The two sisters had always shared similar features—the same clear gray eyes, the same dainty nose, the same high cheekbones—but it wasn’t until right this very moment that Chatine had been able to see the resemblance.
“You’re right.” Azelle sniffed. “I should go. Thanks, Chatine.”
And before Chatine could react, her sister threw her arms around her waist and squeezed. Chatine stiffened at the embrace, unsure what to do. Azelle was too close. This whole situation brought back too many dark, painful memories.
The sweet scent of Henri’s hair. The feel of his tiny body in her arms. His blanket gathering dirt and dust in a corner.
“Okay,” Chatine said, patting her sister on the back. “Good. So, um. Have a nice day.”
Azelle finally pulled away but didn’t leave. For a moment, she just stared at Chatine with a sympathetic expression on her face that made Chatine squirm inside. It was as though her sister could see right through her. Right into the dark depths of her.
Then Azelle reached out and brushed away a strand of hair that had evidently fallen out of Chatine’s bun. She tucked it back under Chatine’s hood and smiled. “I like that you’re cryptic,” she whispered before turning and vanishing down the hallway.
As Chatine watched her sister disappear, she thought about all the walls that were swiftly closing in around her: The general’s warning to the Third Estate. The Délabré gang waiting for a cut of a con that didn’t exist. Her failure to locate the hidden Vangarde base.
She pressed her hand against the small lump in her pocket—the arm of Madeline’s doll.
A piece of something that once was whole.
A reminder of the kind of life that could never be hers. Or Azelle’s.
At least not here.
Once again, Chatine found herself thinking about the day Inspecteur Limier had appeared at the inn in Montfer, asking about a runaway convict.
She took a deep breath and continued out of Fret 7, reminding herself that this was her only option. Then, before she could second-guess herself, she turned in the direction of the Policier Precinct, praying that someone there was still willing to pay for information about the whereabouts of Jean LeGrand.
- CHAPTER 52 -
ALOUETTE
REICHENSTAT.
Her father was taking her to Reichenstat. She’d barely seen Laterre, and now her father was shipping them off to another planet entirely.
It was almost lunchtime and Alouette still hadn’t left her room. She’d missed supper last night, and now she’d missed breakfast, too. But she didn’t care. She wasn’t hungry.
She didn’t want to leave the only home she’d ever known.
Alouette had cried deep into the night until she’d finally fallen asleep, curled in a huddled ball under her blanket. When she’d awoken this morning, her pillow was still damp from tears, and her chest throbbed with an ache so sad and deep, it seemed it might crack her ribs wide open.
She’d been so foolish. She should never have snuck out of the Refuge and disappeared into the Forest Verdure with Marcellus.
She’d known there would be consequences for what she’d done.
But not this.
Never this.
Alouette rubbed at her swollen eyes and checked the time on the small clock beside her bed. Her father had said they were leaving today, but she hadn’t heard from him all morning.
“Reichenstat.” She whispered the word aloud.
It felt as alien and foreign as the planet itself.
Suddenly, all the anger and frustration she’d felt last night came rushing back to her.
She’d only just been made a sister, a real sister, and now they had to leave. She touched her devotion beads, still around her neck, and thought of all the years she’d been working so hard with her studies, with her chores, with her Tranquil Forme. All for nothing.
But there was something else, too. Some other ache deep inside her chest.
“This is about that boy, isn’t it?”
Her father’s words came back to her, and Alouette’s cheeks unexpectedly warmed. A realization was blooming within her that she was having a hard time accepting. Maybe her father was right. Maybe part of this was about the boy. At least, in some way.
Alouette shut her eyes tight. She could still feel his touch on her palm from when he’d held her hand in the Marsh. The urgency in his fingers when he’d begged her to meet him again.
“Tomorrow? Will you meet me somewhere? Anywhere?”
