An Affair of Poisons(13)
Unfortunately, Mother anticipates my scheme. As soon as I deliver the poison to her salon, she administers a few droplets to a pair of doves she keeps in a gilded cage. Her lips flatten and her fingers tap with increased speed and agitation against her dressing table as the birds drop from their perch without a sound.
“Do it again,” she snaps, overturning the tray so the remaining phials of poison shatter across the floor. “And this time, make Viper’s Venom.”
“But—” Viper’s Venom is horrendous. The most violent of poisons. Victims suffer brutal trembling fits, their backs arching and twisting until the bones break, and then the hallucinations and vomiting set in. The torment lasts for hours.
Mother presses her fingers against her temples. “Do you know what the Duc de Vend?me is claiming? That the dauphin and princesses live, since we have yet to produce their bodies. He wants them returned to the throne.”
“You said the royal children perished in the fire.”
“They did,” Mother says forcefully. “Which is why we must send a message. All of France must know the consequences of rising against the Shadow Society, and drifting off to sleep is hardly fear-inducing.”
I close my eyes and try to take a breath, but the lump in my throat feels like a cannonball. “What happened to caring for the people?” I say in a small voice. “I know you would never do anything that wasn’t in their best interest,” I add quickly when Mother stiffens, “but doesn’t this seem extreme?”
Mother takes my hand. Her cold fingers coil around my knuckles like snakes. “We shall care for the people. We would be already, were it not for these rebellious nobles. Now stop acting like your father and distill my order. This is the only way.”
Stop acting like your father. She means it as a slight. A cutting remark to cow me into submission. But a seedling of an idea takes root in my mind. Perhaps Father is exactly who I should be channeling.
Late that night, while the rest of the household sleeps, I scurry down to the laboratory like a clever kitchen mouse and pry open every crate brought over from the garden house. I comb through decaying ledgers and scrolls, digging for something I swore I destroyed two years prior.
In the bottom of the third dusty trunk, I find it: Father’s grimoire. The red leather flashes in the torchlight and my hands hesitate on the binding, years of Mother’s warnings ringing in my ears.
He loved alchemy more than he ever loved us. He was reckless and obsessed, and it killed him in the end.
She isn’t wrong. Father was so consumed by his experiments, we fell into financial ruin and would have starved to death had Mother not resorted to palm reading and selling love potions—the beginnings of the Shadow Society. And he perished in an explosion that could have been avoided had he heeded Mother’s plea to brew only the safe, familiar recipes she required for her customers. But Father brewed what pleased him. The potions he deemed most important. I still remember how Mother cried at night after Marguerite and I were tucked in bed, begging him to be more careful. Begging him to come in for supper and be a father to us. Begging him to love her.
But Father loved only his alchemy, and unlike Mother, I didn’t mind that he treated me more like a laboratory assistant than a daughter. I was glad to have even a measure of his attention. And I had learned to love alchemy nearly as much as he did.
I run a tentative finger along the spine of Father’s grimoire. What if his convictions weren’t as preposterous as Mother claimed? Perhaps he was onto something—trusting his own instincts over her commands.
You will be a great alchemist one day, he used to tell me. Greater even than I.
I pry the grimoire from its hiding place and clutch it to my chest, inhaling the sweet scent of sage that wafts from the paper—the same scent that always clung to Father’s doublet. “What would you do?” I whisper, but I already know the answer.
Experiment. Innovate.
My mind immediately goes to the Viper’s Venom, and I spend the next three hours poring over Father’s notes, determined to distill a compound that will nullify the poison’s horrendous effects. But the curative is extremely temperamental. Too much stirring, and the ingredients separate. And it boils over with even the smallest amount of heat. After five failed attempts, dawn is beginning to seep through the curtains and I want something to show for a whole night’s work. So I close Father’s grimoire and focus on counteracting one of my own recipes instead—one in particular that I wish I’d never invented: Lesage’s désintégrer.
After scribbling four pages of notes and checking my calculations twice, I tip two parts ambergris and one part periwinkle into a pot. The petals wilt into the foul-smelling paste, and I stir continuously until bubbles swell and pop across the surface. When it turns a deep pearl gray, I siphon it into a large phial and hold it up to the light, watching the liquid churn and eddy. The next time Lesage shoots his fire bolts, I will attempt to reverse the effects.
Smiling, I skitter across the chamber to hide the curative, but the door swings open.
Merde.
My heart slams to a halt and my feet follow suit. I quickly slip the phial into my apron pocket. Then I whirl around, fanning my face to draw attention away from the telltale bulge. “Prop that door open. It’s hotter than hell in here,” I say dramatically.
Gris nods as he lumbers through the door. I’m so relieved to see him instead of my sister or Fernand or Lesage that I let out a loud, breathy laugh. “Thank goodness you’re here. I’m anxious to begin.”