Belle Révolte

by Linsey Miller

  Couldn’t even get in the door, and I was crumbling. The magic wasn’t wearing me down yet, but even the midnight arts could break down a body over time, and I was failing so spectacularly at controlling my divining that surely I’d be nothing come winter.

  I sunk as low in my chair as my clothes and manners would allow, and Isabelle, frantically blinking away a vision too, touched my arm. I shook her off.

  Estrel Charron would know. Oh, Mistress, what if she’d scryed it? Divined it?

  No, I wasn’t that important. She never would’ve looked for me.

  But she didn’t need magic to see how much of a failure I was.

  A server set down a squat bowl of fruit, and a vision swirled in the reflective silver—blood splattering across a white gown. Why were none of my scryings normal things like a lightning storm or caravan arriving home three days early?

  The vision lingered. Silver specks drifted through my sight like snow, a hook of blue splitting the room in two.

  “Students!” Vivienne’s voice forced me to look toward the front of the room. She was a smear of white. White hair. White skin. White dress. White snow powdering around her.

  Mistress, this was worse than ever before. Artists didn’t have to be able to see to do magic, but seeing nothing but this white forever would be annoying.

  “I am aware that some of you have had the pleasure of meeting Mademoiselle Estrel Charron at court, but please bear with me as I introduce her to your peers,” Vivienne said, and even through the snow, I could see she was smiling widely. Her hand reached out and found an arm. “Students, this is Mademoiselle Estrel Charron, the royal diviner. Estrel, these are my current geniuses.”

  The others tittered and nodded, already sitting. Estrel was too country to demand standing, even if she was the royal diviner. She was only a blur of green and red to me.

  And across the table, across the fourteen girls between us and a dozen trays and pitchers, across the onslaught of silver that still burned my eyes, my vision cleared and Estrel Charron stared straight at me. I couldn’t see anything but her eyes.

  “Please, call me Estrel. We’ll start after breakfast,” she said, gaze sliding from me to the next girl. “Every midnight artist in this room needs quite a bit of work.”

  Seven

  Emilie

  We had spent a week studying human anatomy, whispering bones in our sleep and muttering common ailments over our meals. At dawn we rose, Madeline and I earlier than all the rest, so we might bathe without interruption or scandal in the dreary bathhouse set aside for hacks and assistants that seemed to hold more mold than steam, and then we did our laundry while the other students got ready for the day. Madeline had taught me how, graciously not mentioning the atrocious way I treated my clothes. I had never had to think about it before.

  We were the only two girls in training, and all the older female hacks we might have asked for advice were working elsewhere in Demeine. Our requests for their names so that we could write for advice had been dismissed. The university didn’t want us “gossiping.” It was unseemly.

  The habit of apprentices to send hacks and assistants, our counterparts for the rest of academia who did not possess the ability to use magic, to run errands felt more unseemly, especially since we were given instructions that led us to breaking rules we hadn’t been told about. Madeline said we were lucky that was the worst that had happened.

  Rainier had been asked to channel a bit of healing arts that had worn his body down so quickly, his blood hadn’t been able to clot for a day.

  I had been asked to deliver papers to the anatomy laboratory, and they had neglected to inform me of the letter box right outside the door or the six-day-old corpse dredged from the river currently resting in the room. One of the lecturer’s assistants, running their own errands, had been nice enough to put down their flyers and offer me mint oil to offset the scent.

  At least I had finally been able to see the building where real medical students attended classes—the light wood polished till it shone like copper, the golden sconces shaped like hearts, the doors carved with the school’s symbolic skeleton clutching a book and knife, and the displays of preserved journals and discoveries. They even had a whole case of entries from ancient Physician Guy de Calciare who had documented the night plague’s effects hundreds of years ago. Still we reeled from those dark days of rotting limbs and failing lungs.

