If you want light
crack the mirror.
Each blade, each sliver
will become a boat of light
…
If you want light
go into the blackest night
where little by little
even the deepest ink
will have its shadow of light.
- Karen Kenyon
I. Paris
La Rose Écarlate was not among the most exclusive brothels in Paris, nor was it one of the inferior ones that proliferated in the rougher parts of town. It was firmly middling, smelling of soap and pot-purri instead of human bodies, and it was only a few blocks away from the British Service headquarters. The madame, a buxom grey-haired woman with a sharp eye and sharper tongue, had agreed to let Pax draw the girls in exchange for a bottle of Deverney wine that Hawker had swiped from Carruthers’ cellar.
Carruthers knew, of course—nothing in that house could be hidden from her—but the fact that she hadn’t punished Hawker or demanded it back was proof that she was developing a soft spot for Hawker after all. That was why Hawker stole it in the first place—to see if he could get away with it. He’d handed it over to Pax with a shrug and a “I prefer gin.” Pax, not one for indulgence, had saved it, knowing it would come in handy as a bribe eventually. Madame Garnier’s eyes gleamed when he offered it to her, but they’d gone sharp again when she warned, “I hear you lay a finger on any of them without payment, I toss you out and you never set foot here again. Understood?”
Instead of explaining that he had no interest in her girls’ wares, he just nodded, and after a few visits, she had stopped watching him with her raptor eyes. Now he let himself in the back door that the servants and tradesmen used, and made his way to a side parlor with his sketchbook tucked under his arm.
The girl in the peacock-blue robe opening the drapes of the northern windows to let in the sunlight was one he hadn’t met before. His last few visits, he’d drawn Desiree, red-gold hair and generous curves. He’d enjoyed trying to capture the plush allure of her body in charcoal. The girl who turned to look at him was very different.
She was less pretty than she was striking. Dark, intelligent eyes; golden skin that spoke of more southerly blood; ebony curls tumbling halfway down her back. Average height, slimmer build, but not lacking in curves. The bone structure would be more prominent than with Desiree—a different sort of challenge.
She cocked a brow at him. “Do I meet with the artist’s approval?”
He felt a flicker of amusement at the challenge in her voice. “Anyone would,” he said, removing his gloves. “Each and every body is worth drawing. I learn something from all of them.”
She made a scoffing sound. “How egalitarian of you. But do your good Revolutionary ideals win over many maidens these days? I’d think they had gone quite out of fashion.”
Still amused, he gave her a casual bow. “Fashion comes and goes. Truth—and art—are everlasting.”
“Ars longa indeed.” Before he had a chance to make note of the Latin—unexpected, from a girl in this kind of brothel—she pivoted to briskness. “Well, how do you want me?”
Only a hint of archness sharpened in the question, drawing sly attention to her profession and dismissing it at the same time. She was very clever, this girl. He came here to study bodies, to scrutinize the details of anatomy that were otherwise hidden from sight. Faces, he could study anywhere. And yet, it was the expression on her face and not the line of her neck that made his fingers itch for his charcoal.
“Any position you can hold for an extended time is fine,” he said, pulling up a chair and taking the tin box of charcoals out of his bag. Sometimes he did give instructions, request stances or postures of a specific kind so that he could focus on musculature or the bend of a joint. But not at the beginning. The beginning was a time for his eyes and his charcoal to familiarize themselves with the lines of a subject. “Make yourself comfortable, Miss….?”
“Salome,” she said, and yes, he could picture her dancing to please Herod. “That’s what they call me here, at least.” She untied the yellow silk cord from around her waist. “It’s really Sara. What is your name?” she asked, removing the robe and revealing more velvety skin. “Madame told me only that you were an artist.”
“Devoir.” He didn’t use Pax in this country unless he was with another agent, and it was easy to answer to Devoir.
“A name as lofty as your ideals.” A grin lurked at the corners of her mouth as she settled herself on the green settee. “What is your real name?”
Wasn’t that a question? Not one he could answer, even if he wanted to. “Devoir will do.”
“Ah. Even in this new age of Napoleon, you hold fast to your principles.” She rested on her side, arm propped up on a brocade pillow. “You are young, to be such a devoted Revolutionary. Are you a Jacobin?”
“I am an artist,” he said, and that, at least, was true. An agent, a Caché, an imposter, the son of a whore and a monster. He was many things, most of them contradictory, but when he held a paintbrush or pastels in his hands, he was simply an artist.
“That is convenient. If you were a Jacobin, I am not certain I would stay in the room with you. My parents died at the guillotine, you see.”
