The Worm in Every Heart by Gemma Files

the stinking mist. Keeping a careful tandem eye, also, upon the uppermost windows of Dumouriez’s house—refuge of a suspected traitor, and previously listed (before its recent conversion into a many-roomed, half-empty “Citizens’ hotel”) as part of the ancestral holdings of a certain M. le Chevalier du Prendegrace.
    Jean-Guy to La Hire: “This Prendegrace—who is he?”
    â€œA ci-devant aristo, what else? Like all the rest.”
    â€œYes, to be sure; but besides.”
    La Hire shrugs. “Does it matter?”
    Here, in that ill-fit building just across the way, other known aristocrats—men, women and children bearing papers forged expertly enough to permit them to walk the streets of Paris, if not exit through its gates—have often been observed to enter, though rarely been observed to leave. Perhaps attracted by Prendegrace’s reputation as “one of their own,” they place their trust in his creature Dumouriez’s promises of sanctuary, refuge, escape—and the very fact of their own absence, later on, seems to prove that trust has not been given in vain.
    â€œThe sewers,” La Hire suggests. “They served us well enough during the old days, dodging Royallist scum through the Cordelliers’ quarter . . . ”
    Jean-Guy scoffs. “A secret entrance, perhaps, in the cellar? Down to the river with the rest of the garbage, then to the far shore on some subterranean boat?”
    â€œIt’s possible.”
    â€œSo the malgre Church used to claim, concerning Christ’s resurrection.”
    A guffaw. “Ah, but there’s no need to be so bitter about that, Citizen. Is there? Since they’ve already paid so well, after all—those fat-arsed priests—for spreading such pernicious lies.”
    And:
Ah, yes,
Jean-Guy remembers thinking, as he nods in smiling agreement.
Paid in full, on the Widow’s lap . . . just like the King and his Austrian whore, before them.
    Across the street, meanwhile, a far less elevated lady of ill-repute comes edging up through the Row proper, having apparently just failed to drum up any significant business amongst the crowds which line the Widow’s bridal path. Spotting them both, she hikes her skirt to show Jean-Guy first the hem of her scarlet petticoat, then the similarly red-dyed tangle of hair at her crotch. La Hire glances over, draws a toothless grin, and snickers in reply; Jean-Guy affects to ignore her, and receives a rude gesture for his politesse. Determined to avoid the embarrassment of letting his own sudden spurt of anger show, he looks away, eyes flicking back towards the attic’s windows—
    â€”where he sees, framed between its moth-worn curtains, another woman’s face appear: A porcelain-smooth girl’s mask peering out from the darkness behind the cracked glass, grub-pale in the shadows of this supposedly unoccupied apartment. It hangs there, empty as a wax head from Citizen Curtuis’ museum—that studio where images of decapitated friend and foe to France alike are modeled from casts taken by his “niece” Marie, the Grosholtz girl, who will one day abandon Curtuis to the mob he serves and marry another man for passage to England. Where she will set up her own museum, exhibiting the results of her skills under the fresh new name of Madame Tussaud.
    That white face. Those dim-hued eyes. Features once contemptuously regal, now possessed of nothing but a dull and uncomplaining patience. The same wide stare which will meet Jean-Guy’s, after the raid, from atop the grisly burden of Dumouriez’s overcrowded pallet. That proud aristo, limbs flopped carelessly askew, her nude skin dappled—like that of every one of her fellow victims—
    (like Jean-Guy’s own brow now, in 1815, as he studies that invisible point on the wall where the stain of Dumouriez’s escape once hung, dripping)
    â€”with bloody