Chapter Text
At curfew, the streets of Paris are swept with darkness like an endless shroud. Lanterns hiss, spindly candles extinguished in every window down the boulevard. In the snow, Alicia’s footsteps are muted, the soft white piles too fresh to crunch beneath her boots. Nonetheless, she hurries, her hood pulled up against the biting wind.
The negotiations had taken too long.
Under her coat, the corners of her prize jostle against her. She holds it tight to her side. It had taken her weeks of lurking in loud parlors, sliding notes under the table of wealthy men’s card games, to find it. It had cost the last of Papa’s good wine and her own silver bracelet to finally pry it away from the Collector. Now her fingers curl around the edges of it, her heart rabbiting against her chest.
As far as she knew, it was the last canvas in all of Paris.
Something shifts in the alleyway to her right, and Alicia flinches. Don’t be daft, Alicia. It’s Clea’s voice in her head, scolding. You’re a Paintress, not some frail little waif. And it’s true, she thinks. In the dark, she herself is a strange creature. A wraith of a girl with her one bright, blue eye trained on the shadows.
Her palms grow damp regardless. She finds herself wishing down to the bottom of her heels that her sister was here. Nothing scared Clea. Not monsters, not Germans, not even the gendarmes who had unceremoniously arrived and whisked her away to the north for the Artist’s Draft.
Alicia swallows, her throat bobbing.
But in the end, it is only a rat, skittering out from beneath a stack of empty crates. She breathes a laugh that scrapes against her ruined throat. Even the vermin look emaciated, she thinks, mouth pursed. She gathers her fraying courage, and continues on.
There are so many things about Paris, this Paris, that had become unfamiliar to her. The cardboard shuttering the glass windows. The silence down the river Seine as she passed over the Quai De Conti. Once, the bridge had been bustling with street performers and book carts, newspapers rolled up on stands. Now the only other souls were the Préfecture, with their batons gleaming in the dark. Several of them stand guard by the bridge railing, staring out at the sloshing waters.
Look away, look away, she prays. I’m not interesting to you, see?
Perhaps the haste of her footsteps convinces them, or perhaps they are too exhausted by the air raids from last night. The sirens had shrieked until morning.
Either way, the officers do not stir as she passes between them.
By the time she makes it up the pathway to the Manor, her arms are trembling, her cheeks numb. She raises a hand towards the enormous metal knocker.
The door opens before she can manage.
Papa stands in the illuminated doorway, his face thunderous.
“Ahk,” she breathes, fumbling in her jacket pockets for her notebook. Damnation. She must have dropped her pen, somewhere. Back at the Collector’s den, if her luck tonight was anything to go by.
He’d forgive her this outing. She was sure of it, once he knew what she’d brought.
But Papa only shakes his head, sharply. “Alicia. I told you to renew our ration cards, not to tour all of Paris.”
Ration cards?
It takes her blurry vision a moment to catch it, but she finally does see the shape moving behind Papa. A man in a buttoned uniform decorated with medals, a leather sash across his torso. His nose is crooked, and he stares at her with eyes that remind her distinctly of ink pots.
A military man, then. Alicia swallows. The Canvas under her jacket suddenly feels distinctly obvious, peeking out at a strange angle.
How had she missed it? There was no coach outside their Manor, no stabled horse. And of all the nights for a gendarme to visit, why now?
Papa grips her shoulder and manuevers her inside.
“Forgive the interruption, General Marcel,” Papa says, all ease and charm when he turns away from her. “My daughter tends to… wander from time to time.”
Alarm bells begin to ring in Alicia’s head. She looks around for Maman, but the Paintress is nowhere to be seen.
“Not at all. These are strange times,” the general’s eyebrows lift when her hood drops. “Fresh air is hard to come by.”
She cannot help it; at the look in his eyes, Alicia stares straight at him, chin lifted.
Papa says, “Alicia, help your mother with the tea.”
She ducks her head and starts to hurry that way, but the General catches her arm first.
“Alicia,” he muses. “A pity, really. I have a son your age, you know.”
She tries to tug away, but his grip is firm. Her gaze whips towards Papa, who stands expresionless, his face white.
In Paris, it is not a crime to be an unconscripted Painter, now. Not after the Archduke Franz Ferdinand was first tortured then murdered in a Canvas.
In Paris, it is a cardinal sin.
The General drawls, “Tell me, Renoir. Is she as talented as her sister?”
