Coline smiled. “The des Marais family hasn’t been to court in ages. I quite like that about them, and now I’m curious. Emilie, what is it you want?”
Country girls from Vaser weren’t supposed to want. Country girls from Vaser who were so bad at simply being that even their parents didn’t like them anymore definitely weren’t supposed to want. We were supposed to give.
“I want to study the midnight arts—divination and scrying and illusions. I want to be like Estrel Charron. I want to be the best.”
“What’s stopping you?” Coline asked.
She didn’t understand. No one but people with money had time to be scholars and geniuses. They didn’t have to do anything but what they wanted and pay people to do the rest.
“Nothing,” I said. “Nothing is going to stop me.”
Five
Emilie
The road to university was spotted with merchants. Robin-red packs wobbled atop shoulders and horses, the pungent taste of alchemistry ingredients burning every time a bit of sunlight slipped through the cloth and struck the brown jars. All schools started during the same two-week stretch, allowing those who weren’t handpicked to prove their worth with exams and demonstrations. Fresh-faced priests returning to their churches and young apprentices returning to the chevaliers they trained under walked the road. The first king of Demeine had combined each noble family’s soldiers into a singular military when he took over decades ago—it was how he had been strong enough to become king—and over time, the noble artists who led had adopted the title chevalier. They studied the noonday arts at university before training with the soldiers in Serre.
The university trained a number of people in a multitude of subjects, but it was the medical school, the department that combined the physical knowledge—surgery—with the ethereal magic—physicianry—of the noonday arts, that employed the most applicants. Those without the appropriate family or connections could be assistants for surgeons or hacks for physicians. As artist Emilie Boucher, Annette’s surname would do well enough and using her first would be confusing. I could only be a hack.
“Women can’t do the noonday arts. It’s too dangerous. Their bodies will wear out, and Demeine will die out,” the old masters of magic in Demeine said, refusing to train women in the noonday arts and acting shocked when women died attempting to study them. “See? It killed her. It’s not natural and can’t be done.”
I didn’t need to be a diviner to solve that prophecy.
The head physician, Physician Pièrre du Guay, had to need a hack, and if I proved my worth to him, he would have to realize he was wrong. I would become a physician. They would have no choice but to accept me.
“Clear the road!”
The shout startled me out of my thoughts. Hoofbeats thundered behind me, bearing down, and I sidestepped left. Annette’s skirts tangled around my legs, their thick presence an unfamiliar nuisance, and a chestnut-brown horse cantered past me. The rider was a long-legged slump of a white boy with a smear of inky hair tangled in a half braid. The road before him was crowded with carts and travelers, the people unable to move aside due to the bridge ahead. At least the noble had the decency to stop instead of demanding passage first.
“My apologies.”
Something blew hot air down the back of my neck.
I spun, and a horse nipped at the shoulder of my pack. I clucked, no stranger to nosy rides, and nudged the horse away from my arm. It was a lovely seal-brown flecked with white, and the golden gear gracing its elegant head only made it prettier.
“Salt, stop it.” The rider was clearly noble as well, and he patted Salt’s neck till the horse let out a low-pitched nicker. “He’s a terrible glutton who doesn’t understand everything isn’t for him.”
I swept my skirts back and curtsied. The people of Marais never talked to me unless I spoke first, so I stayed quiet.
“I am sorry about him and my companion,” he said, bowing his head slightly. “Salt didn’t bite you, did he?”
“No, Monsieur. I shall make it to university intact.” I stayed low, legs already bored of the position, and ran through all the noble families my mother had taught me. “Thank you for your concern.”
I let the sound of the last letter hang in the air, so he knew I was waiting for his name and title and not being rude, and he raised the fingers of his right hand. A quick dismissal of propriety.
“University? My second year of medical school begins today.”