An Affair of Poisons(45)

She looks so vulnerable, gripping that book as if it’s the most precious treasure in this palace. I fidget. It’s undeniably intimate seeing someone love something so much—like cracking a window to the innermost part of their soul—and it makes me so uncomfortable, I blurt something peevish so she’ll stop. “Do you still think this was a waste of time?”

She smacks my shoulder with the book, stuffs it down her bodice, and finally moves toward the doors.

A chambermaid emerges from the adjacent garderobe when we’re halfway across the room and crashes into Mirabelle. Who in turn crashes into me. The maid drops the ewer of water she was carrying, and it shatters with a crack so loud it sounds like every windowpane in the palace is breaking. Louis and my sisters probably heard it from the sewer. Which is bad enough, but then the girl starts screaming.

I lunge forward to silence her, but Mirabelle beats me to it. She hefts a water pitcher off the bedside table, closes her eyes, and whirls. The jug makes a wet thunking noise against the girl’s head, and she collapses into the spilled water and broken bits of porcelain, lying perfectly still, arms and legs splayed at awkward angles.

We both stare down at her, stunned.

Mirabelle drops to her knees. “Please don’t be dead,” she mutters as she places her ear near the girl’s lips. After several excruciating seconds, she sags with relief. “She’s breathing. A bit of butterbur for her head wound and …”

Mirabelle keeps talking, but I’m no longer listening. I check the chamber door, then look back at the unconscious girl. I don’t mean to be insensitive, but La Voisin will have the portcullises lowered and every corner of the palace overturned if she finds a body in her bedchamber. And we cannot return to the lab for butterbur—whatever that is.

I bend over, lift the girl gently over my shoulder, and carry her from the room.

“What are you doing?” Mirabelle demands.

“What needs to be done.” I stuff the maid into the alcove in the hallway and pull the curtain strategically around her body.

“We can’t just leave her.”

“We can and we will.” I hook Mirabelle by the elbow and drag her back toward the servants’ stairs. “It’s just a knock on the head. She’ll be fine.”

Mirabelle glowers at me.

“Well, she may have a skull-splitting headache for a few days, but it won’t kill her. I, on the other hand, will be executed the moment I’m discovered, and since you made it my duty to ensure we don’t get caught, that’s what I’m doing.”

Mirabelle looks back at the alcove once more but eventually sighs and follows.

“You can make up for nearly killing her by healing another,” I say as we wind down the stairs.

Mirabelle kicks the back of my ankle, and I trip, nearly smashing my nose on the stone steps. I suppose I deserved that.

As we hurry past the kitchens, a woman in a black dress with a severe gray bun spots us and insists we follow her, but I break into a run. I’m not about to be caught now, when we’re so close to pulling this off. We batter through the servants entering the castle, then slow to a walk, our heads bowed as we make our way across the crowded courtyards and past the porters at the gatehouse.

Even after I’ve shed my disguise and we’ve blended into the bustle of the busy streets, we continue to plow past vegetable carts and shopkeepers waving baguettes and children selling flowers until the decrepit millinery comes into view. It feels oddly reminiscent of running through the streets the day before, when I freed her from the sewer. That same breathless, buzzing energy. That same rightness, dancing across my skin, warmer than the midday sun. Our boots pound the cobbles in perfect cadence. The air between us feels charged and electric. I’m as raucous and jittery as if I spent the night playing winning hands of lansquenet.

“We seem to have a knack for narrow escapes,” I say.

Mirabelle allows a tiny smile and her fingers brush the front of her dress, where her father’s grimoire hides. “I suppose we do.”





13



MIRABELLE


I cannot stop staring at Father’s grimoire. Cannot stop running my fingers over the crumbling leather binding. It’s truly in my possession—his thoughts, his handwriting, that sweet, sweet scent of sage. I bury my nose in the brittle pages and pull a deep breath into my lungs. Holding it. Imagining Father’s wily, wicked grin. How he would have loved this intrigue!

That’s my girl, risking all in the name of alchemy!

I lie down on a pile of scraps in the corner of the millinery and will myself to sleep. I need to be well rested and ready to begin making curatives the moment Gris delivers my supplies.

But Josse has other plans.

“I don’t know how you can sleep!” he says, tromping around the shop all wide-eyed and red-cheeked, like a child on May Day. “There’s so much to do, so much to plan.”

“It’s simple. You shut your mouth and close your eyes and lie very still—which I’m beginning to realize may not be simple for you …”

He laughs as if I’m joking. “Are you always so calm and practical, poisoner?”

“Are you always so loud and overzealous, princeling?”

He scrunches his brows and strokes his chin. “Why, yes. I do believe I am. And you should thank me for it. You wouldn’t have accomplished half as much without me.”