A/N: Actually I feel as if I should put up a warning for this chapter. I'm not so sure which one though.
So everyone read at your own risk. Nothing is happening that would require a formal go-up of the rating, but this chapter is certainly about an evil man doing disturbing things.
Thanks again to all who still read and review, who favourite the story and follow the tale. Thanks also to judybear236 for corrections
If some of you leave a comment, you always make my day :-)
Chapter 26: The face of the beast
"Tonight is the day of the dead. Tonight the dead return."
Breakfast at Courfeyrac's apartment was a significantly later affair and bordered on something that one might be ashamed to call lunch due to the hour.
Then again, their group had been the last to go to sleep, given as Bahorel and Courfeyrac – not without certain anxiousness - had waited for Marius and Gavroche to reappear, which they did, tired, but unscathed.
From then on, it had been blissful hours of sleep and long hours of watching.
Now however, in the light of day, the three felt thoroughly rested and met up around the large table in the center of the apartment to share a coffee and some of the bread that Gavroche had brought to them, slightly stale, but edible. Courfeyrac felt distinctively more settled after a good night of sleep.
He tried to steer his thoughts not too close in the direction of Alexandre – that wound was still too fresh for anyone's peace of mind – but if he avoided this line, one might almost think everything was alright.
"So, that mystery lady of yours has turned into smoke as ghosts do in the morning?" Bahorel teased Marius as he helped himself to another round of bread.
Marius shook his head.
"Not quite into smoke", he contradicted. "But yes. They have left Rue Plumet for another lodging of theirs, an apartment that apparently also belongs to her father. Down Rue de l'Homme Armée.
"Fitting name after all that happened the last two days", Courfeyrac commented between sips of coffee. "That should bode well for them. Or bad. However you look at it."
A hint of unease crossed Marius' face as he looked back down to the delicate script that was Cosette's letter, food forgotten on his table.
"I have chased them away from their home", he realized, belatedly. "I made them leave…"
Courfeyrac only with difficulty refrained from rolling his eyes. Of course, there was some truth in Marius' words, but it would not do to shove the young baron's son further down that unproductive line of thought.
"Now look Marius", he therefore answered in what he hoped was a calm tone. "You don't even know why she left. And if they did due to the incident, you should rejoice. They will probably be safer in their new lodgings. That assassin won't know where they are."
"Still I'd like to see her safe", Marius admitted, his eyes still fixed to the letter.
"And lead him to her again? Come on, boy, you're smarter than that. Before you do anything on that front, we need to get rid of the man whoever it is." Courfeyrac silently thanked heavens for Bahorel's lack of patience. "Once he's out of the way you can continue to cheerfully moon over darling Cosette."
Marius, even though uneasy at the teasing, nodded slowly, admitting, that for once his friends might be in the right about something. With a world-weary sigh, he folded Cosette's letter upon itself carefully and tucked it away in his vest, retrieving instead the rest of the mail that he had found to be pushed through under the door of his room in Boulevard de l'Hopital.
He had taken them with him, seeing as he did not know when he would go back home again, but had not yet found the time to read through them.
That he now put himself to it, was at least a good sign of him trying to get to different thoughts.
The first two letters were quickly skimmed, refolded, and set aside with a frown.
The third, however, took longer. Marius read it, carefully, and Courfeyrac could have sworn that he paled slightly, the lines around his mouth turning tense and uneasy.
"Bad news?" Courfeyrac asked, still holding his coffee cup in hand, and Marius took a few moments before he answered. His voice did not sound much like him at all, and this was a worrying thing.
"Courfeyrac, Bahorel? I think you should read this."
His tone left any discussion out of the question, and Courfeyrac walked around the table quickly, taking a chair next to Marius so that he could peek over the young man's shoulder.
Bahorel was doing the same on his other side, and only a few minutes later, they understood and shared Marius' concern to the fullest.
The script was practiced and flowing, but not exceptionally so, a man of certain education, to be sure, but probably not one born and bred into a profession that required writing.
Still the wording was tolerable. The content, however, was ugly.
This is the account of a man that shall not be named.
Rest assured, Monsieur, on the love of God and my life, that the words in this message contain the truth, and nothing but it, and while I have nothing but my word to show for it, I would beg you to consider it, at least, for the sake of your own life and peace of mind.
