Poison Priestess Read online

  “Trust me, Cat,” she replies, flashing me a sharp slice of a smile, firelight shining off her teeth. “I am not taking you anywhere you have been before.”

  Some minutes later, she draws to a halt in front of a hulking wooden door clasped with battered hinges. Standing on her toes, she brings the torch to bear just above the door, casting light on a sigil inscribed in the stone.

  “What is that?” I ask her, an anxious swell surging up my throat. “That symbol?”

  “One of the runes of les arts occultes,” she replies, rapping on the door. “This one denotes chiromancy.”

  “But there are chiromancers every night at the Pomme,” I remind her. “You read palms there yourself; I’ve seen you do it a time or two. Why come here instead?”

  “The Pomme is merely good for the occasional diversion, ma belle,” she scoffs. “Only unskilled dilettantes ply their trade in earnest there. The ones too simple to gain admittance here.”

  “But—”

  The eyelet set into the door rattles open, and a gruff “Alors, dis-moi” filters through. Marie whispers something through it, too quietly for me to hear.

  A moment later the door creaks inward, whining on its hinges.

  Then Marie steps inside and draws me in behind her, and I’m left with no more time for questions.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The Haven and the Lady

  The first thing I notice is the ceiling.

  It is barrel-vaulted and flung high enough above us that the arching ribs vanish into gloom, as if the building has neither roof nor end. We must be inside one of the abandoned and deconsecrated churches that litter the Île, I decide, though this one is rather grander than most of them.

  The second is the smoke. The air is so steeped in frankincense and myrrh that it gathers above our heads like trailing clouds, as if we’ve stepped outside rather than in. The first lungful leaves me a little dizzy, reinforcing the illusion of having crossed a threshold only to land in another world. It almost makes me want to trawl the dark above us for stars, or the winking glimmer of a miniature moon.

  The third is the quiet.

  “Why is everyone whispering?” I ask Marie, bringing my lips close to her ear and pitching my own voice low. None of the patrons seated at the room’s many candlelit tables pay us any mind, so intent are they on their quiet conversations carried out over upturned palms. But a thrumming sense of tension pervades the space, and I find myself loath to disturb it. “And there is no music.”

  “What is spoken here is to not be shared beyond these walls,” she whispers back, reaching up to gently tug my hood farther over my head. “As to music, well. No one seeking mere amusement can afford to seek it here.”

  Wreathing her cool fingers through mine, she leads me over to the colossal bar top that takes up the room’s left wall, like a standing stone toppled on its side. As she orders from the gruff barkeep, I lean forward to sweep my palms over the bar’s scarred surface, pocked with age and scratched with obscure sigils. Eight-pointed stars, spirals trapped in circles, hands with too many fingers and palms turned up, inscribed with overlapping lines. With a spurt of shock, I realize that some of them are familiar—I have seen these symbols in Agnesot’s grimoire. Some of them I know to be astrologers’ runes, but others I have never been able to identify.

  And yet they are here, I think with a rising thrill. Perhaps this was once the divineress’s haunt.

  “What is this place?” I breathe to Marie as I dip my head to examine the markings more closely, until I can smell the stone’s rusty mineral odor. “And why have you kept it from me all this time?”

  “It’s a haven of divination,” she replies. “One of many in the cité, and my favorite. As to why I have never taken you …”

  The barkeep interrupts her by sliding two sloshing goblets across the stone, tipping Marie a brusque nod as she drops a clutch of sous into his waiting hand. The wine the goblet holds is rich and red, better than I expected. It burns furiously down my gullet, like a falling star escaping the firmament.

  “The lawless dealings that transpire here are not for the faint of heart,” Marie continues, her eyes glinting secretively above her goblet’s rim. “I wished to keep you clear of it for another few years yet, at least. But were I to wait any longer, I fear that blasted book might swallow you whole. At least here, I can be certain you do not sell your soul to le Diable all unwitting.”

  Her impulse to keep me safe never fails to warm me, unnecessary though it is in this case.

