The guards had already turned back to Al, re-securing the back of the tumbril and pushing him up the ladder to the scaffold.

Walking hastily back down the line of tumbrils, Ada’s hand closed lightly around the key she’d lifted. Guil was waiting at the end of the line, still in his soldier’s uniform. She brushed past him and let her hand press against his. The key for the prisoners’ chains passed between them smoothly and she smiled to herself.

Now she needed her crossbow, and a good vantage point.

Beside the Guillotine

In the heaving crowd of spectators, Camille edged her way to the front, where blood slicked the wooden scaffold and dripped onto the sawdust and straw below. A line of women were knitting and singing ‘Ça Ira’, and next to them a short woman was studiously carving a wooden death mask. From a row of baskets came the sightless stare of severed heads.

Al was hauled onto the platform.

A boo echoed round the Place de la Révolution, with pieces of rotten fruit following to land with wet plops around his feet. He was stripped of his usual sneer, eyes searching the crowd with anxiety plain on his face. He’d seen Ada, then. Good. Camille would expect him to play along, no matter how much he might have had to drink.

Silently, she drew the vizard mask out of her pocket. It was hot and smelled of ashes, but it would do what she needed. A little showmanship, a little misdirection.

She unhooked the pistol from her belt, flexing her fingers around its grip.

Everything could go wrong. Or it could go right. It was the risk they took. The choice they made. All of them. And she trusted all of them, her battalion.

James was wrong, she didn’t trust the wrong people.

On the scaffold Al had been forced to his knees, the executioner’s hand on his shoulder pushing his head between the jaws of the headlock.

It was now or never. She was Camille Laroche of the Battalion of the Dead. And she was so far from finished.

With a cry, she launched herself onto the platform, gun aimed at the executioner.

‘Release him now!’

She pulled back the cock.

‘Cam – behind you,’ yelled Al.

Camille spun on her heel in time to see Comtois leap onto the scaffold, a pistol in his hand. She whipped hers up, jumping back a few paces, as he raised his. They circled, held at the point of each other’s gun. When Comtois finally stilled, he was standing by Al. He raised his hand and the executioner snapped closed the lock, securing Al in place.

‘It’s over, Citoyenne Laroche!’ called Comtois. ‘You cannot manipulate and trick your way out of this. Your associate was rightfully arrested and convicted.’

‘Is that so? I saw that sham trial.’

‘You really expect me to believe you care about that?’