his hands and hefts me up so I can peer into the garden and the house beyond. It’s a towering stone behemoth with turrets on either end and a sharp, spired roof. The iron gate is festooned with flourishes in the shape of a family crest—a red cross surrounded by blue eagles. I recognize it at once. Those banners flew from many a carriage in front of our house on the rue Beauregard: the esteemed Duc de Luxembourg—maréchal of France and perhaps Mother’s most notable client, besides Madame de Montespan. Though their high status did them little good in the end.
The sound of crashing glass comes from somewhere within, and a moment later a bloodcurdling cry that’s swiftly muffled.
I grip the top of the wall and hoist myself over, landing with a thump in the swampy ground. “Hurry!” I hiss to Josse. While he heaves himself over the wall with considerably more difficulty than Fernand, I fumble with my skirts and rip free the phial of antipoison I sewed into the hem of my maid’s dress. If Fernand used Viper’s Venom, we haven’t long to administer the antidote.
We creep along the outside of the château and wait beside the servants’ entrance. The tiny phial trembles in my fist. My pulse roars in my ears, so loud I lose track of the minutes. We cannot venture in before Fernand leaves. Neither of us could best the mercenary in a fight.
I never see Fernand, but I hear the slightest disturbance of pebbles in the road and nod at Josse. He throws his shoulder against the door and we race inside. My boots slide across the polished parquet as if it’s ice.
“Monsier le Duc!” The hall is wide and soaring, and my voice rebounds off the wood paneling, shouting back at me. I pause to listen for an answer. When it doesn’t come, I charge up the nearest staircase.
Abovestairs, the walls are adorned with heavy silk tapestries that billow and flap as we barrel into the great hall. It too is empty. Or has the appearance of being empty. I can feel dozens of eyes watching us from behind pillars and spying around corners. The house is crawling with servants but not a single one answers our call. Not a single one comes to their master’s aid. I don’t blame them. They’ve no way of knowing if the danger has passed.
I call out again, and this time, there comes the tiniest croak, hardly more than a wheeze.
“There!” Josse points to what looks to be a pile of soiled rushes in the corner, but now I see the man. The duc lies prostrate on his back. His hands jerk and flap at his sides, but his gimlet eyes are fixed and opened, so wide that they look to be protruding from his head.
I drop to my knees beside him and bite the cork from my phial of antipoison. “Drink.” I tip the phial to his lips. He looks up at me and a low, guttural scream rattles from his lips. He thrashes violently, and Josse crouches down to hold his shoulders—as he did when I healed Françoise. “I am not my mother,” I roar. “Drink if you want to live.”
The fight goes out of him, and he stills long enough to allow the antipoison to dribble across his lips.
The hammering of my pulse counts the seconds.
I haven’t a clue how long it will take.
When I reach six, the duc’s jaw falls open and a virulent mixture of blood and phlegm spills over his chin. I try to turn him on his side, but he wails and arches back, his spine twisting at a sickening angle.
“Why isn’t it working?” Josse stammers. His face is as pallid as the swath of moonlight pooling beneath the window. He looks like he’s going to be sick.
“It will.” I fumble again for the phial. According to my calculations, the man should have needed only half, but I pull him onto my lap, jam the bottle between his lips, and tip every last drop into his mouth.
You will not die.
I don’t know if I think it, or whisper it, or scream it. But it booms like thunder in my mind. I barely knew the duc, and what I did know I didn’t particularly like, but now I need him to live as surely as I need to breathe. I need my antipoison to be effective.
I grip the standing ruff of his collar so tightly, it rips away from his shirt when another tremor overtakes him, this one even more forceful than the first. He twists and moans, his bones snapping like the crack of a whip. His hand tightens around my forearm and his fingernails pierce my skin like five tiny blades. They cut deeper and deeper, until suddenly the pressure is gone. His legs give a final jerk, then he’s still. Sprawled across my lap.
I shake him, even though I know it’s useless. I shake him and shake him and shake him, as other grotesque, bleeding faces flash through my mind: the Sun King, Madame de Montespan, the Duc de Vendôme and his men.
How many more?
I whimper into the back of my hand, and the duc slides from my lap. His flaccid cheek presses into the floor.
“It was supposed to work. Why didn’t it work?” I’m unsure if I’m talking to the duc, or Josse, or myself, but the words pour from me like the blood that poured from the duc’s mouth. Drenching me until I’m shivering and shaking, rocking forward and back with my palms pressed to my eyes.
Spirits of hartshorn, camphor, and a strong brine of salt. Simmered for five hours and pushed through a sieve. I mentally review the recipe again and again.
I did everything right.
“Mira?” Josse touches my arm but I don’t respond. “We need to go. There’s nothing more we can do here.”
I hunch over the duc’s body like a vulture. There is more. I should be able to do more. If I could only just …
What? I may be an alchemist, but I’ve no Elixir of Life or panacea. I can’t even brew a proper antipoison. I am a failure. A disgrace.
