Chapter 4
NIK
Nik followed the Directeurs out of the morgue and into a dusky afternoon where the gabled rooftops of Belleplace were gilded with sunset golds and oranges. Upper-story windows reflected clouds purpling like old bruises, which gradually darkened to the same shade as the rashes on the boy’s body.
Enough.
Whatever work awaited him tomorrow could be addressed then.
Now he was being summoned by Souverain Baptiste Lafontaine, the most powerful man in all of Arts Humains. The man who’d scooped Nik from the gutter and found promise in him.
The carriage made its way farther north, and the rumble of rocky Belleplace cobblestones gave way to the glide of smoothly paved Galerie stone paths.
Out the window, the buildings thinned until there were more shops, café houses, and theatres.
Théatre Mesmer glowed in starlight, electric beams piercing the air to guide the city’s wealthiest to tonight’s performance.
One of Nik’s earliest apprenticeships had been there, and it had given him his first taste of what power and money could truly buy.
Champagne flowed day and night, people bought their way backstage to meet the prima ballerina, and the ballet magie was always strong enough to make the impossible come true.
Fairy tales. Beautiful stories, but still … lies.
Farther down the road, buildings disappeared entirely, giving way to long stretches of manicured lawns where elegant riders pushed their horses to breakneck speeds and over obstacles.
Wasteful. Every inch of land they used for sport was another inch that could be used for farming or safer tenements for the booming population.
Nik inched forward, craning his neck to get the first glimpse of the Senate upon the hilltop.
It was a strange building, crafted to look like an embrace from the front.
The central structure, which served as a grand meeting hall, rounded outward with sloping pillars on the first and second level.
Two long wings extended to the left and right.
There, the Souverains conducted business in their own offices.
The Souverains could keep their fields and horses. Nik was playing for something much bigger.
The carriage’s progress slowed. A crowd had gathered around the gates to leave whisks, flowers, and rare ingredients on candle-bedecked altars for the late Souverain Lisette Plouffe.
No one actually cared about her. They just hoped their sudden signs of devotion might be enough to gain them favor—or a chance to replace her in the Objet d’Art.
A better man might have feigned sympathy, but Nik was too caught up in the puzzle of her death.
There were only seven Souverains in the city, one for each Société.
Unparalleled magie, money, governing powers, hosts of doctors at their beck and call, food to nourish their bodies and extend their lives—the Souverains were unmatched.
They ruled Anespérer together as the Counseil des Sept, the Council of Seven.
They weren’t supposed to die early.
Yet Lisette Plouffe had.
The carriage slowed at the towering double doors. Nik climbed out after the Directeurs, who were allowed to pass with ease. However, the police scrutinized Nik’s mottled burgundy suit.
Rather than take a left up the marbled staircase toward Lafontaine’s wing, the Directeurs turned downward, descending into the bowels of the Senate. Anticipation was a poorly stitched wound in Nik’s belly, irritating and persistent.
The winding stairs ended in a long, suffocating hallway dimly lit by warm electric lights dotted along the walls. Ahead, a small group of Directeurs in scarlet huddled outside one of the dozens of black doors.
“Dupont,” one of them called, motioning him through the door.
It closed behind him, leaving him alone.
Not alone. There was another body on a gurney, except this one was uncovered and in much better shape than the Restes boy back in Pompes Funèbres.
Chambon, Basset, and those other sycophants would kill Nik for what he was looking at.
Who he was looking at.
Souverain Lisette Plouffe was laid out, her slender figure covered by a slip that reflected the brilliant overhead light. The Restes boy had been frozen in agony, while Plouffe looked truly asleep, a graying sleep but peaceful nonetheless.
The preparation room was stocked with jars, syringes, and vials, but Nik’s shoulders released when he saw no sponges or operating kits prepared.
The door opened, and he spun to face the lone pale figure.
While Nik never felt shame compared to the Directeurs in their expensive red fabrics, he couldn’t deny the urge to brush his dingy suit clean again.
Souverains were the only citizens allowed to wear pure white.
Their clothes were always designed with accents of their Société colors, but their wardrobes were filled with snow-white everything: dresses, trousers, hats, gloves.
