Archive of Our Own

Deryn's been brave the whole way. Eyes strictly forward, nothing on her face for anyone to see, no sign of fear or regret. But when they get to the dark stone arch of Saint-Lazare Prison, she can't resist a quick glance from side to side, and she can't suppress her shudder. This is a one-way trip for her: she's never coming back out of this gate.

*

The intake process is less unpleasant than it could be. Because she is a transfer, the doctor's note already in her file spares her from the most personal parts of the examination. She is still stripped to her underclothes, and weighed, and ordered to breathe while they listen to her lungs. She is confirmed "not tubercular". Her head is still inspected for lice, but her short hair makes it fast and easy. Her valise is dumped out and her undergarments held up for commentary; her one pair of good silk stockings is pocketed by the guard, but the ugly lumpy ones get stuffed back in. Because she is dangerous (another note in her file), they go over the valise itself with a little magnet in a glass ball, but do not find any hidden knives.

And then Deryn is in her cell, and the door is clanging shut behind her.

Her new home is small, and the stone walls are grimy and stained. Because she's dangerous, it's a solitary cell. No cellmate to give her the inside scoop on the way of things at Saint-Lazare. Just a bed, and a folded blanket; a small wooden stand, with a chipped pitcher and bowl; and under the bed, a chamber pot.

She sets down her valise and goes to the window. She can see down into the courtyard, and across to the far wing. That's all, when she used to look down on the whole world from the sky.

It seems a bit like the time to cry, but before she can do anything about that, her door opens behind her and admits one of the sisters.

Deryn has never spent much time around nuns. They seem to be all over France, but the layers of black robes and white veils have always struck her as horridly confining, so that she's hardly wanted to even look at them for long. So strange that here inside the prison the same costume means relative freedom.

This one is smiling reassuringly at Deryn, like she hasn't heard Deryn is dangerous. Deryn certainly isn't going to tell her, and so she sits quietly, meekly even, while the nun tells her about meals and laundry and routine. At such-and-such time she will line up with her pitcher to get water; at such-and-such time, with her pot to dump out her wastes. If she wishes to write letters, they will be read by one of the sisters before they are posted. Any letters received will be opened and read before she sees them. If she is well-behaved, she may be granted permission to walk in the courtyard. Deryn nods, and mumbles "oui" and "non" in the right places. No one's going to be sending her any letters.

Dinner is a watery, flavorless bean soup and eyes kept carefully downcast. And then she is back in her cell, and it is her first night in Saint-Lazare Prison. Deryn looks out her window as the blue fades from the sky, until the clouds are orange from the lights of Paris all around her. Her cell is dark; candles are a privilege she has yet to earn.

She sits down on her narrow bed, feeling very alone. Weirdly, it's not Alek she misses most right now, it's Bovril. A little cheeky commentary would be just the thing.

"Swanky," she can imagine it drawling, looking around the cell. She decides to picture it sitting on the windowsill, to have someone to talk to.

"So here's the situation," she says, silently, to the Bovril in her mind, as she starts to feel along the bottom seam of her valise. "The most infamous dancer and courtesan in Europe has been condemned to death by the French government as a German spy. Appeals failing, execution order expected any day."

"Uh-oh," imaginary-Bovril answers.

"Thing is," Deryn goes on - oh, and there's the knife, good - "We, which is to say the Zoo and more generally the whole British intelligence community, always figured her for a French double agent. So was she a triple agent? For the Germans, or someone else?" She stops and contemplates the valise. She only gets one shot at this; it's not like she can ask for more materials if she slips and cuts something that needed to be whole. So she'd better do careful work.

"The trial proceedings are sealed up tighter than a ship-shape airship," she goes on, to have something to do while she starts detaching the front leather panel. "Can't catch a sniff of them. But for the French to be willing to execute a woman during peacetime, she must have done something really naughty."

"Lit match," she imagines Bovril suggesting. It seems less perspicacious when she's putting the words in its mouth.

"Right," she agrees anyways. "Could be she knows something really hot. Something they're willing to kill her to hush up."

"Garrotte," Bovril might say, which is a disturbing word for it to know, but one it does use in fact use from time to time.

"Sure, you'd think they would just assassinate her, but someone wants it known they can control the courts," Deryn tells it - tells herself. She's still not quite sure she has a handle on the internal French politics at play here. One thing is clear though: Mata Hari has become a game piece of intense interest to any number of sides.

"Mata Hari," Deryn repeats to herself. Right here at Saint-Lazare, and the reason for Deryn's infiltration.

Deryn adjusts her grip on the sharktooth knife. It's invisible to magnets, which is good; it's also not as sharp as a steel knife, for all that the boffins swear they've got the sharpest-toothed sharks to ever swim. This is going to be slow going. She starts cutting.

*

She summons up imaginary-Bovril again the next night, still working on disassembling the valise. Maybe it's a bad sign that she's been in prison for one whole day and she's already making up friends and talking to herself. Whatever.

"All attempts at contact from outside the prison have failed," she tells not-really-there-Bovril, and Bovril would say "bored!" or something but still linger around to listen, if she wanted to talk. Oh, she misses Bovril.

"Cell 12 gets no visitors. Except the lawyer, and he's appointed by the military, he's no good. No mail in or out. The army has set patrols around the outside of the building, so forget passing messages out the window or anything like that. Well, also, cell 12 is on the courtyard side."

They think. She's seen some ancient blueprints, and talked to a couple of women who served time. Unfortunately, they'd both been prostitutes, and not, say, burglars, who might have paid closer attention to building details.

