The Bataillon des Morts occupied a set of rooms above the café Au Petit Suisse on the corner where the Rue de Vaugirard and the Rue Corneille met. They had once been grand, with high ceilings, elaborate cornices and modern porcelain stoves, that they couldn’t afford to light, hunkering in the corner of each bedroom. Ada had done her best to make it homely, picking up paintings and bits of old furniture abandoned by fleeing aristocratic families. There was a Louis XIV dresser in their bedroom, a couple of moth-eaten chaise longues in the parlour and a set of shelves that served for both their supplies and her scant collection of books. The hand-painted wallpaper was peeling, and the parquet floor scuffed, but when the sunlight came streaming through the tall windows, it looked almost like a real home.

Ada had thought Camille must have chosen the café as their base in some moment of bitter humour. The Luxembourg had been taken over as a prison nearly a year ago, and Camille’s mother had been one of the first inmates. The mother who had taken Camille with her to political salons and clubs, to the viewing benches of the National Assembly and to revolutionary festivals. Then she’d been arrested on trumped-up charges of treason and lost her head to the guillotine. Only a few months later, Camille herself and her father were arrested too. Ada had always found Camille’s father intimidating, a tall, strident man who had no time for fools. But Camille had worshipped him. Where Camille’s mother had welcomed Ada into all aspects of her life, her father had no patience for anyone who couldn’t prove their worth in his eyes. After losing her mother, Camille had become even more fixated on gaining his approval.

But only Camille had made it out of the Luxembourg alive. Alone in a dangerous world, searching for anything to restore meaning to her life. The battalion was what she had found – or rather, what she had created to take control again. Nothing could bring back the parents she had idolised and lost. But that didn’t stop her trying to put things to rights in their name.

Al was with Ada in the gloomy parlour, stacking cards then letting them cascade across the table. He split them in half, balancing them precariously against each other. Then he meticulously drew out a card at a time from the inside of the arch, until they collapsed and scattered across the table again.

‘Will you stop that!’ she snapped.

He pushed the cards away, raising his hands in apology. He tipped a healthy measure of brandy into a glass and held up the bottle to offer her one. She shook her head. She wasn’t one to start on the liquor as early as Al. None of them were.

Ada pressed her hand to the windowpane, feeling the fine cracks spider-webbing under her palm.