THERE WAS SOMETHING ABOUT SPACE travel that made it feel like time was moving in slow motion. Or maybe it was just this space travel. Marcellus stood in the middle of the bridge, watching the flight clock tick down.
4 days. 13 hours. 9 minutes.
It seemed for every minute that passed on the hologram, a thousand hours would pass in his mind.
At this rate, he’d be an old man by the time they reached Albion. And his grandfather would rule Laterre. And they would be too late.
“I just can’t get over how endless it is.”
Marcellus startled at the sound of the voice and peered up to see Alouette standing in the doorway.
“The flight?” Marcellus asked, certain she, too, was experiencing this strange sense of time paralysis.
She shook her head. “The view.”
“Ah. Right.” Marcellus turned toward the massive domed windows and sighed. “Yes. It’s almost unfathomable.”
Alouette moved through the flight bridge and came to stand next to him. The glow from the console seemed to turn her curls a beautiful indigo blue, and her dark brown eyes twinkled like jewels in one of the Matrone’s ceremonial tiaras. Marcellus stole a quick glance at her from the corner of his eye. He still couldn’t believe she was actually here. With him. On a voyageur destined for Albion. So much had happened since he’d first seen her in the Jondrette. And now that he was finally able to breathe and think, all the questions that had been queuing up in his mind came flooding back.
“So,” he said, trying to keep his voice light, conversational. “You’ve been busy.”
She turned and flashed him a confused look. “Busy?”
He counted on his fingers. “Running away from the Vangarde, getting arrested, escaping the Policier, incapacitating Inspecteur Limier—”
“Is he dead?” The question darted out of her, fast and desperate, as though it had been plaguing her for weeks.
“Limier? No. I mean, I don’t think so.” Marcellus’s mind flashed back to the inspecteur convulsing violently on that gurney in the infirmerie. “Last I heard, the médecins were still working on him, but they didn’t know whether or not he’d fully recover.”
Alouette dropped her gaze to the ground, looking pained. “It was an accident. I was just defending myself.”
“I know. It’s okay.” Marcellus felt the sudden urge to reach out and comfort her, but he didn’t know how. It had only been a few weeks since they’d sat at that fireside together in the Forest Verdure, but somehow it felt like years ago. Like they’d been different people back then, leading different lives. And now they had to start all over again.
“He came after my father,” Alouette said, her gaze still trained on the floor, as though it were the only safe place to look.
“Jean LeGrand?”
She nodded. “Yes. But he goes by Hugo Taureau now, and as it turns out, he wasn’t my real father. That’s why I was in Montfer. I was trying to learn the truth about my past. Mostly about my mother.”
“Your mother?” Marcellus had never heard Alouette talk about her mother.
“Her name was Lisole. She died a long time ago.” Alouette’s voice fell to a cracked whisper. “I don’t even remember her.”
Marcellus glanced away as something sharp jabbed him from the inside. An old wound he’d thought he’d healed from. He couldn’t remember his mother either.
“I just wanted answers,” Alouette went on, sounding like she was being stabbed by that same sharp object. “I just wanted to know where I came from.”
“And?” Marcellus asked. “Did you find out?”
She shook her head. “Not really. I followed a clue to a bordel in Montfer, where my mother used to sell her blood when I was a baby. To try to make ends meet. I thought the madame would be helpful. But she just made everything more confusing. She seemed to be under the impression that I was …” Her voice trailed off, as though whatever was supposed to come next was too difficult to say aloud.
“That you were what?”
She let out a deep shudder. “Dead.”
Marcellus flinched. That was certainly not what he’d expected her to say. “Dead?”
“That’s what my mother told her.”
“Why would she do that?”
Alouette shook her head. “I don’t know. Then the madame turned on me, and the Policier came, and it was sort of a mess.” She reached down and rubbed at her wrist where Marcellus could see hints of dark purple bruises. “Anyway, the whole thing was just one big dead end. And now …” Alouette bit her lip as though her next words terrified her. “Now I’m starting to wonder if I ever should have left.”
“Why did you leave?” Marcellus asked. “My contact at the Vangarde said you were no longer with them.”
“I was never with them,” Alouette said, somewhat forcefully. Then she took a breath that seemed to calm her. “I mean, not that I knew about. They told me nothing.”
“And you never even suspected?”
“No,” she said. “Never. They were always just sisters to me. Teachers and scholars. They were never …”—she paused, hesitating—“revolutionaries. I guess that makes me the fool, doesn’t it?”
