Read Chapter 17: A Price for the Truth

The general’s tent stood at the crest of the ridge, apart from the others, its canvas the dull grey-green of a man who did not wish to be noticed. Moreau had noticed. He had noticed the general’s name on the order Bastien had carried, the one that had moved the gold from the strongroom to the wagons. He had noticed the signature’s flourish, the way the man signed his name like a king granting a pardon.

Bastien walked at his side, pale and trembling, his young face a mask of dread. Moreau had promised him protection. He was not certain he could keep it.

“You’ll tell him what you told me,” Moreau said. “Exactly what you told me.”

“Yes, Captain.”

“And you’ll point to the order. The one with his hand on it.”

Bastien swallowed. “Yes, Captain.”

They reached the tent’s entrance. Two sentries stood flanking it, muskets slung. They did not know Moreau was a fugitive. Not yet. The provost’s men would come soon, but here, on this ridge, in the grey light of early morning, rank still held.

“Quartermaster Moreau,” one of the sentries said, a flicker of recognition. “The general is not to be disturbed.”

“The general will see me,” Moreau said. “Tell him it concerns the gold.”

The sentry hesitated. Then he ducked inside and emerged a moment later, nodding. “He’ll see you.”

The general’s name was Vasseur. He was a thick-chested man with a grey beard and the weary eyes of someone who had spent twenty years trading lives for geography. He sat behind a field desk, a cup of coffee steaming at his elbow, and he did not rise when Moreau entered.

“Quartermaster,” Vasseur said. “You have something to say about the gold?”

“The gold,” Moreau said, “that you ordered moved out of the strongroom under a sealed requisition. The gold that is now in the hands of Prussian patrols north of here.”

Vasseur’s face did not change. He lifted his coffee and sipped. “I signed no requisition.”

“Your hand signed it,” Moreau said. He gestured to Bastien. “This gunner carried it. He watched you sign.”

The general’s gaze slid to Bastien. The boy wilted under it.

“I don’t know this man,” Vasseur said.

“You do,” Bastien whispered. “You gave me the paper yourself. In your hand, sir. You said the Emperor’s business, and I was not to speak of it.”

Vasseur set down his cup. For a long moment he said nothing, and Moreau watched the calculation move behind his eyes, the weighing of lies and consequences. Then the general sighed, and something in his shoulders relaxed, and he looked at Moreau with a tired honesty that was almost worse than the lie.

“The order was not mine,” Vasseur said. “It was dictated. Every word of it. The signature was given to me, already written, and I was told to make it my own.”

“By whom?”

Vasseur glanced at the tent flap. Then back at Moreau. “They said the Emperor had approved it. That the gold was to be repositioned ahead of a secret movement. I was not to question it. And I did not.”

“The name,” Moreau pressed. “Who dictated it?”

Vasseur’s eyes hardened. “I’ve already risked my command by telling you this, Moreau. If I give you the name and you fail, I am finished. If I give you the name and you succeed, I am still finished, because the man I name has friends in places I cannot reach.”

“The men,” Moreau said, stepping closer. “There are men in this regiment who will hang for a mutiny they haven’t committed yet. Your name is on the paper that sent their pay into Prussian hands. If you do not speak, I will let them read that paper. And then it will not matter who your friends are.”

Vasseur stared at him. The cup trembled in his hand. For a moment Moreau thought he would speak, that the name would come, that the thread would finally unravel. Vasseur opened his mouth.

The crack of a rifle split the morning.

Vasseur’s chest flowered red. He jerked backward, the cup flying, coffee arcing across the desk, and he slumped against his chair with a sound like a bellows collapsing. The sentries outside shouted. Moreau dropped low, dragging Bastien down with him as the tent canvas flickered with a second impact.

Vasseur was still alive. His lips moved, wet and red, and Moreau crawled to him, pressing a hand to the wound that would not stanch.

“The name,” Moreau hissed.

Vasseur’s eyes found his. There was something in them, a terrible clarity, the knowledge of what his silence had cost.

“Crow…” he wheezed. “Crow is in the city.”

“Which city?” Moreau demanded. “Vasseur. Which city?”

But the general’s eyes were already empty.

Moreau tore the tent flap open a hand’s width. The ridge sloped down into a thicket of birch and brush, and among the trees a figure moved, quick and sure, carrying a rifle. The figure was small. Slight. And it wore a French uniform.

A woman.

Moreau was on his feet before he had finished the thought, bursting through the tent’s rear and into the rough grass. The sentries were shouting behind him, confused, the provost’s name on their lips, and Moreau pushed past them into the trees. The sniper was already moving, fast, low, weaving between the birch trunks, and she did not look back.

He chased her through the wood, branches whipping at his face. She was fast, but he was driven, and the distance between them closed. He could see the cut of her hair beneath the shako, the set of her shoulders. She knew the terrain. She had chosen her line before she pulled the trigger.

The trees broke open and she was there, at the edge of a cliff, the ground falling away into a mist-filled valley below. She stopped. Turned. Her face was pale, sharp-boned, utterly calm, and she held the rifle across her chest like a thing that had served her well.

“Captain Moreau,” she said. No accent he could place. A voice that could have belonged anywhere.

“Who are you?” he said.

“Someone who does not wish to be found.”

She stepped back, and for one terrible moment Moreau thought she would throw herself from the edge. But she raised the rifle and fired, not at him—at the ground at his feet. The shot sent dirt and pebbles spraying, and he threw up an arm against the debris.

When he lowered it, she was gone.

He ran to the edge. The cliff dropped into a sheer face of rock and brush, and far below, a narrow path wound between boulders. He could not see her. Could not hear her. She had melted into the stone like a ghost.

Behind him, in the wood, the shouts were growing closer. The provost’s men. And somewhere in the city, in Brussels, the Crow was waiting.

Moreau stood at the edge of the cliff, breathing hard, Vasseur’s last words echoing in his skull.

*Crow is in the city.*

And he had nothing left but a dead general, a lost map, and a gold that was never meant to be stolen.