Emilie
It was far too quiet for a military encampment the morning after the party. I lay on my back in my sleep roll, breath a fog above me. Madeline’s soft snores were loud in the silence, a comforting reminder that she was alive and hadn’t been swept off for treason in the night, and the others in the tent shifted and slowly snored themselves out of slumber. I crawled out of bed and got dressed as quietly as I could. Outside the tent, Louis, Allard’s hack, paced back and forth.
“There was a poster on the opening to my tent this morning.” He glanced around. There was no one about. There should have been people working, talking, preparing to switch shifts. “His Majesty’s personal guards came through and ripped it down.”
“A poster of what?” I closed my eyes and tried to feel out the magic being used in the camp. Nothing—as if Lord Sun had taken a hand and swept it all away. Someone was making it harder for noonday artists to channel magic. “Pièrre and Waleran are doing something to prevent us from channeling.”
I had heard of battle magic’s various uses but never studied them. Only nobles studying to become chevaliers had access to those texts.
“They’re going to blame hacks. That’s why I’m here. Make sure you’ve got your things in order if they question you.” Louis exhaled. “What if they try to scry the past to see who did it? Whoever did it will be in danger.”
His black eyes caught mine. I ducked.
“Scrying the past is exceptionally hard,” I said, “and so far as I know, Estrel Charron is the only one who can do it accurately right now.”
They would probably ask her, but surely someone with her background wouldn’t turn Laurel in.
“Small blessings for traitors, ay?” Louis nodded for me to follow him. “I need your help with rounds—you can adjust alchemistry, right?”
“Sure.”
The low hum of whispering filled the infirmary. This early, it was all common soldiers and hacks. Louis led me to a soldier in one of the middle beds. I sat next to him.
I had only spoken to Louis a few times before this morning. At university when Physician Allard had returned to pick his new hack, Louis had spent the day answering students’ questions about the physician’s work. Laurence had taken us into Delest that day. Louis’s constant channeling for Allard had worn down his hands so much that he almost always wore a pair of dark brown leather gloves the same tone as his skin. He had said he was going to retire soon.
He was only twenty-five.
“Have you heard about Laurel?” Louis asked quietly.
“Incompletely,” I whispered back. “Our tent isn’t near anyone else’s.”
“The camp down in Adamesnil is refusing to work. Soldiers included,” he said. “We’ve got too many chevaliers here compared to the others—they’d crush us—but none of the other hacks at any of the camps are working.”
One of Allard’s other hacks leaned over Louis’s shoulder and muttered, “His Majesty found one in his tent and one left behind during the gathering last night. That was only nobles.”
I whistled. “Good.”
“No hacks, no soldiers, no war,” Louis said. He hummed and pulled away from his patient. “I like Laurel more every day.”
The infirmary flap opened. Charles, a beacon of orange, looked around. Louis stiffened and the other hacks fell silent.
“Everyone’s fine without the noonday arts here, right?” Charles asked, coming over to Louis who nodded and bowed his head. “Good. Thank you.” He beckoned to me. “Laurence is about to kill Pièrre and Waleran for doing this, so we have to go distract him.”
Our moods had been tense for weeks, but Charles had his lips rolled together to keep from smiling as he led us to Laurence’s tent.
“Some exceptionally brave person had the nerve to put one of those lies on the back of His Majesty’s chair last night while no one was paying attention,” Charles said. “Laurence is furious because Henry thinks he must know something and is covering for Laurel, and then Waleran decided to stop anyone from using the noonday arts near His Majesty, and now Laurence and Pièrre are furious at him. It’s been a long morning.”
“The other camps are refusing to work, though,” I said. “It’s working.”
When we walked into Laurence’s tent, only Sébastien was there. He was disastrously put together and wringing his hands.
“They’re questioning Laurence right now,” he said. “And once they are sufficiently sure he has no involvement in this plot, they’re having him contact Mademoiselle Charron to scry who was responsible for it.”
I glanced between Charles and Sébastien. “Well, good for them.”
“Good?” Sébastien pointed one shaking hand at me. “Laurel has doomed us. Without a working army or hacks, Kalthorne could crush us in a war.”
“Then we should broker for peace.” I shrugged. “No war seems like a winning situation for everyone, and it’s not like we had a reason for doing this in the first place. Especially considering how His Majesty is fueling his noonday arts.”
“Your actions have put Demeine in danger.” Sébastien planted his hands on his hips and shook his head. “I can’t stand for it. What happened was terrible, but we can deal with it after we deal with Kalthorne.”
I rolled my eyes. By the time we “dealt” with Kalthorne, His Majesty could have killed dozens of hacks. I walked to Laurence’s rickety folding desk and picked up the stool.
“We shouldn’t be dealing with Kalthorne at all,” Charles said. “It’s a distraction.”
I set the stool before Sébastien. Charles stared, and Sébastien spluttered.
“Is this better, Monsieur?” I asked.
