“No!” She ripped her hands from me and fell back. “No, no, no, no, no. Vivienne can’t know. No one can know.”
Someone behind me cleared their throat, and I glanced back. Coline, arms crossed, stood in the doorway. Germaine and Gisèle peeked into the room from behind her. They were always together, Germaine on the left.
“If you want to get away with this, you have to move,” said Coline. “First rule of breaking the rules: Never stay in the same place too long.”
“Then help me carry her, Mademoiselle Crime.” I rose and wrapped the cloth back around Isabelle’s hands.
Tall, sturdy Gisèle with her wide smile and strong arms came forward instead and swept Isabelle up in her arms. “It is times like these, I am glad I don’t have the curse of magic.”
Coline, Isabelle, and I were the only first-year students who did.
“Thanks.” I gathered up the mess, Germaine helping me clean, and stared around the room. Most of the power had faded. “Well, that could’ve been worse.”
Germaine, Vivienne’s favorite student when it came to comportment, only hummed.
“What was she trying to do?” Coline asked.
I shook my head. “Divine her brother, but she wouldn’t say what about.”
“It must be bad, then, to wear herself down so much for one divination, yes?” Germaine asked. “I have never understood the appeal of knowing the future, but Isabelle talks of nothing except her brother.”
She was a good sister.
“They’re all each other have,” I said. “Their parents are dead, and she’s got something that’s supposed to help but doesn’t. It’s infuriating.”
“I’ll find another bowl.” Germaine dumped the shattered pieces into a decorative vase. “If she gets in trouble—”
I grinned. “I haven’t seen you since class.”
I left, saying goodbye and thanking Germaine again, and raced back to my room. She agreed to make our excuses at supper—Vivienne loved nothing more than us banding together to protect the others, so us keeping an indisposed Isabelle company would delight her. Upstanding ladies of Demeine didn’t let a bit of uncomfortableness affect them, even if it meant they were in too much pain to stand. It was more seemly to excuse yourself.
Couldn’t do it every day, and only for one hour. I’d already tried with household management.
“What were you thinking?” I said, shoving open the door to our room and looking round for Isabelle.
She’d been tucked into her bed, her hands wrapped in gauze, and Coline sat at the foot of her bed.
I paced between her bed and mine, and pulled the lockbox I’d stolen from one of Emilie’s trunks out from under my bed. Inside, I’d been storing little things, mostly. A few tonics for pain or fever, some silver lunes, and most importantly a half-empty tin of balm to help with damage caused by magic that one of the girls had left in the silver room on accident. There was no telling when someone would find me out. I had to be ready.
“Here.” I sat it on the high wooden back of Isabelle’s bed frame. “What did you see?”
“Him dying,” she whispered. She stared straight ahead, eyes red. “My aunt keeps telling me he’s fine, but I saw it and know she’s lying. Blood and steel or a noose and gasping or his body wearing out and crumbling or once a horse hoof to the head. So many possibilities and all of them death.”
I pulled Alaine’s necklace out from under my dress. It was always best to use things well-loved. “You and Gabriel aren’t alone anymore,” I said softly. “You don’t have to be ever again.”
I held the image of her brother—mousy hair like hers that he kept long and knotted at the nape of his neck, her nose beneath a startling set of blue eyes that were all his, and the black coat of a hack covering him from neck to knees—in my mind. I rubbed my hands together as if I were gathering wool, and power condensed around the silver crescent moon. My skin grew cold and clammy. I didn’t need to open my eyes to see this future.
I had gathered so much power, too much of Mistress Moon, to ensure that what she sent me was the future that would come to pass. Most divinations didn’t.
Gabriel, bloodied and worn down, on his back in a field. Black-hearted bruises speckling his white skin. Blood in his throat. No pain. Only stars above and memories.
My first divination in ages, and it was certain death.
