‘Yes. I’ll have to go in at the hinges. It might hurt.’
Olympe turned her featureless face between Camille and the blacksmith.
‘Will you let him try?’ Camille asked. ‘We won’t make it out of here with you in the mask.’
Camille could only imagine what the girl’s expression might be under it. How hot and grimy her skin must feel. How she couldn’t scratch an itch or wipe away her tears.
Olympe nodded, heavy and slow.
The blacksmith motioned for her to place her head on his anvil. She kneeled, her head lying on the block like a convict waiting for the guillotine blade to drop. He set to work.
They’d slid furtively through the prison until they’d stumbled across the forge. Camille knew they’d have a better chance of escaping if Olympe wasn’t wearing the mask, so she had stepped inside the forge, pistol raised and heart in her mouth. But the blacksmith had agreed easily enough. He worked gently, heating a section at a time and chipping away carefully at the hinges. Olympe whimpered, fingers tightly gripping the sides of the anvil.
A nauseating mix of anxiety and humiliation was making Camille restless. She paced in front of the forge doors as the smith worked. This was another unforeseen risk, dragging out how long she had to be in the prison, increasing the number of people who knew she’d been there. The duc had been stupid. How was she supposed to do a good job without all the information? Anger brought heat to her cheeks. The duc had thought she would be a good hireling and follow orders without questioning them. That was the problem with men like him. They had no idea that anyone not of their rank and class was a human being at all.
She paused to peek into the courtyard. A troop of soldiers was passing through. More feet on the ground than she’d expected – a consequence of the balloon crash. The crash, Ada, Al. All the problems she’d not let herself think about. She hoped Guil had found them. That she hadn’t made a mistake letting him go. That Ada would forgive her for the choices she had made.
The mask dropped to the floor with a leaden clunk, landing in the sawdust. Olympe made a hoarse keening sound, her body shuddering. Then she rose stiffly, dark braid tangled where it had been confined, and her shoulders dropped, muscles uncoiling in release from the weight of the mask. She scraped the hair from her face, torn nails catching in the matted strands.
The blacksmith had gone pale, taking one stumbling step back, then another. Olympe was facing him, so all Camille saw was the knotted nest of her hair. He was muttering under his breath. The Lord’s Prayer, Camille realised. He crossed himself – then fled from the forge.
‘Olympe.’ Camille’s voice sounded strange to herself. Unsure, forced. ‘Are you okay?’
At her words, Olympe turned. Camille’s grip on the gun wavered. The breath had been snatched from her lungs, and she fought the impulse to flee.
The skin of Olympe’s face was a riot of swirling grey. Her black hair stuck to her dirt-crusted cheeks and forehead. Eddies like storm clouds washed across her skin, dark grey like the cobblestones, cobalt blue, eggshell and dove and flint and smoke all in constant motion. It was like watching the roiling waters that rushed through the storm drains outside the Au Petit Suisse. Her eyes, which had been invisible under the mask, were two dark pools, free from iris or pupil. Black from lid to lid but filled with crackling blue sparks like the ones that leaped off her skin. Like stars in the night sky.
A few stray sparks caught between her fingers. Camille followed their dancing path, feeling the low hum in the air between her teeth and in the curling ends of her hair. A spike of fear held her frozen. Some primordial hindbrain told her to run and run far.
The impossibility of it was almost too much to bear. There were so many questions skittering around her mind she couldn’t catch hold of them to pull together the strands of a coherent plan.
Olympe took a step forwards and Camille instinctively stepped back. The girl’s face fell. Despite her appearance, Camille realised she could still read her expressions. The downturn of her mouth and the wideness of her eyes was so painfully human that her own heart ached in response.
Camille forced herself to tuck her pistol back into her belt, fighting a scrabbly, panicked feeling, and crossed to Olympe to inspect the bruises and scabs around her throat and shoulders where her mask had rested.
Olympe rubbed tears from her eyes.
‘Thank you. I think I’m okay.’
Something in the gesture sent a spark of empathy through Camille. Whatever else was going on, it didn’t seem as though Olympe was part of it. She was being used, just like Camille.
‘Here.’ Camille plucked a cloak from the wall and wrapped it around Olympe, pulling the hood to hide her face.
‘Are you taking me to the duc?’ asked Olympe.
Camille hesitated. What was she going to do? The duc had lied to her. If she handed him Olympe, then he would have got away with it. And Olympe… What would happen to her? Who was she, and what did the duc even want with her?
Opening the forge door a crack, she checked the comings and goings in the courtyard. Then she turned back, the kernel of a plan forming.
‘Maybe. Maybe not. What do you want to do, Olympe?’
Olympe swallowed, tucking a curl of hair behind her ear. She did it deliberately, as if savouring the freedom to touch her own face, attend to her discomfort.
‘I don’t know who this duc is or why he wants me. So, no, I don’t want to go to him. I’m sick of people treating me as though I’m their possession. I want to choose my own fate. I want to find my mother. And I want to be free.’
Camille smiled.
‘Okay, then.’
