Read Chapter 32: The Sister's Gambit

The password came at midnight, scratched onto a scrap of vellum and slipped under Claude's door at the inn: *Saint-Eustache. Third pillar from the north. When the bells ring for Matins, descend.*

He burned it in the candle flame and watched the words curl to ash. His sister knew where he was staying. She had known for days, perhaps. The thought chilled him more than the damp Paris night.

He went anyway.

The church of Saint-Eustache loomed in the dark like a sleeping beast, its stone ribs visible against the low clouds. Claude entered through the side door, leaving his merchant's cloak with a sleeping beggar in exchange for a promise of silence. The air inside smelled of old incense and colder secrets. He counted pillars until he found the third from the north, its base worn smooth by centuries of kneeling penitents.

Nothing marked it. No sign, no symbol. He waited, breath shallow, until the bells above began their heavy tolling for Matins.

The sound seemed to shake something loose in the floor. A crack appeared at the pillar's base—not a crack, a seam. Stone slid against stone with a whisper that barely survived the bells' final echoes. A narrow opening yawned at his feet, revealing steps descending into blackness.

Claude took a lantern from his belt and went down.

The catacombs beneath Paris were older than the city itself, a labyrinth of Gallo-Roman quarries and forgotten crypts that the living had built over and the dead had claimed. His footsteps echoed off bones stacked like cordwood in some passages, bare stone in others. Twice he paused at intersections, looking for the chalk marks his sister had promised in her message—a small cross, a curve, the letter *M*.

He found her in a chamber that had once been a chapel. Faint frescoes of saints watched from crumbling walls as Marguerite stood beside a brazier, her face half-lit by its glow. She wore a French soldier's riding leathers, her hair cropped short beneath a cap. She looked older than when he'd seen her at Compiègne. Harder.

"Brother," she said, without warmth.

"Sister." He stopped at the chamber's edge, keeping the brazier between them. "You had your spy watch me."

"I had to know if you'd come alone." She gestured at the empty crypt around them. "You did."

"You threatened a meeting in a tomb. What did you expect?"

"I expected you to bring soldiers." A ghost of a smile crossed her face. "You always were the obedient one."

Claude tightened his jaw. "You denounced me as a traitor and fled into the woods. What would you have me bring?"

"The truth, perhaps." Marguerite's smile vanished. "But that's not why I called you here. I need your help."

"I've heard that from you before."

"This isn't a game, Claude." She stepped toward him, and he saw the exhaustion beneath her eyes, the strain around her mouth that no candlelight could hide. "The cardinal is planning something. A massacre—I don't know where yet, or when. But I've heard him speak of it as a cleansing. He means to set the French and Burgundians at each other's throats so thoroughly that only he can bring peace."

"The noble we captured said much the same."

"Then you know I'm not lying."

" I know the cardinal is a snake," Claude said. "I've known that for weeks. What I don't know is where you fit in. You fed false information to both sides, Marguerite. You built a network that could have started a war. Why should I believe you've changed?"

She laughed—a bitter, hollow sound. "Changed? I haven't changed. I've only gotten closer to the truth." She raised her chin, and in the brazier's light he saw their father's stubbornness in her eyes. "You think I came to Paris for the cardinal's sake? I came to find the proof that Father was innocent. That he never betrayed Burgundy, never sold his soldiers to the French. The cardinal arranged his death, Claude. He forged the orders that made Father look like a traitor. And I will bury him in his own lies."

Claude's chest tightened. "Mother sent you to find his killer. Not to save his reputation."

"Mother sent me to avenge him." Marguerite's voice cracked. "But vengeance doesn't restore a man's name. It doesn't bring back his honor. If I can prove what the cardinal did—if I can expose him before the kings of both nations—then Father dies clean. That's all I want."

"And the massacre?"

"Preventing it is part of the proof. If I can stop him, expose his plans, the web unravels." She extended her hand across the brazier. "Help me. We can finish this together."

Claude looked at her offered hand. He remembered her as a girl, teaching him to ride, laughing in the courtyard of their father's manor. He remembered her at Compiègne, sword raised against him, her face twisted with fury.

He remembered the letter she'd left for their mother, claiming she'd taken holy orders—a lie that had sent him chasing shadows for months.

"How do I know you're not feeding me false information now?" he asked. "How do I know this isn't another gambit?"

"I have no gambits left, Claude." Her hand remained extended. "I'm tired. I've been alone in this city for too long, playing a part that grows more dangerous every day. I need someone who can watch my back when the cardinal makes his move."

"Then come back to Burgundy. Testify before the Chancellor. Speak your truth openly, and I'll stand beside you."

Marguerite's face closed like a shutter. "The Chancellor listens to the powerful, not to women seeking justice for their fathers. If I go back, I go back a traitor, or not at all."

"Then trust me enough to tell me where the massacre will happen."

"I don't know yet. I only know it will be soon." She finally lowered her hand. "I watch him closely. I believe the trigger is tied to the negotiations in Arras. A failure there would give him the chaos he needs."

"Arras is months away."

"He doesn't wait for the negotiations themselves. He waits for their preparations to fail." She studied him, searching for something in his face. "You won't help me, will you? You'll go to Rolin, or to the French king's men, and tell them everything I've said."

Claude said nothing.

Marguerite's lips curved into a sad, knowing smile. "You never could lie to me, brother. That's your greatest weakness." She reached beneath her tunic and produced a folded parchment. "Take this. It's the cardinal's schedule for the next three weeks. His meetings, his private audiences, the places where he sleeps. If you don't trust me, trust your own eyes. Investigate. And when you see the truth of it, come find me again."

She pressed the parchment into his hand. Her fingers were cold.

"Where will I find you?"

"The cathedral. I sing in the choir." Another ghost of a smile. "The cardinal thinks I'm his loyal little bird."

She turned and slipped into the darkness of a side passage before Claude could speak. Her footsteps faded, swallowed by the bones of the old city. He stood alone in the candlelit crypt, holding her words and her evidence.

The bells above had fallen silent.

He unfolded the parchment. The cardinal's hand—or someone close to him—had written in careful Latin, with cryptic notations in the margins that made no immediate sense. Dates of audiences. Names of nobles and churchmen. And in the corner, written in a different ink, a single phrase repeated three times.

*Purgare. Purgare. Purgare.*

Purge.

Claude looked at the words on the page and realized his sister had just given him a weapon she likely didn't understand. The cardinal didn't plan a single massacre. He planned a cleansing—and if Marguerite thought she was infiltrating his operation, she was walking into the very heart of the trap she'd come to expose.