Belle Révolte

by Linsey Miller

Charles must have felt it too because he held up his hands. “I have been informing Laurel of the physicians’ and apprentices’ movements for months. Brigitte, the Laurel from Bloodletters, told me you visited her.”

  Madeline’s magic dissipated.

  “But you adore Laurence and being a physician,” I said. “Why?”

  “Because Demeine is deeply flawed, and though it hates me, my family name provides me a safety others do not have. Demeine’s society is a double-edged sword that I and many others do not fit into for one reason or another, and Laurel’s goal is to make Demeine safe for everyone. A nation should be a shield, not a weapon,” he said. “I won’t lie. I was shocked you joined Laurel, Emilie.”

  That was when he had started trusting me.

  “We have things we need to tell you,” I said, glancing at Madeline. “But not here. Laurence’s?”

  Charles nodded.

  I led us to the tent, Charles walking behind Madeline and me. She was about the only person I trusted there, but it wasn’t odd now that I considered it, that Charles was part of Laurel. If he was lying, I was fairly certain the two of us could take him in a fight.

  Probably.

  Laurence’s tent was blessedly empty. We made Charles enter first, and I nearly groaned as he grinned.

  “This isn’t a happy occasion,” Madeline said in her flat tone. “Monsieur.”

  Charles sat down hard on Laurence’s cot. “What’s happened?”

  “Pièrre du Guay used a hack’s body as fodder to repair the king’s wounds from using battle magic,” I said. “He could feel everything, and when they were done, they left him to rot. With the amount of magic they channeled, I imagine degradation is accelerated. There were other bodies, and they were not fully human in how they were breaking down.”

  His jaw tightened, and a trio of wrinkles creased his forehead. His white skin paled till his freckles were nothing but flecks of rust on snow.

  “We want to tell people,” I said softly, “and we especially want to tell Laurel, if they can still get the word out. You know Brigitte?”

  “Yes, I do. I knew the contact in Bosquet first, Aaliz. They were a friend of the family. They helped me…” Charles let out a deep breath slowly and rubbed his eyes. “I’ll help. If people know, there will be no distraction big enough to make them forget.”

  “So, Laurel can help?”

  Charles wobbled his hand back and forth. “The real Laurel—the ones who started it and said they would take the fall for any arrests—haven’t been in contact with the others for several weeks. Brigitte was afraid they had been caught. Then, with Segance, she figured they were part of the group sent in. Laurel could be dead or in the infirmary for all we know.”

  “That’s less comforting. What about Laurence?”

  I couldn’t imagine Laurence supporting this.

  “He’ll be fine,” said Charles. “Leave him to me.” A whistle came from outside the tent, high-pitched and cheery, and Charles cursed. “Act normal, and if anything happens, I’ll take the fall.”

  He said it so easily, and I hated it.

  I couldn’t let him do that.

  Laurence, whistling, threw open the tent flap and had his coat half-off before he noticed us. “How is it somehow always you three together when one of you isn’t even working for me?”

  Sébastien followed in after him.

  “We needed someplace quiet to talk about things.” Charles smiled at Laurence and got off his cot.

  “Am I not allowed peace?” Laurence tossed his coat where Charles had been. “First His Majesty and now you lot.”

  Hypocrite.

  “What did he want?” Charles asked Laurence and looked at me.

  Laurence pulled a clean coat from the bag at the foot of his cot and shooed us out of his way. “Everything. Not to be surrounded by two hacks and one very nosy apprentice?”

  “I am your favorite nosy apprentice,” said Charles.

  “Third at least.” Laurence untied and retied his hair with shaking hands. He had been out all morning with another unit and opted to leave us behind.

  Sébastien let out a low cheer and winked at Charles.

  “I hope a tree falls on you,” murmured Charles to Laurence.

  Laurence laughed. “After years of teaching, it would be a mercy.”

  “You’ve only been teaching for three years,” I said. “It can’t be that bad.”

  “You have no idea.” He showed us a strand of white hair. “This is all your fault.”

