So in exchange for my board, I’m a messenger between the house and the Miracle Court—and sometimes a gunrunner for the Smugglers Guild, who happily accept the students’ generous overpayments for guns, ammunition, and anything else they need.

The students, devotees of Orso, are from the city’s best universities. They’re wide-eyed with the idealism that comes from having grown up with a silver spoon wedged firmly between their teeth. They gather in the school’s courtyards to hear the Dead Lord’s stories. But then, I should have known they were not just stories. Orso does nothing without reason and design. The old bear’s mind is always turning.

Grantaire, who has the nose of a hunting dog, appears in the kitchen as if summoned. He could ferret out the scent of fresh-baked pain au chocolat from a mile away. I have an entire basketful, still warm, stolen from the racks of a nearby bakery. The smell reminds me of the pastries Ettie devoured at the Tuileries, and the dull ache of her absence twists inside me.

“You goddess, Nina.” Grantaire kisses me on the cheek as he abducts a pain au chocolat, melted chocolate oozing from the ends of the crisp pastry. He grins in delight and wolfs it down. I swat him away as he tries to grab another.

“Nina, be kind,” he pleads. “The big day is nearly upon us. We’ll need all the sustenance we can get.”

“‘Big day’?” I dance away from him with my basket.

“Lamarque’s funeral.” Grantaire smiles, flaky crumbs around his lips.

Three days ago, General Lamarque was overcome with sickness.

“We’ve had word from the courier. They think Lamarque might not last much longer.”

“The funeral will be a state event,” Grantaire continues, licking chocolate from his fingers. “Lamarque may be a noble, but the people love him. The city will be in an uproar. It’s the perfect time to stage our protest.”

A protest with guns and barricades and a careful plan to take the streets, so the students can take the city, with Lamarque’s funeral as the chosen signal. I can’t help but shiver as I think of what happened the last time the city’s people protested.

They killed one-third of the mice for reason and one-third for sport. Then the cats hanged the six little mice before all of their brethren to teach the mice fear. A strange coldness grips me; soon I’ll get what I want.

I shake myself and march into the salon with my basket, where nineteen young men sit in overstuffed chairs, talking, smoking, and drinking by candlelight. Another handful surrounds a large table, on which are laid a map and piles of toppling papers.

These men are the members of the Société des Droits de l’Homme, the Society of the Rights of Man, a political club.

I’ve learned a lot from being around them. The walls are paper-thin, and their voices are loud. The palace dictates that no association can have more than twenty members. The nobles made this law to prevent uprisings like the one that almost killed the king and the queen forty years ago. The Société is therefore made up of smaller groups, like this one. Grantaire is its vice president, and St. Juste, who turns from the table to glower at me, is its leader.