his cheek curved white against his newly sun-browned skin, and his smile was wide and kind.
“Foudriard!” she exclaimed happily. “When Chandon said ‘magicians,’ I didn’t expect to find you here.”
“Not a magician, merely a steadfast supporter,” he said with a bow. “Baroness—I mean, Vicomtesse—it is a pleasure. Chandon would have been devastated had you not come. There is, as I’m certain he’s told you, much work to be done.”
“Foudriard will not let me rest for even a minute,” Chandon said affectionately. “But he is right—we face great dangers as a result of this new anti-magic law and must work hard to protect ourselves. The first step is—”
“Chandon, do not be ridiculous!” Roland laughed. “We have nothing to worry about.”
“There you are wrong, monsieur.” The quiet authority in Foudriard’s face brooked no argument. “Among the people, the fear of magicians grows, and the king has just shown us he intends to wield that fear as a weapon. For many, what magicians do matters less than what they’re believed to be capable of doing. The more afraid and distrustful everyone becomes, the more people will cheer the king and his Comité.”
In her mind’s eye, Camille saw again the fight in the Place de Grève, the blood welling dark around the butcher’s knife, the reverberating screams of the mob as it called for death to all magicians. Imagine if they had known the magic she’d loosed to write the pamphlets? It would have been her in a lake of her own blood. The hatred was ancient, but not extinguished. It had taken only a spark to rekindle it.
“To make things worse, France’s borders may soon tighten,” Foudriard predicted. “Even when émigrés fled France after the fall of the Bastille, there was talk of restricting aristocrats’ movements and seizing their assets so they could not raise armies for a counterrevolution. It’s only a matter of time before they do the same for magicians.”
“Magicians will then be trapped in France with no escape,” Camille said. “Jailed, murdered, or forced to stop working magic…” What would she do if it came to that?
“Exactly,” Chandon agreed. “We magicians will need a way to protect ourselves. And a way out. The Comité is confiscating books on magic and reading them. If we do not stay one step ahead, they will devise ways to catch us.” He raised an eyebrow at Roland, as if to say: Understood? “But before I tell you what I believe we must do, there’s one more magician I wish you to meet. I’ve searched everywhere for someone with his knowledge. He is a bookseller on the Île de la Cité. Delouvet?”
From behind the bookcases stepped another young man. He was thin and as narrow as the spine of a book. Every piece of clothing he wore was fashioned in shades of white and cream: elegant, with not a spot of dust on them. His skin was so pale it was nearly translucent; violet shadows fanned out under his light brown eyes. Even his hair was so fair that it was nearly white. Among the medieval furnishings of the room, he resembled nothing more than a fashionable ghost.
He blinked slowly at all of them, as if emerging from a dream, and bowed. “Blaise Delouvet, your obedient servant, et cetera, et cetera.”
Roland scrutinized him through his monocle and seemed to find him wanting. “How can a bookseller do anything?”
“Roland, you try my patience,” Chandon warned. “Do you remember the protection I spoke of half a minute ago? You are looking at it.”
“I bring you a solution from the past,” Blaise Delouvet replied. “All you need to do, Marquis, is listen.” From a nearby table, he picked up a small book bound in mahogany-colored leather. Tiny gold suns surrounded the title: Journal of the Burning Years, 1678–1682 and beneath was written: Laurent de Parte. “Monsieur de Parte, the Marquis de Saint-Clair, lived during the Affair of the Poisons. Then it was Louis XIV who purged magicians and tried them in a special court, the Chambre Ardente—the terrifying Burning Court that gives his memoir its name. A time unfortunately like our own.” With a genteel cough, he cleared his throat and began to read.
Château de Puymartin
December 2, 1679
Having fled Versailles after the king’s arrests, I have now returned home. For one week, I have been closed up in my library, determined to find something that will keep us safe from the king’s infernal magic hunters.
My reasoning thus far …
Premise the first: In order to save their own lives,