Addie is famished, cannot even remember the last time she ate. Her dress doesn’t fit, but it never did—she’d stolen it from a washing line two days outside of Paris, tired of the one she’d worn the day of her wedding. Still, it hangs no looser now, despite the days without food or drink. She supposes she does not need to eat, will not perish from hunger—but tell that to her cramping stomach, her shaking legs.
She scans the busy square, thumbs the last coin in her pocket, loath to spend it. Perhaps she does not need to. With so many people in the market, it should be easy to steal what she needs. Or so she thinks, but the merchants of Paris are as cunning as its thieves, and they keep twice as tight a grip on every ware. Addie learns this the hard way; it will be weeks before she learns to palm an apple, longer still to master it without the faintest tell.
Today, she makes a clumsy effort, tries to swipe a seeded roll from a bread-baker’s cart, and is rewarded with a meaty hand vised around her wrist.
“Thief!”
She catches a glimpse of men-at-arms weaving through the crowd, and is flooded with the fear of landing in a cell, or stock. She is still flesh and bone, has not learned yet to pick locks, or charm men out of charges, to free herself from shackles as easily as her face slips from their minds.
So she pleads hastily, handing over her last coin.
He plucks it from her, waves the men away as the sol vanishes into his purse. Far too much for a roll, but he gives her nothing back. Payment, he says, for trying to steal.
“Lucky I don’t take your fingers,” he growls, pushing her away.
And that is how Addie comes to be in Paris, with a crust of bread and a broken bird, and nothing else.
She hurries from the market, slowing only when she reaches the bank of the Seine. And then, breathless, she tears into the roll, tries to make it last, but in moments it is gone, like a drop of water down an empty well, her hunger barely touched.
She thinks of Estele.
The year before, the old woman developed a ringing in her ears.
It was always there, she said, day and night, and when Addie asked her how she could bear the constant noise, she shrugged.
“With time,” she said, “you can get used to anything.”
But Addie does not think she will ever get used to this.
She stares out at the boats on the river, the cathedral rising through the curtain of mist. The glimpses of beauty that shine like gems against the dingy setting of the blocks, too far away and flat to be real.
She stands there until she realizes she is waiting. Waiting for someone to help. To come and fix the mess she’s in. But no one is coming. No one remembers, and if she resigns herself to waiting, she will wait forever.
So she walks.
And as she walks, she studies Paris. Makes a note of this house, and that road, of bridges, and carriage horses, and the gates of a garden. Glimpses roses beyond the wall, beauty in the cracks.
It will take years for her to learn the workings of this city. To memorize the clockwork of arrondissements, step by step, chart the course of every vendor, shop, and street. To study the nuances of the neighborhoods and find the strongholds and the cracks, learn to survive, and thrive, in the spaces between other people’s lives, make a place for herself among them.
Eventually, Addie will master Paris.
She will become a flawless thief, uncatchable and quick.
She will slip through fine houses like a filigreed ghost, move through salons, and steal up onto rooftops at night and drink pilfered wine beneath the open sky.
She will smile and laugh at every stolen victory.
Eventually—but not today.
Today, she is simply trying to distract herself from her gnawing hunger and her stifling fear. Today she is alone in a strange city, with no money, and no past, and no future.
Someone dumps a bucket from a second-floor window, without warning, and thick brown water splashes onto the cobbles at her feet. Addie jumps back, trying to avoid the worst of the splash, only to collide with a pair of women in fine dress, who look at her as if she were a stain.
Addie retreats, sinking onto a nearby step, but moments later a woman comes out and shakes a broom, accuses her of trying to steal away her customers.
“Go to the docks if you plan to sell your wares,” she scolds.
And at first, Addie doesn’t know what the woman means. Her pockets are empty. She’s nothing to sell. But when she says as much, the woman gives her such a look, and says, “You’ve got a body, don’t you?”
Her face flushes as she understands.
“I’m not a whore,” she says, and the woman flashes a cold smirk.
“Aren’t we proud?” she says, as Addie rises, turns to go. “Well,” the woman calls after in a crow-like caw, “that pride won’t fill your belly.”
Addie pulls the coat tight about her shoulders and forces her legs forward down the road, feeling as if they’re about to fold, when she sees the open doors of a church. Not the grand, imposing towers of Notre-Dame, but a small, stone thing, squeezed between buildings on a narrow street.
She has never been religious, not like her parents. She has always felt caught between the old gods and the new—but meeting the devil in the woods has got her thinking. For every shadow, there must be light. Perhaps the darkness has an equal, and Addie could balance her wish. Estele would sneer, but one god gave her nothing but a curse, so the woman cannot fault her for seeking shelter with the other.
The heavy door scrapes open, and she shuffles in, blinking in the sudden dark until her eyes adjust, and she sees the panels of stained glass.
Addie inhales, struck by the quiet beauty of the space, the vaulted ceiling, the red and blue and green light painting patterns on the walls. It is a kind of art, she thinks, starting forward, when a man steps into her path.
He opens his arms, but there is no welcome in the gesture.
The priest is there to bar her way. He shakes his head at her arrival.
“I’m sorry,” he says, coaxing her like a stray bird back up the aisle. “There is no room here. We’re full.”
And then she is back out on the steps of the church, the heavy grind of the bolt sliding home, and somewhere in Addie’s mind, Estele begins to cackle.
“You see,” she says, in her rasping way, “only new gods have locks.”
* * *
Addie never decides to go to the docks.
Her feet choose for her, carry her along the Seine as the sun sinks over the river, lead her down the steps, stolen boots thudding on the wooden planks. It’s darker there, in the shadow of the ships, a landscape of crates and barrels, ropes and rocking boats. Eyes follow her. Men glance over from their work, and women look on, lounging like cats in the shade. They have a sickly look about them, their color too high, their mouths painted a violent gash of red. Their dresses tattered and dirty, and still finer than Addie’s own.
She has not decided what she means to do, even when she slips the coat from her shoulders. Even when a man comes up to her, one hand already roving, as if testing fruit.
“How much?” he asks in a gruff voice.
And she has no idea what a body is worth, or if she is willing to sell it. When she does not answer, his hands grow rough, his grip grows firm.
“Ten sols,” she says, and the man lets out a bark of laughter.
“What are you, a princess?”