THE OLD FREIGHTSHIP WAS DARK and empty at first. But as they wove onward, through the hallway of Fret 7, Marcellus began to hear noises. Heavy footsteps rattling across the metal floors above. Distant shouts echoing and vibrating down the old rusting pipes that snaked along the walls. Even though it was the middle of the night and well past curfew, the whole Fret felt as if it were coming alive.
“This way,” Chatine said, leading him deftly through the corridors toward the exit.
The alleyway between the Frets was teeming with people. All of them on the move. All of them heading determinedly in the direction of the Marsh. Marcellus’s gaze flitted around, astounded, as they joined the moving crowd.
“What’s going on?” Chatine asked, fear glimmering in her cat-like gray eyes.
Marcellus shook his head. “I don’t know.”
The AirLink conversation had been brief. Too brief to make sense of.
“Meet me in the Marsh. Near the west entrance. She’s gone too far.”
And then it had been over. The pale-eyed man had vanished, leaving Marcellus and Chatine in a stunned silence. At first Marcellus had believed it was a trap. But there was something about the urgency in his voice and the fear in his eyes. It was real.
A Third Estate man in a ragged hood shoved Marcellus from behind. “Better hurry up, or you’ll miss it,” he growled before disappearing into the river of streaming people.
Marcellus and Chatine shared an anxious glance before picking up their pace. Jostled and breathless, they finally reached the Marsh and both came to a skidding, astonished halt. The marketplace, even though it was the dead of night, was jammed. Marcellus had never seen so many people crammed into this space, even on the busiest of market days. The shuttered stalls had been shoved aside, some even pushed over, and the thrumming, vibrating, boisterous crowd were all moving in the same direction. Toward the center of the Marsh.
Toward the towering statue of Thibault Paresse, the Patriarche who had founded this planet.
“What is this?” Marcellus asked as a shiver traveled down his spine.
“It’s her,” came a voice behind them.
Marcellus and Chatine spun to find themselves face-to-face with the man from the TéléCom screen. The man who had stood idly by as a hothouse was demolished and three innocent superviseurs were killed in the blast. The man who had held Cerise down while his sister tried to brand her with a laser. The man who had played a vital part in the death of Azelle Renard.
The brother of both an innocent victim and a guilty terrorist.
Jolras Epernay.
Marcellus felt his blood grow hot at the sight of him standing there, trying to remain still amidst the jostling crowd that pushed past them from every direction.
“It’s Max,” he said, and Marcellus could hear that same urgency and fear in his voice.
“Who?” Marcellus asked.
“My sister,” Jolras said. “Maximilienne. She’s … She’s out of control. I’ve been trying to warn you for days.”
“Why me?”
“Because I saw the arrest warrant,” Jolras said. “I know you’re with the Vangarde. And we need their help if we want to stop her.”
“I am not your ally,” Marcellus spat. “I don’t want anything to do with the Red Scar.”
“Neither do I,” Jolras said. It came like a slap. Fast and unexpected with the sting of surprise.
“What?” Marcellus snapped.
Jolras glanced around at the thick sea of bodies and huffed out an impatient sigh. As though he wasn’t sure how much time they had for explanations. “At first, yes, I was excited about the idea. I was angry about what the Ministère did to Nadette, and it felt good to be doing something to retaliate. But Max, she …” His voice trailed off and he tugged brutally at the end of one of his curls. “Her anger goes beyond reason. Beyond limits. She’s turned into someone I don’t even recognize. Something has to be done. She’s …” And then he repeated the same chilling words he’d said on the TéléCom. “She’s gone too far.”
Marcellus narrowed his eyes. “What do you mean?” he asked.
But it was the crowd who answered. A raucous, deafening cheer exploded all around them, and they were suddenly shoved forward. Marcellus tried to peer up ahead, in the direction everyone was moving. At first, through the gloom, he could see nothing but bodies and the shadows of the giant Frets looming over the Marsh. But as the tide jostled the three of them deeper into the marketplace, toward the looming statue up ahead, Marcellus caught sight of something he’d wished and prayed he would never see again.
It was the blue glow he spotted first.
And then, as he moved closer still, he saw the perfectly straight line of light sending sparks and blinding azure flashes into the misty air.
His body went cold. Colder than it had been crammed into a crate full of ice packs in the cargo hold of a voyageur. Colder than it had been trapped in the frozen tundra of the Terrain Perdu.
This was a cold that gripped not only his limbs. But his mind and his heart and his hope.
Chatine let out a gasp, her eyes locked on the sight in front of her. “Is that the—?”
But she never got a chance to finish the question, because just then, they were shoved again from behind and pushed forward.
Closer and closer.
Until Marcellus could see it all.
The flat bed of metal.
The two jutting PermaSteel columns.
The blue laser sparking furiously between them.
“The Blade,” someone whispered behind them, answering Chatine’s unfinished question and sending a shudder through Marcellus’s frozen body.
The Red Scar hadn’t stolen it to destroy it. They’d stolen it to use it.
Chatine glanced around, her eyes wide with horror and panic. “Where are the droids?” she whispered, and Marcellus suddenly realized she was right. That was what was missing here. The three-mètre-high monsters that had become a permanent fixture in the Frets were nowhere to be found in this madness.
