Page 13

13

CAPTIVE

H enry stalked back and forth across the creaking floorboards, gun held tight in his hand.

Léon sat tense and silent in a chair, watching him.

émile remained close by, just over Léon’s shoulder, fiddling with the tips of his brother’s thick hair.

It was dark in that cabin, with the curtains drawn and Henry having failed to think to light a candle as he watched his grand plan falling apart right in front of him.

Léon hated him—that much was clear.

Léon, who was an executioner and a servant of the law, who would dash his plot to pieces if he set a foot back in town long enough to get word to one other person.

And town was where Henry needed to be.

And how was he to get in there without Léon in tow?

émile took quiet steps to the side-table where the piles of food remained, almost all sugar, just like a desperate idiot might buy to keep a small child quiet.

He took a choice piece from the spread, laid it on a plate, and placed it in front of Léon as a sort of peace offering.

Léon glowered at it, loathing so concentrated in his eyes that Henry was surprised the thing didn’t melt in shame.

“What’s this?”

“Cro… Cro…” émile attempted.

“Croquembouche,” Henry supplied.

“It’s good,” émile mumbled.

“Hen?—”

“Haven’t I taught you better than this?” Léon snarled.

“Accepting treats and trinkets from a man like that?” He eviscerated Henry with a singular glare, then picked the small cake up, plate and all, and hurled it against the wall, a puff of cream bursting out, smearing itself into the rough wood, slapping down on broken shards of crockery.

Yet not a second later, he took a miserable émile’s hand up in apology, making no eye contact with either him or Henry, but curling the rough little fingers around his own and up against his chest with a protective tenderness in perfect opposition to the violence of his last act.

Henry watched him out of the corner of his eye.

‘A man like that.’ He had only the smallest inkling of the kind of people Léon came into contact with in his work, and had no doubt he saw Henry as amongst the worst of them.

The comment had cut him to the quick, but the fact was, whatever horrors Henry thought Léon to be familiar with, his foulest imaginings wouldn’t have scratched the surface of the realities Léon had seen and heard.

Some days, Léon relished his bloody work.

And even as he sat there, staring at the darkening shadows on the curtains as the afternoon wasted away, Henry could never have known how vivid was the image in Léon’s mind of Henry’s head splatting down onto that wooden scaffold, taken off with Léon’s own darling axe.

He definitely would have given his head to the crowd to toy with when he was done.

Henry broke into his deliciously gory musings with the result of his hard thinking.

“I’ll have to tie you up.” Léon’s face turned up in alarm, and Henry rushed to soften the blow.

“I’ll let you stay with him. Here. Overnight. At dawn, you’ll be released. But I can’t allow you to leave this place tonight.”

“If you touch me, I will tear you to shreds.” Léon stated it coldly and clearly, and Henry didn’t doubt his ability to do exactly that.

“I bet you would. That’s why émile’s going to tie you.”

“He won’t,” Léon replied, tilting his head with a cocky smile.

It looked good there, and Henry hated to have to wipe it away.

Thankfully, émile did it for him.

“Don’t worry. I’ll feed you. We have everything we need.”

Léon spun around like a top.

“What are you talking about?”

émile’s bright eyes met Henry’s.

“What can I tie him up with?”

“You’re not tying me up!” Léon snapped.

Henry’s gaze roamed the floor until he lit upon émile’s wind-up cat and the long leash that came with it.

“We’ll use this.”

“Hey! That’s mine!” émile ran forward to save the destruction of his toy, which the tall Henry lifted high above his head, making him jump to try to pull Henry’s muscular arm down.

He failed entirely, and Léon was taken aback to see the playful way he let émile swing on his biceps, the child giggling just as though the man was no sort of kidnapping child murderer at all.

“We’ll reattach it later,” Henry mollified with a laugh, transferring the goods to his other hand and stumbling back as émile jumped up against him again.

If there had been something close to a moment of ease between Henry and Léon, it evaporated that very second with Henry’s, “I’m sure your brother knows a thing or two about tying ropes.”

Léon’s eyes turned to broken glass.