There are things I know without being able to divulge whereof, and one of these things is that you are haunted, Monsieur. There is a man on your track, his mind intent on evil, and you need to be wary of him if you are to escape his paths.
The name of this man is or was Alfonse Rebucy. He was born and raised in a small town in the north to a fisherman's family with more children than they could support.
When she woke, it was to the sound of breathing.
The black veils unraveled their secrets only reluctantly as consciousness returned, and Éponine slowly became aware of those parts of her surrounding that was accessible to her.
Darkness did not recede as she opened her eyes, and realized that they were obscured with a piece of black cloth, rendering vision impossible and leaving her blind and helpless. Pain on her ankles and hands were telltale signs that she had been bound.
Éponine fought down a bout of panic.
For all the bad situations she had been in, this was a new one. Of course, she was used to trouble, but up to now she had only been faced with the sort of trouble that she could escape by running or fierceness. That was trouble she knew.
This here, however, as innocent as it seemed to be as opposed to a dark street or angry shouts, seemed so much more dangerous.
She needed to find out what was going on.
Carefully, she checked her breathing, evened it out so that nothing in her should remind whoever was present of the fact that she was awake, and, like an eternity of two days back, when she woke up in the back room of the Café Musain, she began to sense her surroundings.
She was lying on a bed or at least a mattress, remarkably soft compared to her usual sleeping arrangements. Her head was throbbing painfully.
The same was true for her hands and feet. Éponine could not feel what was binding them – the fetters were tight enough for feeling to recede from her extremities, and careful fumbling with her fingertips brought about nothing – they were too numb to register any useful information.
Fear warred with panic.
But she was Éponine Thénardier. She knew her way around.
She would find a way out of this.
"Who wrote this?" Courfeyrac asked when he had finished the first paragraph, a deep frown engraved on his forehead. "Do you have any idea where this is coming from?"
Marius shook his head, slightly at loss at what to say.
"I don't know", he confessed. "It is unsigned, as you can see, and the hand is unfamiliar to me. I don't know if it was delivered with the usual mail – I might ask our landlord, he might know. I really have no idea where this is coming from."
"We seem to have attracted quite a lot of interest lately", Bahorel remarked with a cocky smirk, apparently partly satisfied with these facts. Courfeyrac was intent to agree, but he did not utter the question at hand, for he was certain not to receive any senseful answer: Why did whoever it is write to you, Marius?
Alfonse was a middle child, the fourth or fifth in a row of what must have been a dozen, a second son, and he passed an uneventful youth learning the trade of his father and of the father before him.
However, be it the poverty and neglect or to a sickness of mind he was born with – as loath as I am to say that about anyone – at some time during his adolescence the young man has taken a turn for the wicked.
At the age of about fifteen years, he was allowed to use the second, smaller boat of his family to drive out to sea on his own, after his brother, who had taken this occupation before him, died of an illness that is of no consequence to this account.
This must have been where it began.
He never turned out to be a very successful fisherman, much to his parents' distress, but the reason for this was not a lack of skill, but rather a lack of determination.
His newfound freedom young Alfonse used to follow a passion of his that one not born to it cannot understand.
Remembrance came back only slowly. She had been at the market and retreated slightly from the tinker's stand she had been looking at to watch the further dealings of the vendor. Her questioning had not been very successful, and thus she had resorted to observation to find out how he was negotiating.
It would give her the correct angle to work with him next time.
She had seen an unexpected movement from the corner of her eye, and all her instincts had reacted with the right impulses but the slightest bit too late. She had recognized the face the moment before she was struck down, had recognized the man she had met two days ago, on the same market but under different circumstances.
The man who had gifted her with the shoulder wound that had taken up angry throbbing again.
And now she was lying in darkness, bound, disoriented and alone.
Not quite alone, of course. There was the breathing.
It was close to her, near her ear somehow, deep, eager breathing as if sleeping soundly or smelling a delicious dish.
That last thought gave her pause. And let a shiver run down her spine.
The breathing hitched, for just a moment, and Éponine froze, afraid that she had given away the fact that she was not sleeping any more, but if her captor had remarked anything he did not notice it. Instead, the breathing receded and the mattress shifted slightly as whoever it was got up and turned away, shuffling. It was disquieting to feel, that something within her hair shifted in the process.
Éponine tried not to squirm.
Only a moment later he returned, and she felt a strand of hair being lifted, long and heavy, and then there was a dry sound, and the weight fell back, a shifting feeling, and Éponine realized that something was wrong.