Alouette’s eyes sprang open and she let out a laugh, which sounded more like a sob. There was no chance of that now, was there? Even if Marcellus weren’t the general’s grandson and therefore a threat to her entire way of life, it wasn’t like she could meet him. She would soon be on board a voyageur heading to a planet worlds away. Laterre would soon be a tiny speck, a distant glow, in the vast sky. A place she would probably never see again.
How could her father do this to them? To her? To the sisters? Had he even thought of them? What if she really had put the Refuge and the library in danger? She couldn’t just leave the sisters to clean up her messes.
With this last thought, Alouette rolled over and screamed, long and hard, into her pillow.
“Alouette?”
She startled at the sound of her name and looked up. Sister Muriel was standing in the doorway of Alouette’s room. Her neat curls glowed white, and her wrinkles seemed even deeper now—etched with concern. Her devotion beads clacked slowly through her aged fingers.
“Are you all right, Little Lark?”
Alouette pushed herself up to sitting and rubbed at her face. “Yes, yes, fine,” she said, but her voice was shaky.
“Are you sick?”
Alouette shook her head. She was worried her voice might crack if she spoke again. Muriel was always so kind, so sweet and caring. Alouette could feel tears pricking at her eyes at the thought of never seeing her again. Never seeing any of the sisters again.
“We were wondering if you might both be ill.”
Alouette furrowed her brow. “Both?”
Muriel stepped into the room. “Your father said you weren’t at supper last night because you felt unwell. And when there was no breakfast prepared this morning, we assumed he might be sick too.” Muriel was threading her beads even faster now. “But then we found the door to his room was open and he wasn’t inside. Jacqui looked in the library and Sister Laurel’s propagation room. Even in the laundry. But he’s nowhere to be seen.”
“He didn’t prepare breakfast?” Alouette blurted out.
She could barely keep up with what Muriel was saying. Her mind was still stuck on the first point. Her father always made breakfast. He always made every meal. Even on those days, those very few days, that her father felt ill, he still went to the kitchen and prepared meals for the sisters and Alouette before returning to his bed.
Muriel shook her head. “We don’t know where he is. We were hoping you might know.”
Suddenly, something cold and hard clutched at Alouette’s stomach. It clutched so fiercely that she shot up from her bed. As soon as she was on her feet, she started to run. She scooted around Muriel and out the door.
“Little Lark?”
But Muriel’s worried shout was just a faint echo behind Alouette, who was now sprinting full tilt down the hallway.
When she arrived at her father’s room seconds later, it was just as Muriel had described. The door was ajar, but there was no one inside. With her heart thudding behind her ribs, she pushed the door wide and switched on the light.
Hugo Taureau’s bed was made, the sheets and blankets stretched and tucked with fierce precision under the mattress. His room was always sparse, but now it felt even more bare for some reason. Maybe she was imagining it, but it felt like there was a cold chill in the air too.
The chill of emptiness.
Alouette’s gaze ran anxiously over the room again before she hurried over to the closet and pulled back the curtain.
“What?” Her word came out as a gasp.
The shelves were empty. Everything was gone. His shirts and pants, his aprons, his underwear and shoes. All of it.
Gone.
Where were all his things? Maybe he’d already packed for Reichenstat. But why wasn’t he here? Why hadn’t he been in to see her this morning, to make sure she was packing too?
Then Alouette spotted something. The shelves weren’t completely empty after all. Up on the highest shelf, she could see her father’s old valise peeking out. Something shifted inside her. She felt a flare of hope. Alouette grabbed the nearby chair, stepped up, and pulled the case down.
But as soon as the valise was in her hands, she knew that it was too light.
She carried it over to the bed, popped the latches, and lifted the lid.
All the old clothes she’d found earlier were gone. The candlestick, too.
Only two things remained.
Glinting and flickering under the room’s dim light, the beautifully engraved titan box that Alouette was certain had once belonged to her mother sat in the bottom of the case, and right beside it lay Katrina. Her childhood doll. Her father had left them both for her.
