Everything That Burns Page 11

  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, magicians must be able to work a magic of invisibility. It is well known that the king’s men have devices that can detect the presence of magic, therefore, it is not enough for a magician to discontinue working it.

  “They do?” Camille asked.

  Blaise shrugged. “They did. They are trying to do it again.”

  Premise the second: In order to work this invisibility, a magician will require an enormous amount of magic.

  Premise the third: The greatest source of magic is a sorrowful memory.

  Problem! Memories fade over time, becoming less powerful and therefore less useful as a means for working magic.

  Premise the fourth: An externally preserved memory is the strongest because it is not dulled by reliving it or attempting to master it. This preservation may be achieved by collecting the magician’s tears and working the magic commonly known as “Tempus Fugit.”

  Chandon frowned. “I’ve never heard of it—what is ‘Time Flies’?”

  “I can’t say. I’ve gone through all the books in my shop and have only seen it referred to, never explained. I worry it was once such an everyday working that no one bothered to write it down.”

  Roland muttered something derisive under his breath.

  Premise the fifth: When needed, the preserved memory is consumed in the form of the magicked tears. The memory of that sorrowful event would be so powerful that while the magician reexperienced it, he would be “there”—and therefore invisible “here.” In this way a magician would be veiled by the power of his own most terrifying memories. I propose, therefore, to name this new magic the Veil.

  “I’ve also heard it called the ‘blur.’” Blaise looked up. His violet circles seemed to have darkened. For a moment, no one said anything.

  “A magic of tears? But it is grotesque!” Roland said, appalled. “No magician would do such a thing!”

  Not true, Camille thought. There was one who had.

  In his luxurious rooms at Versailles, Séguin had tortured her with threats of what he would do to Sophie and Lazare in order to get the sorrow he needed from her. When she finally broke down and wept, he’d licked the tears from her cheek, claiming that the tears of a magician were too valuable to waste.

  She could still feel the scrape of his teeth against her skin. “Did Séguin ever collect your tears, Chandon?”

  “In a vial of the finest Venetian glass,” he replied with a shiver. “It was fitted with a fragment of cork, topped with silver. It was more terrifying than any tool of torture. When I first met Blaise, I told him that Séguin had bragged he’d figured out a way to make himself invisible. So you see,” he said to Roland, who stared disbelievingly at him, “it can be done.”

  “But did you see him become invisible?” Roland demanded.

  “I did,” Camille said. “The night of Aurélie’s birthday party, when you were so ill, Chandon. He was only half there, like smoke. No one else seemed to see him.” For a minute or two, Séguin had been more like a breath or smoke than a person made of flesh and bone. Could he have been working this magic? Was that why he had needed both her and Chandon’s sorrow—because he needed so much pain to fuel it?

  “All the better to sneak around and work at our destruction,” Chandon said with a sigh. “But how?”

  “Collect the tears in a vial, and you’re done, isn’t that what Monsieur Delouvet said?” Roland asked.

  “Call me Blaise, s’il vous plaît.” The bookseller gave a faint sigh. “There is the matter of working the transformation via the … tempus fugit. And the small matter of the dangers. You see,” he said, flipping forward a few pages in the journal, “there are consequences to this magic.”

  Château de Puymartin

  February 5, 1680

  After conducting a series of experiments, everything that I hypothesized two months ago has proved correct. Though horrifying, the magic of the veil of tears does work. There are, however, two more points I must add:

  First point: By collecting his tears and the sorrow, a magician separates the memory from himself. Well and good! The sorrow’s power is contained elsewhere and no longer troubles the magician.

  What if, she wondered, by working this veil of tears she could somehow hide her magic? From everyone?

  “And now,” Blaise said, “what makes it such a dangerous magic.”

  Second point: While this frees the magician from sorrow’s negative effects, each time he uses the veil the magician lives less and less in this world, retreating further and further into his memories. It is a grave danger I do not know how to prevent. Nevertheless I believe this damage would take years to occur. And, to be blunt, when one’s life is at stake, it may not matter.

  “Bien!” said Roland, shaking out his cuffs as if everything were resolved. “We make the veil, have invisibility when we need it, and then there’s no need to stop working magic or even leave France. Problem solved! Though I’d normally be loath to admit it, you are a genius, Chandon.”

  “I wish I could agree,” Chandon said, “but we have no idea how to work the tempus fugit.”

  Roland stared expectantly at Blaise. “You seem to know everything. Surely you must have a book somewhere—”

  “The books we need,” Blaise said, “are being burned. Have you not seen the pyres on the river? You might mistake them for ordinary fires, but they are not. Barges, piled high with magical objects. Paintings igniting as oil and canvas feed the inferno. Books,” he choked, “their pages flapping open…” He cradled the Journal of the Burning Years to his chest.

  “This is the work of the Comité?” Foudriard asked.

