Nine

Emilie

We did not see Florice again. He died in the night, at peace I hoped, and was moved by the time we woke. Rainier was quiet, Madeline was too, but in a determined way, and we met early in our lecture hall two days later for our exam to determine if we had learned enough. Nearly all the hacks staggered in with the tired eyes of people thinking too much. If I were home, Mother would have demanded I illusion them away. I was wearing mine today, though.

“Late night?” Pièrre du Guay, here to oversee our test, said to me as I entered.

He did not say it to anyone else.

I was tired—this place had made me tired—and that was the kindest thing it had done to anyone here. I wasn’t hiding my truth to make him comfortable.

“A productive one,” I said, head bowed. “How was yours, Physician?”

Sometimes, Mother had taught me, we had to bear the storm.

“Restful.” He clapped his hands together and gestured to the rest of the room as I took my seat in the back near Madeline. “I do love a good exam!”

The board at the front of the room was covered with a cloth, gold and gilded as if it had been pulled from a table in the physicians’ dining hall and not meant for us.

“Now, despite the unpleasantness of yesterday, I find myself hopeful that you are all on the road to becoming excellent hacks, one of the most necessary parts of our great institution.” He cleared his throat and touched the table at the front, his fingers tapping along the glass tablets that were our exams. “Our physicians are the best minds of Demeine, and you are to be their hands. Several fully qualified physicians are in immediate need of hacks—me included, given the events of yesterday—and while this examination has been set by us to test for what we consider integral knowledge, it is by no means the deciding factor. Our apprentices observed and taught you. We do take their opinions into account, so I do hope you were nice.”

He paused, and some of the others in the room laughed.

“There are fifty questions on the board behind me. Once you have been handed a tablet and pen and the board has been uncovered, you have two hours to impress us, and I am certain you will.” He smiled, lips pursed, and clapped again. “And I encourage those of you more inclined to stoicism to let go of your coldness and embrace the necessary impromptu problem solving and creativity medicine requires.”

I didn’t gag, which as far as I was concerned was enough to warrant making me king, considering Mother had often declared me as indomitable as a puddle.

I pulled the glass tablet passed back to me into my lap, fingernails clicking against the words and a faint red stain shining from my hands through the glass. My brush shook, and my signature was crooked. These were easy questions with my education but would have been hard if all I knew was what they had taught me this week. The last question would have been easy, too, before I came here.

Is there a physician you wish to serve?

I glanced around the room—Pièrre du Guay had slipped outside a while ago, and none of the other students seemed to be having issues. I whispered “good luck” to Madeline and Rainier and stood. The water clock I passed on my way out said it had only been an hour.

Outside, Pièrre and Laurence were in the midst of an argument, du Montimer trapped in the corner of the hall across from me. Pièrre, back to me, readjusted his stance every time du Montimer attempted to leave.

“You had no authority over him,” Pièrre whispered through clenched teeth. “He was an example.”

“He was a corpse in the courtyard, and you neglected to mention what you wanted to do with him. Of course I had him moved.” Laurence waved his hand as if to banish the conversation. “It is a child’s game. It will be fine.”

“It is treason, and you would be wise to pay attention to it, considering it is your uncle they wish to depose.” Pièrre grabbed Laurence’s arm. “You cannot stare down such a threat with passivity. You have let them fester in Monts Lance for too long, and now you allow them funeral rites? Take action. Be a man!”

“I’d rather not,” said Laurence. “You know I loathe politics, but if you had denied his family funeral rites, it would have come out as another slight against us. Laurel’s desperate. He’ll cling to anything after that last debacle.”

Laurel had tried to rob a storehouse last week in a city north of Serre—two guards and five traitors had died. No one had come forward to claim them, and the news of the deaths had started a whirlwind of rumors.

Laurence lifted his head and spotted me. I studied my tablet as if it were the only thing of interest. Laurence patted Pièrre’s hand.

“So really, my absentminded mistake is a blessing in disguise,” said Laurence. “Go. I will watch our intrepid hacks.”

Pièrre stormed down the hallway, red coat a blood stain in my vision when I blinked, and through the haze of my glass tablet, I saw Laurence raise his hand to me.

“Oh.” I feigned shock and bowed. So Laurence du Montimer had seen Florice dead and shipped his body back to his family. He was notoriously oblivious to anything not a patient or his research, but at least the results were good. “Physician du Montimer, I—”

“Didn’t see me here?” he said with one huff of a laugh. “Do you have a question, Emilie?”

“The last question,” I said. “What if there’s a physician we don’t want to work with?”

He held out his hand. “Leave it. No reason to offend his sensibilities.”

I handed over the tablet.

“You’re free until the morning, then.” He tested the ink with a finger and tucked it under his arm. “Personally, I would go into Delest for the day. You won’t have time soon. There’s a lovely place with wine. Enjoy your time before the work begins.”

He smiled, and I mimicked the expression, but I could feel my lips sticking to my teeth, mouth suddenly dry.

Madeline, Rainier, everyone behind me—we would be worked to near death and then left for dead eventually.

No, they would. I had options. It was unfair of me to forget what I had, even if I wanted desperately to forget it.

“Thank you for the advice.” I bowed again, not as deep, and left.

Florice had told us to go to Bloodletters at noon, so I would. I pinned a note about where I was to Madeline’s bed. They would join me or they wouldn’t; it was their decision. I wouldn’t blame them for avoiding Laurel and his plots. Madeline had told me one night when we were worried about the exam that I didn’t know fear, and I had laughed.

I didn’t know fear. Even now, I had a net woven from my family name and money to catch me if I fell. They didn’t.

Leaving the university held none of the awe that entering it had. The gold fence and fluttering willow trees felt vulgar next to the squat wooden plots that made up Delest. The city looked nice, polished wood buildings and raised stone streets full of vendors and open-air stores selling all sorts of finds, but the prices were all wrong. They were too high. The fruit was too pretty. The people were too involved. It was a stage play of a city.

I found Bloodletters at the end of a crooked alley in the northernmost tip of the city. It was a bar, a single server inside with four guests working their way through glasses of pale wine. I ordered a glass, which was good, and a bowl of soup, which was not, and with an hour and a half until noon, waited for Madeline and Rainier. The other patrons glanced at me every now and then, and the server checked on me once. They asked if I wanted to leave or order more.

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.”