A Far Better Thing, page 40
“Not long now, Evrémonde,” one of them said to me. It might have been jeering or sympathetic; it was difficult to tell.
“I know,” I said. “I’m ready.”
Then the door closed, and I was left alone in Charles Darnay’s cell—my cell. It seemed empty, suddenly. There was a frost in the air still, and winter sun spilled through the tiny window in the corner. I sat carefully. I was very tired, but with only a few hours to go it seemed a waste to close my eyes and miss the sparkle of the light from the Seine and the sounds of the streets spilling up to meet me. I leaned my head against the wall, and waited.
Somewhere across the city, my changeling was asleep in a carriage, taking his turn being Sydney Carton for a while. I was Charles Evrémonde again, as I was born. It had been a long, strange road back to myself, but I had made it in the end.
I was ready.
CHAPTER 29
THE FOOTSTEPS DIE OUT FOREVER
THEY CAME to my cell after the clock struck two, and led me into a small, windowless room with fifty or so others. They cut my hair short to expose my neck for the blade, and they tied my hands behind my back. Honestly, I was more unnerved by the haircut than the bonds. I had never had my hair short, or even properly off my face. I didn’t worry anymore that anybody would notice I wasn’t Evrémonde, but I did feel rather naked before the world.
The carts were waiting for us outside in the courtyard. The light as we were led out was momentarily dazzling after the dark room. It was a cold, clear December day. At three in the afternoon, there was already a feel of dusk in the air. I remembered, as my eyes cleared, that the Conciergerie is beautiful.
“Oh my God,” the woman next to me murmured, exactly as Rosemary had earlier that morning. I had spoken to her in the room: a young seamstress, denounced for plotting. I didn’t even know her name. Her face was pale behind a dusting of freckles and pockmarks. I reached out as I had to Rosemary, my arms hampered awkwardly by the rope, and took her hand. It felt warm and human in my own: as it steadied, I realised my own nerves had steadied too.
“Don’t be afraid,” I said.
She looked at my face, and nodded.
I was grateful for my fellow prisoner’s hand, and for the distraction of comforting her fear. It was a long, slow ride to the Place de la Révolution. I stood with four other prisoners in the tumbril, all of us fighting to keep our balance. People stopped to look at us and point, and more than once I heard the name “Evrémonde” hurled from the street. Executions were less of an event now than they once were, but they still drew a crowd. There was no sign of the Defarges, but as we passed the Tuileries Gardens I saw Barsad trying to quiet a man jeering from the street. The anxiety on his face made me smile a little. As if I would choose to declare myself an impostor at this late stage, and as if anybody would believe me if I tried.
All at once, I saw Shadow. The glimmer hung over the crowds, hovering in the air as Bartholomew hovered on the day of the June uprisings. Shadow. I couldn’t see his face, but I saw the moment he recognised me, and his voice was in my head.
Memory …
The rush of feeling that came with it was hard to untangle: astonishment, of course, and anger, and, most surprising, something that might almost be described as grief. I felt nothing for him. It wasn’t the terrible numbness that held me for so much of life in London before Lucie Manette: it was a wild, careless, joyful disregard. There was nothing he could do. He didn’t matter anymore. He couldn’t reach out and stop me, not before the most powerful crowd in the mortal world. He would have to watch with a thousand other eyes as I stepped up to the blade. Once I was gone, his revenge would be over. He would have no reason to torment Lucie and Charles further, without me to benefit. It was all over. In this one thing, I was utterly free as I had never been in my entire life. In its very last moments, my life was my own, and I was giving it to the people I loved.
* * *
LUCIE AND Charles should be long gone now. Charles will have opened his eyes, and seen his wife and child. I think of that, and I don’t flinch when the silhouette of the guillotine rises out of the distance with its blade raised high for action.
It’s time.
* * *
THE WIFE of my dear friend’s cousin, the one we used to half jokingly call “the more-famous Madame Roland,” was executed only weeks ago. Throughout Paris you still hear stories of how she faced the statue that stands above the crowded square, and declared, “O Liberty, what crimes are committed in thy name!” before turning to meet her fate with her chin raised defiantly. She, I freely admit, was magnificent, and I have no doubt her words will echo down the ages. I won’t have any words, and nobody will remember how exactly I met my fate. I’m one in a line of fifty-two. I’m not even the first or the last—I just counted, and I’m twenty-third. But Lucie will remember me, and so will the less-famous Rolands, and so will Rosemary and Addison.
God. Twenty-two people, then it’s my turn. It sounds like a lot. But they go through them fast.
