The Everlasting Rose (The Belles, #2)(22)

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“Yes, Rémy, thank you for pointing out the obvious as always.” She drapes her travel cloak around her shoulders.

“Edel, they will assume we’ll try to go to the teahouses to find our sisters,” I say, trying to keep my voice low. “That was the most dangerous thing you could have done!”

Edel’s eyes flash. “You want to find Charlotte, right? And I want to get to the palace. Moving around requires money. Amber squandered much of ours. I thought if I scoped out the teahouse, we could break in and take some of the Belle-products to sell. People are desperate to hide their gray until the teahouses reopen. The items would fetch us leas.”

I blink at Edel, surprised. It’s actually not the worst plan. If we’re to go see the Fashion Minister, we’ll need to pay for tickets on the midnight ship to the Silk Isles, which will deplete what we have left, and I couldn’t bear to sell one of the teacup dragons, not even Arabella’s Ryra, who has folded into the pack.

“Plus, we need more sangsues to hold glamours. Ours have become weak from overuse.”

“I actually—”

“I’m not going to argue about this with you,” Edel interjects. “It’s a good idea.”

“If you’d let me finish, I was going to say that I agree with you. We need money for food, and also to buy tickets to the Bay of Silk.”

“Why are we going there?”

I hand her the crumpled picture of the Fashion Minister. The headline is no longer animated, the ink trapped in the wrinkles. “We’re going to go see him and ask for help.”

“Oh no...”

“Yes. He will help us. I know he will. And he’s one of the most well-connected men in Orléans. He must have some idea about where Charlotte might be. We can trust him.”

“We can’t trust anyone.” She shoves the balled-up scrap of newsprint back into my hand.

“He was good to me while at the palace,” I tell her. “He warned me about Sophia.”

“No one in her cabinet is our friend.”

“We have to try.”

I start to pull off my scarf and coat.

“Don’t,” Edel says. “We’re heading out now.”

“We shouldn’t risk it,” Rémy adds. “There are more guards here than I anticipated. I never thought they’d be able to deploy so many and so quickly.”

“In fact, you’d better get a second scarf, I can feel more snow coming,” she tells me, ignoring his warning.

Rémy gazes at her, exasperated. “You think it won’t be suspicious if the two of you march over there so close to curfew? You think you won’t be seen? You think they’re not monitoring the teahouses at all? It’s possible someone spotted you earlier and they’ve sent a whole platoon there to lie in wait for you to come back. This is a reckless errand.”

“Didn’t you see my trick? We can appear however we want to,” Edel says. “Are you coming? Or do you want to go fetch our tickets on one of the midnight boats while we go do this?”

He sighs and turns to the door.

“Ready?” she asks me.

“I need to practice the glamours more, Edel. I’ve only done it once,” I say. “I’ll just wear my mask.”

“You’re a fast learner, little fox. Always have been.” She pats my shoulder and grins. “Masks on, hoods up, and scarves bunched around the base of our faces. Once we get close to the teahouse, we’ll change. I don’t want to waste a drop of energy on the walk over. I’m still recovering.”

She leads the way out of the room. My mind is an unexpected whirlwind of worries with each step we take. What if I can’t hold the transformation? What would we do if caught? The poison bottle taps my leg like a swinging pendulum as we hustle down the stairs. It may kill my arcana, it may kill me, but either way, I won’t ever do Sophia’s bidding again. The reality is a small, terrifying comfort.

The women share meals at long tables in the kitchen. Hunched over bowls of food and caught in heated conversations, no one notices us slink out the back door and into the falling snow. The street is empty aside from early-evening vendors selling warm ale and thick stews, before the curfew sets in.

“The new year is coming. Make it sweet, be sure to build your candy house.”

“Best stew! Get it here.”

Edel makes sharp turns through Metairie’s Market Quartier. Plum market-lanterns fade to dark blue, then lighten to pale pinks as we cross into the aristocratic Rose Quartier of this city. It reminds me of Trianon. Du Barry taught us that every Orléansian city organizes itself similarly to receive blessings from the God of the Ground, who values order, symmetry, and the divine number four.

Ominous news blimps float overhead, their banners bathing us in pockets of gloom. Street-sweepers brush away the fresh snow with long brooms and polish cobblestones so they glisten like pearls under the light. Carriages drop passengers at beautiful mansions that hug a square edged by the Bay of Croix. Ornate river coaches sit at house piers. Newsboats bob in the shallow canals, newsies frantically organizing navy story-balloons and black gossip post-balloons to send out for the night editions or attempting to grab portraits of well-dressed courtiers heading home with their light-boxes.