Sky Without Stars

by Jessica Brody

  She started to back away.

  “No, wait, I—”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” she blurted out.

  Marcellus looked startled. “What?”

  “You could have told me who your grandfather is. Or were you purposefully keeping it a secret?”

  “No,” Marcellus rushed to say. “I wasn’t keeping it a secret. I thought you knew.” His voice grew quiet as he stared down at the ground. “I thought everyone knew.”

  Alouette shrank back, feeling more stupide than ever.

  “Look,” Marcellus said, stepping toward her again. “I’m not going to tell him, if that’s what you’re worried about. I’m not going to—”

  But his words were cut short by a chorus of shouts, followed by a deep rumbling sound.

  They both turned toward the marketplace. A swarm of people were charging straight toward them, shouting, with their fists in the air. Some were throwing rocks, others were grabbing vegetables and loaves of chou bread that had tumbled from the upturned stalls. Behind the crowd, Alouette spotted a pack of droids, like giant flashing, shimmering insects, trampling anything in their path.

  She froze at the sight.

  Marcellus grabbed her by the hand and pulled her out of the way. The mob streamed past them, the droids clanking in pursuit.

  “It isn’t safe here,” Marcellus said, his expression anxious. “I should really escort you home.”

  Alouette’s stomach flipped.

  No! No way! He most certainly could not escort her home. She’d already done enough damage today. She wasn’t about to lead him straight to the Refuge’s door.

  “I’m fine,” she snapped. “I can get home on my own.”

  It was a lie. She wasn’t sure if she could get home on her own. She had no idea how far she was from Fret 7 and the mechanical room. Or which direction to go to get there. She was completely turned around. She scanned the Marsh, searching for something—anything—familiar, but it all looked like another world to her. Another planet, even.

  She could just make out the head of Thibault Paresse in the distance, towering over the chaos like a bronzed Sol. She remembered the execution taking place on a platform right near there. Perhaps if she headed toward it . . .

  Marcellus tugged on her sleeve again. “At least let me see you again. Tomorrow? Will you meet me somewhere? Anywhere? Please.”

  His fingers released her sleeve and slid down her arm until he was holding her hand. No, not just holding. Squeezing. Alouette felt her knees buckle just a little. She looked down, unable to bring herself to meet his eyes again, for fear of what she might say. What she might agree to.

  This boy seemed to cast a spell over her.

  A dangerous spell.

  “I don’t think so,” she said hastily.

  She could never see Marcellus Bonnefaçon again.

  Not tomorrow.

  Not any day.

  But still Marcellus didn’t release her hand. “Please. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about my grandfather. Let me make it up to you. We could go anywhere you want. I could take you back to the Forest Verdure. Or to Ledôme. Have you ever seen Ledôme? I could show it to you! We could—”

  But Marcellus never finished the sentence, because suddenly a hand clamped down hard on his shoulder.

  A big hand.

  A very familiar hand.

  Alouette’s eyes widened and her heart leapt into her throat.

  Then came the voice, equally familiar, and more terrifying than it had ever sounded to her.

  “Let go of my daughter.”

  - CHAPTER 47 -

  CHATINE

  CONDITIONS IN THE MARSH HAD not improved. In fact, they’d only gotten worse.

  Chatine watched from a high beam overlooking the marketplace as five men clobbered a droid and actually brought it to the ground. She witnessed a group of rioters tear apart the new execution contraption—which people were already starting to call “the Blade”—like they were fighting over the carcass of a rabbit. She saw a Policier sergent fall at the hands of broken pipes. He was nearly beaten to death before a pack of bashers arrived to scatter the protesters and load the sergent into a med cruiseur.

  Chatine had thought this whole spectacle would be entertaining to watch. After all, she had no stake in this fight. But as the shouts of anger and cries of pain grew louder, Chatine actually found herself feeling a little unsettled.

  Her heart began to pound. She suddenly felt too exposed. Too vulnerable. The rioting, the violence—she’d never seen the Third Estaste this riled up before. Nor the droids so eager to inflict punishment. But she couldn’t leave. She had to keep a lookout for Marcellus. He was still her best chance at finding the Vangarde base. The stupide pomp had to come back eventually, right? And Chatine would be there waiting for him when he did.

