Read Chapter 32: The Last Flight

The hangar smelled of coal smoke and damp canvas. Dawn came gray through the shattered roof slats, and Étienne’s breath smoked as he worked the needle through the silk seam. His fingers were stiff, the arm wound throbbing beneath the bandage Juliette had re-tied before she left. He ignored it.

Lucien knelt beside him, feeding the cord through brass grommets with a steadiness that surprised them both. Two days of broth and sleep had pulled color back into his cheeks, though his hands still trembled when he reached too far. He did not mention it. Neither did Étienne.

“She’s too small,” Lucien said, tapping the envelope where it lay flat on the workbench.

“She’s enough.” Étienne pulled the final stitch tight. “One man, a burner, a pistol. I don’t need cargo space.”

“You need to come back.”

Étienne looked at his brother. Lucien’s eyes held the same stubborn light from before the war, before the siege had ground them both down to ration cards and waiting. It was the closest either of them had come to speaking of it—the months Étienne had spent searching for Lucien’s name on prisoner lists, the nights he’d flown mail runs over the Prussian lines hoping to see a signal fire from the camp where he believed his brother was held.

“I’ll come back,” Étienne said.

Lucien’s jaw tightened, but he nodded and returned to the rigging.

The balloon was a patchwork—stolen silk from a dressmaker’s shop, oiled cotton from a warehouse that had burned three weeks ago, netting stripped from a fishing boat moored on the Seine. Étienne had built her in six hours while the city slept, while Prussian shells came in slow, lazy arcs and crumbled chimneys a few streets over. Delacroix did not know yet that his name was in Étienne’s pocket. That would not last long.

“Gas?” Lucien asked.

“From the main works. Bribed the foreman with the last of Juliette’s silver.”

“And if he talks?”

Étienne shrugged. “Then Delacroix has more to worry about than an aeronaut with a grudge.”

The burner coughed when Étienne tested it, a sputter of blue flame that steadied into a low roar. He cut it and the hangar quieted. Somewhere beyond the walls, a church bell struck the hour. Eight in the morning. The Prussian delegation would be at the farmhouse outside Saint-Denis by noon if the wind held. Delacroix would be there, signing away the city he had sworn to protect.

“You’re sure about the meeting point?” Lucien asked.

“Marchand’s note was specific.” Étienne did not add that the note had come wrapped around the truth of Delacroix’s plan—that Marchand had known for weeks and had chosen his moment to reveal it. The man was a mystery Étienne had no time to solve. Not yet.

“I don’t trust him,” Lucien said.

“You don’t trust anyone.”

“I trust you.”

Étienne reached out and gripped his brother’s shoulder. “Then help me get her upright.”

---

The envelope filled with a slow, deepening curve. Étienne held the lines while Lucien worked the valve, and within minutes the balloon stood three times their height, straining against the mooring ropes as if it had somewhere better to be. Étienne checked the basket—wicker, reinforced with iron bands, barely large enough for one man plus the burner assembly. He swung his leg over and dropped in.

Lucien handed him the pistol. “Loaded. There’s a second in the coat pocket.”

“I know.”

“And paper. In case you need to write something down.”

Étienne wanted to say something—something about the apartment on Rue de Rivoli, the box of letters their mother had kept, the way Lucien used to laugh at the circus balloons when they were boys. But the wind was picking up, and Delacroix was moving.

“Cut me loose,” Étienne said.

Lucien hesitated. His fingers found the knot, held it.

“I’m coming back,” Étienne said again.

“You said that before you left for Metz.”

The words landed like a cold stone in the basket. Étienne had said it then, too. Hand on Lucien’s shoulder, promises of letters, of returning with stories to tell. He had not returned. The sister they shared had not returned. The war had taken them both, and Lucien had been left alone in the city to starve and wait for news that never came.

“I know,” Étienne said. “But this time I mean it.”

Lucien’s eyes glistened, but he cut the rope.

The balloon lurched upward, wrenching Étienne’s stomach as the ground fell away. The hangar roof shrank beneath him, then the street, then the neighborhood, then the whole of Paris—gray and wounded, scars of shellfire running through the arrondissements like veins of a sick man. The Prussian guns were quiet for the moment, as if even they were holding their breath.

Étienne checked the wind. Northwest. Good. He fed the burner and climbed, watching the smoke from the fires below trail southward. At six hundred feet, the air steadied, and he turned the balloon toward the distant line of Prussian tents.

He flew low over the fortifications, a lone speck against a bruised winter sky. Below him, soldiers looked up—French and Prussian alike—and for a moment, no one fired. An aeronaut was a common enough sight these days, a mail carrier, a messenger, a fool. Étienne hoped they thought him a fool. Fools did not get shot out of the sky.

The farmhouse came into view at half past eleven. A low stone building with a slate roof, surrounded by bare trees and a muddy courtyard. Three horses stood tied to a rail. A carriage waited near the door. Étienne counted six men moving below—two in Prussian uniforms, two in civilian coats, and Delacroix, unmistakable in his dress blues, stepping out of the house and shaking hands with a tall Prussian officer.