From the corner of my sight, I watched Charles open his mouth, shut it, and bury his face in his hands.
“What am I supposed to do with this?” Sébastien crossed his arms, chin shaking it was so clenched, and did not look at me.
Charles gave an overexaggerated shrug. “Sit on it, I would assume.”
“Sébastien,” I said, using his name for the first time that morning. He jerked his head to look at me. I was only a few thumbs shorter than him, but my mother had prodded good posture into me. I pushed him onto the stool, keeping both hands on his shoulders. “Your brother is a chevalier, and you, one day, will be a very good physician, but if we go to war with Kalthorne, His Majesty will continue using the noonday arts, yes?”
Sébastien glanced at my hands and nodded.
“Which means he will have to continue using hacks.” I let my arms fall. “And when he runs out of hacks, who do you think will serve him, then?”
Sébastien turned to Charles. “He wouldn’t.”
“Sébastien,” Charles said. “We’ve talked about this. When one enemy is dead, one resource used, he will move to the next, and who do you think that will be?”
I let Sébastien stew and sat next to Charles.
“They’ll try to find who did it, make them confess it was a lie, and use them as an example.” He ran a hand over his face. “They might not even bother finding out who really did it and skip to the example part.”
“They know someone in Laurel is a noble,” Sébastien said, eyes closed and head leaned back. “He’ll start there. We’ll need a distraction of our own to keep us out of his sights.”
Charles leaned into me and murmured, “Probably don’t antagonize Sébastien.”
“His existence antagonizes me.”
“He’s nervous.” Charles flipped open his leather journal and ran a hand, fingers heavy with gold and ruby rings, down the page till he found whatever it was he needed. He had always styled himself impeccably, but there was an edge to how he carried himself now. He was fashionably disheveled but unbelievably precise. “Leave him be, please.”
I sighed. “Fine.”
Charles hummed and grinned.
Eventually, our silent meeting was interrupted by Laurence. He pulled back the opening to the tent and shook his head, the dark circles under his eyes impressively defined. Laurence flicked two fingers at Charles and me, and we leapt up. He collapsed onto his cot.
Charles leaned over at him. “Laurence, would you like us to leave?”
Then Laurence du Montimer, the consummate voice of reason and tranquility, closed his eyes and said, “What the fuck did you all do?”
“Nothing,” I said.
“Nothing?” Laurence cracked open one eye and glared at me. “That is rich coming from you.”
“Did you see who it was that—?”
“No,” Laurence cut off Charles and waved the question away. “Do not worry about that.”
“See!” Sébastien cried. “This whole thing was too presumptuous. Laurel should have waited and discussed it, not abandoned us to this.”
Laurence winced and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “You cannot fix a decrepit house while standing inside of it. You must tear the house down and start again, though it is useful to get help and resources from inside the house first.”
“That,” Charles said, voice flat, “sounds like Laurel.”
“Another poster appeared in Serre at noon signed by Madame Royale Nicole of Demeine,” said Laurence. “We cannot simply wash our hands of this. Laurel is attempting to overthrow the king, and clearly they have selected Nicole as his successor. Using her means that our neighbors, Kalthorne and Vertgana, will recognize her as a valid successor and not attempt to seat their own. Laurel is planning a coup with Nicole.”
Of course—all of our nations had distant ties to each other, and if they thought they had a stronger claim to Demeine than whoever ruled if Laurel won, they would try to takeover.
“I thought her father had her arrested,” Charles said. “She tried this before with Laurel in Segance.”
Demeine nobles could not have clean hands, but we had to help fix the mess we had made.
I couldn’t keep this secret any longer, not if they were scrying for truths and liars in this camp. Eventually, they would find me out.
“Which is why her signature is curious.” Laurence rolled into a sitting position. “Do any of you know why the first King Henry renamed our nation, our people, and our language?”
I knew he had, but all the historians made it seem triumphant. After the wars with Vertgana and the Empire, we had left our old name, the one that had seen us conquered again and again, behind.
“Because he thought this land was his and his alone.” Laurence looked up at us. “Is a land its crown’s or its people’s?”
“It’s people’s,” I said.
Charles nodded. “There is no nation without its people.”
“Great!” Laurence clapped and stood. “That confirms my worst fears. When they question you, Charles and Sébastien, don’t say that. Get out. I need to think.”
Charles and Sébastien darted out of the tent. Laurence groaned.
“Emilie,” he said, “there are very few conversations I am mentally capable of handling right now.”
“I’m sorry. I need to tell you something.” I was certain my bones were ice and all about to crack, leaving me a collapsed and worthless mess. “My name isn’t Emilie Boucher. It’s Emilie des Marais.”
“Yes?” He glanced at me, not turning his body. “And?”
The little thread of control I thought I still held over my life snapped.
“You knew this whole time?” I asked. “You didn’t send me away?”
“Did I not mention it before we came here?” He tilted his head up, black brows a confused, furrowed line.