"Opportunities for contact on the inside are also limited," she goes on, in her head. "Mata Hari gets her meals in her cell, and they never let her out into the courtyard. Even if I could somehow get her sick, they'd bring the doctor to her rather than take her to the infirmary."

"Isolated," Bovril says sadly.

"Right. They don't want her talking to anyone. Except the nuns, and there's always a nun with her. Cell 12 is a double, but they've got a nun in the other bed. And that's one of my three big problems."

"Lowball," Bovril chirps.

Deryn rolls her eyes at it (even though it isn't really there). "Thanks for the vote of confidence. As I was saying. If she never leaves the cell, I'll just have to talk to her there, but what do we do about that nun. Problem number two, getting there. I can get down the hall, but then it's two flights of stairs, and I'm gonna be exposed like a plucked chicken in that stairwell no way around it."

"Timing," Bovril suggests.

"Of course I'm learning their patterns, but I don't have time to properly get the variances. The gate guards never leave their posts, but there are thirty-six Sisters, that's a lot of dice to roll on nobody breaking routine."

The Sisters of Marie-Joseph are vastly less whim-driven than boffins and aristos, two groups Deryn's spent an awful lot of time skulking around, but it only takes one unlucky impulse for paths to cross ruinously.

"I'm just gonna have to go for it," Deryn concludes. "Hope I make it down the stairs, and then when I get there the nun is asleep and Mata Hari isn't." It's not completely crazy - Mata Hari is a confirmed night owl, often known to stay out until dawn, while Deryn doesn't guess the kind of women who get into nunning are late risers. Still, this would be a really nice point in the proceedings for Alek to jump in with a better idea. She hates working alone.

"Tertiary," Bovril reminds her.

"Right," she says. "Problem number three. Mata Hari herself." The wild card to trump all others. Everything in her dossier paints the picture of an erratic, temperamental diva - but if she's actually a triple agent with a capital-crime intelligence scoop, she could have been playing everybody all along. Deryn has no idea who would be more likely to cooperate, the diva or the master spy. Conversation with Mata Hari is going to be like her work on the valise: no second chances. She's just going to have to get it right.

*

The night after that, it's time to stretch her legs.

The movements of the nuns the previous night had been similar enough to the first night that she thinks she has a solid window when nobody should pass through the stairwell. A Sister on night patrol will walk down her hall about thirty minutes after midnight, giving her twenty minutes to open her door, traverse the hall, and get down and past the stairs before a second Sister comes up them. It's a nice windy night, and someone a few cells down is snoring like a Clanker engine, so she's even got a bit of noise cover.

The Sister walks by. Deryn, in her bed under the blanket, starts a mental clock.

As soon she's past, Deryn sticks a finger in her ear and roots around until she hooks the scaly lump of pickmoss that's been masquerading as really nasty earwax. Silently, she takes her water pitcher and the moss to the door of her cell, places the moss in the keyhole, and dribbles in some water.

Like magic, the grey moss turns green and begins to swell.

Deryn, meanwhile, turns away from the door. Nobody can see her - the solitary cells are just one row, instead of two rows facing across a hall, to maximize the isolation - but she squats over the chamber pot just in case a Sister appears unexpectedly. She hikes her skirt up around her waist and ties it. Then she reaches up the leg of her drawers.

The gecko's-foot gloves are just where she'd placed them three days ago, at the very tops of her inner thighs, itching away where their horrid little leech-mouths have been sucking away at her veins. The boffins thought they were so clever, designing living equipment that could be sustained by the user. Deryn didn't see any of them volunteering to actually employ it.

She detaches the matching kneepads from her groin, wincing as the sucker-seals break, and quickly dons them. She stretches one of the gloves down over her off hand, admiring the white bands across the fingers and palm, just like the ones on the toes of the little lizards the boffins showed her.

Then she checks on the pickmoss. Not quite there. She dribbles a little more water. The Saint-Lazare locks are ancient and honestly kind of pathetic; she could pick this one faster than the moss can work. But her toolkit's been optimized for other purposes, so, no lock-picks.

She wiggles the pickmoss and the door unlocks obligingly. Takeoff. She rolls the other glove down her free hand, and walks over to one side of her cell.

The first move is the strangest, in many ways, like transferring her weight to an invisible ladder. She reaches up the wall, plants her palms, lifts one knee, places it, and then pulls until she can press her other knee beside it. Now she's crawling up the wall, and it's only one more big "step" to the ceiling, hands and then knees, until she's hanging upside down like a bug, craning her neck to aim herself out the barely-open door.

It's slow going. The gecko's-foot pads really like the wood of the ceiling, compared with the stone of the wall, and every movement of hand or knee requires a special twisting, rocking motion to detach them. She twists her shoulders and hips through the gap of the door, using the angle between the door and doorframe. Her arms are already starting to tremble from the strain of holding herself.

Deryn presses her shoulder and hip to the massive beam and soffit that joins the bars of the cells to the ceiling, and tightens her arms further, hugging herself closer to the ceiling, and starts creeping along. She's pretty sure that as long as she doesn't veer away from the beam, nobody in the cells can see her, but the last thing she needs is someone catching sight of her dangling bum wiggling by.

It's very dark - there are no lights in the hall, and nobody in solitary seems to be permitted candles, and when she cranes her head to look, the dimly-visible door at the end of the hall doesn't seem much closer. Deryn has a flash of paranoia - maybe she's just peeling and replacing her hands and knees in place, and she's not actually going anywhere - and makes herself focus on the stretch of her thighs and shoulders as she push-pulls herself forward.

