by Kat Dunn
Known as the Rookery, the slum covered the triangle between Great Russell Street and Broad Street, bounded by Charlotte Street and High Street. It was barely ten minutes’ walk from the polished stone and flashing windows of the Bedford Estate, but he didn’t dare go directly unless some emergency forced his hand.
Within paces, James had left behind the carriage-crammed thoroughfare of Broad Street and disappeared into the dark hollows of the slum. Once-respectable townhouses had been divided and divided until three families lived in each room. Crumbling tenements were squeezed into the gaps, built without foundations and walls only half a brick thick, and everywhere, the rubble of collapsed buildings, a spectre of future ruin. Spider-webbing between was a warren of alleys, courtyards and cul-de-sacs, windows stuffed with rags or papered over, gutters choked with cabbage stalks and refuse, walls bulging, whitewash peeling with mould. James had come here to hide from his past – instead, it only reminded him of Paris, and running with the battalion.
He had taken a room above a public house called The Rat’s Castle on Buckbridge Street, the closest the Rookery got to a main road. The building was a wreck of the area’s former fortunes, a redbrick house with ornamental carving decorating its frontage, though the ground floor had been long since ripped out to make space for the pub.
It was a raucous pub, with a steady stream of clients passing at all hours and in all states of disrepair – perfect for slipping in and out without attracting attention. Edging past a party of drinkers clutching tin cups of spirits, James mounted the stairs two at a time to his room at the very top. He had taken care never to meet his neighbours; he could be rubbing shoulders with murderers for all he knew – and given the Rookery’s reputation, he probably was. Despite its position under the eaves, his room was unusually fine – small but ornately panelled, with a vast fireplace and two windows, their glass panes intact. Olympe couldn’t complain he kept her in complete squalor.
That itch in the back of his mind was stronger than ever: he’d left her alone for too long. She had enough food and water, he was sure, but god help her if she escaped and became lost in this nightmare of a city.
At the top of the stairs he paused, waiting for the footsteps thundering down below to stop, then fished the key from his pocket and let himself in.
To find Olympe holding a pistol aimed directly at his head.
PART TWO
Entente Cordiale
1
A Room in the St Giles Rookery
‘Let me go, or I shoot.’
Olympe’s silk-gloved hand was wrapped tightly around the handle of the pistol.
James stepped inside and locked the door. The hairs on his neck prickled as he turned away from her, even for a moment.
‘Stay back.’
The gun wavered in her hands, tracking a bead between his forehead and throat as she squared up, a head shorter and dressed in nothing but silk: silk dress, silk stockings, a silk scarf around her throat. A rope around one foot bound her to the bedstead, her silk gloves, each tied at the wrist, giving no purchase to undo the knots. Her hair was loose and wild, curling away from her temples to hang in an unbrushed tangle down her back. The smudged grey-blue storm cloud of her skin roiled with tension and, in the darkness, the pinpricks of star-like light in her eyes were as bright as a burning match.
Behind her was the floorboard she’d levered up to locate the hidden pistol.
‘I’m not bluffing.’ The gun was too big for her; she held it in an awkward, two-handed grip.
James raised his hands. ‘I can stay back, or I can untie you. Which one would you like me to do?’
‘Don’t patronise me!’ Her finger twitched on the trigger.
‘I’m not patronising you. Believe me, I take you very seriously. But if you shoot me, I can’t help you. Agreed?’
A look of uncertainty flashed across her face. ‘Yes, but it will hurt you and that will be just as satisfying.’
Olympe had learned a few things from Camille, it seemed.
‘I’ll untie you, and then we can talk, okay?’
‘Untie me and unlock the door. Then you can talk as much as you like, I won’t be around to hear it.’
‘All right.’ James manoeuvered around the trembling point of the gun towards the rope at her ankle. As he crouched, he felt the cold barrel brush his ear.
‘There,’ he said. ‘Done.’
The rope came loose.
Olympe looked down, and James lurched, grabbing for her wrists.
