Belle Révolte

by Linsey Miller

  I couldn’t even nod. The tears on my face had nothing to do with the pain from earlier, and she reached out with one steady hand to wipe them from my face.

  “You need better training than I received, and it will be hard.” She reared back and chewed on her thumbnail, eyes staring through me. “I am supposed to return to Serre in three days, but I can leave Vivienne instructions.”

  “Whatever you want,” I said, the burn in my throat almost gone. I was no one, and she wanted to teach me.

  I wasn’t bad. I was useful. Maman was wrong. She’d lied to me.

  Estrel looked up at me. “I want you to promise me that you won’t gather that much power without supervision.”

  I swallowed, set my cup down, and nodded.

  Wasn’t a lie. Mostly.

  “I mean it. And another rule.” Estrel picked up the chain of Alaine’s necklace with her finger. “You have to stop wearing this and stop using it for divinations. When you gather power, you gather a lot without meaning to, and when you use this necklace with it, some of that power stays in that necklace. It leaks out and wears down whatever is near it.”

  I grabbed the charm at the end, silver warm in my hands, and swallowed. “It’s holding power and wearing me down faster?”

  “It’s wearing down the parts of you it touches.” She tapped her own throat right where a short necklace might have once sat. “Why do you think I sound like this? Those with the money to pay physicians may wear such trinkets, but this silences us. Which is probably why they don’t warn us of that.”

  The phrase stuck to my mind long after she escorted me back to my room. Isabelle was sleeping in the two-bed infirmary, and Coline was reading by moonlight in my bed. She didn’t look up when I entered, but her eyes caught the light as they followed me, watching as I pulled out the lockbox and laid Alaine’s necklace into it. Coline turned the page and sighed.

  “You lied to Isabelle,” she said. “Why?”

  Her tone was even. Maman always got quiet when she got angry, and Coline seemed the same sort.

  “Do you have any siblings?” I asked.

  I knew she didn’t, but I wanted to draw her through my thoughts like how Vivienne taught us mathematics.

  “You know I don’t,” she said. “The only family members I don’t hate are my aunt and cousin, but I’m no longer permitted to speak to them.”

  I tugged at the edges of my clothes and eased myself out of them. There was still a thrum in the air, like seeing someone scry made me feel, and I rubbed the back of my neck. “Is there anyone that you love? Any sort of love?”

  “Yes,” said Coline, but she said it so softly, I might have missed it.

  “Have you watched them die?”

  “No, and Isabelle shouldn’t watch that either.” Coline closed the book and set it aside. “We have to make sure it doesn’t happen.”

  Coline came up to me and turned me around, and she undid the tight braids I’d knotted my hair up into that morning. We were meant to learn to help one another. I wondered, sometimes, why some rich and noble students needed the reminder. Coline dropped the pins from my hair on my bed.

  “You don’t have to say who you watched die,” she said very gently, more gently than I thought she was capable of being, and squeezed my arm. She didn’t let go. “But a lie of kindness is not always a good lie.”

  So she was Mademoiselle Crime and Ethics now?

  “What are we going to do?” she asked.

  “We’re the troublesome girls. I imagine us doing something wouldn’t be wholly surprising.” I turned to face her. “He’s worn down, but why would they wear him down that much and not have a physician heal him?”

  Coline had lived in Serre for a time. She knew more than me.

  “If he disobeyed or betrayed them.” She shook her head. “I have a cousin who is a physician, but I haven’t spoken to him in ages.”

  “Physician du Guay wore down one of his hacks on purpose after finding out he was a part of Laurel,” I said. I had only been able to read that letter from Emilie once. “We need to find out if that’s what’s happening to Gabriel or if it’s something else.”

  She nodded. “How? We’re stuck here.”

  “What if I told you I had agreed to help some people scry,” I said slowly. “And that maybe it’s related to that?”

  A hack kid serving a chevalier would make a great spy.

