Poison Priestess Read online

  And now that I am here, can I truly go through with it?

  Can I make myself into a murderess?

  He scrutinizes me for a long moment, perhaps appraising my commitment. When I meet his stare as steadily as I can, he cedes a nod and leads me to the back of the room, where a whole section of the shelved wall hinges inward at his touch. A hidden door so seamlessly concealed that I would never have spotted it.

  So the mantle of science does not fully protect him, then, I think. Even an alchemist must practice certain things concealed.

  The door swings into a long and narrow room that smells even more forbidding than the antechamber, metallic and sharp as recently spilled blood, with an incongruously pretty note of almond. There are no armillary spheres here, nothing so whimsical behind the counter that Blessis skirts around. Only the milky gleam of jars and green stop-pered bottles stacked on shorter shelves, peering like blind eyes from the low ceiling to the floor.

  “Why Aqua Tofana?” he muses, his eyes roaming the shelves. “When there are so many easier poisons to choose from? Arsenic, for instance, is ready in a snap, and mimics the progression of naturally debilitating disease. One need not even be a divineress to brew it.”

  “But arsenic leaves a telltale trace, if one knows to look for it. Whereas Aqua Tofana leaves the corpse entirely unscathed.”

  I do not add that Aqua Tofana causes terrible pain, as well as paralysis of the body without any clouding of the mind. I want Prudhomme to feel not just agony but utter helplessness in the hour of his death, just as we all felt powerless in his cruel thrall.

  Though it is true that a lengthier poisoning might be somewhat safer, I know from Eugenie that Prudhomme has become prone to gout and fits; sudden death would not seem so remarkable in his case. And I do not want her to suffer her marriage for any longer than she must.

  “I see,” Blessis mutters abstractedly, skittering his fingers up and down the shelves. His fingertips are cracked as old leather and discolored, likely from a lifetime of handling corrosive substances. “And it is very painful, too, is it not? You mean to devastate.”

  A wave of vertigo comes crashing over me, another dreadful deluge of misgiving even worse than the one that came before. I take a halting half step toward the counter, bracing against it with my fingertips. What in hell are you doing, Catherine, I rail at myself, meddling with matters such as this? This is not the simple mischief I’ve become accustomed to making, but full-blown murder. And not the murder of some commoner, but that of the royal candlemaker, an artisan so wealthy and influential he sometimes dines privately with the king.

  All my turmoil is shot through with an even deeper vein of doubt, like an apple tunneled by a worm. Who am I to steal another’s life, even if that life belongs to one such as Prudhomme?

  “Are you quite well?” the alchemist asks with surprising solicitude. “I could fetch you a tonic if you like. Something to calm the nerves.”

  “No, no, I am fine.” I wave a hand at him, though I am still taking desperate little breaths. “I only … feel a little ill. It will pass in a moment.”

  Blessis watches me warily, unconvinced, tugging at his lip in thought.

  “Are you quite certain you wish to do this, madame?” he asks, fixing me with an incisive stare. “Murder by poison may not be quite so bloody as that done by garrote or knife, but in some ways it is far, far worse.”

  “This is a strange and backwards way to peddle your wares, monsieur,” I half laugh, in a feeble stab at humor. “Should you not instead be attempting to convince me to buy?”

  He does not take the bait, his grave mien only sobering further. “What you do with what I sell you is entirely your business—but what you intend to undertake is not for the faint of heart. Once you have committed, there is no turning back.”

  His probing serves to crystallize the wavering core of my intent. I stand now at a crossroads, caught in a moment of choosing—am I still that girl from the fabrique, chained and powerless? Or am I La Voisin, the sorceress, a willful Fate and Fury in my own right, ruthless and single-minded in whatever act I choose to undertake?

  All I know is that I cannot abide being this weakling the alchemist imagines me to be. Waffling pathetically over the murder of a truly monstrous man.

  My indecision vanishes like a puff of breath dissipating in frosty air, and with it my dizzy spell. I abruptly feel like some icy blaze, roaring with all the blistering force of a deep-winter wind. As if I have been distilled, or whittled down, to a purer, more concentrated version of myself.