Beside me, my fellow prisoner’s fingers curl tighter around mine.
“Don’t look,” I whisper. I look at her, until she turns her gaze towards me. “That’s it. Keep looking at me, and don’t be afraid.”
“I won’t be,” she says.
We are the fifth tumbril to be let out and forced into line. Our turn comes quickly.
They always let the women go first. It’s a matter of etiquette. The first to step up is a young woman in a rough peasant’s dress, her face thin and pale beneath cropped brown hair. I watch her ascend the stairs, lie on the board with her neck in the lunette, and I see her strapped down. When the blade comes, it’s almost too fast to see, but I hear the appreciative roar of the crowd. One.
We all take a step forwards.
My heart is racing in my chest. It’s strange, because I never really cared for my life, and yet I’m finding it very hard to let go of it now. It doesn’t matter what my mind is resolved to. My body is still whole, and relatively healthy. It can’t quite believe that anything is going to happen to it.
Was this what it was like for you, Ivy? Your death came so fast. Did you have time to realise, or be afraid? You had time to call my name.
Two. There’s a short scream this time, as the blade comes down. There’s no point saying I’m not afraid, because I am. I don’t want to die.
“Is it time now?” the young woman whispers at my shoulder, and I shake off my thoughts and find a smile for her.
“Yes,” I say.
She nods, the fear smoothed from her face, and her lips brush mine before she is wrenched away. She ascends the stairs with her head held high. Just once, she glances in my direction, and smiles back. I’m still afraid, but I don’t look away.
Three. My turn.
A hand clasps me roughly by the shoulder. I shake it off, and I climb up to the well-trodden wooden scaffolding.
It’s a cold, clear day in Paris. I try to feel that, with all my senses. I feel the touch of the winter sun on my face as a caress, I feel the chill of the air as dusk encroaches. I hear shouts and grumbles and, far away, too far to be part of this scene, someone is playing a violin. I smell blood and damp and ancient stone. There’s a breeze up here, just a faint one. The rope binding my hands cuts into my wrists and my shoulders ache, and I feel that too. I drink in the mortal world. I promised Shadow that I wouldn’t close my eyes as the blade descended—and, besides, I don’t want to. I want to remember everything, even the parts that hurt.
Something odd happens then. All at once, my vision clouds, and the guillotine drops away.
I see the teetering bone dwellings of the Children’s Quarter empty, and a string of children climbing the cliff on which Ivy died to a glowing gate between worlds. I see Rosemary and Thorne, each with a smaller child’s hand in their own. Rosemary has an infant at her hip, and her face glows with fierce triumph.
I see a dark-haired young woman I recognise instantly, her face worn and matured but with the determination of the young girl who stood in front of me in the Children’s Quarter and asked if I had come to take them back to the mortal world. A silver amulet glistens at her neck as she runs through rain-soaked streets under grey skies. She knocks at a door that nobody else can see, and it opens to let her in.
I see the Realm, dark now and cold, torn apart by the weight of fighting. Winter sits on the throne, and Order and Chaos have broken.
And I see Lucie Darnay under the plane tree at Soho Square, her gold hair streaked with silver. An infant is cradled in her arms; the wind stirs his dark curls, and Lucie wraps a fluffy blanket tighter about him. He looks back at her with eyes that are neither blue nor dark, but my odd, unequal mixture of brown and green. Darnay stands beside her, as do Alexandre Manette, Miss Pross, and Mr. Lorry. A new tree grows in the snow. Lucie Ivy, almost a young woman now, bends down to water it. I know, without knowing how, that it is exactly three years from today, they have gathered to remember me, and the child in Lucie’s arms bears my name.
I don’t know what it means. All I know of the world tells me that it’s nothing but my imagination—that magic, though it does exist, is never kind. It takes; it never gives. But I think of the dream that came to me yesterday, the last one I would ever have, and perhaps I’m wrong. Perhaps magic is kinder than I think. Just now, I don’t find it difficult to believe what I’ve seen. Perhaps it’s because I remember Rosemary’s face in Number 72, when she promised me that word would reach the Realm of what I was about to do.
Wouldn’t it be strange if this, the last thing I will ever do, turns out to be the first spark of another revolution? It probably wouldn’t be any more successful than this one, of course. Perhaps even less. But every revolution, however it ends, begins with a flicker of hope.
The last thing I will ever do. A strange thing, and a strange rest to go to afterwards. But perhaps it will be better than any I have ever known.
