Camille had been too tired to argue with James when he’d insisted on going out to find coffee, a packet of roasted chestnuts and a round, fat Sans Culottes cake, from a nearby café. Her paltry breakfast that morning felt a long, long time ago, and she’d fallen on the food, demolishing it in minutes. Then she’d settled with her coffee, hoping it would revive her. The smell of burned coffee meant home to Camille as much as the scatter of her things around a room or a door she could lock behind her. It would greet her halfway along the Rue de Vaugirard and summon her like a congregation to the church bell. The Au Petit Suisse roasted its own beans and took assiduous care to roast dark enough to mask the poor taste of the cheap Robusta beans. The scent would permeate the whole building for hours, curling up through the stairwells until all their clothes had a semi-permanent acrid whiff. At first Camille found the bitter, black coffee undrinkable. Then as the months passed, like the tuft of horsehair that jabbed her shoulder through the mattress, or the crust of mould around the skirting boards, the bitter taste became a comfort, a symbol of the home she’d forced the world to make space for.
They sat round a gritty pot of burned coffee, so far from their cosy evenings together above the Au Petit Suisse, pretending not to look at Guil’s unconscious body. Camille had taken a handful of chestnuts and was peeling them languidly. A shatter of shells fell off her lap when Al spoke.
‘A job well done?’ she replied. ‘Wekilledpeople. It was a disaster—’
‘Do you really care about that?’ Al had sniffed out the remains of a bottle and tipped it into his coffee.
‘Of course I care. I’m not a monster.’
Olympe, arms wrapped around her legs and her forehead pressed against her knees, was next to her. Camille hesitantly rested a hand on Olympe’s shoulder, stroking the exposed skin of her neck in some poor attempt at comfort.
‘I told you getting mixed up in this was too dangerous,’ Al continued. ‘It’s time someone said it to your face: we’re taking way too many risks. Sod doing the right thing – us making it out the other end of this is about as high as we can aim for.’
‘Shut up. Shut your damn mouth. None of this was supposed to happen. You’re the one who said we should go into the theatre. You should have realised they locked the doors—’
She broke off, coughing. She hated everyone seeing her like this. She felt exposed, every weakness and flaw on display.
‘Don’t you dare lay this at my door. I told you it was a bad idea to think we could walk right into the place. You put us into the path of someone dangerous.’ Al was ashen. ‘You weren’t pulling out the bodies.’
‘If anyone’s to blame,’ said James, ‘it’s the man who locked the doors. I don’t think any of you would have let this happen if there was any way you could have stopped it.’
Camille dropped her head into her hands, pinching her temples. The dark seemed to be drawing in, shadows eating up the room. ‘No. I’m not blameless. I should have planned better.’
‘Planned for what exactly? Will you please tell me what’s going on?’
‘I told you, we’re on a job. You don’t need to know the details.’
‘Why not?’ It was Ada who spoke, a flash of anger in her eyes. ‘He’s helped us, risked his life to help us. He should know the truth. He’s your fiancé, isn’t he?’
Camille closed her eyes for a moment, feeling the tightness in her chest.
‘Fine. Don’t make me regret this.’
She ran over the details of their plan and how it had gone wrong, with the rest of the battalion chipping in.
‘Did you get the information you needed?’ James asked when she was done.
‘Yes and no.’ She returned to her cold coffee, thinking over everything that had happened, everything Dorval had said to her as he tried to smash her ribs with his boot. She didn’t know if he’d made it out alive. It seemed impossible that anyone could have survived, and yet James had dragged himself and Guil from the rubble, ghost-white with plaster dust. She could only hope Dorval hadn’t managed the same. ‘Dorval said things don’t end with Olympe. They want the king back on the throne and they think Olympe is the way they can make it happen.’
Al cracked a nut. ‘Shocking. Who would have guessed?’
‘It was more than that. Dorval talked about terror. About showing the Revolutionaries what terror really means. I think they’re planning something. And Olympe is part of their plan.’
‘I won’t do it. I won’t let them use me.’
Camille stroked Olympe’s hair, but the crackling halo shocked her and she drew back. A stormy electric blue glow had spread across Olympe like a second skin.
‘They want to make me hurt people and I won’t. I refuse. I’d rather die than let them take me again.’ A spark jumped from her wrist and caught on the edge of a news-sheet, the paper smouldering. The electric charge rippled wildly around her shaking shoulders.
‘It won’t come to that. I promised, didn’t I?’ Camille tried to reassure her.
But it was too late.
The first spark was joined by another, ricocheting up Olympe’s arms. Like a flame catching, the charge consumed her in a rush, sending her hair flying wildly about her head and catching the light of the stars in her eyes.
The battalion shrank as one, Camille scrambling to escape the storm. She could just make out the tear-stained bruises around Olympe’s eyes. She called her name, but the girl didn’t respond. The hum was crackling louder and faster, rushing over her like a river raging from its banks. Sparks caught on scraps, chairs, their bundles of supplies, filling the room with curls of smoke. A wind whipped from Olympe’s floating figure, scattering Ada’s books, flinging Camille’s hair over her eyes. She could feel the charge in her teeth, in her bones, an awful, insistent hum that filled the inside of her head until she could barely stand it. Somewhere in the mayhem, Ada had crawled over to Olympe and reached for her hand, but a flare shot painfully between them and she let go.
‘I won’t do it!’ wailed Olympe. She hung in the centre of the room, feet dangling a few centimetres off the floor, wrapped in shimmering blue. ‘I can’t – I won’t hurt more people, I won’t … I won’t…’