With her powers locked away behind layers of silk, she was just a teenage girl; in a simple contest of strength, he knew he could win.
Olympe panicked and her finger squeezed the trigger.
The gun went off with a bang at his temple. Powder flared, filling the air with the acrid smell of smoke; the sound punched so hard against his ear he felt drunk.
But – there was no bullet. She hadn’t loaded it.
James almost laughed. Of course she hadn’t; she wouldn’t know how.
The recoil was still fierce on a big old pistol like that. It hit Olympe hard enough that she fumbled, pearl handle slipping against her silk gloves. Ignoring the ringing in his ears, James snatched at the pistol – even if she couldn’t shoot him, it could do damage as a bludgeon. They struggled for a moment, Olympe slipping in her silk stockings, and they went tumbling to the floor. James knocked the pistol out of her hands, sending it spinning; Olympe dived after it, but James grabbed her ankle and hauled her back. She kicked at his face. He ducked out of the way, putting himself between her and the gun.
‘Stop! Stop it! It’s over, Olympe. It’s over!’
‘I won’t let you tie me up again.’ She scrambled upright, hair in her face and panting. ‘You’re like Docteur Comtois, you lock me away like an animal. Like I’m nothing.’
‘I’m not like them. For god’s sake, look around you. Is this a dungeon?’
‘You can put me in silks and call it mercy, but you still treat me like a dog,’ she spat. ‘You betrayed your friends. You’re a monster.’
‘Shut up.’
It stung. Why was Camille a hero when she went after what she wanted? Why was he a monster when he did the same thing? He remembered the pleading look on Edward’s face at Henley House, begging him not to throw away their friendship. Edward, Olympe, Camille – they were collateral damage, yes, but it didn’t make him a monster. He was a good man. He had to believe it.
His heart rate slowed after the burst of action, and a headache from the gunshot was starting to build. Olympe hadn’t fought him like this since France. At first, she’d struggled to escape at every opportunity, but the further they got from anywhere she knew, the quieter she grew. For the last few weeks, she’d barely spoken.
Olympe gave a final longing look at the gun, then slumped, skin clouding blue-grey with frustration, and rubbed her eyes with her hand.
‘Are you crying?’
Olympe sniffed angrily. ‘No. I hate you.’
‘I know.’
‘When Camille finds me, she’s going to kill you. I want to watch.’
James leaned against the bed frame, unutterably weary. Weary from the journey to Henley and back in two days, weary from constantly looking over his shoulder, weary from fitful sleep during their agonisingly slow journey from France, always hiding, sneaking, walking by moonlight until his feet bled, hoping Olympe wouldn’t smother him as soon as he shut his eyes.
‘No one is going to kill anyone,’ he said tersely. ‘There is no revolution in England.’
Olympe folded her arms. ‘Maybe there should be. Just a little one, to make arrogant men like you taste humility.’
‘I told you at the start. If you cooperate, this will be over so much faster.’
‘I’ll cooperate when I’m a corpse and you can stuff me and mount me on the wall like the medical curiosity you think I am.’
‘Please. Give me a chance—’
‘Why? Why should I trust you? Everyone who’s kidnapped
me, locked me up, experimented on me, thought of themselves. Only Camille and my mother were ever for me, ever thought me human.’
‘I promise I don’t want to hurt you. I am not like Comtois – or the duc.’
She narrowed her eyes. ‘And yet here I am, your prisoner. I am not a commodity to be traded and exploited. You’re as bad as the rest of them, whatever you tell yourself.’
James tipped his head to look at the ceiling. The white-washed plaster ceiling was spotted with damp and a spider was patiently building an empire in one corner.
Maybe Olympe was right. After all, he didn’t know what his father would do with her. But surely she would be better treated here than in France. He had to hand her over to prove the science was real – before Wickham got there first. This discovery would be for nothing if he didn’t act fast.
Like the spreading damp, a stain of guilt marred his thoughts. The truth was: he hadn’t thought about what would happen to Olympe in the end. It hadn’t factored into his decision and perhaps it should have. The more time he spent with Olympe the more questions he had. How was she storing electricity – or was she generating it? Did every human have this latent ability, or was she special? Why did the shock hurt? Why did it kill?