She said it lightly, like she was trying to convince herself that it did not hurt her. But the light was good in this room, and he could see her eyes.
“I am sorry.”
“There is no need. You are too young to have been responsible.”
He started with the shape of her head, as he always did. Then the line of her neck that swept into a slender shoulder.
“It is a comfort, actually, to work for a young man. With the older ones, you always wonder.”
Yes, he could see that. Many of Robespierre’s most bloodthirsty accomplices still moved freely through Paris. Some of them must visit prostitutes. He wondered whether they ever considered that the brothels of Paris were full of women and girls whose families had been sacrificed to the Revolution.
“And even if you knew for sure, you couldn’t walk away. A man who pays is a man who must be pleased. Madame taught me that when I was brought here at nine.”
Images, ugly and dark, flashed through his mind, and his hand jerked against the page, leaving an ugly black line across the sketch. “You didn’t—”
“No,” she said, and he wondered at the relief he felt at the short denial. It was common, after all. So many orphans of the Revolution had fallen into the dirtiest hands in Paris. “I worked in the laundry until I was sixteen and Madame decided I was ready. I bloomed late.”
Pax turned the page in his sketchbook, started again. They didn’t often want to talk, his models. Desiree read a novel, and Jenesse, before that, had napped. When Elvire posed for him, she chattered about the gossip of the house. If Salome—Sara—kept this up, he’d know more about her than he did most of the agents he’d worked alongside for years.
But she slipped into silence after that, and he fell into his work. When she wasn’t speaking, when her face was still instead of flashing through expressions, it was easier to see her as nothing more than a collection of lines and shadows, lighter and darker planes, angles and curves. He drew, filling multiple pages, outlining her whole body, then focusing on the place where her arm rested in the dip above her hip, the shadow under her right breast, the complex shell of her ear. And then back to her full figure, all of the elements combined and deeper, this time, for what he had learned from each element.
When he finished—when one more line would have ruined it—he sat back and looked up at her. She was staring out the window, its light falling on her face, but she did not see the courtyard beyond the glass. She had withdrawn into herself, thinking about something so deeply that she might as well have been in another world. Brooding, he might have said, but that seemed dismissive, not a strong enough word.
He shifted in his chair, returning his charcoal to its tin, letting his small movements draw her back into the room. She blinked as she returned to herself, then smiled at him.
“Finished already?” she asked, as though they had not sat in this room together for an hour. “May I see?”
They always wanted to see what he drew. It wasn’t vanity, he knew; it was curiosity. Everyone wanted to see what they looked like through other eyes.
He held up the sketchbook, turning it so that she could see the last sketch he had drawn, the one he’d taken most care with. She studied it for a few moments, then met his eyes again. Why did it feel like she was studying him just as deeply?
“Have you ever been to Italy?”
If it weren’t for the years and years of his life he’d dedicated to disciplining his body, he would have started. Could she know? Carruthers had only handed down the orders yesterday. He wasn’t due to leave for another few weeks. “Pardon me?” His voice was level, revealing nothing he was feeling. But he was totally focused on her now, even more closely than he had been on the line of her hip or the shadow of her collarbone as he’d drawn her.
“Artists often go to Italy, don’t they?”
“Yes. The light is good there for painters.”
“And have you been?”
“No.” Not yet. But this time in a month, he would be in Turin.
“Would you like to go?”
“Why are you asking me this?”
Something flickered in her eyes and once more she looked away, out through the windows to the courtyard beyond. “I would like to go to Italy.”
Again, she said it lightly. Again, there was something fathoms deep beneath it.
“I am saving up. Perhaps one day, I will have enough to go.” She turned back to look at him again, all longing banished from her eyes. “Perhaps one day we will see each other there. You can paint me in the Italian light.”
He would not have time to paint in Italy. But it was a pleasant thought. The setting would suit her. He relaxed minutely; she was not playing at some deep game. She was merely thinking of her long-lost home. A coincidence. She knew nothing about him.
But he knew more about her than he was altogether comfortable with. He would think of her here, doing things she did not want to do with men she did not trust. It would trouble him.
Foolish.
“Perhaps,” he answered.
As he returned his things to his bag, she rose, pulling the robe back on, tying it tight around her waist. She sat back down on the settee, feet tucked up underneath her, bare toes peeping out. Pax wasn’t much of a painter—paints and canvas were bulky, expensive, and more than that, time-consuming—but he would have liked to paint her like this, the way the color of the silk drew out the hues of her skin. It would have been the best kind of challenge, to try to capture the way her expression seemed ordinary and pleasant now, but how something haunted waited just below.
