Read Chapter 35: The Fiery Angel

The church of Saint-Eustache loomed against the bruised Parisian sky, its twin towers like a closed fist. Claude pressed himself into the shadow of a wine cart as a patrol of the cardinal's guards clattered past, halberds glinting in the torchlight. His merchant's disguise was worthless now—every man in the city had his description, courtesy of the provost's herald.

He counted the guards at the main doors. Four. Too many for a direct approach. But the cathedral had other entrances—every church in Paris did, for the priests who kept the relics safe and the beggars who knew the crypts better than the altar boys.

Behind him, the creak of a door. A stable hand emerged from the mews, yawning, turning to slop a bucket into the gutter. Claude moved before the man could see him, slipping through the half-open door into the smell of hay and horse sweat. The stable connected to the sacristy—he'd mapped such routes a hundred times in Dijon's own cathedral, where the canons complained endlessly about drafts.

He passed through the vestry in silence. Candlelight bled through the sanctuary door, stark against the dark wood. Inside, the church was wrong. Not the stillness of prayer—the purposeful motion of men at work. Barrels lined the side aisles, dark and squat, their iron bands gleaming dully. Claude counted ten. Enough to engulf the nave in fire, to turn stone into an oven.

And there, at the far end before the gilded altar, a figure in a grey cloak knelt as if in prayer. A lantern rested beside her, flame guttering low.

Marguerite.

Claude's breath caught. He moved down the side aisle, keeping the pillars between himself and the altar, his boots silent on the flagstones. The cardinal's men who should have been here—where were they? He had expected guards, soldiers, the machinery of a massacre. Instead, emptiness. Only the barrels, and his sister, and the waiting.

She heard him. Her head turned, and even in the half-light, he saw the wry shape of her mouth.

"You came."

"Did you think I wouldn't?"

"I prayed you wouldn't." She rose, brushing dust from her knees. Her hand rested casually on the lantern, and Claude felt his stomach clench. "The provost's men are watching every street between here and the river. They want a Burgundian caught striking the match. Failing that, they'll take any arsonist and ask questions later."

"Marga, listen to me." Claude stepped closer, dropping his voice. "The cardinal is using you. This fire—it starts a war. Burgundians will burn in their beds, French in the streets. And when the blood is deep enough, he'll step forward and offer peace. His peace. A throne built on ashes."

Marguerite laughed. The sound was brittle, cracked. "You think I don't know that? I read his letters too. I've sung in his choir, whispered in his ear, smiled when he praised God's work." She lifted the lantern, and the flame danced in her eyes. "I know exactly what this fire is for. That's why it has to happen."

Claude's blood went cold. "What?"

"It's set to burn the church of the Burgundian confraternity. Cardinal planted his men to blame the French citizens, spark the pogrom." She gestured at the barrels. "Except these barrels aren't in _that_ church. They're here, in Saint-Eustache. His own cathedral. And the men who guard the provost's office have already been redirected—a little note, signed with his seal, saying the threat is south of the river."

Claude stared at her. "You changed the location."

"I changed the tools." Marguerite's smile turned dangerous. "When this fire starts, it won't burn a Burgundian church. It burns the cardinal's own pews, his own sacred ground. The royal guards I've tipped off will arrive to find the oil, the timing fuses, the match. And they'll ask whose seal arranged for this delivery." She tapped the nearest barrel. "Cardinal Louis de Bar's."

The logic was clean. Brutal. Infuriating. It would work—and Claude saw the shape of it, how the accusation would topple the spider, how Marguerite had turned his own web against him. She had arranged everything.

Except one thing.

"The guards will take someone," he said. "They'll find a culprit. A Burgundian lurking in the cathedral."

Marguerite's jaw tightened. "No one has to be here. The fuses will burn on their own. By the time the first flame licks the altar, we'll be gone. The provost will find barrels, not spies."

"And the fire itself?" Claude moved closer, the words scraping his throat. "It still burns. What if the wind catches wrong? What if a priest is praying in the sacristy, a beggar asleep in the crypt? You're willing to burn them too?"

"Better a few than a thousand," his sister spat. "The cardinal would burn Dijon to smoke out a single Burgundian. We have a chance to stop him for good. All it costs is one empty church."

"Empty?"

Voices echoed from the far door—muffled, but growing. Marguerite's face went white. That wasn't the plan. No one was supposed to come.

Claude looked at her, and in that second, the choice crystallized. He could step back, let her work her scheme, turn the cardinal's own hate against him. Let the church burn to save the peace.

Or he could grab her hand and stop the match, and be caught here with the oil, and hang as the arsonist himself.

The voice came closer. A priest's robe swept into view at the end of the aisle.

Marguerite lifted the lantern. Ready to throw it.

"You have to let this burn, Claude."

But she had told him there were only two choices, and the man inside him that had sworn the clerk's oath over and over knew she was wrong.

He lunged.