quiet for a military encampment the morning after the party. I lay on my back in my sleep roll, breath a fog above me. Madeline’s soft snores were loud in the silence, a comforting reminder that she was alive and hadn’t been swept off for treason in the night, and the others in the tent shifted and slowly snored themselves out of slumber. I crawled out of bed and got dressed as quietly as I could. Outside the tent, Louis, Allard’s hack, paced back and forth.
“There was a poster on the opening to my tent this morning.” He glanced around. There was no one about. There should have been people working, talking, preparing to switch shifts. “His Majesty’s personal guards came through and ripped it down.”
“A poster of what?” I closed my eyes and tried to feel out the magic being used in the camp. Nothing—as if Lord Sun had taken a hand and swept it all away. Someone was making it harder for noonday artists to channel magic. “Pièrre and Waleran are doing something to prevent us from channeling.”
I had heard of battle magic’s various uses but never studied them. Only nobles studying to become chevaliers had access to those texts.
“They’re going to blame hacks. That’s why I’m here. Make sure you’ve got your things in order if they question you.” Louis exhaled. “What if they try to scry the past to see who did it? Whoever did it will be in danger.”
His black eyes caught mine. I ducked.
“Scrying the past is exceptionally hard,” I said, “and so far as I know, Estrel Charron is the only one who can do it accurately right now.”
They would probably ask her, but surely someone with her background wouldn’t turn Laurel in.
“Small blessings for traitors, ay?” Louis nodded for me to follow him. “I need your help with rounds—you can adjust alchemistry, right?”
“Sure.”
The low hum of whispering filled the infirmary. This early, it was all common soldiers and hacks. Louis led me to a soldier in one of the middle beds. I sat next to him.
I had only spoken to Louis a few times before this morning. At university when Physician Allard had returned to pick his new hack, Louis had spent the day answering students’ questions about the physician’s work. Laurence had taken us into Delest that day. Louis’s constant channeling for Allard had worn down his hands so much that he almost always wore a pair of dark brown leather gloves the same tone as his skin. He had said he was going to retire soon.
He was only twenty-five.
“Have you heard about Laurel?” Louis asked quietly.
“Incompletely,” I whispered back. “Our tent isn’t near anyone else’s.”
“The camp down in Adamesnil is refusing to work. Soldiers included,” he said. “We’ve got too many chevaliers here compared to the others—they’d crush us—but none of the other hacks at any of the camps are working.”
One of Allard’s other hacks leaned over Louis’s shoulder and muttered, “His Majesty found one in his tent and one left behind during the gathering last night. That was only nobles.”
I whistled. “Good.”
“No hacks, no soldiers, no war,” Louis said. He hummed and pulled away from his patient. “I like Laurel more every day.”
The infirmary flap opened. Charles, a beacon of orange, looked around. Louis stiffened and the other hacks fell silent.
“Everyone’s fine without the noonday arts here, right?” Charles asked, coming over to Louis who nodded and bowed his head. “Good. Thank you.” He beckoned to me. “Laurence is about to kill Pièrre and Waleran for doing this, so we have to go distract him.”
Our moods had been tense for weeks, but Charles had his lips rolled together to keep from smiling as he led us to Laurence’s tent.
“Some exceptionally brave person had the nerve to put one of those lies on the back of His Majesty’s chair last night while no one was paying attention,” Charles said. “Laurence is furious because Henry thinks he must know something and is covering for Laurel, and then Waleran decided to stop anyone from using the noonday arts near His Majesty, and now Laurence and Pièrre are furious at him. It’s been a long morning.”
“The other camps are refusing to work, though,” I said. “It’s working.”
When we walked into Laurence’s tent, only Sébastien was there. He was disastrously put together and wringing his hands.
“They’re questioning Laurence right now,” he said. “And once they are sufficiently sure he has no involvement in this plot, they’re having him contact Mademoiselle Charron to scry who