The flames grow as the boat lazily floats away from its mooring. Eventually, the few Fleshers posted by the docks see it and begin yelling and running toward it as it drifts along in all its blazing glory. They’re so occupied with catching it that they don’t see me slip from the shadows behind them and clamber up the side of the other boat. There I set down a bottle filled with a liquid that the Fisherman has carefully decanted for me.

She warned me sternly not to drop it, so I’m sweating as I let the bottle go, pushing it gently so it rolls down the deck. I take one look behind me. More Fleshers are running from the house now, toward the burning boat. My way clear, I leap from the deck and speed across the moorings and into the catacombs. I follow the dark passage till I come to a grate overhead.

A shadow emerges out of the wall. It has knives.

“You don’t have to come with me,” I say.

“I thought we were friends,” Montparnasse replies. “It would be rude of me not to attend a friend’s funeral.”

I can’t help but smile as we climb up an ancient ladder carved into the tunnel wall. When we reach the grate above, Montparnasse silently lifts it, and I scramble up, practically into his arms, to peer out. The street is empty. Anyone around is down by the river, watching the Fleshers recapture a burning boat.

We emerge just as an explosion thunders through the night and a dark cloud of heavy smoke mushrooms up from the river. It’ll be seen and heard from miles around.

Just in case they didn’t get my note.

“What did the Fisherman put in that bottle?” Montparnasse asks.

“I don’t think I want to know,” I reply as we jog down the street toward the Guild of Flesh.

New guards have been posted at the back of the building to cover those who are hunting down the burning ship, or those who got blown half to bits by the explosion. I grin to myself.

Montparnasse eyes the guards. “I can take them.”

“Wait.”

He raises an eyebrow at me.

“Yes, wait before you murder everything.”

I pull out a pocket watch that I stole from Feuilly and look at the time. St. Juste, where are you? We agreed on a time, and you’re late.

Yells and cheers break out from the front of the building.

“Liberté, égalité, fraternité!”

We can hear the slogan of the Société being chanted by numerous voices carrying on the wind.

Montparnasse looks slightly taken aback.

“You brought the revolutionaries here?” His tone is half impressed, half horrified.

“The traitor compromised their plans. So I persuaded them to join a fight they stand a chance of winning,” I say, winking at him.

The guards standing at the back of the building are pacing, unsure if they should leave their posts to investigate the explosion or the chanting. Someone sticks their head out a door and shouts at them to get to the front immediately. They all go running.