In the thatch of roads off the Rue St Honoré a cluster of law clerks, printers and publishers made their home in the shadow of the Jacobin Club – the political home of Robespierre, president of Revolutionary France and architect of the Terror. Ada passed up the Rue Saint Roch and turned into the Rue des Moineaux. The bookshops and stationers were closed for the night, but lights in many of the clerks’ offices were still lit and the thud of the presses carried on unchecked. Rainwater spilled from clogged drains, the scattered sawdust did little to hold back the tide of effluence that crept across the cobbles. She held her skirts up and picked her way over them. She wore a wine-red riding habit in cotton twill, with a fashionably high waist, gold trim, and an immaculately arranged cravat she’d had Al help her with. Where she was going, she wanted to feel ready for battle.

She stopped in front of a door with a discreet plaque noting the offices of L’Ami d’Égalité. Hand on the knocker, she hesitated.

She didn’t have to do this. Today could be the day she was strong enough to turn around and walk back to her rendezvous with Camille. Today she could stop being a liar.

Or maybe tomorrow.

Giving a perfunctory knock, she let herself in, knowing the door wouldn’t be locked. The room was closed in, with bare wood floors and walls doused in lime wash. At the back, a lumbering desk had been stuffed into the gap by the stairs. Every centimetre of free space was rammed with pamphlets and newspapers and librettos and playbills. At the desk, a middle-aged woman with skin a shade darker than her own looked up, quill in hand.

‘Adalaide!’ she smiled. ‘How long has it been? I could swear you’ve grown even taller since I last—’

‘Is he in, Noëlle?’

Noëlle nodded, and glanced above her where the regular thud of the hand presses slamming ink into paper made the rafters shake.

‘He’s not left the print run all day. You should read it.’ She held out a pamphlet, its ink still glossy. ‘He remains loyal to the Revolution.’

‘He’s loyal to himself. That’s all he ever was.’

Ada swished past, the gust of air from her skirts sending a few sheets fluttering to the ground, and marched up the stairs into the sweltering heat of the press room. A line of machines filled the room with a man at each fitting the paper, applying the ink, then turning the Devil’s Tail to bring the full brunt of the screw down on the frame.