Belle Révolte

by Linsey Miller

  So I stopped his horse’s heart.

  The horse collapsed, and Waleran fell with it, pinned beneath its side. I ripped my awareness from the horse and focused on Waleran. His leg was broken.

  He tried to channel, desperate to be out from under his mount, and I severed the nerves in his arms. A whip of healing arts curled around his leg and healed the shattered bone, the magic too powerful and well done for me to break while the physician was still working, and I reopened an old, deep wound in Waleran’s shoulder. Pièrre healed the severed nerves.

  One of the soldiers Madeline had healed buried his sword through Waleran’s neck.

  I collapsed to my knees a few paces from Waleran. The soldiers with us moved in unison, turning their attention to Pièrre and the remaining hack. I waited for the last beats of Waleran’s heart, but they never stopped. In the last dregs of magic I had left in him, I felt the structures of his throat repair themselves. There was too much damage, though. That was impossible.

  The only way to heal such a wound was too replace the—

  One of the soldiers screamed. Madeline scrambled away from the soldier she had been healing, her hands red and her face horrified. The flesh of the soldier’s throat broke down until he couldn’t scream or breathe, and all that was left was a wound identical to Waleran’s. Waleran’s heartbeat steadied, and he took a deep, chuckling breath. Madeline’s gaze rose to something behind me.

  A sliver of metal like the one that had killed Sébastien ripped through her shoulder. She let out a small gasp and looked down. The world stopped, singled in on the red stain spreading across her chest, and her knees slammed into the dirt. The power she had been gathering faded, seeping from her to the earth. Louis turned too slowly.

  Another bolt caught him in the chest, knocked him from his feet, and landed him in the dirt next to Madeline.

  I crawled to my feet to help them, and a hand curled around my ankle.

  “That was my favorite horse.” Each word Waleran said ground against the other, struggling to escape, and he flipped me over onto my back. “What an utter waste.”

  The spear in his other hand channeled magic in a circle around us, keeping the soldiers at bay. Too tired to gather magic without making the movement, I lifted my left hand. He pinned it to the ground with a sliver of metal.

  Everything hurt, and I tried to push past it, to heal, but I couldn’t while the metal still stuck there. A thin film of flesh, more like a Stareater’s wing than skin, sealed the wound. My fingers twitched and ached. I could feel the magic in my hand. There was too much. The ethereal pieces of me I took for granted were shifting, changing. Power corrupted.

  Waleran yanked off his helm and stared at the odd white flesh of my wound. “You weren’t meant to handle such power, and already your body is wearing down. Did you really think half-trained hacks with no grace in their veins could beat us?”

  So many dead against so few.

  “We had to try.”

  Waleran laughed and drew his sword. “Who’s going to save you now, hack?”

  Twenty-Eight

  Annette

  “We should leave soon.” Brigitte paced from door to window, keeping watch from the little room where we’d found Coline. It was mostly bare. The leftovers from the soldiers who had guarded Coline were useless, and we’d already divided up the two weapons that had been there. “We need to give them less time to scry or divine us. This will work better if all their attention is on the riot outside and not us.”

  “They killed their royal diviner,” I said. “What are they going to do? Press their ears to the floor and pray?”

  We’d watched the guards trickle from the building group by group. Every now and then, a growl would come crashing over the grounds like the warning cry of a hungry creature. His Majesty and his court could kill Laurel and make all the deals they wanted, but that didn’t matter to most people. Those deals wouldn’t come to fruition for months or years if we went to war with Kalthorne. Only His Majesty would trust that a whole country would obey the rules of three people.

  We had for decades, but now most of the chevaliers and artists were at the border and the soldiers in Serre were common. For once, His Majesty didn’t hold all of the power.

  “We’re supposed to attack Kalthorne today,” said Coline. “All eyes will be on Segance. It’ll be him, Chevalier du Ruse, the royal guards, and whoever he had in court today to prepare for Kalthorne and deal with Laurel.”

