Read Chapter 17: Sister's Secret

The chapel smelled of damp stone and old incense, a sweetness that did nothing to mask the rot beneath. Claude had been brought here blindfolded, wrists still bound, two of the Spider's men flanking him like silent executioners. When the cloth came off, he blinked against the candlelight and saw her.

Marguerite stood before the altar, hands folded, head bowed as if in prayer. She wore a simple grey gown, no jewelry, no adornment. She looked younger than her twenty-two years, and older, all at once.

"Leave us," she said without turning.

The men hesitated. One cleared his throat. "My lady, we were told—"

"I said leave us." Her voice carried an edge Claude had never heard from her before. The men withdrew, boots scraping against flagstone until the heavy door groaned shut.

The silence stretched between them, taut as a bowstring.

"You have five minutes," Marguerite said, still not looking at him. "Then they return and you go back to your cell."

"Go back?" Claude laughed, the sound hollow and bitter. "I escaped your dungeon, sister. I walked through your sewers. I only came back because I demanded to see you. Face to face. To ask you one question."

She turned then. Her eyes were wet.

"Ask it."

"Why?"

The word hung between them. Marguerite pressed her lips together, and for a moment he thought she would remain silent. Then she walked slowly down the steps from the altar, stopping an arm's length away.

"Because of Étienne."

Claude's chest tightened. Their younger brother. Barely fourteen, golden-haired, full of clumsy jokes and unearned confidence. Claude had left him in their mother's care when he'd gone to Dijon. He'd thought of him often, but never with fear.

"What about Étienne?"

Marguerite's hands trembled. She clasped them together to still them. "He's not in Vézelay anymore. He's in Paris. In a tower room in the Palais de la Cité."

Claude felt the floor tilt beneath him. "That's a lie."

"I swear it on our mother's soul." Her voice cracked. "You left, Claude. You left, and you never wrote, never asked about us. You were so busy being the Duke's loyal clerk that you forgot you had a family at all."

"This isn't about my letters—"

"No, it isn't. It's about what happened after you left. The French seized the road through Vézelay in the autumn. I tried to get Étienne away, but they took him. Took him with the other boys of fighting age, to be raised as pages for their noble houses. He's a hostage, Claude. A bargaining chip." She touched her chest. "And they hold the knife to his throat through me."

Claude stared at her. The candlelight flickered across her face, deepening the hollows beneath her eyes. She was thin. Thinner than he remembered. He'd been so blinded by his own mission, his own fears, that he hadn't seen it.

"They told you what to do," he said slowly. "What to spy on. Whom to report."

"Yes."

"And you did it."

"Yes." Her chin lifted. "Every day for a year and a half, I've stolen documents, copied letters, whispered names into ears that steer the French war council. I've told them where our armies march, what our supply lines carry, which knights can be bribed and which will die before they bend." She swallowed. "I did it because every month, they send me a lock of Étienne's hair to prove he still breathes. And every month, I do what they ask to keep it that way."

Claude wanted to be angry. He wanted to summon the righteous fury of a man betrayed by his own blood, the kind of anger that would carry him through the streets to report this to Captain de Beauvais, to have her hanged at dawn.

But the image of Étienne's face—unlined, laughing, innocent—rose in his mind like a ghost.

"You denounced me," he said, his voice barely above a whisper. "You stood before the town militia and swore you saw me passing letters at the warehouse."

"I had to." Her eyes were pleading now. "They were already suspicious. A clerk from Dijon arriving the same week as the Duke's assassination plot? The Spider's watchers had marked you. If I hadn't denounced you first, someone else would have, and they would have asked questions I couldn't control." She stepped closer. "Denouncing you gave them a version of the truth they could accept. It bought you time."

"It bought me a dungeon cell!"

"It kept you alive!" Tears spilled down her cheeks. "Do you understand? If they suspected you knew about Aubert, about the glass merchant, they would have killed you in the night and thrown your body in the river. This way, you were 'caught.' This way, you were safe."

Claude turned away from her, pacing toward the altar. The carved Christ above it stared down with patient, sorrowful eyes. He gripped the edge of the stone table, knuckles white.

"You could have told me," he said. "When I came. When I arrived in this town, you could have found me, explained everything."

"Explained what?" She laughed, a broken, jagged sound. "That I'm a traitor to Burgundy? That our family's name is already ruined by what our father did eleven years ago, and I have only made it worse?" She paused. "The archivist told you about Father, didn't he? The French noble, the one who hunts old secrets?"

Claude flinched. He hadn't mentioned the archivist to anyone.

"Yes," Marguerite said quietly. "I know about the meeting. I know what he told you about our father's treason during the Armagnac unrest. I know because I am the one who told him where to find you."

The room went cold.

"You what?"

"I brought you to him. The ring, the engraving—I gave it to you when you arrived. It was always meant to lead you to him." She rushed forward, grabbing his arm. "Listen to me, Claude. The archivist is not just some French spy. He's connected to the faction that holds Étienne. I thought if you spoke to him, truly spoke to him, you might understand why I do what I do. You might find a way to help us."

"Help you? Help the enemy?"

"Help our brother!" Her grip tightened. "He's fourteen years old, Claude. He doesn't know why his sister sends letters to men he's been taught to hate. He just knows he's alone, in a tower, waiting to die if I fail."

Claude pulled his arm free. His heart hammered against his ribs, a wild, trapped thing.

"Every day I walk this line," she said, her voice breaking. "I serve the Spider because they hold the knife. But I serve Burgundy by trying to blunt their blows. I sent word to Captain de Beauvais about Aubert, through your ring. I know you tried to reach him yourself, but I'd already done it. He's been warned. The Duke will not die at the Mass."

Claude stared at her. The pieces rearranged themselves in his mind, falling into a shape he could almost see.

"The masked figure," he said. "The one who visited me in my cell. The one with the Burgundian badge."

She nodded. "Him. He's mine. My only ally in the Spider's nest. He's the reason I know as much as I do, the reason I was able to orchestrate your escape."

"But he said you weren't the true leader. He said you were a puppet for a larger power."

Marguerite's face flickered. Something moved behind her eyes, something older and more frightened than she had let him see. She opened her mouth, then closed it.

"There are… levels," she said at last. "Layers to this that I do not fully understand. The Spider is one faction. But there is another, someone who pulls threads that even the Spider answers to." She looked at him, and for the first time, he saw not the traitor, not the spy—but his little sister, afraid. "That is what I need you to find out, Claude. That is why I needed you here."

The door behind him creaked open.

"Time," a voice said.

Marguerite stepped back, wiping her eyes with the heel of her palm. She composed herself with practiced speed, the vulnerable girl vanishing behind the mask of the Spider's agent.

"I'll arrange your escape properly this time," she said. "Find the true master. Find who really holds the strings. And Claude—" She paused at the door. "When you find out what this is all for, what they're building, what this war is really about beyond crowns and banners… I need you to decide which side you belong to. Not Burgundy. Not France. Mine."

She was gone before he could answer.

The door slammed. Claude stood alone before the altar, the candle guttering in the draft, and wondered if his sister had just saved him or condemned him.