With a defensiveness that caught Henry, he seethed, “I don’t hang people.”

Henry raised a disparaging chin.

“Ah. You prefer the brutality of doing it the old-fashioned way?”

“The way they usually reserve for royalty,” Léon replied.

“A royalist, are you? Well, doesn’t that just figure.” émile was smart enough to have ceased any play, and Henry took the toy to a nearby bench to pull the short piece of rope loose.

Léon was no royalist. He was nothing of the sort.

He had no time for the King and the Queen and their ludicrous spending of the national purse, if the rumours were to be believed.

Yet he wasn’t convinced the revolution was about to achieve everything it was said to either, redistributing that wealth to a starving nation, but he wasn’t about to admit that in front of this dangerous stranger.

Instead, he deflected by turning the conversation to the subject that was at the forefront of his mind.

“Is that who you’re trying to break out of prison? One of your revolutionaries? A brother in arms?”

“That’s none of your business,” Henry muttered, wrapping the red rope tight around his fingers.

“You’ll never get them out,” Léon goaded, enjoying the resultant tensing of the man’s shoulders.

“Do you really think it’s as simple as that? Just take the keys and wander in there? Have you ever been inside Reims Prison?” He looked over Henry’s fine clothes, his judgement clear.

“It’s not some rural, one-cell holding room. It’s not the sort of place you’d even have a clue about.”

With a voice dripping in derision, “Having avoided a stay in prison is not something to be ashamed of, I’d suggest.”

Léon’s grin deepened with the challenge.

“Suggest what you’d like, but it’s exactly why your good friend will lose their head tomorrow.”

Henry’s fingers stopped, and the frozen face that locked onto Léon’s had visibly paled.

“You can’t possibly know that.”

“You don’t think I know whose head I’m to take?”

“You don't know who they are.”

Léon leaned forward, face turned up in hate-filled victory. He had the upper hand now, and he used it to inflict whatever small revenge he could on the man, saying slowly, on a wide smile, “They’re all to die. Every last one of them. First thing tomorrow.”

Henry’s eyes were terror, sheer and unadulterated, and he twisted the rope in his hands, fingers whitening with the pressure as his eyes rambled about the room. Mouth tight, he swallowed, and Léon awaited the next joust. But Henry said, in a voice low and barely audible, “What do you mean, ‘all’?”

Léon leaned back in the chair, fingers drumming in a loud and repeated line that was deliberately designed to unsettle Henry further. “Every single execution, every single condemned man and woman, will die in one enormous show. Blood everywhere. It’s going to be a ghastly spectacle. I’m not sure I have a basket big enough to contain all the heads. I guess I’ll have to throw them to the crowd.”

Henry looked at Léon, a new and not-before-seen revulsion in his eyes. “You’re an animal.” He said it as though it was a new idea, a new conviction. Something in it stabbed at Léon because he was nothing of the sort, and it was exactly what he’d expected a man of Henry’s apparent rank to think of him.

He could have defended himself against the notion easily, but he’d gotten under Henry’s skin now and he liked it there far too well to be concerned with his reputation. “I’ll probably sell them for meat when I’m done. I can turn a tidy profit on the side doing that, you know. No one knows what goes into the stew at the inn, but I?—”

“Shut up!” Henry’s hands slammed down on the table, his face inches from Léon’s, and he raised a furious finger. “Not anymore. Not tomorrow. There isn’t a thing they can do without their prize pig to drop the axe.”

Léon laughed, loudly and obnoxiously. “If I’m not there to do it, do you really think that would stop them?” He leaned even closer with a sneer. “They’ll just find someone else without my precision. And believe me, you don’t want to see that.”

Henry held eye contact just long enough for Léon to see the light fade. Léon was too angry, too much on the attack to register the small jab in his gut that he might otherwise have identified as guilt or sympathy. He watched Henry pull away, walk to the other side of the room, bury his face in two hands, shaking his head. It was curious to see. Was there money tied up in it somehow? More than that? Léon prodded him. “And it’s not just my axe you need to worry about.”