I tried to pull my hands away, but they held fast, the divination arts not done with me. Part of the danger of working the midnight arts was not knowing when to stop and getting trapped—the illusion, present or future, playing out forever. A pair of small hands grasped my wrists and pulled them apart. I opened my eyes.
“What did you see?” Coline asked, her hands holding a cloth beneath my nose. “Emilie, that was the most power I have ever felt anyone pull together without preparation.”
Isabelle’s trembling arm pressed to mine. “Please don’t lie. What did you see?”
I glanced at her. She should know. She’d done it downstairs and nearly worn her hands out. “You—”
Pain tore down my throat. I coughed, choked, and Coline pulled back the cloth. Blood drenched it. I dropped Alaine’s necklace against my chest, the soft tap of it painful, and touched my nose and mouth. Blood dripped down my fingers, flecks of silver magic floating in the red. It clotted almost instantly.
“I—” Instead of words, blood and snot filled my throat. I sniffed. “This is why I don’t divine. It never works.”
Coline pressed the cloth back to my face. “Stop talking. I know it will be hard but try.”
I scowled, but she couldn’t see it through the cloth.
“Did you see him?” Isabelle asked softly.
I nodded. Even that hurt.
Gabriel would die, worn down far too much to be saved.
Not all artists die young. Only the common do. Why?
Because they were killed, by magic or by their artist’s hands. I needed to talk to Yvonne. Something bad was coming. Rich folks always needed hacks because hacks kept them alive. They wouldn’t kill them for nothing.
Demeine wore us down as surely as magic did.
“The last time I saw someone gather that much power, his heart stopped,” Coline said. “And he had to resort to hacks.”
I waved her worry off with a hand and picked up my necklace. Some of the power I’d gathered but not used still lingered in the room. It curled around my shoulders like a mantle of wool on the hottest day of summer, and I gently pushed a single strand of it into the necklace. I had enough in me for one more midnight art. Something quick and easy.
If I was going to help Isabel, Gabriel, and Laurel, I needed to be better, and for that, I needed Estrel. But she wasn’t teaching us yet, focusing on the older, better students instead. How did she get better?
Hands, calloused and scarred, flipped through folded pages. A language I couldn’t read that looked like ancient Deme. Neat, stylized handwriting in red ink. A flash of magic so powerful… My eyes outside of the vision burned.
I jerked back. The magic fell apart, slipping through shaking hands. That wasn’t possible. The midnight arts weren’t physical. They couldn’t affect physical things, especially not through divination. It was just…watching.
“Are you incapable of taking care of yourself?” Coline crumpled up the cloth and threw it on my bed. “Stop. You’re hurting yourself.”
That one hadn’t hurt at all, and I tapped the corner of one eye then nudged Isabelle. My vision blurred.
“You saw it?” she asked. “You saw something bad?”
I was terrible at divining, and maybe, if that were Gabriel’s future, we could stop it now that we knew.
I shook my head.
Knowing your sibling was about to die and not knowing what to do was the worst feeling in the world, and I would suffer no one through it. I had to find a way
to help Gabriel first.
Footsteps echoed down the hall. Coline turned to the door, and I covered my face with my hands. Blood pooled in my cupped palms.
Let it be Vivienne who probably wouldn’t kill us too badly. Please, Mistress, anyone but Estrel.
I blinked, and it didn’t get better. The footsteps grew closer, the clack changing to a shuffle on the hall’s narrow rug. The headache I’d carried since coming here gnawed at my temples. The door opened. Isabelle stiffened.
“It’s rude to scry on someone without their permission,” a voice that was not, could not, but absolutely did belong to Estrel said.
“I tried to divine earlier and failed,” Isabelle said quickly. “It’s my fault.”
“I know. I don’t mean that. Unlike Vivienne, I find power and trouble go hand in hand and expect such experimentation from my students.” Estrel laughed, breath rippling between her lips, and the red-crowned smear that was her crept closer. “Now, which one of you scryed me?”
