The King's Eye

Chapter 13

    Jacques

    Moving my hand to the pommel of my dagger, I kept a pace behind Sophie as we crossed the street. The scent of lavender, honey, and dew on a spring morning filled my nose as I followed her through the iron gate and into the cover of bushes. For someone who had never needed to be stealthy, she was graceful, her bare feet barely touching the ground as she moved. She was the only woman I had ever met that didn't care about dirt between her toes, volunteering to leave her heeled shoes behind to avoid drawing attention.

     As we reached a candle lit window, the shadows from inside danced in the light. Their voices were quiet, but just loud enough to hear from outside the walls. Attempting to peek through the window, I grabbed her arm and shook my head. Her eyes narrowed at me. Even in annoyance she drove me mad. "Stay low," I whispered.

     Lowering to my dagger, her eyes widened. "Why do you have that?"

      "Just put your ear to the wall." I ignored the question on purpose. She had never been on the streets of Paris, not in the ways I had been. At one point, I was the threat lingering over others shoulders, and I knew I  had to be on high alert for both of us because of it.

      Inside the men's voices intertwined, making it unclear who was speaking. One thing was clear, though. They were going to take the Bastille if it meant bloodshed and violence, and they were doing it on the fourteenth. Saying the date over and over, they questioned when individuals would be ready for the uprising. They had to be taking it for more than just ammunition.

     My mind combed through memory, trying to remember who was imprisoned at the Bastille. A man who threatened to assassinate the former king, too old to fight. A nobleman whose parents had tired of his antics and forced imprisonment upon him. I had met him in a pub on the outskirts of the city several years ago, when he hired me to murder a former friend turned foe. It was that job that had almost taken my life at the gallows. It was that job that now had me kneeling behind a bush with a woman I struggled to control myself around.

     A strand of her hair was loose against her face, as she held her ear against the wall. "Sophie," I whispered. Her eyes flickered up to me as my fingers grazed her skin and brushed the hair away.

     "Is something wrong?" Confusion grew in her brows as they furrowed, her nose wrinkling.

     I gulped, my blood boiling under my skin. "We should go."

      Before she could question me, the front door of the house creaked open. Several sets of footsteps went down the porch steps and dispersed onto the streets, and as I looked over my shoulder at the ready, none of the faces belonged to the Duke. I let out a low growl from my throat.

     "Soph—"" I turned to face her again, to find her face too close to my own, making me almost jump to pull my dagger. "Your husband wasn't at this meeting." I said trying to fill what little space laid between us.

     Her voice was barely over a whisper. "No," she said. "He wasn't." It came out as a relief. "Were you able to hear anything?"

    I nodded.

     My internal thoughts took over, as she adjusted the tie on her cloak. "I'm about to do something really stupid." Already plunging into her hair, my fingers caressed her scalp before she could react, pulling her into me. Meeting her lips with my own, I let go of my blade and grabbed at her waist.

     I expected her to pull away. To be the rational one. But then she pulled me so her back was against the wall of the house, her fingers pulling at the lapels of my jacket as our mouths opened to each other. Pulling me closer and closer, as my hand skimmed the edges of her skirts and brushed against her stockings. Her hands slowly fell down from my chest, grazing the buttons on my jacket.

     In a panic, she pushed me away leaving me in the branches of the bush as she stood up and brushed herself off. "We can't, Jacques," she shuttered, her eyes wild and longing. "We can't do this." Fixing her cloak over her head, she began to walk away breathing out an "I'm sorry" as she fled.

    Trying to control my breathing, my heart raced in my chest. The roaring of each beat echoing through my ears as I got my footing and straightened my jacket. Idiot. Idiot. Idiot. I ran my hand through my hair before grabbing my dagger from the ground and putting it back into the sheath at my hip. Across the street a figure waited on the steps of the Paris house, both hands on her hips. The petite frame somehow absorbed all the light from the doorway as I crossed the street. Elodie may have been small in size, but she could make any man tremble in fear with her presence.

     "What the hell were you thinking?" She met me at the bottom step. Before I could respond, she was at my throat. I swore I saw her teeth gleam as she spat, "Were you thinking at all?"

     Avoiding eye contact with her I tried to take a step past. "Elodie, I don't want-"

     "You don't want to talk about it. Of course, Jacques. You've lost your mind, but you don't want to talk about how losing your mind could upend all of our hard work, right?" Her arms flailed through the air. Reaching into her apron, she pulled out a letter and shoved it into my chest. "Get your shit together, or I will let his majesty know Sophie needs a secretary who doesn't think with what's in his pants." A promise, not a threat.

    "You know it has to be us working here," I said, grabbing at the letter before it fell to the ground. I followed after her. "And It isn't like that, Elodie."

    "Isn't it?" She spun on her heel, again in my face. It wasn't though, it wasn't like that at all.
"Just do your job, Jacques. Do your job and stay away from her."

     "I'm supposed to be her secretary."

     Elodie looked like she could swing on me without a second thought, her hands in tight fists. "Looks like you'll just have to go through me from now on."

     I tried intimidating her, standing more upright as I spat back, "Of course, like everything else."

     As the words left my lips she slammed the door in my face, quickly clicking the lock in place.

⚹⚹⚹⚹

     Lamplighters walking down the street, began to snuff out street lights as the gray of dawn edged over the horizon. Looking back over my shoulder one more time, I made sure the body left in the darkness of the alley couldn't be seen. Even though I knew where it laid. Who it was that's throat was cut ear to ear. Quickly I brought my handkerchief to my face to wipe the stickiness of blood splatter away, tossing it into the alley once it had served its purpose.

     The letter from the palace had been clear about my job. Find my target. Kill him without hesitation. After hours of stalking him across the city, I caught up to him. He had been at the meeting at the house across the street, the slight limp he walked with too memorable. Too easy to target.

     Approaching him had been too easy, calling out his name as if I was seeing a friend on the street just as he crossed paths with that alley he now laid in. One little shove got him off kilter into the darkness and one swing of my knife ended him. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath as the sounds of gurgling blood flooded my mind. Often I had to hum to myself as they died, to drown out their last suffering breaths. The death rattle leaving their lungs never got easier to hear.

     Watching them try to scream, but drowning faster only made it harder.

     As I walked down the street, I pulled my cloak back over my head. I didn't know who I was before I first took a life anymore, but I knew today wasn't the day I would be caught.

     "Good morning, monsieur," the lamplighter said as I passed, but I just nodded as I rounded the corner. In only a few blocks I could wash the blood away and resume to the everyday life I had come to know outside of my work.