Kester Grant - The Court of Miracles

“Can you stand?” the dark one asks with concern. Then he wobbles and topples over, making the blond one roll his eyes and go to his aid. The dark one is drunk. They probably both are.

“I’m fine,” I say shortly, biting down at the stinging in my side.

“You seem to have fallen into extremely bad company,” the dark one says from the ground, where he sits batting away the blond one’s attempts to bring him to his feet. “If you want to paw at me, St. Juste, you’ll have to ask for my hand first.”

“No one will ever want to paw you until you are less of a drunk, Grantaire.”

“You are to blame for the depth of my drunkenness, St. Juste. Your meetings positively bore me to tears and drive me to the bottle.”

The blond one gives up and turns to look at me, and it is not a look that I will ever forget. He seems to see right through me, scanning me swiftly and taking in the lines of my clothing, the blood on my cheek, on my hands and my feet.

“We should introduce ourselves to our new friend,” the dark one says. “I do believe this urchin owes us his life.”

I wince at that. The idea of a child of Miracle Court owing a debt to one of Those Who Walk by Day is unthinkable.

“I am in your debt, sirs,” I say, the admission sticking in my throat.

“What is your name, little boy?” the dark one asks.

The blond one’s eyes narrow. “Girl,” he says.

I try not to let my surprise show. Almost nobody can tell I’m a girl.

“Girl? Where?” Grantaire looks around comically, and seeing no one else, he blinks at me and points unnecessarily at my face. “ That is a girl?”

I raise my chin defiantly. “They call me the Black Cat,” I offer in response.

“Oh, that is good,” says the dark one. “I want an animal name—can I have an animal name too? What about the Drunken Ferret? And you, St. Juste. You can be … the Oppressive Eagle of Judgment.”

“You can call me Nina,” I say, trying to suppress a smile.

“Well, m’lady Nina, I am Grantaire,” the drunkard continues with a swift return of grace and manners. “And this pinnacle of humanity is Enjolras St. Juste.”

Now it’s my turn to stare. St. Juste, the beautiful. St. Juste, the Angel of Death, whose head is one of the six impaled atop the gates of the Tuileries. One of the six little mice— revolutionaries who set the city aflame and nearly toppled the king and queen only a generation ago. And for their pains the nobility fed them to the guillotine and hunted down all of their known relations, hanging them from the gibbet of Montfaucon.

“You call yourself by that name openly?” I ask.

“Oh, here we go. Don’t get him started about his ancestry,” Grantaire says, and takes a swig from a flask that has appeared in his hand.

“I am not ashamed of my kin,” St. Juste says. “I was in the womb when my uncle tried to change the world. I was brought up under my mother’s name, and so I lived, but what kind of living is it when gangs of brutes set upon children? When little girls are so scared they must hide what they are under layers of shapeless cloth?”

I stare at him. “You’re mad,” I say.

“Perhaps, for only the mad would see the endless darkness, the great evil that reigns around us, and stand against it.”

“They’re going to kill you.”

“Probably,” St. Juste says with a grim smile. “But by all hells, I’ll set this city on fire and take as many of them down with me as I can.” His eyes gleam with a passion I’ve never seen before. It’s both frightening and mesmerizing. Here is a boy who is marching toward his death, and he is delighting in it.

“They’ll hang him from Montfaucon for sure, and us alongside him,” Grantaire says so mournfully that I am released from the spell St. Juste’s words have cast over me. “But we are all his lackeys, for there is a truth in what he says. This city is a broken thing, and the world itself is wrong, and we cannot sit by and do nothing about it.”

“Falling over in taverns is not doing something about it,” St. Juste retorts sharply.

Grantaire smiles at that. “I drink to you, Son of Rebellion, Oppressive Eagle of Judgment.” He raises his flask and salutes his friend before downing its contents.

As he swallows with a heavy hiccup, a sharp cry rends the night. It is the call of Aves, the Elanion; Femi.

“What on earth is that?” Grantaire asks.

“It sounds like some sort of hawk,” offers St. Juste.

“What kind of devil bird preys at this hour?”

Suddenly there is a tinkle of breaking glass, and the solitary streetlamp goes out. I cannot help but grin in the darkness. “Sirs, I will take my leave of you, and am mindful of the debt I owe you. It would be wise to leave before the Fleshers return. They will no doubt be armed this time.”

In the sudden darkness they are half-blind, so they barely see me slide past them and clamber up the wall of a nearby building.

“Wait!” Grantaire shouts, but I ignore them. I’m not afraid they’ll shoot me, because, unlike me, they are not accustomed to darkness. Well, that and I’ve stolen their pistols.

“Well, that was fairly rude. We did save her life,” comes Grantaire’s voice as I climb higher and higher, ignoring the pain in my side. “Then again,” he continues, “I can’t blame her for fleeing. You probably drove her away with your weary justice speech.”

“I am going to let you find your own way home if you don’t shut up, Grantaire,” St. Juste’s voice says clearly.

“Hold on a minute … Where’s my gun?”

My laughter carries on the wind, curling around them, caressing their skin like a kiss, before I am completely gone.

The Messenger is waiting for me, perched on the edge of an old gabled roof, so still he might be one of the city’s weathered gargoyles.

“Femi—”

“What did you think you were doing?” His voice is a snarl.

His barely controlled anger hits me like a wave, and I take a step back. “You took your sweet time,” I retort sharply.

“Aye, and if those two fools had not intervened, I’d have arrived only to sing a death song over your corpse.”

Femi turns, and it strikes me that there is something odd in the way he is standing.

“You took an oath that you would not seek her out, that you would not attempt to rescue her. Beating you to death was the most merciful thing the Fleshers might have done if they had discovered you were a girl. But the Tiger is afraid of nothing and no one. Law or no Law, he’d probably take you, just to see what the other Lords would do. He’d feed you the poppy, and turn you into …”

I blanche at his words.

“You swore you would not do this, Nina,” Femi says again. “You cannot help her. Not this way.”

Though I know his words are true, a storm of rage rises within me. “How can you speak of oaths while she is in there—you who swore you cared for her!”

It is as if I have slapped him across the face. He stops, trembling and towering over me in anger, his face turning hard and cold.

“It is because I care for her that I promised to protect you. It was the last thing she asked of me, Nina—the only thing she asked of me. If she’d asked me to flee with her, I’d have gone. If she had asked me for Death the Endless, I’d have given her a blade.” He swallows and looks down, cradling his hands. “And even though she did not ask it of me, did you really think I wouldn’t try to find her? I who hear all and see all that happens in the Guilds. Did you think I wouldn’t have called in every debt, paid every coin and jewel in my possession, to try to save her? Did you think I would not come for her myself?”

They broke his hands. Azelma’s terrified voice lances my brain.