‘I really didn’t hurt you? It looked awful.’
‘It felt … strange. But that’s it. I told you you wouldn’t hurt me. Your abilities aren’t inherently good or bad, they’re simply something you can use as you will. They’re whatever you want them to be.’
‘Sounds like the perfect secret weapon,’ said Al.
Camille’s hands stilled where she was rebraiding her hair. ‘It does. Which would explain why the Royalists and Revolutionaries both want you in their control.’
Shaking, Ada made more notes while the rest of the battalion dressed and fetched breakfast. Any memory of pain disappeared quickly, and Ada was left only with the thrum of excitement. That had been amazing. She’d used her knowledge to create a hypothesis, run an experiment and record meaningful results. This was everything she’d ever wanted to do. For a moment, the sheer frustration of being confined to studying borrowed books in stolen free moments when she was barely five minutes’ walk from one of the finest universities in the country hit her. But her excitement overruled it. There was so much she didn’t understand about Olympe, whether her abilities were really her own or if they’d been created by the experiments she’d told them about. This Docteur Comtois or the duc who had hired them might know. Might even have had a hand in it. Whatever it was, she had to find out.
She scribbled quickly to keep up with her whirring brain.
Discovery was addictive, and she wanted more.
8
The Royalist Drop Point at the Madeleine Church
The incessant rain had come and gone again by the time Camille left for the arranged drop with their Royalist employers that evening. A hazy pink sunset was unspooling over the river as she crossed the Pont National. The dirt and cobbled roads were lit by oil lamps strung between buildings. Restaurants and taverns emptied out factory workers, merchants and shop girls, squeezed between the ornate-fronted hôtels of the aristocracy and the high walls of their city gardens. Posters covered any exposed space, advertising the upcoming Festival of the Supreme Being and arrests or rulings for each section of the Paris Commune. Ada walked with her for a while, drawing closer as they passed the shadow of the guillotine in the Place de la Révolution. It was probably her imagination, but Camille thought the ground seemed almost sticky with years of spilled blood.
Ada peeled off, ready to meet her later or report her absence if things with the Royalists went wrong, and Camille continued down the Boulevard de la Madeleine, coming up short in front of the grand portico of the church of Sainte-Marie-Madeleine. Only the looming columns and pediment had been built; behind them the excavations for the foundations lay untouched. Revolutionary Paris had no use for a church, so building had stopped. The void was like a dark bruise between the glowing windows and lamps lighting the street. Camille waited until an idling group of students had passed before slinking down the side of the abandoned church.
At the far end of the foundations, a wall from the choir of the older church still stood. A storm lamp threw lurching shadows onto its cracked plaster. Two people were waiting for her.
Camille readied herself and pulled her mask out of her pocket. It was a simple black riding vizard, used by ladies to protect their faces from the sun. Made out of black velvet on pasteboard, it formed a rough oval with holes for her eyes. It was supposed to be held in place by a button clamped between the teeth, but Ada had helped her modify it to be secured with string instead. She positioned the mask, then shoved her hands into her pockets and joined them.
‘Bonsoir, mademoiselle.’
The duc stood nearest the lamp. He looked just as he had when he’d recruited Camille, a tall, middle-aged man with a shock of white hair and piercing blue eyes, wearing expensively tailored silk breeches and tailcoat, silk stockings and shoes with immaculately polished buckles. Beside him was a younger man with a ruddy complexion, thick with muscle but impeccably dressed. Something about him didn’t feel right. An air of latent aggression seemed to come with him, making it seem as though his suit was a poor disguise for his true nature, like old wallpaper showing through thin paint. Camille kept her distance from him, hand resting on the handle of her pistol.
‘Bonsoir, citoyen,’ she replied. The duc’s lips tugged into a momentary sneer at the revolutionary epithet. ‘Bonsoir…’ Camille glanced questioningly at his companion.
‘Monsieur Dorval,’ the duc introduced him. ‘An associate.’
‘How do you do?’
The man nodded in acknowledgement.
‘I trust it is a good evening?’
‘Oh, fair to middling, I’d say.’ Camille looked at the darkening sky. A sliver of moon was making itself known among the clouds. ‘Don’t think the rain will last, which is all any of us can ask for. Paris can’t afford another bad harvest.’ She smiled pleasantly. ‘Quite literally.’
The duc’s hand twitched as though wanting to tap restlessly against his stick.
‘If you’re angling for more money, I will need some assurances that you have safely retrieved my daughter.’ The duc made a show of looking around. ‘It would seem she hasn’t made it this far. May I enquire as to her whereabouts?’
‘Not where you told me she’d be, as it turns out.’
The duc tensed.
‘We raided the prison. She wasn’t there.’
The plan had come together in her mind during the walk from the Au Petit Suisse. She wasn’t going to hand Olympe over, whatever Al said, and she wasn’t keen on letting on they had her. But she didn’t want to tell the duc they’d failed to get into the prison either. That was just kicking the problem down the road: he might end up asking her to go in again. So this was the option left after all other choices had been scratched off her list.
‘The directions I gave you were very precise. Did you make some error of comprehension?’ The duc’s finger was twitching against his thigh, rapping out a stucco rhythm. Camille hoped for his sake he didn’t play whist.
‘I can read quite well, thank you. The room you sent me to was empty. No sign of where she might have been taken.’
The duc pursed his lips.
