Joanna Bourne: The Black Hawk

“Well, I’m not one of them yet, am I?”

“That is because you are an imbécile and keep interrupting me.” Another minute passed. “They are orphans, those children. A man of the Police Secrète searches for young orphans of a particular quality.” The long slit of light from the door fell on her face. Her mouth pulled in at the corner. “There have been many orphans in France, since the Revolution.”

“They’re a glut on the market lots of places.” The streets of every city ran full of strays in various stages of starvation. He knew. He’d been one. “Common as lice.”

“These children are not so common. They are the clever ones. Some are so beautiful they make the eye ache. They are brought there at eight or nine or ten years and it begins. In that house, every spoken word is English. They eat English food and learn the lessons and games of little English schoolchildren. You would not know they were born French. They are trained to fanatic loyalty to France and to the Revolution. Then they are sent to England, to be spies.”

Interesting. “Not much use sending kids that age, if you ask me.”

“You say that, you, who are younger than many of them. I would be amused if I had leisure to be amused with you.” She shook her head. “Think, ’Awker! Someday, they will not be children. They will be grown men and women who have worked their way into the circles of power.”

“That’s planning a long time ahead.”

“We speak of the Secret Police. Twenty years is a nothing. Governments rise and fall, but the Police Secrète remain.”

“And that is a thought to take home and have bad dreams about.”

“Do not smile at me in a superior manner. We speak of dangerous matters here, not foolery.”

“I’m listening.”

“Probably not, but I will speak anyway.” She bent her head closer and lowered her voice to a whisper. “The children are reborn in the Coach House. The Tuteurs strip away from them all they have, even their names. When a place is found for them, they are sent to England and pass as orphans, or as children lost from English families. They are so young, no one questions whether they are what they appear to be.”

That was a satchel of news to bring home to Doyle. Kids planted in England, waiting to be let loose someday. Spies still in the pod. “You know a lot about it.”

“It is part of my charm to be knowledgeable in many fields.” She batted his arm. “Move aside. I want to go out into the light to speak of this.”

He didn’t budge. “Why did you bring me here?”

“We will put an end to this. You and I. Tonight.”

He said a couple of French words he’d learned recently. He wasn’t sure what they meant, but it was something obscene. “Don’t tell me your people couldn’t have stopped that, Chouette. Any day. Any week. If you gave a damn about—”

Her hand twisted into the cloth of his coat. She held him, furious, snarling into his face. “We did not know.”

“You knew.”

“ Écoute-moi, Citoyen ’Awker. You are the newly minted spy. You strut about with your insouciance and your black knife and you understand no more than a flea. This is the battle of shadows we fight here in Paris. There are a hundred factions. There are secrets the Secret Police themselves do not know. Men too powerful to be challenged.” She let go of him. Pushed him away. “The Tuteurs who rule the Coach House were such men. They were untouchable.”

She stood, breathing heavily, her teeth gritted. If he kept quiet, she’d get to the rest of it.

She did. “Three days ago, the Head of the Coach House followed Robespierre to the guillotine. Now, secrets creep into the daylight. Men say openly that the Tuteurs of the Coach House have committed the most evil acts.”

“What exactly does that mean when you put it in plain words? Being as I’m an expert in evil, I take a certain interest in the variety of depravity in this—”

“Do not play the dunce. You are not the only connoisseur of evil here. We have all waded deep in blood since the Revolution.” Her voice was brittle as glass. “You may accept my judgment. The men who placed those children in England were monsters. They have committed enormities. The Secret Police themselves are appalled.”

“What enormities?” When she didn’t answer, he said, “Go ahead. Name them. Impress me.”

She set her fist to the wall. Just set it there and looked at it. “Many of the Cachés—most—became children built of smoke. False names and false histories. English children who never existed. But some were more solid than that. Sometimes, the Tuteurs traded a child for a child.” She hit the wall, suddenly, with the side of her fist. It must have hurt. “Stand aside. I will go out from here. I am sick of darkness.”

He let her shove him away. When he followed her outside, she was waiting for him at the iron railing that separated the churchyard from the road, holding onto one of the bars with her free hand, looking at the ground.

He said, “Now you tell me what that means. A child for a child? What’s that?”

She breathed deeply. Twice. “Sometimes, the Cachés became real English children. They became orphans without close family, sent to live with distant relatives.” She let go of the railing. “How do you think so many very convenient orphans are created? Walk beside me. I must tell you what we will do tonight.”

“Hell. Are you saying . . . ?”

“I am not saying anything. Now, attend.” She strode down the street, every bit of her the firm, busy, basket-on-her-arm house servant. A kitchen maid in a hurry. Not one speck of spy showed. “These Tuteurs must close that house if they wish to avoid an accounting for what they have done. They must place the last children in England, and do it quickly and brutally. I will not allow this.”

“Because you’re so concerned about England.” He lengthened his stride to keep up with her.

“Because they will choose the easy placement. There will be no false persona prepared for the Cachés who are left. They will take them to brothels in London and sell them to important men.”

He shouldn’t have felt it like a punch in the stomach. Kids in St. Giles sold themselves every day for food and a roof overhead. Lots of the girls he’d grown up with ended up in brothels. Some of the boys too. He didn’t like to think how close he’d come to it.

Deliberately, he slowed down, making her slow down too. “You think this is my business, somehow.”

“I have made it your business. You cannot forget what you have seen.”

She’d taken him up to that tower to see that skinny girl with her braids flapping out, dodging and hiding. He was supposed to think about that girl, locked up in a brothel.

Owl was a fool if she thought any of that made a difference to him. He said, “I can’t do a damned thing about it, anyway, so—”

“But you can. We can. Tonight, I will go into that house and take the children out. I have laid my plans. All is prepared. You will aid me in this, or you will not, but do not tell yourself there is nothing you can do.”

“I’m not going to help you.”

She stopped and turned to confront him. She looked so bloody innocent. She had a face like a flower, pale and open. Fine threads of her hair fell down alongside her face, picking up sunlight, shining. “I will be at the bookstore on the Rue de Lombard at sunset. If you are there, we will together perform this little theft of the property from an arm of the Secret Police.” She smiled, all winsome, not fooling him and not trying to. “It would be a brave and wily act to take so many potential agents from the French, would it not?”

“It would be a good way to get myself killed.”