Chapter Nineteen Claire
Chapter Nineteen
Claire
Pretending I’m fine is too easy.
Angéline riffles through a pile of parchment. Leaning against her desk, I tap my foot while I wait for her to find the most recent search update for Gérard Dupont.
“You’d think one drunk of a dragon would be easy to locate,” I say. “The marshal didn’t give you enough help?”
“Not enough competent help. My investigators often submit disorganized reports.” She sighs. “Too many new hires at once, in my opinion.”
I hum and let my gaze wander the station. No curious glances from the gendarmes today. Abel and I are old news, apparently. Ascension Day preparations have them in a flurry.
“I could help skim the reports,” I offer.
“As much time as that would save me, civilians aren’t permitted to read about active investigations.”
Too bad. I might’ve glimpsed a lead for a sleep powder dealer.
“He might as well be a Dame Blanche for how well he’s hiding,” I remark.
She casts me a wry glance over her glasses. “I doubt he’s that smart about it. Dragons tend to act rashly as they approach their second or third Ignition Day.”
“Do you help locate many dragons?”
“One or two each month.”
Two. Like me and Gérard. “What happens if you expect multiple dragons on one Ignition?”
“If there are no traveling slayers already on the case, we alert the slayers on residency.”
“Residency?”
“Resident slayers receive tax funding to remain on standby. They typically watch for first-time dragons unless we petition them to slay the prisoners we deliver to the dragon pits.”
The mere thought of more slayers in this city makes my fingertips twitch with the impulse to grip the desk harder, so I make a show of examining my nails instead.
“I’m surprised anyone chooses to live in a city,” I say. “Too much potential for new dragons for me to tolerate, personally.”
“Our local laws are much stricter than in most cities. Failing to take shelter in a fire cellar the night before each Ignition is punishable with prison time. If a dragon emerges here, the streets are empty.”
“Ah. So the dragons see no one to attack.”
She nods. “They’re quickly slain or they fly away, usually with no more damage than a bad house fire. Smaller towns often experience much more damage than we do. Low odds convinces people it won’t happen to them.” She shakes her head. “Careless fools.”
Sellecastel is one terrible example of that. Bourlin, too. Even Papa dismissed the odds, with so many pastures between properties.
Finally, Angéline finishes sorting her papers. “No mention of Gérard Dupont yet.”
“Could he have gone someplace else?”
“Unlikely. He should arrive before Ascension Day.”
Hmm. “Abel did mention he seems the type to enjoy a celebration.”
“Gérard will be here, mark my words. If Hanna du Fay claimed it, I believe her.”
After we exchange goodbyes, I make my way outside. The door falls shut behind me. My knees weaken to the point that I lean against the cold bricks to stay upright.
Answers. I need more answers to decide my next move, but I don’t know which questions to ask. Another dragon seemed a solid place to start—maybe he knows something about the curse that I don’t. But if I can’t find him, how does that help me?
A chilly breeze sweeps through the street. Even the winter wildflowers shiver from the force. The city’s shine has worn off, the buildings dull under hazy cloud cover. I pull the fur-lined hood over my head to blend in with the rest of the bundled crowd.
The sorrow I swallowed last night pounds in my head, so thick and heavy I can hardly think. Assassins. Abduction. Abel’s journal. It’s all too much. Diu’s magic is shoving me toward death with the force of the Tordou River, and I can’t swim to shore.
I hug myself as I walk through Jardincourt’s winding streets, killing the hours with window-shopping and petting the city’s many alley cats.
Now that being near Abel is more of a threat than a drug, his proximity terrifies me.
If he learns I’m a dragon, he’ll bring in a resident slayer to help kill Gérard and me.
I’ll die in a crater, surrounded by seventeen centuries’ worth of bloodstains.
I need help. I need sleep powder. I need time.
I need the Dames Blanches.
Anne-Sophie taught me how to find a sister in an unfamiliar place: Check lampposts for unusual ornaments.
Specific ornaments are signal items that only the Dames Blanches recognize.
They mark sister-owned establishments. It sounds simple, but sisters operate more elusively than people think.
They change the signal item if they think the information has been leaked.
Hours pass. Countless lampposts. No pattern to be found—until I swipe a tear with my glove and a familiar glimmer catches my eye. A verdigris lamp, with cloudy, smoke-stained glass, sports a silver ribbon tied into a bow. That’s the fourth one I’ve seen. The store beside it: Le Miroir d’Ivoire.
