It was half an hour to noon.
I bought three glasses of wine and waited. Rainier peeked through the door. I raised my hand to him, and he pulled Madeline through with him. He flanked her when she sat, and one of the patrons lifted her head. Bloodshot red eyes glared at us through the dim room.
“I haven’t seen anyone,” I said, “but I got you these, and I don’t think they’re poisoned.”
Madeline checked anyway, power slipping into her wine with a breath, and she shook her head. “You finished the exam early.”
“And I overheard something interesting.” The hair on the back of my neck rose. A low hum built in my ears. “Do you feel that?”
Madeline nodded, and Rainier shook his head.
I spun around. There was only a patron and the server, a cup of wine in their hands. The familiar tug of the midnight arts, soft magic and tight control, slipped over me, and Madeline reached her hand across the table. We hadn’t worked since last night, and even though it had left us exhausted, she flung out her power in a whip. It broke through whatever vision the server was trying to scry. The water in the cup turned to steam, ruining their scrying surface. They jumped back.
“Rude of you to scry us,” Rainier said loudly. “Could have just asked what we were talking about.”
It was so little magic, but the server’s hands were shaking.
The bloodshot patron rose, dragged a chair to our table, and sat. I downed the last of my wine.
“Who are you?” she asked. She couldn’t have been more than a few years older than us, but her face was haggard, and the cut of her clothes was slightly too big, as if she had lost weight and muscle in recent weeks. A scar beneath her left eye was still shiny.
Madeline and Rainier at the same time said, “Hacks.”
“How’d you hear about today?” she asked. “Don’t lie. I’ll know.”
“Are you better with magic than that one?” I asked and pointed at the server. “Because if not, you will have trouble seeing as we can all control our bodily responses to stress as well as other people’s.”
She turned to Rainier and pointed at me. “This one always an ass?”
“Yes.”
I scowled.
“Well, that was truthful, so I think I’ve still got it,” she said, running a hand over her recently shaved black hair. “Now, who told you to come here at noon?”
Madeline set down her wine. “Florice.”
“He’s dead, but nice try.” The girl dropped an elbow on the table and leaned in. A strip of leather knotted around her throat held a small curl of icy-blond hair in a locket cut like lacework. “How did you really hear about it? You’re not our standard fare.”
“We know he’s dead,” I said. “We were there for it. He told us to come here before he died. If it helps, it would’ve been around two in the morning when he told us.”
“Shit.” She dropped her forehead into her hand, massaging her temples. “Physician Pièrre du Guay left him as an example, didn’t he?”
I nodded. “Laurence du Montimer didn’t know and sent Florice back to his family at least.”
She nodded and rocked in the chair. “Your names?”
We told her who we all were—perhaps a mistake, perhaps the start of something better—and she cleared her throat.
“Here’s what you’re going to do, then.” She stood her first two fingers on the table and walked them about as if explaining battle positions. “We already have eyes inside of the medical school, but they can’t get close to Physician du Guay. We need to know what he’s up to and what he’s thinking. Can you do that?”
“Who’s this ‘we’ you’re talking about?” I asked. “And what should we call you?”
“You lot don’t call me anything. Last time I told folks my name was in Segance, and I’m not getting arrested again.” She rolled her eyes at me. “But let us say that a physician, like a king, should not rest on his laurels.”
She was one of the Laurels.
“But you asked for our names,” said Rainier.
“I did,” she said. “Problem?”
“No.” Madeline shook her head. There was a thump, and I was sure she had stepped on her brother’s foot. “He’s picking a new hack from our class. We can talk to whoever it is and figure out what to do.”
“Good,” she said, standing. “Send word through one of you. Don’t all come tromping back here at once. We can’t survive another Segance. Now get out of here.”
So we downed our wine and did.
“Madeline, if you’d had Charles’s education, would you be as skilled as him?” I asked later that night in our room.
“If this is a veiled insult, your veil’s not thick enough,” she said, head leaning back on her folded robe.
“It’s not. It’s a question.” I spun the silver cuff in my hands, gathering all my memories of Annette and channeling magic into the metal. “If you were a comtesse, things would have been different. Was he lucky that he had the education he had, or was it predestined?”
She rolled her eyes to stare at me but didn’t say anything.
“And I don’t mean in the way the Empire’s new ministers go on about predestination. I mean it in the political way. Is it luck if the world is designed to ensure he got that education?”
“I feel like this is less a question for me and more you working through some sort of issue.” She whistled a tune and threw a wadded-up blanket at me. “Stop spinning it.”
I glanced up at her. “Can you scry?”
“Oh yes. I refuse to sacrifice what I love simply because it’s too feminine for a physician, whatever that means,” said Madeline. “Hold it still. Moving won’t let the image take hold.”
“Thank you,” I said.
But the silver still showed me nothing.
