The Court of Miracles

by Kester Grant

  “I am not afraid for myself,” I say, biting off each word with chattering teeth. I look Tomasis in the eye and see pity swimming in the depths.

  If I can find out what the Tiger has planned, or where he has taken my sister, then surely I will be able to do something….

  “You said you will give me a gift, so I ask you for the truth,” I say, my voice small. “Is he going to kill her?”

  Tomasis shakes his head slowly and looks away. “I will not gift you this truth, for it is one known to all. Death would be a mercy to her,” he says quietly. He smiles at me, a smile wreathed in sadness, and for a moment he looks just like Femi. “But the gift I have promised you will keep. Know that one day you may ask it of me and I will bestow it on you.” A stern look comes over him. “Do not go looking for her, for you will not find her. Do not try to help her, for there is nothing that can break the Tiger’s hold once his claws are in. Do not make Kaplan your enemy; you will not sing the hunting song in his name. Swear to me that it will be so.”

  Azelma sacrificed her one chance at escape to send me here, to give me the small bit of safety that even now stings behind my ear. Femi risked the wrath of his brother to save me, and now the Lord of Thieves has pledged to protect me from the Tiger, and from Thénardier. I must heed their words; I must respect their sacrifice. I must forget my sister. I would be a fool to do otherwise.

  I nod.

  “I swear it, my Lord,” I say.

  And the lie tastes bitter on my tongue.

  Breaking into a place under cover of night is usually a simple matter of finding an entry point. A loose window, a door with a lock begging to be picked. Sometimes you have to toss up a rope or scale a wall to get to a building’s weak spots. Other times you might creep across rooftops and let yourself down a cold chimney. But the same techniques are much more difficult by day, when you’re likely to be spotted by any number of people: the merchants and workers; the laundrywomen hauling their linens to the boats floating on the Seine; the musicians, the beggars, the tradesmen, all the common people of the city, who aren’t children of the Miracle Court. By day the city seethes with life: it is a nest of mice scurrying to and fro, everyone hurriedly going about their business.

  I shift impatiently under the lowering sun as the city hums its frenzied song. It is not yet time for me to be about; every inch of me longs to retreat until the daylight is truly gone. Dogs of the Thieves Guild work by day, and we Cats despise them because of it. Cats glide across the rooftops in the moonlight like dancers, while Dogs roam the arrondissements and slip silky hands into rich men’s pockets. Cats would never lower themselves to such petty work.

  But today I’m not even a Cat. Today I’m a flower girl. I stole a dress, an apron, and neat slippers from a girl down at the floating baths. She likely walked home half-naked, poor thing. I took the basket of flowers from a distracted woman who was eating breakfast. Breakfast is a luxury for most of the Wretched, one I am rarely afforded.

  A building looms before me, all yellowed stone and tiny windows. I’ve watched it since sunup, and it’s been silent all day.

  My heart is skittering in my chest; the hair at the back of my neck stands on end. I know the danger of what I am about to do, and I am afraid.

  Everyone is afraid.

  Azelma’s words float toward me on the cold breeze. And I do what I always do when the fear threatens: I remember her whispering to me by candlelight. I wear her words like a shield as I set forth.

  It’s been three months since Femi first brought me to the Thieves Guild. Three months of delivering takes to Lord Tomasis while secretly scrambling up the walls of every Flesh House I can find in the city. Three months of watching and waiting and learning that the houses of flesh come alive only after the sun has set. Three months of cramped limbs from perching on window ledges in the rain, counting the heads of a hundred girls, searching for one that looks like her. I climbed a hundred walls, slipped into a hundred windows before I found her.

  I take a deep breath and approach the building from the side, avoiding the front, with its door of flaking blue paint, and the outrageously fat man sitting on a barrel. Weeks of spying on this house have shown me that when he’s sober, he’s as strong as an ox and as violent as a caged bear. But right now, he’s still in the depths of a daylong hangover. Last night was a wild night. He indulged in too much wine—good wine. I would know. I stole it from the cellars of the Marquis de Loris, an avid collector, and dosed it with poppy purchased from the Guild of Dreamers to ensure he would sleep deeply. Although the guard is snoring, I won’t risk the front door and instead slip to the side entrance, where kitchen deliveries are made. I push open the door, and as I knew they would be, the kitchens are empty at this hour.

