Humiliated, the man left with vengeance burning in his heart, and set out to break Lady Kamelia. He purchased opiates from the Guild of Dreamers and bribed members of her own Guild to feed them to her. He made her unable to think or move without the poppy, until she was ready to say or do anything he asked. Then the Tiger took her Guild from her and fed the poppy to every Sister until he had made them slaves in a city that had not known slavery for a hundred years.

The Lords did not see what he had done until it was too late. And once they did, they looked upon him and were afraid. For he had turned the Guild of Sisters into a Guild of Flesh. And he had allies on a hundred ships at sea, allies who would come if he called them.

He took his place at the high table, and the Lords came to know that they should never have abandoned that boy so long ago. They had been fools. For is it not written that the Law is like the giant creeper? It drops across everyone’s back. And none can escape it.

26

The Société des Droits de l’Homme

I crouch on the rooftop, darkness wrapped about me like a cloak. The sounds of the night float toward me: the sloshing of the river, the Great Serpent on its banks, proactive costermongers shouting their evening wares—oysters and coffee for those with an appetite.

A shape sits motionless beside me, like a giant bird of prey with golden eyes that see everything. The frayed edges of his cloak stir in the wind.

“Will you summon them?” I ask.

Femi looks at me, and he does not answer.

“You know that I will do this even if you will not help me,” I say.

“I promised to protect you” is all he says.

My gut twists with guilt.

It is an impossible thing he has promised, especially given what I am planning to do. But he swore a bone oath to my sister, and he will never forget it.

“I will summon them,” he says finally, and the silence that follows tells me he has already gone.

I stretch out my limbs, pins and needles prickling my muscles, and I stand, staring out over the city. Somewhere in those crowded streets Azelma sleeps; somewhere out there Ettie is afraid. The night wind buffets me, whispering around my ears, caressing the long scars that have healed into ropes across my back.

I hear the hunting song, and I know whose name it sings.

I climb in through the kitchen window of the house on the rue Musain with a basket in my hand and land on my feet like the cat that I am.

The house is many-storied, alive with thick cigar smoke and the loud chatter of excitable young men.

Thénardier’s inn ceased to be my home the night he tried to strike a bargain for Ettie with the Tiger. I lived for a time with the Ghosts, then under the Pont Marie, with Femi Vano and a handful of other Cats of the Thieves Guild. Then Orso arranged for me to take a room at the top of a house occupied by students. Ever since thousands of the city’s children died due to sickness in the water, we’ve been working together—the Wretched and the students. The nobility is our common enemy, after all.