Kester Grant - The Court of Miracles

“Will he harm me?” Ettie’s little body shakes. “Nina …?”

It’s the same reaction I had only a few years ago, when I stood shaking before the truth of what the Tiger was.

Ettie always looks to me for answers. I’m the one who tells her how to keep out of trouble. I shouldn’t have bothered to disguise her; it was a silly, disjointed attempt to protect the lamb I was planning to offer up. To keep people from seeing what she is. For Ettie is beautiful, the kind of beautiful that would draw attention even clothed in rags. The kind you spend years hoping to find, the kind you convince Thénardier he must take in, the kind you know the Tiger will want.

“Will he kill me?”

Ettie’s words shake me from my reverie. I need to get her away now, to hide her so that neither Thénardier nor the Tiger can find her; thwart them, make them mad with the wanting of her. Only then can I demand my price.

I catch my breath.

“Yes, he’ll kill you,” I lie. He won’t kill her. What he’ll do is much worse. She will look for death and it will not come.

Ettie’s face crumples. She breaks into little sobs.

The first night I brought her back to the inn, she looked around and promptly burst into tears until Thénardier’s reprimand left her cheek a mass of blue-black bruises. When the last customer was gone and dawn was peeping through the wooden shutters, I crawled up to my bed and found her curled in a ball, shivering under the bedsheets. She was half frozen with fear and sorrow. I should have given in to my exhaustion, ignored her, and fallen asleep. But she stared at me entreatingly with those enormous blue eyes. So I lay down beside her, put my arm around her for warmth, and told her a story.

“Stop crying,” I say shortly, and grab Ettie’s hand. “Come on.”

“Where are we going?” She sniffles.

I smile. A smile that she should never trust.

“Somewhere he will not be able to find you,” I say, which is only partly a lie.

We rush down a tangle of back streets, keeping to the shadows.

She’s breathless and struggling along behind me, but at least she’s stopped crying.

She thinks I’m going to save her. When I’m sending her to a fate far worse than the seven hells.

But sometimes we must pay a terrible price to protect the things we love.

After the revolution failed, the city was carved into two parts. Half of Paris is rigid, boxtree-lined avenues haunted by the aristocracy. The other half is a murky jungle of crime and misery.

I wear this city like skin wrapped around my bones. I know each street by the feel of the stone beneath my feet. It speaks to me; it shows me where to go. It would have been safer to go the long way, cutting through the manicured streets of the sheltered nobles, but we don’t have time. And it would have been faster to go over rooftops, but Ettie doesn’t know a Cat’s way of racing along tiles and leaping sure-footed from one house to the next.

So instead, we run down the villainous-smelling streets, weaving between wagons and Those Who Walk by Day. Dodging an old lady sitting on a crate with a sign that says she’ll mend clothes for a few sous; darting down an alley, throwing out a prayer that we’ll find it empty. We skitter along the alley’s length before ducking into another one.

Ettie’s boots are too big, and she can’t run fast. But I bring her along at breakneck speed. We have to keep moving. The city assumes that anyone hesitating too long in one place is issuing a challenge.

Ettie pulls on my arm to slow me down.

“Nina, if we could find a carriage, I could go to my maman. ”

I shake my head. Her maman stopped sending letters months ago; we both know what that probably means.

So we hurry along till we get to a ramshackle factory in the Gobelins, shut down by the banks for debt.

“Where are we?” Ettie asks.

I ignore the question.

It takes a ridiculous amount of time to clamber through a window and hoist Ettie up, since she’s awful at climbing. She’s awful at a lot of things …

Ettie wrinkles her nose at the stench; a toxic smell from the arsenic used to dye the wall coverings, hats, and dresses of the nobility hangs in the air.

“How long will we stay here?”

I’m in no mood for Ettie’s questions. “I’m not sure—a day or two, maybe.”

She looks around, not liking what she sees. “Will you tell me a story?”

“This is hardly the time for a story!” I snap, making my voice as hard and ugly as I can, for it is an ugly thing that I am doing.

She shrinks from me, eyes wide.

I try to calm myself, but my thoughts aren’t so easily cowed; they whir and screech in my head, accusing and shouting, clawing at me with a thousand knives of guilt. What kind of person sells another?

The kind of person who would do anything to get her sister back, I remind myself grimly.

I’ve no choice; it’s the only way. Azelma safe. Isn’t that worth the cost?

And yet I know I’m not just condemning Ettie to the Guild of Flesh. Whispers speak of Sisters smuggled in boxes, of living cargo traded to the Tiger’s allies overseas.

The horror rises and threatens to overwhelm me. What he does, what he is, is an abomination, forbidden by the Law. The Law that is meant to protect us, to keep us safe.

And yet I cannot help the Sisters hidden in the shadows. I cannot save all the women in the Fleshers’ houses. But I might free one of them. I can make Azelma safe.

For a terrible price.

I eye Ettie shivering in the corner.

“I’m sorry,” I say, for snapping at her. And for what is about to happen, and for my part in it. I am so filled with regret that it threatens to burst out of me.

As if she can sense the turmoil I’m in, she gives me a small, forgiving smile, which is so typical of Ettie. It is not enough that she is beautiful; she is also kind. She rises and comes nearer to me and sits down on the floor.