“Little Lark? Is everything okay?”
It was Muriel’s voice again, but Alouette didn’t turn around. She kept staring into the valise at the small box. At the soft yellow fabric of Katrina’s dress. At the two things in the world that truly belonged to her.
And that was when the crushing realization finally hit.
“He’s gone.”
- CHAPTER 53 -
MARCELLUS
“NO RESULTS FOUND,” THE TÉLÉCOM announced.
Marcellus sighed and lowered the screen, staring out into the bustling studio of the Ministère headquarters in Ledôme, where his grandfather had just finished broadcasting his Universal Alert to the Third Estate.
For the past twenty minutes, Marcellus had been searching the Communiqué for anything he could find on Alouette LeGrand. But the girl was still a ghost. The only result he’d managed to produce was the one for Jean LeGrand, confirming what his grandfather had told Inspecteur Limier earlier this morning:
Escaped from Bastille in 478 ALD.
Deceased in 480 ALD. No surviving relatives.
Except he wasn’t deceased. Marcellus had seen him just as clearly as Limier had sworn to see him. The image in the Communiqué had been taken before his hair had turned white and his skin had wrinkled around the eyes, but everything else matched perfectly with the man in Marcellus’s memory.
But why was there no mention of a daughter?
Staring out into the crowded studio, Marcellus spotted his grandfather surrounded by admirers, people queuing up to offer their words of gratitude and congratulations on such a compelling and effective speech.
Marcellus cringed. Was he the only one who thought that this kind of threatening approach wasn’t going to work? That it would only make things worse? Nadette’s execution had riled up the Third Estate more than Marcellus had ever seen. The people were angry and starving. They were attacking droids, for Sols’ sake. They didn’t need more threats; they needed someone to pacify them. Throw them a lifeline. They needed someone to show them that the Ministère and the Patriarche were on their side.
Apparently he was the only one who thought like that, because after the alert had ended, the entire room had broken into applause. Inspecteurs, sergents, officers, even the aides had cheered. They all seemed to think that General Bonnefaçon’s tactic was the right one. But they hadn’t been in Montfer. They hadn’t seen the metal shacks of the Bidon. They hadn’t looked into Théo’s eyes when Marcellus had sworn that the Regime wasn’t flawed.
“My only hope was that you would grow up to think differently. . . . I tried to give you empathy.”
And none of them had been raised by a Vangarde spy for a governess.
“AirLink request pending from Sergent Chacal.” The voice of his TéléCom pulled Marcellus back to the room. He blinked and tapped on his screen to accept the request.
“We got one.” The startling words came before Marcellus could even offer a formal greeting.
Sergent Chacal’s angular face filled the whole of the screen, as though he were purposefully leaning in to the microcam to get his point across.
There was no leaning necessary. His words spoke volumes.
“You got one?” Marcellus echoed in disbelief. “As in one of them?”
There was only one “one” these days.
“Affirmative, Officer,” Chacal said. “He’s Vangarde, all right. He’s been running messages for them in the Frets. We need you to get down here right now to interrogate him.”
“Me?” Marcellus asked, confused. “Why can’t you do it?”
Interrogation was definitely more of Chacal’s specialty than his. The sergent could force all kinds of secrets from the lowliest of lowlifes. If his cruel glare and fierce voice didn’t work, then the metal baton that he kept strapped to his belt would always do the trick.
“Because he says he knows you,” the sergent replied.
Marcellus blinked into the TéléCom. He could see his own reflection blinking back at him from the corner of the screen. His thoughts immediately flitted to Mabelle. Had she sent someone for him? Someone to try to recruit him again?
“And no one else has been able to crack this one,” Chacal went on. “So we figure, why not give the future commandeur a try?”
Marcellus knew this was meant to be a jab. It was no secret that most people in the Policier disapproved of how fast Marcellus had moved up the ranks. Everyone knew it was due to the fact that he was the grandson of the general. But, like all the jabs they threw at him, he chose to ignore this one too.
