Poison Priestess by Lana Popovic (classic books for 7th graders txt) 📕

“See how it is done, p’tite? Given the chance, always resist.”

“But he beat you to a pulp,” I whisper back vehemently. “How could that possibly have been worth it?”

She shakes her head as she staggers along beside me.

“Pain is unpleasant, but it ends,” she rasps, almost panting with the effort of speech. “And it is a … a good reminder that evil exists. Always remember this, and let no one tell you that salvation might be found through your woman’s goodness. Protect a measure of your evil, p’tite. Keep it safe in cupped hands, and nurture it.”

She stumbles on a crack in the floor, blanching as the movement jerks her ravaged back. And for just a moment, her bitterness seeps through.

“Else men like these will break you on their will.”

The next morning, we wake at the matins bells to find that Agnesot has vanished from the dormitory. Though our pallets are crammed so close we nearly sleep atop one another, somehow none of us heard anything in the night. Not even a stray creak or whimper to betray her departure.

“But where could she have gone?” I wonder, dragging a comb through my unruly hair. “The doors are still barred.”

“They must have taken her,” Eugenie insists as she dresses hurriedly next to me. “You saw how she was yesterday, styling herself after the martyrs. Refusing to submit. She should have known the maître wouldn’t stand for it.”

“Or maybe,” little Berthe offers timidly, “she walked through the walls. You heard her say she was a divineress. They can do such things, you know.”

“Oh, please,” Eugenie retorts, starting toward the doors. “As if a sorceress would have allowed herself to fall under a whip.”

They are still debating as they join the swarm of girls by the doors, eager for our morning repast of barley gruel. I linger by Agnesot’s pallet instead, running my hands over its threadbare quilt, as if her bedding might yield some silent answer. I find nothing beneath the thin square of her pillow, nor captured in the tangle of her sheets. But caught between the prickly straw-tick of the mattress and the wooden frame, my fingertips meet the corners of something hard and cool.

My heart drumming, I ease out a black bound book, casting a quick glance over my shoulder to ensure I am not being watched. Whatever Agnesot left behind, I find myself loath to share it with the others. The leather cover flips open to reveal yellowed pages dense with text and odd illustrations—sketches of creeping plants with labeled parts, and charts of strange and angular symbols. I cannot read the words, having never been taught letters, but as I cradle the pages to my chest so tightly they seem to hum against my skin, I am struck with the certainty that someday I will.

Because wherever Agnesot has gone, I know beyond the cobweb of a doubt that she escaped on her own power.

And whatever this book is, I suspect the divineress left it behind for me.

CHAPTER ONE

The Sigil and the Door

PARIS, FRANCE

June 5, 1667

Should the waters guard their secrets close, make certain you have not overlooked the strongest of the scrying herbs.

“But I added the agrimony already, devil take you,” I grouse into the grimoire’s pages, resisting a powerful urge to slam the spellbook shut. “Why won’t it simply work properly for once?”

As if sensing my high dudgeon soaring to even greater heights, Alecto slithers up my arm, tucking her wedge-shaped head against my collarbone. Her tongue flickers against my skin in a ticklish caress, urging me to settle down. I take a calming breath, running my hand gratefully along her cool, muscular length. In my view, anyone who believes snakes to be cold or unfeeling has never taken the proper time to get to know one. And of my three king snakes, Alecto is the most affectionate, supremely attuned to the shifting squalls of my whims and moods.

If she were a person, one might call her solicitous.

“I know, mon trésor,” I murmur to her, tracing the outline of her dainty head with a fingertip. “Failing to conjure a vision is hardly the end of the world. But it is galling to be foiled when one is so very close, n’est-ce pas? Perhaps we try again, just one more time?”

Alecto tightens briefly on my arm before relaxing again, the serpentine equivalent of a long-suffering sigh. But it seems she is willing to indulge me for at least a little longer. When I rest my hand on the table’s edge, she pools down my arm like a sentient spill of ink, arranging herself in a coil around the obsidian scrying bowl. I refill the bowl with the mixture called for in the book: ewe’s milk, water strained through cheesecloth to rid it of impurities, a blend of herbs, and a dash of my own tears. After my years in the fabrique, precious little moves me to weep, and I had to pinch myself rather viciously to eke these out.

Against the unremitting black of the bowl, the murky liquid roils like a storm front crawling over an eventide sky. It lurches into tantalizing shapes, which scatter into ripples as my breath skates across the water’s surface.

Once the waters are waiting, bring the sight to bear upon them—but gently and with forbearance, the book directs, somewhat prissily. Do not be insatiable in your hunger to know, nor overeager in your demands. The veil does not bend readily to the will of a boorish divineress.

Be patient, in other words. Reasonable enough, yet the enjoinment still rankles me. Patience has never been among my virtues.

Taking another breath, I do my best to heed its command. I let my eyes go hazy, my vision thinning at the edges like unraveling gauze, letting the swirling of the water lead the way. As if sensing the slow gather of my