  Directly below her, a droid dragged a writhing, ranting woman through the aisles of the marketplace. She was putting up an impressive fight. She even managed to break free from the basher’s grasp for a moment. But the second she tried to run, a paralyzeur pulse was buried deep into her calf and she collapsed to the ground with a snarl.

  It was only then that Chatine recognized her.

  It was Madame Dufour.

  Chatine had always had bad blood with the old woman. But now, as she watched the droid march back toward her and scoop her up by the back of the neck, she almost felt sorry for her.

  Until she remembered the scent that had wafted from Dufour’s stall earlier today.

  Chatine had never moved so fast in her life. Within a minute, she had reached the catwalk directly over Madame Dufour’s stall. She peered over the edge. And there it was.

  Tucked behind the stall on a plate hidden from view from anyone on the ground, the chicken was roasted to a perfect crispy brown. Her stomach growled. She was so hungry.

  With her mouth already watering, she swung down from the catwalk and landed in a crouch inside the abandoned stall. She reached for the leg, but before she could wrap her hand around the bone, the plate was suddenly yanked out from under her.

  “Hey!” she roared. She was fully prepared to fight anyone—including the Patriarche himself—for that chicken. That is, until she looked up and saw who was standing over her.

  “Are you sure you should be here right now?” Her father sneered as he ripped a leg from the chicken and tore a piece of juicy flesh from the bone with his teeth. “Shouldn’t you be out working this Bonnefaçon con you’ve cooked up?” He licked his grease-stained lips. “This is delicious.”

  “Give it back,” she snarled.

  Her father arched an eyebrow, clearly not about to do anything of the kind. He took another bite and rapped his fingers against the edge of the metal plate, making a harsh clanking sound. Chatine’s gaze darted toward Marcellus’s ring, shoved up around her father’s weathered knuckle.

  “I don’t need to remind you of what’s at stake here, do I?” Monsieur Renard asked.

  Chatine glared, her cheeks flaming, as her father continued to knock the ring rhythmically against the plate.

  Tap. Tap. Tap.

  “No,” she said through gritted teeth.

  Her father stuffed the entire chicken leg into his mouth, raking his teeth against the bone. When he pulled it out again, all the meat was gone. Only the fatty tendons remained. He smacked his lips together. “Good. Because remember, Chatine, a child who doesn’t bring in enough largs as a boy, must pull her weight as a girl.”

  The cut on the inside of her palm throbbed, as though her father were pressing his knife into her skin a second time.

  He would, wouldn’t he?

  She was his own daughter, but she knew that wouldn’t stop him. He’d send her off to the blood bordels in a heartbeat. There was no point in fighting.

  There never had been.

  “Why is it always me?” she fired back. “Why don’t you ever threaten to send Azelle to the bordels? She’s only two years older than me. Her blood is still worth something
.”

  Monsieur Renard dropped the clean chicken bone onto the plate and reached for a wing. “Azelle brings in plenty from her fabrique job. And it’s always smart to have someone inside the system. She serves her purpose.”

  Then, with the plate of chicken still in his hands, her father scooted out of the stall and sauntered right back into the fray, as if he were taking a moonlit stroll through one of the Palais gardens. As if the riots didn’t faze him at all.

  Chatine let out a growl of frustration and kicked at an empty turnip crate. She was furious at her father for threatening her. She was furious at Marcellus for running off with the Défecteur girl. But most of all she was furious at herself for letting it all happen.

  By the time she made it back to her lookout point near the center of the Marsh, more droids had arrived and the situation was finally starting to come under control. People were being thrown into Policier transporteurs by the dozens. Some of them were stoic, calling out, “Honest work for a dishonest chance!” and some of them cried, begging for mercy and apologizing for their actions. Regardless, they all ended up heading to the same place: the Prisoner Transport Center to await passage to Bastille.