Sometimes when she pulls her hands away, little bits of dust and grit rain down on her face - her whole body, she assumes. She'd better remember to shake her dress out, if she makes it safely back to her cell. She can smell smoke, a smell that, still, always makes her tense - she remembers seeing blackened areas of the ceiling, in the daylight, residue from some past era when the building must have been lit by torches, and nobody's cleaned or repaired this particular hall since.

She has a sudden, wild stab of panic - are the gloves leaving handprints in the smoke patina? She can't tell, in the dark. And there's nothing she can do about it now, except hope that nobody notices, if they are.

She keeps going. The slowness is agonizing. As she works her way down the hall, the clock in her head ticks louder and louder and louder. Seven minutes. Five. She needs to get to those stairs, or never mind about handprints, she's going to get caught on the stairs.

The muscles in her arms are screaming, and so are her lungs - god, she wants to gulp air, not these silent breaths! Three minutes. Two. Finally, the stairwell. She hauls herself through the doorway, twists all four limbs, drops to the landing, and sprints down the stairs as fast as silent steps can move her. She darts a quick glance towards the special cells - clear - and flings herself at the wall, scuttling up it just in time to hold herself, quivering, as a nun comes around the corner and passes directly under her, never looking up past the brim of her veil to see the escaped prisoner overhead.

Just for a second, Deryn lets herself sag from her hands and knees, body hanging between them like the cable of a big bridge. Then she reminds herself that she's still on the clock, and starts inching along again, looking for the door of cell 12. She hasn't been able to scout this area at all, coming and going from meals, but the blueprints think it should be right here, just up the stairs from the main gate and prison office.

There it is. It's not all bars, like hers, it's a heavy wooden door with just a little barred window around eye level.

Carefully, Deryn levers herself head-down from the ceiling, knees still stuck tight, hands braced against the wall, until she can look in through the little window.

Her heart sinks. The nun is not asleep. She's up, and talking to Mata Hari. Apparently an hour past midnight wasn't late enough. Deryn curses inside her head, thinking about how much work it's going to be to get back to her cell, and then having to do it all again tomorrow.

She decides to watch for just a minute. They're speaking very quietly, and she can't make anything out, but maybe she can lip-read a few words.

She squints against the glow of the candles - Mata Hari has five or six of them that Deryn can see, all blazing away. The nun has her back to the door, and is just a featureless black veil, but Deryn can see Mata Hari nearly head-on.

Her first impression is that she's completely unremarkable. In that plain, dark, unfashionable dress, Deryn would walk past her on the street without a second glance. Deryn tries to picture her in a jewelled headdress, with kohl around her eyes.

Deryn is just reaching the unfortunate conclusion that she's not going to learn anything by lip-reading - she gets by in English, and can do a little German thanks to Alek, although their practice sessions had tended to degenerate quickly, but Mata Hari and the nun are most likely speaking French (in a French prison, the nerve of them) - when Mata Hari points at the door, and the Sister turns to look.

It's Lilit.

***

Deryn would fall right off the ceiling if it wasn't more work to move the gecko's-foot pads than leave them stuck. As it is she just dangles dumbly.

She hasn't seen Lilit since New York - since before the War had even ended. She hadn't said anything then that made it sound like she might be taking up the religious life. No, the only thing that makes any sense is that Lilit is here just like Deryn, under cover. And now she's standing up and coming towards the door. Deryn belatedly thinks that she should have bolted before Lilit could get a good look at her; even if she raised the alarm, Deryn might have made it back to her cell before anyone caught her.

Too late now.

Lilit is peering out the little window.

"Mr. Sharp?" she whispers, sounding disbelieving. "Are you on the ceiling?"

Being upside-down is suddenly entirely too literal an expression of this topsy-turvy feeling, and so Deryn twists her knees and push-twists with her hands, flipping down to land on her feet. She's aware as she does it that she's showing off, but the impulse is too strong to stop herself.

Lilit's eyes flicker over her, her shock rapidly turning into a sort of wicked glee. "What, did you sneak yourself in as a convict? You and your disguises."

Deryn frowns at her. "Couldn't get in as a Sister, how ever did you do it? These nuns are just impenetrable."

"I think zey take vows about that," Mata Hari says over Lilit's shoulder.

Deryn jumps, a little; she'd been so focused on Lilit she'd almost forgotten about her target.

"So you wanted a peek at the doomed harlot?" Mata Hari asks, and she looks - pleased. Almost preening.

"To talk to you," Deryn says, and Mata Hari smiles and arches her neck.

"Of course," she says. "My dear, if you would."

Lilit ducks down out of sight; a moment later, the door opens.

"Quickly," Lilit says, still on her knees from where she'd done whatever with the lock. "Sister Agnes will walk through any minute, go lie down between the trunk and the second bed."

Deryn does, trying to think fast. It feels like an echo of New York, Lilit warning of an approaching enemy - but she's surely here as an agent of the Ottoman Republic, not an old friend. Deryn can't just fall back into trust.

Mata Hari and Lilit sit down, and Deryn just barely hears quiet footsteps in the corridor.

"So," Mata Hari says, as soon as they pass. "A little rosbif to go with ze Turkish delight, what a treat."

"I told you, I'm Armenian," Lilit says.

"We were just talking about countries and why a Javanese princess would have Nederland papers," Mata Hari says slyly.

"Why a girl from Leeuwarden would claim a Malay name," Lilit corrects.

Mata Hari makes an airy gesture. "I tink we have at least six or seven names between us," she says, and looks down at Deryn expectantly.

"Oh!" Deryn says, clambering to her feet. "Sharp. Deryn Sharp." Her prison file thinks she's Delphine Sault, but she doesn't see much point in that with Lilit here.

