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 one 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.
Which she’d done. And was doing right now. Metaphorically, as Vivienne had taught me in our literature class.
“I’m not romancing anyone.” I knew what she meant—sex. People always meant sex when they said romance even though the two weren’t the same. “Don’t call her cook. She’s a chef and an alchemist.” I spun around. “Have you been spying on me?”
She let out a huge sigh and flopped back onto the bed. “I do love watching disasters unfold.”
I knew her well enough by now to not take it personally. She was prickly with everyone. She was only funny-prickly with people she liked.
“But really,” Coline said. “You’re her superior. That creates complications. And you pick now? When we’re on the cusp of war and revolt?”
“Like I could do it if I die tomorrow?” I scrunched up my face, hating the sensation but too furious to fix it. “You think you’re superior to everyone, so how’d you romance whoever’s hair that is in your locket?”
Coline didn’t move or speak for a whole minute, and then very softly said, “I romanced her like one picks a rose—carefully and with permission.”
“Is she the poet in the relationship because I don’t think that metaphor works.” She didn’t laugh like she normally would’ve, so I sat next to her and softened my words. “Thank you for trusting me with that.”
“I haven’t seen her in months. She was arrested in Segance during Madame Royale’s revolt. I’m living through you,” Coline muttered. “And Mistress bless, are you boring.” She rolled over to look up at me, her face as flat and emotionless as I’d ever seen it, and laced our fingers together. “We’re not the same, but we must be allies. We shouldn’t let the crown divide us. We’re stronger together.”
“We’ll survive together,” I said. “We will survive.”
I lay down next to her. “Did your parents understand?”
“Not even remotely.” She laughed and flipped over onto her stomach. “Yours?”
“I’m being merciful by letting her know now,” Maman had said, hands on her hips while Papa paced the room. I’d listened at the door. “She’ll have to learn to like it one way or another. She won’t always have a family who will put up with her, and she can’t make enough to survive living alone.”
I shuddered.
I wasn’t ever going back.
“No,” I said softly. “You know that feeling when you miss a day of lessons and come back to all the other students knowing something you don’t? Like you missed out on something everyone else learned and now you don’t understand it like they do? That’s how I feel about sex and attraction. Not that part of me is missing, but that my understanding isn’t the same as everyone else’s. I liked people in the past, wanted to romance them, but we had different meanings of romance.”
Sometimes I felt like I was giving Demeine what it wanted. Men were lustful and women were controlled, the frozen calm of Mistress Moon that tempered Lord Sun’s heat. But this wasn’t control. I still wanted. Just not as some folks thought of want.
“There’s nothing wrong with that.” Coline laid her cheek against my shoulder. “You should talk to Alchemist Yvonne about it.”
“Do you think if this works and Laurel does overthrow the king, things will change?”
“Yes. It’s not only about money or the war or magic. All of those things are pieces of Demeine, and if we change them, we can change Demeine. Even the parts of it that feel set in stone.” She glanced at me. “No matter what happens, we’re family now.”
“We’ll survive,” I said.
And Coline whispered, “We’ll thrive.”