  Most believed it was a physical manifestation of spiritual uncleanness—a reminder from Lord Sun that we were not all-powerful. Physicians had worked themselves to death trying to cure it and died before they could unravel its mysteries. So began the use of hacks.

  Cleanliness was next to godliness, and so hacks were here to do nobles’ dirty work.

  All of our classes took place in one long room that looked dimmer and bleaker now that I had seen the halls of the rest of the school. Our class was the same pale wood, but we were in charge of cleaning it when we left every day, and the shine had long left the floors. There were no skylights—we were below ground—but three narrow windows were at the top of the back of the room. The floor was sloped so the room was five different levels, the instructor on the lowest level at the front. Four long tables with chairs filled the other levels.

  Every morning, a physician’s apprentice stumbled through the systems of the body, a new one graced us with their presence every day, and neither Charles nor Sébastien had yet made an appearance. Our afternoons were owned by the physicians who hoped to hire us one day. They watched us, beady eyes on other, more important things, while we cleaned their instruments and work spaces. I adored those hours, peeking through journals and observing their work while cleaning up after them. Each physician had different rules for different things. Already one student who had complained had left in the night.

  I had never been more bored in my entire life.

  The only thing I had learned—truly for the first time—was how much of a pain it was to get ink out of wool.

  At least Madeline shared my boredom if not my apathy, though I was certain it would lead to atrophy by the end of the week.

  “It looks better if you take notes,” she whispered to me, as yet again we sat in the lecture hall, her with her notes and me with nothing.

  I leaned my chair back until it rested against the wall behind us, and the breeze snuck through the shutters of the windows above us. “Who cares what I look like if I know it?”

  I was lucky—I had a noble’s education, but no one else in the room could say the same.

  “How have you not been arrested for insulting some duc yet?” she asked, never raising her face from her notebook.

  She took meticulous, lovely notes in midnight-blue ink with handwriting that would have given the royal printer a run for its money. The ink, an alchemical substance of her own making, was delightfully, terribly permanent. Most of her dresses were the same shade of blue to keep the stains hidden.

  “There’s only the one, and I doubt he cares so long as we show up to the exam,” I said. At the end of this week, we were to sit for an exam on anatomy and alchemistry to determine if we were trained enough to be hacks and allowed near real people. The physicians and their apprentices would pick which of us they wanted. “Regardless, only Physician du Guay’s opinion matters.”

  He was the head of the medical school, the oldest physician living, and I would prove him wrong. I would be his hack, prove I was good enough, and make him regret his policy that girls couldn’t study physicianry.

  “Suit yourself,” Madeline muttered as the door to the hall opened.

  “I always do.”

  Most hacks only survived ten years after beginning. Most physicians, even with their hacks, survived thirty. Even with only ten years, I could actually change something for the better. That was more than my father had ever done. I owed my people that.

  Charles du Ravine, clothes
a mix of colors beneath his orange coat and his tangle of red hair pulled up into a messy knot, stepped inside the room. He wasn’t carrying much, only a book and a glass tablet with a smear of notes inked across it. The room quieted.

  “I hope you remember who I am from your first day here. You can call me Charles; it saves time in emergencies.” He set his glass tablet against the desk at the front of the room and picked up the ink brush at the base of the glass writing board that covered the whole front wall. “I will be going over some of the most common injuries seen in soldiers and chevaliers today—wounds and blows to the head.”

  I leaned forward. This might finally be useful.

  “He’s so starry,” Madeline said and sighed. She rarely dropped her serious mask, but now she was all smiles. “Smart too. It’s very unfair.”

  I twisted to glare at her. “I’m certain the gorgeous, genius vicomte needs little more to feed his vanity.”

  “Just remember, you said ‘genius.’ I didn’t.”

  “I’m already trying to forget,” I said.

  “Mademoiselle Boucher!” Charles’s call cut through the room, and my cheeks burned before I could even turn to look at him. “How many bones are in a human skull?”

