Baker Thief

by Claudie Arseneault

  A little knot unwound itself in her stomach as Claude presented Livia as his sister, surprising even Adèle. Perhaps she was more interested than she’d allowed herself to believe. She slipped down her stool to greet Claude’s twin, but before she could extend her hand, Livia had twisted away from him.

  “Did you say ‘youngest’?” Livia’s accent induced a flourish in her otherwise perfect Bernéais. She poked Claude’s ribs hard as he laughed, then rolled her eyes and turned to Adèle. “My brother compensates for his missing inches with the five extra minutes in his life.”

  “I’m not sure which is the best deal,” Adèle said. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

  Livia glanced at the extended hand, then ignored it to peck Adèle three times on the cheeks. “Same to you,” she exclaimed, stepping back. “I hope you like your new home.”

  Adèle’s mind sprung to the purple-haired thief in her office, all wide smile and bandana and cape. Claire had laughed and introduced herself too, remorseless at her unwelcome presence in Adèle’s home and her shattered sense of security.

  “I did,” she told Livia, “until last night anyway. I had an undesired visitor about which I really must give my report.” It always amazed Adèle how little consideration for others people could have. It shouldn’t—not with the horrible things she’d seen criminals and old colleagues do through the years. Yet it still did, and she berated herself each time for her naivety.

  She hated to start her job this way. “Hi, I am l’officier Adèle Duclos, your new detective, and last night a thief broke into my house and slipped through my fingers.” This move into the city was supposed to be a new beginning—a chance for Adèle to put her life together, closer to her favourite sibling. Not a resounding success so far. Adèle downed the espresso, smoothed her uniform, and grabbed her still-untouched croissant.

  “I must head out. It wouldn’t do to be late for my first day. A pleasure again, Livia—and Claude, thanks for the coffee.”

  It helped to know at least one person besides her sister cared for her in this city. Even if it was a distant, “I wish you no ill” kind of caring. He’d given Adèle a croissant and solid coffee, and it had soothed her tired irritation. Adèle left the rich warmth of the bakery, stepping into the heavy summer day. Stifling humidity thickened the air, holding down the stench of burning gas. Exocores might cost an arm and a leg, but they didn’t stink, at least.

  Adèle grimaced and threw the croissant into her vélocycle’s front basket. She had a long way to bike still, and new colleagues to meet. With no idea what lay ahead, Adèle suspected the croissant’s softness might come in handy to remind her she already had a friend in the city.

  * * *

  Claude flipped the Ouvert/Fermé sign on his door, then slipped the key in and closed for the day. The morning had come and gone, customers emptying the shelves of his bakery as Livia and he provided for their bread-related needs. He’d never worked the bakery with his sister before, but she fell into the role as though she’d been around for months, serving clients with a wide smile and chatting as she wrapped their loaf and handed it to them. She’d picked up a broom to clean while he counted his till and completed paperwork for the day, but as soon as he emerged from his office, she stopped and stared at him.

  “This is a nice life you’ve got going,” she said, “but you didn’t write me for a bakery problem. Not after so long.”

  Claude pressed his lips tight at “so long”. Livia resented him for not following the family out of Val-de-mer—and in truth, so did he, at times. He missed their dad’s wry puns and the way their mother’s singing always filled the house. But he had spent all his life in Val-de-mer, spoke Bernéais better than he ever would Tereaun, and he hadn’t wanted to flee, no matter how bad the threats to magic users had become. Besides, being alone had granted him time to fully explore his genderfluidity without worrying about potential family reactions.

  “Sorry, Livia,” he said. “The climate grew worse at first, and then…” He gestured vaguely at the air. “You know how bad I am at giving news.”

  “Indeed I know. Thank God for Zita, who writes a novel every week and makes sure to check on you!” The hint of a smile pierced through her stern expression, and in that single moment she was strikingly familiar to their father when he tried to scold them.

  “I get it, Livia. I promise never to go silent for so long again! Happy?”

  “Yeah!” She strode up to him, her grin returning. Claude’s eyes widened at her approach and the mischievous light in her eyes. Before he could dodge, she’d wrapped an arm around his neck and rubbed her knuckles in his hair, pulling even more strands out of his ponytail. “You can’t blame me for wanting news of my tiny sibling!”