  I straighten up from the counter and lift my chin, crossing my arms loosely over my chest.

  “I am far from faint of heart, monsieur,” I tell him crisply, each word as cold and unyielding as a diamond on my tongue. “Nor am I undecided. Now, let us discuss price.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The Poison and the Partnership

  Making the Aqua Tofana is the hardest thing I have ever done.

  I make my excuses to the marquise ahead of time, telling her that my blood is upon me, too painful and ill-omened to allow for any productive scrying sessions. The rest of my clients are given less specific excuses for my temporary seclusion; all the better, as it will only serve to enhance my mystique. Let them think I have withdrawn in order to commune with whatever eldritch forces they believe underlie my sight.

  Let them believe whatever they wish, as long as they leave me alone for this time I need, free from all distraction.

  For the first four days, I read and reread the entry for Aqua Tofana until I know it nearly by heart, and follow all the painstaking instructions for preparing the ingredients. This involves ornate exercises like soaking the belladonna and virgin’s hair in water that has held a gibbous moon’s reflection, then drying them over a fire stoked by hazel wood felled and gathered by my own hand. A tall order for a city dweller, but one I managed all the same.

  Once I instruct the chatelaine to have food left outside my door and refrain from otherwise disturbing me, I am ready to properly begin.

  I tend to the cauldron for three seemingly endless days and nights, keeping it at the same precise temperature, stirring and chanting and inscribing the bubbling surface with hundreds of complex runes. Sweat dribbles down my face and stings my eyes, my fingers trembling from the effort of such precision. There are brief intervals of stability during which I rush to relieve myself, splash water on my scorching face, and cram some food into my mouth before I must begin again. Not nearly enough time for sleep, so I run on sheer dread energy and infusions of strong black tea.

  Should my attention flag even for a moment, should I skip a single step, the substance will yield not a poison powder but a deathly smoke able to kill me with a breath.

  It is at once so tedious and terrifying that I am transported back to the fabrique, firelight from remembered braziers licking at the edges of my vision, my shoulders tensed against a bullwhip’s sting. By the time the substance has reduced into an odorless powder—which Eugenie will mix with Prudhomme’s cosmetics, so that it will sink into his blood through his skin—I am so exhausted that I feel almost as if the making has drawn something vital from me.

  Shaved off a sliver of my own soul to incorporate into itself.

  And perhaps it has, I think, falling into bed immediately after Eugenie has collected the powder, leaving a heavy purse in its place.

  But it is worth it, to know exactly how Prudhomme will leave this earth, with crystalline awareness, and in fearsome pain. Inflicted by my own and Eugenie’s hand.

  The only thing that I can hope for further is that he finds his way directly into hell.

  For the next few weeks, my clients can speak of nothing but the royal candlemaker’s untimely death.

  “Dead between one day to the next, as if struck down by notre Dieu’s own lightning!” the marquise remarks to me during a session, narrow-eyed. “Though with everything I have seen of late, perhaps it was the devil’s handiwork …”

  �
��I hear his widow is beside herself, absolutely woe-struck,” Madame Leferon twitters later, hands clasped to her bosom. “Such a devoted, pretty thing. I daresay she won’t be mired long in her widow’s weeds before another suitor snaps her up.”

  “Was it his heart, do you think?” the Duc de Nevers questions, brow wrinkled with a vague curiosity. “Surely it must have been, to cut him down so fast. And he always was such an unhealthy man.”

  Though they ply each other heedlessly with love philters and dastardly draughts, somehow none of them think to consider poison in this case. As if one of their own could never have succumbed to such an ignominious fate.

  I stay silent throughout it all, my lips curved in an impenetrable smile. My placid surface masking the crashing victory that breaks within my heart in wave after stormy wave. The bane of my youth is gone, the mythical monster of my past vanquished. Eugenie’s and my justice done.

  Agnesot would be so proud of me, and of the legacy I have become.