  Of course. Finally I could prove one of the people with my fate in their hands wrong, and I hadn’t been paying attention. Everyone in the room turned around—Madeline and I had claimed the chairs in the very back of the room, so no one could talk behind our backs—and I pressed my hands together, forefingers against my lips. It was an incomplete question.

  “What age of human?” I asked.

  My model skeleton—I had named it Basil and decorated it for winter solstice until Mother had disapproved and given it away—had always stood, labeled, next to my desk at home.

  “Do not play with me or waste my time. There’s no room for that in an emergency.” Charles scowled. If we had been at court, I would have called his glare cutting and expected no one to speak with me again. “Who do I work for? How many children do you see on battlefields?”

  “Several,” I said. “Some pirates will not kill children, but that does not mean children are not in the line of fire. I thought specificity in triage was important?”

  His face softened. “Boucher, how many bones are in an adult human skull?”

  Someone in the room snickered, and I said, “Twenty-two.”

  “Thank you,” he said. “Now, unfortunately, our brains are quite often in the line of fire…”

  He did not call on me again.

  I didn’t mind, though it felt like punishment. He was a good teacher, and by the end of the class, I somehow felt more ass than student.

  It had been a vague question.

  “It was not a vague question.” Madeline didn’t raise her eyebrows as we left the room, the model of restraint.

  Rainier, wiping the blue ink from his white hands, snorted. “That could not have gone worse.”

  “Yes, it could have,” I said. “I could have gotten the question wrong.”

  “What happened is making sense now.” Madeline led us to the courtyard for lunch. “You think every question asked, no matter what, is for you.”

  “If a question is asked of me, I answer it.” I threw up my arms in surrender. “It has worked until now.”

  We sat on a bench in one of the many courtyards and ate lunch. The proper students, the nobles and children of the wealthy who could afford to attend university for longer than a season, banded together on picnic blankets and tables set out by their assistants, varlets, and hacks. Our trio sat in the shadows of the medical school, away from prying eyes.

  “If it were only you, this wouldn’t matter, but this isn’t about only you.” She sat next to me, shoulder brushing mine. “They’ll take whatever they think about you and apply it to me.”

  I picked at a savory pastry stuffed with cheese and onions. “The other students don’t matter. Only physicians.”

  “Why are you even here? Girls like you have other options,” said Madeline. She nibbled on half of an apple.

  The money I had taken from my purse had been enough to cover tuition, an appropriate small wardrobe, and supplies. The amount I had left was questionable at best. The price of food was far higher than I had anticipated.

  No wonder Laurel was gaining ground.

  At least Annette was sending me money to arrive in the next day or so. Her last note had been short—she was ill—and to the point, which was a small blessing given her handwriting.

  “I want to be a physician, but it’s not appropriate or allowed,” I said. Madeline and Rainier could certainly hear the bitterness because it was so strong, I could taste it. “And I’m not rich right now.”

  It was not a lie.

  “I’m sorry.” I offered her half of my pastry—what else did I have when my word was questionable at best—and she laughed, refusing. “I will do better.”

  If Demeine were a fire, I was simply inhaling the smoke and calling myself a victim when I could’ve been helping others escape.

  We returned to the building only to find pockets of people crowding the doors. I pushed my way to the front and froze.

  Propaganda from Laurel. On highly guarded, mostly noble and wealthy university ground.

  WHY MUST WE BREAK OUR BODIES FOR THEM

  AS WORKERS AND HACKS

  WHEN THEY WILL NOT SO MUCH AS BREAK BREAD WITH US?

  ALL ARTISTS DIE YOUNG, BUT HACKS DIE YOUNGER.

  IF WE WERE ALL TRAINED,

  IF WE ALL SHARED THE BURDEN OF POWER,

  THE MASTER ARTISTS WOULD ONLY DIE FIVE YEARS EARLIER.

  HACKS WOULD LIVE TWENTY YEARS LONGER.

  WHY DO THEY PREFER US UNTRAINED?

