Loup hesitates. “If Orso summoned him as a guest, then what will he say when he returns to find his children picking the boy’s bones clean?” I ask.

Loup sighs dramatically and makes a motion. St. Juste is untrussed, but when they go to remove his gag, I stop them.

“Leave it in—I’ve need of silence while I make my plans. And keep his hands bound, too.” That way he can’t betray us by shouting or throttle me for stealing his pistol years ago. “Just untie his feet so he can run.”

St. Juste gives a noise of deep discontent. It makes me smile.

“Keep close. The tunnels are treacherous,” Loup warns me as the four ghosts, dragging St. Juste along with them, set off into the dark tunnels.

“Thank you, Master of Ghosts.” I bow. “Nous sommes d’un sang.”

“D’un sang,” Loup answers. “If you survive, and if you find him, tell our Father we wait for him.”

10

La Vallée de Misère

Loup is right: the bone-encrusted tunnels, elaborate as a spider’s web, crisscross in a huge network beneath the city. Gavroche and the others move with ease, taking sharp, sudden turns, bumping St. Juste along behind them while I follow closely, realizing that without them we will be lost in the darkness.

Eventually, the Ghosts slow, and the tunnel narrows as we start our ascent. Winding stairs, slick and damp, lead to the surface, until patterns of light illuminate a grate above us. The largest of the Ghosts reaches up and, with only a faint noise of metal scraping, moves the grate aside. Gavroche scrambles up the larger Ghost’s shoulders. And out we go.

I emerge, blinking, beneath the blinding streetlamps. Then there’s the smell. Salt and rot. Old blood.

I know where we are.

We have come out under a bridge, the Pont au Change. It’s low tide, and the waters of the fetid Serpent, the Seine, have rolled back, leaving a thick, rank sludge, the sewage and waste of the whole city. Beside me, Ettie points, and I turn my head. On the banks of the river, the dark mud appears to move, heaving and slithering like a great monster with a thousand glittering eyes. I smile.

“Mudlarks.”

The city has a way of breeding a certain desperation. So it is for the mudlarks, the urchins and the ragged elderly who brave the river’s poisonous banks, hunting among decaying animal flesh, burning chemicals, and human waste for anything they might salvage: bits of metal, leather, an ancient coin from the time of the Parisii, a ring from one of the river’s many suicides.

We clamber up the slippery steps to street level. The bridge continues into a road that turns into a courtyard. To the left of it is a gendarmerie. I frown. Children of the Miracle Court tend to keep away from the police. They’re corrupt, inept servants of Those Who Walk by Day.

The lights of the gendarmerie blaze. A large building with towers looms beyond it, its shadow casting a deep dread over me.