Read Chapter 28: The Turn of the Tide

The road north out of Paris was a wound that kept bleeding mud. Three days of rain had turned the cart tracks into a quagmire, and René's borrowed horse—a swaybacked bay with a temperament like a pissed-off nun—picked its way through the muck with theatrical reluctance.

He kept his hood up and his mouth shut at every village. Moreau's papers said he was a minor nobleman traveling to Frankfurt on family business. The seal on his letters carried weight enough to buy silence, and silence was what he needed.

By the fourth day, the clouds broke and the country opened up around him—flat farmland studded with burnt husks of barns, fields gone fallow from a decade of marching armies. The war had been here, chewed through, moved on. René knew the look of a landscape that had been eaten and spat out. He'd left enough of them behind.

The forest came sudden, a wall of oak and beech crowding the road on both sides. Good cover. Bad country. René loosened the pistol in his saddle holster and kept the bay at a steady trot.

They hit him at the creek crossing.

The first shot came from the treeline, a puff of smoke and a ball that threw up mud ten paces ahead of his horse. The bay reared, screaming. René dragged it down, one hand on the reins, the other already drawing his wheellock. Three more shots, none close, and then they came out of the trees—eight men in the faded sashes of the Emperor's service, pikes lowered, faces hidden behind visors and grime.

René considered running. The bay had other ideas, planting its feet and refusing to move.

"Drop the piece," a voice called. The sergeant stepped forward, a barrel-chested man with a scar that split his lip into a permanent sneer. "You're the courier. We've been waiting."

"I'm a merchant," René said. "My name is—"

"I know your name." The sergeant spat. "I know three of your names. Which one do you want me to call you? Moreau? Delacroix? Or the one you used at Breitenfeld, when you ran from the field and left my brother to die?"

That stopped René cold.

"Voss," he said slowly. "Captain Voss."

"Sergeant now." Voss smiled, and there was nothing friendly in it. "The Swedes didn't think much of a man who lost his company and his honor on the same afternoon. The Emperor's pay is just as good, and the Emperor doesn't ask questions about what you did in an earlier war."

René's hand tightened on the pistol. The other men fanned out, flanking him, pikes angled at his horse's chest.

"You wrote to me," Voss said. "Sealed it with Moreau's ring, like you were some kind of gentleman. You thought I'd forgotten the smell of your cowardice? You thought I'd forgotten the sound of my brother calling your name while you rode away?"

"I didn't ride away," René said. "I was wounded. The line broke—"

"The line broke because the man holding the center was supposed to be there, and he wasn't. He was running for the trees with a purse full of Imperial coin." Voss stepped closer, close enough that René could see the hatred working in his jaw. "You sold us. You sold the battle. And my brother paid for your greed with his guts in the grass."

René had no answer for that. He'd told himself the version where he was a survivor, a pragmatist, a man who knew when a fight was lost. Voss's version was uglier, and uglier versions were usually closer to the truth.

"His letters," Voss said, jerking his chin at a man who held a leather satchel. "Every one of them. From Paris, from the road, from every stop you made. You thought you were clever, changing names, changing clothes. But the Emperor has eyes in Richelieu's house, and ears in every tavern between here and the Rhine."

"Then you know I'm not carrying what they think."

"I know you're carrying something." Voss pulled a folded paper from his breastplate—René recognized the crease, the shape of his own hand. "And I know the Swedes haven't paid for it yet. So here's the bargain. You give me the archive, the one you sewed into your coat, and I consider your debt paid."

"I don't have it."

Voss's smile grew. "I know. We searched the dead envoy's coat before Richelieu's men could burn it. We found the needle marks, the empty lining. And we found the cardinal's agent who told us where you were going, and why." He tapped the paper. "I know what you're carrying, Delacroix. I know every word in your head, because I know the men who taught you to read them."

René's blood went cold.

"You're not a double agent for the Emperor," he said slowly.

"I'm a double agent for myself." Voss shrugged. "The Emperor pays. The Swedes pay. Richelieu pays. I collect from all of them and answer to none. It's the same road you were walking, except I never pretended I could get off it."

The forest was silent. Eight pikes. One pistol, still in René's hand, still loaded.

"You're going to kill me either way," René said.

"No. I'm going to take you to a man who wants to talk to you." Voss nodded, and two men grabbed René's arms, pulling him from the saddle. "An Imperial general. He has questions about the Gunpowder Accord. And he has a very personal interest in what you know about a woman named Katarina Vogler."

René fought the instinct to struggle. The archive draft was in his boot, wrapped in oilcloth, and they hadn't searched him yet. But Voss's words lingered—the dead envoy's coat, the empty lining, the cardinal's agent.

Every step of his road had been watched. Every choice he'd made had been catalogued by a man who'd been waiting for him since Breitenfeld.

The bay horse stood placidly as they bound René's wrists. Voss picked up the reins, looked back over his shoulder.

"You chose the wrong side when you chose to survive," he said. "I've been collecting that debt for fifteen years."