Read Chapter 11: The Deserter's Confession

The night air hung thick with marsh rot and the smell of blood-soaked bandages. Moreau lay propped against a cedar trunk, his shoulder wrapped in torn cloth that had gone black in the moonlight. La Rue kept watch at the edge of the reeds, carbine across his knees, eyes scanning the dark water.

Étienne crouched over the deserter. The man's name was Corbeil, he'd said, before collapsing from exhaustion. The Huron had found him half-drowned in a creek bed two miles south, still wearing the tattered remnants of a French uniform coat, the sleeves cut away to hide the stripes.

"Talk," Étienne said, pressing a skin of water to Corbeil's cracked lips. "You said you came from a fort. What fort?"

Corbeil drank greedily, water spilling down his chin. His eyes were wild, the eyes of a man who had seen something that broke something inside him. "The fort at the bend. The one that's not on any map." He laughed, a hollow sound. "Wasn't on any map. That was the point."

Moreau stirred, wincing as he shifted. "There is no fort at the bend. Only Carillon."

Corbeil's laugh died. He looked at Moreau with something like contempt. "You're the officer. The one leading the relief column. They told us about you—that you'd come with orders and supplies and enough men to hold the river." His voice cracked. "They told us that for three months. We waited. We watched the river bend until our eyes burned. Nothing came."

Étienne's jaw tightened. He pulled the letter from his coat—the same letter Moreau had given him at the start, sealed with the governor's mark. "This is a letter of reinforcement. We're carrying it to Carillon."

"There is no Carillon," Corbeil said. "Not anymore. The fort at the bend is called Fort Saint-Louis, and it sits exactly where that map says it sits, and it's been abandoned by every Frenchman who was supposed to answer its signals. We were forty men. Forty. Under Captain Roche."

The name dropped like a stone in still water. La Rue's head snapped around from his post. Moreau went very still.

"Roche," La Rue repeated, his voice flat. "Tall man. Scar across his left cheek. Wore a silver badge on his chest, the shape of a fleur-de-lis within a sunburst."

Corbeil stared at him. "You know him."

"I knew of him." La Rue's hand drifted toward his knife. "He was commandant of the fort before I left. A hard man. Fair, I thought, until—" He stopped.

Étienne reached into his own coat, fingers closing around the two badges he carried—the one from Baptiste's pack, with the scratch he'd made as a boy, and the twin he'd lifted from Moreau's gear the night before. He drew out the scarred one and held it into the faint firelight.

"This badge?" he asked.

Corbeil went pale. "Where did you get that?"

"Dead man's pack."

"More dead men to come," Corbeil whispered. "That badge belonged to Captain Roche. He wore it the night he opened the gates." He swallowed hard, his throat working. "I was on watch. Third hour past midnight. The English came out of the trees like the forest itself was walking—no torches, no noise, just shadows and the sound of boots on wet earth. I thought they were ghosts at first. Then I saw Roche walking ahead of them. Not as a prisoner. As a guide."

La Rue made a sound low in his throat. "He betrayed us."

"He betrayed *you*," Corbeil said, looking at La Rue with sudden sharpness. "I was there when the fort fell. I watched Roche hand the keys to an English major and then walk among his own men, picking out the ones he wanted to keep. The rest—" He gestured vaguely, a hand wiping away something invisible. "The river took them."

Étienne's chest felt hollow. His father had been betrayed by a captain who wore this badge. His father had been killed—not in fair fight, but by the same kind of treachery that had opened this fort's gates. And now he was carrying the proof of it, along with the secret of Moreau's own brother.

He glanced at Moreau. The officer's face was unreadable in the dark, but his good hand had moved to rest on the hilt of his sword.

"You said the English major," Étienne said carefully. "What was his name?"

Corbeil shook his head. "I didn't catch it. A hard man. Cold eyes. But I saw him give an order to a soldier who wore a green coat—one of their rangers—and the ranger was carrying a knife that caught the torchlight. A knife with a curved blade and a bone handle, like the ones they trade up north."