  “And of the people,” Blaise added. “Why hold on to magic when it may bring the Comité to your house in the middle of the night and land you in prison?” He must have seen something in Camille’s face for he added, kindly, “For now, at least, prison is but a rumor.”

  It was hardly a comfort.

  “But this crisis is also an opportunity,” Blaise said. “Because I am known, in certain circles, to be interested in magic, people have been coming to my shop to sell me magical objects. I buy mostly books, naturally, but if they have some … vials … or other curios
ities, I buy those, too.”

  “And have you found a vial of this esteemed blur?” Roland challenged.

  As if he had been waiting for this moment, Blaise took from a pocket in his waistcoat a tiny glass cylinder, no longer than his little finger. It looked very much like the one Chandon had described Séguin using. Holding the glittering vial up to the light, he tilted it slowly from side to side. Inside, a tiny amount of viscous jade-colored liquid shifted hypnotically back and forth.

  Roland held out his hand. “May I see?”

  “Certainly, just please be careful—” But before Blaise could give it to him, he snatched the vial out of his grip and pried loose the cork.

  Blaise lunged for the vial. “This is a dangerous magic!”

  “Oh là là! What is the worst that could happen?” With a flick of his wrist, Roland tipped the bottle into his open mouth. Two pale green drops fell onto his tongue. Wonderingly, he said, “Horrendously bitter.”

  Blaise’s mouth worked, but he said nothing.

  “You are a fool, Roland,” Chandon snapped. “But now that you’ve taken it, you can at least tell us what’s happening.”

  “It feels like sticks snapping against my skin. But inside my skin. Not nice.” For a few long minutes, Roland said nothing. He did not fade, but his eyes narrowed, as if he were watching something they could not see. Pain spasmed across his face, and then his shoulders bent into a protective hunch. A wrenching sob tore from his mouth. It was a ghastly, haunting sound. “All her memories! Poor child. So much suffering—”

  And then Roland dimmed.

  “Where is he?” Foudriard asked, bewildered. “Did he leave?”

  “Look!” Chandon pointed at the fire. “He’s over there, very faint now.”

  By the fire was a shadow without a person, a figure made of smoke. Roland kept silent, and only once, as he moved around, did he make a noise loud enough to draw attention to him.

  “Incroyable,” Chandon said with a low whistle. Then he took out his watch and waited. Five minutes passed before Roland began to reappear, but slowly, and not all at once. Camille was able to first see him out of the corner of her eye, then full on.

  His eyes were red with tears.

  “Well?” Blaise’s curiosity seemed to have overcome his anger.

  “The worst thing I’ve ever experienced. I lived through a girl’s sorrows. Broken dolls. A dead pet bird. A cruel best friend. And then a stepfather who tried to”—his voice broke—“have his way with her. A marriage with a duc who beat her and took her money. Mon Dieu! How do we allow these things to happen?”

  They all stared.

  “Alors,” demanded Chandon, “could you see us?”

  “As through a haze. All the while I struggled mightily to stay here. It was like falling into a river. I was almost carried away.” Pouring himself some wine, he hastily threw back a glass. “I could have lost my mind completely!”

  A cold finger of misgiving ran down Camille’s spine. The magic that overtook her when she was printing was already too much for her to control. If a magician like the Comte de Roland had nearly been carried away—what would that mean for her? She felt already too susceptible. Would it mean she would never be able to use this magic?

  Foudriard said, “We have learned something, but now it seems we are missing a bottle of the very substance we need.”

  “Stop!” Roland sank into a chair. He had the gray, worn-thin look Camille knew all too well. “I regret it!”

  “In any case, it wouldn’t have been enough for all the magicians I hope we can help,” Chandon said. “Our task remains: we must find a book that tells us how to work this tempus fugit and so, the blur. As an act of penance, you must scavenge your libraries, Roland.”

  “Fine.”

  “Why not come to the Hôtel Séguin? The library has hundreds of books,” she said to Blaise, who gave her a look of gratitude. “Séguin once told me the queen gave him access to ancient grimoires from a secret library at Versailles … perhaps they’re in the collection. There’s only one thing I ask.” She hesitated. It was hard to say it aloud. “I don’t wish anyone to know of it.” My sister. Or Lazare.

  “It will not be a problem,” Blaise replied, but there was something melancholy about the way he said it, as if he understood what she was asking more than she did herself.

  “We will come in secret,” Chandon promised. “Until we have the blur, we must not give the Comité any reason to suspect us.” He studied them all carefully. “Unexpected as Roland’s experiment was, we now know it works. And its effects, as it were. But before I make a toast to the success of our search, I would like to give you a gift—a useful one—that Monsieur Delouvet has prepared for us.”

  From a table nearby, Blaise picked up a short stack of papers. They were blank, with a silvery sheen, and cut into palm-sized squares, which he divided among the magicians. “These are message papers of my own invention. I will demonstrate.” He took one of the sheets, crumpled it, and placed it in his hand. “Bringing up sorrow, and thinking of what I wish to communicate, I will ignite it, and send it into the sky.”

