Poison Priestess Read online

  So he says. And yet a hot reek boils up my nose, the memory of acrid tallow pierced with beeswax sweetness. I can almost feel the blister of a bullwhip falling across my back, cruel hands tightening on my shoulders, a vicious grip buried in my hair.

  I do not need my scrying bowl to see a bad moon rising, its bloated outline cresting the horizon to leer above my head.

  And even clasped between my husband’s hands, mine begin to shake.

  “Antoine, listen to me.” I gird my tone with steel and search his eyes, trying to impress the truth into my kind yet feckless husband, whose downfall would surely spell my own. “I cannot be poor again. I would rather die, do you understand, than return to the squalor from which I came. Do you hear me, Antoine? I would rather die.”

  Because, where would I go if he loses everything of ours? What choice would there be for me, besides the poorhouse or the streets?

  If he cannot find us a way out of this, I will lose even this small plot of freedom that I’ve staked out for myself.

  “Oh, Catherine.” Antoine draws me close, and though we are almost of a height, I allow him to tuck my head into his neck. “I promise it will never come to that. I am only sorry to have distressed you with this at all, and so needlessly!”

  When I shudder against him with a restrained sob, he holds me gently away from him, attempting a reassuring smile.

  “Why don’t you go out again tonight, divert yourself with your friend? I will review our ledgers, make certain that all is just as well as I know it shall be in the end. Trust me, chérie. We may not be … exactly as other unions are. But you are my cherished wife. And I would not let any harm come to you on my account.”

  And what am I to do, I think despairingly as I look into his eyes, if you step over the precipice and lead us both into ruin because you cannot help yourself ?

  Because I know, as surely as I know that I owe my life to Agnesot, that it is I who will pay for my husband’s folly, as has every wastrel’s wife that came before me.

  Then I remember the weight of the little coin bag Marie slipped into my purse the night before—payment for my session with the nameless lady, which Marie insisted that I keep for having done all the work. With that thought, the frantic gallop of my heart subsides a little in my chest.

  Perhaps there is another way I might yet begin protecting myself.

  The next night, I fashion myself into a proper fortune-teller.

  Asking Marie to let me read for another of her new clients is even simpler than I had hoped. She is amused by how a single taste has whetted my appetite for selling prophecy, and though I fear that I may be encroaching on her territory, she assures me that she has amassed a reliable enough clientele that ceding one more newcomer to me will hardly affect her livelihood.

  But if I am to make my own livelihood of this, I know it will take much more than just the sight. If life has taught me anything, it is that folk with means yearn to feel as though they have taken some clever advantage. Spent their coin uncommonly well in comparison to their less-savvy peers.

  So I must learn to sell myself, to wear mysticism like an alluring second skin. To present the face of a true divineress.

  When Marie’s gentleman client meets me at the haven, I know just what illusion I have conjured up for him. I’ve draped a black lace veil over my curls, allowing only the stubbornest of ringlets to spring free by my temples. Thick kohl lines my eyes, and a much darker shade of carmine than is stylish stains my lips. I keep my face both taut and expressionless, teeming with possibility as I reach confidently for his hand. As though I am some oracle he has sought out on a mountaintop, poised on the breathless brink of revelation. Lovely and untouchable as she is secretive.

  “And who might you be, mademoiselle?” His lips purse petulantly even as he allows me to take his hand. I asked Marie to make herself scarce while I read for him, though I know she watches from the shadows, ready to swoop in should I require her help. And there is also burly Alexandre to call upon, the rough who ensures that the haven’s hush remains unbroken by customers displeased by their purchased prophecies. “I thought it was to be Mademoiselle Bosse who—”

  “Mademoiselle Bosse is, alas, indisposed tonight,” I interrupt, keeping my voice soft but unassailable, leaving no room for contradiction. “But I am her trusted colleague, Madame Catherine Monvoisin. Should you be unhappy with my services, Mademoiselle Bosse will read for you for free once she has recovered. But I assure you, messire, I am every bit her equal. You will not require a second reading once you have heard mine.”