"Mister Sharp," Mata Hari says, drawn out like she's savoring it. She looks Deryn up and down and sighs theatrically.

"Not a young man in the ways that interest me," she says.

Lilit, over her shoulder, looks indignant, but Deryn smiles.

"Not much of one at the moment, certainly. And... how may I..."

Mata Hari chuckles. "Not Madame Hari," she says. "And not Mata. It does not work like zat."

"Madame Zelle, then" Deryn says. Lilit's eyebrows go up, but Mata Hari - Madame Zelle - smiles.

"A better name than I married," she says. Damson at the Bureau had said she would like that. Deryn might be the boots on the ground (or rather, the fly on the wall) but the Secret Service Bureau had an awful lot of the script in mind; crucially, of course, the kind of information she needs to get Mata Hari to admit to having.

"I yam afraid I cannot offer you any tea," Zelle is saying. The way her accent comes and goes is fascinating - Deryn honestly can't tell if she's varying it on purpose, or if she simply can't hold it consistently. Deryn's been training her ear for a couple of years now but Zelle skips around faster than she can keep up - Dutch, Parisian French, Russian... possibly actual Malay?

"We're all at a bit of a disadvantage here," Deryn says smoothly. In fact Lilit looks great, under the nun's cowl - unfortunate that the magnificent hair is hidden, but her eyes are practically glowing in the candlelight, and her skin looks all warm and creamy-smooth. Deryn probably looks like a coal miner from bits of dirty ceiling falling on her.

"I once spent a night with a General at the front," Zelle says. "We could hear the artillery, but we still had Kaffee und Kuchen." She sighs. "So civilised, but his kiss still tasted like smoke. Ah, well. Your first kiss was like that, no?" She looks between Deryn and Lilit, smiling again.

Deryn looks at Lilit too. "You told her that?" Lilit frowns, and Deryn immediately feels stupid. That's not even a lapse in basic espionage, falling for that - that's, like, little-kid not-getting-caught-by-your-mother stuff.

Zelle smiles and claps her hands. "I thought I saw ze zing of romance!" she says.

"No," Lilit says, neutral-faced. "No romance, was there romance for you with your General?"

"I think you want to know his name," Zelle says. "And maybe who introduced us, no?"

Lilit shrugs. "Whoever made the coffee knows the one," she says. "Probably the other."

"But you are here," Zelle says. "And Mr. Sharp has worked so hard to join us." She leans forward a little. "It has been years since I was so popular," she confides. "Do you know there are reporters at all the nearby hotels, hoping to speak to me before my execution?"

"Surely the nuns wouldn't let a reporter in," Deryn says. They haven't, so far.

"As my time draws near," Zelle says, looking down at her lap, "They deny me less and less. Zey are so worried for my soul. They let me pick my dear Lilit over much more senior nuns, because I said I thought I could learn more from a fellow daughter of the Orient."

Lilit rolls her eyes.

"Of course they would never let in a male reporter," Zelle goes on. "Much too dangerous given my notorious wiles. But I have received a letter from a woman reporter, an American, who I think they would admit. Perhaps before the end I will tell my story." She lifts her chin, striking a pose.

There is more than one American woman writing for the papers, but Deryn has a sudden sinking feeling that she knows this one. The last thing she needs is Adela Rogers calling out "bell captain?" and blowing her cover. Of course Deryn shouldn't be anywhere near Mata Hari's cell during the day, and they're unlikely to let a reporter in at night...

"You could tell us your story right now," Lilit suggests. "I would love to hear more about Berlin."

"Ah, Berlin," Zelle says. "Or perhaps Frankfurt - my dear friend the Fräulein Doktor once made the most interesting observation about German cities, she said - "

Deryn tries not to react. Lilit is probably doing the same thing, if she's heard that codename before. The Secret Service Bureau thinks "Fräulein Doktor" is pretty high up in the German intelligence service.

"But you young people probably aren't interested in that," Zelle says. "Are you sure you do not feel the stirrings of romance? I am so rarely wrong about these things. And I see how you glance at each other."

Deryn, involuntarily, glances at Lilit. There's maybe a play here, if Lilit goes along with it.

"She doesn't want to impose," Deryn says. "Interlope? One of those words. Thing is, we both still think of her very fondly."

Zelle's eyes go all interested, a bit like a cat that's just spotted a mouse. "You care for someone else."

"Felicitously," Deryn can't help saying; it's kind of a code word, not that either of them will understand that. "But in our line of work, well. You talk about all sorts of possibilities."

Lilit frowns at her. "I assure you I haven't been pining. Or, ah, lonely."

"Of course not," Deryn says breezily. "But if two old friends happen to encounter each other and the zing is there - "

"The zing is there?" Lilit says, amused.

"Try and see," Deryn says, and leans in, just a bit. Just enough that Lilit starts to lean too, and then Deryn stops.

"But I'm so sorry," Deryn says, turning away. Zelle is leaning further forward than either of them, and rocks back with a pout. "You can't want to have to put up with our youthful nonsense. Are you sure you don't want to tell us about Frankfurt? I've never been, myself."

Zelle laughs, really laughs, enough that Deryn worries about drawing attention from the corridor. "You fink I am so lonely and bored here that I would buy a ticket to the theater, and yes, it is true! I miss the lights of the City of Light. In Frankfurt, once, ze chemists try to convince me I want to use their new inks. Like the dance of the veil, hidden and then appearing, yes? And I tell them, the only marks I need to hide are my fingernails if the wife is jealous, ha ha ha."

It's not funny and it's barely intelligence, but the implication that she's versed in German invisible inks is promising.

