Thénardier looks long and hard at me through the hulking forms of the Fleshers. “Ah, Elanion, I would love to intervene, but you know me.” His face splits in a vicious gold-toothed grin. “I always back the winning side.”

I hold on to the wall and haul myself to my feet as the Fleshers circle me like jackals.

When the first blow comes, I fall without even raising my hands to defend myself.

I taste metal. My fingers scratch at the cold, wet ground as the pain sings in my ears. It’s easiest not to think. It’s easiest to close down.

I feel the heartbeat of my mother the City beneath my palms, and I murmur the words of my childhood, words I used to say like a prayer into sticky, wine-stained floors.

It’s all right; it’s only pain. It’ll be over soon.

“For Rennart’s sake, she’s your daughter!” Femi pleads.

Rage screams through me, fueled by my pain. I might as well get it over with quickly. I raise my head.

I shouldn’t say it, but I do.

“I will never be his daughter. I’m a child of the Thieves Guild. Tomasis is my Father.”

Thénardier laughs.

A boot comes down on my face, and the world turns to darkness.

I fall into muddled dreams of Ettie shrieking in some distant place and Femi arguing with someone. Then the sensation of being lifted into the air, a voice like a whisper of cold wind against my ear.

“Don’t die, little Cat.”

Time is a blur, long stretches of silence and darkness. Days, hours, or weeks, I can no longer tell its passing.

Sometimes Ettie is beside me, her voice coming out in little choked sobs. Other times I have the impression that Gavroche is watching me carefully with his expressionless dark eyes.

Sometimes there are moments of startling clarity, pain lacing my body as every detail comes sharply into brilliant focus.

Sometimes there’s movement as the Ghosts whirl into action, fetching foul-smelling ointments, burning things, boiling water in large steaming vats, changing bandages, offering blankets.

Sometimes there’s a whisper of almost-black linen, the glint of a silver blade, the suggestion of coldness and death.

Much later, when I’m awake, a box is delivered. It’s black, with a ribbon tied around it. It has written on it Pour la Chatte Noire.

“Tomasis sent it,” the Master of Knives tells me in an icy voice. “With his regards.”

It’ll be better than the vile medicine Montparnasse usually brings. Brewed by the Poison People, a gift from ColBlanche that is meant to heal but burns my throat. I assume since I’m not yet dead that the Master of Poisons isn’t trying to kill me.

Ettie undoes the ribbon, lifts the lid of the box, and almost drops it.

Inside is a hand. Bones protrude from the wrist, blood is coagulated at the stump. The knuckles are hairy, decorated with rings I recognize instantly because they’ve marked my face many times.

Thénardier.

It is a statement from Tomasis to the Miracle Court. He has proclaimed with flesh, blood, and bone that I am a child of the Thieves Guild. That he is my Father now, and that I am under his protection; that anyone who harms me is striking at him and will be punished. Even if that person is his Master of Beasts.