  He blinks at my assertive tone, taken aback—exactly as I want. I mean to unsettle this man, set him back on his heels and tantalize him all at once.

  I mean to make him remember me.

  “I suppose that will do, for now,” he allows, his smooth hand relaxing in my grip. An arrogant languor overtakes his patrician face even as his eyes spark with anticipation. Though he has offered her only an alias, Marie believes him so highborn that he may even have grown up in Versailles’s gilded halls. Cosseted enough, at any rate, to render him mostly intrigued rather than alarmed by unexpected novelties.

  And why should he not be intrigued, I think a trifle bitterly, when life has offered him nothing but pleasantness and opportunities?

  Yet some real need boils in him, seething just beneath his pampered surface like a sulfurous spring. I can feel it tugging at me even before I properly begin. I have barely bent my head over his palm, following the furrows of his lines, when my nape starts to knell, tolling like a rung bell with the rising of the sight.

  “Ever since you were old enough to know it, your father has favored your half brother,” I begin, speaking the vision aloud for him even as it unfolds behind my eyes. “The silver-tongued son of your father’s second wife. Though you are his better in every aspect, from riding to falconry to the keeping of the estate’s books, it seems nothing can unseat him in your father’s fond regard. And with every passing year he burrows deeper under your skin, lodged like a stubborn thorn festering in your side.”

  I can hear the breath snag in his throat, bright shock flaring in his eyes. He clearly expected his fortune told in broader strokes, was unprepared for such a specific truth.

  “It is … Yes!” the lord exclaims. “That is Bernard, pardieu, that is him precisely! Go on, girl, what else do you see?”

  Though it galls me to hear this uppity nobleman call me “girl,” I set it to the side.

  “You thought you had time to prove yourself his better,” I continue, tracing my fingers over his palm in ornate designs. “But now your father lingers on his deathbed, and your brother does not leave his side, whispering sweetened venom in the old man’s ear. Angling to steal the estate out from under you—along with your sire’s title, if he can manage it.”

  The lord breathes raggedly, a savage fury twisting his handsome face.

  “So he is plotting to usurp my inheritance, the weaseling blackguard,” he growls through clenched teeth. “Well, he and his grasping chit of a mother cannot have what is mine by right, he will not take—”

  “But he will, messire,” I interrupt softly, spearing his eyes with mine. Because I can see the possibility of this loss looming in his future, like a long shadow cast upon a spreading fog. “Even now he is telling your father that you have failed him as a son, that you harbor no true filial love. Convincing him to redraw his will and testament, so that your brother may properly honor his legacy once he is gone.”

  The young heir’s lips compress into a vicious line. He swears under his breath and slams a bunched fist to the table’s surface, rattling the candle and his iron tankard. I manage to retain my impassive facade only because I saw this outburst coming, but the patrons at other tables startle at the sound. They cast us curious glances from the corners of their eyes, which only pleases me the more. Let them wonder what it is I am telling him that stokes his passions so.

  Let them wonder what I might be telling them, were they in his pl
ace.

  “Then I must put a stop to his scheming,” he mutters, a flurry of dark thoughts chasing one another across his face. “If he feels so very free to plot against me, why should I not do the same?”

  “Perhaps you should, at that, messire,” I agree placidly, flicking one shoulder in a shrug. “It does sound as though he has brought a reckoning upon himself.”

  His eyes latch ferociously on mine, though he takes care to corral his impassioned tone, shooting a wary glance over his shoulder.

  “He certainly has, the ingratiating weevil. I … have heard of substances that might help at times like this. Poudre de succession, for one.” He lowers his voice even further, lifting a fine brow. “And if I should ask you to procure some for me?”