Josse begs and pleads, prods and pushes, but I sit on the floor, my skirts soaking up the Duc de Luxembourg’s blood, until Josse loses patience. Muttering oaths, he crouches beside me and slides an arm around my back and beneath my arms. “I’m not being indecent. I’m just helping you up.”
I’m too numb to fight him. He hefts me off the floor and I sag against his side, boneless and tripping as he guides me down the hall. Some far-off, distant part of me is mortified, but the part of me that failed to save the duc is too empty to care.
16
JOSSE
Mirabelle feels like a corpse in my arms—as if she is the one who perished from Viper’s Venom. Her glassy eyes stare out at nothing. Her arms hang, leaden and swinging, as I retrace our steps down the stairs and into the garden.
I boost her over the wall and tug her down the street. The entire time she looks as if she’s sleepwalking. I clear my throat and glance down every few minutes, imploring her to look at me. I haven’t a clue what I’ll say, but some sign of life would be comforting. She looks as brittle as a wasp’s nest. Hollowed out with grief.
A light rain begins to fall, and I tug my hat lower to shield my face. Mirab
elle does the opposite, tipping her head back, so streams of water trickle down her cheeks. They almost look like tears.
“You shouldn’t be so hard on yourself,” I blurt out when I can’t stand the silence any longer. “You’ve saved scores of people. Think of the poor on the rue du Temple and the sick in the Hôtel-Dieu. This is just a minor setback.”
“A minor setback?” she shouts, wheeling around. We both flinch and scan the road. She steps closer and continues in a furious whisper. “How can you say that when you’ve seen what my mother is capable of? The good we’ve done won’t matter. It isn’t enough.”
“So we’ll do more …”
“I can’t do more.” Her voice cracks on the word can’t. “My father believed I would be a great alchemist, but I can’t even brew a simple antipoison.”
“The Viper’s Venom antipoison is hardly simple! You said so yourself.”
“Forget everything I said. I haven’t a clue what I’m talking about.” She charges ahead, her fists clenched at her sides, and my breath comes a bit easier as I jog to catch up. I may not have consoled her, but anger is better than the blank nothingness of before.
Anger means she hasn’t given up.
At long last, the millinery comes into view. I drag myself the final excruciating blocks, practically salivating at the thought of my lumpy pile of scraps. My body feels as limp as a deboned pheasant and I intend to fall through the door and sleep for days, but something crunches beneath my boots as I trudge up the steps. I squint through the shadows at what appear to be tiny bits of cracked white paint. Mirabelle is reaching for the door when I realize where the paint came from. I fling my arm out to stop her.
“Don’t!”
“I swear on my father’s grave if you try to—”
I put a finger to my lips and point up at the glaring brown hole in the center of the lintel, then down at the flecks of paint littering the steps like snow. “Someone’s inside.” I am barely short enough to pass through the door without disturbing the decaying paint, which means whoever entered is taller than I and still within, else their boots would have scattered the paint chips to the cobbles.
The color drains from Mirabelle’s face, and we retreat down the steps to consider the shop. It looks exactly as it did when we left—windows blackened, shutters drawn, and the door shut tight—but those tiny flecks of paint scream, Go no farther. “Wait over there.” I point to the alleyway between the millinery and a gambling den.
Mirabelle crosses her arms. “I don’t need you to defend me.”
“I never said you did. But I followed your lead on the rue du Temple and at the Hôtel-Dieu. Now it’s your turn to follow mine.”
Mirabelle scowls but complies.
Once she’s safely tucked away, I draw the dagger from my boot and edge toward the door. Most likely it’s a vagrant who took shelter in this seemingly abandoned shop. Nothing to fret over. Or it could be a Shadow Society patrol. Or what if it’s La Voisin herself? Or Lesage?
A thrill courses through me. Terror, yes, but also a vicious, ravening hunger. A burning hope that it is one of them. My bones scream for vengeance—for Rixenda, who took a knife for me. For my sisters, who deserve a life in the sun. For Mirabelle, who was rejected and forsworn to the enemy. And for my father—as much as it pains me to admit—who will never have the chance to see me as anything more than a bastard.
I roll my shoulders back and jam my boot into the door.
I’m so intent on finding La Voisin, shrouded in her double-headed eagle cape, I almost fail to recognize who stands before me.
“Desgrez?” A pulse of panic knocks me off-balance and my dagger clatters to the floor.
“You knew I would find you eventually.” His voice spreads like ice beneath my skin, and I step back. He stands in the center of the room, stance wide and arms crossed over another disguise—this time a tattered brown priest’s cassock.
“Desgrez,” I say again, cursing the bedamned tremor in my voice. “I can explain.”
“What is there to explain? You’re a liar and a traitor. You attacked me and ran off with the poisoner. You abandoned your sisters.”
“I haven’t abandoned anyone. And I didn’t betray you without reason. You’re my best friend—”
He laughs—a quick, mirthless rush of breath. “You’re no friend of mine.” He means to lash me with his words, but a hint of emotion creeps into his voice, and he coughs to chase it away.
