Wicked Women

by Gaie Sebold

  I would find Thérèse and we would disappear together. Safe. As always.

  That was all that mattered.

  I ducked through the door that led to the stairwell. The thin, golden straps of my Grecian sandals bit into my feet as I ran up the stairs.

  How long would it take the story to cross the ballroom? How long before it reached someone who knew the legends... or the truth?

  The first-floor gallery above the ballroom was brightly lit and filled with embracing couples. Too public. I turned back to the stairs, shaking with urgency. How long did I have left?

  I should have known better than to leave Henriette untouched and free. No, I had known better, but I hadn’t listened to common sense. It had been madness to let sentimentality put us in such danger. Thérèse would never have been so foolish.

  Too late now for regrets... or rather, too soon. Once I found Thérèse and we were safe, then I could pour out all my regrets to her alone, and she would laugh and stroke my hair and soothe me, calling me her soft-hearted ninny, not safe to let out of her sight, and I would laugh, too, as I agreed with her.

  Once I found Thérèse...

  I leapt the last two steps onto the second floor landing, in the darkness.

  ‘Thérèse?’ I whispered.

  And that was when I heard her scream, far below.

  Time is the cruellest of all masters.

  I was born twenty-six years ago, in my parents’ country house outside Paris, and my first sixteen years passed with all the slow placidity of a cow’s life, imprisoned in a field she did not choose. Ten years ago, I met Thérèse in a darkened corridor, and I was born again. In all our ten years together, time raced by as quickly and as fluidly as a stream rushing toward a towering waterfall, unknowing of the cataclysm ahead.

  But time stopped altogether as I heard Thérèse scream. And as I ran back down the three flights of broad, marble stairs, each step took at least a decade to complete.

  I couldn’t hear Thérèse anymore.

  With each step I prayed. I prayed the Rosary of my girlhood, and I prayed to anything, anyone else who would listen, until all the words my lips could form were:

  Thérèse. Thérèse. Thérèse, please, Thérèse...

  I hurtled into the ballroom.

  The dancing and the music had stopped.

  I couldn’t see through the shifting crowds. Shocked whispering and chatter formed a high-pitched whine against my ears.

  I pushed my way through, taking in scattered words without meaning.

  ‘...His daughter...’

  ‘She was dead!’

  ‘I saw her move.’

  ‘Her smile--’

  ‘Died seventeen years ago--’

  Thérèse.

  She was facing me, in her last moment. Her black eyes widened. Restrained by three soldiers, she still shook her head, flattened her hands in a gesture that meant Go! even as I lurched forward to save her.

  Too late.

  The force of the stake was a meaty thunk! that resonated in my bones.

  Her body fell and lay, unmoving.

  I fell to my knees. I couldn’t breathe.

  The man who’d wielded the stake brushed his hands off and turned to the men around him, all wearing the same finery. He wore a gold medal on his jacket. His face was lined with age, his hair thin and white. But his eyes were a black I’d only seen once before.

  ‘It was the same with her poor mother and both her sisters,’ he said. ‘You learn the trick of managing them soon enough. I’m only surprised this one had the gall to attend tonight, knowing I would be here with the rest of the new régime.’

  ‘She--’ began one of the younger men nearby.

  Thérèse’s father shook his head. ‘It,’ he corrected. ‘Oh, it may look like a beautiful woman, gentlemen, but it’s no more than a demon beneath the skin.’ He began to move away, then stopped. ‘Oh, and for safety’s sake, it’ll still need its head cut off and garlic stuffed in its mouth before it’s buried.’

  A scream welled up in my throat. My vision blurred. I felt the blood-rage lift me from the ground.

  A hand closed around my arm to stop me.

  ‘Annette,’ said a voice I knew. ‘Annette. You can’t help her. Annette.’

  I turned around. It was Henriette Marchand, silly Henriette, with her blonde wig and her worried face.