“No. She isn’t.”
It is Maman, at the top of the staircase.
Where Papa’s words had bounced off the general, Maman’s gaze bores a drillsaw hole through him. He smiles briskly and releases Alicia. The Dessendre matriarch descends one step at a time, an oddly striking figure in her gray nightgown and bare feet. It should make her look frail, her collarbones jutting out under her pale skin.
Instead, she looks more like she had just strolled through a hurricane unscathed.
“Alicia,” Maman says, stopping with one hand on the bannister. “Leave us.”
She does, this time without any resistance, taking the stairs two at a time. By the time she has made it to her room, her nerves feel like they’ve been peeled one by one out of her skin. She pushes her fingers through her hair, gripping her skull.
They could not draft Papa or Maman. They wouldn’t. Clea had only promised her voluntary help if they let her family be, and besides, they were too old. Too frail, too worn down by the last ten years, losing their only son.
Losing their only worthwhile daughter, she thinks, before she could help it.
But she forces down the claws of panic that scrabble at her chest, at that. No, Clea wasn’t lost. She’d be back, a year maximum, they’d said. More than enough time for whatever they had in mind.
It’d be a year next week.
Maybe, she thinks, this visit was the gendarmes bringing good news. Maybe he was just heralding Clea’s return.
Her mouth twists. And maybe this Manor will fly.
Exhaling, Alicia pulls out the small Canvas from under her jacket. The dull frame shines enough that she can almost see her own reflection. Her fingers brush the smooth surface, still chilled from the winter air.
Within it, the thrum of Chroma is a whisper, an invitation to come in.
Alicia shakes her head and pushes it under her bed, as safe as it can be, for now. And silent as a brush sliding into paint, she slips from her room, towards the glass overhang where she can listen in.
The mobs had found the Sculptors first. They were, Alicia imagined, the most obvious Artists. On the night the Cathedral in Reims was bombed, they dragged out the old man who had crafted the angel statues in the Central Square. The crows had peeled away the skin on his ribs.
After that, and the slew of Writers found hanging from alleyway clotheslines, the Painter’s Council had quietly issued an order to hide and retreat.
Supposedly they were lucky, here in Paris.
Papa wouldn’t tell her what they did to the Artists in Italy.
When she was younger, Alicia used to read in the sunlight on the stained glass that made up both the floor of one level and the ceiling of the sitting room. With her belly pressed to the glass and her feet kicking lazily behind her, she’d whittled away hours. The silhouettes of servants had flitted beneath her, as they went in and out of the kitchen and dining room. Their gossip, floating towards her, had been almost as entertaining as her books.
Now, she holds her breath as she creeps above the three silhouettes beneath her.
“... know it is poor timing for such things.” It is the General’s voice, deep and resonant. “I wish I could offer more reassurance.”
“We aren’t seeking comfort, General.” Maman, now. “Not from the State.”
A brief, uncomfortable pause.
“Be that as it may, I’m afraid our terms are not up for negotiation.”
“Your terms are built on lies. Whoever told you such a thing was possible was clearly out of their mind.”
“Aline,” Papa says, strained. “Please.”
Alicia’s hair falls over her face as she leans towards the glass. The General’s silhouette shifts forward. “I was not told anything. I was shown.”
“By who?”
The silence is enough answer.
“Nom de Dieu,” Papa breathes, so choked that Alicia’s blood runs cold. “She didn’t.”
“As I said, your daughter is quite remarkable. If we had just a few more of her, we could win this war within the year.”
“It’s an abomination of nature! It breaks every law we have –”
“This is war, old man. Nature has no place here.”
Clea. Clea, what did you do?
Alicia strains to hear, even as Aline murmurs something, inaudible. Two shadows merge, Papa’s arm around Maman’s shoulders.
The General says, “So perhaps you see my urgency.”
“We need time,” Papa says. “This isn’t the kind of decision one makes overnight.”
“No,” the General agrees. “You’ll have two. My men will return on Friday, at dawn.”
“A week, at least. Please.”
There is a rustling, the General standing. “I’ve been generous enough. Follow through, and you’ll have done a great service to your country.”
“Say we don’t, then.” It is Clea’s defiance, in Maman’s voice. No one would doubt they were related. “Say you return to an empty house, come Friday.”
The General chuckles. “Your Manor has already burned once, mademoiselle. Perhaps you would not like it to happen again.”