I nodded and turned to leave. A few paces later, I realized Arcturus wasn’t with me and looked back just in time to see him give Katell an extra few notes. She took them as if they would bite her.
“She cannot have given birth more than a week ago,” Arcturus said to me, once he caught up.
Tenderness surged in me. “I know. I wanted to give her more, too,” I said, “but we have to be careful how much of that cash we spend. With Alsafi gone, I presume we’re going to have a lean period.”
“Most likely. Unless Burnish can help us, Terebell fears the line of communication with our financiers could be lost.” Arcturus fastened the top of his coat. “You are right to recommend frugality.”
I wished Scion had more room for compassion. I wished I didn’t feel the need to curb it in him.
“So. This Man in the Iron Mask.” I pushed my hands into my pockets as we pressed on. “Think it’s a Rephaite?”
“A Rephaite would not abduct a human. My kind would leave such work to underlings.”
A disquieting thought occurred.
“The Rag and Bone Man vanished after the scrimmage,” I said. “No one saw or heard of him again after that night, even though I put a substantial bounty on his head. He has an unusual aura, like you. If he was the attacker, that could be why Katell mistook you for him.”
“You believe he may have fled here.”
“Maybe. If he did, I’ll wager he’s up to his old tricks. Selling voyants to Scion again.”
“There is no reason to fear that the gray market has resurfaced. Caron may simply have been arrested.”
“True. I suppose he could also have had a run-in with debt collectors. Or vigilantes. All kinds of ways to disappear in Scion.” I spoke with more conviction than I felt. Something felt off. “For now, let’s just find the syndicate. Remind me what carrières means?”
“Quarries. Katell was referring to the system of abandoned mines and ossuaries that lies beneath the skin of Paris, which covers at least two hundred miles. Scion has never been able to map it.”
“Sounds like the perfect hideout. And Mélusine could be our key to it. Our next link.”
“She will still be in the citadel tomorrow, Paige. It can wait.”
“I’m not tired.”
A barefaced lie. We both knew it. I also knew that if I didn’t push myself, I would never get my strength back.
“It will be safer if we separate for the journey,” Arcturus said. He stopped and handed me a roll of notes. “For your cab. I will meet you at an establishment in Montparnasse—La Mère des Douleurs. Ask the waitron for a café sombre.”
“Café sombre.” I raised an eyebrow. “Is the goal to sound as much like a tourist as possible?”
“Indeed. An ostensible mistake that will not attract unwelcome attention.”
“You really are the prince of mystery, you know that?”
“Yes.”
I tamped down a bout of nerves as I tucked the cash away. I couldn’t be afraid of striking out alone. If I let that sort of dread set in, it would mean the torture had broken something I might never fix.
“A gloomy coffee at the Mother of Sorrows.” As I turned away, I threw him a smile. “You really know how to show a girl a good time, Arcturus.”
I was sure the corner of his mouth flinched.
3
Gloomy Coffee
It was a short walk to the Porte Nord. Two pickpockets trailed me for a while, but when I turned and gave them a level stare, they melted away.
Carven faces gaped down at me from the triumphal arch, which honored the French soldiers who had fallen at the Battle of the Iron Gates during the Balkan Incursion. Idling across the street was a car with dabs of azure paint above its wheels. I climbed in, gave the address, and we were off. The cabbie smoked like damp kindling and paid me little mind.
Dull pain throbbed in my temple. Twice I snapped out of a drowse. The car rattled back over the river and into the south of the citadel, where it braked outside the shell of a church. I paid the cabbie and waded through a snowbank, toward a coffeehouse on the corner.
La Mère des Douleurs didn’t look as if it hid any secrets. The awnings over its outdoor tables were heavy with snow, its façade peacock blue, and bay windows flanked its door, each square pane laced with frost. The menu promised hot spiced mecks and Lyonnaise-style cuisine.
Inside, I scraped mud and snow from my boots. Customers lounged on wicker chairs, eating and talking. I checked my lenses were still in place as a waitron approached me.
“Bonjour,” she said.
“Bonjour.” Hoping I wasn’t about to make a fool of myself, I went for it: “Je voudrais un café sombre, s’il vous plaît.”
She didn’t miss a beat: “Très bon choix, Madelle.”
I followed her to the back of the building, past tables and framed photographs, and she took a key from her apron. She led me through a concealed door and down a winding flight of steps.
We descended into a tunnel, which resonated with chamber music and the beehive hum of a hundred conversations. It seemed many Parisians had a taste for gloomy coffee.
The waitron escorted me past a statue of a veiled woman, who seemed to be holding her own heart. Candles glimmered at her feet. An amaurotic was on his knees before her, hands clasped, head bowed. Dim impressions came to me: fragrant smoke, voices raised to a vaulted ceiling. Tendrils of a memory.
The coffeehouse was a warren of cozy spaces, lit by tapers and cluttered with tables. A peppery fug of tobacco and regal hung in the air. The vast majority of these patrons were voyant. I was getting closer.
In the largest chamber, where a quartet of whisperers played baroque violins, several alcoves served as private booths, cut off from the rest of the coffeehouse by red velvet curtains. I took the last vacant one and slipped into an upholstered seat. The waitron set down a glass of hot blood mecks and a basket of bread before she closed the curtains. I removed my gloves and read the menu, which boasted such delicacies as cassoulet au cimetière and tarte ténébreuse.
My eyelids were heavy. Now that I had stopped moving, all my aches had crept back in. I kept my coat on and burrowed into it.
Arcturus soon joined me in my alcove. The curtains fell together in his wake, muffling the clamor again.
“This place is so . . . you.” I took a slice of bread. “How on earth do you know your way into a secret coffeehouse?”
“You sound surprised,” Arcturus said. “I have been a revolutionary for a very long time.”
“Oh, yes. Such a rebel, with your organ-playing and gramophones and good manners.”
“Are you mocking me, Paige Mahoney?”
“Fondly.” I smiled into my glass. “Seriously, how did you find this place?”
“After France pledged to Scion, this crypt was used first for clandestine religious services. Later, artists and musicians discovered it, too,” he said. “Nine years ago, Nashira sent Alsafi to find a seditious painter, and his investigation led him here. He told me about it.”
“Did he turn the painter over?”
“Yes, though he did not betray the crypt. Alsafi did only what he believed was necessary to keep his place beside the blood-sovereign.”