A fortune teller.
A sick laugh escapes my lips. Me? Inquiring about the future? Diu loves to dangle things I cannot have.
With a steadying breath, I turn the door handle.
Bells chime above me. As I let the door fall shut, I use a little sleight of hand to flip the Open sign to Closed.
Crimson curtains block out the daylight.
Multihued glass candleholders bleed colored light into the violet wallpaper.
Cherrywood shelves boast milky quartz pendants, shamrock charms, and teacups and leaves.
Oil paintings of fawnas rest against the wall behind a paint-smeared front desk.
An easel props a half-finished close-up of a buck’s soft face, the unfinished flowers sketched with charcoal.
“Bonjour,” says an alluring voice.
A young woman emerges from behind the beaded curtain that partitions the front and back room. Her eyelids are dusted with a gold shimmer, her bow-tie lips painted glossy pink. A blanket of red curls spills from the grass-green veil covering her head. Quartz teardrops line the hem above her brow.
Appearances don’t fool me. This is a criminal’s den. I’m careful to block her line of sight to the sign I flipped to Closed.
“Bonjour,” I reply. Then wait.
“Comment allez-vous?” she asks. How are you?
The ancient code phrase for the Dames Blanches moves past my lips for the first time in months.
“Je me défends.” I defend myself.
Her chin dips. “Sister. Your name?”
The cursed blood in my veins runs hotter under her scrutinizing gaze.
If she sees what I am—what I’m trying to hide—she’ll sell my name to a slayer in a heartbeat.
It won’t matter if I escape in the moment.
Knowing the Dames Blanches and their swift communication network, even sisters I’ve never met will learn my name.
But I can’t give this woman just any name.
The Dames Blanches keep a list of active sisters. It has to be a real one.
“Anne-Sophie Travers,” I lie.
At first she doesn’t react. Then she steps behind her desk, lacquered ruby nails grazing the corner, and sits on the stool with her back to me. She lifts a paintbrush and resumes her work in progress.
A calendar of celestial events hangs next to the beaded curtain. Two suns mark the upcoming Ignition. Less than two weeks left.
“I need sleep powder,” I say.
“Anne-Sophie Travers had a teenage daughter. Your youth proves you a liar.”
My mask cracks as I fumble to rein in my guilt. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have lied. I need anonymity for…temporary reasons,” I insist. “Treat me like a normal customer. I want to buy sleep powder, that’s all.”
“Unless you have inquiries about your future, outsiders have no business here.”
“Please. It’s only a sedative.”
“Without a name, you are not a Dame Blanche. Liars do not benefit—”
I slip the moondagger from my bodice. In a flash, I have her curls in one fist and my weapon’s razor-sharp edge at her throat.
“Je me défends.” My mind spins with the memory of that blue-cloaked woman’s blood splashing my face, but I grip tighter. “Or have you forgotten?”
The most honest thing the Dames Blanches taught me is that society is a scam. Any theft, con, or deception is a stroke of intelligence to take pride in, the rewards of which are justly earned. Cheating society—cheating anyone—is fair game, because society is only as fair as you make it.
So why can’t I cheat a sister?
Head bent back and veil slipping, my sister’s sharp emerald eyes glitter up at me. Her lip curls into a sneer.
“Greed runs thick in your veins,” she hisses.
Pain pierces my stomach. The taste of metal bubbles up my throat. Hot blood leaks from the hole where her thin spike punctures my skin.
She appeared so defenseless in front of her canvas. I should’ve anticipated she would hide a weapon inside the paintbrush handle.
She tugs her weapon from my flesh, which sends a fresh wave of nausea to my head. I grapple with the desk for balance. The moondagger clatters to the floor with me.
My sister circles the desk, stare turning as cold as Abel’s. “Je me défends.”
Curled up on the cold floor, I gasp for air, trying to clear the black spots in my vision.
I press down on the hole in my abdomen with shaking hands.
She kneels at my side, eyes lowered to the satchel on my hip.
She sifts through the contents with mild interest—until she withdraws the journal, head tilted curiously at the protective cover.
“Please.” I cough, tears in my eyes. “Sell me sleep powder!”
“I see no future for you, false sister,” she says. “You won’t need anything.”