Every article of clothing was a chance to demonstrate their class, their power.
Souverain Baptiste Lafontaine was no different.
Today he wore a long, flowing coat designed to represent a doctor’s frock, but the buttons and hems were threaded with thousands of rubies.
As usual, his graying hair was slicked back to perfection, his short beard trimmed close to his angular cheeks.
Everything about him screamed authority, from his stare to his confident stride as he approached the table.
“Your apprenticeship has been going well?” he asked.
“Yes.” It wasn’t a lie. Chambon would tell the truth, Nik was trying.
“Show me.” He motioned. “Tell me everything you notice.”
Shit. Lafontaine was no weak-minded Chambon, and this was a test.
Nik approached the table and pulled back the shroud.
At fifty-two, she was young for a Souverain.
Her pale face was comfortable in death, her white-bleached hair fanned behind her as if each strand had been delicately placed.
There were no obvious wounds or bruises, no sign of attack.
Nik had found the headlines in the papers strange, but the proof of no obvious sign of death confirmed his suspicions: She’d been murdered.
Souverains never died of natural causes this young.
Age was the only disease Souverains succumbed to, because Arts Humains was paid handsomely to have a doctor in every Directeur and Souverain home.
They tended to paper cuts and coughs, conducted weekly checkups for their families, and ensured all blood tests were perfectly healthy.
Only the best for Anespérer’s social elite.
“Well?” Lafontaine asked.
Right. Focus.
He removed the leather pouch from his coat and readied a syringe with a hair-thin needle. He’d been assured this part would become easier with practice, that his mind would compartmentalize and adapt.
He understood all those things.
But he didn’t feel them.
Yes, the world needed doctors who could reset bones, stitch skin, and heal invisible ailments. Those people saved lives.
The truth was, the syringe never fit his large hand, and he fumbled for veins, causing more harm than good.
He lifted Souverain Plouffe’s arm, grateful his rust-colored gloves blocked the feel of her cold skin as he inserted the needle.
Plouffe’s vein rolled several times before he managed to draw blood.
Next, he added drops of solution to the white pads inside his kit, followed by a sample of blood. They turned green immediately.
“It wasn’t a heart attack,” he said. “Her blood lacks the cardiac enzymes.”
“Then what happened to her?”
One cause down. Thousands more to go.
He went for a physical examination, analyzing her fingernails. “No tissue present. No abrasions or bruises.”
Lafontaine stepped aside, motioning to a collection of delicate crystal jars and decanters filled with lotions and makeups.
“Her effects.”
Nik took a sample from each and added the solution.
Green.
“No detectable poisons,” he muttered.
Other Aspirants like Basset would have a dozen more tests they could conduct, but Nik only had one more idea.
He withdrew a set of spectacles from his pocket and hunched over the body.
He flipped the first lens, then the second, increasing the magnification until he could see the individual small hairs upon her fingers.
Observation was a powerful tool. It had kept him alive better than any book ever had.
He was near to giving up when a mark near her throat caught his attention … the jugular vein? It was a minuscule point, smaller than any intravenous wound he’d ever seen. The skin around it lacked signs of irritation or bruising. Strange.
“She was injected with something that left behind no trace.” Nik looked over the top of his glasses.
“Continue your examination. What could have done this?”
His mouth dried. The truth, he had learned in these last four years, was something Lafontaine coveted above all else. He did not suffer fools who tried to con their way into his good graces, and he would not abide liars.
“I don’t know,” he admitted quietly.
“Then it is some new poison,” Souverain Lafontaine said. “Who could have done it?”
New? Lafontaine was the medical expert of Anespérer. Nothing was new to him.
Lafontaine offered a white file, which Nik took hungrily.
According to the coroner notes, she’d been found in her bed by a servant sent to wake her.
Even the coroner admitted Plouffe looked as if she’d simply fallen asleep and refused to wake.
There’d been no signs of forced entry, no evidence of a struggle.
Meaning her killer had been someone she knew well or …
Someone she feared enough to never turn away.
Someone with ample knowledge of new, untraceable poisons.
Nik shoved his nerves down, hiding any shake of his hands by removing his glasses.
“You killed her.”
Lafontaine nodded. “Well done, my boy.”