  Chevalier du Ruse—the noble who had executed Estrel and Laurence.

  I took a deep breath, exhaustion giving way to fury. “Let’s go.”

  “Are you sure?” Isabelle’s whisper was so soft, I almost missed it. Her fingers brushed my shoulder.

  I nodded.

  “Here.” She carded her fingers through my hair, a fistful of brittle strands falling out completely, and braided it back from my face. “You’re worn out.”

  “Aren’t we all?”

  “Not quite yet,” Yvonne said.

  “We’re falling apart,” I said with a laugh. “How’s that for a portent?”

  I grabbed the short sword from Coline’s hand. There was too much power in the afternoon air, the desire to use it all overwhelming. I angled the blade in the sunlight until I could see a clear reflection of my face, the sunken eyes and cracked lips unfamiliar, and summoned up all my memories of Emilie. I had scryed her before, but now I summoned up the sound her voice and crook of her smile. She’d been so certain all those months ago in Bosquet. I needed her confidence now.

  A chevalier, golden armor shining on top of a golden horse, broke through a line of Deme soldiers. Emilie threw up an arm. Power oozed like curdled blood in her veins.

  “We’re not attacking Kalthorne,” I whispered. “The rest of the army’s fighting the chevaliers.”

  And dying.

  Coline muttered to herself, hands pressed together before her mouth. “This isn’t just Serre.” She inhaled and took back the sword. “There will be his personal guards, but if the army is revolting there, it might be elsewhere. Now’s our chance.”

  “Great,” I said. “One question—if we kill him, why are we immediately putting another noble on the throne?”

  Brigitte pursed her lips, a grin twitching at the corners, and glanced at Coline.

  “Annette?” Coline’s hands clenched and unclenched at her sides. “Do you not trust me?”

  “It’s not about you.” I ignored the pinch of regret in my stomach and sniffed. “Trust doesn’t make you a good ruler.”

  “Aaliz said the same thing,” Brigitte said.

  “There will be a hole in power, and other nobles will attempt to fill that hole,” Coline said quickly. “The revolts in Kalthorne failed, and the whole reason Laurel happened was to avoid a similar failure here. I have the resources to provide that security until it’s no longer needed. Our neighbors value monarchies. They will try to conquer Demeine and take the throne if they think they have a claim to it. I prevent that claim.” She looked at Brigitte who shrugged. “Also, I’m fairly certain if I don’t follow through on my word, I’ll be killed.”

  “That seems fair,” Yvonne said. She held one of her vials up, magic bright. “I can maybe remove five guards from the equation, but I will have to be close to them. And this is for you.”

  She handed a yellow vial to Brigitte. Brigitte held it with her forefinger and thumb, as if it might burst at any moment.

  “Anesthetic.” Yvonne nodded to Brigitte’s sickles. “Extremely fast acting, so cut them somewhere needful and it will numb the area within thirty seconds. Only lasts five minutes, though.”

  Brigitte tucked the vial into her chest pocket.

  “All right.” Coline laid one hand on Brigitte’s shoulder and kissed her cheek. “Are we ready?”

  I nodded and glanced back at Isabelle, a shadow over my shoulder.
“Follow my lead.”

  She squeezed my shoulder.

  We crept through the empty halls of the palace. The eerie silence in the walls and distant rumble of shouts stalked us. Brigitte whispered that Aaliz and some of the others had spent two days making sure the people who worked here knew enough to hide out but not enough to betray Laurel if they were so inclined, and Coline ran her hands along the walls like a child returned to an old home. She led us through the gilded wings, past portraits painted with gold flakes and the illusionary arts. Isabelle traced the lines of a portrait the size of a door that detailed the crowning of the first Henry du Rand.

  “Guards,” Coline whispered. “Four in front of the doors. Annette, can you scry to see if he’s in there?”

  She stumbled through the words, the beginnings of father on her tongue.