  And I feel more powerful and unfettered than I ever have; colossal in size, almost larger than mortal life. As though I have summoned one of the true Furies and then swallowed her whole, unhinged my jaw to suck all her power into myself. Now that I have taken matters into my own hands once, what is there to stop me from doing it again? Especially when so many of the vipers in the Sun King’s court are far more deserving of death than even Prudhomme.

  It occurs to me that if I might be paid to help their enemies kill them off—as Eugenie insisted on paying me, a far greater sum than I would have thought to ask of her—I can not only administer the justice sorely lacking at court, but ensure the sort of livelihood for myself that will eventually cut me loose even from the marquise.

  The kind of elevation that will finally set me free.

  “Do not mistake me, Catherine,” Adam says, steepling his fingers beneath his chin. We have just finished a sumptuous dinner that I had catered for us at his home, as an ostensible peace offering. “It isn’t that I am not delighted by your changed heart, but you do not exactly strike me as a fly-by-night. The opposite, in fact. So tell me, what am I to make of this reversal in your desire to work with me?”

  “You were right,” I say simply, dabbing at my mouth and setting my napkin aside. “And I was wrong, and shortsighted, to boot. I am not such a stubborn fool that I cannot admit as much.”

  A lazy smile spreads over his fine-cut mouth.

  “And I am not so modest to pretend that it does not please me to hear it.” He runs his lips thoughtfully over his knuckles. “What brought on this realization?”

  “It is just as you said.” I shrug, spreading my hands. “We are each formidable in our own right. But together, we should be unstoppable, a force the likes of which this city has not seen. So let us cease dissembling and share freely with each other. Lay all our cards on the table, as it were.”

  One black eyebrow flicks curiously up, like a raven taking flight. “Meaning?”

  “Meaning we use my sight and your tricks to select our most strategic and profitable noble marks,” I clarify. “You show me how your magic is done, and I share my visions with you—then we decide, together, how to turn it all to our mutual advantage.”

  “Forgive me if I speak out of turn,” he says dryly, taking a swig of wine, “but what you are proposing is not entirely fair, not when the risk falls squarely upon me. While I cannot hope to steal your gift, you can certainly divest me of my tricks. How am I to trust that you will not do just that?”

  “I am a divineress, Adam, not an illusionist. Seeking to become one would take far more time and trouble than it is worth. And if we were to pool our talents, why would I bother with stealing your tricks at all?”

  “Oh, because you have done as much before?” he hazards with a wry grin.

  I incline my head, as if to say, Touché.

  “I can see why you would hesitate; I would, too, were I in your place. But I am not trying to gull you, Adam. As a token of my trust, an assurance of the openness I hope to foster between us, I would offer you some information as collateral.”

  Intrigue flares in his eyes like sparks falling from a struck flint. He twitches his long and tapered fingers, beckoning me on. “By all means.”

  “The royal candlemaker, Prudhomme. You’ve heard of his death, I presume?”

  “Mon Dieu, how could I not? The vicomte and his entourage grow tiresome with their constant carping on it. Much like your marquise, I’m sure.” He rolls his eyes in collegial exasperation, and I do the same, though it still galls me that he only gained the Vicomte de Couserans as a patron by stealing his favor away from me. “What of it?”

  “He did not die of any obscure natural cause, nor of any of the satanic balderdash they’re spouting at court.” I watch him, unblinking and austere. “He died because I helped kill him.”

  Adam smiles broadly at that, as though I must be jesting. But his mirth soon fades at the cool equanimity on my face.

  “You … helped kill him,” he says slowly, as if turning the words around in his mouth like a sweet. Tasting them for truth. “And why would you do such a thing, Catherine?”

  “His wife sought my help in ridding herself of her abuser, and paid handsomely for it.” I leave out Prudhomme’s link to me, Eugenie’s and my shared history. Just because I recognize the worth of a partnership with Adam does not mean I care to trust him with my vulnerability. “Handsomely enough that I supplied her with a very clever poison. The sort only a divineress could make.”