  Chatine checked the time on her Skin. Marcellus and Alouette had been gone for over an hour. As she watched Inspecteur Limier wrestle a Third Estate lowlife into the transporteur, Chatine once again cursed herself for letting Marcellus get away. She’d been so focused on the girl—keeping her away from him—she hadn’t been doing her actual job. And she’d lost him because of it.

  But then, just as Limier managed to slam the door behind the thrashing croc, she heard a new kind of commotion ring out in the marketplace below her. It wasn’t the usual whir of droid sirens or the bellowing of a mad woman with a makeshift weapon. It was Marcellus’s voice shouting, “Let go of her!”

  A low growl followed the sound, and then someone yelled, “Stay away from my daughter.”

  Chatine scanned the stalls, searching for the source of the voice. She saw nothing at first. But then she spotted a gigantic figure trampling past the nearby statue of Patriarche Thibault, dragging a girl behind him. Officer Bonnefaçon was chasing after both of them. Chatine couldn’t see the figure’s face. It was concealed by a dark hood hanging low across his brow. But she was certain it had to be a man. A very large man. And the girl he was dragging had wide, bewildered eyes and infuriatingly clean clothes.

  It was most definitely that girl again.

  Alouette.

  “Please, Papa.” She was crying. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  “I am an officer of the Ministère!” Marcellus shouted at the man, sounding more intimidating than Chatine had ever heard him. “I command you to release her at once, or I can and will arrest you.”

  She snorted. So now he stands up for something? Where was all this gumption back in the Tourbay? Of course, then he didn’t have a sparkly eyed bimbo to fight for. He only had pathetic little Théo.

  Chatine felt a stab of something sharp and hostile in her chest. She pushed it away and focused back on the hooded man, who was now almost directly underneath her. He was still dragging Alouette behind him.

  Marcellus pulled out his rayonette and aimed it at the man with shaking hands. “Stop! Or I’ll paralyze you!”

  But the hooded figure turned around and knocked the weapon right out of Marcellus’s grip, with what looked like nothing more than a flick of his fingers.

  Marcellus stared at his weapon on the ground before deciding on another tactic. With a roar, he ran after Alouette’s father and jumped onto his back. The man was so large and strong that Marcellus looked just like that rioter who’d tried to attack the massive Policier droid earlier. Alouette’s father thrashed and beat at Marcellus over his shoulder. But Marcellus had seemingly found some untapped strength that impressed Chatine. He held on tight, strangling the man.

  Alouette screamed. “NO! Please! Stop! You’re hurting him.”

  But Chatine wasn’t sure whom she was screaming at. Whose side was she on? Her father’s or Marcellus’s?

  Perhaps even she didn’t know the answer to that.

  The hooded man gave one final heave, bending forward and launching Marcellus over his head. Chatine watched wide-eyed as the officer flew through the air.

  In that moment, it was as though the entire marketplace froze. The riots came to a halt. The droids seemed to power down. Every pair of eyes in the vicinity turned to see Marcellus crash into a vegetable stall, sending grungy carrots and withered cabbages flying.

  Panic shot through Chatine as she stared down at his body slumped on the muddy ground.

  Unmoving.

  Then, a moment later, the stall let out a loud creak, buckling to the left as its rusting corrugated roof crashed into the base of the old Patriarche statue. The rickety statue swayed ominously, like the men whom Chatine used to see drinking too much weed wine at the Jondrette. With wide, unblinking eyes, Chatine watched as the giant Thibault Paresse wobbled and let out a deafening screech.

  “Watch out,” a nearby stall owner yelled. “It’s falling!”

  Someone screamed, and Chatine couldn’t be 100 percent sure it wasn’t her. Her gaze flicked from the tumbling statue to the person who still lay on the ground, directly in its path.

  Marcellus.

  “No!” Chatine shouted, and this time, it really was her.

  - CHAPTER 48 -

  CHATINE

  CHATINE LEAPT DOWN FROM THE beam, landing hard in a crouch. She felt something in her left ankle twist awkwardly, but she didn’t stop. She dove toward Marcellus, shoving him out of the way.

  Crash!