He had too many questions and the uneasy feeling he wasn’t smart enough to answer them.
Ada was smart.
She had figured out so much with no formal scientific education. Of course Camille would pick someone like her. Smarter than him, sharper, better. Here he was, dim and ordinary and offering her nothing—
James stilled mid-thought.
There was a creak on the stairs, then the softest of sounds at the door.
The handle turned. Rattled against the lock.
James grabbed Olympe before she could utter a cry, clamping a hand over her mouth, rolling them both under the bed.
The sound at the door stopped; for a moment he thought whoever it was might have gone. Then a piece of paper was slid under the door. Slowly, the key he had left in the keyhole was pushed out, and dropped onto the paper waiting below, before it was pulled back to the other side.
With a jolt James remembered the gun still on the floor.
Reaching with his foot he could just about toe it into the hole and push the floorboard into place.
The lock clicked.
He whipped his foot out of sight as the door opened.
And someone stepped inside.
2
A Dressmaker’s, London
‘How many heads did you see chopped off?’ Hennie leaned across the carriage, eyes wide in horrified delight.
‘Henrietta, shush.’ Lady Harford flicked open her lace fan and wafted herself gently.
‘Was there a lot of blood? Was it awful?’
Camille looked between Hennie and Phil’s attentive faces, at a loss. She had thought she was good with words, sharp with a plan at any time. And she was – in Paris. In the middle of a revolution. When stabbing someone and running away was always an option. Here in London, in sprig muslin skirts and genteel society, Camille was finding herself more than a little helpless.
And hurt. It was almost a curiosity, the capacity she still had to feel hurt by naive, insensitive children who thought the Revolution a game.
‘Yes. It was quite awful to see my parents murdered in front of me. I did not particularly enjoy that.’
Hennie’s face fell. It was cruel, but Camille felt a moment of satisfaction. She had suffered in ways Hennie could never – hopefully would never – understand. It had marked her, and for the rest of her life she would be working around this raw wound, like the gap of a pulled tooth.
‘Oh. Oh, yes, of course. I’m terribly sorry. We both are, aren’t we, Phil?’
Phil was still staring at Camille, like she was at an exhibition of medical curiosities on display for penny-a-view at a saints’ day fair. ‘Oh, er, yes. Awfully.’
It was the four of them driving into town: Camille, Hennie, Phil and Lady Harford. James had barely arrived at the London house before vanishing. Camille just had time to instruct Al to follow him before she was caught up in an expedition to the dressmaker to outfit her with a new wardrobe.
She had watched jealously as Al sauntered unimpeded into the city. In Paris she would have left with him without another thought; in London, playing the role of pitiable refugee and James’s fiancée, her freedom was severely reduced. More than that, everything that made her confident – her contacts, her array of weapons, her knowledge of the sprawling mess of alleys and rooftops of her city – was gone. All she had left was herself.
Not that her body felt like much of an asset. Her lungs were bothering her still. She’d blamed it on the fire, then the stress of their exploits with Docteur Comtois and the duc, and finally the journey from France to London. She had lost so much weight that she’d been able to fit into Hennie’s cast-offs.
‘Still, a tragic orphan is far more likely to be the heroine of a novel and that is at least something of a comfort,’ said Hennie.
‘Oh, girls, not these silly novels again. So ghastly and improper,’ said Lady Harford.
‘Gothic, not ghastly, Maman. You haven’t even read one.’
‘And I never shall. That strange Udolpho book you were in such a passion about – in my day we wasted money on dresses not bound heaps of paper! Trop bizarre.’
Hennie turned from her mother with a humph. ‘It is literature and I’m sorry you are too stuck in your ways to appreciate it. I will lend you my copy of The Mysteries of Udolpho, Camille.’
Camille blinked. ‘Thank you.’
‘Ah! We’re here.’
