Read Chapter 22: The River in Flames

The Rhine was a serpent of smoke and screaming men. René crested the last rise above Koblenz and saw the river choked with burning hulls, their masts tilting like blackened fingers clawing at heaven. Imperial troops lined the far bank, silhouettes against the orange roar, their pikes stabbing at the water as if they could spear the flames themselves. Grain barges—dozens of them, fat-bellied with the winter harvest—burned where they lay at anchor, their cargo crackling and popping like musketry.

He pulled the hood of his stolen peasant cloak lower and guided the abbot's mare down the switchback toward the town. The horse, a placid chestnut gelding, had no taste for fire and kept jittering sideways, ears flat. René clicked his tongue and pressed on. A courier's first lesson: never arrive late because a horse felt nervous. His second lesson, the one learned in a dozen gutters from Flanders to the Valtellina: chaos was a currency, and tonight Koblenz was minting it.

The town walls loomed ahead, gates thrown wide, merchants and peasants spilling out against the tide of soldiers pushing in. A captain in Imperial yellow was shouting orders from horseback, his voice frayed with the effort of being heard over the crackle of burning timber and the low, animal moan of the river current strained through wreckage. René slid from the saddle, led the mare by the reins, and walked straight into the mob.

A hand grabbed his arm. "Where do you think you're going?" A soldier, young, with a powder burn across his cheek and eyes that had seen too much already today. He wore the double-eagle patch of the Emperor's service.

"Out," René said, letting his accent slide into a rough trade German. "My goods are on the quay. I have a contract."

"The quay is burning."

"Then I'll burn with it. My master will have my hide otherwise." He tugged free, not too hard, and pressed a coin into the soldier's palm. Cheap silver, but it did the work. The boy let him pass.

The quay was an inferno. René had seen fires before—campaign fires, siege fires, the patient, methodical burning of villages by men who took pride in their work. This was different. This was waste. The Imperials were burning the harvest before it could feed the Swedes marching south. Grain meant bread; bread meant armies; armies meant a war that could stagger on another winter. He understood the logic. It did not make the smell any easier to bear.

He reached the water's edge and found a stretch of bank where the flames had not yet reached, where a line of small skiffs and punts lay beached like forgetting. A boatman stood among them, wringing his hands and staring at the burning barges. His face was the color of tallow.

"My skiff," the boatman said, not to René, perhaps to God. "It was moored in the middle. I was hauling a load of barrel staves. They set the tow ropes alight. It's gone."

René followed the man's gaze. Three barges out, a skeleton of charred ribs rose from the water, the corpse of a riverboat. He made a sound of sympathy, the kind that cost nothing. "You'll find another."

The boatman laughed, bitter as gall. "There are no others. Every boat on this stretch that isn't burned is pressed into Imperial service. They'll take mine at dawn." He kicked a stone into the water. "There, that's my luck across the river."

René looked at the far bank. The smoke was thick enough to hide the shore. The Imperial troops had moved downstream, pursuing some breakout. For a few moments—half a candle, maybe less—the crossing was unguarded. He looked back at the boatman's skiff. A small craft, river-worthy, with a single sail and a pair of oars. It would carry him and the horse, if the horse could be coaxed aboard.

"How much?" he said.

The boatman blinked. "What?"

"Your skiff. How much?"

"You're mad. The river's full of burning boats. The patrols will shoot anything that moves."

"Then I'll make it worth your trouble." René reached into his purse. A handful of silver. More than the skiff was worth. The boatman's eyes widened, then narrowed with suspicion.

"Where are you crossing to?"

"Zurich."

"Zurich." The boatman let out a short, humorless laugh. "You'll never make it past the bend—"

"My horse and I will take our chances. What do you say? Silver for a boat you'll lose to the Emperor anyway at dawn. You come out ahead."

The boatman scratched his chin. Behind them, something exploded—a barrel of pitch, perhaps—and the sky turned briefly white. The crowd on the bank screamed and pushed. René saw his moment slipping. The Imperial captain had returned with reinforcements, a file of men in yellow, muskets at the ready.

"Two more coins," the boatman said. "Then we're done."

René paid. Together they dragged the skiff to the water's edge. The mare balked at the lapping waves and the heat radiating off the burning barges upriver. René spoke to it in quiet French, nonsense words, a litany of calm that he himself did not feel, and eventually the horse stepped onto the planking, trembling but obedient. The boatman shoved them off without ceremony, already counting his coins.

The skiff drifted. René took the oars and pulled, long, steady strokes, keeping the craft hugging the shallows where the smoke hung thickest. The water was a mirror of fire, and each stroke of the oars shattered a hundred orange suns. His arms burned. His eyes streamed. The horse stamped its hooves, a rhythm of panic that he feared would overturn them.

Halfway across, the current took them. The skiff swung broadside, and René caught a glimpse of the far bank—still smoke, still darkness, no soldiers. He dug the oars deep and hauled. The fire was spreading, catching on drifting wreckage, and the river had become a highway of burning islands. One collided with the bow, sending up a hiss of steam that engulfed them. The horse screamed, high and thin, and René tasted ash.

Then he was through, into clear water, and the far bank rose before him like a dark wall. He let the skiff scrape against gravel and vaulted out, boots sinking into mud. The mare followed more willingly than he would have guessed, eager to be off the water. He waded into the reeds, pulling the skiff after him, dragging it beneath the overhang of a willow until it was hidden from any eye on the river.

He stood there a moment, chest heaving, watching Koblenz burn across the water. The fire had reached the grain barges—the real ones, the ones too heavy to move. Great columns of pale smoke rose into the night, and with them the smell of bread burning, a smell that would haunt him.

He had crossed the Rhine. He had the true draft, rolled in oilskin and pressed flat against his heart. He had the forged copy, waiting in Zurich. And now he had the abbot's introduction to the count, which would open the doors of the city's finest houses.

He was one step closer to Katarina Vogler, and one step closer to Richelieu's throat.

And then he saw it.

On the far bank, where the Imperial troops had been, a figure stood. A man in a long coat, watching the fire with an air of patience that did not belong to a soldier. He held a brass spyglass to his eye, and even across the river, even in the dark and smoke, René could see the instrument glint as it caught the flames. The man was not watching the fire. He was watching the water.

René lowered himself into the reeds. The horse shifted behind him, and he clamped a hand on its muzzle. The man lowered the spyglass, folded it with a click that René could not possibly have heard at this distance but imagined anyway, and turned away. He walked back toward the town, unhurried, as if he had all the time in the world and knew exactly what he was looking for.

René did not move until the man was gone from sight. Then he let out a breath he had not known he was holding.

Someone had followed him. Someone knew the crossing he would take, or the route, or both. The soldier at the Swiss guard post, the one who had recognized him as the Breisach courier—that coin had finally been spent. Somewhere, a piece of silver had bought his name and face.

He turned the mare westward, toward Zurich.

The letter shifted against his chest. The promise of the iron cross lay cold and heavy through the cloth of his shirt, a talisman of a debt he still owed.

He began to run.