  “While I appreciate the thought, ma chère, I’m quite certain Lucifer has far more pressing things with which to occupy his time than lurking in wait for me,” I scoff, rolling my eyes. While I do not doubt that notre Dieu and le Diable wage their eternal war against each other somewhere far beyond our ken, I do not truly believe now, any more than I did back at the fabrique, that either of them deigns to meddle directly in the affairs of men. “And what do you suppose I shall learn here, that all my failed attempts with the grimoire haven’t taught me?”

  Marie makes a thoughtful moue, lifting a single finger. “Not learning, but the right sort of practice. Those born with the true gift, like you, ma belle, are few and far between. And though the chiromancers here are exceptional grifters to the last, most of them have about as much real magic as I do—which is to say, not a jot of it. But I put up a lively enough pretense when there is coin involved, do I not? And if even I can convincingly pretend to read the future in a palm, think what you might be able to do.”

  I frown at her, cocking my head. “But I have never even tried to read a palm!”

  “Not yet, you haven’t. But a certain woe-struck lady who wishes to remain unnamed comes here tonight, seeking a stolen glimpse of what lies ahead.”

  She leans in closer to me, her dark eyes sparkling with mischief. “And I’ve a mind to have you read for her in my stead.”

  A quarter of an hour later, Marie and I sit at one of the tables with the nameless lady across from us.

  “Pardonnez-moi, but I came for your talents, Mademoiselle Bosse,” the lady protests, her cultured voice barely above a breath. She is wealthy but not highborn, Marie believes, most likely some well-heeled tradesman’s wife. “You come highly recommended, whereas your companion … Catherine Monvoisin, you say? Well, I’ve never heard so much as a whisper of her name.”

  “Catherine is my apprentice,” Marie lies smoothly, the corner of her plush mouth quirking when I dart her a peevish look. “And an exceptionally promising one. Her star is on the rise, madame. Soon her name will be on everybody’s lips—and you will have been the first to sample her gift.”

  The lady’s eyes shift to mine, clouded with uncertainty. “But …”

  “What harm can it do to try, my lady?” Marie cajoles. “Allow me to ease your mind. Should you be dissatisfied with the reading, I shall take over for Catherine—free of charge, bien sûr.”

  The lady weighs the offer a trifle longer before deciding that she has little to lose. When she extends her hand to me, I bend my head over her proffered palm, thinking furiously. My sight has always been unpredictable, tempestuous as a summer storm; if I can barely claw it up with the grimoire’s exacting guidance, why should it heed me now?

  But, I tell myself, I have watched Marie do this same thing so many times. Drinking in the intent lines of her face as she subtly scanned her targets, reading intentions from the cast of their expressions, discerning hidden desires from their eyes.

  If she can lie her way through a divination, then surely so can I.

  “A … a fearsome cloud hovers over your path, madame,” I improvise haltingly. “I can see its outline casting a shadow on your palm …”

  And then I sputter out, unable for the life of me to think of what might come next.

  As the lady gives me a dubious look, I take a few deep breaths to calm myself, under the guise of letting magic build. I allow my eyes to drift up to the lady’s face, taking stock of her. The sort of troubles th
at drive people to a soothsayer tend to hail from a common source—health, or wealth, or matters of the heart. This woman is too young and clearly hale to be besieged by some deathly ailment. Nor, from her fine skin and the rich fabric of her cowl, does she seem to lack in means.

  Which very likely leaves us with love.

  “Alors, you wish to know what will become of you and him,” I venture, searching her face for confirmation that some “him” exists at all. When the skin at the corners of her eyes crinkles minutely, I take heart and plow ahead. “And given what has come to pass between you, whether his attentions will hold true.”

  “And will they?” she whispers, eyelids fluttering to contain sudden tears. “Now that, now …”

  Though I am only spinning a grift, something about the raw fervor of her need calls to me. I sink my teeth into the inside of my lip, sweeping my thumb over the lines that lattice the lady’s palm. For a moment they remain no more than creases of the skin, meaningless and inert—then they begin to waver like shifting runes, to writhe and realign.

  A buzzing starts to build low in my nape, the sense of swarming pressure that often accompanies the sight.