  Her hands fisted at her sides. “Some people?”

  “People trying to help Demeine.”

  “If you told me that,” said Coline, “then I would like you much more than I did yesterday, and I would say we have a lot of work to do. Laurel had gained quite a lot of ground in Segance and was working with Madame Royale Nicole until the king arrested them all. I was lucky enough to escape. Others weren’t. We can help them.”

  I froze. “Wait. How much did you like me yesterday?”

  “Doesn’t matter.” She waved the question away. “Tomorrow, when Isabelle is back with us, and you’re less whatever is happening with you, and we’re on our own, we’re figuring this out. We help. Even if we break the rules?”

  What was breaking a few more rules compared to this? “We help.”

  We slept fitfully. Coline snored as she always did, her presence a comfort. I wasn’t used to sleeping in silence, the root cellar always alive with sounds from upstairs, and Isabelle had become the sounds in the night for me. She slept rarely, sketching by the light of a hooded lantern most nights, the pages a soft rustle in the back of my mind, the sighs of her breathing like the wind through the cracks of the house I’d always known. There were no cracks here, at least none that I could hear. Money bought silence.

  It unnerved me.

  I woke up at dawn. Isabelle was only just returning from the infirmary, and I slipped from my bed onto hers. She sat, lacing our fingers together.

  “Our father was sick before he died,” Isabelle whispered. “I was seven, and our aunt and uncle told Gabriel and me he was getting better. That we shouldn’t worry. Everything would be fine. So we didn’t worry, and then one morning he was dead. I can’t wake up and find out Gabriel’s dead. I can’t do that again.”

  “If he’s about to die, then let’s save him,” I said. “We’re artists. We’re smart. We can do something, so let’s do it.”

  She nodded. “Should we tell Coline?”

  “No.” I helped Isabelle out of bed and gathered up our bathing supplies. “She’s too grumpy after waking up. We’ll tell her later.”

  By the time we made it to breakfast, Isabelle was smiling. Estrel handed me the yellow-tinted spectacles when I walked past her, gesturing for me to put them on. I did, marveling at the room as some of the other girls must have seen it, and my stomach growled. Germaine and Gisèle took the seats on either side of Isabelle and me.

  “What happened?” Germaine asked, voice soft.

  Even Coline looked to me to answer.

  I glanced at Vivienne and Estrel at the head of the table, laughing. “Nothing,” I said. “I scryed after you left, and Estrel caught me.”

  “Caught you scrying?” Gisèle asked.

  Germaine laughed. “That’s not against the rules.”

  I shrugged and tapped the spectacles, but before I could answer, Estrel tapped her spoon against her water glass. She stood and dropped it with a clatter.

  “Morning, all,” she said, and magic flickered at her throat, pale and sunny through the tint of these lenses. An illusion. I hadn’t noticed she hid her voice. To hold that all the time must have been exhausting. “I have so greatly enjoyed meeting most of you and must apologize that I haven’t had time to meet all of you, but I hope to rectify that.” She leaned against the table like we were never supposed to and stared at me. “I have decided to stay and help teach the midnight arts this term. Power and rebellion often go hand in hand, and
it would be far too dangerous to leave you all on your own.”

  I leaned forward too, able to see the world plainly for the first time in days, and my mind blessedly clear.

  I knew what I had to do.

  Eleven

  Emilie

  We woke at dawn every day. Laurence required that we attend morning rounds with him at one of the Delest clinics, teaching us the basics through example. Our school sessions were over, the education of hacks largely lacking in academia and built solely upon practical experience, and we would remain with Laurence’s group until they returned to work in Monts Lance after the term was over. After an hour, Sébastien would lead Rainier away to work as his hack and deal with the patients Sébastien didn’t want—inevitably, it was the children and pregnant patients, which suited Rainier fine. I was always stuck competing with Charles for Laurence’s attention, gleaning as much as I could from over Charles’s shoulder. We fell into an easy pattern.