Pax wasn’t one for whims, either. Instinct, yes, but whims were dangerous in the life of an agent.
Whether it was a whim or whether it was instinct, he would never be able to say, but as he slung his bag over his shoulder, he reached into his pocket and fished out a sous.
She started as he leaned towards her, then relaxed when he simply held out his hand. She opened her own, and he dropped the coin into her palm.
“For Italy.”
That smile belonged in Italian sunlight.
II. San Biagio del Colle
Letizia burst into the storeroom where Sara was inventorying the casks and barrels, dust and dark hair plastered to her sweaty forehead. The little girl’s bare feet skidded to a halt on the broad golden flagstones as she caught her breath.
“Who?” Sara asked, skin cold, all thoughts of olives and cheeses wiped from her mind. They weren’t expecting the boys back till tonight. But for Letizia to run like this—
“A stranger,” Letizia said, and relief swept sweet through Sara’s veins. “In the angel room. Bleeding from a wound low in the side. He’s pale, but not gray yet.”
Letizia was eight years old, but she was a Baldoni; she knew how to make a report. All the relevant details there, to tell Sara exactly what was needed. “Auntie Rosa’s in the kitchen.”
That was all her little cousin needed by way of instruction. She took off running again—in a few minutes, Auntie Rosa would appear in the angel room with as much boiling water as Sara needed. By that time, everyone in Villa Baldoni would know what was happening.
Sara raced across the afternoon-hot cobblestones and mosaics of the courtyard, skirting the fountain, not pausing to explain herself to the great-aunts who sat dozing in the sun. At the threshold of the door to the angel room, she stepped in something warm and sticky. Blood, her racing mind noted, but there was no time to pause, not when Rafaello and Giovanni were lowering a tall man down onto the ancient wooden table. Sara’s eyes flitted over them to Matteo who was already pulling a basket of rolled bandages out of the cabinet. Her cousins were bedraggled, sweaty, and exhausted, but other than a few cuts and bruises, apparently unharmed. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust Letizia’s report, but she could never really believe that her family was safe until she could see it with her own eyes.
Before she could even open her mouth to ask, Matteo was already saying, “Stabbed in the side. It’s bleeding bad, and we didn’t have time to see whether it sliced any organs.”
“He’s still alive, so probably not,” Rafaello said, which was exactly what Sara was thinking. Villa Baldoni was only a few miles from the village of San Biagio del Colle, but if the knife had put a hole in something vital, he probably wouldn’t have made it even that far. Letizia was right—the man was pale, paler than anyone she had ever seen, but that was blood loss on top of his natural skin tone—English? Scandinavian, perhaps?—and he had not yet taken on the gray tinge that signaled that death was imminent.
She brushed Giovanni’s hand away from the man’s side and eased the wadded, red-sopping fabric—Rafaello’s jacket, she thought—from the wound. It was big, jagged edged, but not as deep as it might have been.
She lifted her hand, and Matteo handed her a bottle of medicinal wine, already unstoppered.
She glanced at the man’s face again. The hair that clung to his sweat-slick neck was a lighter color than she’d ever seen on a human head, almost white. He was sunburnt across the ridge of his cheeks, the bridge of his nose. His eyes were half shut, his wide lips pressed closed, and he was breathing through his nose in little, silent jerks. This was a man who was trained not to cry out, no matter what. “This is going to hurt,” she told him, then wondered if he even spoke Italian. It didn’t matter. He’d know about the pain soon enough.
He didn’t cry out when she doused the wound with the wine, though his body jerked under her hands and she felt Rafaello shift to hold him down more firmly. The blood welled up too fast for her to get as clear a look as she should, but it would have to do.
“I’ll sew him up as soon as Auntie Rosa gets here. Who is he?”
“Il Gatto Grigio,” Giovanni said, and even in these grim circumstances, there was humor in his voice.
“Il Gatto Grigio?” Sara echoed. There wasn’t much her cousins could do that would surprise her, but this she had not expected. “What is he doing so far south? No, never mind, it doesn’t matter now. Later.”
Auntie Rosa arrived the next moment, all the small children—ranging in age from two to eleven or twelve—who had crowded in the doorway sweeping aside to let her and her kettle through. Ottavia was right behind her, arms piled high with herbs.
It went fast after that, the cleaning, the sewing, the packing and bandaging. Il Gatto Grigio passed out sometime after Sara’s needle first bit into his skin, and by the time she was done and everyone was cleaning up the blood and supplies, his breathing was more even. Still pale, but still not gray. Unless the wound turned bad, he would live.