  Trash swirled, mud splattered, and people screamed as the huge bronze figure of the founding Patriarche hit the ground, right where Marcellus had been just a second ago, and cracked in half at the waist.

  “Marcellus?” His name scratched in Chatine’s throat as she slumped down next to him, her heart hammering at her ribs. He still wasn’t moving.

  “Come on, get up, you stupide pomp,” she whispered.

  His eyelids shot open, and before he could even focus on Chatine’s face in front of him, he scrambled to his feet, practically shoving Chatine out of the way as he glanced around the marketplace.

  Something cold and bitter squeezed in Chatine’s chest.

  He was still looking for her, wasn’t he?

  Still trying to save her.

  Chatine turned away in disgust and pushed herself to her feet, immediately feeling the pain shoot through her left ankle. Fantastique, she thought as she started to hobble away. She couldn’t watch this anymore. The boy was a fool. Alouette’s father clearly wanted her to have nothing to do with Marcellus, and yet here he was, chasing after her like a sot.

  “Oh my Sols!” someone shouted, and Chatine turned back to see a woman pointing at the fallen, cracked statue. “There’s someone under there!”

  Chatine’s eyes traveled the length of the giant Patriarche, from his enormous head lying facedown in the mud to his broken left foot on top of the wreckage of the collapsed stall.

  And that’s when Chatine saw it.

  Pinned under the massive bronze boot was an arm. A child’s arm. Chatine tried desperately to make out whom it belonged to, but there was too much rubble. Too much debris covering the rest of the body.

  Chatine stood frozen to the spot, staring helplessly at that arm. Those unmoving, untwitching little fingers as lifeless as the plastique doll arm that lay under the grate next to her bed.

  Before she could even react, a figure emerged from the crowd, running toward the statue. His raincoat was no longer spotless silver. It was stained with mud.

  “Quick!” Marcellus called out to the small crowd that had started to gather. “Help me!”

  The officer waded through the debris, flinging trash and wreckage to the side as he dug his way to the bottom half of the broken statue. Chatine watched in a semi-trance as Marcellus pushed aside a broken plank from the old stall, revealing the
face of the young boy pinned beneath the Patriarche’s foot.

  Chatine’s stomach rolled again.

  It was Roche.

  The boy she had met less than two hours earlier hiding underneath the cabbage stall. He wasn’t moving.

  “We need to get this off him!” Marcellus yelled.

  Chatine flinched, coming out of her trance. She ran toward the base of the statue, ignoring the stabbing pain in her ankle. Marcellus locked eyes on her and silent understanding flowed between them.

  They slid their hands under opposite sides of the Patriarche’s ankles.

  “One, two, three,” Marcellus counted out.

  Chatine heaved upward with all her strength. She could feel the blood rushing to her face, and her fingers went numb. Across from her, Marcellus gritted his teeth, and the tendons in his neck popped out from the effort.

  The statue didn’t move a single centimètre.

  Two more men joined them, one of them gripping the statue’s left knee, the other slipping a hand through the gap formed between Thibault’s torso and lower half. Together, they all lifted like they were trying to pull an entire planet from orbit.

  The statue shifted, but only slightly.

  Roche let out a soft whimper as the enormous structured settled back down onto his arm. Chatine shuddered out a breath. He was still alive.

  “We’re going to get you out!” she told him. “Don’t worry!”

  They needed more help.

  Chatine stepped away from the statue and scanned the crowd. She spotted Inspecteur Limier a few mètres away. Why the fric wasn’t he helping? Or at least sending in some of his metal-headed bashers?

  “Inspecteur!” she called out.

  But it was as though Limier weren’t even in the same marketplace. He was barely on the same planet. Something in the distance had caught his attention. His circuitry flashed more wildly than Chatine had ever seen before. She followed his gaze through the crowd. It wasn’t difficult. She could have easily drawn a line straight from Limier’s flickering face to the hooded figure.

  Alouette’s father had stopped and turned, maybe to see what had silenced the crowd again. But he was not looking at the commotion around the fallen statue. He was looking straight back at Inspecteur Limier.