I shook my head. “Not even a little bit.”
“My apologies. I meant to,” he said. “It’s really irrelevant to most of my opinions on you, and you weren’t doing anything untoward, so I might have—”
“You forgot,” I said, “didn’t you?”
He tried too hard to not be flighty and fickle like his contemporaries pretended to be, their well-controlled acts that ticked every box—half-done appearance, overly expressed emotions, and fiery temperament—and yet here we were. All of them wanted to look like the carefree genius who was too far above mortal concerns, but Laurence was.
“The intricacies of your life are not as interesting as you think they are.” He stretched, face falling into his normal expressionless calm. “Why are you confessing this now?”
“I didn’t want you to be caught unawares if Charron’s scrying found me out,” I said.
Laurence waved for me to leave. “She already knows. Your decoy is her apprentice, everything is fine, and I appreciate your honesty, but I dearly need to think. In peace.”
“Of course. Sorry.” I bowed out of habit and went to find Madeline.
The day went on as most days had, but more subdued. We stayed in the infirmary, checking injuries and taking stock of supplies. The three chevaliers in the camp walked through the little gatherings of people during supper, chatting with hacks as if they were old friends and not sniffing out traitors, and I ended up in Laurence’s tent once again the next morning with Charles. Charles and Sébastien had been questioned and cleared. Sébastien was still twitchy, though.
“Stop thinking about it. Here.” Laurence pushed a small leaf of papers into his hands. “Read this. You’ll like it.”
Sébastien clutched the papers to his chest, nodded, and left.
Charles picked up one of Charron’s journals Laurence was flipping through, trying to find notes on scrying. He thumbed through the pages. “Exquisite.”
“An exquisite pain,” Laurence muttered. “If I leave you two here, will I return to find you both in one piece and none of my work worse for wear?”
“Yes.” Charles sat on the cot next to me, book open on his lap. “I’ll refrain from asking questions. That should keep us all safe.”
Laurence laughed his way out of the tent.
“I was going to offer you the cheese pastry I had in my bag,” I said, “but I’m rethinking that now.”
“You should eat it.” He smelled of vinegar and soap and something sharp like orange water. “You hate me. Why would you even want to share?”
“I don’t hate you. I think you’re”—I paused, the precise words not coming and shrugged—“insufferable and stubborn; however, you’re intelligent and hardworking, and I know you put the well-being of patients over your current health no matter how foolish that is. You gave half of them your lunch. Please eat the pastry.”
“You called yourself those things weeks ago. The insults only, though.” He laughed and took the pastry from the bag at my feet. “How peculiar.”
“Not really.” I tore a piece of the pastry off and ate the plain corner. “I’m much meaner to me than I am to you. You should be astronomically insulted to share an insult with me.”
“I’m astronomically concerned about how you think that’s a normal sentiment.” Charles took me by the shirt collar, gently, carefully, and tapped my lips with the pastry. “Eat.”
I did, and Charles ate the other half. We sat in silence for some time, wiping our hands on Laurence’s blanket—not that he slept or would use it—and talking about nothing. He leaned back, his left side flush with my right. My mother would have died if she saw us.
“I actually quite like you,” I said finally.
He tapped his foot against mine. “I quite like you as well, Emilie Last-Name-Definitely-Not-Boucher.”
“Let me keep one secret successfully,” I said. “My mother shipped me off to Gardinier’s finishing school before I could get away, and I had to improvise.”
He let out a barking laugh, nudged my shoulder with his, and said, “I am very glad you ended up here, though.”
“Me too.”
Someone at the tent door cleared their throat. Sébastien shuffled his feet. “Charles, I need your help in the infirmary.”
Charles glanced at me. “Later, then.”
I nodded. He set the book back on the cot, and I stood as well.
The pair left. I fiddled around Laurence’s stacks of journals, mostly things he had carried so we could continue studying. The odd haze that had interrupted my magic lifted, and I peeked outside. Waleran strolled toward the tent.
I gathered the magic in my hands faster than I ever had before and channeled it through me, the sting of so much power in my veins a pain I hadn’t felt. I thrust my hands at Waleran. The alchemistry of his body lit before me.
Another soldier darted between us. A dozen more soldiers rising from the sides of the path. I let my magic fade and turned to run. A soldier yanked me up by my coat.
I stumbled.
“Please do not try to run,” Waleran called out. “Any further attempts of escape will be met with retribution, either on you or Madeline Mercer.” Waleran unsheathed his sword, a long, thin thing of artist-forged steel and magic. “Understood?”
“She had nothing to do with this,” I said. “Don’t touch her.”
I lunged for him, and he flipped his sword up, ramming the hilt into my temple. I blacked out, knees hitting the ground. The world shifted beneath me.
“We’re aware she’s not involved, but I assumed she would make an excellent motivator.” Waleran clucked his tongue against his teeth and wiped his hands clean. “Madame, please do not do that again. We require you alive for questioning.”