I lifted my head and tried to deny it, but the words were a bloody mess.
“What for all the gods have you done?” Her voice was a rough, low thing with no humor, and the bed to my left dipped. Warm hands touched mine. “It was an accident, wasn’t it?”
I nodded.
“I cannot believe you two let her do this,” she said. “You should have helped.”
“Is that even possible?” Coline asked. “We’re not trained as hacks.”
“Are you asking me is it possible for you three to do what the majority of artists do? You don’t need training to share, I would hope.” Estrel’s fingers tilted my face back and forth, her gaze unreadable from all the snow in my vision. Then, after what felt like a century, she brushed my hair from behind my ears and slipped her spectacles onto my face. “I can’t believe Vivienne didn’t notice you.”
Why would anyone ever notice me?
The whole bottom of my stomach dropped out. Maybe this was it. The worst fate in the world. My legs were numb and my brain was of fire and the little bundle of nerves I’d been keeping in my belly since she’d arrived was finally eating me in two. Maybe I’d get lucky and there’d be nothing left of me to be embarrassed. I was so bad, she wished Vivienne had told her about me.
“Open your eyes,” she said. “Does that help?”
I blinked, the world tinted orange-yellow, and the snow in my vision cleared. The power I’d been seeing everywhere was gone. My head still ached and my stomach still rebelled, but this was better. The little itching pain in the back of my mind since first entering the silver room faded.
I nodded again.
“You two rest, and no more midnight arts. If you do any, I will know and I will not be happy. I know you are Vivienne’s rebellious group for the year, but this is really beyond the scope of her capabilities,” said Estrel. “Understood?”
They both agreed.
“And you.” Estrel Charron, the best midnight artist who had ever lived and maybe the best artist of the decade, gently took me by the shoulders and smiled. “You are coming with me.”
Estrel led me to her quarters on the upper floors. The halls looked different, stained gold by her spectacles, flickers of magic dancing across the lenses when I looked sideways. She’d a real laboratory with divining bowls in every shade of silver and glass, vials of quicksilver and water full of arts, and two gold-plated tables lined with tall gold stools, and she swept me through the room before I could get a good look at any of it. The bitter-clean scents of vinegar and lemon peel filled my mouth when she opened a door in the back of the laboratory, pushing me into a small, cushioned chair. Water flowed through a clock in the corner, trickling down the hour. Four trunks stood open and messy along one wall.
Maybe she’d kill me. Couldn’t be embarrassed if I were dead.
“Now, don’t speak,” said Estrel, sweeping to the large desk taking up most of the room. “Vivienne told me you call yourself Emilie des Marais.”
I pushed her spectacles up my nose and nodded. She must think me weak compared to her.
She was the country girl so good with magic she’d tried to join the university and they’d accepted her as some half-real student so they could keep an eye on her as she studied the midnight arts. Hope had whispered through the villages from kids’ lips to kids’ ears because if she could do that alone, what could we do together?
She’d teach me how I could help, how I would be worthy, surely.
“Drink this.” She pressed a small cup into my hands. “It will help your throat.”
The familiar scents of sage, barley, and honey hit my nose. It smelled like Yvonne’s kitchens and the hum of her alchemistry trapped in the honey soothed me. She was so talented.
After I’d been sipping for a while, Estrel asked, “I’m curious—did it work?”
“What?” The word was a croak.
“Your scrying—you were looking at my past,” she said. “Did you see it clearly?”
I shook my head. Scrying the past was possible, but no one ever did it. It was only slightly easier than divining but took too much power to make it worth it.
She laughed, the sound of two old book pages rubbing together. “Divining is the hardest midnight art and provides us with the most dangerous knowledge. Do you want that sort of power?”
She stood barely five foot and three thumbs, smiling, but still the words wouldn’t come. What if she thought what I wanted was silly? What if she laughed again and the sound was ruined forever?
“Emilie?” she said softly but firmly. “There’s no wrong answer.”
