by Kester Grant
I do my best not to frown, confused by her presence here at the Assassins Guild. I’m so distracted, I almost miss Corday nodding to Montparnasse.
I swing around in horror to find that he has Ettie on her feet, his blade at her cheek. Ettie’s eyes are wide with terror, the razor-sharp dagger pressed into her skin.
“Please!” I cry.
“You’re daring, Black Cat of the Thieves Guild.” Corday’s face is a picture of calm. “And for that I’ll give you some free counsel.” Her eyes flicker back to Ettie. “Slice up her pretty face, and perhaps the Tiger won’t want her anymore.”
“Please. Don’t!” I plead.
“I doubt Kaplan would be put off by a disfigurement at this stage. You know what he’s like when he wants something,” says Col-Blanche.
“It’s true he doesn’t like being defied,” Corday agrees.
She glances again at Montparnasse, and at the merest blink of her eyes he lets go of Ettie and puts his blade away. Ettie breathes out in a long, loud sound.
I dare not even go to her. I try to still my trembling hands and keep my eyes on Corday, who seems to be measuring me up for something. I hope it’s not a coffin.
“You’re very small.”
I nod.
“And you’re a Cat.”
“Yes, my Lady.”
“You must be very good at getting into hard-to-reach places.” Her eyes flicker toward the fireplace at Komayd.
“Nina can break into anywhere,” Ettie pipes up from behind me. “She once broke into the Tuileries!”
I could kick myself for having told her about my burglaries, but Ettie so loves stories.
Corday looks at Ettie in amusement. “Did she? Well, that’s very good, because everyone else has failed.”
I frown. Failed at what?
Corday’s and Komayd’s eyes meet; they’re having some sort of silent conversation.
“The Cat speaks truth: there’s only one Lord mad enough to openly defy the Tiger,” Komayd responds. “Only Orso.”
The Dead Lord.
Corday agrees with a tilt of her head. “So you are right, little Cat, to seek an audience with him.”
She motions to Montparnasse, and the bonds at our wrists are sliced with the whistle of a sharp blade.
“You must find the Ghosts,” Corday says. “They are incomprehensible at the best of times, and I hear the absence of their Father makes them…even worse. I wish you both the best of luck. Shall we drink to your endeavor?”
I’m left with the feeling I’ve missed a fundamental part of the conversation. Did we just walk into the Assassins Guild looking for clues about the Dead Lord, only to be sent to find the Ghosts? Nobody has seen them in weeks. Was this some sort of test?
Col-Blanche moves to a small side table and pours sparkling white wine into two cut-crystal glasses. He carries them over on a tray and offers them to us.
I hesitate. The Master of Poisons is offering me a drink. A drink no one else in the room is drinking. This is definitely a test.
“I thank you, sir, but I’m afraid we can’t accept your generosity,” I say.
Corday smiles, showing her even white teeth. The sight fills me with dread.
“Wise, little kitten.” She pulls a gold pocket watch out of a fold in her dress. It’s a small, intricate thing hanging on a long chain, with a brass serpent twisted around its face.
“Now, if you could both look closely at this.” Corday’s tone indicates we have little choice.
I squint at the tiny gilt thing; it has Roman numerals of black, and hands like knives behind its glass face.
As the watch moves back and forth, the numbers blur together. I try to focus on them, but my thoughts seem to slow and the room grows wider, stranger; the crackling of the fire is loud in my ears.
Behind me, Ettie gives an odd sigh.
I try to turn to her, but my feet won’t obey. My fingers scrabble uselessly at my coat, trying to grab for my dagger, but I can’t seem to lift them. A wave of dizziness overcomes me. Have the Death Dealers given me some drug after all?
With a thud, Ettie crumples to the floor.
“You’re a fighter, aren’t you?” Corday says to me, her voice seeming to come from far away. “That’s good.”
“We came for your help.” My words catch on my tongue and trip at my teeth.
I slump to my knees.
“It doesn’t work on everyone. Some can fight it. Few are immune. The trick, little Cat, is not to look.”
The last thing I see are Corday’s eyes, wide and bright, drowning me inside them.
I hear a sound like someone clapping their hands together.
“Nous sommes d’un sang, little Cat. I hope we meet again soon.”
The first thing I do when I open my eyes is to make sure I’m not floating on the festering waters of the Great Serpent—the Seine—with my throat slit. My head aches, my mouth is dry, and my stomach churns. I narrow my eyes and peer away from the streetlight into the darkness, smelling the rain as it falls, trying to make out where we are.
Ettie wakes, too, and leans her head on my shoulder as we try to clear our minds from the heavy fog that shrouds them.
“How did they drug me if I drank nothing?” she mutters.
I ignore her, because my head is ringing. I should be relieved. We survived a direct encounter with the Lady of Assassins, even if it feels like someone has stabbed at my brain.
“Maybe it was a mist in the air,” Ettie muses. “I always feel strange after the Dreamers have been smoking their pipes in the inn.”
“There was something about the watch.” I hesitate. “It did something to us.”
Ettie rubs her eyes and shakes herself. We get to our feet, and she looks around at the dark street.
