A Thousand Recipes for Revenge by Beth Cato

Author:Beth Cato [Cato, Beth]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-05-31T16:00:00+00:00

Though they avoided the major thoroughfares in Lutecia, the strange tension of the city remained palpable—that terrible sense that something bad had happened, and worse would follow. Street gossip was flurried but hushed.

This same mood of distraction and anxiety carried into the palace quartier. With the sun shining high after a day of drenching rain, a number of the well-to-do had stepped out for a stroll or ride, though many hadn’t made it far. Several wagons sat parallel on both sides of the broad avenue as occupants jabbered through coach windows.

Ada had returned to the outfit she’d worn to Hester’s Grace, which could readily be excused as servant’s attire, while Emone left their refuge for a brief while and returned with a maid’s outfit in light blue. That Emone knew people nearby, ready to hand out clothes willy-nilly, didn’t surprise Ada in the slightest.

What did make her mood turn grim was that they were almost to Maman’s residence.

“There’s a house coming up that I dare not get close to,” Ada said. The fact that Comtesse Esme Alarie was her mother was known only to her grandmother, Erwan, Ragnar, and Gyst, and it needed to stay that way.

Emone cast her a sidelong look and nodded. “Can you describe the house?”

“It has the vine-covered stone wall, three chestnut trees visible beyond.” They stopped walking as Ada feigned digging in her boot as if for a stone. The chestnuts were just visible from where they stood.

“We needn’t go farther, then. Our former peer’s spawn entered the gate of the home beside it, the one closer to us.”

“Let’s turn around,” Ada murmured.

Mallory Valmont’s son—and presumably, the deathly ill Mallory Valmont—lived next door to Maman, in the house Ada and her grandmother had utilized in their escape. Maman and the Valmonts, business partners. Maman wouldn’t be involved in the plot against Ada and her compatriots, though . . . no, that had arisen from the Valmonts alone.

“What are you thinking?” murmured Emone. They crossed the grand square before the palace, normally a place of bustle to be avoided, but today the vendors and passersby were sparse.

“That the mysteries being solved are still snarled, even by Gyst’s standards.”

Bells tolled again, this time not from the pentad but from the palace ahead to their right.

“Summoning bells?” said Emone, her brow furrowing. “They must be making the official declaration—oh no.”

Ada heard the roar behind her, like an oncoming flood, as people emerged from homes and businesses to fill the streets. Wagons, riders, and pedestrians began to converge around them.

“Emone!” Panic warbled in her voice. “I need out of here.”

Awareness flashed in Emone’s eyes. “This way.”

They faced an alley, but it, too, began to fill with humanity. People, people, everywhere. Ada and Emone briefly fought the flow, trying in vain to reach the doorway of a haberdasher, but the twenty feet may as well have been a deep chasm. Heat flashed over Ada’s skin, her breaths quickening, sweat sopping her like an instantaneous, personal rainstorm. Usually, her hot drenches

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