He was referring to their new killing machine, of course, and it seemed to him as though Henry knew of it, or of something else, because the horror was unmistakable in his features. A hand pressed to his chest. He looked like he might crumple straight to the floor right then and there. “No. They wouldn’t. They…”

He dashed to the side of the room, ripped a bag open, and pulled out a charcoal and paper. He slapped it down on the table in front of Léon. “Draw it. Draw the prison. Tell me where the guards will be. Every one of them.”

Léon shoved it away with a shrug. “How should I know?”

A shaking hand pushed it straight back and held it there. Henry, looking deep into Léon’s eyes, begged for the first time, low and weak. “Please. Please, Léon… I will do anything you ask. Anything. I swear to you. Please help me. She’s…”

And there he cut off. A flare of fear, new and mingled with that which had already overtaken him, widened Henry’s eyes. Henry’s hazel eyes. And for the first time, in that look and that look only, Léon recognised the eyes he’d seen that very morning. Eyes scared and hidden in blonde hair, nothing like Henry’s, which was dark and ragged with worry. Eyes in a face small and round, in no way the reflection of these hard and proud edges before him, that cleft chin and strong jawline. But those were the very eyes. Eyes that had drawn his empathy once, and did again now. Suddenly the toys and the cakes and the choice of a beloved little brother as a bargaining chip all made sense to Léon. He saw Henry, for the first time, as the man he was. “Tell me what she did.”

“Nothing. There’s nothing.” Such a vague and desperate reply. Henry tapped a finger down on the paper, trying to buy time and distraction. “Draw the prison.”

“I know her,” Léon said starkly. “I talked to her this morning.” The hopeful flame jumped back into Henry’s eyes, and though he made no reply, his gaze urged Léon to talk. Léon said, gently this time, his voice and his head low by Henry’s, “She’s to be killed tomorrow. With the rest of them.”

“What time?” Henry asked.

“It’s yet to be decided. But I am the one to decide, and I am the one to do it. And if I don’t, if someone else does, it will be far worse for her.”

Henry turned away, mechanical, just as strange and inhuman as the wind-up cat. He took up its leash with a dullness to his gait that spoke of his hopelessness. It had a finality to it. A resigned air. Léon recognised it as the same walk some men took to his chopping block, when there wasn’t anything left for them to lose.

Léon decided to reveal what little he thought he knew. “She’s your sister.”

Henry’s movement didn’t stall. He threw the rope down within reach of émile, who stayed still, only watched Henry make for his bag, shoving things into it, packing to leave.

Léon said, “I promised I’d bring her something to eat. I thought to gather some strawberries from the forest. If you’d rather, I can take her something else. Along with a message.”

Henry paused. He paused for so long an ice chill took Léon as he eyed the gun by Henry’s still fingers. It occurred to him, now that he’d seen that isolated walk, now that he knew how close to the edge this man was, it would cost him very little to kill both Léon and émile. And he didn’t take another breath until Henry finally asked, “Did she talk to you?”

“No,” Léon replied. “She’s mute, is she not?”

Henry’s head bowed in a slow nod. “That’s right.”

He turned and sat down on the bed, face framed in his hands, much the way Léon had when he’d discovered his brother missing. His brother, who even now was fast by his side, his small fingers more frantic in their twists of his hair, the smooth touch of it calming him, as it always did. As it calmed Léon to feel it again. And he wondered what small affections like these Henry shared with the girl in the cell. He felt in his heart a touch of whatever Henry must be feeling, knowing she was to die in the morning, after spending the night in that cold and horrible place. His hand wrapped around émile’s in an unconscious motion, the warmth of his skin deeply reassuring. “Tell me what she did.”

He shook his head and gave out a bitter half laugh. “She didn’t do anything.”

“They don’t put people in prison for doing nothing.”

“Oh, don’t they?”

“Not like that. Not in the condemned cells. Not without a black mark against her name. She must have done, or have been accused of, something terrible.”

Another laugh, but barely the ripple of one, ending in a lifeless, “You wouldn't believe me if I told you.”