  Her voice covered his protest and he struggled until she let go, both of them laughing. Claude tried to smooth his hair, his skull hurting but his heart full. “Maybe this kind of behaviour is why I don’t write!”

  “As if.” She booped his nose, but her smile lessened. “Now tell me what your magical sister can do for you.”

  “It’s the exocores.” His shoulders slumped. He would rather talk about bread and family and Livia’s sibling-bullying than these unnatural devices. They’d plagued enough of his nights over the last months without occupying his days, too. But Livia had crossed the Bernan-Tereaus Détroit for his sake, and he couldn’t keep his suspicions secret. “Do you have them in Tereaus?”

  “Not yet, but with that ugly bridge of yours it’s only a matter of time.”

  Claude grimaced. Val-de-mer nestled at the bottom of a depression, on the most southern point of Bernan. Here, the sea separating the country from Tereaus narrowed to a thin, thirteen kilometres band. Ferries had always ensured the passage of citizens from one country to the other, but during the last five years a massive bridge had been built over the water: Le Pont des Lumières. They called it a marvel of new technology, the first large-scale structure powered entirely by renewable energy. To Claude, it was a dreadful scar on the sea below, huge supporting pillars plunging into the water. And, if his fears about the exocores meant to fuel it were true, this bridge would become the most ignoble project ever constructed in Bernan.

  “Let me show you.” Claude led Livia through his office, to the cupboard where he stored old administrative paperwork. He rolled the filing cabinet containing them out, revealing the thin trapdoor under, then removed the key hung around his neck. Livia tilted her head to the side as he slid it in the lock, opened the way, and motioned for her to go down the ladder.

  “Secret lair?”

  Claude laughed. “You have no idea.”

  He waited for his sister to reach the bottom and step aside before jumping down, foregoing the ladder and landing behind her. After so much climbing around Val-de-mer’s rooftops at nights, he’d gotten used to simple shortcuts.

  Two gas lamps hung on the low ceiling of his basement, but Claude hadn’t needed them to see in weeks. A huge pile of exocores was strewn on a table in the centre of the basement, each of them glowing a pinkish red, and collectively they cast enough light to move around the small room unaided. A large map of the city covered the right wall, half-buried under black and red pins marking his progress. In the Quartier des Chênes and the Quartier des Mélèzes, where wealthy citizens resided, one could hardly read the street names anymore. Claude’s neighbourhood and other, poorer sections of Val-de-mer had next to no pins, not even the red ones to indicate exocores to steal. His gaze stopped at the newest addition—black, for exocore stolen.

  Adèle’s pin seemed to glare back at him.

  Guilt dried Claude’s throat, and he turned away from the map. Livia had crossed the room to the wardrobe in a corner and opened it. Her fingers trailed the black cotton of Claire’s outfit, then moved to the massive skirts and beautiful dresses behind. Was she purposefully ignoring the exocores, or did she not feel the wrongness of them, as he did? Her smile widened as she continued to inspect his clothes, pulling them out one by one.
“You always had more flair than I did.”

  Claude snorted. “Not a hard feat by any measure.”

  “Oh shush.” Livia closed the wardrobe and her voice softened. “So that’s where Claire went. Is it better? For you, I mean.”

  “Claire didn’t go anywhere, you know this. She doesn’t vanish with daylight, just as Claude doesn’t go away when I put a cape on.” He wished it was so simple. His gender swung between male and female, sometimes firmly on one end for weeks, sometimes shifting after a day. Claire and Claude were both full expressions of himself and they helped him handle his fluidity. “It’s not perfect, but it’s better than trying to suppress one gender. So, yes.”

  “Good.” Livia frowned. “No, not just ‘good’.” She strode to Claude, flinging her arms around him and hugging him before he could react. The tightness of her arms communicated what her words couldn’t, and a deep warmth spread through him. Livia squeezed, then stepped back. “I’m happy for you.”