She unwraps Abel’s journal, then holds it to the candlelight. My tears spill over, body hot and trembling as her emerald eyes narrow on the name on the cover—then cut to me. They widen on the steam that rises between my bloody fingers.
Her smile flashes like the surface of a coin. “Dragon.”
She raises her spike. With the moondagger I snuck back into my hand, I’m a heartbeat faster. I push upright and slam it into her thigh. Her weapon falls to the floor with a clatter. Her scream vibrates under my free hand as I push her down.
“You were right, sister. Greed runs thick in my veins. Too thick,” I say, more confidently than I feel. “Don’t fight me, or I’ll have to fight back.”
A passerby’s laugh from outside the shop draws her quick stare.
My sister’s eyes widen on the sign I flipped, but I don’t dare let down my guard.
She could have more tricks up her silken sleeves.
I retrieve the journal, but my hand stays firmly on the hilt of the dagger in her thigh, ready to twist.
“Tell me where to find your sleep powder,” I demand.
She points a shaky finger at the beaded curtain. “The palm-reading room,” she gasps. “Skinny black dresser, second drawer down. Enough to supply a dealer.”
I pull the dagger from her thigh, pushing the guilt for causing her whimpers to the back of my mind, then haul her to her feet. “Show me.”
With no small struggle, we enter the palm-reading room.
Too weak to stand, my sister slumps onto the chaise.
I open the dresser and take everything. Two jars of thick white powder, corked and sealed with wax.
Enough of a supply to sleep through three Ignitions—maybe.
Maybe not, based on Abel’s research, but this is all I can get.
I tuck them into my satchel safely beside the journal, then withdraw my coin purse.
She laughs airily. “Does payment matter anymore?”
My fingers halt on a soleil as I look at her anew. Blood still gushes from her thigh. Large dribbles of it form a crimson trail from the hallway back to us, as if someone spilled a wine bottle over the floor.
“No, no, no,” I whisper, then I fall to my knees in front of her, pressing her nearest throw blanket hard against the wound. The blood soaks through it in seconds, sopping and sticky. “I didn’t mean to do this much. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry!”
“No, you’re not.”
I’m not sorry for defending myself, but this? A wound so deep, she’ll bleed out before I can call for help? I didn’t want to hurt her. I’m not a violent person. I even warned her that I’d have to fight back.
But is it self-defense if I cannot die?
“My name is Claire Belgard,” I confess. I don’t know why. Maybe I owe her at this point. She gives no indication of whether she accepts my name as a Dame Blanche. Her gaze falls to my satchel instead.
“Why does a dragon carry a slayer’s belongings?” she asks.
“I hired him to cure me.” The moondagger on the floor draws my eye. “He doesn’t know it yet.”
“You want to live?”
“I want to die.”
The reply startles even me.
I swallow hard, as if to take it back. But it’s true, isn’t it? I can’t live like this, wondering whom I will hurt next. It’s too painful.
“Liar.” She laughs faintly. “ ‘Je me défends,’ yes?”
“Not if it means killing people,” I whisper.
“Too late for that.” Her breath deepens, then shudders. “Go, Claire Belgard. You stole yourself a future.”
Her use of my name stirs yearning in my chest—for sisters—but then I think of Leah on that dock in Port-de-Chance, chained and bloody, eyes wet with betrayal.
To be a sister to the Dames Blanches, you must be viewed as human first.
I close my eyes, nodding at the ceiling, swallowing tears.
I’m long past thievery—since Ravinfort, I’ve graduated to murder. Claire Belgard amounts to nothing more than Diu’s greedy, vengeful spawn, salivating for every kill she can get. No matter what form I take, I will forever be someone’s monster.
“I’m not human, am I?” I whisper.
When I open my eyes again, hers are half lidded. Gold smeared. Unseeing. Her chest does not rise. The hole in her thigh has no more blood to give.
“Thank you for the sleep powder,” I tell her. “I’ll leave the coins on the table.”
A sob-laced laugh bubbles up my throat. I only wanted to do right by a sister, but that came out sounding evil.
I place the coins on the table anyway, then sit on the floor with my arms wrapped around my bloodstained middle. While the hours of daylight waste away, I rock myself like Papa rocked me as a child and repeat one phrase to salvage my mask before it breaks for good.
“Je me défends. Je me défends. Je me défends.”