  I ease into a corridor. At its end is a door to the chamber of the madam who runs this establishment. Her door is ajar, and from inside comes the sound of snoring. Good. Her wine, too, was laced with poppy, and I paid a sailor on his way in to make sure he delivered it to her. He was delighted to do so. A grateful madam would earn him more time with the girls.

  I should leave. I always leave at this point. It’s too dangerous to stay. But today will be different. Today I am going to rescue her.

  I look up the stairs.

  Do not go looking for her, Tomasis said.

  I should obey him, but I can’t.

  As if mesmerized, I’m drawn up the stairs, creeping quietly, hand on the banister. The gaudy peeling wallpaper shows exotic scenes of the Qing lands.

  The top of the landing is lined with doors half-open in invitation. But only one room calls to me: the last one on the left. I walk to it with purpose and push against the door, and my breath catches in my chest.

  She’s lying on the bed, her body curled into a ball as if to protect itself. The room is seedy: an open cupboard with a few fading costumes, a small dressing table with a cracked mirror, a clutter of colored bottles of watered-down perfume, cheap powders and rouge, a brittle calling card from a customer, two syringes lying used and empty.

  My heart contracts as I look at her. Her makeup is smeared across her face. Her hair has been curled into unnatural ringlets. In the last few months, she’s grown thin and hollow-cheeked. The dress she’s wearing is torn in several places, with uneven stitches along the hem. She who once sewed so quick and neat can make only uneven stitches now, her hand unsteady from the drugs, or from a beating. The syringe has tattooed her arm with black pinpricks, each one flowering into a yellow-blue bruise. Her skin is bumpy with gooseflesh, but she was too tired to pull the threadbare sheet over herself.

  I reach out and gently trace the mark of her Guild. The Tiger doesn’t tattoo his children with ink. He has other ways of marking them. Her mark runs across her eye like a stripe from her cheek to forehead, a scar of raised flesh against smooth skin.

  At my touch her lashes flutter groggily, her gaze heavy and unfocused with the poppy they’ve shot into her veins. Her eyelids close again. I know that she does not recognize me. Perhaps she thinks I’m a dream, a memory of another time when she was another girl. While in other beds throughout this building, and in hundreds of houses around the city, her sisters dream uneasily as well.

  It wasn’t always this way. When Lady Kamelia led the Guild of Sisters, there were five thousand women of the night. But hers was a reign of seduction and luxury, and all of her daughters flourished under the protection of the Law. Since the Tiger wrested control of the Guild, it is said that twenty thousand Sisters sleep under his thrall.

  “Zelle, Zelle!” I hiss softly in her ear, but she doesn’t stir. I shake her, and when that fails I grab a jug at her bedside and spill icy water over her face.

  She splutters awake, gasping. One eye is dark brown, the other filmy and blinded by the cat-o’-nine-tails that cut into her, marking her as a child of the Guild of Flesh.

  She tries to sit up but is too we
ak, so I try help her. Trembling, she edges away from me, her hands raised to protect herself—she’s afraid I’m here to give her a beating.

  “Zelle, it’s me. It’s Nina….”

  Between her fingers her good eye finally focuses on my face and she gives a sharp intake of breath.

  “No, no, no…”

  She’s shaking violently now, wet and cold, as I try to drag her to her feet.

  “Zelle, please, we have to go before they wake. Come quickly.”

  “No!” She twists out of my grasp and tears herself away from me, backing into the wall. “I won’t go, I won’t, I won’t. They broke his hands. They broke him….” She stops, and something in her gaze hardens.

  “Zelle,” I say calmly. I approach her slowly, like a person trying to tame a frightened beast.