"What do you think," Deryn murmurs to Lilit. "Good enough for something we want to do anyways?"

"When you put it like that," Lilit says, and puts her hand on Deryn's cheek. They kiss gently, close-mouthed; it's strange now to kiss someone who isn't Alek, and Deryn tries to catalogue the differences for when he asks. Lilit pulls away and smiles at Deryn, and Deryn thinks they're on the same page, enjoying a small, warm moment in this dank and dangerous place.

Zelle raises her eyebrows at them. "You are young," she says.

"Young and up past my bedtime," Deryn says, yawning. She's faking the yawn but the next good window for getting back to her cell is coming soon; every additional trip is a risk, but she thinks she needs to let Zelle sit, a bit, before she presses.

"Will we see you again?" Lilit asks.

"Of course," Deryn says. "Au revoir." She bows to them, and looks out through the little barred window, checking that the corridor is empty before she opens the door. Up to the ceiling, drop, bolt up the stairs, back to the ceiling, down down down the hall until she's at her own cell. Usually return trips of any sort seem shorter, to Deryn, but this one seems longer. By the time she's back to her cell, she's been upside down so long that her hands and feet are going numb, and when she drops down from the ceiling, she stumbles and falls over, her feet all pins-and-needles.

She rolls over onto her belly. The floor is filthy and gross under her face, but she's back, one jaunt completed safely, when no one had been sure she could really do it.

She peels out of the gecko gear and repositions it under her drawers - the leechpoints hurt, this time. They must be too dry to ooze their numbing stuff. She finds a hidden corner for the pickmoss to dry out, and washes her face so it's less obvious she's been up to something. The water comes away grey - it's amazing Lilit had been willing to kiss her.

For this particular mission, Deryn's contingency planning with Alek had revolved around the possibility that Mata Hari would want to seduce her. "She's old enough to be me Mum," Deryn had objected, but Alek had pointed out that it was a running theme in the reports of British agents who'd crossed paths with her, and at least one of her identified lovers, the Russian pilot, wasn't much older than Deryn.

"Also I'll be dressed as a girl," Deryn had said. "And who knows about those rumors."

"All I'm saying," Alek had said, "Is that I think you should do what you need to do, and then tell me about it afterwards."

"Oh, like that?" Deryn had said, waggling her eyebrows.

"No, actually," Alek had said, catching one of her hands and kissing it. "I think my father saw her dance in Vienna, it's a bit odd to think of - well. I don't like missions that split us up, is all."

"Probably get farther with her chasing me than catching me," Deryn had said, but it wasn't exactly a hardship to have Mata Hari using Lilit as a proxy for her romantic impulses. And it probably would be like that, when she told Alek, with Lilit.

*

She does it again, the next night, after a long, tired, quiet day. She's tired, and her muscles feel like aspic. Her bones feel like lead. She hauls herself up the wall grimly, down, etc.

Madame Zelle tells a long, wandering story about a private performance during the 1915 peace talks. Deryn kisses Lilit again, brief and chaste like the previous night. Zelle tells an even longer story about performing in an opera in 1912, which she keeps getting mixed up with being in a different opera in 1910. At the end, Deryn and Lilit look at each other and shake their heads. At least the 1915 story put certain diplomats in a room together.

Zelle tells a meandering, borderline-pornographic story about a ménage à trois in Paris. One of the men is a Belgian major, but that's pretty much the only political or military content. There is tension and suggestive detail and by the end, Deryn is squirming very slightly in her seat, but she hasn't actually learned anything.

Lilit kisses her anyways, nipping a little, probably feeling the same multiple frustrations as Deryn.

"I think I will accept zat American's request," Zelle says after that. "If you are getting bored with my stories, perhaps Mademoiselle Rogers will be more interested."

Deryn isn't bored, but she has an objective she's not accomplishing and conditions she's not filling. And of course it has to be Rogers coming to complicate things. Lilit has been here longer and apparently not gotten much farther.

Deryn is good at the parts of espionage that involve abseiling out of windows and drawing plans of things from memory, from a quick glance. She has no idea what magic words might give her a breakthrough with Zelle.

She gets back to her cell around three in the morning, stows gear, lies down in the hard and musty bed.

She can't have been asleep for more than an hour or two when she wakes up. A noise; gunshots, or fireworks. She jumps up and looks out the window. Another resounding pop. And, there, above a nearby roof, a green bloom fading from the sky. There have been other fireworks in the night sky since she's been here; Paris is the city that's always having a party. But none so close, or in the early morning like this. One more, gold this time.

That's definitely her signal. Mata Hari's last appeal has failed, and the order has been given to muster the firing squad. It's a matter of hours, now.

***

It's a dangerous time for the trip to Cell 12 - in another hour, most of the nuns will start waking up, and Deryn's retreat to her own cell will be cut off - but she doesn't see another choice. The gecko gloves and kneepads feel stiff and dry. She hopes they last through the trip.

She fishes under the mattress for what she's made of the valise and the pair of ugly, lumpy, fabricated spider-silk stockings. She ties the straps and lines around her waist. She's got the moss, and the shark tooth knife. No reason to leave her tricks behind for French intelligence to find.

Her arms shake as she heads up the wall, but she's running on adrenaline, now, and the momentum of taking action.

Zelle and Lilit are asleep in Cell 12, but Deryn shoves the pickmoss into the lock and spits on it until it expands and does its job.

Zelle stirs when the door opens and closes, but drops back into snores. Lilit sits up, blinking in confusion.

Deryn sits down on the bed next to her. "What's your extraction plan," she hisses, urgent.