“Does it matter if I believe you?”

The statement held so many conflicting emotions for Henry that he slipped back into silence.

No. In the grand scheme of things, it hardly mattered. She was to die. Any number of men had decided her fate, signed papers, transferred her, bound her wrists and locked her away, and all of them did it, and none of them cared. And the very man who was to take her life sat before him now, and he had probably taken hundreds of lives, and why should this one matter any more than the rest?

But it did matter to Henry what Léon thought. It mattered deep inside that he should hear—that anyone should listen and hear, and know, at least one of them, that she didn’t deserve what they’d all decided to do to her. So he began, “There was an incident. On… On the ship. From England?—”

Léon cut in with a surprised, “You’re English?” The man’s accent was strange, one he didn’t recognise, but he hadn’t pegged him as a foul and duplicitous Englishman, though that would explain a lot.

His accent came back more French-sounding than before when Henry replied, “No. Of course not. But we had been overseas. For some time. Perhaps I’ve developed a small accent.” Léon studied him, and Henry added, “We’re from Toulouse.”

Having no idea what an accent from Toulouse sounded like, Léon accepted the statement for what it was. “Then you must hate the English too, given the way they’ve ravaged your city. I’m surprised you’d want to visit them.”

“It’s complicated,” Henry sighed out. “And not at all the point of my story. Now if you’ll let me continue?”

Léon shrugged in response.

Henry gave a nod, then, “There were… It was night. On the ship. And some people—well, some men—there was an accident. Six or, uh, possibly,” he scratched his chin, rushing out the word, “sixteen, perhaps, went overboard?—”

“ Sixteen ?” Léon repeated.

“Yes.” He threw up an irritated hand at Léon’s interruption.

“Overboard?” Léon also repeated.

“Yes, yes, overboard. Into the sea. At night. And drowned. Mind you, I was in my bunk sleeping all the while, but I awoke to some furore, discovered Catherine missing, then soon found she’d been thrown in the brig.”

Léon, well caught up in the tale by now, sat forward. “What can have happened?”

“A freak wave is my best guess, for what else could have done it? It’s not as though there are kraken about the channel, sweeping men off their boats.”

“Certainly not. But then how did she end up in the brig?”

“It’s quite beyond my understanding.” The same hand that had been in the air roamed through his hair nervously. “Perhaps the company didn’t want to pay the insurance on the lives of the men they’d lost, and so they decided to blame my poor sister.”

Léon’s eyes and brow narrowed in confusion. “For what? For a wave?”

“That’s the very thing, you see? They have her trumped up on a charge of witchcraft!”

“Witchcraft!” Léon almost yelled, shocked as he was. “This day and age?”

“I know!” said Henry, shoving himself to standing and strutting a few paces away, arm flying out to exemplify their shared opinion on the matter. “Utterly ridiculous. No one believes in that nonsense anymore. I, personally, had thought better of France, with this so-called enlightenment.”

“We are very enlightened!” Léon protested. “There must be some mistake. It can’t be for witchcraft. Are you sure?”

“I attended the trial myself, if you could call it that. Every spare man of the ship attested they’d seen her blast the men off board with a swish of her hand. And someone said the ship wasn't wet enough after the accident to support the theory of a wave. Well, I ask you, water dries, doesn’t it?”

“That it does,” shouted Léon, in firm agreement that Catherine’s situation was beyond a joke. “Sixteen men? How could anyone do that? It’s an act of God!”

“Exactly right,” shouted Henry, raised to equal fervour. “It was some small town, some stupid jurisdiction of peasants and dead-brained fishermen and lard traders and… Oh, well, it hardly matters now. You see what I’m up against. They brought her to Reims, not another word about it, due to be executed, and that’s when I came to you.”

Léon laughed, a cold laugh, and the short-lived camaraderie died a fast death. “Came to me?”

“More or less,” mumbled Henry, a touch of pink about his handsome cheeks. “But we’re here now. And, to give you due credit, you’re far more receptive to our situation than I thought you’d be.”