The carriage had finished its stop-start trundle, arriving finally in Pall Mall at the tasteful frontage of a linen-drapers. Above the large windows hung a sign: Harding, Howell & Co. The four women stepped over the horse manure and overflowing gutters into the haven of the shop.
Lady Harford was immediately recognised, and they were whisked through a series of airy rooms separated by glazed partitions, past displays of furs, fans, suede gloves, lace trimmings, bonnets, jewellery and perfume, until they reached their destination. Lit by a grand domed skylight above, this room was given over entirely to fat bolts of every fabric imaginable: sprigged muslins, slippery silks and weighty brocades, shiny black bombazine, velvet, calico, linen and printed cotton, stashed in alcoves that reached from the floor to the ceiling, two storeys high.
Camille was ushered into a chair and a book of fashion plates was pressed into her hands. Hennie leaned over her shoulder, flipping between different illustrations of diaphanous young women wearing an array of gauzy, fluttering, high-waisted dresses in the new style. Camille let the hum of chatter from the other shoppers wash over her, the sound of scissors slicing silk, the distant hoof beats from the street outside. She hadn’t quite adjusted to hearing English all the time. She understood it perfectly well, and that was the problem. Out in public, with countless voices all speaking at once, it was an onslaught, her mind straining to catch it.
‘Oh, what about this one for Camille’s trousseau?’ Hennie snatched the pattern book to show her mother and Phil. ‘I heard if you dampen your chemise beneath the dress it looks quite indecent and all the most dashing ladies wear it that way at the balls. Of course, I don’t know for sure, as Maman won’t let me near a ball.’ She shot a sullen look at her mother.
‘Balls are dreadful things, my dear. I won’t inflict them on myself any sooner than needed.’
The shop assistant came and took an extensive order for dresses, chemises, underthings, pelisses, short spencer jackets, a riding habit and finally a ball gown, reeled off with casual disregard for the bill that must be racking up.
‘I’m sure I do not need quite so many things,’ said Camille, after Hennie added in a third nightdress.
‘Nonsense.’ Lady Harford was firm. ‘This is your wedding trousseau. Do not begin to think of the cost, we shall pay it, of course; it is only what your dear, dear parents would have wa
nted.’
Camille looked about her at the sheer excess, the gilt furnishings, the glittering jewels and silks. She thought of the children she had seen begging on their carriage ride over, the soldiers missing limbs and rattling tins at indifferent passers-by.
No. She wasn’t sure this was what her parents would have wanted at all.
Though, given what she had found out about her family – her mother’s affair with Lord Harford, her father’s revenge that had sent her mother to the guillotine – maybe she didn’t know that much about her parents. Watching Lady Harford flick through fashion plates, Camille wondered if she knew of the affair. Or – a darker thought – perhaps her illness had been Lord Harford’s excuse to stray. Camille wasn’t sure she wanted to know the answer.
The patterns decided, it was time for the huge bolts of cloth to be brought for inspection under the domed skylight, and candles that were brought for the express purpose of testing how a colour would look when firelight was all that was on offer.
Camille let the other women take the lead. She felt exhausted, hectic spots of colour burning in her cheeks, her pulse fluttering in her throat. She hadn’t realised how outnumbered she was going to feel, faced with so many people to manage, or how stressful it would be to play the long con. This wasn’t a job with a clear get-in and get-out; it stretched on indefinitely, demanding more than her quick wits or skill with a knife.
Seeing James’s family made her miss her battalion, Guil and Olympe and Ada, especially Ada. The rosewater smell of her skin, the brush of her fingertips and the crumple of her nose when she was about to tell them how short-sighted they were being – and, oh god, how she missed her parents too and a million other things she could never go back to.
Even so, it was still a job. She had to make it work. James was rattled; now they had to work out where he was hiding Olympe. Camille knew from experience it was no easy task keeping someone hidden, and James was an amateur. If Al could follow him, they could learn where his base was – and plan how to strike. This wasn’t her world; the rules she played by in Paris wouldn’t work here, but moving quietly and playing the role expected of her could be just as effective as any other weapon. Ada had taught her that.