Two seconds, two blows. Two deaths. No cries.
The half-blood was on the point of letting the bloody poker fall onto the stomach of one of the dead bodies when he heard the squeak of hinges.
“So, lads?” someone said. “Already busy stuffing your faces, are you?”
Saint-Lucq about-turned and flung out his arm.
The poker hummed as it whirled through the air and drove itself, hook first, between the eyes of the Corbin who, hatless and dishevelled, had so casually entered the room. Stunned, the man staggered backward and crumpled onto the floor.
Four and one made five-the count was still short.
His right hand tightening around the hilt of his sheathed rapier, Saint-Lucq slipped into the room the dead brigand had just come from.
Makeshift beds had been set up in there, and Saint-Lucq found the last surviving Corbin lying on one of them, paralysed by absolute terror. He was young, an adolescent of perhaps fourteen or fifteen years old. His lip sported no more than blond fuzz and bad acne ate at his cheeks. Woken with a start, he seemed unable to tear his gaze from the corpse and the wrought-iron rod embedded in its face. The poker began to tip over very slowly, its point spattered with viscous fluid and lifting up a piece of skull bone which tore through the skin. With a final cracking sound, it toppled and fell to the floor with a clatter.
The sound made the adolescent quiver all over and he suddenly directed his attention toward the half-blood wearing red spectacles. Looking deathly pale and distraught, his eyes already filled with tears, he vainly tried to force out a few words, vigorously shaking his head-a quiet, desperate supplication. Rising from his bedcovers, he retreated until his hands and heels touched the wall. He wore nothing but a shirt and a pair of breeches, breeches that were now stained with urine.
“Mer… Mercy-”
Saint-Lucq took a slow step toward him and drew his sword.
Lucien Bailleux shook with fear, cold, and exhaustion. He wore nothing but a nightshirt and the hard ground on which he was lying proved as chilled as the stones against which he sometimes leaned.
It had been three nights since he had been surprised, unsuspecting, in his sleep at home, in the apartment where he lived above his notary’s office. They had gagged him before pulling a hood over his head and knocking him senseless. What had they done with his wife, who had been sleeping at his side? He had woken here, bound hand and foot, in a location he could only guess at due to the hood. He was attached to a wall by a short, heavy chain that ran around his waist. He had no idea on whose authority he was held. All he knew for sure was that he was no longer in Paris, but somewhere in the countryside. The noises from his present surroundings, which also allowed him to keep track of the passing days, had made that much clear to him.
Initially believing he had been abandoned he had chewed away his cloth gag and shouted, yelling until his voice broke. He’d finally heard a door open, the footsteps of several men in boots approaching and a voice, at last, saying to him: “It’s just you and us, here. No one else can hear you. But your shouting annoys us.”
“What… what do you want with me?”
Rather than answering him, they had beaten him. In the stomach and kidneys. A kick had even dislodged one of his teeth. He’d swallowed it, as his mouth filled with blood.
“Not the head!” the voice had said. “We must deliver him alive.”
After that, the notary had done nothing to draw attention to himself. And the hours and the nights had dragged by, filled with anguish and uncertainty about his fate, and without anyone troubling to give him something to eat or drink…
Someone pushed the door open and entered.
Bailleux cowered reflexively.
“I beg you,” he mumbled. “I will give you everything I have.”
His hood was removed and, once he grew used to the light, he saw a man squatting close beside him. The stranger was dressed as a cavalier, with a sword at his side and strange red glass spectacles covering his eyes. Something dark and threatening emanated from him. The notary grew even more frightened.
“Don’t hurt me, please…”
“My name is Saint-Lucq. The men who abducted you are dead. I’ve come to free you.”
“Me… To free me… Me?”
“Yes.”
“Who… who sent you?”
“It’s not important. Did you talk?”
“I’m sorry?”
“You’ve been beaten. Was it to make you talk? Did you tell them what you know?”
“Good Lord! What is this all about?”
The half-blood sighed and patiently explained: “You recently discovered and read a forgotten testament. The testament indicated where a certain document could be found.”
“So, this is about… that?”
“Well?”
“No. I didn’t say anything.”
Saint-Lucq waited.
“I swear to you!” the notary insisted. “They didn’t ask me a single question!”
“Good.”
Only then did the half-blood unfetter Bailleux, who asked: “And my wife?”
“She is well,” replied Saint-Lucq, who in truth had no idea.
“Thank God!”
“Can you walk?”
“Yes. I am weak but-” There was the sound of a horse neighing in the distance and they heard hoofbeats approaching. Leaving the notary to complete the task of freeing his ankles, Saint-Lucq went to the door. Bailleux took note of his surroundings. They were on the ground floor of a disused, dusty old water mill, close to the enormous grindstone.
Having risked a glance outside, the half-blood announced: “Six horsemen. No doubt those to whom you were to be delivered.”
“Lord God!”
“Do you know how to fight? Or at least how to defend yourself?”
“No. We are lost, aren’t we?”
Saint-Lucq spotted an old, worm-eaten wooden staircase and raced up the steps.
“Up here,” he said after a brief moment.
The notary followed him to the next floor, where the central driveshaft, attached to the hub of the huge waterwheel, joined the vertical axle which, passing through the floor, had formerly powered the grindstone.
The half-blood forced open a skylight.
“We have to slip out through here and let ourselves drop into the river. The current will carry us away. With a little luck, we won’t be seen. Although it’s a shame, because I had horses waiting for us in the wood.”
“But I can’t swim!”
“You’ll learn.”
5
That morning, reclining on a long, low seat, the vicomtesse de Malicorne was savouring the tranquillity of her flowering garden when the marquis de Gagniere was announced. The strange globe filled with its shifting darkness was next to her, on its precious stand, and she caressed it nonchalantly-as she might have stroked the head of a sleeping cat. The turbulent interior of the Sphere d’Ame seemed to respond to each stroke. Gagniere, arriving on the terrace, made a conscious effort to look elsewhere. He knew the dangers that the soul sphere represented. He also knew the use to which it was destined to be put, and the casual manner with which the young woman was treating this relic, entrusted to her by the Masters of the Black Claw, both worried and astonished him.
“Good morning, monsieur le marquis. What have you come to tell me at such an early hour?”
“Leprat is dead.”
“Leprat?”
“The messenger Malencontre and his men failed to stop between Brussels and Paris. Using your information I laid an ambush for him yesterday evening, near the Saint-Denis gate.”
“Monsieur Leprat…” sighed the young woman with a thoughtful look. “Is that so?”
“One of the King’s Musketeers,” Gagniere hastened to explain.
“And formerly one of the Cardinal’s Blades. I told you you would be hearing more about them, didn’t I?”
“Indeed. However-”