She had Rafaello and Giovanni move him to the bed of dark wood and white linens in the corner, asked Auntie Rosa to cook some broth (this offended Auntie Rosa, who had already set Valentina to that task), and then chased both the boys and the small children out of the room.
“He will live,” she said. “Go.”
The boys disappeared to clean themselves up and brag about whatever had happened, Auntie Rosa went back to the kitchen, and the children gathered in the courtyard, just far enough from the door that they weren’t disobeying, but close enough that they’d be able to hear anything that happened inside.
Sara didn’t close the big worn-wood door on them. Their ancestors had entertained guests in this room, but the angel room—so called by generations of Baldoni children because of the ochre and blue fresco on the walls—was used these days as a sickroom. With the doors and windows open, it stayed cooler than almost any other room in the villa, catching whatever breezes passed by.
Ottavia had poured cool well water into two earthenware cups, and she handed one to Sara. “Did you know Il Gatto Grigio wasn’t Italian?”
“I did not,” Sara said. “I also did not know that he was in Tuscany and that the boys were involved with him.” Though of course if he was in Tuscany, the Baldoni boys would be involved with him. That went without saying.
“I will go find out the details,” Ottavia said, and it also went without saying that she would come back and tell Sara everything she found out. They were second cousins, not first, but they had been born two weeks apart and been inseparable since childhood. They never had any secrets between them.
Sara set down her cup on a broad windowsill and straightened the sheet over the man who was Il Gatto Grigio. He was not what she had imagined, and not just because he was clearly not Italian. He was very tall–-really too tall for the old-fashioned bed; the boys had had to lay him down diagonally. No bulging muscles or stockiness like her uncles, just lean, deadly flesh honed to survival. His face was whittled down too, so that the bone structure stood out prominently, strong and handsome enough. An intriguing face. She wondered what his eyes were like.
As she wondered, they twitched, then blinked open. Light, of course. Well, light in color. Sara suspected that even when they weren’t dimmed with pain, those eyes would reveal deep shadows.
“Welcome to Villa Baldoni,” she said as he focused on her face. “You had a close call. It seems Il Gatto Grigio will be with us for some time.”
Even with eyes fever-bright and glazed with pain, he studied her with a rare depth of attention. It should unsettle her, and it did. But it didn’t only unsettle her.
“Pax,” he rasped after a moment, eyes sinking shut again. “My name is Pax. Thank you.” His Italian was very good. If he hadn’t looked like he did, she might have thought he was from some little village in Piemonte.
“Sara,” she said, pouring another cup of water. It would be awkward to brace him upright long enough to drink from it, but she was strong. She would manage. “My name is Sara.”
III. Wiltshire
Cami had spent years trying to not be annoyed by Alice, and most of the time she managed it quite well. After all, Alice didn’t have a cruel bone in her body. She genuinely liked everyone she met, was generous to a fault, and Cami had never once heard her mock the Fluffy Aunts, unlike most of the gently-bred young ladies in their social circle. She liked Alice, most of the time.
But Alice Fanshaw had never dealt with an inconvenience more severe than a picnic canceled by rain, and it showed.
“I’ve seen widows bury their only sons with less wailing and gnashing of teeth,” she said to Aunt Violet.
But the voice that answered wasn’t Aunt Violet.
“It does make one wonder how she would react to a real calamity. Like, say, a carriage with a broken axle or a case of the measles.”
Cami spun around, heart racing. She had assumed it was Aunt Violet coming up behind her because the person moved almost soundlessly and smelled of peppermint. But instead of her lavender-clad aunt, there was a tall man standing just behind her.
A man that tall should not move as silently as Service-trained Aunt Violet. Nor should he smell of peppermint. But at least that was explained by the teacup in his hand.
“I apologize, Miss Leyland,” the Honourable Thomas Styles said. “I didn’t mean to startle you. I come bearing gifts.” He held out the cup and saucer to her. Steam curled up, and a small square of chocolate rested against the pale blue porcelain. “I asked the housekeeper for some. It’s helpful for colds.”
Unsettled, she took the cup. The Vérité who lived inside her chided her for taking something to drink from a strange man. But she was Cami now, and would another guest at a Wiltshire house party poison her? He didn’t even know her. And she did have a cold.
He had noticed it. She’d barely said three words to him when she was introduced earlier and she’d been sucking on Aunt Lily’s lozenges to keep herself from coughing. But he had noticed.
