The Left Hand of Justice (12 page)

“Come downstairs,” she said. “I have something to show you.”

He followed her to the basement—quietly, nimbly—and emerged just in front of her into the softly lit laboratory. She led him to the table, where the magpie lay, cooling and still.

“What is it?” Joseph asked.

“It’s a sign.”

“What does it mean?”

“You’re going to help me find out. Turn your back just a minute while I put on my work clothes.”

Suitably attired, she cleared a spot next to an iron torso cage and pulled up a stool for him. She took his small, thin hand and ran his index finger over the bird’s underside, pausing at the hard lump. “Do you feel that?” she asked.

“The breastbone?”

“A bird’s bones are hollow, delicate.” She pressed his finger down. “Here’s the breastbone. Feel how it gives way under pressure?”

“Feels like it swallowed something, then,” he said.

“But whatever it is, it’s too big for the bird to have swallowed it intact. Hand me a scalpel.”

Joseph selected a small one from the towel where she had laid out a selection of cutting tools. Maria fingered the protuberance again. Murmuring apologies to the bird’s departed spirit, she took the scalpel in her deft fingers and slit the carcass from throat to vent. She folded back the thin skin from the incision. Metal glinted between the liver and the gizzard. Gingerly, she worked it out and wiped it clean on the sky-blue silk.

“It’s Romani magic. This is a bridle ornament.” Like the one she carried in her pocket-charm. “We’re great horsemen, you know.” Her family had been metalsmiths but had shared the Roma people’s affinity for horses. She missed the animals’ smell, the feel of their muscles beneath her fingers. “Look, these are symbols I learned when I was about your age. Power,” she said, pointing to the image of a sun engraved on the surface of the disk. Inside it were inscribed two crescent moons. “And double protection.”

“Protection from what?”

She blew out a long breath. A long list of possibilities scrolled through her mind, none more comforting than the others.
Romanian authorities? The Church of the Divine Spark? Monsieur le Préfet? His Holiness the Pope? The Fickle Hand of Fate?

She shrugged.

“Enemies are everywhere. Take your choice.”

“Who put it there?”

She frowned. The sign was one her grandmother had spoken of, though Maria had never seen it before. But everyone she had known in her home country had scattered a long time ago. The only Romani she currently knew was…

“Armand.”

“Monsieur Lambert?”

She nodded.

Armand Lambert was her only remaining ally in Hermine’s circle. His mother had been Romani; Maria had known it the moment she met him. The fact had bound them on a spiritual level from the start.

“Something’s happened to him,” she said. She had gained that much from her conversation with Inspector Corbeau. He must have set the sign to manifest in case some evil overtook him. “But it’s a strange message, if that’s the case.”

“He had an attack this morning, Doctor. Just like Mademoiselle Fournier and Monsieur Bertrand. He’s gone, now. Vautrin took him. A priest was there as well.”

Maria inhaled sharply. Her heart pounded. For Joseph’s own protection, she had tried to keep him ignorant of what transpired between her and Hermine. But he was as intelligent as he was useful. Surely he must have begun to sense a connection among the three servants, even if he was unable to articulate the nature of that connection. She hoped, for his sake, that he hadn’t realized Vautrin was more than just the chief inspector of the Sûreté. “Mademoiselle Fournier and Monsieur Bertrand, did Vautrin take them as well?” she asked.

“Nobody knows. No one’s seen them since last night.”

Maria rolled the silver disk between her fingers, catching the gentle light of the wall sconce. First Hermine’s lady’s maid, the driver, and now the footman—Vautrin was picking off her allies one by one. But the loss of Armand hurt the most. He had been the closest to Hermine. His assistance had helped Maria keep one step ahead of the Church of the Divine Spark, of Vautrin himself, who had sworn himself to her destruction. And now Armand was gone. And yet this sign—power and double protection, even in this most precarious situation—it was not yet time to lose hope.

She pushed a section of hair behind her ear. “Tell me what you think, Joseph. The situation worsens by the minute, and yet, despite the torment to which Vautrin and his priest must be putting him, Armand sends a message of hope. See here? The twin moons in the protective embrace of the sun. Claudine and Michel, perhaps? Or Armand and myself? My question, who is the protector?”