Léon was very receptive. The only problem was, Léon was far more experienced with the long arm of the law in France than Henry was. And were there ways to extricate wrongly convicted people from prison in time to save their lives, he’d have exercised that power dozens of times. It was almost certainly a hopeless case, yet the ridiculous nature of the matter, should Henry’s claims turn out to be true, had Léon in its grip from the start. Pushing all his newly roused anger aside, he took up the charcoal and began scrawling the plan of the prison. As he drew, he asked, “What should I call you?”

The air turned thick. The silence brought Léon’s eyes up. Henry searched them, swallowed, then, “Henry.”

Léon’s lovely lips curled about the sound. “Hen…”

“Hen-Hen-Henri!” he blustered out. “Henri! It was just…” He coughed, rather dramatically. “Sorry, my throat. Henri. That’s my name. Henri. And you’re Léon, correct?”

“Lyon.”

“Léon.”

“Lyon.”

“Léon?”

“Lyon,” Léon repeated a little louder.

“Le… Le…”

“Léon Lyon, that is my name.”

Henry scrunched his brow. “Léon Léon?”

“Oh my god.” Léon hid his forehead against his hand. “Lé-on Ly-On. I’m twice the lion.”

“You’re twice…” Henry pushed his lips together. Hard. Léon stared at him, harder, and Henry kept perfectly still as his insides threatened to explode in laughter.

After a long and exacting assessment, Léon finally looked back down at the page, Henry took a deep breath, and a frown came across Léon’s forehead as he continued to draw. “I’ll tell you honestly, Henri, I don’t think there’s any way to help your sister. But if there is, if you could get her out, how do you expect to escape with a convicted witch?”

Henry, seeing the charcoal working across the paper, came to the table and sat opposite Léon for the first time, watching on eagerly. “We’ll head straight to Paris. Lose ourselves in the city there. Somewhere the people are intelligent, and-and-and educated, and don’t believe in outdated notions such as witchcraft.”

“You think it’s smarter to stay in France with a wanted woman?” Léon raised his shapely eyebrows over his sharp green eyes. “Brilliant plan.”

The mocking nature of the comment struck Henry as a touch playful, and his heart did an odd little bounce, despite the precarious nature of the situation. “We’ll be safe there,” Henry replied softly. “We have friends. I just need to get her out of prison, and we’ll be on our way.”

Léon eyed him a little longer, making some sort of judgement about him, Henry suspected. Then the charcoal returned to the paper until he finished by making three little Xs. Léon pushed it towards Henry, and with fingers longer and prettier than Henry had noticed before, he pointed at the first two marks. “The guards will be here, in the main room. They have a fire, and they’ll probably spend the night right by it. They’re supposed to check the prisoners twice during the night, but I do not believe they are very careful of their rounds.” His finger slid through the doorway he’d drawn on the page to another X. “This man will leave at ten o’clock. He keeps the keys to the prison. He will be locking the place up then, so…” It was here that Léon remembered the fake keys he’d given Henry, that Henry had accepted in good faith. Here he remembered that Henry couldn’t get into the prison at all after Mollard left.

His pulse ticking a little faster, Léon thought aloud, “You’d have to disable them somehow. The guards and the warden. One shot of your gun, and the whole town will come running.”

“I’m an excellent swordsman,” Henry replied, too readily, eyes fast on the paper. Léon could just about see the bloodbath playing out in Henry’s mind—leave Mollard dead on the floor, slip through that doorway, take one, then another of the guards. Nothing but marks on a page to him, but very real people to Léon, whether he liked them or not.

Should he tell him? Tell him that his keys were false, and he’d have to be there by ten? It was perhaps the only way to save the life of his sister, jailed on such a ridiculous accusation. But he saw murder in Henry’s eyes, and if he told him, he was, with no trial whatsoever, condemning the three other lives. Three at least. What if Henry was seen? How many more would he kill to get to her? And what right did Léon have to make this decision for any of them?