The next morning, we were shuffled to a tailor bright and early. Madeline and I went in last, and while we waited, I held up bolts of fabric to her to see which looked best. We settled on physician-coat scarlet, but the tailor had strict orders on what to fit us for. Old, donated dresses in cheap cloth and pale colors were thrust into my arms, and the pitch-black coat of the hacks—so as not to show our mistakes—buttoned from our collar to our hips. I paid the tailor’s assistant double for a pair of trousers like Rainier had been given earlier. The money I had brought with me from Bosquet was gone, the disgustingly expensive sets of supplies and texts from the university responsible for most of it. Annette had sent me more, of course.
Everything well. Haven’t done anything dangerous. No one suspicious. Scrying notes on back. Also, everyone hates your handwriting. Sorry.
I had not asked her if she had done anything dangerous, and for such a short letter, it begged so many questions.
“I bet you a silver half that Physician du Guay picks first and makes a speech about it,” Madeline whispered to me.
I grinned. “Deal. I bet he makes his hacks walk to meet him and doesn’t bother coming here.”
We were all dressed in our uniforms. The coat over our long-sleeved blouses and thick skirts was uncomfortably hot, dredging every drop of sweat from my skin. Madeline had buttoned her blouse and coat to her chin, a much more feminine fashion statement, and I had rolled up my sleeves like Rainier and most of the others. I pulled at my collar. Rainier leaned back to say something.
The door to the lecture hall slammed open. Laurence du Montimer, scarlet coat neatly buttoned from throat to knee over his white shirt and black hose and his hair plaited back so that only a few stray curls framed his face, swept into the room. Every part of him was put together, despite the early hour. He held up his right hand and pointed to the back of the room. Two gold rings with opal slivers glittered on his fingers.
“Rainier, Emilie,” he said, turning to leave. “You’re mine.”
Arrhythmia.
Madeline grabbed my arm.
I stood and Rainier did the same, staring at me. “Good luck. You owe me some silver.”
Madeline looked at me, eyes slightly too wide, lips slightly too tense, and Rainier and I walked after Laurence. I marched after him—my strides too wide to be polite and my arms crossed against my chest; an inappropriate lady of Demeine—and licked my lips, the sting of sulfur and seared skin thick in the air around him. He led us out of the building and to an area far on the other side of university. We stopped before a thick wooden door carved with the creation of the universe. Laurence laid his hand against the dual sun and moon etching.
“You’ve met my second apprentice, Charles, I believe.” Laurence pushed open the door and beckoned for us to enter. “He’s opted not to have a hack, but Emilie, you will, when needed, assist him with non-ethereal and surgical medical work. Rainier, you will be working with my first apprentice, Sébastien. I typically do not permit the use of hacks for my apprentices, but I let them decide this year.”
Wait—was I not going to be working as a hack? Did he think I couldn’t work with the noonday arts? That I shouldn’t?
Laurence ushered us inside. A prickling of gooseflesh spread over my arms, sweat chilling on my skin. The familiar thrum of the noonday arts around me pounded in my head, powerful and demanding, hungry to be used, and I breathed it in, let it steep into me until Laurence spoke again.
“This is the laboratory,” Laurence said, sweeping one reedy arm out to gesture at different tables. No wonder his hands were so worn down. He must channel so much for this amount to have lingered here. If this was what he hadn’t used yet, I could only imagine what he had. “My research is mostly in long-term ethereal solutions to physical problems, adjusting body alchemistry and healing the small veins we haven’t quite mastered closing with surgery yet.”
A glass tablet no bigger than my thumb rested on a table nearby, and a red drop was crushed between two planes. I peeked at it, fingers on the table edge. Charles darted in front of me.
“Don’t touch things.” He said it softly, so Laurence wouldn’t hear, and tapped the pair of thick, protective spectacles atop his head. They had left little crescent moon indents on each side of his nose. “He has a whole list of rules I’ll give you two later. He always forgets.”
“Sorry.” I shrugged. “I’m very curious.”
“Yes,” Charles said. “That is the word we have used to describe you.”
Behind me, Rainier snorted.
“Familiarize yourselves with this layout,” Laurence said quickly. “In the event of an emergency, which does happen on occasion, you might need to traverse it without sight or sound.”
It was a large, high-ceilinged room with windows of curved glass for privacy. Vents spotted the ceiling, to redirect bad air and fumes, and if I were to divide the room in even quadrants, I was sure the four tables of the room would fall in the exact center of each quadrant. Small lamps—flameless, alchemical things of glass and magic that cast an odd, yellow light across the room—hung from the ceiling, sparking in the various glass jars, vials, and distillation setups on the tables. At the back of the room sat Sébastien practicing stitchery on a pig flank. The table to the right of the door, Laurence’s table, was meticulously cleaned and organized. At its center was a small steel box.
As Laurence turned to move it, Charles mouthed to Rainer and me, “Two explosions.”
It took everything in me not to laugh.
“That,” Laurence said, pointing to Sébastien, “is my first apprentice. Do you want to introduce yourself or should I?”
Sébastien didn’t seem to hear. Laurence only nodded.
“That is Sébastien des Courmers, comte de Saillie,” Laurence said, voice overly nonchalant. “He is too busy to select which one of you he wants to work with—”
Sébastien turned around. His dark hair was braided back but escaped strands dangled across the sides of his face, giving him the look of a person interrupted whilst in the middle of something of great importance. His spectacles were artfully drooping down his straight nose, and the bushy brows above bright green eyes were naturally full and arched. “We agreed. I get Mercer.”
