“How can I contact you?”
He laughs heartily at that. Then the smile drops from his face and he points a long, thin finger at the ceiling above me. I raise my eyes to look, but the pop of a bursting lightbulb hits my ears an instant after the tunnels are plunged into utter darkness. Fine bits of glass rain down on me, and I duck to the ground, hands over my head.
“Go back to Versailles, Your Majesty.” The man’s voice echoes in the darkness, coming from every direction at once. “You’ll find no help in Paris tonight.”
“DANICA!” EVEN WITH her hushed whisper, Molli’s giggles give her away before her high pompadour can claim the honor. Rather a feat—thank goodness she’s not sporting feathers in her hair tonight. After a quick glance down the hallway, I join her in a small nook behind a set of heavy damask curtains. Lord Aaron and Lady Mei are with her, leaning out a picture window, sharing a cigarette. Someone has hacked M.A.R.I.E.—Lord Aaron, no doubt.
“Be careful,” I say, the finicky words escaping my mouth before I can clamp down on them. “The smell seeps,” I continue in an embarrassed mutter. Though it’s been only two months, I feel as if I’ve aged ten years since my failed escape attempt, and it’s starting to show. Seventeen going on thirty, I suppose.
“Oh, lord have mercy on us if we damage His Royal Highness’ precious frescoes,” Lord Aaron mocks. His eyes aren’t as playful as his tone, and he meets my gaze briefly before blinking away all trace of our shared secrets.
“Lean way out,” Lady Mei says, passing me the hand-rolled cigarette and shifting her skirts aside so I can bend as far through the window as my stiff bodice and wide skirts will allow.
I take a long drag, and it does soothe me—but I wonder if the night air alone would have done just as well. It tastes of freedom, that rarest of delicacies.
“Give it here,” Molli says, nudging me over and carefully grasping the cigarette dangling from my fingertips. “There’s only a pull or two left.”
“Give it here, Your Grace,” Lady Mei corrects. “Mustn’t forget whose presence we’re in.”
I force a smile at her rousing, though in truth I wish I could forget. Not something I’d confide to Lady Mei; as much as I enjoy her company, she’s a hopeless gossip. Lord Aaron and I were lucky to be able to replace her family’s priceless jewels the day after we stole them, or the only people she wouldn’t be talking to about it would be us.
I back away from the window and right into Lord Aaron’s chest.
“Steady,” he whispers in my ear, his hands encircling my upper arms protectively.
“I don’t suppose it’ll catch anything on fire down there, will it?” Molli asks, peering at the grounds below the window.
“If it does, M.A.R.I.E. will handle it,” Lady Mei says, breathing out a long stream of smoke before pulling her head back inside. M.A.R.I.E.—the Mainframe for Autonomous Robotic Intelligence Enhancement—is the central nervous system of the Palace of Versailles. She handles the drudgework, monitors the entire complex, and controls every bot, from the ones that trim the grass to the ones that help me dress. Presumably, she would also put out little fires.
“Hurry,” Mei says. “The system’s going to override His Lordship’s hack any second.”
Sure enough, scant seconds later the window sash slides shut with a defiant click. A blue light at the lock blinks indignantly, as though scolding us, but soon the anachronism fades and our little cabal bursts into laughter.
“I don’t know why you can’t simply smoke outside before you dress,” I say, dabbing laugh-tears from the corners of my eyes as we emerge through the curtains, back into the hallway.
“Because dressing takes an hour, at least,” Lady Mei says. She flips a jet-black curl off her shoulder and puts two hands under her barely-there cleavage, pushing it up ineffectually. “Some of us take a little more work than others,” she adds with a sidelong glance at the more-than-ample shadow between my breasts. She’s not wrong; the gowns of the Baroque era don’t really suit her figure. But the fashions in Sonoman-Versailles must be pulled from actual history books and are, thus, as unyielding as the boned corsets we all sport.