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PARIS

T hey started out in the early evening and pushed both horses hard.

Not that they needed to.

The animals were charged with strange energy.

Henry said it was because they couldn’t wait to get in amongst all the violence of the city streets.

He then countered with a reassurance that reports of disorder and terror in Paris were wildly exaggerated, and that he expected to find a far more civilised society than either of them had ever encountered before.

Despite Henry’s mollifications, warm ramblings, and absurdly sunny outlook on the situation, all manner of anxiety gripped Léon through the long and arduous night.

He worried over émile—he hadn’t stopped worrying over him.

He trusted Souveraine, who had always been like a sister to the boy, but he was scared for her too.

It was no small ask to take over émile’s care while he rescued Henry.

And now she’d travelled to Paris for him, too.

Guilt twisted in his gut as payment for the day he’d spent at the inn.

And the day in the cottage.

Of course, it was smarter to travel by night, but the taking of so much pleasure felt grossly self indulgent, careless, even cruel.

Especially to Souveraine.

He knew, logically, that he would have to do the right thing by her after everything was done.

He was resolved to do it—to see the wedding through.

Then Henry would say something sweet, or something funny, or simply talk at all, and Léon would melt all over again.

A thousand times or more he dreamed of resting his head on Henry’s soft shoulder, of the possibility they’d travel too slowly and have to spend one more day hidden away together…

Then the guilt would return.

What would Henry say when he saw Souveraine again?

What would Souveraine say if she knew about the two of them?

How could it be possible that the right thing to do was to disappoint them both, one way or the other, and end up miserable himself by marrying her?

But the alternative was impossible.

They arrived in the outskirts of Paris at sunrise, and Léon was amazed to discover that Henry’s splendid rhetoric hadn’t done the city justice.

But what words could?

The major streets were wide, buildings towering high, and row upon row of glittering windows twinkled in the new dawn.

For beauty, Reims could hold its own, but for sheer scale which amplified that beauty tenfold…

Paris was a glory.

Henry pointed out landmarks as they went, and with every block they passed, he seemed more like a man returning home than one on holiday.

He sat a little taller, talked a little more proudly, and Léon, inch by inch, felt a little more foreign.

How strange that this Englishman knew the city so much better than he did—could find his way around and meet the people and take all the things he wanted from it.

How strange the network of the aristocracy, that even across shores stretched out a safeguard for men like Henry.

So long as he kept to the correct circles in the correct cities, he would always be more welcome anywhere in the world than Léon felt in his own country at that moment.

But as they wound their way deeper in, Henry’s aspect changed, his confidence slipping when he noted the scars the last few years of famine and war had wrought.

The very atmosphere darkened, and a palpable tension gripped the city.

Here were walls fallen down, buildings gaping open with enormous gashes in their sides.

There were the homeless—great swaths of them—crouching in corners in rags on a frigid morning.

Deeper still, and those once-glittering windows were replaced by wooden boards.

A door hung off a cathedral, ransacked of its goods.

Then, half a block further down the road, they found the cathedral’s priest, dragged out into the street and hung from a lamppost, his body swaying in the light breeze.

The streets grew dirtier with every block—discarded papers, mud, horseshit, the grime of a city with no resources to clean itself.

The nauseating fear of real danger brought Léon’s eyes across to Henry.

He could practically hear him trying to excuse the state of it all, trying to keep his dream alive.

‘ After the revolution’.

Always after …

They rode on, and Léon was glad for his long leather executioner’s pants, for Henry’s knee-britches—fashionable anywhere else—drew the disparaging eyes of men who’d been out drinking all night, readying for violence, determined to keep up their fight at the smallest instigation.

They immediately picked him, correctly, as a member of his own class.

Léon’s axe was strapped to his back, and he had returned the sword Henry lost when he was arrested, but Catherine had kept hold of his pistols.

Léon was already shocked at the things he’d done in order to protect Henry.

He found he barely trusted himself when one man whispered to another as they passed, all of them dressed in a patriotic fervour of blue, white and red.

They kicked their worn and ragged horses on.

“How much further?” Léon asked, breaking the silence of many streets.

“We’re close. It’s just across the Seine.”

Their path took them past what had been the King’s palace and gardens.

Léon couldn’t help but study the famous buildings, thinking over the massacre that had occurred there just a few weeks prior.

Was it six-hundred guards slaughtered?

Seven hundred? As well as the palace staff, all of them hacked to pieces defending the King as he tried to flee.

It had been cleaned up since then, of course, the gore and the bodies, whatever wild dogs hadn’t eaten after men were pulled apart, their genitals cut off and stuffed in their mouths, their heads lodged on stakes and paraded around.

But unlike Léon, Henry saw the scene in a haloed light.

Every scar of the battle was a mark of pride.

The revolution was powering on.

Real change was happening.

“Incredible, isn’t it?” he marvelled aloud.

“The entire course of history changed in a few hours. Finally, people will be able to choose their own paths in life. Old Louis will sign whatever he’s told to now they’ve got him under wraps.”

Léon wondered how he might have viewed the idea had he not seen up close those who came to watch his executions.

He wondered how much of their ferocity was patriotism, idealism, and how much was pure blood lust—an animal instinct he’d witnessed often enough to learn to be terrified of it.

“So you agree with what they did?”

“I believe they were left with little choice but to do it. He’ll never give power without force, and that’s been made abundantly clear. He’s an enemy of the people, and he’ll get what’s coming to him.”

