"Quinn? You must be kin to our absent father, Marcus Quinn. You know, they ought to tear that statue of his down from the Plaza of Heroes. Thanks to that fool, wages stay so low that only the rich, like you, ever see a cent from the export trade."
Alphard felt a deep exhaustion settle over him at the lecture — a sermon aimed squarely at the real Alphard's grandfather. Deserved as some of it might be, it still stung to swallow.
Even so, it was hard to blame the old man. Within the machinery of Saint-Cyr, the bourgeoisie and the elite held a tight grip on the wealth the export trade generated. The truth of it ran far deeper than simple greed, but for the working class, the math was simple enough on its own.
"It's more complicated than that, sir. Let's leave it there — I'll be on my way and let you get back to your afternoon."
Offering a brief bow, Alphard turned to continue on. But the old man stopped him, asking who exactly had sent him.
"I've come on behalf of Mrs. Lisa Villeroy's husband."
"Paul Villeroy's wife. Hard to believe he'd keep company with someone like you, but I suppose he saw something worthwhile in you. I'll take you to Rue Valrose myself — I know a man there who'll give you work." the old man said.
Without dropping his air of pointed indifference, he ushered Alphard into his carriage and set off toward Rue Valrose. The rattle of wheels over cobblestone carried them gradually into a calmer stretch of the district.
The streets here settled into something refined but austere, far removed from the hollow vanity of the wealthy classes — and it was precisely that restraint that gave Moulin back its own particular kind of pride.
"Sorry — I didn't catch your name."
"Gustave Mercier. Though to you, it's Mr. Mercier."
Stepping down from the carriage, Rue Valrose opened up before them like a vivid open-air storefront. The place buzzed with the energy of a great commercial artery, but without the chaos or grime of the working-class markets.
Along both sides of the road, an unbroken run of storefronts unfolded — apothecaries with gilded signs, neighborhood tailors, bakeries breathing out the smell of freshly baked wheat, and secondhand bookshops with stacks of worn volumes piled behind the glass.
The clatter of hooves against stone mixed with the polite murmur of customers haggling in doorways. Every corner carried its own constant motion, a commercial rhythm that made it clear this wasn't money flaunted for vanity's sake — it was money earned, day after day, through honest work.
"Here we are." The old man pointed toward a three-story building, a wrought-iron sign hanging over its entrance: Printworks & Typography.
The moment the door opened, a thick wave of linseed oil, damp paper, and fresh ink washed over them. The dull thud of the hand presses set the pace of the work inside. Alphard couldn't help glancing at the freshly printed sheets stacked across the tables; after the fiasco of paying for a week-old newspaper, standing here now felt almost like fate playing a cruel joke on him.
Behind a mountain of galley proofs and lead type, a man with rolled-up sleeves and ink-blackened hands looked up.
"Well, look who's come to see me!" the printer grumbled, wiping his fingers on a greasy rag.
"Brought you someone who looks like he reads too much and works too little. Comes on behalf of Paul Villeroy," Mr. Mercier said flatly, gesturing at Alphard with his cane.
The man extended a hand toward Alphard, who took it without hesitation. He was a man of about fifty, his shoulders worn down by decades bent over type and metal.
"Name's Antonie Fournier. Pleasure. And you are...?"
"Alphard Quinn Aurelius. Of the Quinn family."
Antonie's face lit up as if he'd just met someone important. Walking over to the tables, he began slapping his rag against the tall stack of that day's newspapers, kicking up a small cloud of dust and grime around him.
"You'll be the one selling these. Do the job right, and you'll take over the cleaning here and at my other shop over in Bercy square too. And a word of advice — if anyone offers you a loaf of bread for a paper, don't fall for it. Happened to one of my sellers already."
Alphard faltered. A polite smile crossed his face, only to twist into something faintly uncomfortable as the memory hit him squarely. He let the silence stretch a beat too long, giving the memory time to fade before turning his attention back to the conversation.
"Don't worry, I'll do what I can."
"Good. You start now. Just deliveries for today — tomorrow I've got something important for you, ahead of Independence Day. Go grab a bicycle."
Alphard nodded, first pulling on the clothes the printer had left laid out for him. He set his top hat down on the table and pulled on a flat gray cloth cap, its brim worn soft with use. Then came a loose, heavy canvas work coat, tan and roomy.
The garment, wide and drooping at the shoulders, settled easily over his tailored jacket, swallowing the sharp lines of his clothes and erasing, in an instant, any trace of bourgeois polish.
Antonie led him to the workshop's back courtyard, where, propped against a stack of wooden crates, a heavy iron bicycle waited, a sturdy woven basket mounted over the handlebars and a pair of worn leather saddlebags slung behind the seat.
"If you can keep your balance on two wheels, you've got a job here for as long as you want it," Antonie said, rapping his knuckles against the metal frame.
"The boys on foot only cover Rue Valrose. You, I'll send out with the evening editions to the outlying neighborhoods — the dark alleys nobody wants to walk into, and the residential avenues where gentlemen like Gustave here expect their paper delivered to the door before dinner."
