Read Chapter 15: The Price of a Brother

The catacombs stank of rot and old fear. Étienne crawled through the gap in the wall, dragging the canvas-wrapped parcel behind him. His knees found the slick stone of a drainage channel that ran beneath the Rue de Rivoli. Above, muffled by layers of earth and history, the city ground its teeth.

Juliette followed, her breath ragged. She had not spoken since they left the downed balloon outside the walls, since they watched the Prussian patrols torch it. She had not spoken since the shell.

Étienne tried not to think of the convoy. The screaming had carried over the field. He had seen the horses scatter, the ambulance wagons splinter. He had seen men—wounded men—burning.

"You're slowing," Juliette said. Her voice was flat.

"I'm carrying the weight."

"Put it down, then. We might make better time."

Étienne hauled the parcel higher on his shoulder. Rothschild's secret. The thing for which his brother's life had been bargained. He said nothing.

They climbed out through a coal chute three streets from the old telegraph office. The sky was gray, the air thick with coal smoke and the distant crump of Prussian artillery. Paris was starving, but the streets were not empty. A crowd had gathered outside the Ministry of War, and Étienne pulled his scarf over his face before they got close.

A man on a crate was reading from a paper. His voice rang across the cobbles.

"—the aeronaut Étienne Vautrin, who conspired with the enemy to bomb our own hospitals! This coward, this assassin, fired upon the great convoy of injured men returning from the front!"

The crowd roared. Bottles shattered. Somewhere a woman wailed.

Juliette grabbed Étienne's arm. "Don't stop."

"The convoy—" he started.

"They think you did it. Delacroix made sure of that."

"I did do it. I pulled the rope. I aimed the mortar." His voice cracked. "Those men were already wounded. They were coming home."

Juliette's grip tightened. "We didn't know."

"I knew what I was aiming at. I wanted to kill Delacroix. I didn't care who else was in the way."

She pulled him into an alley, pressed him against the brick. Her face was close, her eyes hard. "Do you want to die for that? Because if you turn yourself in, that's exactly what happens. You'll hang. And your brother stays dead—or worse, he stays alive in a Prussian camp with no one coming for him."

The parcel. He felt its weight against his ribs. Inside was the bargain.

"The ransom note says the meeting is at the cathedral in Rouen," Étienne said. "Von Falkenstein will have Lucien. I deliver the parcel, he releases my brother."

"You believe that?"

"Do I have a choice?"

Juliette's mouth tightened. She released his arm. "We need supplies. I know a woman in the market district who keeps a cellar for people who need to disappear."

They moved through the back streets. Twice they dodged patrols. Once, a gendarme looked directly at Étienne and Étienne saw the flash of recognition—but the man turned away, and Étienne didn't know if it was mercy or fear.

The namedropper's cellar was a half-collapsed hovel behind a burned-out bakery. The woman—old, sharp-toothed, one eye milky—let them down a ladder into a room that smelled of herbs and candle wax. She looked at Étienne's torn coat, at the parcel, and said nothing for a long moment.

"You're the one they're howling for," she said at last. "The bomber."

"Did you bring us down here to turn us in?" Étienne asked.

"I brought you down here because I remember your brother." She lit a candle. The flame caught her face. "Lucien Vautrin. Flew mail over the siege lines until the Prussians caught him. A good man. Too good for the likes of the generals who command this city."

Étienne felt his chest tighten. "You knew him?"

"I knew his letters. He wrote to a woman in this district, some seamstress. He spoke of you often. Said you were the brave one. Said you'd fly across the whole world if they asked you to." She gave a dry laugh. "Brave. Look what it's bought you."

"Is there news?" Étienne asked. "About Lucien. Anything."

The woman's eye flickered. She fetched a folded paper from her skirts, held it to the candlelight. "This came through the lines two days ago. A Prussian prisoner exchange. There's a list of names—French prisoners the Prussians say they'll release for transport."

She handed it over. Étienne scanned the column. His pulse hammered.