  “Thank you. It means a lot.” This, more than anything else, was why he should write more often. Livia would always be on his side. He’d shared so much of his early gender confusion with her, and not once had she belittled him while he figured it out. Now, more than ever, he wanted an ally he could trust—and no one could beat his twin in that regard. “Back to business?”

  Livia stepped back and hesitated, casting a wary look at the glowing pile on his table. “These… things? These are exocores?”

  The disgust in her voice surprised and worried Claude. She did feel it, then. Starting with the wardrobe must have been avoidance if even standing nearby put her off. His heartbeat sped and his palms grew sweaty. He needed to hold one to sense something off about them, but Livia had known right away.

  “I’ve spent the last months investigating exocore rumours,” he said. “I tracked down their owners and stole those I could, gathering them here. They’re promoted as renewable and safe—the perfect solution to our limited gas supplies and the supposed instability of magic—but their creation process is an industrial secret. I don’t trust it. I can’t! Not when hovering my hand near one makes me feel… sick.”

  Sick didn’t properly describe how he reacted to the exocores. They gave him a slight nausea, true, but the feeling went deeper, gripping him tight. Like someone had flared up an alarm, and his brain and heart and soul screamed in protest, repeating wrong wrong wrong over and over. No one else ever noticed, however, not that he could tell. After some time, Claude had concluded it might be related to his limited magic.

  “Since you hogged all the magic strength when we shared a womb, I figured I’d ask you to check it out.”

  Livia snickered and gave him a little shove. “Jealous still?”

  “You bet I am. Imagine the delicious bread I’d prepare with your power!” He was only half-joking. Sometimes he wished he didn’t have to keep his small abilities a secret and could put his spells into creating unique loaves and cakes, or the butteriest croissant in the entire city. He’d need to practise a lot before he could shift the essence of his magic so significantly, however. His power naturally augmented speed and strength, and Claude had made great use of it recently, but he’d often desired something more… peaceful. “Seriously, though. You can feel it, can’t you?”

  Livia met his gaze, her expression turning into an impassible mask. That, more than anything, alerted Claude to the seriousness of the situation. Livia had the worst of all poker faces. Her face always gave away something, whether through wide grins, deep scowls, or shaking lips. This emotional void scared him.

  “Livia?” he asked, his voice tight.

  “I don’t want to go nearer,” she whispered, casting a glance to the exocores as though they would hear her and react. Her mask cracked into a fearful grimace as a shudder ran up her spine. “They feel so wrong. It scares me that you even have those in your basements. People use them for electricity?”

  “They want to power the entire Pont des Lumières with them. Hundreds of them.”

  Livia stared at the pile of exocores, and Claude could follow the rise of her nausea through the twisting of her face. She breathed in slowly, inching her fingers through her short hair as her lungs filled, and exhaled. Her hands dropped to her side—an old routine of hers before distasteful tasks—then she took several determined strides to the table and snatched one of the exocores up.

  A shocked gasp crossed her lips, then a loud swear. She flung the encased gem across the room, cringing as it hit the wall and clang to the ground. “Oh, no, I’m sorry! I’m so sorry!” She had addressed her words to the thrown exocore and dashed after it, scooping it up from the floor. Although her grimace returned the moment she touched it, Livia ran a finger over its surface. “It’s not your fault. I know, I understand. I shouldn’t have done that.”

  A deep unease grew at the bottom of Claude’s stomach as his sister whispered apologies to the exocore—heartfelt, horrified apologies. His mouth dried, and words failed him, as if his mind snatched them away before he could form a complete sentence and ask her why. But he needed to know. He couldn’t dodge out of this now, not when he’d spent months hunting down exocores, trying to unravel the secrets behind their creation, to understand what was wrong about them and if he should destroy them.

  “What’s going on, Livia?”

  She lifted her head, tears shining in her eyes. They didn’t quite hide the furious determination behind them, however, and Livia set her jaw. “These feel like people, Claude. They’re… people’s core, the sheer energy we draw on when we cast magic. I—touching one was like forcing them to help me create a spell. Like I could have ripped off parts of their souls for my needs.”

