Page 30 of Shadowfox

Thomas folded his napkin, lined it up perfectly beside his empty plate, then looked at me. “No one gets paradise in this life, not in a world torn apart by old men and war,” he said. “But if they’re lucky, maybe they get the illusion of it.”

I stared at him for a beat, then raised my glass.

“To illusions, then.”

“To surviving them,” he replied.

We finished our wine as the last of the daylight vanished outside. The streets of Budapest took on a dusk-blue tone, just before lamps sparked to life. The city didn’t change at night—it revealed itself.

What it revealed, only the morning knew.

10

Sparrow

WelostsightofWill and Thomas a few minutes after stepping off the train. One moment, their silhouettes were ahead of us, cutting a path through the quiet throng. The next, they vanished into the rain-wet blur of Budapest.

I didn’t say anything about it. I didn’t need to.

Egret noticed, too.

He stood beside me at the platform’s edge, smoke curling from the end of his cigarette like a lazy question mark. The corners of his mouth were drawn in the half smirk he wore like armor.

“They’re fine,” he said eventually, eyes scanning the faces around us. “Beckett could find a bolt-hole in the middle of a Siberian blizzard.”

I nodded, adjusting my coat and gripping my bag tighter.

Budapest loomed beyond the station like a city halfway between breath and burial. The war had chewed it down to bone; and, while the Soviets had stitched it back together, the seams showed.

“Let’s find our way to the Astoria,” I said.

A line of taxis waited just beyond the station. Our driver spoke little English, less German, and no French. Egret answered the man’s clipped Hungarian with brief, unoffensive phrases. I watched out the window while the city crawled past—trams, darkened shopfronts, red stars on every corner.

We spoke little on the way.

It wasn’t that there was nothing to say.

Halfway through the ride, Egret’s hand found mine, and our fingers intertwined.

I watched a boy chase a scrap of paper across a puddle. A pair of Soviet soldiers leaned against a wall, smoking and watching.

“Let’s go to your room first, check things out,” I said after a while, my voice barely a whisper. We needed to check both rooms for listening devices, and it would go faster if we did it together.

Egret didn’t turn. He simply nodded.

I didn’t answer.

He didn’t push.

The Astoria was beautiful—crumbling a little at the edges, like a woman who once held court in Paris salons but smoked too much and now played cards with ghosts.

Inside, the floors shone, the chandelier sparkled with forced pride, and the desk clerk greeted us with a bureaucratic politeness that felt more like a warning than hospitality.

Egret signed the guest book first. “Dr. Hans Weiss. Austria.”

Then me. “Juliette Moreau. France.”

We were given rooms on the third floor with a view of the street.

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