  I leaned my forehead against the wall and looked into the crescent of Alaine’s necklace—Henry du Rand, weathered face weary, hands braced against a table covered in maps, Executioner René du Ruse at his side.

  “He’s in there.”

  “One of the guards is coming this way,” Coline whispered. She slunk back around the corner with us.

  I slipped in front of her. “When he’s distracting the others, take them out.”

  Yvonne made a sound behind me, and then the guard was on us, his eyes widening. A flush rose on his white skin. I closed the gap between us.

  The magic in me surged, diving into his body like rain in a river, and I followed the path before me to the memories deep in the dark of his mind. Festering skin burned to the muscle and left to rot. Wriggling, writhing masses slipping through skin, burrowing into the recesses of the burn. White heads poking through red burns. Ever-hungry mouths gnawing at a leg and never leaving. The prickle of awareness that his body was not his own. Not anymore.

  The illusion I created of his old injury was complete. The sight, the sound, the smell, the sensation. All of it real to him.

  “No, no.”

  I stumbled back, skin burning under my nails, and blinked away the itch of his memories. The guard stared down at his arms and clawed at the sleeves. His nails tore through the thin ends.

  “No, no, no. Not again.” Blood beaded up along the scratches. Old scars, well healed and decades old, reddened under his nails. “Get them out. Get them out!”

  He raced back to his fellows, arms held out before him, and screamed for them to help him.

  Brigitte and Coline dashed forward. Metal clanged against metal. Bodies thumped to the floor.

  I leaned against the wall and shut my eyes. Blood welled up across the skin of my forearms, matching the lines he had scratched through his clothes. Yvonne wrapped one arm around my shoulders.

  “What did you do?” she asked.

  “An illusion,” I said. “Or a vivid memory. They work the same. Illusion arts change how we observe the world on an ethereal level. I dredged up his old memories.”

  Yvonne let out a small sigh. “That’s body alchemistry.”

  I had always been told the midnight arts couldn’t change the world, only observe, but maybe a change in perspective could change the world.

  I peeked around the corner—Brigitte and Coline still stood, but none of the guards did. We joined up outside the door, and Coline pushed a thin knife into Isabelle’s hands “just in case.”

  “They certainly know we’re here and will be prepared,” said Brigitte. “That was not a quiet entrance.”

  There was no quiet now.

  “Death isn’t quiet,” I said, the thump of Estrel’s head hitting the scaffolding floor still heavy in my mind. An echo. A heartbeat. She died in me over and over and over again. “We shouldn’t be either.”

  “Let us go loudly, then.” Brigitte searched the guards’ pockets till she found a key, and she paused with her hands on the doors.

  Coline nodded, and Brigitte pushed open the doors. There were only a dozen people in the room at most, each one in the golds and silvers of Demeine. A long table of polished wood encircled the opposite end of the room in a half-circle, and they were spread out across it, their hands skimming over maps and scrying mirrors. René du Ruse—the executioner who didn’t deserve the honor of a name—rose to his feet. At his side sat Henry XII, by the grace of Lord Sun and his Mistress Moon, King of Demeine. His gaze fell on Coline.

  “Nicole,” he said, voice bored, as if we had not escaped prison and pushed past guards bearing weapons. “I am much too busy for whatever foolish endeavor you are undertaking.” He looked back down at the glass tablet before him, signed it, and made a cutting motion through the air with his right hand. “You may leave, alive, or you may die. I have reached my limits with you.”

  The other nobles in the room fled through a door at the opposite end. Coline turned her back on her father and gathered magic, sharp and writhing, in her hands and laid them on the door. The mechanism stuttered and clicked, and she glanced at me. Over her shoulder, her father glowered at being ignored.

  “Fighting arts trick,” she said softly. Her jaw tensed. “Laurence taught me.”

  They were cousins. I hadn’t even thought about it, but how much hurt had Coline bottled up so she could do this?

  She braced herself and turned. “Do you really think killing me will end this?”

