conversation out here when no one’s around.”
He straightened, face in shadows. “Why is that, Madame?”
“Your laurel leaf pin,” I said. “It’s a lovely idea. I was wondering where you got it?”
Vivienne had taught me many things, but above all else, she had taught me how to speak to other people in compliments and half-truths.
“It’s one of a kind, I’m afraid.” His arms crossed behind his back. “How did you see it? I can’t recall having made your acquaintance, Madame.”
“I was scrying, and I saw something bad.” I clenched my hands in the folds of my skirt and dropped my voice. “In the midnight arts, it’s safer to share power than to hoard it. That’s probably true for other things too. Like information.”
“This is too risky,” he said.
I cut off whatever other complaints he had. “Some things are worth the risk, and I think things are about to get real risky.”
“Wait here.” He crossed the distance between us and stuck the laurel pin to my shoulder. There was a pause between him reaching out and him pinning it to me, as if he thought I’d run, but I was winter. I endured. “You scryed something bad?”
“Yes,” I said. “And I want to help stop it.”
“Don’t move,” he said. “You might have company soon.”
The guard slipped through the gate. The key clicked twice, locking behind him. I slunk back a bit, into the boughs of an apple tree, and the soft crack of underbrush behind me made me lean into the trunk. A tall shadow, backlit by the light from the estate, stepped into the clearing before the fence, and the familiar scents of yeast and sulfur drifted to me. Yvonne, hair covered in a dark hood, lifted her face to the gate and looked around. What good company to have.
Her shoulders tensed, lifting up to her ears. The soldier had told me I’d have company, and she was getting anxious. Talking to her couldn’t hurt.
“Yvonne?” I stepped into the clearing.
She spun, skirts a swirl of silver and dusk. “What?”
“Hi,” I said with a laugh. A real one. “I might’ve interrupted your meeting.”
“What are you doing here?” She crossed to me and fell short of touching my arm. “You can’t be here.”
“I have to help,” I said. She hadn’t touched me because I was Emilie des Marais to her. “I want to help, and I scryed something that led me here.”
She didn’t know me. Her head tilted to the side, the starlight flickering fires in her brown eyes. “Emilie…”
She didn’t even know my real name.
The gate creaked, and we both spun around. The guard had returned, and with him was a stout person, hood drawn so low I could see nothing of their face. The guard let them through the gate and nodded to Yvonne. She swallowed.
“They are who you want to talk to,” the guard told me. To the newcomer, he muttered, “This is Emilie des Marais.”
“So,” they said, lifting their head and not pushing back their hood. They’d a wide nose and hooded eyes, blue a softer shade than spring skies, and their clothes were the slightly worn of someone who worked every day in a shop. Dust and wrinkles, a few good tears, but mostly just ink stains at the wrists. “You’re a comtesse who wants to help?”
Their tone was not promising.
“Laurel,” Yvonne said quickly. “She’s noble, but she’s all right.”
“That’s the best compliment anyone’s ever given me,” I said. “You’re Laurel?”
“We are all the laurels because our king and his nobles rest on us,” said Laurel. They brought their hands up, their leather gloves the sort embroiderers and tailors wore with thimbles in the tips. “What did you see?”
“War,” I said, and Yvonne stiffened. “A chevalier with a hack, but they were in all their armor and in a field fighting. Didn’t look like normal training.”
“That’s fair specific for divination,” they said. “Sounds like a lie.”
“Scrying; I can’t divine. The chevalier told their hacks they had to be prepared by the end of the month. I’m not the best midnight artist, but I’m not sitting by while people die.” Emilie hadn’t written back after I’d asked what to do if Estrel found me out. If I was getting hanged, might as well make it for something bigger than impersonation or thievery. “I can’t divine or leave school, but I can scry. I can be useful.”
“You could hear them speaking?” Laurel asked.
I nodded.
Yvonne cleared her throat. “She can see arts after they’re done. She’s the one who wrote that