"Wha?"

"How do you plan to get out of here?"

Lilit gives her a disgusted look, like, you came back and woke me up for this? "They do let the nuns out, you know," she says. "I wait a little while, I get a letter that my friend is very ill, I leave to go pray at her bedside, we send back word that I've contracted it and don't want to return for fear of spreading it to the prisoners, I die, and the Sisters add my soul to the list they pray for, never suspecting a thing."

Deryn listens to this shaking her head impatiently. "No," she says, "Not your fallback. Your plan A. How do you get her out?" She jerks her thumb in the direction of Zelle's bed.

Lilit frowns at Deryn. "I'm not here to get her out. I thought I was here for the same reason you were, to learn what you could from her before they - you know."

"Okay," Deryn says, "Fine. Great. That's useless." Lilit makes a hurt face, but whatever happens next with her, it's going to have to come second to the primary mission.

Deryn switches over to Zelle's bed. Zelle's eyes are closed, but they open without confusion when Deryn taps her shoulder.

"I vas not expecting to see you again so soon," she says.

"Here's the deal," Deryn says. "They're mustering the firing squad. You probably have about an hour before they come get you."

Zelle closes her eyes.

"I can get you out of here," Deryn says. "Britain is prepared to offer you asylum if you can offer information that would make it worthwhile."

Zelle opens her eyes again, staring back at Deryn.

"You've got to give me something to go on, though," Deryn tells her. "Something about what you've got, and none of this 'I slept with so-and-so' nonsense."

Zelle cocks her head dramatically. "Oh, I have seen such things. Such things! Better that your tender ears never hear them, better that I go to the grave - "

"Are you seriously choosing the firing squad," Deryn interrupts. "Because I'm getting out of here, if you'd rather die than talk."

Zelle looks at her for a long moment, all the posturing gone. "No," she says. Her voice is soft, neutral, the fake accent gone. "Gas weapons, would that interest your masters? People on both sides who think the War ended too soon, developing gases that blister and choke and kill. Poisons," she says. "War crimes."

"Both sides?" Deryn asks quietly.

"France and Germany," Zelle says. "Each thinking they're ahead of the other, knowing no one else is even close. Hence their cooperation in my... removal."

"If both France and Germany consider you a threat, then who are you actually working for?"

Zelle smiles, the diva again. "You'll just have to see who rescues me from you," she says archly.

Deryn considers, but only for a moment. "Okay," she says, "Good enough for me." By the time the Secret Service can disagree, if they do, Deryn will be back under Dr. Barlow's protection. If Zelle is telling the truth, this is something they need to know about.

Deryn looks back at Lilit. She's certainly not leaving her behind for French intelligence.

"What do you weigh - " she starts, and then waves her hand at Lilit when she looks like she's going to answer. It doesn't matter; it's going to have to work. She looks out the window - light conditions are going to be marginal, but that was inevitable given the whole "execution at sunrise" thing.

"This is a chest harness," Deryn says, taking one of the leather-and-spider-silk assemblages. "You're going to be going up a wall with me holding onto this loop here. If I may?"

Zelle is sleeping in flannel pajamas, which are probably better for climbing than anything else she has. She sticks out her arms cooperatively and lets Deryn tie her into the harness. It's not a great fit but it's a pretty impressive design for something cut out of a piece of small luggage. Deryn tucks spare loops into the back then peels off one of her gloves.

"This is a gecko glove," she says. "Press to hold, twist and rock like this to release." She demonstrates with her remaining hand. "My hand that's holding on to you won't need this, so you can use it to help yourself climb. We'll be going from a windowsill to a gutter and I've practiced this, something similar, with someone about your size. You'll be good." They'll be good unless Zelle panics.

"Safer than the firing squad," Zelle says, pulling the glove over her hand and wiggling her fingers.

"Do I get a harness?" Lilit asks, looking at the remaining parts tied around Deryn's waist.

"No," Deryn says, putting the second harness on herself. (Crossed in back, under her arms, loose bits stowed.) "But..." It's risky, but she pulls one kneepad down her leg. "Here," she says, handing it to Lilit. "On a palm, it'll help you grip..."

Lilit's eyes are still fixed on Deryn's bare leg, raised for kneepad removal. Deryn quickly drops her foot from the bed where it was propped back down to the floor.

The prison is quiet this early in the morning, and maybe that's why Deryn is able to hear the familiar voice carrying from somewhere downstairs.

"She will want to see me," loud and insistent, in American-accented French, and another voice says "Madame!"

"Time to go," Deryn says. She grabs the blanket from Lilit's bed, fishes the pickmoss out of the lock, and they spill out into the hall.

"Stairs," Deryn says, and there's a "quoi?!" that must be someone in another cell coming awake and seeing them, but they're running to the stairs. "No," Deryn says, "Up!"

She takes Zelle by the hand and starts pulling her up the stairs. She can hear commotion starting to break out below.

"We're going to be trapped!" Lilit says. "There's no way down - the soldiers!"

"Not going down," Deryn says, panting a little. "We have a ride."

She gets to the last landing on the stairs before the top. The window here, on the courtyard side, doesn't have bars, since there's nowhere to go but the courtyard.

Deryn jumps up, grabs the lintel, and kicks out the glass.

"Blanket!" she snaps, kicking at the remaining shards, and Lilit picks it up from where she'd dropped it and puts it over the edges that are left.

Someone is running up the stairs, shouting. Deryn ducks through the window, getting a good gecko grip and bracing her knee, and reaches her free hand down for Zelle.