  “You look very distinguished, Laurence.” Charles smiled, and it was clear how much he adored Laurence. “Like a sturdy, dependable mountain with fresh snow.”

  “Please never attempt to compliment me again.” Laurence finished buttoning his coat and looked around at all of us. “We need to talk about how my meeting went.” He pointed at Madeline. “You may stay if you wish, but it won’t concern you.”

  “I’ll stay.” She curtsied. “Thank you.”

  “Well, firstly, everyone called me Monsieur le Prince, and secondly, His Majesty used my favorite phrase—the opposite of the noonday arts,” Laurence said with all of the affection one usually reserved for dog shit on the sole of a shoe. “He wants me to find a way to store more magic in his sword and shield so he may use the noonday arts at night in the event of an attack, and I made the fatal flaw of suggesting he use the midnight arts instead.”

  The midnight arts couldn’t be used for battle magic. They were too weak. Battle magic was strictly noonday, destructive and fickle. “Could he even do that?”

  “Logistically, yes,” Laurence said, “but personally, no. He’s far too proud.”

  “No, I mean, can the midnight arts be used for battle magic?”

  “Oh, yes, of course.” Laurence shrugged and gathered power in his hands. “Most things don’t have a natural opposite, magic included. The divisions are purely synthetic—for some reason, our world creates magic with lower energy at night. It’s a bit like our alchemistry with sleep cycles if you think about it. As if the world is a grand beast waking and slumbering beneath us.” He let out a great sigh, eyes glazed with the faraway look of thinking, and curled a strand of hair around his finger. “Transforming things at an ethereal level requires immense amounts of energy, so people use high-energy magic for it. Illusions and divining require more control and less energy, so there’s no reason to use high-energy magic. All magic can be used for anything. You simply have to adjust to account for how much energy there is. And, of course, it’s not all high and low. It’s really more of a spectrum, like many things.”

  Laurence drew his hand through the air in a wave pattern.

  “Eventually, the artists in charge categorized the arts into noonday and midnight,” he said. “It’s very misleading.”

  Charles glanced at me. “Would you like place a bet as to what sort of artists they were?”

  “I don’t take bets I know I’ll lose,” I said.

  “Even Estrel with all of her little lists realized magic was high-energy and low-energy and capable of doing anything,” said Laurence.

  “I thought you kicked a chair out from under her when you discussed that in class?” Sébastien finally looked up from his journal. “My brother said it was hilarious.”

  “It was very much not hilarious, and that’s not what happened.” A slight flush reddened Laurence’s cheeks. “Regardless, I got off track—His Majesty is hosting a small party next week once more of the chevaliers have arrived.”

  Madeline sighed beside me.

  “Agreed.” Laurence looked at Charles. “It’s to celebrate our retaking of Segance and begin discussing our plans on taking the rest of Kalthorne. There will be a representative from nearly every major family in attendance.”

  My mother—where would she stand on this?

  “There will be
a simultaneous event in Serre to accommodate those families with members not serving currently or working as diviners with Mademoiselle Charron.” Laurence’s eyes flicked to me. “Emilie, you aren’t invited. My apologies, but I imagine you will enjoy having a night off. You will have to cover all of Charles’s and Sébastien’s work. Understood?”

  Oh, well, my gig was up. My mother would definitely be in Serre and so, almost certainly, would Annette.

  I nodded.

  “Excellent,” Laurence said.

  When he had left, I turned to the others and said, “In one week, we’re going to use that party as a distraction. My friend in Bosquet is helping Laurel spread the truth to show people what happened, and it’s going to be our job to get the posters out.”

  Before we died or I was caught, one way or another, the king was going down, and Demeine was not going to war.

  Eighteen

  Annette

  Isabelle painted. She drew Gabriel’s face in her journal, charcoal lines smeared and fading. She inked him onto the glass tablets we were supposed to use for work, leaving behind ghosts of him that materialized when the tablet caught the light, and sketches of him appeared in books and on tables. Gabriel, writhing. Gabriel, staring and unable to scream. Gabriel, the flesh of his arm pulled back to reveal the muscles and bones making him up. Gabriel, empty.