He blinked at her, his eyes, even in the gloom, clear and dancing with intelligence. “There was someone else this morning.” The lenses of her mechanical eye turned and clicked into place, as they often did when her mind was reaching unconscious conclusions it would later reveal. She had long ceased to be bothered by the sound but wondered what others must have thought. Joseph spoke more confidently, as if encouraged by it. “Inspector Corbeau of the Sûreté.”

Her eye whirred as she focused on his thin face. Her cheeks felt hot, and her pulse pounded.

“You know this person?”

“She was responsible for this,” he said, giving his bad leg a shake. “Then later she saved my life. You can trust her. The chief inspector tried to strangle her this morning.”

Maria felt a smile tug at the edge of her lips. She’d like to have seen the injuries Vautrin had taken away from the encounter. She had definitely misjudged Elise Corbeau. It wouldn’t be the first time fear had blinded her to possible sources of help. Would she have the chance to make it up to the inspector—to show she herself was worthy of trust as well? “You saw that? With Vautrin?”

“I was the one who took her there, to the Montagne Ste. Geneviève. And to see Mademoiselle Fournier and Monsieur Bertrand as well. I thought she could help them. She tried, but I don’t think she’s ever seen anything like this before.”

“Before?”

The boy excitedly related tale after tale of Corbeau’s heroic deeds with the Bureau of Supernatural Investigations—a bureau Vautrin had recently disbanded. Maria’s mind flashed back to the insignia Inspector Corbeau had worn on her collar—the bell, book, and candle. The insignia had been so similar to the one Javert’s Department of the Unexplained had used—no one could blame her for having confused them. The insignia had made her certain Corbeau was working for Javert. Could she have been wrong? She polished the silver disk with her thumb.
Double protection.
Inspector Corbeau would make a very powerful protector.

If only she weren’t convinced Maria had kidnapped Hermine Boucher.

“She was here earlier,” Maria told the boy. “I sent her away.” She sighed and sank down onto the stool. “Javert will never let me be. Not as long as I have what he needs. He must be getting desperate now if he thinks his only option is to frame me for whatever it is that happened to Hermine.”

An enormous clap of thunder shook the building. Maria glanced at the amulet again. Running her thumbnail over the engravings—the metal tingled with magic beneath her skin—she tucked it into the inner breast pocket of her robe. It was a small thing, this mysterious hope, and she would have to think more about what it meant. But at this point it was all she had.

“Perhaps Monsieur Javert is your protector,” Joseph said. “He was once before. Was he really so bad?”

She thought about it. “He wasn’t, not on a personal level. But in the end he wanted the same thing everyone else did. And I couldn’t give it to him. Come.”

She folded the corners of the silk square around the magpie and slipped it into her pocket. She would lay it on the fire upstairs and let its body follow its spirit into oblivion.

She ushered Joseph up the stairs ahead of her, leaving the wall sconces and the brazier burning. It was time to start work again, and Joseph would soon be on his way. She really had thought things would be better in Paris, away from the small-minded villagers and ingrained superstitions. So many people in Paris, and so many ideas—and yet even in the heart of the modern, enlightened world, she was still a foreigner. If she were still alive in a year’s time, it would be interesting to see where she would find herself.

“Is this your umbrella, Doctor?” Joseph asked, as she shut the door to the laboratory behind her.

“It’s hers. What do you think? Should I walk it over to the Palais de Justice myself?”

Making her way into the front room, she took the blue silk bundle from her pocket. She cleared a spot in the fire and laid the magpie atop one of the logs. Flames leaped eagerly toward the cuffs of her robe. She snatched her hand away, watching as the flame turned its attention to the silk. She took a pinch of dried herbs from a jar on the mantel and sprinkled it on top.

“Joseph!” she called. She wanted to explain to him what she was doing. He’d shown interest in her mechanical work, but if she was going to pass some of her knowledge to him before she left, he would have to understand some of the spiritual underpinnings. Why hadn’t he joined her yet? Was he still fiddling around with that blasted umbrella? “Joseph!”

“Doctor!” he cried.

She whirled at the panic in his voice. She opened her mouth to shout, but her cry was drowned by the sound of splintering wood and shattering glass.