Alice had said he was an artist, and he looked it. The fabrics and tailoring he wore were just as fine as any in the room, proof that he was the grandson of an earl, but something about the colors and the way he tied his cravat made him stand out in a crowd of dandies and self-satisfied country squires. Yes. He looked like an artist. Cami didn’t know any artists, but perhaps they noticed things other people did not.
She decided to risk the tea. “Thank you,” she said. The first sip felt lovely against her scratchy throat. She couldn’t stop herself from eyeing him warily, though.
He noticed that, too. “Again, I apologize. That was not a gallant thing to say about a lady.”
It took her mind a moment to understand what he meant. Oh, about Alice and a real calamity. “Perhaps not gallant, but true. Alice is spoiled. The sweetest girl I know otherwise, but spoiled.”
“Yes, well, any room full of English gentry is a room full of people who are used to having their own way. They’re so accustomed to being wrapped in cotton that they feel the slightest jostle as a sign of the end of the world.”
She cocked her head, intrigued by the comment as she had not been merely by a handsome face. “A strange thing for a member of the English gentry to say.”
He smiled fleetingly, unoffended. “When I was nine years old, my mother sent me to the corner to buy a newspaper. When I returned, I found that she had shot my father and then herself.” His voice didn’t quaver over any of the words, spoken as matter-of-factly as he might have spoken of the weather. But there was the tiniest hesitation—so tiny she thought she might have imagined it—before the word father. Strange, that the emotions came not from the fact of a murder-suicide or of the blood found by a small child.
He set down his glass. “I was in an Amsterdam orphanage for some time before my grandfather found me.” A wry smile touched just the edges of his mouth. “Before he decided that he wanted to find me.”
Yes. Intriguing. “Why would he not want to find you?”
“My mother was a prostitute. They were lawfully married—some malicious whim of my father’s. And once he saw me, even my grandfather couldn’t deny that I was my father’s son. But there are always lingering whispers, when your mother is a prostitute.”
She could top that, if she wanted to. I was born into the infamous Baldoni family, became a victim of an interfamilial vendetta, saw my parents denounced by their own cousin and sent to the guillotine, grew up in the cruelest house in France, became a secret agent, was almost dashed to death against the rocks of the English Channel, and every single day I wonder if today will be the day that my duplicity is revealed.
But of course she couldn’t say that.
Strange that she almost wanted to, to this man. Yes, he had a great tragedy from his past, but that didn’t mean he would understand what she had been through. So why did she get the feeling that if she told him, he wouldn’t even blink?
“My parents died in the Terror,” was all she said. It was true, both for Sara-who-had-become-Vérité and for Camille Besançon, who had died years ago. So it was true for the person she had made herself into, this woman who went by the name Camille Leyland.
“I heard they fished you out of the Channel and brought you to the Misses Leyland half dead.”
“An exaggeration.” It really wasn’t. It would have been so easy to die in the water. Or later, burning with fever. Cami’s life was liberally punctuated with times it would have been easy to die.
“Still. I can’t imagine you crying over a canceled picnic.”
“I don’t cry easily.”
“No. I can’t imagine you do.”
Cami took a small bite of the chocolate and let it melt on her tongue. It was almost too bitter, but she liked it that way. “I should go sympathize with her,” she said, watching as the other young ladies fluttered around Alice.
“I don’t think you belong over there.”
No. It was as though there was a great chasm between her and the other girls, the complacent matron chaperones, the young beaus on the other side of the room. Cami had become quite adept at playing the scholarly code-breaking niece of the two fluffiest secret agents in Britain. But pretending to be the kind of person who had never never known true tragedy, true pain? Who could cry at something so small? That was not a role she could ever pull off.
So Cami sipped her tea, and stood beside a man who had also known true darkness, and watched a kind of innocence she had never known play out like a pantomime in front of her.
IV. Chieri
When the slender young man removed his cap, dark curls tumbled down around the slim shoulders. Ah. Not a man after all. Well, the women of northern Italy fought for freedom as well. Her body language was sure and confident enough to tell him that she would not be easily ruffled, and that was all he asked of someone in the work they would do tonight. Her gender mattered not at all.
“The bells echo far in the mountains,” she said, and the pass phrase revealed that she wasn’t northern Italian at all. That accent was pure Toscano.
“They ring clear and true,” he answered and she gave a small nod of satisfaction. She glanced around at the shadows that swathed most of the abandoned wine cellar they stood in, past the stacked crates that held ammunition, then back to his face. Studied him with a tilt of her head.
“Il Gatto Grigio?”
“Yes.” He’d stopped wincing at the nickname some months back. It was affectionately meant, and it wasn’t as though he could reveal his name—any of his names—to those he worked with.
