I entered, but her eyes caught the light as they followed me, watching as I pulled out the lockbox and laid Alaine’s necklace into it. Coline turned the page and sighed.
“You lied to Isabelle,” she said. “Why?”
Her tone was even. Maman always got quiet when she got angry, and Coline seemed the same sort.
“Do you have any siblings?” I asked.
I knew she didn’t, but I wanted to draw her through my thoughts like how Vivienne taught us mathematics.
“You know I don’t,” she said. “The only family members I don’t hate are my aunt and cousin, but I’m no longer permitted to speak to them.”
I tugged at the edges of my clothes and eased myself out of them. There was still a thrum in the air, like seeing someone scry made me feel, and I rubbed the back of my neck. “Is there anyone that you love? Any sort of love?”
“Yes,” said Coline, but she said it so softly, I might have missed it.
“Have you watched them die?”
“No, and Isabelle shouldn’t watch that either.” Coline closed the book and set it aside. “We have to make sure it doesn’t happen.”
Coline came up to me and turned me around, and she undid the tight braids I’d knotted my hair up into that morning. We were meant to learn to help one another. I wondered, sometimes, why some rich and noble students needed the reminder. Coline dropped the pins from my hair on my bed.
“You don’t have to say who you watched die,” she said very gently, more gently than I thought she was capable of being, and squeezed my arm. She didn’t let go. “But a lie of kindness is not always a good lie.”
So she was Mademoiselle Crime and Ethics now?
“What are we going to do?” she asked.
“We’re the troublesome girls. I imagine us doing something wouldn’t be wholly surprising.” I turned to face her. “He’s worn down, but why would they wear him down that much and not have a physician heal him?”
Coline had lived in Serre for a time. She knew more than me.
“If he disobeyed or betrayed them.” She shook her head. “I have a cousin who is a physician, but I haven’t spoken to him in ages.”
“Physician du Guay wore down one of his hacks on purpose after finding out he was a part of Laurel,” I said. I had only been able to read that letter from Emilie once. “We need to find out if that’s what’s happening to Gabriel or if it’s something else.”
She nodded. “How? We’re stuck here.”
“What if I told you I had agreed to help some people scry,” I said slowly. “And that maybe it’s related to that?”
A hack kid serving a chevalier would make a great spy.
Her hands fisted at her sides. “Some people?”
“People trying to help Demeine.”
“If you told me that,” said Coline, “then I would like you much more than I did yesterday, and I would say we have a lot of work to do. Laurel had gained quite a lot of ground in Segance and was working with Madame Royale Nicole until the king arrested them all. I was lucky enough to escape. Others weren’t. We can help them.”
I froze. “Wait. How much did you like me yesterday?”
“Doesn’t matter.” She waved the question away. “Tomorrow, when Isabelle is back with us, and you’re less whatever is happening with you, and we’re on our own, we’re figuring this out. We help. Even if we break the rules?”
What was breaking a few more rules compared to this? “We help.”
We slept fitfully. Coline snored as she always did, her presence a comfort. I wasn’t used to sleeping in silence, the root cellar always alive with sounds from upstairs, and Isabelle had become the sounds in the night for me. She slept rarely, sketching by the light of a hooded lantern most nights, the pages a soft rustle in the back of my mind, the sighs of her breathing like the wind through the cracks of the house I’d always known. There were no cracks here, at least none that I could hear. Money bought silence.
It unnerved me.
I woke up at dawn. Isabelle was only just returning from the infirmary, and I slipped from my bed onto hers. She sat, lacing our fingers together.
“Our father was sick before he died,” Isabelle whispered. “I was seven, and our aunt and uncle told Gabriel and me he was getting better. That we shouldn’t worry. Everything would be fine. So we didn’t worry, and then