A cold, clear day in Paris. It was a cold day in London when I first laid eyes on Lucie Manette, a clear day under the plane tree when I came to their house for the last time. She told me that she would have said yes.
There’s no time left to speak now. I don’t know what I would have said.
Ivy …
I can’t see the crowds anymore. I feel the breeze on my face and the sun on the back of my head. In a moment, I will hear the blade singing as it comes to cut me away, and then I will be gone, faded like the echoes of footsteps under the plane tree at Soho Square or the last shimmer of the light of the Wild Hunt in the dawn, nothing more and nothing less than a memory.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
WRITING THIS book has been a journey, one that started over a decade ago when, over the course of a year, I visited London and Paris for the first time, read A Tale of Two Cities, and said aloud, in cold blood, “But what if Sydney Carton and Charles Darnay look identical because Darnay is a fairy changeling?” It took a long time to tease out the story I wanted to tell from the story that already existed, which wasn’t helped by the fact that the existing story was already one of the enduring classics of the English language. The fact that the journey ended in a real book is amazing, and I owe thanks to many people for it.
Endless thanks to my agent, Hannah Bowman, who had a very early version of this story flung at her before I even signed with her, who has patiently, perceptively, and encouragingly waded through its ever-changing drafts as long as we’ve known each other, and who fought for it long after I would have stopped. Thanks also to Hannah’s assistant, Lauren Bajek, who read over a much later draft and whose insights and enthusiasm were vital.
A very special thank-you to my editor, Jen Gunnels, for taking on this book with such intelligence and energy, and to the entire team at Tor for bringing it into the world with such care and attention. It’s such a pleasure to work with you.
Dickens based A Tale of Two Cities on Thomas Carlyle’s The French Revolution, an extraordinary and highly influential work in itself that blends history and high drama. The way we understand history in general and the French Revolution in particular has evolved over the years; in adapting A Tale of Two Cities, I’ve tried to balance historical accuracy with staying true to the world depicted in the original story, as well as to reflect the perspective of its central character. This, of course, means I needed to know which was which, and I’m always thankful to the many scholars of both Dickens and the French Revolution who make that possible. Any factual errors that aren’t intentional are my fault. (The fairies are my fault, too.)
Thank you to the Bunker for your wisdom, your humour, and your friendship.
Most of all, thank you to all the members of the menagerie, past and present; thank you to my parents, for your love and support; and to my sister, for everything.
Last but not least, always and forever: thank you for reading this book.
BOOKS BY
H. G. PARRY
The Magician’s Daughter
THE SHADOW HISTORIES
A Declaration of the Rights of Magicians
A Radical Act of Free Magic
The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
H. G. PARRY is the author of the fantasy novels The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep, A Declaration of the Rights of Magicians, A Radical Act of Free Magic, and The Magician’s Daughter. She has a Ph.D. in literature and lives in Wellington, New Zealand. You can sign up for email updates here.
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Part One: London
Chapter 1. In Which I Meet My Changeling
Chapter 2. Belonging To the World
Chapter 3. The Wild Hunt
Chapter 4. In Which I Murder the Marquis de Saint Evrémonde
Chapter 5. The Art of Poison and Falling Asleep
Chapter 6. Stage Magic
Chapter 7. The Children’s Quarter
Chapter 8. Goblin-Men
Chapter 9. I Attempt Another Murder
Chapter 10. The Fairy of No Delicacy
Part Two: Paris
Chapter 11. A Scene At the Theatre Royal
Chapter 12. Port in a Storm
Chapter 13. The Storm Arrives
Chapter 14. The House With Two Doors
Chapter 15. A Book Full of Claws
Chapter 16. Still Knitting
Chapter 17. Riots
Chapter 18. Backstage
Chapter 19. Charlotte Corday
Chapter 20. Fairy Prison
Part Three: Memory and Shadow
Chapter 21. Realm-Silver
Chapter 22. A Game of Cards
Chapter 23. Number 72
Chapter 24. The Substance of the Shadow
Chapter 25. Dusk
Chapter 26. The Last Night in the World
Chapter 27. Dawn
Chapter 28. Fifty-Two
Chapter 29. The Footsteps Die Out Forever
Acknowledgments
Books by H. G. Parry
About the Author
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
A FAR BETTER THING
Copyright © 2025 by H. G. Parry
All rights reserved.
Cover design by Faceout Studio
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Published by Tom Doherty Associates / Tor Publishing Group
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eISBN 9781250334190
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First Edition: 2025
H. G. Parry, A Far Better Thing