  A bitter chill whirls through my veins at how readily the request falls from his lips. I know what inheritance powder is, of course. Though she would never sell such a thing, I have heard Marie mention it, and Agnesot’s grimoire contains many recipes for occult poisons meant to rid one of ham-fisted husbands and pestilential relatives. But it shocks me to hear it nonetheless, when I had been expecting something less insidious. Perhaps a duel at dawn to settle the brothers’ differences, or counter-stratagems to regain his father’s esteem. Nothing, in any event, so malicious and sly as arsenic.

  The young heir’s eyes narrow calculatingly at my hesitation. “I could make it worth your while, Madame Monvoisin,” he offers in a whisper. “If you do not trade in such alchemy yourself, I would pay you for only a name. A reputable and discreet source for what I seek.”

  I waver for a moment, sorely tempted by the prospect of additional coin; surely the alchemist Marie uses for her tinctures and abortifacients would have something deadlier at hand. But I find I cannot bring myself to go that far. His wretched brother’s death, should it come to pass, will not weigh on my soul.

  “I’m afraid I do not deal in poisons,” I demur, shaking my head. “Too illicit a business for my tastes, you understand.”

  The amiable facade disappears in an instant, like a candle guttered by a fearsome wind.

  “You would refuse me?” he demands in a low, incredulous hiss laced with rage. “You, only a two-bit soothsayer without even a reputation to her name? Do you not realize how I could destroy you, with no more than a word in the right ear?”

  I meet his eyes with a steely equanimity I do not feel, my stomach flopping like a landed fish. But if my spine is too fragile to bear me up against this overindulged brute of a peer, then I will surely never succeed in making myself a name.

  “And do you not realize you are speaking to a divineress, who sees truths such as few others could possibly fathom?” I ask, lifting a cool eyebrow. “What else might I be capable of, do you not wonder? Other things … less pleasant, perhaps, than a stolen glimpse of your future?”

  His eyes narrow, but I can see the fear that also flits within them, like fish glinting deep beneath the surface of a pond. “Are you truly threatening me? Surely you cannot be so brazen, especially when I have yet to pay you.”

  “No, messire. I am merely asking you to consider whether antagonizing me might not be in our best mutual interest.”

  Though I have mentioned nothing so overt as hexes, as his eyes rove a trifle fearfully over my carefully constructed sorceress’s facade, I can almost see the notion of dangerous magics take hold of his mind. Which means it is time to take another, less aggressive tack.

  “And perhaps you will require another consultation in the future,” I add, gentling my tone a shade. “Would it not be better, for the both of us, if I were still inclined to grant you one at such a time?”

  “Very well, then,” he grinds out, wariness winning out over pique. As he balefully drops a clinking money bag onto the table before he pushes back and rises, a warm bloom of triumph opens in my chest.

  “It was my pleasure, messire,” I say, allowing a sphinx-like smile to curve my lips at his continued glower as he turns away. “And should you have a friend in similar need … please do not hesitate to tell them that they might find me here.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The Skeleton and the Magician

  After the reading, I am far too galvanized to go straight home, my skin still abuzz with lingering excitement. Instead, Marie and I strike off for La Pomme Noire, her arm looped through mine as we traipse down the cité’s night-shrouded narrow streets.

  But when we reach the Pomme, we find our tumbledown tavern nearly deserted, the sagging tables bereft of their usual complement of merrymakers and scalawags. Exchanging puzzled looks, Marie and I sidle up to the bar, where the solitary serving wench fills our tankards in a sullen huff.

  “Where is everyone, Jeanne?” I ask her, taking a bracing slug of abysmally cheap wine. “I’ve never seen it so quiet in here.”

  “They are all out back,” Jeanne grouses, irritably wiping down a goblet. “Some new magician is putting a show on in our courtyard, have you not heard? It’s only been the talk of the cité for weeks. Stephane left me to man the till, the heartless canaille. So now everyone will have seen Lesage’s magic but me.”

  “Lesage … I have heard of him,” Marie says slowly, her eyes agleam with interest. “A young magician newly returned to Paris after some years spent abroad. They call him an unparalleled prodigy of minor magic, though I shall believe that only when I see it.”

