was not, though.”
He had foregone his orange apprentice coat for an evergreen suit with white shirt that brought out the freckles along his collarbone and didn’t clash spectacularly with his red hair. Sébastien had told me it was the first thing Charles bought when he had been paid for his work as an apprentice. He had also demanded I not mock Charles for it. As if I would be so ill-mannered as to resort to insulting appearances.
“Yes,” I said. “I don’t think anyone could feel less than nice in it, though; even in the nicest dresses, I always feel more like a turnip pretending to be a person.”
“And here I always thought carrot.” Charles tucked a small journal into his coat pocket. He scowled when I laughed. “I have to have something to do during this, and you will not be able to convince me you wouldn’t do the same thing.”
I had done the same thing many times, much to my mother’s chagrin.
I smoothed out the lines of his coat. “Translating ancient Deme anatomy texts during a party?”
“Sébastien and I make a game of it,” he said and swallowed.
I leaned away from him and nodded. It was much better than that orange coat. “May I read it when you’re done?”
“Why? Going to correct my translation?”
“Only if yours is very bad.” I smiled and handed him a small vial of orange water I carried to clear my head after work. “Here—no one wants to talk to someone who smells like an infirmary.”
He laughed, openmouthed, and tipped a few drops onto his fingers.
“You’re late!” Laurence burst into the infirmary, words a hissing whisper, and beckoned for Charles to join him. “You are not getting out of this if I’m not.”
Laurence du Montimer wore red velvet so dark, I might have mistaken it for black had I thought him inconsiderate enough to wear mourning colors to a celebration. The opal earring was not alone tonight—a collection of heirlooms glittered on his fingers in golds and reds, and a pair of dark brown leather gloves hid his hands.
Charles hummed. “If there are not at least two books hidden somewhere on his person…”
“Only two?” I laughed. It was nice, pretending I wasn’t about to commit treason and maybe die. I whispered, “Be careful.”
“You too,” he whispered back and touched two fingers to his heart.
Madeline, grave-faced, found me in the infirmary several minutes later. We were not leaving a poster in the infirmary. We had only three—one for His Majesty’s tent, one for the tent where the chevaliers held their meetings, and one for the post that nearly everyone passed every morning when walking about the camp. Our additions to this rebellion were mostly fear tactics since so many here were noble. It was the other camps that were crucial.
However, His Majesty had designed this war to tear us apart and stop us from working together. To stop him and this war, the soldiers would have to all agree not to fight. Only then could we hope to beat the chevaliers.
Luckily, though, Laurence’s tent was near the edge, and we stopped in there and lit a few lanterns. Neither of us had any experience with the illusionary arts, and so we set up two coats to make it look as if we were studying. The setup cast two us-shaped shadows against the tent side.
We slunk out the back of the tent when no one was around.
The posters were heavy in my coat pocket. I had clipped the seam and slid them between the two panels of fabric for the coat, so they were hidden and easy to pull out. It was well after dusk, the darkness seeping across the horizon bleak and complete in this new moon night, and I walked with Madeline to the edge of camp toward where Gabriel had died. We stopped every now and then when people passed, pausing to look busy. There weren’t many people on this side of camp. It was closer to Kalthorne.
A fly, young and golden, landed on my arm. I slapped it away, shuddering.
“We’re close,” I whispered.
It was almost comical—two hacks in black coats creeping through the bushes on bent knees, gilded flies flickering through the trees like hungry lightning bugs—the two of us crawling through the dark bushes toward a cloth tent of gold and silver. There were five guards now, and we stopped on the outskirts. They paced around the tent.
“This complicates matters,” I whispered. I had expected three.
Part of our job here was to