The swirl of thoughts, the weight of the fate only Léon could decide in that moment, began to suffocate him. He tried, “They have guns. They’ll shoot you on sight. I don't think you can get through this door and across the room to their fire and?—”

“Then I’ll shoot first.” He spoke the words with a finality that scraped down Léon’s spine.

“Didn’t you hear what I said? You’ll wake the whole town. A gunshot at that time of night—you’ll be killed before you can escape with her.”

“So be it.” Henry’s finger traced the circular stairs Léon had sketched, the long walkway to the cell his sister languished in. “This door, is it…” He looked up at Léon, a plea in his eyes. “It’s the same key?”

“Yes. It’s a skeleton key. But you’re not listening. You can’t get her out.”

“I don’t need to get her out,” Henry whispered, the flames of the fire reflecting bright in his desperate and confiding eyes. “I just need to make it quick.”

“Quick?” Léon repeated, his mind working overtime on how to get a point across that Henry seemed unable to grasp.

But then the sinking realisation twisted inside.

If he was caught, he wasn’t going to try to escape with her. He was going to shoot her dead to save her the pain and horror of the execution.

Just as quickly as the understanding struck him, Léon’s hand reached for Henry’s. “I won’t let her suffer.”

A sick grin pulled across Henry’s face, and he wrenched his hand away. His voice slipped to thin in harrowed disbelief. “What will you do? Give her more straw? A few extra twigs?” Léon made to form an answer and failed, so thrown was he by the response, but Henry talked on, sharply too, his voice raising on every word. “Extra wood? Make the fire burn a little faster? Just what exactly are you going to do for her?”

“You think…” The revulsion of the notion struck Léon, and he gasped out, “They’re not going to burn her! No, no! No, nothing like that!”

“That’s what they do with witches, is it not?”

“No. No, it’s not…” But even as the words left Léon, it occurred to him that he had no idea what exactly they did with witches, because there had never been a witch tried or convicted in his entire lifetime, that he knew of. And another moment’s thought brought back the memory of Mollard’s filthy fingers on Catherine’s file, him saying she was a special case. Then a remembrance of DuPont saying he needed to talk to Léon about one of the condemned. ‘Special circumstances,’ he’d said. And then there was the pile of firewood by the door of the prison…

Heart hammering in his chest, Léon snatched the paper and charcoal back from Henry and thrust it towards émile, tapping his finger down on the bottom of the page. He leaned close to the boy, but Henry heard him say, “Write ‘witch’ for me.”

Clear, intelligent eyes met his. “Witch?” émile confirmed, quickly putting charcoal to paper.

“Witch… Maybe ‘witchcraft’,” Léon corrected. “That’s what she’s been convicted of?” He looked up at Henry.

Henry could only murmur a vague confirmation as he watched on in astonishment, émile scrawling out the letters for Léon in a neat and practiced hand. He gave the paper back to Léon. Léon ripped the word from the bottom of the page, his chair scraped against the floorboards as he pushed it back, and he announced, “I have to go. émile come.”

Henry jumped up just as fast as Léon had, but with some measure of confusion, rounding the table to meet him. “I’m sorry, no, you’ve been abducted.”

Léon pulled to a stop right before his chest hit Henry’s, émile bumping into the back of him with the suddenness of his halt. “No, listen, this is serious. I…” He stared into Henry’s eyes, no longer scared of him now that he believed he knew what he was. And despite Henry’s vile words only minutes before, he found he didn’t have the heart to say out loud what he was thinking: that there was every chance they were going to strap Henry’s little sister to a post in the town square in the morning and set her on fire. And that they’d likely expect Léon to be the one to drop the burning torch to her pyre. He nodded faithfully and said, “I will return.”

Henry’s gaze flitted to émile. “Then leave the boy.”

Henry’s look was fearful, and Léon understood it perfectly—his only firm grip on the situation was slipping away—but Léon wasn’t about to trust a desperate stranger with his brother. He held out his hand, offering to seal the promise with a shake. For Léon, his word was true every time. He prided himself on it. He would come straight back as soon as he had the facts. “I think I can… I can try to stop this. I can talk to the administrator. I can do things to at least make it better. Please. You have to let me try.”