Then he saw it. *Vautrin, L. — Châlons. Transfer pending.*

"He's alive," Étienne breathed. "He's in Châlons. They're moving him."

"Or it's a trick," Juliette said. "Delacroix has already showed you a body. He said he shipped a corpse to Paris to display at your trial."

"That body was a stranger. A French balloonist in a Prussian coat." Étienne's hands shook. "But this—this is an official transfer list. Châlons is the meeting point for prisoner trades. If Lucien is being moved there, it means von Falkenstein intends to honor the trade."

"Or it means someone wants you to think that."

Étienne looked at her. "You've been telling me to distrust everything since the opera house. You pushed me through a sewer to find a dead spy. You broke me out of prison and killed—" He stopped. Swallowed. "You killed a dozen men to get me out of there. And attacked a convoy because I asked you to."

"And I would do it again," Juliette said quietly.

"Why?"

She didn't answer. The old woman watched from the corner, saying nothing.

Étienne turned to the parcel. He hadn't opened it. Not once. Across two escapes, through fire and ruined balloon silk, he had carried Rothschild's secret without a hint of its contents.

"I'm going to Rouen," he said.

"Étienne—"

"If I don't, Lucien dies. Delacroix wins. And the people who did this—the people who put a price on my brother's head—they keep doing it to other families. Other brothers. Other daughters." He set the parcel on the table. "Do you know what's in this?"

"No."

"Do you want to know?"

Juliette stepped forward. Her fingers brushed the wax seal. "I want you to live."

"Then come with me. Or don't. But I'm going to Châlons first. I need to see if Lucien is really there. If the transfer list is real, I find him, I get him out, and then we decide what to do with the parcel."

"It's a trap," Juliette said.

"Everything has been a trap since the opera house," Étienne said. "But this is the first one that might actually have my brother at the center of it. And if von Falkenstein has him, if that name on the ransom note is real, then I'm not delivering the parcel to a Prussian general. I'm bargaining with the man who holds Lucien's life."

The old woman cleared her throat. "There's a stable at the edge of the tenth. An old racehorse, a cart that's seen better days. It won't get you to Rouen in a week, but it will get you to Châlons in three days if you push."

Étienne looked at Juliette. She stared back.

"Châlons is inside French lines," she said. "They'll have your face on every wall. You walk in, you're dead before midday."

"Then I don't walk in." Étienne pulled the canvas off the parcel, exposing a square black case with brass fittings. He looked at it for a long beat. "I fly."

The old woman raised an eyebrow. "Fly what? There isn't a balloon left in Paris that Delacroix hasn't claimed."

"There's one in the stable," Étienne said. "A racing balloon, probably. The kind they use for regattas. Sheath enough to carry a man and a package."

"That's a death sentence," Juliette said.

"Lucien was worth a death sentence. I went to war for France. I flew over enemy lines for France. I can fly over my own country for my brother."

He hefted the black case. It was heavier than he expected. Inside was something that clicked, something that hummed with the faint mechanical rhythm of a clockwork device. He did not open it.

"I'm going," he said. "You can stay here. Wait for Delacroix to find you. Or you can come with me."

Juliette let out a long breath. She looked at the parcel. At the old woman. At Étienne.

"God help me," she said. "I'm beginning to understand why your brother never stayed home either."

Étienne didn't smile. He was already thinking about the fields outside Châlons, the morning light, the shape of a man standing at a crossroads—and whether the brother he had mourned for a year would meet him with open arms or with the barrel of a Prussian rifle.

The old woman handed him a compass. "North by northeast," she said. "Don't trust the maps. The war has made liars of them."

He took the compass. As he climbed from the cellar into the gray morning, he found himself wondering what Lucien looked like now. Worn. Scarred. Changed. Or the same bright boy who had filled their mother's kitchen with laughter before the war had taken everything else.

The balloon was buried under a tarp in the stable, silk patched and timeworn but intact. As Étienne worked the ropes free, the parcel sat at his feet, strangely warm against the cold, and he could not help but feel that whatever was inside it was already writing his end before he had even taken flight.