  We found him on windows and bedsheets, in books and foggy mirrors on cold mornings, in blues and blacks and vivid, violent yellows the exact shade of the fat that had been under his skin. She drew him everywhere, each stroke of her fingers or brush or quill another line bringing him back to life. Dying a little bit every time.

  Isabelle was an undercurrent of air, her presence like green-sky days when birds fell silent and lightning bounced on the horizon. Funnel weather, all power and constraint.

  “Here,” I said, setting a plate of savory and sweet pastries between us. “I can’t possibly eat all of these, so you’re going to have to help.”

  “No, thank you,” Isabelle said, running her inky hands across a fresh canvas. Her fingers were a flag of dripping black, gray, purple, and green, and she painted Gabriel, his profile the mottled purple-green of a healing bruise, with so much care, it hurt to watch her. “I’m busy.”

  She had spent all day trying to perfect her shade of green for the grass outside instead of sleeping.

  “Isabelle, I love you and I don’t want to make you do something, but I remember how bad I got after my sister died and—”

  “Really?” she asked, and her eyes rolled to stare at me. “Did you watch her die?”

  “Yes. I did.”

  Grief was an old, familiar friend who came calling at all the worst times.

  “Oh. Did it get better?”

  I had lied to her so much that I couldn’t do it again. “No. It got different, and eventually I got used to the different.”

  She hummed and went back to painting. Coline, still wearing her nightgown and a robe, looked up from her text on the fighting arts and made a motion for me to try again. I had told her my sister’s death was a closely guarded family secret, and she hadn’t brought it up again. I sighed.

  “Isabelle, I’m going to hold this pastry in front of your mouth till you eat it, so either I’m haunting you with breakfast foods forever, or you’re eating. Just one,” I said. “You can’t paint Gabriel if you’re passed out from starvation.”

  “I’m not starving,” she muttered, but when I held the food to her lips, she ate it.

  Yvonne had made them. She’d the run of the one small kitchen and still prepared all the breads for the school, but it was slow work with long pauses. I spent the hours before sleeping with her, kneading bread and making sure it didn’t burn, so that she could continue her alchemistry work. We’d finally found Laurel—their name was Aaliz, and they were five days away, stuck with their old unit training new soldiers. Yvonne’s reaction to Gabriel’s death had been quiet.

  It did make sense, in a horrible way, once I’d thought about it. Coline was shocked it had happened at all, and I wondered sometimes if she would believe it if she hadn’t been there. I didn’t tell either of them we were working with Laurel. The revolt disbanded, still committed but distracted. It would be hard to rally people when the crown was playing war hero.

  “Write exactly what you saw and send it to me. We can do this together,” Aaliz had said in their letter.

  “We can manage to make a few without anyone noticing, and you should send those to your friend in Segance,” Coline said, not looking up from her book. She had been practicing illusions nonstop. “Aaliz will have to make copies for the rest of Laurel and send them out. Vivienne will definitely notice if we try to do that.”

  Serre—the crown was hosting a get-together for the important families of Demeine to celebrate taking back Segance and the plans for going forward. Isabelle and Coline were not invited. Emilie des Marais was.

  Her mother, Vivienne had said, was too busy to attend, and so I was to represent the family alone. Estrel thought it hilarious.

  I hadn’t told her about Laurel or Gabriel or the king’s hacks yet.

  “I can help with some before I leave,” I said. I poured a cup of cold tea from the kettle we’d all forgotten about and picked out the leaves. We would not be portents today. “Isabelle?”

  At least she took the tea, even if she didn’t drink right away.

  “Good. You’ll have Estrel with you, which is good. She likes you, and Bisset probably won’t hang around you given your disagreements,” Coline said. Vivienne was staying here. She wasn’t noble, only useful. “I already picked out what you should wear, for which you may thank me later, but you’ll either need to practice your illusions or take my cosmetics.”