She wasn’t soft or still or stagnant like Maman always said I should be. She was sharp and moving—one finger tapping against the tip of her hooked nose, pointed jaw tensed so tight, her muscles twitched, red curls bouncing free and wild around her shoulders as she shifted. Two starry clips bright as her brown eyes flickered near her ears. She pulled a spare set of spectacles from her pocket and put them on. Opal slivers sparkled in the arms.
My vision for faraway things was still blurry, but at least it showed me her.
“Yes,” I said. “I want to be the best. I want everyone who told me I couldn’t be to know they were wrong. I want to save people and help people and be something to someone, so it doesn’t all feel like nothing. I have to be the best.”
If I wasn’t, what was the point of me even learning magic?
“Good. I love ambition.” She came to me from around her desk, shoulders squared as if her well-tailored plain clothes were armor instead of her origins, and sat on the footstool before me. “I’ll talk to Vivienne in the morning, but you need to start training immediately. This”—she tapped my brow and then my throat—“is because you are much more capable of gathering magic than most other artists. Does it feel like magic is calling to you? Like it wants you to channel it?”
I nodded.
“You are innately talented, but because of that, you are more susceptible to wearing down.”
I knew it. I wasn’t trained enough for it. No wonder I’d been more wince than girl in that room.
“How much more training?” I asked. “Am I far behind the others?”
“Behind?” Estrel laughed, hands fluttering around her like excited Stareaters. “The amplification effects of the school are affecting you quite badly, as they did me. I mean that in the best possible way, of course.”
“I don’t know what you mean, though.”
The embarrassment had died, and in the hollow place where my stomach had been, a warm, curling feeling like dry heat after a humid summer day had taken over. She was brilliant. Of course she’d say things I’d not get. And she was nice, bedside manner more sisterly than strict. Her thumb tapped my jaw.
“Oh, darling, you think you’re terrible at magic, don’t you?” Her fingers tilted my chin up, and she pulled the spectacles from my nose. Least h
er smile was as cutting as I expected from the smartest person in Demeine.
“I know I’m not the best, but all I want is to be better,” I said. “Everyone always told me I was bad at it, and I can’t divine.”
“I’m going to put a drop of castor oil in your eyes. Blink and it should help.” She touched my chin. “Not to be the bearer of bad news, but everyone lied to you or didn’t want you to grow into your power. And I would bet that you can divine.”
She held open my eyelids and let two drops fall into each eye. I blinked them away for a few minutes, the two of us sitting in the tense but comfortable silence of two people who didn’t know what to say, and my vision slowly cleared. I was sitting in a chair with a tall, cushioned back near the door, and the rest of the room was a barely contained, cluttered mess of books and glass and bowls and kingfisher feathers spread out across the desk and table and shelves. A map of the sky with each constellation outlined and the meanings for reading portents decorated the stone wall behind a complete human skeleton on the side of the room across from the door. Tiny scrawls of black curled around each separate bone. Estrel’s wooden desk was in the corner to the left of it, covered by a series of knives and telescopes.
She leaned away from me. “Better?”
It was nice being cared for.
“Much. Thank you,” I said. “So, what has been happening to me? Feels like you’re laughing at me.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “You remind me of me a little bit in how shocked you are by all of this.”
Well, that was a lie. We were nothing alike.
“Sometimes,” Estrel said, “there are people like us who are so affected by the ethereal power of magic that it can have more detrimental effects on our physical bodies when we aren’t trained. Power begs to beget power. It wears whatever it touches down over time. We tend to gather it innately, store it in things without realizing it.”
“Us?”
“Us.” She leaned toward me, hands on her knees, and stared into my eyes. “You are a wonderful midnight artist who needs training, but you taught yourself control and all the intricacies of scrying, didn’t you? Power comes in many forms, some that we might not recognize at first, and some that others seek to disregard, and I want to help you recognize yours. You’re not alone.”
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