  I hear the creak of a door opening downstairs, and a raised voice berating someone. I curse under my breath. The Fleshers have arrived, and they must have realized that something is wrong. Voices grow louder. I don’t have much time.

  “Zelle, it’s me, Nina,” I say.

  “Nina? Nina, no…not Nina. Not Nina…” Her words are slurred, her voice ragged. “You must leave, before they come….They broke him. They broke—”

  “Shhh,” I say, even as footsteps pound up the stairs. It’s only moments now until they begin to check on the girls, until they find me here with her.

  Azelma’s eyes focus on my face, and for the first time since I have stood here before her, I think she truly sees me.

  Boots thunder down the hallway. Doors slam. Voices call out that the girls are asleep. Azelma’s eyes dart to her window, terror raw on her face.

  “You must go,” she says urgently.

  “Not without you.” I reach for her. “Come with me.” She looks at my hand, and she takes it. We dash to the window, which I throw open, and I clamber onto the ledge, then turn to her.

  I see it then, the clarity amid her confusion, the resolve beneath her fear. My sister stares into my eyes; she is so close I feel her breath against my cheek.

  “Run,” she says, and she pushes me as behind her the door flies open. I watch my sister’s face as I fall in slow motion, and then abruptly she is gone and a man is leaning out, yelling and pointing.

  I hit the ground with a shuddering impact. Pain laces my side. The wind has been knocked out of me, and I gasp for breath, willing my limbs to move, finding that they obey far more slowly than I can afford. I barely manage to rise to my feet as several men burst out of the building. They’re giants, like all of the Tiger’s sons, chosen for their brawn, their complete absence of morals, and their unspeakable propensity for inflicting pain. They circle me like sharks. They ask no questions; they don’t want to know who I am or why I am there. My being there is enough for them.

  The sun is setting fast. I have time to call out only once, so I whistle loud and sharp, the call of the Thieves, knowing that even if anyone hears, it will probably be too late.

  A voice rings out, and the words are so ridiculous that even in the depths of my fear, I almost laugh.

  “Six grown men against a child seems incredibly cowardly to me.” The voice is amused, young. Its owner clearly has no idea that he is addressing some of the most dangerous men in the whole city.

  “If we could return home without getting into any trouble for once, I would be most grateful,” says another, wearier voice.

  “They’ve got a child there, St. Juste. Take a look.”

  “Dear heavens, you’re right.” Which is followed by a barked order. “Unhand that child immediately or you will have cause to regret it!”

  The voice—St. Juste’s, it seems—is well modulated, educated; the voice of someone who is used to being listened to.

  The Fleshers, however, listen to no one but the Tiger, so they ignore St. Juste and lunge at me. Two of them grab me from behind, and I’m thrown to the ground. They begin to kick me, and I scratch and yowl, striking out with a dagger that’s been tucked into my boot.

  Then someone fires a gun and the Fleshers freeze: men unaccustomed to being crossed rarely carry weapons.

  “I will shoot you if you do not unhand that poor child. And what’s more, Grantaire will shoot you as well, and he is far less likely to kill you.”

  “I object to that!” says the other man now. “I can shoot perfectly well in my cups, I can! Watch…”

  Another shot rings out, and one of the Fleshers yelps and raises a hand to his ear.

  “See, I meant to clip that one.”

  The Fleshers look at one another. As a Guild, they are not known for their brains. The Tiger adopts only the most violent children, the ones who will obey without question; figuring out a complex problem like this is beyond them.

  He takes a second shot, and another Flesher swears and grabs his leg, nearly crumpling to the ground. I can hear the Fleshers scuttling heavily away, but surely only to get weapons and return. I take a second to appreciate the fact that I am still alive.

  “I say, Grantaire, that was good! Did you mean to get him right above the knee?”

  Someone turns me over, and I am greeted by the sight of two faces staring down at me. One has a mess of black hair, a green waistcoat, and a roguish smile.

  “Oh, good, it’s alive!” he says.

