The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue - V. E. Schwab Page 0,45
the world clean, leave it smelling crisp and new.
But it seems nothing can rinse the grime from the streets of Paris.
If anything, that storm has only made things worse, the world wet and dull, puddles brown with mud and filth.
And then, amid the muck, she smells something sweet.
She follows the scent until she finds a market in full swing, the vendors shouting prices from tables and stalls, chickens still squawking as they’re hauled off the backs of carts.
Addie is famished, cannot even remember the last time she ate. Her dress doesn’t fit, but it never did—she’d stolen it from a washing line two days outside of Paris, tired of the one she’d worn the day of her wedding. Still, it hangs no looser now, despite the days without food or drink. She supposes she does not need to eat, will not perish from hunger—but tell that to her cramping stomach, her shaking legs.
She scans the busy square, thumbs the last coin in her pocket, loath to spend it. Perhaps she does not need to. With so many people in the market, it should be easy to steal what she needs. Or so she thinks, but the merchants of Paris are as cunning as its thieves, and they keep twice as tight a grip on every ware. Addie learns this the hard way; it will be weeks before she learns to palm an apple, longer still to master it without the faintest tell.
Today, she makes a clumsy effort, tries to swipe a seeded roll from a bread-baker’s cart, and is rewarded with a meaty hand vised around her wrist.
“Thief!”
She catches a glimpse of men-at-arms weaving through the crowd, and is flooded with the fear of landing in a cell, or stock. She is still flesh and bone, has not learned yet to pick locks, or charm men out of charges, to free herself from shackles as easily as her face slips from their minds.
So she pleads hastily, handing over her last coin.
He plucks it from her, waves the men away as the sol vanishes into his purse. Far too much for a roll, but he gives her nothing back. Payment, he says, for trying to steal.
“Lucky I don’t take your fingers,” he growls, pushing her away.
And that is how Addie comes to be in Paris, with a crust of bread and a broken bird, and nothing else.
She hurries from the market, slowing only when she reaches the bank of the Seine. And then, breathless, she tears into the roll, tries to make it last, but in moments it is gone, like a drop of water down an empty well, her hunger barely touched.
She thinks of Estele.
The year before, the old woman developed a ringing in her ears.
It was always there, she said, day and night, and when Addie asked her how she could bear the constant noise, she shrugged.
“With time,” she said, “you can get used to anything.”
But Addie does not think she will ever get used to this.
She stares out at the boats on the river, the cathedral rising through the curtain of mist. The glimpses of beauty that shine like gems against the dingy setting of the blocks, too far away and flat to be real.
She stands there until she realizes she is waiting. Waiting for someone to help. To come and fix the mess she’s in. But no one is coming. No one remembers, and if she resigns herself to waiting, she will wait forever.
So she walks.
And as she walks, she studies Paris. Makes a note of this house, and that road, of bridges, and carriage horses, and the gates of a garden. Glimpses roses beyond the wall, beauty in the cracks.
It will take years for her to learn the workings of this city. To memorize the clockwork of arrondissements, step by step, chart the course of every vendor, shop, and street. To study the nuances of the neighborhoods and find the strongholds and the cracks, learn to survive, and thrive, in the spaces between other people’s lives, make a place for herself among them.
Eventually, Addie will master Paris.
She will become a flawless thief, uncatchable and quick.
She will slip through fine houses like a filigreed ghost, move through salons, and steal up onto rooftops at night and drink pilfered wine beneath the open sky.
She will smile and laugh at every stolen victory.
Eventually—but not today.
Today, she is simply trying to distract herself from her gnawing hunger and her stifling fear. Today she is alone in a strange city, with