And this time, she could not suppress the flinching.
The response was another long-drawn breath.
And then words.
"Ah. You're awake then."
"The others must read this. Hell, Enjolras must read this. And probably Joly shouldn't read this."
Absent-mindedly Courfeyrac realized that Bahorel had probably read more quickly than him. Yet, already the tone of what he had read convinced him that his friend could not be more right. This letter was like the window into a nightmare.
"Yes", he agreed. "We'll be leaving for the Musain right away."
There is no easy way of saying this. There is no easy phrase, and so, if you can forgive me, I must be blunt.
Alfonse Rebucy has become a monster. He thrives on the hunt of people, and he is merciless in his process. A victim chosen, he tails it with infinite patience. What spurs him on, I know not. But what I do know is that he is capable – and willing – of waiting out until the whole life of his victim is sprayed out before him. He investigates. He shadows.
And then, one day, he kills.
I do not know how many he killed. He has been convicted on the murder of two and the attempted of a third.
Arianne Grère stemmed from a neighboring village. She was barely seventeen, a farmer's daughter, in the prime of her beauty. It seems that she even knew him, had exchanged words with him, until one day she did not return from her daily chores, and she was found only six months after when the snow had cleared.
I will spare you the details. This man has no pattern in his method of killing. It is of no consequence.
Michèle Pointeau was only two years older, but infinitely less fortunate. She belonged to the lower classes, to those, who sell their bodies to the sailors that arrive.
Apparently she has done the same to Rebucy and paid with her life for it.
It was only later that we learned, that Rebucy was a regular in her environment, not so much having actually visited prostitutes, but more hanging about the establishments there. He had followed her for six months before the final blow, and when it came, it was merciless.
Éponine froze for a moment, being caught out. Terror threatened to grip her again – she was helpless, helpless, and all her instincts screamed in panic. There was no running now, no quick escape through the streets, no hiding in dark places.
There was only her and him.
Talk, she realized, was the only thing she could do for the moment, until she could think of something more senseful, more productive to do. In the meantime, the goal had to be to find out what the man wanted.
Maybe this would show her a way out.
"Who are you", she asked roughly, and he stilled his breathing for a moment, and even the sounds of his movement ceased, one moment of perfect silence almost more terrifying than the shuffling before.
"I have many names", he answered smoothly. "They are not important."
His voice was strangely gentle, not very deep, but fairly agreeable, an even drawl but, as Gavroche had accurately pointed out, there was a rolling, slurring note in his speech, that hinted at dreary back streets and darker corners.
Whatever this situation was, Éponine did not want to appear any weaker and more caught out than was absolutely inevitable.
It did not seem wise to bait him overly, but given the situation she was in, Éponine figured that meekness would not improve her situation at all.
She shifted around slightly to be able to lie on her back and answered with a slight sneer in her voice.
"Some come to mind", she replied drily, and then continued, "But it's your choice. 'Hey you' it is, then. What do you want?"
This earned her a laugh.
"You", he said, in a conversational manner that did nothing to soothe her nerves, "have stolen something from me." A deep breath again. "It is only right that I take something in return, don't you think?"
Éponine felt herself go cold. The words of Enjolras and his friends came back to haunt her.
And it reminded her of something.
"I am a thief, I'm sure you know that", Éponine spat out, out of pure spite, and to silence her own fearful thoughts. "What were you expecting?" She fletched her fingers to try and get some feeling back into them.
She needed to get Enjolras' knife.
"Ah, yes." His voice reminded Éponine uneasily of a cat stretching in the sun. "But so am I."
"This is bad", Courfeyrac commented the only thing that was going through his mind as he stared at the orderly script in front of him.
"Beyond that", Marius confirmed, shaking his head. "To think that I have led this monster to Cosette!" He shivered.
"Count your blessings she's away from that house", Bahorel reminded. "When you told me about them running, I thought they were quite the skittish lot, but honestly, this here puts things in perspective."
"It does", Courfeyrac confirmed, and read on. If what was written in this letter was any kind of true, things had become a lot more disturbing now.
The third murder he failed to commit. Elizabeth Paulekerk was a dutch woman come to France to work, and she escaped him, not once, but twice.
It is from her account that I draw my statements on his dedication.