  “No, I think killing every damned rebel in this country will end this, but I can’t do that at this very moment, so that leaves me with you.” Henry let a loud breath and looked up, eyes steel gray in the sunlight. “And killing you, assuming you were to take command after me, will certainly be a blow to their morale.”

  Of course—he thought of his daughter as replaceable but his people as not even worth it.

  “Deal with them,” Henry said to the executioner and the six royal guards who had flanked them as the nobles left. “I would rather not have to kill my own daughter.”

  Coline took the sword from my hands. “I trust you. Tell me what to do.”

  I sunk to the ground. My fingers found Alaine’s necklace, magic burning through them. Brigitte raised her sickle and approached the guards, and they hesitated. Isabelle sat beside me, channeling magic through her body and into mine, bearing some of the burden of my divining, and Yvonne’s fingers brushed my shoulder. She upended a vial of silver filings in a crescent around us and struck flint against steel over it. Flames, moon-white and hot, flared to life between the guards and us. I grabbed her skirt and pulled her back to me.

  “Magnesium,” Yvonne muttered, pulling out a waterskin. “It’ll buy us time.”

  And safety.

  “You are brilliant.” I leaned against her calf and forced the magic from Isabelle and me into Alaine’s necklace. It quivered, silver rippling. The royal guard nearest Brigitte struck out, short sword tearing through the air toward her right. “Brigitte! Block right.”

  Metal struck metal. Boots scuffed across the floor. The thunk of a body against the floor.

  I winced. Another image—a guard thrusting his sword through Coline’s right arm as she blocked another blade—shimmered in the silver. I whipped my head up.

  Coline raised her arm to stop a blow.

  “Coline!”

  Brigitte moved faster than I thought possible, sliding between Coline and the guard aiming for her arm. She hooked a sickle around his neck. She tugged. He died. Coline lived.

  And blood stained the silver necklace red.

  Only two guards were down, and my divinations were already wavering. Isabelle’s hands were flushed, red-pricked pink, and blood oozed out from beneath my nails. We needed more. More power. More time.

  We were not soldiers or noonday artists. We had never been trained to fight or to use our magic to protect us. Henry and his court had created a world where no one but them were trained to wield power. I channeled more magic, not caring where I gathered it from, and the power seared my skin, s
moke curling free from the little cuts and scabs opening along my arms. An ache itched in my throat, a rotting wound where I had worn away from too much channeling. My neck creaked, more snapped twig than popping joint. Isabelle coughed, blood on her lips.

  Another soldier swung, his actions clear in my divinations, and I shouted for Coline to duck. I heard her exhale. Grunt.

  A body hit the floor.

  I shouted instructions and the fight carried on, the sounds of the swords clashing beyond our dimming ring of fire. Not all of my divining was right, and each wrong future opened a new wound in Coline and Brigitte. I tried to channel more power with more precision, and it tore through my fingers and into the necklace. The image wavered, and a shadow covered my hands. Yvonne tossed water onto her ring of fire. White sparks skittered and melted across the stone floor. The table caught fire.

  “Curious,” the executioner said, the golden coat denoting his title of chevalier smoldering. In one hand he held a sword and in the other gathered magic, and the flickers of the noonday arts in him glowed like distant stars. His gaze settled on Yvonne. “You could have been very useful if you had not chosen this.”

  “Left!” I said and pulled Yvonne back with me until we hit the wall. Brigitte slid left and took out a guard too cautious after my shout. “Coline, lunge.”

  She did, and the final guard stumbled out of the way, feet tangling in his fallen comrade’s coat. He hit the ground, and Brigitte hit him hard enough to keep him down. Yvonne tossed the waterskin into the flames between us and the executioner. The fire roared. He twisted his hand.

  Power drenched our corner like rain. The fire died. Isabelle gasped.

  I tried to breathe and nothing happened. The air was different, gone, and no matter how deeply I inhaled. Yvonne’s hands went to her stomach, her chest, her mouth. She shook her head.