Emilie
I crawled into my sleeping roll, didn’t sleep, and rose to the scents of salt and smoke. For a moment, eyes closed, I was home.
“Emilie,” a hoarse voice said. “Wake up. We need to talk.”
I opened my eyes. Madeline, eyes red, sat cross-legged before me, her hands folded in her lap. The coat she wore had been Rainier’s.
It hurt to look at her. I had no notion of what she was going through, and I could offer nothing. Anticipation leaked out of me in a clammy sweat, and I sat up, head bowed. She wrapped both of her arms around me. I stiffened.
“I need you to be my friend right now,” she said. “I know you’re sad, but he was my brother. I need you now.”
“I’m so sorry.” I threaded my arms around her, and she tucked her face into my shoulder. “What do you need?”
She pulled back a little bit. “I need some part of the world to stay the same. Do rounds with me?”
“Sure.”
I tried to be the same as always but slightly less biting. Her torpor lasted a single day before anger burned it out of her.
“We shouldn’t even be here!” She slammed her fists into her thighs. The tent we slept in was empty. “This is all his fault.”
She meant the king, but she never said his name.
“He did something,” I said quickly. I had tried and failed to find the courage to speak about it until now. “Something bad.”
It was an understatement, but there were no words terrible enough to capture what His Majesty Henry XII and Pièrre du Guay were doing.
She settled back, legs crossed and skirts flared around her, and took my hands in hers. “With Rainier?”
“No, not during the fight. A few nights after.” I swallowed and made sure there was no one else around us. “I know what the crown has been hiding.”
I told her everything, whispering about Pièrre du Guay and His Majesty and the young hack they used to build our king back up, the hair on my neck prickling still, though I knew no one was around to hear, and Madeline’s fingers tightened around my arm till I was afraid she would never be able to unclench them.
“I feel like I shouldn’t be as shocked as I am,” she said finally. “We have to contact Laurel.”
“How?” I asked. “Everyone got scattered when this mess happened. It was exactly as planned—someone also found out, they created a distraction, and Laurel’s whole system collapsed because people have to keep on living.”
“Yes,” she said, pulling me close. “They went through all this trouble because they knew that if people found out, Laurel would be the least of their worries. So how do we tell people?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know. Let’s start with what we know and go from there.”
* * *
The next day, we were no closer to a plan. The war was still happening, the world still turned, and Madeline was stuck working with Pièrre every day. The only saving grace was that Pièrre’s apprentices were too caught up in their work to notice that the hack channeling their art hated them. The three of us almost never left the infirmary for all the small works that needed doing.
I held a soldier’s heart rate steady as she rebuilt a chunk of missing skin from his shoulder. Charles lingered at the foot of the bed, watching us work. He held up a thick fold of paper.
“Emilie, you have a letter from Bosquet.” Charles held out a thin letter sealed with wax. A chromatic crescent moon shimmered with stored power above the seal. “Is that an illusion?”
I tore open the seal, and the crescent moon shifted into a single sprig of laurel. “Yes.”
Staring at Charles from the corner of my eyes, I waited to see what he would say.
He only hummed and muttered, “You should probably burn that when you’re done.”
Charles followed us to an empty bed in the back of the infirmary where Madeline was cleaning. I glanced back at her and unfolded the letter close to my chest. She stayed on the opposite side of the bed.
Emilie,
If you do not see a crescent moon on the front, the wax seal holding our illusion was broken and this letter has been read.
I divined it. I saw it, and I saw you there. You’ve taken off the silver cuff, but I know what we can do. I’m doing something about it. I have been scrying this letter since it was sent. If you are amenable to helping, please touch your right hand to your nose. If you aren’t, thank you very much for the money and education. You’re dead to me.
“A bit much,” I whispered and touched my nose. “Point taken, however.”
“Here.” Charles held out another letter with the same seal. “Messenger had specific instructions, but I am curious to a fault, so I tipped well to leave it to me.”
“Thank you,” I said, not meaning it at all. He laughed.
Well, at least someone was putting the family money to good use.
Good. That boy you saw was my friend’s brother. His name was Gabriel. There will be no forgiveness for this.
I’ve been working with Laurel to scry for common soldiers and give them information about the court, and if we tell Laurel about Gabriel, they can tell the rest of the Demeine. Flyers, posters, placards—we tell everyone what they did to him. What they want to do to the rest of us. People may decide to believe it or not, but I think they will. We just have to tell enough people. We hope. That’s what we need your help with—getting the word out. We can’t leave the school.
Also, I’ve enclosed a letter for my brother, Macé. He’s Chevalier du Ferrant’s new hack.
I’m glad you’re not dead to me.
“Me too,” I muttered.
I tucked Macé’s letter into my pocket. I gathered a few small strands of power, channeled them through my hands, and burned the letters to me in my hands. The ash, with a bit of material from my blood, I wiped away as nothing more than water. Madeline had come to stand behind me, and she took a deep breath. I nodded.
“We have a plan,” I said. “Except…”
I looked across the empty infirmary bed to Charles.
He crossed his arms and smiled. “You really should be more careful about working for Laurel.”
I felt the soft prickle of Madeline gathering the noonday arts behind me.
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.