  ‘She was your friend?’ Henriette said softly. ‘I’m sorry. I can tell she was. I found someone who took care of me, too, when I was in La Force and should have died. But you have to leave her now before someone sees you in such a state and suspects.’

  I shook my head. My voice could barely form words. Later, I would wonder at her calmness, and at myself. Now all I could say, like a child, was: ‘Thérèse...’

  ‘You can’t stop them,’ Henriette said. ‘You’re surrounded by five hundred people, can’t you see that? They would have you in seconds, before you could even touch him. How would that help her?’

  ‘I have to--’

  ‘Didn’t you learn anything from the Terror?’ Henriette asked. Her face was pale with anger now. ‘Do you think I wanted to see my sisters guillotined? Do you think I wanted to become a filthy sans-cullotte’s mistress? Do you think I like what I’ve become? We don’t have a choice! You have to survive! That’s all that matters anymore.’

  I stared at her. Behind me, I heard movement. Henriette gripped both my arms and held my gaze. I heard wet, horrible sounds.

  And I let Henriette hold me.

  ‘We’ve survived,’ Henriette said at last, as she let me go. ‘Be grateful.’

  She turned and walked away through the crowd.

  Thérèse never told me about her past. Oh, we made up new histories for her every year, just as we did for me. We called her a Spanish princess, an actress, the lovechild of a nun. But I never asked her for the truth, and she never offered it.

  I think I must have believed, somehow, that she had never truly existed before she met me, just as I was only born into myself when I met her.

  My Thérèse.

  That boy in the gardens--he was right. Gaiety can mask our losses, but it can never heal them.

  ‘I can help you forget,’ she told me, our first night.

  But she never forgot her own past, did she? We only pretended, together, that it had never happened, in our own private, glittering bal des victimes, where nothing in the past could be allowed to matter, and we could feel no pain. And it was that pretence that killed her in the end.

  ‘Citoyenne Davenant,’ the secretary calls. He’s kept me prisoner in this waiting room for hours--just one of the many unimportant supplicants waiting to see one of the most powerful men in new, Thermidorian Paris, to buy favours, laws, armies... and lives.

  As I step into Thérèse’s father’s private office, I raise the dark veil I wore over my face to protect myself from sunlight on the long walk here.

  I look into his black eyes, not yet widening with fear, and I see only Thérèse.

  ‘I will never forget,’ I tell him. ‘Never.’

  A CHANGE OF LEADERSHIP

  Jonathan Ward

  It had been raining for the last half-hour: the clouds thick enough that the moon and stars were blotted out entirely. Fortunately, there was enough light cast by the lanterns hung at irregular intervals along the street below for Jayla to be able to see what was going on. She swept her gaze along there now. Persistent rain was turning the already-saturated road of packed earth into more of a quagmire than it had already been, and sluggish rivulets of mud could be seen oozing along the base of the long, high wall that formed the right-hand side of the street and the very edge of the city. On the other side of the wall there was nothing but a long drop off a sheer cliff to jagged rocks far below, and as a result this section of the city wall was not permanently guarded.

  The buildings along the left side of the street were all abandoned: their inhabitants had fled when the palace at the summit of the city had first been razed. Man
y across the city had done the same during that dark period, although most of them had returned now that repairs on the newly-renamed Drake’s Roost had been completed. While some form of order had been restored, the population was still well below the peak found during Bask rule. All this combined with the bad weather meant that there were unlikely to be any witnesses to what they were going to do tonight. Conditions could hardly be more ideal, which was some consolation for the fact that Jayla was getting completely soaked.

  She pushed such thoughts out of her head and focussed on the here and now. From her position lying prone at the edge of a roof halfway down the street she could see the connecting road winding away deeper into the city. That road was occupied and a custodian patrol passed along it once an hour, every hour, with idiotic predictability. By her estimation they were a few minutes late, and she felt the knot of tension inside her twist itself a little tighter. It was possible that the bad weather had kept them indoors, or perhaps they had changed their route, or...