  The other face scowls at me as if disappointed that I have survived. Even from this perspective I can make out the grim features of a young god, his face carved of marble and determination and framed with a halo of ice-blond hair tied at the nape of his neck. He is beautiful and terrible at the same time in his tailcoat of deep red, with a cravat artfully undone at his throat. In his hand is a fine pistol of gold filigree, which he tucks into his waistband so he can scoop me up and put me on my feet.

  “Can you stand?” the dark one asks with concern. Then he wobbles and topples over, making the blond one roll his eyes and go to his aid. The dark one is drunk. They probably both are.

  “I’m fine,” I say shortly, biting down at the stinging in my side.

  “You seem to have fallen into extremely bad company,” the dark one says from the ground, where he sits batting away the blond one’s attempts to bring him to his feet. “If you want to paw at me, St. Juste, you’ll have to ask for my hand first.”

  “No one will ever want to paw you until you are less of a drunk, Grantaire.”

  “You are to blame for the depth of my drunkenness, St. Juste. Your meetings positively bore me to tears and drive me to the bottle.”

  The blond one gives up and turns to look at me, and it is not a look that I will ever forget. He seems to see right through me, scanning me swiftly and taking in the lines of my clothing, the blood on my cheek, on my hands and my feet.

  “We should introduce ourselves to our new friend,” the dark one says. “I do believe this urchin owes us his life.”

  I wince at that. The idea of a child of Miracle Court owing a debt to one of Those Who Walk by Day is unthinkable.

  “I am in your debt, sirs,” I say, the admission sticking in my throat.

  “What is your name, little boy?” the dark one asks.

  The blond one’s eyes narrow. “Girl,” he says.

  I try not to let my surprise show. Almost nobody can tell I’m a girl.

  “Girl? Where?” Grantaire looks around comically, and seeing no one else, he blinks at me and points unnecessarily at my face. “That is a girl?”

  I raise my chin defiantly. “They call me the Black Cat,” I offer in response.

  “Oh, that is good,” says the dark one. “I want an animal name—can I have an animal name too? What about the Drunken Ferret? And you, St. Juste. You can be…the Oppressive Eagle of Judgment.”

  “You can call me Nina,” I say, trying to suppress a smile.

  “Well, m’lady Nina, I am Grantaire,” the drunkard c
ontinues with a swift return of grace and manners. “And this pinnacle of humanity is Enjolras St. Juste.”

  Now it’s my turn to stare. St. Juste, the beautiful. St. Juste, the Angel of Death, whose head is one of the six impaled atop the gates of the Tuileries. One of the six little mice—revolutionaries who set the city aflame and nearly toppled the king and queen only a generation ago. And for their pains the nobility fed them to the guillotine and hunted down all of their known relations, hanging them from the gibbet of Montfaucon.

  “You call yourself by that name openly?” I ask.

  “Oh, here we go. Don’t get him started about his ancestry,” Grantaire says, and takes a swig from a flask that has appeared in his hand.

  “I am not ashamed of my kin,” St. Juste says. “I was in the womb when my uncle tried to change the world. I was brought up under my mother’s name, and so I lived, but what kind of living is it when gangs of brutes set upon children? When little girls are so scared they must hide what they are under layers of shapeless cloth?”

  I stare at him. “You’re mad,” I say.

  “Perhaps, for only the mad would see the endless darkness, the great evil that reigns around us, and stand against it.”

  “They’re going to kill you.”

  “Probably,” St. Juste says with a grim smile. “But by all hells, I’ll set this city on fire and take as many of them down with me as I can.” His eyes gleam with a passion I’ve never seen before. It’s both frightening and mesmerizing. Here is a boy who is marching toward his death, and he is delighting in it.

  “They’ll hang him from Montfaucon for sure, and us alongside him,” Grantaire says so mournfully that I am released from the spell St. Juste’s words have cast over me. “But we are all his lackeys, for there is a truth in what he says. This city is a broken thing, and the world itself is wrong, and we cannot sit by and do nothing about it.”