“You are not what I expected,” she said, and he was accustomed to that now too. He braced himself for prying curiosity, but she simply added, “Tonio sent me.”
That explained the accent. A Baldoni. More and more of them were streaming north into Piemonte and Valle d’Aosta these days. A useful bunch to have about and dedicated to a free and unified Italy. The latter was a common enough trait, but it was so rarely accompanied by the kinds of skills that the Baldoni had. They were as well-trained as any agent he’d ever met.
“He is currently entangled in a…complication,” she said, wry and exasperated and affectionate all at once. He understood why: it was easy to imagine what kind of complications a passionate young man like Antonio might find himself entangled in. “I will be your second.”
Anyone Antonio sent would be skilled and steady, even if she weren’t a Baldoni. “He gave you the details?”
“Yes. I checked the clock in the piazza on my way here. It’s still some time before midnight.”
At midnight, the church bells would toll the hour, their cue. This location had been chosen because it was within easy hearing distance of Monastero Delle Benedettine Cassinesi.
She pushed herself up on top of one of the crates, settling down with an ease that told him she was used to waiting. She moved easily in the men’s clothes as well, no self-consciousness. He hadn’t had any idea of her gender until she’d removed her cap. She would do.
Still, Pax believed in fair warnings, mostly because he had so rarely received them throughout his life. “Blood will be spilled tonight.”
It was difficult to make out her expression in the low light of the lantern, but he could see her raise an eyebrow at him. “You are concerned that I worry over getting my hands sticky? Women know more of blood than men.”
Not a perspective he had considered before, but true enough in its way.
“I would rather not kill,” she said. “I avoid it if at all possible. But you don’t grow up Baldoni without knowing that sometimes it’s the only way to make it out alive yourself. Or to keep your family safe.”
It was an imminently reasonable attitude. Practical, but as humane as possible. But it was not one he had the luxury to subscribe to. The Service sent him a name. He took a life. That was the job. Ironic that most people would consider the Baldoni the lawless ones.
“But we have been paying attention to Il Gatto Grigio.” Her tone made it clear that this was a rare compliment. The ‘we’ would be the Baldoni. Every one of them he’d had chance to meet had spoken like that—the same way an agent spoke of the Service. “We are not much in the business of assassination, but that Austrian colonel was particularly well done. Clean—at least as far as such things can be. No clues left behind at all. Just how a Baldoni would have done it.”
What did it say about him, that he felt a small curl of pleasure in the pit of his stomach at the compliment? But he had always tried to be straightforward in his kills. Use as little violence as possible. Get in and get out.
For all Pax’s skill at drawing, he’d never attempted to make his kills artistic. When you started trying to impress instead of getting the job done…
Well, you became the Merchant. And that was the one thing he had sworn he would never become.
The man who had become Thomas Paxton walked knee-deep in blood. But he did not relish it. He did not try to make it something it wasn’t. All that blood was never beautiful. It was just red.
“One does not admire that sort of thing,” the Baldoni woman said. “But there are better and worse ways to accomplish it. If you had chosen a worse way, we would not want to work with you, no matter how closely our interests align.” She cocked her head again, a bird-like motion that was oddly charming. “You could almost be a Baldoni. Perhaps we will adopt you.”
Adopt. What a sentiment. He had a family now, in the Service. He did not need another. But he took the words as the compliment they were.
“Or perhaps I will just recruit the Baldoni.”
The lamplight glinted off her teeth as her face broke into a grin. “We shall see who wins.”
An invitation to dance. Pax was, among many other things, an excellent dancer. And it had been a very long time since he’d had the time to prove it.
He let a shard of a smile flicker across his face. “So we shall.”
V. London
The woman who was not Camille Leyland looked up as he entered the room. She was sitting on the lone chair, empty hands folded in her lap. Her face was blank but her eyes were stormy. She had known he was coming. She had been waiting for him.
Pax stopped in the doorway of the bare little room and studied her for a moment. Her dress, the styling of her hair, her boots and cloak were all comfortably English and might have belonged to any well-tended-to young woman in the country. But the hue of her skin and the dark of her eyes weren’t English or even French. It was so obvious that she was not Camille. How had the Service missed this? Even as a scrawny child, her foreign heritage should have been evident to Doyle when he questioned her. It was the kind of mistake Doyle rarely made. But then, he and his Maggie were always taking in orphans and strays. He had a soft spot for children.
Still, that shouldn’t have been enough to pull the wool over the eyes of a master spy. She must have been as well educated in acting as he himself was. He had heard that the Cachés at the Convent were not as comprehensively trained as the ones from the Coach House. He had always believed it, assuming that that kind of training was singular. He had been wrong.