  There.

  The faint, bobbing light of their lanterns was just visible as they rounded a corner and started down the road. Within half a minute they would have passed the junction and moved on: the time to act was now. Jayla allowed herself a few more seconds to make certain of what she was seeing, then she dangled her arm over the edge of the roof and made a quick signal before drawing it up and out of sight once more.

  Moments later a woman screamed. Right below her, two figures were locked in a desperate battle. A woman, slim with shoulder-length brown hair, was struggling to pull away from the grip of the burlier man, who was half as tall again as her and far more muscular. She kicked out repeatedly; the man twisted to avoid most of the blows but a raised knee smacked into his groin and he let out a tightly-controlled grunt of pain. He backhanded her across the face, and she staggered against the nearest wall. She screamed again.

  Jayla looked round and saw that the twin circles of light had changed direction; now heading towards the fight at rapid speed. Seconds later two custodians, dressed in dark-brown leather uniforms with a black symbol emblazoned across their chests, came into view. Their pace slowed as they drew closer and took in what was happening. Both drew their cudgels from the loops at their belts. The younger of the two stepped forward, closed his hand around the attacking man’s arm and yanked him backwards. It was not enough to make him release the woman fully but it did twist him round and throw one arm wide. In the moments before the man recovered his balance the second custodian stepped in and drove the end of his cudgel into the attacker’s stomach, driving the air from the man’s lungs. He released his grip on the woman and doubled over; his descending head meeting the first custodian’s knee coming the other way. The blow flung the attacker backwards, landing hard enough to raise a spray of mud that splattered across the legs of all three of the others.

  As the younger custodian crouched down beside the prone man with his cudgel raised, the second moved to where the woman still stood against the wall, eyes wide and mouth agape as she struggled to take in the rapid change in her situation.

  ‘It’s alright,’ the custodian said, smiling reassuringly. ‘We’re here to help now. Did he hurt you?’

  ‘No, I-’ the woman hesitated, her gaze darting to the fallen man.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ the older man said. ‘He’s not going to hurt you again.’

  Jayla watched as the woman stepped away from the wall and made eye-contact with her rescuer.

  ‘I know.’

  In one fluid movement the woman swept her arm up and around, her clenched fist thumping against the custodian’s temple. A puzzled expression briefly formed on his features before she pulled her fist back. The knife she had been clutching in her hand tore itself free and dragged a spray of dark red blood behind it. The man collapsed immediately as if the knife had been the only thing holding him up.

  The second custodian began to rise, letting out an incoherent cry of horror and denial. His hand flew to the short sword at his waist, but before he could draw it, he looked down and saw that the ‘unconscious’ man at his feet had a hand wrapped firmly around his ankle. The attacker swept his arm round and the custodian went over on his back with a squelch of displaced mud. Before he could rise again the woman crouched down and drove her blade through the base of his jaw, up into his brain. The custodian took a few seconds to die: from her vantage point Jayla could hear the man gargling helplessly as irregular sprays of blood frothed from his mouth before he finally expired.

  She took a few seconds to scan each end of the street, looking for any sign that someone else had seen or heard what had just happened, her hand resting on the haft of the mace hooked to her belt. Nothing. Even so it would be wise not to linger. Jayla sat up slowly, wincing as her muscles protested after their long period of inactivity. She lowered herself over the edge of the roof, hanging by her hands for a moment before letting go and crouching to absorb the impact as she hit the ground. Mud was flung up by her landing and some of it splattered against her cheek but she ignored it: the rain would wash it away quickly enough.

  When Jayla turned the man and the woman were waiting for her. The man looked a little unsteady on his feet but greeted Jayla with a curt nod, which she reciprocated. The woman still had her knife drawn, the blood dripping from its tip being slowly absorbed by the quagmire of mud at their feet.

  ‘Good work, both of you,’ Jayla said. ‘Let’s get moving.’