From what he told her during hours he held her captive – and again, Monsieur, I will spare you the details of it – he knew her every move and breath. Every secret he had pried of her by watching, by breaking into her house, by questioning her friends and relations.
It was the account of Elizabeth Paulekerk, which allowed him to be convicted and sentenced to death.
But there were more disappearances, more deaths up and down the coast while he was there, and they stopped when he left. I shiver to count, or to imagine what he must have done.
She had placed the knife into the belt of her skirt, half hidden beneath the folds of her blouse, on the left hand side, to be able to draw it easily.
Éponine had never felt the need or inclination for knife work. That had always been the domain of Montparnasse. She had rather resorted to running and clever talk, to schemes of avoidance and nimbleness. Nonetheless, growing up basically at his side had left her not fully incompetent on the subject.
If she could only get to that knife…
Carefully she shifted her weight, lying on her back now, and she slightly propped herself up on heels and shoulders to subtly test with her arms the location that the knife was supposedly at.
But where she had put it, there was only the cloth of skirt and chemise.
Éponine felt an icy dread settling into her stomach. She was really helpless.
A chuckle coming closer drew her attention back to the assassin. She clenched her fingers at his approach, tense to the last fiber of her body.
"I took that one, sweet girl", her captor said. "Wouldn't have you hurt yourself while you are lying there."
"Why do you bring me here?" Éponine forced out between clenched teeth. "What do you want from me?"
Again, something settled in her hair, and she realized it was a hand, running through the strands fanned out on the pillow.
Éponine closed her eyes under the blindfold, concentrated on the sensation to be able to estimate where he was, and bide her time.
"I want what you took from me. Enjolras would be dead, if not for you, and Pontmercy as well."
The bed shifted, as he probably sat next to her. About at the level of her hip. Good.
So Enjolras had been the first target. Now, that Éponine knew so much more than two days before, it was not so surprising. And he was right in thinking she had saved his life.
Somehow, it made their conversations during the last days less confusing. He was indeed in her debt. That was something she could accept and work with.
If it ever came to that. For the implications of her captor's words were clear as day.
"I'm not as important as them", she snapped back. "You win nothing by killing me. They won't even notice." That, at least, was probably as of yesterday a lie, and Éponine pushed aside any tumbling thoughts that threatened to come to the surface due to that.
"That would matter to my friends", the man said, and for the first time since this whole story began she had heard the confirmation that all of these events were indeed interlinked, the assassins in some way connected to one another. "Not to me. As far as I am concerned…", and again the mattress shifted, and Éponine understood that he was bending forward, to actually bury his face in her hair. His voice was slightly muffled, and close to her ear.
"… you are a very delicious kind of prey."
That did it. That last, so very disgusting statement had her panic overwhelming every good sense she still tried to maintain in this situation. Steeling herself, she quickly moved her head into the direction of his, with all the speed and strength she could muster, to hit something, anything on him and knock him out.
The impact was severe and she felt stars between her closed eyes and tears of pain threatening, but her fear served her well and she continued, raising her feet to where she estimated him to be sitting and brought them down hard, aiming for the groin the best she could.
His hiss of pain and the tumble from her bed indicated that she had at least in part been successful in her venture, but he was not unconscious. While she desperately tried to get up on her knees, remove the blindfold or any of the fetters that were holding her, he got back on his feet, and Éponine swayed, trying in vain to guess his position.
She was of course at a tremendous disadvantage.
Out of the blue, she felt a strike coming towards her temple, pain exploding as she collapsed, engulfed by a moment of panic.
And then darkness.
While Courfeyrac was reading through the last lines of the letter, Marius and Bahorel were already donning their waistcoats in a hurry. They had to catch Enjolras and Combeferre at the Musain before they left for any kind of errand, and this news was too disturbing not to be shared with all of them.
The moment of peace had, most certainly, not lasted.
Why he is alive, I cannot say.
All the advice I have to give is to watch the shadows around you, Monsieur. This man is as devious as he is patient, and he takes pleasure in many things that you and I would consider repugnant.
All I have to offer for protection is his name. Whatever he may have become, this is still a remnant of his past. And the knowledge of where he comes from and what sort of enemy it is you are facing.
May god be with you, Monsieur, and watch you on your path.
"So this is where it happened? Quite the sordid corner of Paris that you have led me to, Prouvaire."
