The world brightened even more noticeably as we passed under the archway and reentered the colorful domain of the daimons. Street after street, Vale pulled me along by my elbow, silent, intent on his errand.
Finally, I couldn’t stand it anymore. As we reached a quiet place on a bridge, I murmured, “How much did they cost you?”
“Ne t’en fais pas, bébé.”
“What does that mean?”
“Don’t worry about it.”
I stopped and, God help me, stamped my foot. “I know what it means, ass! How much, Vale?”
He turned to face me, gone from gruff to amused in a heartbeat, thanks to my little snit.
“A gentleman doesn’t name prices.”
“Well, I just . . . I mean . . . thank you.”
He grinned, a spark of humor back in his eyes. “De rien, mon chou.”
“I’m not your cabbage. Cabbages don’t drink blood,” I grumbled.
“So you do know some Franchian.” He eyed the slant of the sun and jerked his chin toward the other end of the bridge. “If you want to find out who this mysterious Fermin is and get back in time to perform, we must hurry.”
My eyes were drawn to the water as we scurried over the river. I couldn’t help jealously eyeing the carefree daimons and children laughing in large paddle boats shaped like demented pink swans or tossing crumbs at regular ducks and geese from dinghies floating in the teal-blue water. Bathers reclined on the grassy shores in straw hats and the sort of half-revealing bathing suits no one in Sangland would touch, even if they had a death wish. Sure, they were guarded by an electrified fence and a guard with a seawater gun and a bludrat net, but they still looked mostly relaxed. I’d spent one giddy night at the Tuileries and one brief and stolen night at the Louvre, but no one had ever offered to show me the beauties of Paris during the daylight, and it made me desperately sad. I hadn’t been born a creature of the darkness.
Soon we were on the other side of the river. The Tower loomed over us, closer than I’d ever seen it, spindly and wrapped with wires and lights and spikes to keep the pigeons from roosting. Surrounding the elevator at its base was an unwieldy metal generator crackling with electricity like something out of Dr. Frankenstein’s lab. After another block, the palpable buzz in the air subsided, and we entered a district that smelled of coal, fire, and iron. Some of the storefronts had been hollowed out and equipped with iron gates to show soot-stained daimon blacksmiths, swordsmiths, and jewelry artisans hard at work pumping bellows and hammering cherry-hot steel with a cacophonous clanking that felt like horses galloping over my brain.
“Ugh. Please tell me we’re not going to hang around here long.”
“I do not know what we’re looking for, really. This is Boulevard Saint-Germain. I haven’t spent much time here, for obvious reasons.” He nudged me in the side. “At least it’s not the leather-tanning district, n’est-ce pas? Or the one where they process civet and ambergris?”
As we passed between the forges and storefronts, reading every sign, the sun slowly sank. We didn’t have much time left before I was expected to be in costume and on a chandelier. When we came upon a blacksmith taking a rest on a bench outside his forge, Vale bowed slightly and said, “Pardon, but do you know where we might find the artificer?”
The blacksmith grunted, his thick tail twitching against the cobbles. “We’re all artificers, monsieur. Which one in particular?”
“Anatole Fermin.”
The blacksmith pointed a black-singed finger down the street, ahead of us.
“Idiot got himself crushed. They are moving his junk now.” He shook his head, his curly mustache and muscles making my heart ache with thoughts of the buff but kindly strong man, Torno, back at the carnival.
“Merci.”
We jogged down the street, and I noticed for the first time how Vale’s fighting claw slid into a sort of scabbard along his thigh. A bludmare screamed up ahead, marking our destination: a shop being emptied, the goods stacked outside as daimon workers packed them into crates and hammered boards over the tops before stacking them on a pallet behind the coal-black horse. The tasteful sign over the storefront read simply, “A. Fermin, Artificer,” and the air around the open doors stank with an odd and familiar mix of oil, metal, and magic.
Vale being Vale, he maneuvered around the crates, ignored the daimons’ shouts of protest, and slid in through the door as if he belonged there. Me being me, I followed him.
“Can I help you, monsieur? Mademoiselle?”
The voice was cold, and the man it belonged to was even colder. His sneer made it clear that we had been instantly judged inferior, which made me automatically hate him. He even had a little Hitler mustache and a monocle.