Read Chapter 19: The Sewer Route

The key turned with a sound like a bone snapping. Marie exhaled, long and slow, and pressed her forehead to the cold iron of the cell door. Célie stood behind her, heart hammering against her ribs, the rough wool of the laundress's dress scratching at her skin. The dress smelled of lye and other women's sweat, and it fit poorly—too loose at the shoulders, too short at the hem—but it was a disguise, and a disguise was a beginning.

"Now," Marie whispered. She eased the door open a crack, then wider. The corridor beyond was empty, lit by a single guttering torch that threw monstrous shadows against the damp stone. Somewhere above them, a guard laughed, the sound muffled by vaults of masonry. The laugh was distant, careless. They had minutes, perhaps fewer.

They moved. Marie led, her bare feet silent on the flagstones, Célie close behind, clutching the skirts of her borrowed dress to keep them from brushing the walls. The air grew thicker, colder, as they descended a narrow stone stair that spiraled into the bowels of La Force. The torchlight faded above them. Marie did not pause. She knew this path the way Célie knew the feel of her own seal against her palm—except she no longer had it. The seal was at the bottom of the Seine, and the thought of it made her stomach clench with a grief she could not afford.

At the bottom of the stair, the corridor ended in a wall of rough-hewn stone, slick with moisture. Marie knelt, ran her fingers along the base of the wall, and found what she sought: a rusted grate, set flush into the floor, barely visible in the darkness. She worked the key into a lock that had not been turned in years. It resisted. Marie muttered something under her breath, a prayer or a curse, and threw her weight against the key. The lock gave with a groan that echoed like a cannon shot.

The grate swung upward. Below it, black water moved, slow and fat, carrying the stink of the city's guts.

Marie looked up at Célie. "There is no bottom you can see. You must trust your feet. The current is not strong, but the water is deep in places. Hold your breath when I tell you to."

Célie stared into the void. The water was a mirror of nothing. She thought of her mother, of the drawing room at Vernet, of the way candlelight had danced off the gilded mirrors and the silk hangings. She thought of her father, executed in the Place de la Révolution, of the crowd that had cheered. And she thought of the girl with the twin seal, the sister she had never known, alive somewhere in this city of blood and hunger.

"What are you waiting for?" Marie asked.

Célie lowered herself into the gap. The water was shockingly cold, rising to her thighs, then her waist. She gasped. The smell was immense—rot and waste and the mineral bite of ancient stone. Marie followed, pulling the grate closed above them with a clang that seemed to shake the very foundations of the prison. They were sealed now, in darkness so complete Célie could not see her own hand before her face.

"Take my shoulder," Marie said. Her voice was steady, almost soothing, as if she had done this a hundred times. Perhaps she had, in her imagination, in the long nights of servitude. "We go left. The channel widens. Keep your mouth closed."

They waded. The water rose to Célie's chest, and she lifted her chin, straining to keep her face above the surface. Her feet found the slick, uneven bottom, and she stumbled more than once, Marie's grip on her shoulder the only thing keeping her upright. The walls narrowed, then widened. The ceiling vanished into darkness. They were in a larger channel now, and the current moved faster, tugging at her skirts.

"Here," Marie said. "We must duck under. The water will cover you. Do not breathe until I pull you up."

Célie's heart seized. "How long?"

"Not long. A count of twenty, perhaps thirty. Do not fight the current. Let it carry you."

Marie pressed her hand. Then the grip shifted, and Célie felt herself guided downward, into the water, into the dark. The cold closed over her head. She squeezed her eyes shut, though it made no difference. The current took her, tumbling her against stone, scraping her elbow, her hip. She lost all sense of direction. She counted. Ten. Fifteen. Her lungs burned. Twenty. She was going to die here, swallowed by the city's waste, and no one would ever know what had happened to Célie de Vernet—

A hand grabbed her collar and hauled her upward. She broke the surface gasping, coughing, water streaming from her hair. She vomited a thin stream of bile and river water, and Marie held her head until the convulsions passed.

"Breathe," Marie said. "Breathe, child."

Célie breathed. The air was still foul, but it was air. She blinked, and realized there was light—a pale, gray light, seeping from somewhere above. She looked up. A second grate, larger than the first, set into a stone ceiling perhaps ten feet above the water's surface. Beyond it, the sky.

"Where are we?" Célie managed.

"The Marais," Marie said. "There is a drainage grate near the Rue des Rosiers. The house you seek is not far."

Célie stared at the light. Everything she had ever known was behind her now, in the water, in the dark. She had no name, no seal, no proof of who she was. She was a laundress in a borrowed dress, covered in filth, standing in a sewer beneath the city she had once called home.

The Rue des Rosiers was narrower than she remembered, and it was not a street she had ever walked as a lady of the Vernet household. It smelled of cabbage cooking and horseshit, and the buildings leaned toward each other like gossips, blocking out the sun. Marie led her through a maze of alleys, pausing at corners, listening. At a public fountain near a cluster of market stalls, Marie stopped.

"I must leave you here," Marie said. She did not look at Célie when she said it. Her hands were busy, wringing water from the hem of her own dress.

"You cannot—"

"I can, and I will. If I am seen with you, we are both dead. You know the address?"

Célie nodded. The name Lefèvre had been written on a scrap of paper, now illegible pulp in her pocket. But she had memorized it. Rue des Francs-Bourgeois, near the old hôtel that had once belonged to a family that had fled at the start of the Revolution. Three stories, green shutters, a bakery on the ground floor.

"The house is watched," Marie said. "The Section's agents have eyes on the revolutionary families—they watch everyone now, even their own. Do not approach the front door. Find the courtyard entrance from the alley behind. Wait until dark. Watch the windows. Count the heads that come and go. When you move, move like you belong there, a woman delivering laundry or fetching bread. You understand?"

Célie understood. She also understood that Marie was afraid—not of the prison, not of the guillotine, but of something else. Something she had not said.

"Marie. What is it?"

Marie looked at her then, and Célie saw the fear in her eyes, raw and undisguised. "Your mother," she said. "The girl she raised. Amélie. There is something you should know about her."

"What?"

Marie opened her mouth. Closed it. Shook her head. "No. You must see for yourself. But when you find her—ask her about the mark. The mark on her left shoulder. Your mother knew. She always knew."

Then Marie turned and walked away, her stride quick and certain, and did not look back. Célie stood at the fountain, dripping, alone, the name Amélie burning in her chest.

The house with the green shutters was three streets away. Célie found the alley behind it without difficulty. She pressed herself into the shadow of a doorframe and watched. The shop front was shuttered, but a light burned in a window on the second floor. A woman's silhouette passed across it, then a man's. A child ran through the frame, small and quick. They looked like a family. They looked ordinary. But Célie had learned long ago that ordinary was the finest disguise of all.

She waited. The light burned on. The street grew quiet. A dog barked somewhere, then fell silent. The woman's silhouette appeared at the window again—and this time, the woman looked down directly at the alley where Célie stood. She could not have seen her in the darkness. She could not have. But she stood there, perfectly still, as if she knew something was out there. Then she pulled the shutter closed, and the light was gone.

Célie's hand went to her collar, where her twin seal had once hung on its chain. Half of the pair was at the bottom of the Seine. The other half was alive, upstairs, in a house watched by the agents of the Revolution, and Célie had no idea if the woman would embrace her as a sister—or deliver her to the guillotine. And there was the mark on her left shoulder, whatever it meant, and the look in Marie's eyes when she spoke of it.

She had escaped La Force. But she was still in a cage, and the bars were made of questions.