PART ONE
Desperate Disease
1
The Sky Above the Conciergerie Prison, Paris
15 Prairial Year II
A bullet ripped through the fabric of the hot air balloon, and Ada knew their whole plan had been a terrible mistake. Dangling high above the most notorious prison in Robespierre’s Paris, her faith in the scientific forces holding them aloft seemed suddenly a lot more questionable. The job was simple: rescue Olympe Marie de l’Aubespine, who was being held prisoner before being taken to the guillotine. The plan was anything but. Breaking someone out of the Conciergerie had never been done before. So they’d needed to do something no one had ever tried.
‘If we die, I’m going to kill you.’ Al clung to the wicker basket beside Ada, blond hair whipping around his pale, pinched face as the hot air balloon lurched violently.
Stomach in anxious knots, Ada yanked on several ropes and pulleys at once, sending them bobbing slantways over the rooftops. ‘If you don’t start helping, Al, I’ll kill you first.’
She threw bag after bag of ballast over the side and watched them thunk onto the cobbles far below. Not far enough below for her liking. Streets and squares and parks unfurled beneath them, sprawling out from the prison like a spider’s web. A muddy swirl of slate roofs and green treetops washed up against the brown ribbon of the Seine as it flowed through the centre. The river split around the Île de la Cité, where the Notre Dame cathedral dominated at one end. At the other lay the prison, among the complex of law courts and Revolutionary headquarters. Above them, a broad sky yawned the cool eggshell blue of a half-hearted summer.
The tear in the balloon flapped jauntily in the wind, huffing out precious hot air. Ada had thought they’d been too high up for the prison guards’ musket fire to reach them.
She’d been wrong.
In the distance, she could just about see the Place de la Révolution, where the guillotine lay waiting. When the Revolution had started five years ago, it had been called Place Louis XV, named for the previous king. There had been hope of building a new France, of finding a better, fairer way to rule. But the new government had floundered, and King Louis XVI had been executed in the same square. It changed everything. It was as though France was a frustrated child, finally getting what it wanted, but finding the prize sour and disappointing. Without the king, people still starved, inequality continued. The country splintered and the different factions spat at each other like a serpent with many heads. In the middle of all of it, Ada, Al and the rest of the Battalion of the Dead were the last port of call for anyone with a loved one in trouble – whatever side they were on – with prison breaks their speciality.
Ada loved the thrill of the chase, the flare of pride when a plan came off. But sometimes she knew they pushed their luck too far. The hiss of escaping air gave her the creeping fear that this was going to be the last mistake she ever made.
‘What do we do?’ shrieked Al, peering over the edge at the crenellations of the prison that were rapidly rising to meet them.
Ada rammed a hairpin back in place to secure the tight, black curls that framed her brown face. She threw another couple of ballast bags overboard, giving a calculating glance at the ground to try to judge their rate of descent. Dread made her chest tight, but she was damned if she’d let Al see it.
‘I’m making us lighter,’ she explained. ‘It’s a basic scientific principle. Hot air rises – we have lots of hot air above us – but only if we’re lighter than the volume of air.’
‘Are you mad? Air doesn’t weigh anything!’ Al clutched at the ropes, face ashen. ‘I’m going to die because a madwoman thinks she can weigh air. Dead, disowned and not even eighteen.’
Ada rolled her eyes. She yanked at the burner, sending a jet of flame soaring, praying the other members of the battalion were in place, ready to carry out their part of the plan.
‘Just throw the ballast overboard.’
The flame licked the drooping fabric and it started to smoulder. Al watched it curiously.
‘Is that supposed to happen?’
‘No.’ She swallowed. ‘It really isn’t.’
A rush of fire whooshed over the fabric and the balloon began to disintegrate around them. Below, guards clustered on the prison roof, pointing and shouting. She wondered what they must look like to them: one pale face, one dark, hurtling down in a shower of flames like Lucifer falling from the heavens.
Al grabbed her hand, naked panic in his eyes.
The last of the balloon was swallowed up, and then they were free-falling into the most notorious prison in Paris.
Well, they were supposed to create a distraction.
2
A Room on the Quai de la Mégisserie
‘Ten livre.’ Camille lumped the stack of coins on the table.
The soldier scowled. ‘You said twenty.’
‘I also said turn up on time and don’t tell anyone you’re coming. But you failed on both those counts.’
‘I didn’t tell anyone.’
‘You told someone ten minutes after our deal. Or were you too drunk to remember telling Guil, here, that you could make good money selling your uniform to mad bitches in trousers?’
Guillaume smiled pleasantly from where he blocked the exit of the garret they’d rented opposite the Conciergerie.
The soldier cursed.
‘Ten livre.’ She pushed the coins across to him.
He snatched them up and Guil stepped aside to let him slope away.
Guil put on the uniform and took Camille’s pistol from her, tucking it into his belt. The uniform suited him; the blue and white tailored to his strong physique, the colours crisp against his dark skin. Suited the soldier he had once been. He was the oldest of her battalion but his months at the front in Germany made him seem far older, more authoritative. She was relying on it to get them into the prison.
Her disguise for the job was easier to come by: cheap canvas trousers, a worn-through shirt and a tattered jacket. She paused in front of the spotted mirror, scrubbing her hair into a rat’s nest and rumpling her clothes. Her pale face was already smudged with dirt, completing her look.
Frowning, Guil crossed to the window.
‘Camille – you ought to see this.’
She joined him at the window.
Above the prison, the last scrap of balloon disappeared from sight. Her stomach sank.
‘Did you tell Ada to do that?’ asked Guil.
‘Definitely not.’
‘I said Al should have stayed behind. He cannot be trusted with such a responsibility.’
Camille fell back from the window, fingers twisting in the cuffs of her shirt. She’d told Ada and Al to cause a distraction with the balloon, not crash the thing. Ada would be fine – she was clever, resourceful – Ada had to be fine.
The memory of Ada lighting the balloon’s burner in the Jardin du Luxembourg came unbidden to her, the warm rush of flame catching, lighting Ada’s brown skin, picking out the tawny flecks in her eyes. Ada’s fingers sliding against hers, comforting, intimate, gentle. They’d stood side by side watching the balloon slowly inflate and take shape. Before they’d cut the tether, Ada had leaned down and tucked a stray lock of Camille’s hair behind her ear, running her thumb along her jaw. When she got her hands on Ada again she didn’t know what she was going to do first, kiss her or yell at her for frightening her so badly.