The elegant set of rooms Sophie kept on Rue St. Dominique hadn’t changed, though the benefactors that paid for them seemed to turn with the seasons. The thought of living at someone else’s sufferance curdled Corbeau’s stomach, but the life seemed to suit Sophie fine. Her quarters were superior in comfort, design, and water-tightness. She never lacked the basics, as Corbeau sometimes did. And it seemed to be a point of pride for Sophie’s benefactors that their ornament be well fed and dressed. A nice arrangement, if you could find it. And one with which Corbeau had never been able to compete.

The rain began to fall again, washing the even pavement clean. Beneath the steely skies, the granite facades of the shops seemed to gleam, set off by the black ironwork that marked the apartment windows above. Fashionable people hurried past as Corbeau stepped from the fiacre, slowing to watch Sophie light in the carriage doorway before accepting Corbeau’s hand onto the sidewalk. Jealousy sparked in Corbeau’s chest as she watched them undress Sophie with their eyes. She snuffed it immediately. Too much time had passed, too much water gone under the bridge for her to have any right to be jealous. Sophie led on, and Corbeau followed her through an unmarked doorway next to a jeweler’s shop and up two flights of stairs.

Only a month had passed since Corbeau’s last visit, yet Corbeau felt as if she were returning to a place she’d not seen in years. The dark-green door seemed smaller and more brittle. The brass numbers and knob looked the same, yet somehow unfamiliar. Sophie tickled the brass lock with her key, and the door slid open silently across polished wood—just as silently as when Corbeau had stolen away, nearly a month ago to the day, leaving Sophie sleeping safe in her overstuffed bed. The same bold paintings dotted the walls. Whatever dust had been allowed to settle on the crimson molding had been whisked away, probably that morning, by a well-paid hand.

Sophie sloughed off her coat and boots then crossed the room to stoke the coals. A large kettle hung from a hook in the fireplace. Corbeau watched as she checked the water level and resettled the vessel on a stand straddling the coals. Her movements were strong and efficient. She might carry herself like a delicate flower, but there had been a time when she’d been accustomed to hard work. She’d been an invaluable assistant, when Moreau the Alchemist had more work than she was physically capable of performing. Sophie had never had a head for compounding, but she could follow a recipe with precision. And where Corbeau even still risked offending entire rooms every time she opened her mouth, silver-tongued Sophie couldn’t turn a corner without turning up new clients as well.

Tension gradually began to drain from Corbeau’s neck and back. She hung her coat on the rack near the door and took off her boots. Sophie hadn’t been joking—she really was going to set up a bath, right in the middle of her main room. It had been so long since Corbeau had done more than run a moist cloth over her body. The thought of availing herself of a basin of hot water and Sophie’s collection of scented soaps made her almost giddy.

Sophie pulled a fine mesh screen halfway across the fireplace, taking care not to damage the hammered-metal dragonflies that adorned it. She laid a sheet across the tiles in front of the fireplace and set a large washing basin on top of it. The basin was strictly for bathing—Sophie sent her linens out. Often. While the kettle warmed over the coals, she poured cold water into the basin and laid out a selection of oils, ointments, and clean, dry cloths. She dripped fragrant oil into the basin, attending to her preparations as if they were sacraments.

What they were about to do was an offense to most Parisians’ religious sensibilities as well as to simple common sense—and not merely because they would surely end up behind the lacquered door of Sophie’s bedroom. Decent people, when forced to remove the layer of grime that many considered to have divine disease-repelling powers, dabbed themselves off quickly and changed their linen undergarments. Only the decadent ever immersed themselves, never mind with the indulgence of oils, hot water, and someone fetching to apply them.

“What a den of sin,” Corbeau said. Her voice broke the tension. “Vanity, sensuality, lust, and we’re both still fully dressed. Can’t wait for Vautrin to read my proof of confession for this one.”

“You forgot pleasure. It’s not technically a sin, even though people think it should be.”

“Since when do you believe in sin?”

“I’ve been making a study.”

Corbeau peeled off her wet socks and stuffed them into her boots. She squatted, resting her elbows on her knees. Of all the changes they’d gone through during their separation, she’d never expected Sophie would flirt with religion. And what a funny kind of religion—so blasé about the carnal transgressions that were about to transpire, yet so earnest about the existence of actual spiritual wrongdoing.