Étienne’s jaw tightened. He brought the burner down, descending in a controlled drift toward the far edge of the field. The wind wanted to carry him east. He fought it, bleeding gas, dropping toward the trees.

At one hundred feet, a Prussian sentry spotted him and raised his rifle. Étienne did not have time to swing the burner around. He drew the pistol, aimed, and fired. The bullet kicked up dirt at the sentry’s feet. The man dove for cover, shouting.

The noise splintered the scene below. Delacroix looked up, saw the balloon, and his face went white even at this distance. He turned to run for the carriage, but the Prussian officer grabbed his arm.

Étienne landed hard, the basket dragging through mud and tearing a furrow through turnips. He was out of the basket before it stopped moving, pistol up, boots slipping in the fields. Two Prussian soldiers were running toward him, rifles raised. Delacroix was shouting something, pointing at Étienne, gesturing wildly at the Prussian officer to shoot.

“He’s a spy!” Delacroix’s voice carried across the field, ragged and desperate. “He’s with the communards—he’ll burn the whole city!”

The Prussian officer hesitated. He looked at Delacroix, then at Étienne, then back at Delacroix. The wind carried the smell of smoke and horses.

Étienne raised his empty hand. “I’m not here for you,” he called to the officer. “I’m here for him.”

He reached into his coat and pulled out the paper—the list, Delacroix’s name circled in ink at the bottom, with Juliette’s bold script beside it: *traître.*

“He sells your army grain—my city’s grain—and then he offers you the keys to a city that is not his to give.” Étienne took a step forward. “Ask him about the warehouses on Rue Lafayette. Ask him about the barge he sent down the Seine last Tuesday.”

Delacroix lunged. The Prussian officer moved faster, stepping between them and catching Delacroix by the chest. Delacroix’s face twisted—not fear, but fury, a man caught with his hand in the till and nowhere left to hide.

“A misunderstanding,” Delacroix said. “This man is a deserter, a criminal—he has been hunting me for weeks because I refused to fund his escape.”

The Prussian officer looked at Étienne, then at Delacroix, then at the truce flag flying from the farmhouse roof.

“You agreed to surrender on the condition of secrecy,” the officer said slowly. “No witnesses. No letters. You swore the command did not know.”

Delacroix’s mouth opened and closed.

Étienne held up the paper. “Read it.”

The officer took it. The wind snapped the edges as he scanned the names—Rothschild, the grain merchants, the quartermasters, Delacroix at the bottom. His jaw tightened.

He looked up at Delacroix with a expression Étienne had seen on the faces of men who had just realized they had been played for fools.

“Take him,” the officer said.

Two soldiers seized Delacroix by the arms. He struggled, spitting curses, his polished boots kicking mud across the stone courtyard. The Prussian officer folded the list and tucked it into his own coat.

“This says he planned to surrender Paris before the new year,” the officer said.

“He did,” Étienne said.

The officer studied him a long moment. “You flew alone, unarmed, over my lines, to deliver a traitor to his own enemy.”

“He was not your traitor,” Étienne said. “He was ours. But you get the pleasure of holding him.”

The officer almost smiled. Almost.

Delacroix’s shouting faded as they dragged him into the farmhouse. The door slammed. The Prussian officer turned back to Étienne, his face unreadable.

“You’ve cost me a treaty,” he said.

“You’ve cost me a war,” Étienne replied. “We’re even.”

He walked back to the balloon. The envelope was still inflated, just barely, the burner hissing low. He climbed into the basket and looked up at the sky. Gray, cold, empty except for a few crows making their way south.

Behind him, the farmhouse door opened. A Prussian soldier stepped out and raised his rifle. Étienne’s hand went for the pistol, but the officer raised his own arm and gestured the soldier down.

“Go,” the officer called. “Before I change my mind.”

Étienne fed the burner. The balloon rose, uneven and slow, dragging its basket through the field before the wind caught it and lifted it clear. The farmhouse shrank below him, then the trees, then the line of Prussian tents, then the fortifications of a city he barely recognized as home.

He flew over Paris in silence. The smoke from the last shelling had cleared. Below him, people moved through the streets—thin, exhausted, carrying what they could. They did not look up.

Étienne landed in the field behind the hangar, collapsing the envelope with practiced hands. By the time Lucien reached him, running across the mud with a coat thrown over his shoulders, Étienne was sitting on the edge of the basket, hands shaking, the burned-out pilot light still ticking heat.

“Well?” Lucien asked, breathless.

Étienne looked at him. The words came out quiet, almost lost in the wind.

“They have him. The Prussians have Delacroix.”

Lucien stared at him. Tears came to his drug-dulled eyes, but they were not heavy tears. They fell, and with them, night.

Étienne did not know what would come next. The war was not over. The surrender Delacroix had planned would surely find another hand. But for this one moment, the man was caught, the city stood, and Étienne had not died in a field far from home.

He reached out and pulled his brother into a rough embrace.

“I came back,” he said.

Lucien said nothing. He just held on.