The man that stepped onto the small market at the side of Jean Prouvaire was significantly older than the young poet, but not old yet, in the middle of his thirties but looking significantly younger. A narrow face was framed by a set of fashionable, brown, short locks, well groomed but modest, as was the complete appearance of the man. A long straight nose and a narrow mouth completed the picture of a man that could be, with all right, described as looking both bourgeois and intellectual. Yet, the light in his eyes was that of slight irony as he took in his surroundings, the market, the hustle, the surroundings that distinctively were neither his nor that of his companion.
"Ah, the charmingly romantic view of decay, my friend. I can imagine why you would like this place."
Beside the teasing, his words also had a slightly hard note to it, that did not go too well with the language he was speaking. He spoke the words with the proficiency and ease of long practice, but not with the smoothness of one born to it, and that was no wonder, for his mother tongue was, in fact, German.
"We thought it perfectly suited for our task." Jehan could not help to sound slightly defensive and ill at ease. He liked Heinrich Heine, the German poet-turned-newspaper-correspondent, who spent his time in the Paris salons keeping a confident finger on the pulse of the city, but the biting manner that the man was able to exhibit never failed him to put it on edge.
Heine laughed.
"Don't be offended, Prouvaire, I am only jesting, you know this."
He thoughtfully passed his cane from one hand to the other as his keen eyes continued to survey the market.
"It seems a disquieting thought that someone out of these misérables would come out and strike at you out of the blue."
Prouvaire nodded and with a shudder remembered the fearful hours of two days ago, when they had been attacked and then fled.
"Another story for your "Französische Zustände", don't you think?"
Heine carefully shook his head.
"I am not sure, Prouvaire. You see, back in Augsburg, it will be difficult to judge all that is going on in this city at the moment, the shifts and turns of different factions and ideas. To Germany, the July Monarchy is a republic, or as close as any of them can imagine it without turning to the Americas. I am not sure I could portray the picture in full if I tried. It has to be seen and lived… or maybe I have not found the words yet."
"I can hardly imagine that", Jehan disagreed. The man wrote poems and articles not only in his mother tongue, but in French as well, and Jehan had no doubt of his eloquence. The reason, he suspected, for his reluctance was rather in the fact, that he had not fully taken a position with or against the July Monarchy yet. Jehan had worked on convincing the German for a while, but as of now, he had remained a cautious outsider to the whole discussion.
As if guessing his thoughts, Heine continued.
"Though, if what you suspect is true, it sheds quite a somber light on some parts of your administration. Le Globe is piping a similar tone, I believe." He turned towards Jehan, a quizzical note in his clever eyes. "You are acquainted with the Cambouts as well, are you not?" he asked. "What is this? Enfantin seeing specters or something real? And is Le Cambout really dead?"
Jehan nodded sorrowfully.
"He is. I have it on authority of Madame de Cambout directly. And we have indeed reason to believe by the same source that attacked us here."
"Unfortunate." Heine took a few steps into the market and left Jehan to follow. "And a shame about Cambout. He was a decent man…" The jest was gone from his voice, replaced by a thoughtful concern. "Ill news, Prouvaire, I fear. I think some careful listening will be required, if one is to make sense of this."
His voice trailed away and the two men wandered over the market, taking in the surroundings.
The hustle was no different than any other day, shouts and haggles, discussions over goods and over daily issues, information exchange, and the general chaos of a poor market in Paris.
Prouvaire and Heine walked over the market in relative silence, watching the scenery. Jehan did not interrupt the older man's thoughts – he knew him well enough not to do this - and took in the scenery in curiosity.
He allowed himself to get lost in his thoughts again, on the things that happened, and those, that still might come to pass. He was tired, having slept fairly little after yesterday's meeting that had reached into the wee hours of the morning, and so his thoughts were slightly dazed.
Which is why he only saw her when she was slamming into him.
The impact almost tore him off his feet and he tumbled to the side, immediately aware of the impending danger of the moment – for the disaster two days ago had not started much differently – but he regained his footing fairly quickly. The person running into him had been small and light, and not intend on damage, but on speed.
Still, as he looked at the girl that had fallen to the ground, sitting in the dirt of the market where the impact had pushed her to, he could hardly believe his eyes.
For a moment, he was questioning his powers of observation. That particular hue of brown hair – while having made quite a lasting impression on him – was not exactly uncommon, and neither was a slim, skinny gamine, dressed in a threadbare chemise and fading skirt.