  WHY DOES THE KING PREFER US DEAD?

  “Are they on any of the other buildings?” a boy next to me asked.

  I shrugged and shook my head. “I don’t know.”

  “Can you scry it?” He glanced around, eyes wide with fear, and ripped the poster down. “Midnight arts it or whatever?”

  “What do you think we’re studying here?” I snapped. “You ‘midnight arts it or whatever.’”

  The flyer was passed from hand to hand until I lost sight of it, and I slipped through the crowd to rejoin Madeline and Rainier. The silver cuff Annette had made me keep was in my room under the bed.

  “Your attention, all of you,” a voice called.

  We all fell quiet and turned. It was Physician Pièrre du Guay, the First Physician of Demeine and responsible for keeping Henry XII, King of Demeine alive. He could reattach limbs and reconstruct half a heart, and here he stood before me. He was a stout white man in his fifties, square jaw clean-shaven, and scraggly eyebrows the same gray as snow slush in dirt grew wild above his sharp, blue eyes. The red coat he wore was not one of the newer ones that was made with red wool but had once, when he had been first named a physician, been white. His work had stained it over the years, and his magic had kept the color but not the mess.

  “Where is it?” he said

  From our small group of a few dozen, the three flyers nailed to our buildings made their ways to Physician Pièrre du Guay. He crumpled them in his hand and gestured for us to follow him. We did.

  The courtyard where we had eaten was empty, and in the center was a body. It was a hack, black uniform speckled with blood, lying face up on the grass. Pièrre circled behind him.

  “I know I have not had the pleasure of making your acquaintances before now, so forgive my bluntness. I am sure many of you are entirely dedicated to your future work,” said Pièrre. “However, please allow me to introduce to you Florice, who was formerly my most-trusted hack. In fact, I spent all morning working with him to save three lives.”

  Florice’s chest heaved. A thin line of red seeped across his stomach, the stain more like veins than blood loss. He w
as steeped in power, magic from overuse of the noonday arts burning in his skin, and I could see it all the way down to the marrow of his bones. He was a skeleton still dressed, dead save for the soul still in him. There was no coming back from this without a physician to intervene. But Pièrre wouldn’t let him die.

  “It has come, most unfortunately, to my attention that Florice had a hand in this garbage appearing here, but I know for a fact he had an accomplice place them. I need to know who.”

  The magic that had been building in Florice’s bones for years was devouring him, gnawing at the threads of his life, changing the smallest ethereal aspects of him, and working its way out. The red stain grew.

  Bisection was a mortal wound.

  Pièrre was a physician. He had a responsibility.

  “Please,” Pièrre said, his hands spread wide as if to embrace whoever gave him what he wanted, “tell me if you saw anyone.”

  Next to me, Rainier and Madeline shook their heads. My hands shook against my thighs, the bright burn of Florice’s life all I could focus on. The tissues of his intestines gave way beneath the magic that had finally become more than his body could handle. His ribs were webbed with cracks. His very blood was a poison.

  He could still be saved maybe. It would take work. It would take action—now.

  “Now,” Pièrre asked, “I will ask once more—did anyone see Florice’s accomplice?”

  Pièrre was letting Florice die. His hack! The assistant he had worked with for years, the assistant who had worn down his body channeling magic so Pièrre could heal.

  It might have been magic wearing Florice down enough to end his life, but it was Pièrre who had killed him by not helping.

  “This is a trying time that requires loyalty and solidarity,” he said, “and as we have only recently welcomed you into our school, it would be beneficial to demonstrate your loyalty.”

  No one spoke.

  Pièrre nodded, clasping his hands together behind his back. “Then I am hopeful that none of you are involved in this nonsense and that we may care for Demeine together. All infections must be burned out, of course.” He glanced at Florice. “And if any of you need a reminder of what I mean by that, let Florice be your demonstration. Anyone found with such propaganda from the coward Laurel or aiding him will be dealt with swiftly.”