But Henry only looked down at the long fingers Léon held out, his own not moving, his expression darkening to grave with every passing second. He, appearing deep in grim thought, said softly, “Will you take her something from me?”

Léon’s hand curled into a slow, discarded ball, and he pulled it away, embarrassed. “Of course.”

Henry crossed the room and took a small scarf from his bag. It was silk, finer than anything Léon had ever seen up close, but Henry didn’t hesitate to sticky it with one of the small cakes he’d bought for émile. He folded it in carefully, then came around behind Léon and émile. He held out the parcel, which Léon took carefully, feeling the tremble of Henry’s fingers.

Then Henry’s hand pulled away, and his gravelly voice revealed, “It’s her favourite. She’ll know it’s from me. And she’ll trust you. Please tell her…” He thought it over, pain etched into every line of his face, which Léon saw him try to wrestle down to a blank canvas of angry reserve. “Tell her I won’t let her go like that. Tell her to stay brave and keep doing what she’s doing. Tell her…” Here his voice broke, and he turned his head away, the handsome brow contracting above shaking lips that he grimaced into submission. His voice came back hard and strong. “Tell her I’m working on it. And I’m sorry, Léon, truly, I am, but…” With a sharp glint of fading sunlight, a knife slid deftly beneath émile’s chin, eliciting a sharp scream from the boy. Henry pulled his head back against his chest, lifting it so Léon could see the blade pressing into his throat. “I’m sorry. You understand.” His eyes searched Léon’s, terrified, desperate.

It took Léon a moment to process the act—for his mind to obliterate the just-formed notion that Henry was in any way like himself—to wipe clean the picture he’d begun to form of him as sympathetic, maybe even kind.

This man was a killer.

He was a killer, and he had a knife to little émile’s throat.

émile let out a whine, tears running fast down his cheeks as he struggled uselessly against Henry.

Henry’s dark eyes watched Léon’s hesitation, and a cruel sneer crept over his face. “If you’re not out that door by the time I count to three, I’ll do it right here, right now, and I’ll take the keys, and I’ll break her out myself.”

“I’m trying to help you,” Léon whispered, disbelief thickening his barely audible words.

“Three.”

Léon’s feet started backwards automatically, moving towards the door, Léon barely conscious of the flight.

“Henri!” émile snapped. He stomped hard on Henry’s foot, but Henry’s grip was firm and precise, and he didn’t flinch no matter how roughly the boy fought.

“Two,” Henry ground out.

Léon’s mouth set firm, twisting itself back into a symbol of hatred, one that Henry was sure he had no chance of coming back from after that. He had nothing left to lose but his sister, which was exactly how things needed to be, and to firm that resolve, to do her the honour and the justice that he had promised he always would, he drove the final wedge between himself and Léon with clear and foul words: “If you bring anyone else back with you, I’ll paint the floor with his blood before you get a foot inside.”

Léon shot one final, frightened, betrayed, heart-rending look at his brother, then was gone.

Just as quickly, Henry slammed the knife down on the table with all the revulsion of a man who’s found a leech at his vein, and he dropped to his knees, pulling émile into his arms. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

émile smacked a palm into his shoulder, shoving him off, but keeping his voice quiet enough to avoid Léon’s hearing. “What did you do that for, you idiot?”

“I don’t know.” Henry sank fully to the floor, dropping his face into his hands, his words coming out muffled and miserable. “God, this is all so fucking awful.”

In the blackness of his eyelids, all Henry saw was Léon’s beautiful face, and that last glare of utter hatred. Then that look burning up into a vision of his sister’s execution, the sound of her screams, the visceral pain he felt in his own limbs at the thought of the fire touching her. Then, several seconds later, he was wrenched out of the lot by the feeling of a small hand running over his ear, and the tug on a stand of his hair as a finger twisted into it.

Henry looked up to see émile’s round face, tear-stained, all soft sympathy under a mess of blond hair, just like his brother’s.

émile offered up a slight smile, dimples winking at him, and he said, “That’s going to cost you ten livres.”