  Seeing illusions was easier than creating them, and I much preferred portents and divining.

  “Cosmetics,” I said. “I think I’ll have to wear Estrel’s spectacles anyway if everyone’s illusioned up.”

  Coline made a disgusted noise, and I glanced at Isabelle who would’ve laughed before.

  She didn’t now.

  * * *

  Yvonne was boiling down honey when I got to the kitchen. The sleeves of her blouse were rolled up, her skin ruddy from the heat. She laughed when I offered to help, but I didn’t take offense. Emilie des Marais didn’t know how to make syrups, so Yvonne must’ve thought my words an empty offer. I sat in the corner of the kitchen packaging up vials for Aaliz.

  “Remember that apothecary I was selling to? The one you wrote to saying my work was legitimate?” she asked, voice biting as vinegar. “He’s selling his business, and Mademoiselle Gardinier hired me mostly to help the head chef, but she knew I was looking for alchemistry work, and one of the people who came in to bid on the shop is an alchemist trying to make a line of alchemical agents to help counter and prevent dangerous reactions to foods and medicine.”

  She couldn’t help her grin, even though she’d been scowling a minute ago.

  I nodded. “You got a job?”

  Her smile could’ve replaced the sun. “I’ll need more training since I didn’t go to university, but she was impressed by my theoretical knowledge and practical know-how. I’ll be part of a team of other alchemists, university and self-taught. She was going to pay for us to travel to Amleth and study there since alchemistry’s their specialty, but with the war, that’s on hold.”

  Yvonne drew her hand through the air as if writing, and her eyes shone. Passion. Purpose.

  Even in the middle of the mess, that was Demeine.

  “I’ve wanted a job like this forever,” she said softly. “No nobles, no hacks. Finally getting recognized for work. It could all go under, but it’s something.” She glanced at me, eyes half-lidded. “And she’s one of Laurel’s. I asked about her, and she was the contact in the north.”

  “Good.” I pulled a violet from on
e of the dried bundles in the rafters near the door and sat at the table behind her. “I’ll miss you, though, if you leave here.”

  “I won’t be leaving quite yet,” she said, sitting across from me. “Do you like violets?”

  “I’ve never really thought about it.” I rolled the stem between my fingers, feeling the gentle crush of it. “They’re lovely, but seeing something pretty’s never really spoken to me in the same way as everyone else, I think.”

  I swallowed, a fluttery worry in the pit of my stomach. Without precise words, talking was like drawing a map for a world you knew, but no one else did. You never knew if they’d understand your key.

  “Oh.” Yvonne reached out across the table, slowly, shakily, and took my hand in hers. “We won’t be able to talk for a while, though, and I want to talk to you. I like talking to you, even if it’s only occasionally while we both work, or we don’t say anything at all. I like spending time with you. Also, we might get arrested and executed next week, so this is it.” She brought my hand to her lips and kissed my knuckles. “I want you to stay.”

  So I did.

  * * *

  Only Coline saw me get back to my room later that night. It didn’t matter where we went so long as we did our work and didn’t break any rules or leave the estate, so no one really cared. Isabelle was gone, probably painting out in the garden. We needed pictures of Gabriel in every pose and position so the illusion looked as if he were moving, and she refused to sleep until it was done. Coline and I had given up trying to stop her. Perenelle mostly sat with her now, helping with the paints. I’d written out everyone I’d seen, and Coline had even made an illusion depicting it to send to Aaliz before I left for Serre. The timing would be tight, but it was necessary. Everything had to be perfect. We couldn’t afford failure.

  I sat on Isabelle’s bed. It was as far away from Coline as I could get.

  “So,” she said, drawing it out. “You’re romancing the cook.”

  Coline was the sort of person who had the cunning to betray me behind my back and the arrogance to reap the rewards right in front of me, which was to say, she was as noble as any noble I’d ever met, eating my secret stash of biscuits on my bed without even laying down a cloth to catch the crumbs.