Just as Alphard was about to head out with his stack of papers, Antonie stopped him and set a thick leather pouch, worn from years of use, along with a small ledger, on the counter. He jangled a fistful of copper coins against the wood before fixing Alphard with a steady look.
"Listen closely, because I won't say this twice. Every copy of the Saint-Cyr Herald costs five cents. One copper coin. Not four, not six. If you're out in the wealthy districts, some gentleman might toss you a silver franc and refuse the change, purely out of pride. If someone hands you paper bills, count yourself lucky — that's nearly a sixth of a working-class wage right there. Sell all hundred papers and that's five francs. Out of that, a franc fifty is your cut for the day."
Alphard nodded and set off toward the outskirts of Saint-Rémont.
The rattle of the bicycle over the cobblestones marked the line between two worlds. As the neat symmetry and storefronts of Rue Valrose fell behind him, Moulin began to crumble away by degrees. Stone buildings gave way to narrow brick alleys, damp staining the walls, the road itself dissolving into a choking sea of mud.
Alphard quickly confirmed the truth behind Antonie's numbers. Deeper into the outskirts, where sixty-franc wages barely kept people standing, he passed workers with hollow, sunken faces and barefoot children chasing after his wheels, hoping some scrap of paper might fall loose.
But turning north, toward the residential avenues, the city transformed entirely. It took no more than twenty minutes of pedaling for the whole picture to shift.
In the Palais Blanc district, gentlemen with silver-handled canes and ladies in silk gowns strolled by, oblivious to the misery only a few kilometers away. To them, Alphard was little more than a transparent ghost in an ink-stained coat, even though, strictly speaking, his own economic standing wasn't so far removed from the upper-middle class.
Still, to him, they were the living embodiment of the fracture running straight through the Republic.
I'm middle class, maybe lower-middle at best — and even so, Helena and Alexi live comfortably, without much to worry about. What rotten luck, being born poor here. Something has to change.
The gas lamps here wore beveled glass, and the façades dressed themselves in wrought-iron balconies and tall windows that threw back the light with a cold, distant gleam.
Hours passed, and the sky over Saint-Rémont began to burn into a deep, glowing copper. The sunset bathed the city in a heavy red light, reaching even Alphard's exhausted figure, his shoulders aching under the weight of the canvas sack.
Legs numb from the constant grind of pedaling over cobblestone, he turned back toward the Moulin District. Reaching Rue Valrose, he brought the bicycle to a stop in front of the printworks and dragged it into the back courtyard, savoring the blessed relief of finally being done for the day.
No doubt about it — that was exhausting. Now I just need to wait for the boss and get paid.
The shop stood empty, and a heavy stillness began to settle over it. Still, Alphard's excitement over getting paid drowned out any hint of unease, and as he waited, he wandered through the whole building, working his way up to the top floor.
Antonie wasn't around — he apparently kept a job at a police station that paid well enough to help him manage both shops without trouble.
The third floor of the printworks sat in a silence heavy enough to feel sacred, broken only by the creak of old wood beneath his boots. Alphard drew close to the large arched window and watched the city surrender itself to twilight. From up here, it looked like a map carved apart by the whim of some severe god.
To the south, the lower-class districts sprawled into a chaotic maze of sunken rooftops and factory chimneys, coughing up thick, sooty smoke into the sky.
In the opposite direction, the view shifted with an almost arrogant elegance — zinc and slate rooftops of the wealthier districts gleamed like silver scales beneath the day's last light, crowned by the monumental domes of government buildings. It was the first time Alphard truly grasped the scale of the city, and the world he now had to survive in.
Tomorrow I'll head to that strange bar. For now, I need to figure out how to stop looking so suspicious.
As he finished taking it all in, the atmosphere around him shifted, closing in with a searing, unmistakable sense of danger — of being watched.
Again? No. Not again.
The urgency drove him down the stairs at a run, his steps rough and hurried, the old wood groaning beneath him almost like a dying breath carried on the wind, his hands scraping desperately along the railing to keep from falling in his haste.
What's happening to me?
All at once, his heart began slamming against his chest, his skin draining of color as a whisper crept closer, unmistakable now.
"Alphard. Alphard. Alphard."
In the space of a blink, reality itself seemed to fracture. The shop destabilized entirely; the printworks' walls bent into impossible, unnatural curves, and the air thickened until it felt almost solid.
Out of that disproportionate chaos, a woman's figure emerged, floating amid the torn fabric of reality, materializing like an error stitched into the very seams of space.
She reached a hand toward him, mimicking a gesture of help, as though offering to catch him before he fell. But horror settled deep in Alphard's chest the moment he met her gaze. There was no human expression on her — only an empty silhouette, a blank, featureless mold that defied every law of sense. Unable to bear the weight of his own warped senses any longer, Alphard's legs gave out beneath him, dropping him onto the cold tile of the workshop floor.