  “Then what are we waiting for?” I demand, tossing back my tankard before I seize her by the arm and drag her toward the tavern’s back door. “Let us go see him for ourselves!”

  We tumble together out into the courtyard, where it seems half the cité has gathered to watch the show. The crowd presses in against us from all sides, a shifting crush of ale-rank breath and unwashed flesh. Even standing on our tiptoes, we can barely see the wooden stage that has been hastily erected against the crumbling stone wall in the back.

  “Well, this obviously won’t do,” Marie mutters, then raises her voice. “You there; move, if you please.”

  Disgruntled rumblings and mumbled oaths die almost as quickly as they’re uttered, as soon as those being elbowed meet her basilisk glare. Marie’s aptitude with her stilettos is well known across the cité; none of these spectators are quite so attached to their spots, it seems, as to risk being speared between the ribs for them.

  It is not until we reach the crowd’s lip that I hear the music.

  I have seen minor magic shows before, of course, though most have left me cold. Even the most elaborate rely on benign deceits, sleight of hand, and cheap trickery of the eye. Most magicians keep up a steady stream of patter to assist in their misdirection, and wear billowing robes to conceal their multitude of props.

  Compared to them, the magician Lesage might as well be a shadow cast onto the strange, pale smoke that roils across the stage.

  He does not speak at all, relying instead on his accompaniment. A trio of black-robed violinists plays for him just beside the stage, their faces hidden by hooked plague doctor masks, their hands encased in black gloves. All three keep uncannily still even as they coax a macabre, meandering song from their strings. Their heads do not so much as twitch, and even the gusts of summer wind seem to barely stir the heavy pooling of their robes.

  And yet they are not nearly so captivating as the magician himself.

  He wears black, slim-fitting garb that matches his unfashionably short hair, which is inky as a raven’s wing and cropped into feathery spikes. Even the ruffles that cascade above his trim waistcoat are basalt black. Though matching ruffles at the wrists are customary, he wears his shirtsleeves plain and rucked up to the elbows, leaving him with seemingly nowhere to hide the sly tools of his trade.

  Yet he conjures an endless spool of scarlet ribbon out of thin air nonetheless.

  And he makes the most arresting faces as he loops the blood-red ribbon around his wrists, a quicksilver deluge of them. Sly bemusement melts into rakishness, which gives way to sheer confounded glee, as though he himself cannot comprehend his own
astonishing legerdemain.

  “How is he doing that?” I ask Marie, thoroughly baffled. “I don’t understand.”

  She shakes her head, her lips parted with wonder. She is so lovely that for a moment I cannot even look back to the stage, held captive by the unguarded softness of her profile, the enraptured luster of her eyes, even the way her paintbrush lashes swoop down to her cheeks with every blink. My best friend is always pretty, but rarely quite so overtly tender. The sight of it stirs something dangerous to life; a tenderness of my own that I prefer to keep firmly bricked away and hidden.

  But for once, I let myself give in, reaching down between us to thread our fingers together.

  She squeezes back, casting me a slantwise smile without shifting her eyes from the stage. “I’ve no idea, chérie,” she replies in a whisper. “You know I have nimble fingers myself, but I cannot say I have ever seen anything quite like this.”

  As though he has heard us, the magician’s gaze rakes our way. His dark eyes snare mine for a single heart-stopping moment, glimmering as if with unspoken promise.

  This is only the beginning, they seem to say. And you cannot begin to imagine what comes next.

  I lift my free hand to my plum-stained bottom lip, coyly tracing its outline as I wait with bated breath. Then he tips me a roguish wink and flings the mass of ribbons up—where they burst into a shower of petals so dark they must be either deepest crimson or truest black.

  As they rain over him and fill his waiting hands, he tosses them up again, even higher above his head. There they transmute through some unknown alchemy into an unkindness of ravens, cawing shrilly as they wing their way above the cries of the crowd below. I wheel around to track their progress as they flap above the courtyard’s wall and disappear into the dark beyond, where Notre Dame’s colossal silhouette blots out the stars.