‘Go, Camille. Run now, while you can, and hide yourself away. Comtois will find another way to protect France and her children. And I hope you will be at our side when the fight comes. As it must.’
She lowered the gun, eyes blurring with tears.
‘Let us leave this place as family once more.’
He held out a hand, a fond smile lifting his eyes and the colour in his cheeks. Her grief for her parents sliced through her, keen and pure.
Tentatively, she took his hand. On numb legs, she turned and stumbled down the mountain, letting him support her as they made their way through the paper rocks. The wind died, the screaming with it. She stared at the gun in her hand, still warm from shooting Olympe.
She hadn’t thought she had anything left to lose.
She’d been wrong.
At the foot of the mountain, Camille slid the pistol back into her belt and tried to pull herself together. She needed to find Ada and get out of there.
‘I have to find my friends.’
For a moment, she wanted to hug him like she had as a child.
‘I—’
Dorval appeared behind Molyneux, and the words died on her lips.
Dorval, who should have died in the theatre days before. An angry burn puckered the side of his face, as cruel as his smile. Camille’s heart was racing. How was Dorval still alive? How had he found them here?
Molyneux shuddered, eyes widening in shock. Then he coughed, convulsing, as a trickle of red bubbled over his lips.
Dorval pulled the knife from Molyneux’s back and pushed him into her arms. She fell under his sudden weight, knees hitting the ground hard. Over Molyneux’s shoulder she watched Dorval clean his knife on a silk handkerchief.
‘You disappointed us. I told you there would be consequences.’
PART SIX
Dangerous Remedy
1
Île aux Cygnes
20 Prairial Year II
Camille ran.
Blindly, scrambling through stampeding crowds, gasping around the knot in her chest. She was slick with blood – no, she couldn’t, she wouldn’t think about what had just happened. Ada. She needed to find Ada. That was the only thing that mattered now.
Where the Champs de Mars sloped to the river and the Île aux Cygnes, Camille left the crowds and headed into the alleys towards the spot she had planned to meet Ada. Above her, the Périer brothers’ steam mills rose over the scattered buildings, the twelve huge driving wheels churning incessantly, filling the air with a metallic thrum.
There was no one waiting for her.
She sank down by one of the channels of brackish river water that ran through the reclaimed land, wiping her bloody hands on her trousers. Her father’s pistol was still at her belt, but she was careful to avoid touching it.
Ada would come. She had to.
The air was heavy with the odours of offal and lamp oil from the factories and slaughterhouses. Camille felt numb. Neither side had Olympe. They’d won, but why didn’t it feel like it? She was aware of the pain in her lungs. First the river water, then the fire. She could barely catch her breath.
Church bells chimed the afternoon into evening, and still Ada didn’t come.
A hand touched her shoulder and she started, expecting Dorval.