It would have been a picture in thousands, if not for the eyes.
They had caught and demanded his attention the day before, in Picpus, brown and wide and in expression far-off, and they had left an imprint he would have a hard time forgetting, even if he tried.
But as she looked up to him in shock – flinching reflexively away from him, bringing up the unpleasant question of what sort of reaction she was expecting – he realized that something was tremendously wrong about her.
Yesterday, she had seemed so lost in her own thoughts. She had had an air of fairy about her, a touch of another world, like a small, flighty spirit from a tale of centuries passed. The handmaiden of the lady of the lake, Melusine in the moonlight…
It had been a fascinating, alluring picture under all the show and pretense of a gamine.
All this was still there. But it was covered, hidden by the fact that her eyes were full of tears – and her cheeks were telltale signs that these were not the first to fall.
And her expression wavered from scared to frantic.
Had, at this moment, their mysterious attacker appeared to shove a dagger into his stomach, the impact could not have been more painful.
"M… Mademoiselle", he blurted out inelegantly, and she flinched, taking note, real note of him for the first time. Recognition flickered, and she retreated; scrambling over the floor as she fled a few inches back.
She had been skittish yesterday, but this was worse. And yet, Jehan resorted to what had worked with her before. Slowly, he lowered himself into a crouching position, both hands open towards her in a gesture of peace. Her eyes wide, she watched his every move.
Jehan took a deep breath to calm himself. He had had half a mind of going back to Picpus today in the hope of seeing her – she had proven herself to be quite unforgettable since yesterday – but now fate presented him with a different option.
"I remember you", he began softly, the words easier in this venture than in other dealings, as here, he was sure of his ground and path. "But I would not have wished to meet you again thus…" He gestured weakly to the tears on her cheeks, not daring to touch her for fear she would bolt. "Is there anything I can do? Are you hurt?"
She mutely shook her head in what he guessed was a reflex, her eyes darting from her surroundings to him and back again. But Jehan was not deflected that easily.
"What is wrong Mademoiselle?" He sought to apply his gentlest tone, the one reserved for things cherished, loved or scared, not closing in on her, but holding her gaze in the hope of reaching her.
She hesitated for a moment. Her lips pressed together, as if to keep words in, her eyes darting about, she was an image conflicted as she still sat on the ground.
"Mademoiselle", he reiterated, and this got her attention, her eyes snapping back to his frightfully.
"It's… alright", she answered, softly shaking her head without breaking the gaze, and he could tell that it was anything but this; however, her secrets were hidden behind a curtain of brown strands and fear. "I will just…", and she made to get up, when he heard a voice, as if from far away.
"Azelma?"
He took a moment to realize that the voice was speaking to the gamine, and he understood it only by the quick turn of her head in direction of the sound, the spell broken. Only moments later, the man had caught up with him, almost a boy still. Brown hair under a dark blue cap and eyes of green, cool and calculating, the eyes of a man beyond his years by far.
He was not dressed badly, given their surroundings, one of those better off on this market – a waistcoat and jacket, cheap cloth but tolerable cut - and Jehan had to admit he cut a good-looking figure, in comparison with most of what was seen on this market.
The man ignored him and shot straight to the girl, placing his hands on her shoulders with an ease of long familiarity. There was something frantic about his manner, his body coiled like a cat before the jump.
"Azelma, where's your sister?"
She shook her head softly, eyes wide.
"I don't know", she whispered, frightened and uncertain. "I only briefly turned and then she was gone…"
He swore, in a manner that quickly betrayed exactly how much a disguise his attire was, and Jehan could not help flinching at the ferocity of it.
"Come with me!"
He took her at the arm, almost roughly, and a protest on Jehan's lips died away as she followed more or less willingly, getting up with only a fleeting glance towards him between swaying brown strands. As an afterthought, the young man turned to him, and for a moment he caught a wild expression in his eyes before a smile – no, rather a sneer – wiped it all away in a moment of casualty.
"You'll excuse us, Monsieur. We have things to do.", he said in a tone that clearly said he did not care at all, and then they were gone, disappearing into the crowd that had spit them out, mingling with their own.
Slightly dazed, Jehan got up and looked into the direction they had vanished into.
"My, my." He almost flinched, having forgotten of his companion on this walk over the market. Heine stepped up to him and followed his gaze. "Who was that?"
"Azelma", Prouvaire replied, softly. "That's all I know…"