“I’m telling you, everything I’ve done is for good reason. We have a plan to take back Paris.”
“Would you listen to what you’re saying? Referring to yourself and the poisoner as we! Yes, I’m sure she’ll help you hand the city right over to her mother. And your sisters along with it. Where is she?”
“Mirabelle wants nothing to do with her mother or the Shadow Society.” I drag my fingers through my hair. “If you would just listen—”
“And you’re foolish enough to believe her?”
“Has she ever given us reason to doubt? She guided us to safety during the procession, she healed the girls, she healed you. Or have you conveniently forgotten?”
Desgrez grunts. “I would have recovered on my own.”
“You were a dead man.”
“Better dead than a traitor.”
“For the millionth time, I’m not a traitor!”
“If you’re not a traitor, what, pray tell, is all of this?” He flings his hand at the counter cluttered with phials and forceps and herb packets. “It looks like a damned poison laboratory.”
“That’s part of our plan. If you would care to listen instead of snarling like the chimera atop the towers of Notre-Dame, I’d be happy to explain.”
Desgrez folds his arms and glowers—the closest I’m going to get to an invitation.
“We’re brewing curatives—not poison,” I say pointedly, “which we’ve been distributing to the common people in the name of the royal family—to earn their favor and support. In addition to medication, we’re offering the people a say in the government once Louis is restored to the throne—elected officials who will bring their concerns before the king. And we are devising an antipoison to administer to the remaining nobles whom La Voisin plans to target, so they will be indebted to us too. It will be a union of the common man and noble man—something neither Father nor La Voisin could accomplish. We’ll be able to overthrow the Shadow Society with the strength of a unified city behind us.”
I look triumphantly at Desgrez. I’m getting rather good at making these speeches.
He’s silent for an endless moment, then he tips his head back and laughs. It feels like thousands of needles jabbing into my ears. “You poor witless fool! Please tell me the poisoner has tainted your water or sprinkled you with her devilish powders and that you don’t honestly believe this ludicrous plan will work.”
“It will work!” I bite back. “It’s a good plan!”
“Perhaps it would be if you could believe a word out of her wicked, lying mouth.”
“She’s innocent. She was used and betrayed by her mother—just like us.” Desgrez makes a show of wiping beneath his eyes and shaking his head, and my fingers curl into fists. “Stop laughing,” I say, my voice a growl.
“I’ll stop laughing as soon as you start using your head. I don’t care what she told you or what she claims. She’s lying. She’s still one of them. She will always be one of them.”
My heart bashes against my ribs like a caged bird, and my vision darkens around the edges, narrowing on Desgrez’s infuriating face.
“You’re impossible!” I shout. Then I do something very stupid—I lunge forward and ram my shoulder into Desgrez’s chest, which I know will end badly, since he’s the one who taught me to fight. He topples backwards and slams into the counter but somehow still manages to hook his foot around my ankle as he falls. Before I know what’s happening, the back of my head cracks against the dusty floor.
Desgrez scrambles on top of me. I kick out and my boot sinks
into his stomach. He doubles over, wheezing, and I try to roll away, but there’s nowhere to go and I smash into the counter. A gallipot clangs to the floor, reverberating like a bell, followed by the crash of at least a dozen glass phials.
“What the devil is going on in here?” Mirabelle bangs into the shop. She looks first at her shattered equipment and then at Desgrez. “You.”
Desgrez props himself up onto his elbows, his blue eyes dancing with amusement. “How precious, Josse. Your poisoner has come to rescue you.”
“Tell him,” I say to Mirabelle as I rub my throbbing head. “Tell him he can trust you. That you haven’t hurt anyone, and you had nothing to do with the attack on Versailles.”
She blinks as if I’m speaking in tongues. “What?”
“Tell him what you told me.”
Slowly, she steps back and steadies herself against the door. Her eyes are wide and haunted, her cheeks the same chalk-white as the moon. “I don’t understand. I can’t… .” She grips her forehead. Droplets of sweat bead along her hairline. Her lips open and close, but she can’t seem to find her voice.
A prickle of dread traces up my spine. “Mirabelle?”
She clasps her hands and looks heavenward.
“Mirabelle!”
I can feel Desgrez watching us. His eyes flit back and forth as if this is the most enthralling tennis match he’s ever witnessed.
I clamber to my feet, heart battering inside my chest. “What, exactly, are you trying to say?”
“I’m sorry.” A shudder grips her shoulders. “So sorry.”
“Why are you sorry?” She’s silent so long, I want to launch across the room and shake her. “Answer me!”
Finally, she looks down. Her gaze is as vacant and as faraway as it was at the Duc de Luxembourg’s château.
“It’s all my fault,” she says softly.
“I don’t understand,” I say again.
A sob burbles up her throat and her voice breaks. “My mother delivered the poisoned petition into the Sun King’s hands, but I made the poison. I am ultimately responsible for his death.”
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