The Fleshers, however, listen to no one but the Tiger, so they ignore St. Juste and lunge at me. Two of them grab me from behind, and I’m thrown to the ground. They begin to kick me, and I scratch and yowl, striking out with a dagger that’s been tucked into my boot.
Then someone fires a gun and the Fleshers freeze: men unaccustomed to being crossed rarely carry weapons.
“I will shoot you if you do not unhand that poor child. And what’s more, Grantaire will shoot you as well, and he is far less likely to kill you.”
“I object to that!” says the other man now. “I can shoot perfectly well in my cups, I can! Watch…”
Another shot rings out, and one of the Fleshers yelps and raises a hand to his ear.
“See, I meant to clip that one.”
The Fleshers look at one another. As a Guild, they are not known for their brains. The Tiger adopts only the most violent children, the ones who will obey without question; figuring out a complex problem like this is beyond them.
He takes a second shot, and another Flesher swears and grabs his leg, nearly crumpling to the ground. I can hear the Fleshers scuttling heavily away, but surely only to get weapons and return. I take a second to appreciate the fact that I am still alive.
“I say, Grantaire, that was good! Did you mean to get him right above the knee?”
Someone turns me over, and I am greeted by the sight of two faces staring down at me. One has a mess of black hair, a green waistcoat, and a roguish smile.
“Oh, good, it’s alive!” he says.
The other face scowls at me as if disappointed that I have survived. Even from this perspective I can make out the grim features of a young god, his face carved of marble and determination and framed with a halo of ice-blond hair tied at the nape of his neck. He is beautiful and terrible at the same time in his tailcoat of deep red, with a cravat artfully undone at his throat. In his hand is a fine pistol of gold filigree, which he tucks into his waistband so he can scoop me up and put me on my feet.
“Can you stand?” the dark one asks with concern. Then he wobbles and topples over, making the blond one roll his eyes and go to his aid. The dark one is drunk. They probably both are.
“I’m fine,” I say shortly, biting down at the stinging in my side.
“You seem to have fallen into extremely bad company,” the dark one says from the ground, where he sits batting away the blond one’s attempts to bring him to his feet. “If you want to paw at me, St. Juste, you’ll have to ask for my hand first.”
“No one will ever want to paw you until you are less of a drunk, Grantaire.”
“You are to blame for the depth of my drunkenness, St. Juste. Your meetings positively bore me to tears and drive me to the bottle.”
The blond one gives up and turns to look at me, and it is not a look that I will ever forget. He seems to see right through me, scanning me swiftly and taking in the lines of my clothing, the blood on my cheek, on my hands and my feet.
“We should introduce ourselves to our new friend,” the dark one says. “I do believe this urchin owes us his life.”
I wince at that. The idea of a child of Miracle Court owing a debt to one of Those Who Walk by Day is unthinkable.
“I am in your debt, sirs,” I say, the admission sticking in my throat.
“What is your name, little boy?” the dark one asks.
The blond one’s eyes narrow. “Girl,” he says.
I try not to let my surprise show. Almost nobody can tell I’m a girl.
“Girl? Where?” Grantaire looks around comically, and seeing no one else, he blinks at me and points unnecessarily at my face. “That is a girl?”
I raise my chin defiantly. “They call me the Black Cat,” I offer in response.
“Oh, that is good,” says the dark one. “I want an animal name—can I have an animal name too? What about the Drunken Ferret? And you, St. Juste. You can be…the Oppressive Eagle of Judgment.”
“You can call me Nina,” I say, trying to suppress a smile.
“Well, m’lady Nina, I am Grantaire,” the drunkard continues with a swift return of grace and manners. “And this pinnacle of humanity is Enjolras St. Juste.”
Now it’s my turn to stare. St. Juste, the beautiful. St. Juste, the Angel of Death, whose head is one of the six impaled atop the gates of the Tuileries. One of the six little mice—revolutionaries who set the city aflame and nearly toppled the king and queen only a generation ago. And for their pains the nobility fed them to the guillotine and hunted down all of their known relations, hanging them from the gibbet of Montfaucon.
“You call yourself by that name openly?” I ask.
“Oh, here we go. Don’t get him started about his ancestry,” Grantaire says, and takes a swig from a flask that has appeared in his hand.
“I am not ashamed of my kin,” St. Juste says. “I was in the womb when my uncle tried to change the world. I was brought up under my mother’s name, and so I lived, but what kind of living is it when gangs of brutes set upon children? When little girls are so scared they must hide what they are under layers of shapeless cloth?”
I stare at him. “You’re mad,” I say.
“Perhaps, for only the mad would see the endless darkness, the great evil that reigns around us, and stand against it.”
“They’re going to kill you.”
“Probably,” St. Juste says with a grim smile. “But by all hells, I’ll set this city on fire and take as many of them down with me as I can.” His eyes gleam with a passion I’ve never seen before. It’s both frightening and mesmerizing. Here is a boy who is marching toward his death, and he is delighting in it.
“They’ll hang him from Montfaucon for sure, and us alongside him,” Grantaire says so mournfully that I am released from the spell St. Juste’s words have cast over me. “But we are all his lackeys, for there is a truth in what he says. This city is a broken thing, and the world itself is wrong, and we cannot sit by and do nothing about it.”
“Falling over in taverns is not doing something about it,” St. Juste retorts sharply.
Grantaire smiles at that. “I drink to you, Son of Rebellion, Oppressive Eagle of Judgment.” He raises his flask and salutes his friend before downing its contents.
As he swallows with a heavy hiccup, a sharp cry rends the night. It is the call of Aves, the Elanion; Femi.
“What on earth is that?” Grantaire asks.
“It sounds like some sort of hawk,” offers St. Juste.