Joanna Bourne - The Black Hawk

She did not care that this was a great moment of history. Her sister was not yet four—the age of those children being shown this “history”—and she would not have taken Séverine anywhere near this abattoir for any reason under the sun.

Hawker settled to the wall beside her, his arms folded, his eyes on the guillotine. “So that’s where they did him. Robespierre.”

Hawker was not there . . . and then he was. Close enough to touch. She had not been aware of his approach. How annoying. If he had been a fellow member of the Secret Police, she would have asked him to teach her this trick of becoming part of the crowd, invisible. But he was not Secret Police. Not yet.

She would try to recruit him. He was young—her own age, no older—and he would be impressionable.

They shared the wall companionably. She said, “You did not come to see the great man die? That was incurious of you, Citoyen ’Awker.”

“Doyle kept me busy. I don’t know why he bothered. It’s not like I’ve never seen a man die.”

Madame had done the same—set tasks to keep her away from La Place de la Révolution. “I am sorry you missed the spectacle.”

“There’ll be others.” He leaned with his shoulders against the stone and his arms folded. When he shrugged, it was a ripple of his whole body. “No shortage of deaths here lately.”

“Comme tu dis.”

His hair fell across his forehead, black and straight as poured ink. He was always pushing it away as an annoyance, casually, without thought, the way an animal might toss back its mane. He was a good-looking boy in a dark, exotic fashion.

He said, “I suppose you’re keeping busy lately.”

It was an oblique reference to her many activities. “I am.”

“How’s the sprat?”

Because she had involved herself with British spies, they now knew more of her than she wished. Hawker knew the most. He had met Séverine. “She does very well. You should not wear that waistcoat.”

He frowned at her. “I like it.”

“I had supposed so, since you are wearing it, but it does not go with what you are pretending to be, which is a tradesman’s son. Unless you wish to portray that you have no taste at all.”

“I might be.” A minute later, “No stripes, huh?”

“Not stripes of that color. It is vulgar.”

“Thanks for pointing that out. Sometimes, when I’m talking to you, I get a revelation as to why certain folks meet a grisly end.”

They had met one week ago. She had learned much about him and surmised more. He was the most novice of British spies, an ingenious boy who learned with frightening speed. He was of the lowest class of English. He had very little patience. She had not seen him show fear. He possessed a dozen rare skills, some of which she needed very badly. This was what she knew of him.

In the same time, she had allowed him to learn almost nothing about her. He knew she was one of the great, secret smuggling chain that slipped refugees out of France, saving them from that very guillotine. He might not know she was also of the French Secret Police.

Pigeons strutted up and down the platform of the guillotine, self-important as sentries. Bold boys climbed and dodged up and over and around the steps where Robespierre, Danton, Desmoulins, Lavoisier, and Herbert had walked to death, and before them, the king and queen. Every few minutes, a bored soldier would come over and chase the boys away. The pigeons scattered. In a while new examples of both returned.

“I got your note,” Hawker said. “I must be stupid. I’m here.”

She had left messages at a café Hawker knew and at a stand on the Rue Denis where she had seen him buy a newspaper. Citoyen Doyle, who was Hawker’s master and an English agent of the most exemplary type, would not have returned to those places. He would not have been lured by her beckoning. Hawker was less wise.

“You are kind to come. Especially when I did not tell you why.” Of course she had not told him why. Even in the short time she had known him, she had learned his great weakness. He could not resist a mystery. What Frenchwoman worthy of her salt could not make of herself a mystery?

She was thirteen, but she was a Frenchwoman. Really, he stood no chance against her.

“I know why. You want something from me.” His eyes slid to her . . . and away. “You’ll get around to asking for it in a while.”

She did not contradict him. Side by side, they looked across the Place, watching for anyone who might take undue interest in them. There was a certain camaraderie.

“You ever see anybody chopped?” He jerked his head toward the platform. “Up there?”

“Once. When I was eleven.” She had come to La Place de la Révolution alone, in a cold rain, and she had been colder inside than any rain that fell from heaven.

Hawker glanced over, prying at her face. “Somebody you knew?”

“An enemy.” They had dragged Monsieur Grenet from the tumbrel, the third in line of fifteen who would die. The demon who had defiled her shamefully for so long had become a shaking, white-faced old man, held upright between soldiers. She had been savagely glad to see him so diminished.

She had been too small to push her way close to the block. The crowd seethed and shifted between her and the execution. She did not get to see everything. She had heard the shrill whine of the blade dropping. Heard the knife thunk on the block. She caught one glimpse of the aftermath when his body was rolled aside like so much garbage, and it was over. “I am the one who sent him to the guillotine.”

Across the square, a flurry of pigeons flew up, kicked into motion by a small child chasing them. Hawker’s eyes flicked to that, then back to her. “And you were eleven. Deadly brat, weren’t you? Did it help any, killing him?”

“No.”

It had not stopped the rage. It had not warmed the chill inside her.

Grenet had been her father’s friend. The day her parents died he came and took her and Séverine away from their appartement . He had a wife and children at home, so he could not take her there to do shameful things to her. He had taken her to a brothel where men of his corrupt tastes debauched children. For months, he visited again and again. He was one of those who demanded that she smile and tell him she liked what he did.

She said, “He was one of several dozen I would like to kill. And his death was too fast.”

“Sometimes fast is all you get. Can we stroll away from here? I don’t like being out in the open. Makes me wonder who you might have invited to meet me.”

“You are cynical for one so young. If I wished to betray you, which I would not bother to do because you are entirely negligible, I would perform that betrayal in an alley with several large accomplices. But, certainly, let us remove ourselves from this unpleasantness. I have been advised to avoid public places, in case there is disorder.”

“Half the town’s walking around, hoping somebody will start a riot.” He narrowed his eyes at a band of laborers, swaggering in a group, pushing through the crowd. “Those fellows, for instance. You can see them thinking about it.”

He was right. Under everyone’s voice, under the laughter, under the holiday atmosphere, they were all waiting. “No one is quite sure what to do next. It was simpler when we feared Robespierre. Now there are fifty devils to take his place, and we have not the least idea what to expect.”

“Let’s go expect it somewhere else. I don’t like the smell of blood unless it’s a throat I cut myself.”

It was chilling that he said that and meant it. Hawker was in many ways like a fine gun. At rest, well made, efficient, and even beautiful. Pull back the cocking piece and the gun became deadly. This boy, elegant in motion, perfect in feature, cold as carved crystal, was the cocked gun. He was, in fact, rather frightening.