“You know him,” Hawker said.

“Antoine Drieu. He is a corrupt and wicked man.”

“Was. He was corrupt and wicked. Now he’s just inconvenient.” Hawker methodically laid the bits and pieces of everyday life beside the corpse—a tinderbox, a watch, a penknife, a silver toothpick case. Deft and unconcerned. He made no wasted motion. “Was he one of those Tuteurs at the Coach House?”

“He works in . . . He worked in Lyon. But he was of the Jacobin faction. The Coach House is wholly their operation. He may have come there from time to time. He . . .” she made herself say it, “. . . he liked to mistreat children.”

“Ah.” Hawker did not ask one question. He saw too much with those cynical dark eyes. He guessed too much about her.

“I have not seen him in more than a year.” Drieu was dressed for travel in dark pantaloons and coat. The strip of light crossed his plain gray waistcoat, horrible with blood. The shiny red was a blow to the eyes.

“If you’re going to throw up, go do it somewhere else.” Hawker did not look up at her, which was delicate of him. He continued to turn out pockets. “The first one’s the hardest.”

She wanted to tell him this was not her first killing, that she waded to her ankles in gore every day of the week, but there is nothing more pointless than telling lies that will not be believed.

“It helps if it’s somebody you hate,” he said. “Next time you might give some thought to how you’re going to dispose of the body.”

“I know how I am going to dispose of the body. I will give him to you. You will leave all the papers you find upon the ground there and not attempt to steal them.”

“Me? Nothing here for me.” He turned his attention to Drieu’s valise. “Just a pile of travel documents. Looks like he was leaving France. Not fast enough as it turns out. And they are useless to me unless I grow six inches and get thirty years older all of a sudden. I’m keeping the money.”

“I do not give a damn what you do with the money.”

“Owl. Listen to me. You always strip the corpse. Otherwise you might as well tuck a note on him saying, ‘This was business, not stealing.’ Always take the money.”

She knew many spies—good and bad, skilled and clumsy, some nearly as young as she was. She had never met one like him.

If she had been with anyone else tonight, she would be dead. He had been keeping an eye on the street. He lifted his head from his pillaging of valises. “Looks like your friends have finally showed up. We may brush through this more or less intact.”

A sliver of moon, white as bone, hung in the sky, giving no light. An old woman hobbled out of the darkness toward Pax, bent over, leaning on a cane, approaching slowly so he would have time to study her. It was Blackbird.

“She doesn’t look like much.” Hawker buckled the bag and stood up.

“That is her genius. We are in luck. They have sent us one of the best of the smugglers, with a hundred lives saved at her hands. She will take the Cachés to safety.”

“Good. Because I am sick and tired of dealing with them.”

Tiny and barely lit, the figures of a shrunken woman and the tall Englishman leaned together, talking. A shadow ran across the road. All was going well. “It won’t be long now.”

Hawker said, “That’s ten. We’re done.”

“There are more.”

“Three of them aren’t coming.”

She did not understand at once. Then she did. “Damn you. Oh, damn you to hell. You left them behind.”

“It’s their choice.”

Her hand went to the gun that hid under her shirt, heavy and hard and cold upon her belly. She must go back. “You’ve made it more dangerous. I’ve wasted—”

Hawker grabbed her, jerked her around, and slammed her back to the wall. “Stop it.”

“I will not leave three children in that house. I will not. Never.”

He gave a hard push to keep her there. “They won’t budge. You’re not going to throw the others away trying to save three of them.”

“You do not tell me what I do and what I will not do.” Rage boiled from her heart till she choked with it. Till she could not speak for the thickness in her throat. “No one says what I must do. I decide. I—”

“They decide. Not you.”

She twisted, viciously, against the cage of his hands. He was incredibly strong. She threw herself, all her strength, against him, and it was nothing.

Then she was free. Suddenly and completely free. He released her. He stepped away. “Go ahead. Go in and convince them, Citoyenne Golden Tongue. Get yourself killed like a bloody fool.”

“And you are an idiot.”

“I’m not idiot enough to blunder in there, thinking I can change their minds.”

