“Look at me, you stupid, useless, pointless …” My words fail me, but the venom in them snaps him out of his dream and he focuses on my face.

“Nina,” he says, lifting a trembling hand to my cheek.

“Don’t you ‘Nina’ me. You’ve got a bullet in you, and we have to get out of here, because there are soldiers and they are going to kill us.”

He smiles then, and it is like the rising sun. Even in the chaos it takes my breath away.

“Here, lean on me …,” I say. I try to raise him as I stand, but his body slumps. “St. Juste, for Rennart’s sake!”

He blinks up at me.

“It’s raining,” he says. His voice has lowered to a delirious whisper.

The drops fall gently at first, washing the grime and blood from his face. The City is weeping for her children.

“Rain will make the flowers grow …,” he murmurs in a singsong voice.

“Are you singing?” I say in horror.

I slap him hard across the face. And he recoils in shock. He stares at me with wide, focused eyes.

“So help me, St. Juste, if you don’t get a grip and stand up, I will shoot you again myself.”

He gives a gurgle of weak laughter at that. “You wouldn’t,” he says with assurance.

“Don’t tempt me—it’d be a whole lot easier to get out of here if I weren’t dragging a useless Frenchman with me.”

“No,” he insists. “You wouldn’t shoot me because you don’t have a gun.”

“Of course I do. I stole your pistol ten minutes ago.”

37

The Courier

I manage to drag St. Juste down two roads before Gavroche returns with le Maire. The giant takes one look at St. Juste and gently hoists the boy over his shoulder, ignoring his complaints of pain. Le Maire is a machine, and both Gavroche and I jog to keep up with him as he speeds down alleyways to the rue Musain.

Grantaire answers my thundering at the door. There are dark circles under his eyes, and he’s got a pistol stuffed untidily into his breeches. He takes one look at St. Juste and yells for Feuilly. Suddenly the students are everywhere, wresting St. Juste from le Maire’s grasp and carrying him away.

“Grantaire, you must call it all off!”

The words come tumbling out, though I know that with them I might be losing the boys’ aid.

“The palace knows your plans, and the army has been dispatched to all of the cell positions.”

I follow him like a shadow, almost tripping over the stacks of rifles piled up in the corridor.

“We just came from the avenue Ficelle. The cell has been wiped out.”

Feuilly has set St. Juste up in the kitchen and is shouting orders, getting others to boil water and cut sheets into bandages.

“You can’t all be tending to him,” Grantaire snaps. “I want the first ten of you ready to go on ahead.”