Zelle shudders, climbing out onto the sill and getting that first vertiginous look down to the courtyard, but she hangs on to the gutter gamely. Deryn gets a grip on Zelle's harness loop and starts the process of maneuvering herself up over the edge of the roof. Lilit's head pops through, followed quickly by the rest of her - there isn't really room on the sill for three, but Deryn's up and over the gutter, then, setting her hand and knee again while Zelle gets a knee up to the roof.

There's really a lot of shouting inside the prison, now, and a bell ringing, dong, dong, dong, escape escape escape. Arms reach out through the window and flail around; Lilit has to dodge to the very edge of the sill, kicking away while she levers herself up.

"Bell captain!" Deryn hears, and looks back to see Adela Rogers leaning backwards halfway out the window, looking up at her. Deryn hopes one of the nuns is holding her feet, or something.

The next thing out the window is the barrel of a rifle, and Deryn resumes her scramble up the roof before any of the soldiers can figure out they'll have better luck with a handgun given the angles. Adela's in the way, too, that should help.

Zelle's feet are sliding on the tiles of the roof, but Deryn has a solid grip on her. They make it up to the peak of the roof.

"I don't think they can hit us from the street," Deryn says. "But we don't have long before someone thinks to shoot from another roof, or out the window. Here." She gets Zelle sitting so she can adjust her harness. "This is the leg loop, it'll help hold your legs up," she says, helping Zelle slip her feet into a leather ring at the end of a line tied into the big top loop Deryn had held to help Zelle up the roof. "Wrist loops here and here. You're going to stand on the ridge of the roof, knees bent, arms up, holding this part up, okay?" The leather is stiff enough to stand up in a neat arch. "Deep, slow breaths while you wait, it's a little hard to breathe in the harness but it won't be for too long. Ah, there's our ride now."

There's a pair of small, weird birds swooping and circling around them - swallows, but oddly striped on their wings, and occasionally tumbling like trick pigeons.

"That's our ride?" Lilit asks, sounding disbelieving, and well should she; it would be like asking a baby to lift a mammothine.

"That's the guide for our ride," Deryn says, helping Zelle up into an uneasy stance on the roof, facing away from the dawn. The sky is pink and grey and Deryn really, really hopes it's light enough.

One of the small birds streaks over Zelle's head, and Deryn drops away, just as the wind from much larger wings hits her.

It's not an accident that Zelle has her back to the catch. Even if you know what's coming, even if you've practiced like Deryn has, it's almost impossible not to flinch and duck when a colossal bird of prey dives at you. It's like being standing in front of a speeding train if the train also has a beak that could bite off your head. Zelle is swept off her feet and carried away over the rooftops of Paris almost faster than Deryn can process that the catch was successful. Shots ring out as they go, but miss - clearly nobody was expecting that - but, damn. Deryn ducks down behind the ridge of the roof, looks like someone's made it to a window across the street.

Ok. Zelle is successfully extracted. If she hadn't been, the second bird would have been a second try. As it is, the second pilot bird knows there's a second catch to be made, and Deryn can only hope it won't be confused by there being two of them, and that they won't get dropped. Neither Deryn or Lilit is heavily built, but the two of them together are going to be right up against the weight limits, and the harness wasn't designed for two.

More shots overhead - they've got cover, but sooner or later someone's going to come up the roof after them.

Deryn eyes Lilit - she's wearing some kind of heavy nun nightgown, maybe multiple layers, and clinging to the roof looking stunned.

"Get this off," Deryn says, tearing at it, trying to simultaneously kick off her own shoes. Anything they can dump to drop weight. She yanks at the skirt of her dress. It's awkward to strip on a roof while trying not to stick anything up to get shot, but she gets Lilit down to drawers, and twists her torn skirt into a sort of rope tied around both of them, holding them together chest to chest.

"Hand in here," Deryn says, holding out one of the wrist loops. She gets her feet into the leg loop and then takes the other one. "Next time the other pilot flies over, we stand up, raise the catch loop, and hold on! There!"

One of the swallows streaks past, and Deryn tugs Lilit into an awkward crab step up to the roofline.

There's just enough time to pray they don't get shot, to hear a bullet whistle past, to think that they must look like they're doing some kind of crazy polka, left arms around each other's waists, right arms up holding the catch loop.

And then they're caught, swinging up into the air, all the bits of valise and stockings pulling tight. Lilit twists, slides, almost falls away, but somehow she hangs on, from one wrist and the skirt-rope around them both, and ends up sitting sideways in Deryn's lap, half lying on top of her, in the sort of hammock Deryn's body makes between ankles and shoulders. They swoop past chimneys, bell towers, mooring masts, twisting and dodging faster than a human could comprehend or react.

"What the hell is this," Lilit shrieks at her, over the rushing wind.

"Gosroc!" Deryn screams back. The brain is mostly goshawk, the most maneuverable of falconry birds. The body is things she isn't going to try to explain while hurtling over Paris, ancient teratorn and Haast's Eagle.

"Where are we going!" Lilit yells.

"Don't know!" Deryn says. Northwest, roughly, but there's a plan where they ditch into the Seine and go by water to the channel, there's a plan where they end up in hay wagons, and there's the air plan. She has no idea which one they're trying. That's not her end of the op. The pilot bird knows, and the gosroc follows the pilot.

They're staying close to the ground - it makes it harder for anyone to line up a shot at them - but now there are fewer roofs and more trees. And then suddenly, fields, yellow and stubbly in the autumn morning light.

"I've had dreams like this!" Lilit screams.

"I know," Deryn yells back. "Real flying!"

"I mean the part where you ripped my clothes off!" Lilit says.