“They were called to deal with several disturbances strategically spread out among the city and the outskirts,” Jolras whispered back. “An explosion in the fabriques, another two in the exploits, a ransack of the power plant in Lacrête, and a handful of riots in the fermes. Timed diversions. All premeditated. All in preparation for this.”
Marcellus shivered at the implication. Thousands of Third Estaters crammed into the Marsh after curfew, with no means of policing them.
Then, as if echoing his very fears, the crowd around them roared, and Marcellus found himself being shoved again from all sides. He reached out and grabbed on to Chatine’s hand. But when he turned to look for Jolras, he was nowhere to be found, swallowed by this thrumming, vibrating sea of people who were now cheering and shouting, raising their fists into the air.
But, despite the deafening noise, there was one voice he could hear above them all.
“It is time to end the tyranny. It is time to end our hunger and our misery.”
Marcellus knew the voice instantly. There was no mistaking it.
Up ahead, on a makeshift stage positioned right below Thibault Paresse’s feet, he spotted her.
Maximilienne.
She stood beside the gleaming, purring exécuteur, her shaved head glowing in the blue light of the laser. Her red hood was pushed back to reveal the whole of her face and her fist was punched fiercely into the night air.
“It is time to end the injustice, the servitude, the hours we spend toiling for the upper estates so they can live in luxury in their precious Ledôme.”
The crowd around Marcellus shouted in response. He could feel the coiled tension, the awakened excitement, and the hunger for something more than food, radiating off them.
“It is time for them to see that we are the power. We are the true beating heart of this planet. We, the Third Estate, are everything. And now that our Skins have been turned off and our life-long shackles removed, we can finally take control of what is rightfully ours.”
Another resounding, deafening roar erupted around them.
It was almost more terrifying than watching the general’s weapon. Because these Third Estaters were being fueled by their own minds. Their own desire to fight.
“It is time to destroy that which destroys us and destroys our children. It is time to look into the eyes of our enemy for the last and final time.” With that, Maximilienne raised a single hand into the air, like she was calling forth the skies.
Behind her, Marcellus could see a group of her comarades in red hoods shuffling forward, dragging something with them. His stomach knew what it was before his eyes could even make sense of it.
Grasped between two of the hooded men, shivering and cowed and dressed in nothing but a battered cloth, was …
“It is time to remove that which oppresses us.”
As she said these words, the figures in the red hoods shoved forward their captive.
The bare-footed man.
The quavering man.
The Patriarche.
Suddenly, the roaring and shouting stopped. The whole Marsh fell silent. The man they’d only ever seen on their Skins was now in front of them, as clear as if the Sols had risen and were shining down onto the stage. But gone were the Patriarche’s fine clothes and polished shoes. Gone was his powdered, smooth skin and perfectly coiffed hair. Now he looked like one of them. A Third Estater. Battered and damp and beaten, shivering from the cold air—and the fear.
“Our beloved, fearless leader was caught trying to flee from our planet,” Maximilienne explained with a biting sharpness in her tone. “We captured him on his way to the Vallonay spaceport. He was trying to abandon us in our time of need. Just like he and his wretched family have abandoned us for centuries.”
Marcellus felt his knees weaken, and as though sensing his waning strength, Chatine tightened her grasp around his hand.
“It’s time to put an end to our Darkest Night and welcome in our new dawn,” Maximilienne bellowed.
The figures in red grabbed the Patriarche again and pushed him fiercely down onto the metal block of the exécuteur. His whole body shone blue from the strip of blinding light above him. His auburn hair flopped to the side like a discarded mop, and his terrified eyes flashed like two shining pebbles. His mouth opened and closed, as if he wanted to say something, to shout something. But nothing came out.
The crowd whooped and jeered at the sight.
“Are they really going to do this?” Chatine asked, her voice trembling and barely audible above the din.
Marcellus could do nothing but numbly shake his head.
He did not know the answer to that question. Nor the answer to every question that seemed to line up behind it.
Marcellus glanced up at the statue that towered above them all. The founding Patriarche loomed over this spectacle like a disappointed father, reprimanding his children. And then Marcellus looked back at the current Patriarche, shivering and whimpering as his head was pressed down against the block.
A once-mighty man reduced to nothing.
Marcellus had always known Lyon Paresse to be a fool. A greedy, selfish leader. But he didn’t deserve this. No one deserved this.
Marcellus tried to push his way closer to the stage, but it was impossible. The people were unyielding. Unmoving. Like a battalion of impenetrable droids.
Then a crackling sound reverberated through the crowd. Marcellus snapped his gaze back to the stage to see the laser beginning to move.
Beginning to descend.
Beginning to slice its way through the swirling, wet air.
The crowd fell silent again. The hum and sizzle of the laser was more deafening than any shout or roar of a riled up Third Estater. The blue light sparked and flashed, consuming every molecule of mist in its path.
And then it happened.
The laser cut through the Patriarche’s neck in one clean and crackling slice.
There was no blood, no scream, no sound. Except the thud of the Patriarche’s head as it dropped onto the metal slats of the stage.
Then, like a dream, like a nightmare unfurling, came the smell.
The familiar, terrible smell of burning flesh.
The smell of a planet about to ignite.