  “You took a lover, madame. Betrothed to another, but under your thrall,” I intone, the words suddenly tumbling past my lips seemingly of their own accord. “Breath to breath, mouth to mouth, entwined beneath the darkened boughs. And when he said he loved you, that he only needed time—that he would withdraw his given ring and pledge it to you instead—you did not think to doubt him.”

  Her story unfolds in flickering spurts and starts, inscribed in her palm but suddenly coming alive in my mind’s eye. I see her slipping out of a fete with her giddy lover in tow behind her, all flushed cheeks and swallowed laughter. I watch as they shed their clothes, sinking together into passion in the tangled space within a hedgerow. I hear their heated promises as though I am there myself, a silent ghost bearing witness to their ardor.

  Then the lines swirl and coil again, melting into nothing before taking on another shape. When the roiling darkness finally clears behind my eyes, I can see the lady curled like a forlorn comma into a cushioned alcove, hand hovering above her belly.

  “But instead of his ring, you bear his seed,” I murmur, looking up to meet her stricken eyes. “And now you stand at a crossroads, abandoned and alone. Save for the unborn child he left behind.”

  This time her tears do spill over, glimmering on the darkened hollows under her eyes.

  “I do not know what to do,” she whispers, pressing trembling fingers to her lips. “Should I tell him, in hopes that it will spur him into wedding me instead? Or will the knowledge only make him cast me away for good?”

  I shake my head vaguely, swaying it from side to side. When I strive to see past her sitting at the window, the vision slithers away from me, clotting into a denser darkness. Yet I can feel something lurking just beyond, more secrets hidden in her palm.

  But how do I coax them forth into the light?

  A snippet from Agnesot’s grimoire surfaces, a maddening explanation of a rune that only ever vexed me before.

  If you should find yourself well and truly stalled, remember that circles make for openings.

  I had no notion of what this might mean before, but now I think of the spiral sigils inscribed into both the bar top and the grimoire. With my ring finger, I begin to draw slow, concentric circles into the lady’s palm. As though I am stirring away the obscuring darkness, wheedling the vision forth. Her lines shudder and dance under my touch before falling firmly into place, the truth of them like the breaking of a new dawn.

  Dazzling and irrefutable, a certainty beyond reproach.

  “If you tell him, he will ruin you,” I say bluntly. “He will paint you a harlot, a strumpet who flung herself at him with no care for decency. A siren calling to a sailor until he dashed himself against the rocks. He will leave you disgraced, madame, and thoroughly alone.”

  He will, he will, he will.

  She flinches every time I speak, each of my pronouncements striking her like a ruthless blow.

  “But that is not fair,” she says, her shoulders slumping pitifully. My heart swells with sympathy for her, even as I wonder what sort of unduly sweet life she’s lived thus far, that has led her to expect fairness as her rightful lot. “What shall I do now?”

  I shake my head, my body slackening with fatigue as the last whorls of the vision melt away. “I do not know, my lady. I’ve told you all that I can see.”

  “S’il vous plaît,” the lady presses, gulping back tears. “Please, you must tell me what to do.”

  Though I have all but forgotten that she is here, it is Marie who rescues me. She reaches for the lady’s other hand, folding it between her own.

  “There is no need to weep, madame,” she says quietly. “If you do not want this child, there are ways to go about things. Remedies I can suggest, procedures to help you should the tinctures fail. And if you do want it, well …”

  She fixes the lady with a gimlet gaze, but not without sympathy. “I would suggest finding yourself an amenable husband with a great deal of haste.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  The Moneylender and the Lord

  I barely remember staggering home that night, drunk on elation and the haven’s robust wine.

  “You did gorgeously, ma belle,” Marie whispered into my ear as she left me on my doorstep, the warm fan of her breath sending a spiraling tingle down my neck. “Just as I knew you would.”

  “But why was it so much easier to scry for her?” I marveled, the words sluggish on my tongue. “When I can barely dredge up a vision for myself?”

  Marie tipped me a sly wink over her shoulder as she turned away. “Perhaps you might take this lesson to heart, chérie. And trust that sometimes I do know best.”