  Claude stumbled back and reached for the wall behind him for support. “Are you saying—the electricity…”

  “Comes from trapped witches’ lives, I think. And I… I can’t tell if they’re sentient or not, so throwing one like this…”

  Claude’s gaze snapped back to the exocores on his table. The forty-seven exocores he had stolen from various homes in Val-de-mer’s quartiers, acting on instinct more than anything else. The forty-seven souls, abused and trapped, at which he’d flung a multitude of insults over the course of the last weeks. The floor seemed to vanish under him. People. Alive, after a fashion, stored in gems, in his basement and all across the city. A scream built inside, but it stuck in his throat, imprisoned there as surely as these witches were in exocores.

  A light hand squeezed his forearm and startled him. When Livia spoke, her voice was steady, grounding. “You’ve been rescuing them, Claude. At least no one is using them while they’re here. They’re safe here, and we’ll find a way to free everyone.”

  Free them. Over the last months, all he had thought about was how to destroy the exocores. Collect and eliminate, in short. He hadn’t understood their nature, only that they were wrong, that something needed to be done about it. But these were people, and destroying the exocores… Claude closed his eyes, struggling with the heavy mix of guilt and relief washing into his nauseating horror. Thank the Saints he had called Livia to Val-de-mer. What would he have done, without her insight? Killed the exocores? But together, he knew they could find a solution. And if he needed to break into every house of Val-de-mer to save those trapped in exocores, he gladly would.

  -3-

  BANDE À PART

  Biking to Val-de-mer’s west precinct showed Adèle the brutal differences existing between some of the city’s quartiers. Emmanuelle had called the Quartier des Érables the heart of Val-de-mer, and every time Adèle’s path brought her to the rue Saint-Adémar, its northern edge, she rediscovered why. It breathed life. Here, three-storied buildings leaned against one another, linked by attics and balconies, housing local business, families, and artists. People greeted each other on the sidewalks, shops kept their doors open or had stalls in front of their location, and music drifted past from a nearby park.

  And yet, just one street away, the scenery changed completely. Mass
ive villas and spreading lawns formed the Quartier des Chênes, and its people averted their eyes as others biked past them. No commercial avenue brought life to the area, and the rare park remained well hidden behind ample vegetation. How many tightly packed homes had been destroyed to make room for these mansions inside Val-de-mer’s old walls? Fences and hedges concealed the inhabitants from prying eyes, but the Wansonian names on streets and individual houses served as constant reminders of who too often held wealth and power in the country of Bernan, even more than a century after conquest.

  Adèle tried to ignore the street names of Preston, Ross, and Stanley surrounding her—Wansonian generals, politicians, or merchants—and parked her vélocycle in front of the precinct. She paused there, her breathing laborious. Val-de-mer’s old walls enclosed the highest part of the city, and she had biked uphill most of the way, leaving her struggling for air. Reluctantly, she snatched a vivifiant and its chamber from her bag then cracked the capsule in it before inhaling the medication with relief. It was only a temporary fix, but on this first day of work, it would have to do. She wanted to appear calm and in control.

  Her new workplace had no reason to envy the surrounding houses. Two massive wooden doors greeted visitors at the top of smooth, marble stairs, and on each side the structure extended, proud and solid, with columns in a style reminiscent of the first settlers to arrive. Its green roof contrasted with the red tiles of nearby manors, and the oxidized copper tiles reflected the sun, forcing Adèle to squint against the light’s glare. The old architecture mixed seamlessly with the large and clear windows, the modern sign on the entrance, and clacking of heavy typewriters reached Adèle as she stepped inside.

  She stopped in the grand hallway, impressed and estranged by the airy space and its illumination. The entirety of her old station could have fitted here, with its cramped space and shoddy gas lamps—all a punishment for her unit’s willingness to dig where they shouldn’t. A year in the mouldy, decrepit offices had almost killed Adèle’s lungs, causing irreparable damage. They had wanted her to leave—to vanish along with every bit of proof of corruption she had unearthed, and which they had promptly buried anew—and she’d had little choice but to oblige. It would be better here, she thought as she studied the hall. She wouldn’t have years of bad blood between her and other colleagues slowing her investigations. She hoped the latter wouldn’t happen again.