“Do you think the Dead Lord will want to take me?” she asks doubtfully.
I smile. “I think so. We have to find him first.”
* * *
Each Guild of the Miracle Court has hundreds of its own calls, to speak over long distances, to give warning, to summon, or simply to announce their presence. The Thieves even have a complicated language of day and night calls. Then there are the Master Calls, calls that are universal in their meaning and that every child of the Miracle Court is taught to recognize.
I raise my chin and sound a Master Call, a short, sharp whistle. Ettie turns upon hearing the noise on my lips.
“What are you doing?” she asks.
“Calling the Dead.”
A shadow moves in the fog. I slip my dagger into my hand as I wait for the person to materialize; I find comfort in the weight of it in my palm.
The shadow has a name: it is Montparnasse, Master of Knives. I wonder what he is doing here. Is he here to protect us, or to do us harm?
More shadows shift. I blink several times. I see them before Ettie does: broken mountains of gray, hollow-eyed specters in ashen robes, their faces pale as death. Some are missing limbs or eyes; others have faces that are labyrinths of ancient wrinkles. These are the Dead Lord’s children. The Ghosts.
Montparnasse looks at me. “You found your Ghosts, so I suggest you run along unless you want the Hyènes to find you.”
I’ve no desire to encounter the Hyènes, the children of the Guild of Mercenaries, men and women paid to do violence.
I turn to say something, a small word of thanks, perhaps, for his not having murdered us. But there’s only an empty space where he was standing.
With Ettie holding tight to me, we move toward the ghostly figures.
“We’re looking for your Father,” I say.
“Father?” The whisper comes back to us as a question.
An ashen boy who can’t be older than five opens his mouth. “Do you know where he is?” he asks in the high, lost voice shared by all the Ghos
ts. I pause, surprised. The Dead Lord is Father of their Guild. Surely they know where he is.
“I think I might,” I say noncommittally. I don’t know, of course, but I’m not about to betray that fact, or they might lose interest in me…or worse.
A murmur goes through their ranks.
“Take them to Loup.”
“Yes, come,” says the boy. And where they were as still as statues, they’re suddenly in motion, pulling us along with them. The small one leads the way, without hesitation, with surprising speed.
As we go, more shadows join the troupe, till we’re walking surrounded by a gray wall of Ghosts.
Ettie looks at me, worried, as she should be. The Ghosts are among the most dangerous children of the Miracle Court, second only to the Assassins. Because there are so many of them.
“It’s all right,” I mouth at her.
But that’s also a lie.
* * *
The train of gray Ghosts walks together, pressing in from all sides in an odd, jostling wave. Ettie’s tense beside me. Her arm is linked with mine; we’d get carried away from one another otherwise.
“I thought you meant real ghosts,” she mutters, her tone deeply reproachful.
“People mostly ignore or look through them,” I explain, “so they call themselves Ghosts because they think they’re already dead.”
Ettie is staring at a girl with milky eyes and long gray hair hanging down her back. She’s blind. Beside her an older Ghost walks with a crutch; he’s missing a leg.
“What happened to them?”
“Their Father.”
There’s a long and horrified silence as Ettie takes this in. But it’s the truth of it. The city weeps tears of silver coins to the unfortunate. So the Dead Lord occasionally takes a hand, or a pair of eyes to encourage the silver. That’s how he loves his children.
I lean over to whisper in Ettie’s ear, trying to distract her from the horrors.
“Do you know why they’re gray? They sit so long in one place begging that the dust from the carriages and street becomes part of them.”
Like the smell. It wasn’t so noticeable when there were only a handful of them, but now, as the bodies press into us, it’s overwhelming. Sweet, sour, stale.
“What’s that?”
I narrow my eyes to make out what she’s seeing. The gray road ends, but the Ghosts still move forward.
Overhead is a large barrier. One of the Portes de Paris, the sixty-two gates in the wall that imprisons the city. Its name carved into the ancient stone.
La Barrière d’Enfer. The Hell Gate.
And beyond it, only darkness. The Ghosts are disappearing into it. The closer we get to the gaping hole, the more it grows. Holding hands, we let the darkness swallow us.
We’re in a tunnel of some sort. In the distance, a single flaming sconce burns over an archway. The light illuminates the walls, which appear to be decorated with odd, detailed patterns carved in white stone.
“Nina!” Ettie gasps, her hands flying to her mouth.
I look closely. The delicate patterns of animals and flowers framing the archway are not carvings; instead, they’re made of hundreds of human bones intricately fitted together, and rows of skulls above them.
Carved into the bones, an inscription over the archway reads: L’empire de la mort—the empire of the dead.
Ettie shakes beside me.
The small boy looks at her. He points beyond the archway into the darkness.
“It’s all right,” I whisper as we get dragged with the Ghosts deep into the catacombs.
The tunnel finally widens into a giant cave, ten times the size of the Shining Hall. The walls are lined from floor to ceiling with bones. The cave is lit by sconces made from the bones of human hands, the flame emerging from wicks fitted into palms, making the light jump and casting shadows everywhere.
