“Focus!” Desgrez yanks Josse back by the shoulders. “This isn’t the time to be …” He waves a hand between Josse and me and makes a disgusted face. “We’ve work yet to do.” He nods to the scores of people still gathered on the wharf. “Make your speech so we can be off before a Shadow Society patrol spots us.”
I never dreamed I’d say this, but Desgrez is right. We’ve a city to retake. No time for distraction.
“Do you want to do the honors?” Josse asks me.
“And deny you the pleasure of touting your royal heritage?” He clutches his chest, as if wounded, and I grin. “You’re the link to Louis. And you’ve got a knack for making these speeches.”
A slow smile tugs his cheeks. He straightens his cloak with a flourish and climbs onto an overturned crate. “My good people! I am Josse de Bourbon and this is Mademoiselle La Vie. We bring you these healing tonics from His Royal Highness, the dauphin! He is alive and plotting to reclaim the throne from La Voisin and the Shadow Society, even as we speak. But he needs your aid and loyalty to do so. If you will join us in this battle, we will continue to provide curatives and protection. Once order is restored, you will also be given a voice in the new government. Representatives will bring your complaints before the dauphin and the Parlément de Paris.”
“Sure they will!” calls the fishwife who slapped her husband, Étienne, back to life.
“Ameline, hush,” the man orders, but she elbows past him to the front of the group and stands before us with her arms crossed. “I’m just as likely to have a say in the government as I am to dip my fingers in the mucky Seine and have them come out plated gold.”
A few fishermen snicker, and the rest stare—awaiting our reply.
“I assure you—” Josse begins, but Ameline cuts him off.
“Save your assurances! We want proof!”
Josse looks down at me, and I shrug helplessly. We have no proof to give them. We haven’t needed it. The poor and sick have been so grateful for aid, they willingly put their trust in us. I had assumed the fishmongers would be the same, especially with all their happy tears and thankful cries. But Ameline tilts her head back and laughs bitterly, pointing a finger at us.
“Just as I suspected. If the dauphin is so eager to join with us, where is he? Where is any of the royal family? Shouldn’t they be the ones distributing the curatives?” She looks all around for royals who are distinctly absent and more and more of the dockworkers begin to murmur and shout.
Josse waves a hand overhead. “I am the bastard son of the late king and here on behalf of the royal family—”
“Not to disparage your status, as I’m certainly in no position to do so”—Ameline tugs on her ragged skirts coated in mud and fish guts—“but sending the royal bastard and runaway daughter of La Voisin to do their bidding hardly inspires confidence.”
“His Royal Highness wishes to walk among you, of course,” Josse grinds out, “but you must understand how dangerous—”
“Exactly!” another man cries. “How do we know the dauphin lives at all? These could be cruel, empty promises. We were betrayed by anotherchampionthis very night. Seems foolish to put our trust in someone we can’t even see, who could be hiding in a lavish castle, swathed in velvet and silk, while we are poisoned and left to perish.”
“Louis and my sisters are living in conditions no better—”
“Prove it!” someone yells. And then all of the Quai de la Grève is shouting it.
Josse steps down from the crate with a heavy thunk and rakes his fingers through his soaking hair. “I give up. There’s nothing I can say to please them.”
“We appreciate what you’ve done for us,” Ameline calls above the tumult, “but if we’re to believe your promises, if you want commoners to rally behind royals who have always reviled us, we need to see them with our own eyes. And if it be as you say it is, then we’ll cast our lot with yours.”
A hundredAyesrise up in agreement, followed by a hundred more.
Josse gives a curt nod and stalks off. Desgrez follows. I linger slightly longer, forcing a smile and calling out assurances. Then I rush to catch up to Josse and Desgrez.
“The healing was impressive, I’ll give you that,” Desgrez says. “But the response wasn’t quite as enthusiastic as promised.” He casts goading smiles at Josse and me in turn.
“Save it,” Josse says.
“That wentdifferentlythan expected,” I agree, “but we knew we would have to include Louis sooner or later.”
“I was hoping formuchlater,” Josse growls.
“Not looking forward to your glorious family reunion?” Desgrez continues. “But Louis has missed you so!” He tries to sling his arm around Josse’s shoulders, but Josse buries his elbow in Desgrez’s side. After a long, drawn-out wheeze, Desgrez chuckles. “Not to worry—I’ll protect you.”
I accidentally laugh, and Josse shoots me a glare. “We’llbothprotect you,” I say. Then slowly, so as not to draw Desgrez’s attention, I slide my fingers between Josse’s and give his hand a faint squeeze.
20
JOSSE
