He nods, but I can’t tell if he believes me.
“Clients ask Belles to do many things,” I add.
“I suppose.”
“What would you do?”
“People have duties. She’s been tasked—like you—with a massive responsibility, and has vowed to fulfill a specific obligation. But none of those obligations require risking one’s life. That is the role of a soldier. Is your sister changing professions?”
“Of course not.”
“Then she can set boundaries,” he says.
“That’s another way of saying no. Can you say no to the House of War?”
“Soldiers take a vow to protect Orléans to the death. I can’t, but your sister can.”
I want to tell him that refusing Du Barry, the Beauty Minister, clients, and most of all the queen or Sophia, feels impossible.
“No one is a prisoner.” He takes a sip of tea. “Even you have the power to make your own choices.”
His words burn and crackle like the logs on the hearth.
33
Today is Maman’s birthday. All the mothers’ birthdays. Forty days after the last warm day, deep into the windy season. I set her mortuary tablets on my vanity. I place her Belle-book beside them and trace my finger over her portrait on the cover.
“Maman, what would you do?” I whisper. “Help the queen?”
I wait to hear her voice.
Silence.
I open her Belle-book and comb through entries that mention the queen. It’s so strange, knowing that my mother dealt with the same queen every day that I deal with now. I wonder how Maman felt about Her Majesty. I wonder if the queen liked her.
Date: Day 96 at court
The queen was angry today. More than I’d ever seen before. The newsies buzzed about her inability to get pregnant. When I went to her chambers she had all the papers strewn over her tables, the ink scattering and reassembling, hollering their scandalous headlines. The tattlers and newspapers had released cameo portraits of the queen’s sisters and their newborns. They say she is desperate to birth an heir. The worst of them claims she might replace the king, or use another man to father her bloodline. Everyone at court knew that she preferred the company of her lover, Lady Zurie Pelletier, but securing an heir had become her cabinet’s top priority. She felt the pressure.
I sat in the corner of her chambers for three hourglasses. I waited for her to tell me she was ready for beauty work. She paced so furiously I thought she might put a hole in the fur rug beneath her feet. She threw vases and Belle-products and her own shoes. When exasperated and out of things to pummel against the wall, she turned to me and said, “Get rid of my anger. Make it go away. He won’t lie with me. He says my temper is too much. He says I lack patience with him because he’s not Zurie.”
She yanked me from my chair and dragged me to her treatment salon. I pressed my fingers along her spine, pushing my Manner arcana deep inside her. For hours and hours she had me drain her temper from her, like how the leeches remove the toxins from our blood. She never felt like it was gone. I worked on her for three days straight. She wouldn’t let me stop for meals or to rest. Leeches crawled over my limbs to help me push through, and I had to eat pastille cakes and skin-color pastes to quiet my stomach.
This can’t be Queen Celeste. It doesn’t sound like the person I know. Her gentle brown eyes and slow smile flicker in my memory.
I reread the passage twice.
Bree tiptoes up to my desk. I press Maman’s book to my chest.
“Didn’t mean to startle you.” She sets down a fresh stack of newspapers, scandal sheets, and tattlers, plus a shiny beauty-scope. “These just arrived.”
“Thanks.” I smile at her. She rushes off.
I thumb through the papers. Headlines pulse and flash.
PATRONS LEAVE THE GLASS TEAHOUSE WITH
GILDED HAIR AND PERMANENT MAKEUP
BEAUTY LOBBYISTS MEET WITH THE QUEEN TO
PETITION FOR AN EASE ON BEAUTY RESTRICTIONS
AND TOILETTE-BOX ALLOTMENTS
MAKING ORGANS MORE YOUTHFUL TO BE OUTLAWED
BY THE QUEEN IN FAVOR OF NATURAL DEATHS
WILLOWY FRAMES AND DAINTY HANDS,
THE MOST REQUESTED LOOK
FASHION MINISTER’S NEW DRESS COLLECTION BOASTS NEW
VIVANT DRESSES MADE OF LIVING THINGS LIKE BUTTERFLIES
QUEEN CHANGES LAW: ALLOWS BOY TO
REVEAL TRUE SELF AND TRANSFORM INTO A
GIRL AT MAISON ROUGE DE LA BEAUTé
“Camellia. Correspondence is here.” Bree guides a massive rose-petal-pink post-balloon into my bedroom. The princess’s royal emblem blazes brightly on its side. Two cream-colored ribbons hold a dress box.
I open the back of the balloon. Sparkles rain down at my feet. I slip out a sealed letter and read aloud.
“Your presence is requested by Her Royal Highness Princess Sophia in her chambers in an hourglass’s worth of time.”
I open the dress box. A windy-season tea dress stares up at me with a handwritten note that says WEAR ME. The plum silk and tulle are the shade of a fresh bruise.
“What is it, Lady Camellia?” Bree asks. Her voice squeaks and she clears her throat before continuing. “Do you not like the dress?”
“No, it’s beautiful,” I say.
She takes it out of the box and holds it up. “The princess has excellent taste.”
“What do you think of her?”
“Who, my lady?”
“The princess. Sophia.”
She shudders. “I—”
I take the dress from her. “What is it? Tell me.”
“I’m not supposed to have opinions of royalty. I’m supposed to do my job.” She turns to fuss with the dress and make sure it doesn’t get a single wrinkle while draped across the bed.
“But if you did. What would it be?” I step closer to her.
“The servants call her ‘la chat,’ my lady,” she whispers.
“Why? Cats are sweet.”
“Not always. At least, not the teacup ones. It’s just that Her Highness loves you one day and hates you the next.”
“Temperamental,” I say.
“Worse. Cats cuddle you when they want something and will scratch your face when you don’t give it to them.”
“Give me an example,” I say.
“Last year one of the servant girls, Aria, was put in a starvation box by the princess. She had been a favored servant of the royalty. She got to wear that purple pin on her uniform. The princess would shower her with extra gifts—beauty tokens, food—and allow her to travel as her companion on trips to palaces in the other isles.”
“And? What happened?”
Bree sighed before continuing. “One day the princess said Aria’s eyes were too beautiful for a servant girl. Even though Aria maintained the beauty restrictions for servants. She accused her of getting additional work done, and put her in the box for three days. She had her eyes pecked out by birds. She almost died.”
My stomach lurches. A chill settles over me.
Sophia cannot become queen.
Bree slips her hand in mine. “Please don’t ever tell anyone I told you that. I could be—”
“Don’t worry.” I stare into her eyes to reassure her. Tiny hints of red push against the warm sepia brown of her irises. A gray tinge lingers beneath her pink-white skin and more stubble dots along her chin.
“Let me refresh you.” I touch her face lovingly.