The Ghosts settle down, sitting on the floor or perching in the many other tunnel entrances riddling the cavern. Their numbers must be in the hundreds. Their whispery, childlike voices echo around the cave.
Ettie and I stand together. The boy still holds on to her hand and looks around.
“Who are you?” comes a voice, loud and clear.
The Ghosts begin to murmur again, taking up the question.
Who are they? Who are you—
“And what are you doing among the dead?”
—Among the dead. What are they doing?
“We’re looking for the Dead Lord.” I try to sound brave.
Their whispers echo my words.
The Ghosts are like a swarm: you can’t make out where they start or end. The gray shapes morph and move in the dim light until through them a figure seems to rise from the ground itself. A thin boy, he is all pale skin and gray rags, his hair white, and in the middle of his face, where his nose should be, is a hole. I grip Ettie so she doesn’t say anything. She remains admirably silent.
The thin boy bows low. I follow suit, dragging Ettie down with me.
“And what do you want with our Father, Thiefling?” The noseless Ghost’s eyes are sharp with accusation.
“Bonne chasse, Master Loup. We’ve come to beg your mercy.”
Loup looks at us, frowning. “Bonne chasse…Speak then, quickly, or we’ll add you to the pot with the others.”
The pot! The pot! comes the whispering cry.
I take only the briefest moment to wonder what others have been added to the pot; Ghosts are mysterious at the best of times, and their words are as garbled as a sphinx’s riddle.
“I’ve business with the Dead Lord.”
“You may speak your business.”
“No,” I say firmly. “I was sent by Lady Corday. I have matters to discuss with Lord Orso alone,” I add, twisting the truth.
Loup crosses his arms. “Then we must await his return.” The conversation is over. He turns his back on us, his torn cloak swishing as he goes.
“And when will he return?”
Loup pauses but doesn’t answer. I have the unsettling feeling that I’m seeing only part of a puzzle. First with the Assassins, and now here among the Ghosts.
The pot! The pot! Feed them to the pot! his brethren begin to chant again.
Loup sighs, and nods, and a hundred gray hands rise to grab us. We are pushed and pulled by the living wall of hands and feet and gray faces, all snapping teeth and voices whispering over and over.
“Wait! Wait! Master of Ghosts! What is this?”
“Nina, they’re not actually going to eat us, are they?” Ettie shrieks beside me.
I decide that avoiding the question is the best course of action at the moment.
We are brought to another large cavern, so hot the thick air hits us in waves. At the room’s center is a giant cauldron, big enough to hold a man. At its base roars a giant fire, stoked by Ghosts on every side.
“The pot is unusually full. I am not sure I can fit you in at the moment,” Loup says mournfully. He points a finger toward someone in a corner of the cavern. “He will be going first. You will be after him.”
I blink. The heat is making the world shimmer and move. I see a tousle-haired blond boy in a dark red coat, trussed like a chicken. He sees me, and though it’s been several years, I know who he is: the beautiful son of the rebellion who saved me from the Guild of Flesh. St. Juste. He must recognize me, too, because the look he gives me is clear enough. For someone so used to giving orders, St. Juste doesn’t need words to make his meaning clear.
You owe me!
“Master Loup! Not that I would ever question the wisdom of a Master of the Beggars Guild, but is there a particular reason you are going to cook this Day Walker?”
Loup looks at me and sighs. “He followed us into the Guild.” He sounds offended at the effrontery of St. Juste’s behavior. �
�He entered without an invitation.”
We both look at St. Juste squirming in his bonds.
“Well…,” I say. “Before you cook him, have you asked why he dared to follow the Ghosts?”
Loup shakes his head, looking sullen. He gestures to another Ghost to remove the gag from St. Juste’s mouth.
He gasps, dragging in long breaths of air.
“You—” St. Juste starts.
“You have very little time, and even fewer words to use, so I suggest you put them to good use,” I advise him. “Why did you follow the Ghosts and enter their Guild?”
“I was looking for Lord Orso. I had a rendezvous with him, and he never appeared.”
“Why would the Dead Lord have rendezvous with a Day Walker?”
“He said he that knew my uncle, that he would tell me stories about how it was when they were young men together, before the revolution failed, before my father was fed to the guillotine, before every man, woman, and child in my family was hunted down and hanged at Montfaucon simply for bearing the name of St. Juste.
“I have never met anybody alive who could tell of them. So when he did not come, I was worried, and followed the beggars to this place.”
A lie! A lie! Feed him to the pot!
The cloth is stuffed back into St. Juste’s mouth, and he scowls, trying to talk, but nobody can decipher what he is saying.
I look around at the Ghosts, crammed into every space in the cavern, their eyes glimmering with a strange madness.
“Before you suck the marrow from his bones,” I say, “is there anyone who can verify his tale? Is there any among you that saw the Dead Lord with this Day Walker?”
A silence greets my question, and then a movement, a pushing and shoving, and the smallest Ghost, the ashen little boy who led us here, appears at the front.
“Did you witness this, Gray Brother?” Loup demands.
The boy solemnly nods.
“Was it before Father went away?”
He nods again.
“And were you ever going to speak up, Gavroche?” Loup says in a tone that is both exasperated and threatening.