“Just making sure you’re paying attention.” Laurence pushed Rainier toward him and moved to sit at his desk. “Acquaint yourselves.”
Charles held up his hand. “You forgot to introduce yourself.”
“I hate small talk.” Laurence dropped his pen.
“You’re intimidating without it.” Sébastien cleared his throat. “But it’s only because you’re so smart.”
“Complimenting me to make me do something I hate?” Laurence asked. “Really?”
Charles and Sébastien glanced at each other and said, “Yes.”
Laurence sighed, his shoulders rising and falling with the effort, and he held out his hands to us as if his next words were an offering. “Please call me Laurence or Physician du Montimer. Please do not break anything. No eating in the laboratory, and no excessive use of the arts without my permission.” He glanced at Sébastien. “Better?”
He nodded.
“What’s your favorite color?” Charles asked. “Everyone has one. It’ll make you seem more personable.”
“I have apprentices to be personable for me.” Laurence rolled his eyes but smiled. “I like dark green and hate apples. Personable?”
“Very,” Sébastien said.
I glanced at Charles. “Laurence said I would be working with you, but that you didn’t want a hack?”
“No,” Charles said, grin pure malice. “I see he also forgot the entire purpose of today. You’re working with Laurence.” He patted my shoulder. “My condolences—I don’t think I slept for two months when Laurence first took me on.”
I shuffled to Laurence’s desk, unsure of what to do. He had already set to taking notes and staring at some sort of alchemical agent I had never seen. He glanced up at me after a moment.
“Right.” He narrowed his eyes and pushed his glasses to his forehead. “I need an assistant who knows how to alter the alchemistry of the human body, and judging by your exam, that’s you. I won’t use you as a hack unless necessary, but you will do exactly what I say. Understood?”
I bowed. The new stays and shift scratched at my spine. “Yes. I am glad I can fill that need.”
Laurence tilted his head to one side, plait bouncing against his shoulder. “You bow quite often, so I’m assuming you don’t normally wear skirts. Wear what you’re comfortable in.” He slipped off his physician’s coat and handed it to me, gesturing to the hook on the wall behind me. “And please stop bowing to me. If you do it every time we see each other, you’ll end up face-first in a dissection cadaver.”
Finally! We would get to learn something.
“Thank you.”
“You’ll go with me on my rounds, as will the others, but they are studying minor surgeries and bonesetting now. We’ll start tomorrow. I spend most of my days between research and free infirmaries when not at university,” Laurence said, tossing his journal on the table at the back of the laboratory. “It’s tedious work, but it has to be done and be done right, no matter how much the patient can pay, and while we are here, we work in Delest every day.”
The world needed reordering, me included, and maybe this was my first step in helping. I would hear all sorts of things about court and Pièrre from Laurence.
I sat on the stool across from Laurence. “Where would you like me to start?”
“Here.” Laurence reached beneath his table and dropped a stack of books heavier than the earth before me. “Start reading.”
Ten
Annette
Breakfast was the same except Estrel didn’t show, and I nearly vomited after eating a pastry oozing with cinnamon that had looked too good to pass up. I sat on a bench next to Coline in mathematics, head on her shoulder, whi
spering the answers, and the teacher didn’t bother us about it. On my way back to my room, the pull of channeling magic took hold of the power around me. Someone was divining in the silver room.
It was an hour before supper. The sun was still up, burning through all the windows. Whoever it was gathered power like their life depended on it, channeling the midnight arts and noonday arts into their work, and it was too much. Even being near it made my teeth ache. I crept to the door.
Isabelle, awash in magic, sat bowed over the same silver bowl I’d used for her brother. She was ethereal, cloaked in ribbons of power that threaded through the air to her open hands. Thin strips of flesh peeled away from her hands where the magic poured from her body to her bowl. Instead of water, she’d used quicksilver to keep the artistry steady. Red smeared across the silver.
“Stop!” I rushed to her and yanked the bowl from her hands.
The skin touching it tore away. Isabelle didn’t even shriek. The bowl, solid silver, shattered against the floor, and I pulled Isabelle’s chair away from the table. She didn’t move, didn’t speak, didn’t drop her hands from where they’d held the magic. Her teeth chattered.
“Isabelle?” I knelt in front of her. The pieces of her skin the magic had worn down were raw and open, not so deep they made me shudder, but unnatural enough they gave me pause. Like a paper cutout made with fire, except her flesh was the paper and the cutouts a perfect view of the inside of her forearm. They weren’t even bleeding. Drops of quicksilver beaded up along her veins. “Isabelle, can you hear me?”
Sometimes, if an artist didn’t have the money to pay a physician and enough power had channeled through their skin, the wounds killed them. Too many common artists died from healable injuries like this.
“I saw a future,” she whispered. “I had to know if it came true.”
“You were killing yourself.” I pulled her handkerchief from her pocket and wrapped it around her hands. “Can you walk? We have to take you to Vivienne.”
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