“Where is he?” Marcellus asked.
“He’s being held down here at the Precinct.”
Marcellus nodded dazedly and mumbled something into his TéléCom that vaguely sounded like, “I’ll be right there.”
• • •
The giant, windowless building of the Precinct was bustling with activity. Noisy, furious people being herded into holding cells and interrogation rooms, sergents shouting out instructions, trying to maintain some semblance of order. As soon as Marcellus walked in, the frenetic energy of the place slapped him across the face, and he nearly turned around and walked back out. It was almost as though he could feel the walls shaking.
“Took you long enough.” Sergent Chacal was suddenly beside Marcellus. He was the only one in this whole building who actually looked happy to be here. His small, compact body was almost twitching with excitement. Which was to be expected. Sergent Chacal was completely in his element. He loved nothing more than rounding up troublemakers.
“Where is he?” Marcellus asked, glancing around nervously.
“We’ve got him in interrogation room two. Real piece of work, that one. Have barely been able to get a word out of him all day.”
“How do you know he’s Vangarde, then?”
The Ministère had been rounding people up for two days, but everyone had denied any association with the Vangarde.
“He copped to it,” Chacal said.
Marcellus balked. “He did?”
“Yup. Admitted to the whole thing. He was in the Med Center yesterday, being treated for a broken arm, and he was bragging to anyone who would listen about being a Vangarde messenger. But when we brought him in here today and asked him about where the messages were going and what they said, he clammed up.”
Marcellus felt his chest tighten. As he followed Chacal down the hallway to interrogation room 2, he pictured every possible kind of person behind that door. A man-beast as frighteningly huge as Alouette’s father. A formidable guard like the ones who had flanked Mabelle back in the Tourbay.
Chacal clapped him on the back when they reached the door, and with an unhelpful smirk said, “Good luck.” Then he turned and left Marcellus alone in the hallway, presumably to go and watch this charade from the monitoring
room with the rest of his deputies. Marcellus could already envision them sitting around laughing, taking bets about how long he would last in there.
With a deep breath, Marcellus reached out and turned the handle. He pushed the door open wide, his gaze immediately landing on the person occupying the steel chair in the center of the room.
A very small person.
Marcellus bit his lip to keep from laughing. Was this a joke? Had the guys down here at the Precinct decided to pull a prank on him?
It was a child.
A boy.
As skinny as one of the Patriarche’s titan toothpicks.
Marcellus curiously took in his large gray eyes and the pair of goggles on his forehead. He recognized him. He did know him. This was the same boy whom Marcellus had tried to save in the Marsh yesterday.
Tried, but failed.
In the end, it had been Alouette’s father—this mysteriously un-deceased Jean LeGrand—who had saved him with his incredible strength.
Marcellus was grateful to see that the boy was relatively unharmed. His left arm was bandaged, but in his right hand, he held a half-eaten carrot, which he drummed against the surface of the table.
Annoyed at what was clearly a Precinct prank, Marcellus turned to leave, prepared to march out that door and tell Chacal enough was enough. He was tired of being the joke around here.
But then a voice stopped him.
“Old Chacal thinks I’m Vangarde, doesn’t he?”
Marcellus spun around and stared at the boy. He couldn’t have been much older than twelve, but his voice sounded more mature.
“That’s what he told you, right? That I’m a Vangarde.” The boy stopped drumming his carrot and pushed his goggles farther up his forehead. He flashed Marcellus a wide grin.
“Yes,” Marcellus said. “That’s what he said.”
“I’m not.”
“Well, I know that. And I’m going to get this sorted out right away and get you released.” He turned back toward the door.
“Unless, I am.”
Marcellus stopped in his tracks again. Was the boy in on the prank? Had Chacal and the others offered to give him a loaf of chou bread if he played along?
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