“You tried to stab me with your knife,” le Maire reminds her.

“He wouldn’t even let me eat with a knife and fork,” she says, “which is fine in the Halls of the Dead. But when the nuns are watching you eat with your fingers like you’re some kind of animal—”

“You tried to stab me with your fork, too.”

She ignores him. “I tried to keep up the things you taught me. And I didn’t eat too much, so I’d not get slow if we had to escape suddenly. I fed half my food to the birds, and every time I did that I thought about whether you had enough food, whether there was sickness, whether little Gavroche had recovered … whether you and St. Juste had declared your feelings for one another.”

“Why is everyone convinced I am in love with St. Juste?” I ask, disgruntled.

“I hear he is very handsome,” le Maire says gravely. “That he has the face of an angel.”

“Oh, Nina!” Ettie says with a sob, and she throws herself into my arms, almost bowling me over. “I’ve been so miserable without you.” Over her head, le Maire gives me look that says she has been far more trouble than she is worth.

He is a grown man, a member of the Guild of Letters, a spy, a hardened criminal, so I try my utmost not to show him how amusing I find the fact that he is being utterly undone by a mere slip of a girl.

“What are you doing here, Black Cat?” he asks.

“I would not have come, le Maire, except—”

Ettie pushes away from me. “Le Maire?” she says, and then she looks at the man who has kept her imprisoned. “Le Maire?!”

He looks at me, his eyes heavy with reproach.

“Le Maire?” Ettie is saying again, her voice pitched high in disbelief. “One of the three living Wonders of the Miracle Court? Le Maire, who convinced an entire town that he was their mayor for three years? Le Maire, who infiltrated the Austrian Court and escaped from the Bastille?”

I look between the two of them.

“And you said you had no stories to tell?”

I hastily interrupt this one-sided exchange to address le Maire. “I need your expertise, and there is no one else I can ask, no one who can do what I need done.”

“The debt was to hide her.” He frowns and motions at Ettie as if she is no more than an envelope he has had to secrete away. “There was no talk of further aid.”

I smile at him. “If you do this favor for me, le Maire, then you will not need to hide her from the Tiger anymore—your debt will be considered fully repaid.”

It takes the space of a heartbeat for him to reply. “What do you need me to do?”

“And what about me?” Ettie says, her voice as sharp as the blade of the ax. “What am I to do while you and le Maire are off having adventures? You cannot leave me here or hide me somewhere else. I’ll not stand for it, Nina!”