Prescient, the words appeared, as they then reached the end of their long avenue and arrived in what had months earlier been called Place Louis XV, now renamed Place de la Révolution.

In the centre of the enormous square stood the still-empty plinth that had held the recently toppled statue of the dead king for whom the square was once named.

But that wasn’t what drew the eye.

Off to the side, in the opposite corner, was something else raised high on its own stage.

Something that would be remembered long after everyone had forgotten the dismantled statue, the old name of the square, or most of the men and women who would meet their end right there in the coming months.

This guillotine sent the same cold reverberation through Léon’s limbs as the last had.

This one seemed larger, was older, and was charged with all the grandeur appropriate to the saviour of an oppressed people.

“Fabulous, isn’t she?” said Henry, pulling Destroyer up.

The beast threw his black head back with something that looked like agreement, and it didn’t help Léon’s curling insides when Azazel leaned her head romantically against Destroyer’s.

How the hell did this kind of news spread between French farm animals, anyway?

“She?” asked Léon, a little skeptical of the title.

“The Widow. Madame Guillotine. How did you find using it, by the way?”

“Ghastly,” Léon replied.

“Heartless, soulless, distant, diabolical, and terrifyingly efficient.”

“Serving its purpose, then?”

“In a manner of speaking.”

People were milling around the square by that time, and it dawned on both Léon and Henry that all had found a way to display their devotion to the revolution publicly.

They wore badges or hats or scarves in blue, white and red, or dressed head to toe in those same colours.

Léon remembered the easy accusations of a lack of fervour for the nation that he’d flung carelessly at Mollard—the look of fear that came over his face each time.

He thought over the need to refer to each other as ‘citizen’, lest another title suggest he was clinging to the old ways.

And DuPont’s warning to always play along recurred to him—his suggestion that it was better to kill Catherine quietly—to never be seen as not following orders, no matter who was in charge, no matter what they said.

Don’t stand out .

And he tried to imagine what it must be like for people to walk past the guillotine every day, while the fear of traitors and treason hung in the air.

He would change his outfit when he got to Henry’s father’s house.

He would find something and dye it the correct colours.

He would take émile and Souveraine, and he would get the fuck out of Paris the second he could.

“Henri, did you say your father knows Robespierre? What’s your plan to speak with him? Don’t you think he’s terribly busy?”

“Not for old friends, surely,” he said in a too-easy way, encouraging Destroyer on through the square and towards the river.

“I’m sure he can find a use for me somewhere. Writing speeches, or?—”

“Pamphlets.”

“Pamphlets are important.”

“What about…” Léon glanced back over his shoulder at the guillotine.

“Do you think you’d have the heart to drop the blade?”

There was no judgement in the comment.

Léon wasn’t proud of his ability to kill people.

It was something a lot of people thought they could do, but when faced with it, plenty turned green.

The price he’d paid was the loss of all the softness and tenderness Henry had brought out of him in recent days.

It was something one needed to be able to turn off.

“I feel no guilt for killing those men who attacked us,” Henry replied, as though it was the same thing.

“You were protecting your sister,” Léon said.

“And yourself.”

“And you.”

Small words that rattled Léon’s heart-cage dangerously.

“It doesn’t count like that. Not in the heat of passion.”

“I know.” Henry’s words held sympathy, as did his quick glance before he fixed his sight distantly over the approaching river.

“I’m genuinely not sure if I could do it. Not if I didn’t agree with it. You’re a special kind of brave.”

“Not just an unthinking arm of the law, then?” The bitterness of it surprised Léon as much as it did Henry.

But it didn’t take Henry even a second to understand.

“I’m sorry I said that to you. I was angry. I was trying to upset you.”

“You did upset me.”

Léon rode onto the bridge slightly ahead, so Henry caught up quickly.

“I knew I’d messed your life up. I knew if you got caught for helping me, they’d probably kill you. But I also wanted you.” A fast flash of green eyes, wary but caught.

“I think I wanted you to hate me so I wouldn’t drag you any deeper. Like I’ve done now.”

His newly stacked defences holding, Léon replied only, “I don’t like it here.”

“Please give it a chance.” But all the tension of Paris was seeping into them, the very horrors of the streets silently invading their minds and bodies, as ghosts of the dead.

It was already what Léon had expected, but not Henry.

He had no other plan, no backup, no Reims to escape to.

Henry had only the elusive promises he’d built the mirage of his future on.

If he could but show Léon what he saw, that this mess was simply the labour pains that any new and great society must push through, then he’d have it all.

Hoping he might influence Léon’s decision in his favour, he stretched his arm out to indicate a row of grand establishments standing tall on the far side of the Seine.

“It’s just over there.”

Léon didn’t take his meaning, assuming he was referring to some landmark, like the many others he’d pointed out along the way.

“Hmm?”

“My father’s house. Just through that little archway.”

‘That little archway’ stretched four storeys high, was built of stone, and sat between two enormous mansions.

The gigantic wooden gate beneath it, which reached at least one and a half of those storeys, did nothing to settle Léon’s qualms about what it hid, though it did strike him as a possible safe vantage point to wait out the violence of the streets should they need to.

But clearly this part of town had been saved the looting and destruction other areas had suffered.

He wondered why, guessing, somewhat cynically, that such homes would likely be prized by the victors of the revolution, whatever their backgrounds, as worthy booty.