Simon Hart's knife. Étienne had seen it twice now—once in the forest, buried in the shoulder of a Huron scout, and once in Moreau's account of his father's death.

"You saw the knife," he said. "Did you see the man?"

Corbeil's brow furrowed. "There was another fellow with them. Not English. Spoke French with the accent of the frontier—mixed blood like you, maybe. He and the ranger had words. Loud words. Something about a debt unpaid." He paused. "The ranger hit him. Knocked him down. And the mixed-blood got up and walked away into the dark, and I never saw him again."

Jean-Baptiste. It had to be. Étienne's brother had served with Hart, had quarreled with him, had walked away from the English force at the fort. But toward what? Toward the revenge that had driven him to the wilderness? Toward the brother he hadn't seen in years?

"Where is this fort now?" Moreau demanded, his voice sharp with pain. "Still in English hands?"

Corbeil laughed again, and this time the sound was worse than weeping. "English hands? English hands have been in it since spring. But you want to know what's there now?" He leaned forward, his eyes glittering. "Nothing. It's empty. The English pulled their garrison out two weeks ago—every man, every gun, everything that could be carried. They stripped it bare and left the gates open."

Moreau frowned. "Then why would they—"

"The river," Étienne said quietly, the pieces clicking into place. "The fort commands the river. If they stripped it, they don't need it. They know the French army is too busy at Carillon to send anyone south. And they know—" He stopped, the thought arriving cold and certain. "They know someone is coming with orders, and they want to make sure those orders never reach anyone who can act on them."

Moreau's face went slack. "The orders. They're not for Carillon at all."

"No." Étienne drew the letter from his coat, the same one Moreau had carried, the one with the governor's seal. He broke it open and read the words he'd been carrying for weeks without knowing what they meant. And for the first time, in the firelight of the marsh, he understood.

The letter did not order reinforcement. It ordered surrender.

By order of the Governor-General, upon presentation of this document, you will yield Fort Saint-Louis and all matériel to the commanding officer of His Majesty's forces in the region, and you will provide every assistance in their movement upriver.

The signature was not the governor's. It was a careful forgery—but a good one. And the order was dated the same month the fort had fallen from within.

Étienne looked up at Moreau, who was reading over his shoulder, his face pale in the light.

"You said the letter was orders to reinforce," Étienne said. "You said you did not know what was in it."

Moreau's silence was answer enough.

La Rue's carbine came up, covering the officer. "Then you know what you are, Moreau."

Moreau's jaw worked. His hand stayed on his sword, but he did not draw. "I knew what it said when I was given it," he said finally, the words coming out heavy as stones. "I thought I could find a way to disobey it—to see it destroyed before we reached the fort. But I did not know my brother was the man who'd betrayed it." He met Étienne's eyes. "Now I do. And that changes everything."

"Does it?" Étienne asked. His hand rested on the scarred badge. "Your brother wore this. Your brother handed the fort to the English. Your brother stood by while my father was killed."

Moreau's face crumpled. "Roche is my half-brother. I have not seen him in twenty years. I did not know—"

"You knew enough to bring that badge." La Rue's voice was cold. "You knew enough to put yourself between me and the truth at every turn."

Moreau shook his head. "I brought the badge because I wanted to find him. I wanted to kill him myself."

The fire crackled. Somewhere in the marsh, a bird called out—a night heron, gone silent a moment later as a shadow passed over the moon.

Étienne looked from Moreau to the deserter to La Rue. The letter sat in his hand, damning and useless. The fort was empty. The English had already moved on. And somewhere beyond the marsh, his brother was walking away from Simon Hart, carrying a debt that Étienne did not yet understand.

"We're going to the fort," he said. "Empty or not. Because that's where the trail leads—Roche, Hart, and my brother. Whatever's waiting at that river bend, that's where it ends."

Moreau started to speak, but Étienne cut him off.

"You will walk ahead of us, Moreau. And if you so much as breathe wrong, I will give La Rue your badge as a keepsake."

He folded the letter, tucked it into his coat, and began to gather what they could carry.