  “Mademoiselle Marie here has had trouble balancing and has experienced ringing in her ears over the past few weeks. Why do you think that is?” Laurence asked Charles and me. “But don’t worry,” he said softly to Marie. “I promise I do know what’s happening, and you’ll be fine.”

  “Growths on the nerves,” Charles said, as I asked, “Both ears or only one?”

  “Charles is correct; though, it wouldn’t hurt to ask more questions.” Laurence sat with Marie for a while, channeling magic from his hands to the nerves near her ears, and dealt with the first step of her recovery.

  Charles glanced at me. I sniffed.

  “Do you think your first guess will always be correct?” I asked.

  He laughed. “I suppose high intelligence would appear to be guessing to some.”

  By the end of the first week, Charles was winning, and he was insufferable about it. Not that he said anything; no, he never stooped so low as to mention our little competition. But he looked at me with his face all calm and unconcerned. I knew he was thinking it.

  Unbearable.

  “Now, Henry is an alchemist and several days ago cut himself with a small knife,” Laurence said one morning as Charles and I stood behind him.

  “Overgrowth,” Charles and I said at the same time. I cleared my throat and added, “Overproduction by the vascular tissues inside of vessels.”

  Laurence nodded. “Very good, Emilie.”

  Henry, an affable white fellow with alchemistry scars stippling his brown skin and a head of thick, white hair, laughed.

  Charles didn’t.

  “Stop baiting him,” Madeline said one evening as we recovered from our day. “And don’t say you aren’t. You like being smarter than other people, and you’ve finally met someone who won’t let you boast.”

  Physician du Guay, the most contradictory man I had ever had the displeasure of meeting, had selected Madeline as one of his hacks since she scored the highest on the exam; however, he refused to let her use the noonday arts. Instead, he was using her as little more than a maid or surgical assistant.

  It took all the fun out of being jealous of her score.

  “You’re smarter than me and I don’t fight with you.” I was sitting on the windowsill, and the last dregs of sunlight were still warm against my bare arms.

  She wrapped her hair in a silk scarf, carefully checking the hairs around her face. “I might be smarter than you, but you’re smart enough to know that I’ll win any fight we have.”

  “True.” I pulled Annette’s latest letter from my pocket and unfolded it, the scraggly ink of her words already fading. For all our writing, her penmanship was still atrocious. “Laurel put another poster up in Bosquet, this time about Waleran du Ferrant’s excessive spending. Did you know the church funds the upkeep for the town and Mademoiselle Gardinier’s garden? People are not pleased.”

  “Shocking.” Wrapped in a thin robe, Madeline sat next to me in the window. “Physician du Guay is plotting something.”

  “Doubly shocking,” I said. “Did Physician du Guay say anything today?”

  This week, many of the older hacks had resigned with no warning, and physicians around Demeine had been left doing their work alone. The Laurel from the bar had said the original plan had been to organize a mass retirement of all hacks, but there were many who served the countryside. All the Laurels had voted against it; they wanted His Majesty to hurt, not Demeine.

  “He counted us like a dog herding sheep.” Madeline groaned and let her head fall back against the wall. “But no, he said nothing.”

  An unspoken tension pulled at all of us—the physicians inserted themselves into conversations any time they heard the word poster; they made snide comments about responsibility and idleness; they plastered up placards about the natural order of the world and how the abolishment of hacks would put undue pressure on the overworked physicians; and one physician had given a talk about how to budget one’s money, but he had, absurdly, not bothered to find out how his own income varied from a hack’s. He had advised investing with one’s extra money.

  Rainier had leaned over to me and whispered, “What’s extra money?”

  Beneath that universal tension, a singular worry tugged at me: I didn’t belong here.

  While I knew how much hacks were paid, the full hilariousness of the presentation was lost on me. It was as if, because of my upbringing, I had been staring out at the dark world from a brightly lit room. I couldn’t see what was right in front of me because of the privilege of affording candles.