“You did not try hard enough.” But she stood where she was, shaking. With anger. With fear. With great and terrible grief. “You did not try.”

“We were lucky to get any of them out. They think it’s a trap.”

She knew. Oh, she knew. She had lived her months in captivity when she was a child whore. Trusted no one. When men came to free them, she had hidden in her room, trembling, hugging Séverine. She had feared them all, even Madame. “They do not know what will happen to them. They cannot know. They do not understand.”

“You aren’t going to convince them.”

“No.” She made a fist. Slammed the stones of the wall, hurting herself, making no noise. “I will not let this happen. I will not lose three children.”

“Then you’re going to lose them all. These kids . . .” he jerked his thumb to the far end of the street, “the ones we got out . . . those ten kids are a mouse hair away from panicking and running back into the cage. They’ll do it if we don’t move them along.”

“I will wait then. Wait until they leave.” Her body shook and she could not stop it. “When they are safe, I will go into the Coach House and drag the others out.”

“Not short of knocking them over the head and tying them up, you won’t. You think anything else, and you’re just stupid. I don’t think you’re stupid.”

He listed the reasons this could not be done. He would not be silent, though she interrupted him and sneered at him. Everything he said, she already knew and did not want to admit to herself. He battered her mind with his certainty. His relentless common sense.

He ended up, “. . . at which point those Tuteurs are going to come pounding up the stairs and gut you like a fish.”

“I have been taught to fight.”

“I don’t care if you’ve been taught to fly like a bird. They’ll kill you. They won’t even raise a sweat doing it.”

The night was silent and heavy with heat. Tiny and far away, Blackbird gestured to the children. Each in turn slipped around the corner, out of sight, moving as small, slight darknesses rippling the greater darkness. Ten of them.

I have saved only ten.

Those last three would not be persuaded. She knew that in the pit of her belly. In her heart, in the cold reason of her mind, she knew that. She shivered under her skin, sick with the bloody murder she had done and this corpse that waited at her feet. Sick with failure. “If I do not go back, I condemn them to hell.”

“Close enough.” There was light to see his lips twist. To guess at the expression in his eyes. She did not want pity from him. “You can’t save them.”

“I must try.”

“That’s not running an operation. That’s a complicated way to commit suicide.” He let her think about that. “Either way, you’re dragging me along with you.”

“This is nothing to do with—”

“If you go in, I go in. You decide if you lead me in there to get killed.” He did not look like a boy when he said that. She did not doubt for one instant that he would follow her back into the Coach House.

On the stage of her mind, she could see many ways to die. Nowhere did she see a way to save the last three Cachés. “They are children.”

“They’re not any younger than you.”

She stood with her hands empty. It was defeat. “You are a bastard.”

“My mother always swore she was married. I kind of doubt it. Owl, I’ve had longer to think about this than you. If I could come up with any way—any plan at all—we’d do it.”

“I will not forgive myself for leaving them behind.”

“Most of us have something to keep us awake at night.”

“You make light of—”

“The hell I do. You think I don’t have nightmares?” They stood awhile, looking at each other. He said, “If they weren’t trained fighters, I’d try it.” He nudged the valise with his foot. “You get rid of this.”

She would scatter the belongings of a dead man across Paris. Leave a shirt rolled behind a drain spout. Stuff a boot into some gutter.

She realized, suddenly, that her hands were covered with drying blood, sticky and somehow slimy. The lantern disclosed the slumped dead body. Overhead, the stars burned steadily, pitiless in the night sky, watching her, knowing her for what she was. Not brave. Not passionate. She was so much the realist, so cowardly, that she would leave three children to fall into hell.

If she had still possessed a soul, it would have died tonight.

Down the street, the drama of the Cachés’ escape was coming to a close. The children were gone. Blackbird followed, limping around the corner, playing the feeble old woman. Citoyen Pax stepped back and disappeared into shadow.

She said, “Your friend Paxton is headed this way.”

“We’ll start carrying corpses out of the vicinity. Hold a minute.” Hawker shifted his body, not blocking her path, just getting her attention. “Take this.”

He had pulled a knife from somewhere, like magic. He held it by the blade, offering her the hilt.

“Your knife?”