“That’s not what I meant,” Marcellus rushed to say.
Alouette’s face softened. “I know. I’m sorry. I’m still just trying to process it all. Twelve years of lies is a lot to sort through. I didn’t find out who they really were until that night I saw you in the Frets. After you showed me those images of Sister Jacqui and Sister Denise.”
Marcellus knew the moment she was referring to. He could still see the look in her eyes when they’d stood in that hallway of Fret 7 and he’d told her about the Vangarde operatives who had been captured breaking into the warden’s office. She’d looked at him like he was speaking in another language.
“Do you know where they are?” Alouette blurted out, the possibility clearly just occurring to her.
Marcellus shook his head, hating to disappoint her. “I’m sorry. I don’t. My grandfather has a detention facility hidden somewhere. It’s where he takes prisoners to …”
He didn’t dare finish that sentence. But the darkness that passed over her eyes told him without a doubt that she knew. She understood exactly what happened at a facility like that.
“And you have no idea where this”—Alouette swallowed—“facility might be?”
“No. My grandfather never told me. I’m pretty sure there are only two people on the planet who know where it is: the general and Limier. At least Limier did know, at one point. His circuitry was pretty fried from the rayonette pulse. And it damaged his memory chip.”
Alouette nodded, her fingers fidgeting absentmindedly with something inside her sac. Marcellus glanced down to see a glint of silver from her string of metal beads. He stared at them, remembering the night he’d stood in that same dark and dingy hallway of Fret 7 and that necklace had somehow triggered a strange message to appear on the screen of his TéléCom.
“You never told me what it said.” Marcellus’s voice was quiet and hesitant.
Alouette looked at him, confused.
“The message that Denise sent you through my TéléCom.”
At first, Alouette didn’t respond. She just continued to thread her fingers pensively through the beads. And Marcellus worried that she still wouldn’t tell him. Even after everything that had just happened. But then, in a distant, trance-like voice, she whispered, “When the Lark flies home, the Regime will fall.”
Marcellus stood stunned and silent for a long moment, trying to make sense of these peculiar words.
When the Lark flies home, the Regime will fall?
“What does that mean?”
Alouette shrugged. “I don’t know. Honestly, I don’t know what to think about anything anymore. Fly home? I don’t even know where that is. I’m not entirely sure I have a home. I just …” She dropped her gaze back to the floor. “I just feel so … lost.”
Marcellus’s brain squeezed as he tried to make sense of all this. But it was like trying to look at a picture through broken plastique. The edges were blurry, the image was warped, and nothing seemed to fit together.
The pounding of footsteps jolted Marcellus out of his thoughts, and he turned toward the flight bridge door just as Cerise barreled through it, clutching a TéléCom in her hand.
Panic instantly spiraled through him. Had their mission failed already?
“Marcellus!” she said, winded. “You need to hear this.”
“Hear what?”
“I was just working on your TéléCom, to check that the tracking capabilities were still deactivated, and I found”—she paused and put a hand to her heaving chest, trying to catch her breath—“a signal.”
“What kind of signal?” he asked.
“An open AirLink signal. It’s encrypted but it’s coming straight from the south wing of the Grand Palais.”
Comprehension flooded Marcellus, and he exhaled a sigh of relief. “That’s an auditeur. I planted it in the general’s office before I left.”
Cerise scoffed. “I know. I figured that part out on my own. Merci for telling me, by the way. It nearly gave me a heart attack. I thought the general was tracking us.”
Marcellus cringed. “Sorry. There’s been a lot going on. And I honestly didn’t think the signal would reach out here.”
“The signal does. But I had to amplify it to be able to hear what was being said.” Cerise hastily tapped on the TéléCom. “I think you should hear this. It’s about the Vangarde.”
Alouette flinched and looked to Marcellus with wide, fearful eyes. He nodded to Cerise. “Play it through the speakers.”
Cerise tapped on the screen and Marcellus felt Alouette’s hand slip shakily into his. He gave it a reassuring squeeze.
“When I recognized my father’s voice,” Cerise explained, “I immediately started logging the transmission.”
“Your father?” Marcellus had rarely known Directeur Chevalier to come to the general’s private study in the Palais. They normally met in the Ministère’s Cyborg and Technology Labs.
Cerise nodded gravely and Marcellus recognized the regret that flashed in her dark eyes. As though she really despised being the one to convey whatever they were about to hear.
“What’s all the commotion?” Gabriel appeared in the doorway, rubbing at his eyes. “I was trying to sleep.”