Deryn laughs. Her joints feel perilously close to separating and she's pretty sure that if she blinks the wind-tears out of her eyes and looks up, she'll see the harness disintegrating just as fast. But she's free, and flying, and carrying off a beautiful girl.

They're pretty much face to face anyways, and holding each other as tightly as they can; Deryn cranes her head and manages to catch Lilit's lips. It's awkward, the motion of their flight banging them together, but good, open mouths and tongues like Deryn had been thinking about but hadn't wanted to do in front of Zelle.

The gosroc starts to climb, pulling away from the ground, heading for a bank of clouds. The fields shrink underneath them. Deryn is so cold, and still so exhilarated. Into the clouds, the world vanishing into blank fog, and then through, and there's where their pilot bird is leading them. An airship. The Gibraltar is smaller than the Leviathan, and remodeled to have a special bay for the gosrocs. They're dropped into netting, then the gargantuan bird hops to a tree-sized perch, where its austringer handler immediately hands it a large, bleeding chunk of meat.

Zelle is there already in the bay, being disentangled from her harness. Her hair is crazy from the flight, but she's still managing to pose gracefully.

"Sharp," says one of the Secret Service agents with Zelle. Damson. "Sharp and... guest?" His eyebrows go up. The other one, Michaels, makes a disapproving clucking noise.

"Colleague," Deryn says. "Speaking of?"

"Bridge," Damson says, "Although - "

"Deryn!" Alek says, bursting into the roc bay. "Lilit?"

"Good morning," Lilit says, trying to get herself untied from Deryn. Deryn would be shocked if any of the knots could be picked loose, after holding their combined weight - she's relaxing in the net, waiting for Damson and the scissors. Of course, pinned under Lilit, she doesn't have many other choices.

Damson eventually pulls his hands off of Zelle and comes to cut them apart, and Deryn gets her face in Alek's neck and his arms around her - she's starting to shake a bit, now that they're safe, she really hates being shot at - and they all get out of the bay and into the ship proper and wrapped in blankets and given mugs of tea. Zelle and Lilit get a cabin (and Michaels standing guard), and Deryn gets to debrief with Damson, but he's merciful about it, lets her go through the key points and says he'll ask his followup questions later.

"Kissed Lilit," Deryn mumbles to Alek, when they're finally going to let her nap for a bit. Alek pets her hair.

"Sleep and tell me later," Alek says, and Deryn sleeps.

*

She wakes up to her cabin door being thrown open.

"That Turkish girl," Michaels says, sounding crazy. "That so-called Javanese snake."

"What?" Deryn says, sitting up.

"They're gone," Michaels sputters. "Mata Hari, Damson, your colleague, and three parachutes. Damson was taking his turn watching them."

"Ugh," Deryn says, blinking. "Where? How long ago?"

"Over the Channel," Michaels says. "We're not sure. Damson sent the austringers to do inventory, I don't know why they didn't realize something was up."

"Right," Deryn says tiredly. She can see the writing on this wall. "You want to start the re-debrief now, or leave it until we're back at the Bureau?"

"I'm only still on because it's too much hassle to fly someone else onto this airship," Michaels says. "I've worked with Damson since the War, they'll likely have more questions for me than for you. If it's any consolation."

*

The questioning is long, and miserable, but they eventually have to admit that Deryn had reported Zelle's "see who rescues me from you" line promptly to Damson, and she couldn't have been expected to know he was already compromised.

"They could have been picked up by at least six different ships, depending on exactly where they landed," Alek tells her, when they're finally back home at the Zoo. "Spanish passenger liner, Russian cargo ship heading for Brazil, Dutch trader heading for the East Indies, three different French fishing boats."

"French?" Deryn asks.

"Dr. Barlow thinks they may never have intended to execute her at all," Alek says. "That she was just bait, to see who would bite, or maybe even to flush us out specifically."

It had been the first actual use of the gosrocs, although Deryn knew there had been a few unintentional previous sightings.

"I don't so much mind being played by Mata Hari," Deryn says, scooting closer to Alek. "I did the job they sent me to do. Lilit, though."

"You know Britain would never have let her go, not knowing what Mata Hari might have told her," Alek says. "Whether or not she knew in advance, I'm not surprised she took the opportunity."

"I suppose," Deryn says glumly.

Alek puts his arm around her. "Were you hoping you could bring her home? Convince her to work for the Zoo?"

"I don't know what I was hoping," Deryn says. "I didn't have a plan, I just wasn't going to leave her, and then she was gone before we ever talked about it." She sighs, tipping her head against Alek's. "I guess I like that she's still out there," she says. "I'm sure she'll pop up again where we least expect it. Her and Mata Hari both."

"If we're all trying to investigate this poison gas business, that could be soon," Alek says.

"I might be on a short leash after Adela Rogers," Deryn says. "Looks a bit bad for the Zoo, me being spotted like that."

"All anyone will remember is the gosrocs," Alek says. "If Mata Hari was telling the truth, Dr. Barlow can't afford not to use us. And anything else she can."

Deryn snorts. "Well then I hope my leech bites heal first. Ugh, that was too long, smuggling those damn gloves up my drawers."

Alek quirks a smile. "If they're bothering you, I could kiss them better for you?"

Deryn shoves playfully at his shoulder, but doesn't say no. It's good to be home. She hopes Lilit is heading back to one, or on her way to finding one. Or if not... next time they cross paths... maybe Deryn will invite her to come home with her. Even if just for a night. Just to see how far the zing would take them.

"I should tell you this story Mata Hari told us," Deryn says. "About three people, in Paris..."

"Three?" Alek asks, already interested, and Deryn smiles.