  “I see.” He watches me avidly, poised between admiration and a slightly horrified awe. “How terrible, and rather marvelous. Quite the piquant secret to share with me, indeed.”

  Beyond its sensationalism, the obvious shock value of my admission, this secret is not so valuable as he thinks—which is why I chose to offer it. Should Adam turn on me down the line and seek to hang me with this knowledge, it will be long after interest in Prudhomme’s death has died, his body interred, and Eugenie united with her painter and far too content to ever speak out against me. Not that she would, anyway, as the poison was administered by her own hand; I never set foot anywhere near Prudhomme. There is no proof, no evidence linking me with the murder—especially since I plan to make no mention to Adam of Blessis.

  Still, any confession is a powerful offering, and I can see that it sways him.

  “Would you have accepted anything less as barter?” I lace my hands together, smiling at him over them when he shakes his head. “I thought not.”

  He watches me for a long moment of frank deliberation, his dark gaze gliding between my eyes.

  “A well-earned death, I imagine,” he finally says. “I performed my show for him once at his home, several months ago. The man was a brute to his wife, a bastard of the vilest sort. Whatever death you and his widow saw fit to give him was likely less than he deserved.”

  Something like glee uncurls itself inside me, tickling at my ribs. This is exactly what I had at once expected and hoped to hear from him.

  “And no one else knows of this?” he continues.

  “No one. Save for my client, of course. Obviously Prudhomme’s widow would never tell another soul.” I lift my eyebrows in question. “So, what do you think?”

  “I think I would hear more.” He leans back in his chair, tilting his head. “Tell me, how exactly do you envision our partnership? Because I would have been content with acquiring ever more powerful benefactors for the two of us. But it seems you have set your sights even higher, with more sinister aims.”

  I nod. “Clients will only pay so much for the sort of services we have thus far been providing—we will hitch up against dead ends much sooner than we’d like. But what if we begin to seek out select clients with darker demands, like Eugenie Prudhomme, only even more influential and wealthier, the sort we want in our debt?”

  “And are you so fearless that you do not fear to hang for murder?”

  I lean back in the chair and shake my head, a smile tugging at my
lips. “No, I do not fear the noose—because if we are careful and clever, we will never find one around our necks. I will brew the poisons for them, to whatever effect they wish, but you and I will never administer them ourselves. The dosing itself, the act of murder, must always be committed by their own hands.”

  “Brilliant,” he murmurs, his eyes shining with admiration. “Shared culpability removes the incentive to turn against us. And how shall we decide upon our noble marks?”

  “We already have our first leads,” I reply, spreading my hands. “Those who’ve attended our Messes Noires, those willing even to entreat the devil. Those who have already divulged their darkest wishes to me. I already know of at least three who dearly desire someone’s death.”

  “I assume you do not intend to offer our services to everyone at court with murderous inclinations,” he remarks with a quirked eyebrow. “For we should find ourselves overwhelmed within a fortnight, and in gaol not soon after, shared culpability be damned. There are droves of would-be murderers in the Sun King’s den, many of them fool enough to boast of their diabolic pursuits to their friends.”

  “Of course not all of them,” I say, taking up my wine for another sip. “Or even most. Only the ones we deem dependably discreet, capable of taking such a secret to the grave. And most importantly—to me, at least—the ones who wish to murder someone of equally villainous ilk. Because I will not be party to killing innocents, Adam. That is where I draw my line.”

  “Then we are of a mind,” he says, favoring me with another of those lupine smiles, sharp as teeth glinting from the brush. “We will make quite the pairing, you and I. Sorceress and magician, infernal priestess and priest. The unholiest of alliances.”

  I laugh, my heart swooping a bit in exhilaration. I realize, to some surprise, that I am looking forward to this collaboration not only for how far it might take me, but also for its own sake. I know exactly why I wish to do this; for the coin and influence, and the freedom both will eventually secure me. But also for the justice I can see done, by meting out punishments the decadent blackguards of Louis’s court would otherwise never have met.