  Which were, I had learned, very expensive. Madeline, Rainier, and I were spending a fortune on them, but there was no other way to study after dark.

  Laurel’s passive presence at university had snuffed out a light and showed several of us the world.

  Of course, I wasn’t sure Laurence du Montimer knew Demeine was on the cusp of trouble.

  “Your free time is your business,” Laurence said the next morning when Rainier asked for permission to go into Delest that afternoon. “I don’t care what you do so long as everything I tell you to do gets done.”

  Sébastien sighed. “Please stop saying things like that.”

  “Yes,” Charles said, nudging Sébastien with his elbow. “Laurence, you should really pay attention to politics more.”

  It was hard to hate Charles when he was so terribly bearable outside of our competition.

  “That is hardly what I meant,” said Sébastien. “We need less politics these days. Everyone takes things so personally.”

  Charles turned to glare at him, and Sébastien flushed.

  “They do,” he muttered, as though saying it again made it true, “and I don’t want to get arrested because Laurence is bad with words.”

  “I can hear you.” Laurence snapped his book shut. “What am I not paying attention to?”

  I covered my laugh with a cough, and Charles glanced at me. He rolled his eyes.

  Lord, he made hating him so hard.

  “Laurel,” Charles said with a shrug. “Have you even noticed all the posters and suspicion?”

  Laurence groaned and made a hacking sound in the back of his throat. “They’ve stolen my name. Do you know how long it took me to convince everyone it wasn’t me? I am intimately familiar with Laurel, trust me.”

  Sébastien rounded on Rainier. “If I find out you are mixed up in that nonsense, I will not hesitate to get rid of you. I’m not sullying my family name because someone is softhearted.”

  “Of course, Monsieur,” Rainier said and bowed. “I will not sully your name, though I cannot promise that my heart is as hardened as yours.”

  “Leave it.” Charles gently smacked Sébastien’s shoulder and shooed him away with Rainier. “You walked into that one.”

  Laurence let Charles and me wander the infirmary. It was a comfortable routine, the two of us walking in silence. Unlike the stifling atmosphere of
the university, Charles and I felt no need to fill the void with idle gossip or assertions of our innocence, and the most we spoke was to exchange notes on a patient. We checked over those who were still recovering and stayed out of the other’s way. Until today.

  “Not like that!” Charles smacked my hands away from the young girl I was working on. “Too much power. You’ll wear yourself out and them before you even notice.”

  I froze. The magic gathered in my palms dissipated, leaving a slight red flush in my fingers. Charles spread his hands wide, magic so carefully collected that I could barely feel it, and urged the skin along the patient’s sliced arm to heal much more slowly. I had never bothered to take my time, but I had only ever healed myself before this month. It had never worn me out before.

  The patient recoiled and wouldn’t let me near them for the rest of our time there.

  Before we left, Laurence held Charles back. I lingered, cleaning up the table slowly.

  “I know you haven’t been taught how to teach yet, but let this be the first lesson—do not correct people in front of others unless the mistake is dangerous or rude,” Laurence said. “They will eventually be glad for the correction. They will never be glad for the humiliation. And never strike them like that. Did I ever do that to you?”

  Charles shook his head. “Was it humiliating?”

  Laurence cocked his head to the side and raised one eyebrow with the graceful aloofness of someone who practiced the move in a mirror. Charles groaned.

  “Emilie, stop eavesdropping.” Laurence patted Charles’s shoulder and walked to the door. “Talk it out before supper, you two.”

  We stood, silent, for far longer than necessary.

  Finally, I said, “You don’t have to apologize.”

  “No, I do.” He dropped his face into his hand and pushed his hair from his eyes. “I should not have slapped your hands. I just—”

  “I know.” I knew exactly what he had been thinking and probably would have done the same thing. “Remarkably, we are quite alike.”