  ‘Wait a second!’ The woman snapped, grabbing hold of Jayla’s wrist as she started to turn away. ‘You’re happy, right? I’m in?’

  Jayla looked at the hand for a moment and the woman snatched it away as though Jayla’s arm was burning her. Jayla turned her gaze to the body of one of the custodians lying at her feet, her eyes fixing themselves on the symbol emblazoned across the man’s chest. It was like a giant hand rendered in black paint: crudely done, but not without a certain artistry. She knew what it meant: just thinking about the message it conveyed made her guts churn with loathing and the urge to kill pulse within her mind.

  Six talons: one for each of the clans, all linked together to form the paw of a firedrake. The six clans brought together under the creature’s rule: it was intended to signify alliance, unity. Hope.

  It was a symbol of oppression and tyranny.

  ‘Yes Leana,’ she hissed. ‘You’re in.’

  The tavern was old and showed every day of its age, seemingly held together as much by the half-hearted prayers of its owner as by anything as prosaic as decent building materials. Nobody remembered its name, if it had ever had one to begin with. It was deep within a slum district; its only customers those who were either unaware how heavily watered-down the beer was, who didn’t care because they couldn’t afford anything else, or those who couldn’t risk showing their faces in any other drinking establishment in the city. Since the firedrake had established its dominance over the six clans, the custodians had been cracking down much harder on crime throughout Talscar, but they still avoided the slum unless they had no other choice.

  That made it ideal for Jayla’s purposes.

  Through careful, oh-so-innocently-posed questions over the course of several nights Jayla had learned that the landlord, a Bask clansman, had utterly no respect or loyalty for their new ruler, though he concealed it well. That, coupled with regular payments of silver, had led to Jayla being handed a key to the premises along with the understanding that what went on there at night, while the owner was at home in bed, was none of his concern.

  She knocked four times in careful sequence before unlocking the door. The inside of the tavern was barely any brighter than out in the city; the feeble illumination provided by two flickering candles placed on separate tables. A dark mass off to one side was the long slab of oak that served as the bar, with a row of kegs just behind that. The air stank of stale beer, vomit, and the half-rotted straw that covered the floor.

  ‘It’s me,’ Jayla said, and on the edge of hearing she registered the faint sou
nd of a blade being slipped into its oiled leather scabbard. She glanced around the room and spotted Rae in one corner, mostly concealed by the shadows. She nodded in her direction. The other three sat within the candlelight, and Jayla watched the emotions play across their faces as Leana entered next. Tor came last, closing the door behind him. Jayla sat down at one of the tables and waited for the others to do the same. Once they had, she looked slowly around the room, making eye contact with each person in turn.

  ‘Leana has proven herself,’ she said, and a subtle tension went out of their postures. ‘She’s one of us now.’

  ‘How many, and what clans?’ The question came from Rork, a man who seemed to be built of nothing but muscle. He had customised his leather armour heavily to fit him, but even so it still strained to contain all of his bulk. ‘Two custodians. Bask and Black Wolves.’

  Rork’s fat lips curled into a sneer and he looked away. Jayla knew what he was thinking. Talscar was a Bask city; there was a time when only the Bask would have been charged with keeping law and order in their settlement. But the firedrake and his consort cared nothing for the traditions of the people they ruled over: clan affiliation was becoming less and less important in their precious new order.

  ‘Well done, Leana.’ That came from Dolan. His expression was a mixture of approval and ill-concealed relief: he had recommended his sister, Leana, be admitted to the group and knew that if Jayla had not approved then she would have ensured that Leana didn’t survive to tell anyone about her failure.

  ‘Thanks, Dolan.’ Leana paused. ‘I’m glad to be here, as long as what my brother said is true. Was he right? Are you going to do something about that bastard creature that’s enslaved us all?’

  All eyes turned to Jayla, and she felt a thrill of anticipation steal through her. One day her name would go down in history for this. She rose to her feet and rested her clenched fists on the table as she gazed around at her comrades once again.