What made it all worse was that the Misses Leylands had known all along. They had made that quite clear when they turned up at Meeks Street.
“Of course she wasn’t really Camille,” Miss Violet had said, as though the revolution of a cuckoo in the nest had not rocked the Service to its core. “But she was a child alone.”
“And intelligent. An excellent code-breaker. She’s really a dear, dear girl,” Miss Lily added, sipping from the tea Hawker had brought her. “We couldn’t ask for a better niece.”
“We love her, you see.” They always spoke like that, one picking up from where the other left off. It was only an unnerving habit if you knew what excellent agents they were. “And we will not have her tortured or killed or whatever you lot are planning.”
“She has not betrayed us. She would not.” Miss Lily’s voice was utterly confident. They believed that, clearly. But they loved her. They couldn’t be trusted to judge correctly.
This woman who was not Camille Leyland was a Caché. She could not be trusted. Everyone in the Service agreed about that, no matter what the Misses Leyland said. No matter that she had lived in England for so many years and there was no evidence whatsoever that she’d ever passed along any secrets to France.
She was a Caché. Therefore, she had to be brought in.
Galba had agreed that she would not be harmed unless she fought to escape. But she would be interrogated. Not tortured, out of deference to the Misses Leyland. But the cell in the attic at Meeks Street was waiting for her. Pax knew it would take a long, long time for her to convince the Service that she did not belong there. And perhaps she would not ever be able to convince them, and all the protests of two formidable old ladies would be in vain.
That was why Pax was standing here with a gun in one hand and a knife in the other. That was why Hawker was just behind him and Grey and Stillwater and the others were guarding every entrance to this building.
That was why Pax’s stomach was in knots as he looked at her, acid climbing up his throat to choke him. He hadn’t felt this way since he was a child. After all the things he had seen and done, he had not thought he could feel this way again.
But.
She is me. The words had been echoing in his head since the moment Hawker had uncovered proof that the Leylands’ niece was a Caché. They had provided the background music as he watched everyone hash it out and agree that no Caché could ever be allowed to walk free in England.
Pax had known, of course, how they would react if the truth of him was ever revealed. But hearing it confirmed…it made him feel something he had not believed he could feel. It wasn’t just terror or guilt or those two things mixed together. It was something beyond words.
And it wasn’t even personal with the woman who was not Camille. The Service had reacted like that, and none of them but Doyle had ever even seen her. If it was someone they knew, someone they shared drinks with, had worked alongside, joked with between jobs, how much worse would it be?
He could keep going. Keep his secret. This Caché had been raised in a different training facility, and she did not know him. She could not give him up. He could continue as he had for all these years, this secret boiling inside him. Even as he’d burst through this door, he’d been considering it.
But the woman stood, hands held loose by her sides to show that she held no weapons. Her expression, defiant just a moment before, was swept away into a smile, and dizziness washed through Pax.
“You know, it is truly a relief,” the woman said. “I had not believed it could be. You have come to take me away and lock me up and do all sorts of terrible things to me. Probably kill me.” She laughed then, a golden sound that struck something in Pax’s chest like a bell. “And yet, somehow I feel free.”
Heart drumming, decision made, Pax lowered the gun. He returned the knife to his holster. He held out his hand as though offering her a dance. She took it as easily as she would have in a ballroom.
“Yes, I will go quietly,” she said. Her hand was strong and warm and ink-stained. It fit with disturbing rightness into Pax’s. Well. She is me. Perhaps it should not surprise him. “The truth shall set you free.’ My grandfather used to quote it to me, but I never paid attention. I see now, how right he was.‘”
Her courage smote him. And the light of her laughter called him forward. Yes, his decision was made. The cell in Meeks Street would hold two Cachés tonight.
“I see too,” he said, and led her through the door.
The Coach House
The new girl was tiny. Behind a fall of tangled black curls, Vérité’s face was sallow in a way that said that when she was healthy, her skin gleamed golden-brown.
But she wasn’t healthy, and she wouldn’t become so here. As he did a hundred times a day, Devoir marveled at the stupidity of the Tuteurs. If they fed the Cachés, the children would be stronger fighters, faster learners, sharper thinkers. Better spies.
But control mattered most to the Tuteurs. And nothing kept a child under control like hunger.
Vérité licked her bowl of lumpy porridge clean just like every other Caché, but when it was empty, she stared down at it with a wistful expression, as though she still held hope that perhaps a second helping would appear. That told Devoir a lot. She’d known hunger before being brought here, but it was still new to her.
