Read Chapter 15: The Girl in the Records

The records office stank of tallow and desperation. Étienne pushed through the door with the same coins he’d used on Roland, but the clerk behind the counter barely looked up before sliding a ledger across the scarred wood.

“Names are listed by district. You’ll find the bourgeois families marked with a cross. If you want the revolutionary committees, those are in the other book, and I don’t keep that one here anymore. Too many people come looking for their neighbors.”

Étienne ignored the clerk’s nervous chatter. He ran his finger down the columns of the finance ministry register, past the names of men who had already felt the blade, past the widows and orphans now classified as enemies of the people for having once dined at the wrong table. He was looking for something else. A girl. A daughter. Someone who would still be alive because she hadn’t yet been noticed.

The candle guttered. He turned a page.

There.

*Claire Beaumont.* Daughter of Louis Beaumont, Minister of Finance under the late King. The father’s name had been crossed out in red ink—executed, or maybe just erased. But Claire was listed as *whereabouts unknown*, with a note in the margin that read: *Last seen in the Marais. Believed in hiding. Property confiscated.*

Underneath, in fainter hand, an address. It had been scribbled over and corrected once, the original number scratched so hard the paper had torn.

The tailor’s shop.

Étienne’s breath caught. The Marais tailor’s shop—the one Margaux had suggested as a possible refuge. The address in the record led there. But that couldn’t be coincidence. Nothing in this city was coincidence anymore.

“This girl,” he said, tapping the page. “Claire Beaumont. She was the finance minister’s daughter.”

The clerk leaned over, squinting at the blurred letters. His face went pale. “I wouldn’t touch that one. The minister signed the papers that sent half the treasury to the armies. Then word came down that some of the gold never reached the front. They asked him questions, naturally.”

“And what happened to him?”

“He died in his cell. They said suicide. Broken neck doesn’t look like suicide to me, but nobody asked for my opinion.”

Étienne let his finger rest on the address. “The tailor’s shop in the Marais. Do you know it?”

The clerk looked at him sharply, then looked down at the pile of coins again, as if weighing whether they were worth the risk of answering. He licked his lips.

“I know a man who bought cloth there. Rich fabric. The kind of cloth that goes on royal backs. The tailor closed his doors two months ago, saying he was going south to family. But people in the Marais say they still see light in the back room after midnight. They say the tailor is helping someone hide.”

“Who?”

“No one will say. The street is loyal. Or they’re too afraid.” The clerk wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “If you’re thinking of going there, you’d better bring proof of who you are. The kind of people who hide in that quarter don’t like strangers who ask questions. And they’re right not to—the Committee’s spies are everywhere.”

Étienne copied the address onto a scrap of paper. He had the name. Claire Beaumont. Daughter of the finance minister who had refused to sign off on the gold scheme, if the rest of the story held true. She had the names, Ferrand had said. The names of the real identities of the swapped prisoners.

But first he had to reach her before the conspiracy’s watchers did.

The room behind the records office was cold. Through a grimy window, Étienne could see the first pale streak of light above the rooftops. Dawn was still an hour off. Ferrand and Marchand were scheduled for execution in less than six.

He turned to leave, but the clerk called after him.

“Monsieur. One more thing.” The man’s face was troubled. “That girl—Claire. There was a death notice filed for her last week. It was marked provisional, which means they didn’t find the body. But someone wanted her listed as dead.”

“Who filed it?”

“I don’t know. Committee stamp, but it came in sealed. Everything from the Committee is sealed.” The clerk lowered his voice. “The only time they file provisional death notices is when they want the world to think someone is gone. Makes it easier to hunt them without drawing attention. They don’t want anyone else looking for her.”

Étienne felt the cold settle deeper in his chest. The conspiracy had already tried to erase Claire Beaumont from the record. They had ransacked Margaux’s shop looking for evidence he hadn’t written. They had killed the prisoner rather than let him speak. And Ferrand was about to go to the blade with the last fragment of knowledge that could bring it all down.

But Ferrand had pointed him to Claire. And Claire was still alive—if the provisional death notice was a lie, as the clerk suspected.

“No one else saw her in that tailor’s shop,” Étienne said. It was a question carved into a statement.

The clerk licked his lips again. “There was a woman. A laundress who delivers to the back door. She saw a young lady in the window one evening, reading by candlelight. Dark hair. Thin. The laundress said she looked refined, the kind of person who had never carried her own wash.”

Étienne pressed another coin onto the counter. “The laundress. Where does she live?”

“Rue du Coq d’Or, third floor, the building with the broken gutter. Her name is Nanette. She’s discreet, but she’s poor. She’ll talk for the price of bread.”

Étienne stepped out into the pre-dawn air. The streets were hushed, the city still holding its breath before the day’s executions drew its crowds. He moved quickly, keeping to the narrower alleys, but as he rounded a corner he stopped.

The brown-coated man was standing at the mouth of the records office street. He wasn’t following. He was waiting. His face was half hidden in shadow, but he looked directly at Étienne without surprise.

The watcher’s lips moved. Not words meant to be heard at this distance, but the shape was unmistakable.

*Too late.*

Then he turned and walked away, his footsteps sure and unhurried, like a man who had already finished his work.

Étienne’s pulse hammered. The clerk’s provisional death notice. The light in the back room of the tailor’s shop. The laundress seeing a girl at the window. The watcher standing here, at the records office, at this hour.

They weren’t hunting for Claire. They had already found her.

And Étienne had just led them to the only evidence that she existed.

He broke into a run toward the Marais, the address burning in his pocket, knowing he was racing the sunrise—and knowing that if Claire Beaumont had held the names for this long, she had held them alone, silent, while the city slept on its secret and the conspiracy closed its net.