“Shh,” Cerise urged him and pressed play on the TéléCom.
At first there was nothing but a low hum through the speakers. Then, with a sharp click, Directeur Chevalier’s voice began speaking, midsentence. “… the results of the analysis you requested for the devices found on the captured Vangarde operatives.”
Devices?
It took Marcellus a moment to connect the dots in his mind. He remembered something his grandfather had said during their last hunting trip with the Patriarche. He’d told the Patriarche that Directeur Chevalier’s team was analyzing the necklaces that had been found on Jacqui and Denise when they were arrested.
Necklaces just like the one still peeking out from Alouette’s sac.
“As we suspected,” the directeur went on, “they are not just decorative. The two devices we analyzed are part of a larger communication network that the Vangarde have been using.”
Alouette turned to Marcellus with desperate, searching eyes. “What is he talking about?”
Marcellus drew in a heavy breath and nodded toward Alouette’s bag. “He’s talking about the beads.”
Alouette’s whole body went rigid. “The sisters’ beads?”
“What can you tell me about this network?” the general’s voice boomed out from the TéléCom, causing Marcellus to flinch.
“The devices were still active when we apprehended the operatives,” the directeur said, “so we were able to trace the signal back to a server. Unfortunately, we’ve been unable to discern the location yet. But what we did discover is that there are eleven devices total, all connecting through the same network.”
“Eleven?” the general repeated gruffly. “What is the significance of that?”
“There’s no way to know for sure,” the directeur replied. “But our working hypothesis is that the eleven necklaces belong to current leaders of the Vangarde. The highest-ranking members of their organization.”
Dazedly, slowly, Alouette reached into her sac and withdrew her string of metallic beads. Cerise jabbed the TéléCom to pause the playback and stared openmouthed at the necklace now dangling from Alouette’s fingertip, the little metal tag glinting in the console lights.
“Wait a minute. You’re Vangarde too?” Gabriel, who up until this moment had been lingering in the back of the flight bridge, suddenly pushed his way into the middle of the group. “Am I the only one on this ship who is not Vangarde?”
Alouette ignored him as her eyes swiveled back and forth, following the metal tag that was swinging like a pendulum. When she finally spoke, her voice was so quiet, it was as though the words were only meant to be heard by her. Disjointed thoughts whispered aloud in search of meaning. “Ten sisters. Ten strings of devotion beads. Plus mine equals eleven. Connected to the same network.” She gasped with a sudden epiphany. “Principale Francine! She gave me my devotion beads the night before I snuck out of the Refuge for the second time. She told me it was because they were going to make me a sister. But they knew. Of course they did. They knew I was sneaking out. They gave these to me so they could keep me safe.” Her head snapped up, her gaze finding Marcellus’s. “They’re tracking me.”
“Were,” Cerise replied in a low, somber tone that sent a ripple of dread through Marcellus.
Alouette’s brow furrowed. “What do you mean?”
Tears were already glistening in Cerise’s eyes as she let out a burdened breath and resumed the playback on the TéléCom.
It was the general who spoke next. And even though his voice was coming from all the way back on Laterre, it still felt like he was standing right there in the flight bridge with them. His imposing presence translating across millions of miles of space. “So, if we have two of them in custody, that means there are nine Vangarde leaders still out there?”
There was a long pause, during which Marcellus felt sweat start to pool on the back of his neck. When the directeur finally replied, there was something different about his voice. A levity that made Marcellus queasy. “That’s the good news, sir.”
“Good news?” the general repeated.
“We were able to run a trace through the server and pull status updates on all eleven devices. One is offline. Two are still active—those are the ones we analyzed, belonging to the operatives in custody. But the remaining eight are all dead.”
Dead.
The word felt like a stone sinking to the pit of Marcellus’s stomach. He glanced over at Alouette. She looked frozen. Paralyzed. A statue of disbelief.
“What do you mean ‘dead’?” The general’s gravelly voice held a hint of hope.
“The last time the remaining eight devices connected to the server was on Month 7, Day 32. The night of Rousseau’s attempted escape.”
Silence filled the general’s office. A silence so thick and so laced with insinuation, it seeped out of the TéléCom like a poisonous gas, spreading through the flight bridge, leaving charred streaks in the atmosphere.
Then the general asked the final question that stood between him and his long-fought victory over a rebel group called the Vangarde. “Where did the last connection come from?”
Marcellus felt the stars shift even before the answer came. Even before the directeur said those two words that confirmed everything Marcellus had been fearing for days.
“From Bastille.”
They really were on their own.