  The next morning, I break my fast with Antoine at a decadently late hour. We eat in companionable silence, both of us basking in the afterglow of a night well spent. I am idling over the gossip pages and spooning fromage and fruit compote into my mouth when Suzette cowers into the dining room in her diffident way.

  “Pardonnez-moi, monsieur,” she breathes, wringing her hands in her starched apron. “There are some men downstairs to see you. I told them you could not come to the door just now, but they would not be turned away.”

  “But who would be calling on us at noon?” I wonder, glancing over at Antoine, expecting to find a reflection of my own bemusement. Instead, I see that my husband has gone an alarming shade of suet gray.

  When my gaze lands on him, he fumbles clumsily for a smile, dabbing at the corners of his mouth.

  “Nothing of any import, I’m sure,” he says weakly, pushing back from the table and waving me down when I begin to stand as well. “No, please, Catherine. Do not trouble yourself. I will go and sort it out.”

  But the cheese has already soured in my mouth, a premonitory dread surging up my throat like bile. Whatever this interruption is, I suddenly know that it bodes far from well.

  Gathering my dressing gown closer around my shoulders, I whisk out of the dining room and down the carpeted stairs, until I reach the landing overlooking our foyer. Below, Antoine confers with a burly man, menacing despite his grubby wig and tiny pince-nez. Beside them two muscle-bound roughs wrestle our claw-footed credenza out the door, followed by a third lout with one of our Gobelin tapestries slung like a corpse across his brawny shoulders.

  “Antoine?” I call down, my voice more strained than I intended. But I cannot help the shrillness of my tone, not when my throat has turned into a vise. “What is happening? Where are they taking our Gobelins?”

  When Antoine and the stranger glance up at me, I do not know if I am more terrified by the sheer blaze of panic that streaks across my husband’s face or the flat disdain in the strange man’s beady eyes.

  “I told you there was no need to interrupt your petit déjeuner, Catherine,” Antoine chides feebly, jogging up the stairs to meet me on the landing. “I have everythi
ng quite under control.”

  “Of course there is a need, Antoine,” I hiss under my breath, flicking a pointed glance below. “When there are men taking our things, I should say there is decidedly a need. I am sure my fromage will keep while you explain all this to me.”

  He wets his lips with his tongue, his eyes skittering nervously to the side before resettling on mine. “It is truly nothing. Only that earnings at the shop have dipped a bit of late, and I have had to be … somewhat more enterprising in keeping astride our debts.”

  “Our debts?” I repeat, simmering with rage. “Ours, Antoine? Surely I misheard you.”

  What my well-intentioned wastrel of a husband means to say is that he spends his jeweler’s income like water, streams of coin sieving through his fingers. Even his lively trade cannot keep pace with his refined tastes. Antoine is a helpless connoisseur of every sort of beauty, drawn to luxury like a moth to any open flame. Rich clothing, the objets d’art tucked into every corner of our home, exorbitant love tokens for his petit copains; he can resist none of it. I suspect that even I was such an acquisition, with my bramble of foxy curls and cinnamon spattering of freckles, my hazel eyes that edge toward amber. Though I am not beautiful in any fashionable way and certainly do not stir his particular passion, I know Antoine finds me outwardly arresting.

  I have never begrudged my husband this weakness for finery, not when he cares for me so well, indulges my own appetite for matters of the dark.

  But though there have been other debts, repossession men have never come traipsing into our house before. It has never come to this.

  “Catherine, do not be like this,” he pleads. “Please, ma chère, spare me a little understanding.”

  “And how should I be instead, when you have beholden us to a moneylender?” I demand, striving to even out my faltering voice. “When we cannot pay what is owed?”

  “It is only a few pieces to tide us over,” he soothes, squeezing my hands. “You know our profits are always scarcer over the summer, when so many of the noblesse abandon the city for their country estates. But I have several commissions lined up in the coming months, for the Vicomtesse de Polignac and the Duc de Bouillon, to start. Once they are complete and I am paid in full, I can reclaim whatever we have lost. This is only a temporary thing, Catherine. I promise you. We will be fine.”