  “We are inside,” Roland pointed out.

  “Do you trust magic, monsieur?”

  Cowed, Roland shut his mouth. Blaise held out his hand, the crumpled, silvery paper lying on it. Briefly, he closed his eyes. His mouth twisted mournfully, his forehead furrowed with lines. Camille’s heart ached for him. She had never liked for anyone to see her working magic, especially the glamoire’s blood magic. It had seemed too raw and revealing. But Blaise worked his magic unflinchingly in front of them all.

  The paper caught fire.

  It rose from his hand, hovering above their heads. As if hesitating, or thinking. And then it drifted to the fireplace and with a swoop, disappeared up the chimney.

  “Right now,” Blaise observed, “it is burning above Paris. But also, I suspect, somewhere else?”

  Camille’s ears tingled. “I feel it on my skin. And I feel—your wish for us is to find answers to lead us to the blur.”

  “Just so. You are all bound in this magic,” he said to the group. “If one of us needs help, send up a paper. If the others do not happen to see it in the sky, they will feel it. And then you will know to come here to Bellefleur as soon as possible.”

  “Well.” The Comte de Roland sniffed, impressed.

  Blaise smiled enigmatically. “As the poet said, there are more things in heaven and Earth than are dreamed of in your philosophy.”

  He was right, Camille thought.

  One summer in Paris the weather had been so dry that the leaves hung lifeless on the trees. The water in the Seine had sunk so low that a rowboat crossing the river had struck a large object. Nothing but a scuttled ship, Papa guessed, nothing to see. And Camille thought nothing of it until one afternoon he burst into the apartment, panting, “Come, mes enfants! They are bringing it up!” From the banks they watched as a snarling dragon’s head broke the water’s skin. It was ancient, darkened by water and time, torrents pouring from the holes that once were its eyes. A Norse raider’s ship, Papa whispered, from when they sacked Paris. She remembered her awe, tinged by the fear that it might roar to life. How the air itself seemed to change, as if the boat had brought with it a breath from a thousand years ago.

  Sometimes, under the surface, there was treasure.

  She could not turn away from it now.

  “On that note,” Chandon said as he uncorked a bottle of ancient, amber-colored wine and filled five glasses. He raised his goblet high, a determined smile on his face. “To the tears of magicians—may we find a way to survive this coming world.”

  THE LOST GIRLS SPEAK

  THE FRUIT SELLER

  I CAME WITH MY MOTHER AND MY BROTHER TO PARIS ON A BARGE

  Before that, it was a clipper across the gray A T L A N T I C. We left our island of Saint-Domingue, where the sun danced on the waves and touched my skin like a kiss, to come here, all three of us. A better education for my br
other was the reason. But Jean-Pierre wished to start a revolution in Saint-Domingue, not go to school in Paris. And when we arrived here, there was already one underway.

  A revolution, but not for us.

  People who see me—brown skinned, curly haired—assume I am a slave.

  But I have always been free, in body and heart. People do not understand that there is no freedom they can give me through the laws they plan to make. It already belongs to me.

  By saying they can give it, as if it belongs to them, they try to take it away.

  Why then, you ask, do I sell oranges and strawberries on the streets?

  When we came to France, I believed I would, like my brother, have something more. I believed my mother would let me step into this new way of life easily. New ideas, new hopes. But she only saw fears and danger in this cold foreign place. And when I came home with a new friend, he was nothing but a threat.

  I WAS GIVEN A CHOICE:

  HER AND THE OLD WAYS & COMFORTS

  OR

  HIM AND THE NEW

  I chose

  FREEDOM

  BUT

  FREEDOM IS NOT FREE

  IT

  HAS

  A

  COST

  20

  In a precise line on a grassy field, five tethered balloons trembled in the wind.

  For the last few days, while Camille had been printing Margot’s story and trying not to hope for too much from the magicians’ visit to the Hôtel Séguin—for wasn’t it possible Blaise might find what she’d searched for in vain in the library?—Lazare had been busy with preparations for the launch.

  Though they’d made plans to see the first public performance of Les Merveilleux at the Palais-Royal, Camille hadn’t seen Lazare except for one late dinner at a restaurant on the fashionable Left Bank. In the room, candles had glowed among pools of dark. Lazare had proposed champagne—we must celebrate being together, when the world conspires to keep us apart—and between courses they held hands across the tablecloth, her small pale one clasped in his long-fingered brown one as they dreamed about what they might do, together. After his work with the balloon corps was finished, after she’d made sure the girls were free to stay in their home. They might take a balloon voyage over the Alps, combining pleasure with cloud studies. Talking and laughing late into the night, they had a thousand ideas, each one more entrancing than the next. As their faces flushed with the restaurant’s warmth and their own excitement, the possibilities seemed endless.