It was like that with many of the Cachés. Some had been born street rats, the sweepings of the street. But many others were orphans of the Revolution, their parents dead at the guillotine. Égalité had been the daughter of a duc, and though Justice never said so, Devoir had always suspected he was nearly as high-born.
This girl did not have the look of an aristo, not with that complexion. But until recently, she had been well fed, secure in the knowledge that she would always be taken care of. She was still adjusting to hunger and uncertainty.
But there was a sharp intelligence in her eyes and a determination in the way she set her chin as she put the bowl aside that told him that she’d learn fast. Good. The ones who didn’t…well, Devoir didn’t like to think of them.
Tomorrow, he would explain the code, outline the rules the Cachés lived by. No need to do it tonight. Let her have one more night believing that hunger and a hard floor to sleep on would be the worst her new life held. Perhaps she would get a good night’s sleep. Tomorrow, he told himself as he settled down for the night, Vérité would learn the truth of this place.
He came fully awake sometime in the night, and he knew before he opened his eyes that someone was moving around. Almost silently, it was true, but Devoir was Caché.
When he cracked his eyes open and saw the small figure standing in the moonlight streaming down from the high-set, grate-covered window, he was impressed. Not many came to the Coach House already knowing how to move so silently. Vérité had skill already.
Around him, he could feel the others awake and alert. They all slept lightly, waking whenever someone got up to use the bucket in the corner that served as a chamber pot. It was the Caché way.
But none of the others sat up, and Dédicace flopped over and was snoring again a moment later. They would leave it to Devoir to handle this.
He pushed himself to his feet, ribs aching from where Cambert had kicked him this morning. He didn’t move silently, deliberately stepping on a creaky floorboard so that she would know he was approaching. The Tuteurs below would hear, but they didn’t care. So long as the children were all there when they unbolted the door in the morning, it didn’t matter what they did.
Vérité didn’t jump at the noise, but when he positioned himself beside her, she looked up at him with wary eyes.
“They’ll give you one try at escape,” he said, voice pitched just loud enough for her to hear, but not loud enough to disturb the others who would already be falling back into sleep. “You won’t get away.” No one ever, ever got away. “They’ll beat you and bring you back and never mention it again. But if you try a second time, they’ll take you to one of the brothels. This place is a hell, but it’s better than that.”
She couldn’t have been more than eight or nine, but she understood enough. She gave one last look at the window, then turned to face him.
“I’m Devoir,” he said.
She studied him with a gravity beyond her years. It would serve her well here. “What’s your real name?”
He shook his head. “No real names here. They’re dead, just like your old life. Forget about them. You’re Vérité now. I’m Devoir. That’s all.”
Anger flared in her eyes, and, oh, he remembered that. Anger sharp and bright as lightning. He’d felt it too, at the beginning. It would die down soon, till it was nothing more than an ember buried in ash, quiet but intense. A low-grade fever that never burned itself out. Perhaps someday it could be kindled back to a blaze. But for now, that kind of anger was not safe. She would have to learn that.
“I’ll get out of here,” she said, voice and lifted chin all defiance. He almost smiled.
“Yes, you will. You’ll die, or they’ll take you to the brothel. Or, if you’re smart and lucky and work hard, one day they’ll take you away and make you a spy. But those are the only ways anyone ever leaves here. Make sure you leave as a spy, not as a whore or a corpse.”
He could see the struggle in her face, the war raging in that tiny body between her stubborn hope and her instinctive intelligence. If she was as smart as he hoped she was, she’d kill the hope dead and cling instead to survival.
She might die. Children did, here. And she was so small, and she was shivering, and it was only the beginning of November. Winter was coming, and she might not survive it.
“Come back to bed,” he said. Her eyes darted back to the window. “Save your one escape attempt for when you have a better chance.” She wouldn’t have a better chance, but she didn’t understand that yet. She would, soon enough, or she wouldn’t last long here. “They wake us before dawn. Tomorrow will be a long day.” Every day was long, in the Coach House. But there was so much he had to explain to her, tomorrow.
After one last look at the window, she followed him back to the pile of sleeping children. Égalité shut her eyes when he glanced at her, but the others were already sleeping again. Cachés fell asleep just as quickly as they woke.
“Here.” Devoir took Vérité’s hand and pulled her down in the space between himself and Fidélité. “Stay close. You’ll stay warmer that way.”
She took it as the permission it was, curling up against his back, sharp spine pressing into his, and only when he felt her breathing even out did he let himself sink into sleep.