Read Chapter 15: The Brother's Dilemma

The guard on the stair saw them first. He had time to open his mouth—no more—before Corbeil’s knife was in his throat. The man slid down the stone steps, gurgling, and Corbeil caught him by the collar and lowered him the rest of the way without a sound.

Étienne stepped over the body, torchlight from the passage above casting his shadow long and crooked down the cellar stairs. The air was thick with damp and the smell of old blood. His heart hammered against his ribs, but his hands were steady. He had killed before. Not like this, not creeping through the guts of a fort that should have been his king’s, but the act itself was familiar.

At the bottom of the stair, the cellar opened into a low-ceilinged room of fieldstone. A single lantern burned on a barrel near the wall, its flame low. And there, chained to an iron ring bolted into the floor, sat Jean-Baptiste.

Étienne stopped.

His brother looked nothing like the boy he remembered. The face was thinner, the cheekbones sharp as blades, and a dark bruise spread from his temple down to his jaw. His shirt was torn at the shoulder, crusted with dried blood. But the eyes—those were the same. Green, like their mother’s. They widened when they saw Étienne, and for a moment neither of them spoke.

“You came,” Jean-Baptiste said finally. His voice was hoarse, cracked from thirst. “I prayed you would. I didn’t think you would.”

Étienne knelt in front of him. He did not reach for the chains. “You’re alive.”

“Barely. Hart wants information. I’ve given him none.” Jean-Baptiste’s lips twisted into something that might have been a smile. “You look well, brother. For a man who should be dead.”

“I might be yet.”

Étienne studied his brother’s face. The bruising. The cracked lips. The way his hands trembled where they lay in his lap. All of it spoke of suffering. But suffering was easy to fake. Étienne had seen men play roles for months, years, always waiting for the moment to strike. He needed to know which kind of man sat before him now.

“The English took you at the trading post,” Étienne said. “That’s what I was told.”

“That’s what I wanted them to say.”

Étienne went still. “What?”

Jean-Baptiste shifted, the chains rattling. “I let them take me. Hart didn’t capture me—I walked into his camp and surrendered. I told him I knew the river, that I could guide his men through the rapids north of the bend. I needed to get inside. To find the traitor.”

“The traitor.”

“Roche.” Jean-Baptiste spat the name. “He sold this fort. He sold all of us. I heard rumour of it in Montreal—a French captain who wore an English badge under his coat, who had sold a position of strength for silver. I couldn’t prove it. But I knew if I could get close to Hart, I could find the proof.”

Étienne’s jaw tightened. He reached into his shirt and pulled out the badge he had taken from Baptiste’s pack. The twin of the one Moreau wore. He held it up to the lantern light.

“You know this?”

Jean-Baptiste’s eyes fixed on it. “Where did you get that?”

“From a dead man’s pack. A man who served Roche. He wore a twin of it, and his brother carried this one.” Étienne watched his brother’s face carefully. “You scratched your mark into this badge when you were eleven years old. I remember. You did it with my knife.”

Jean-Baptiste was silent for a long moment. When he spoke, his voice was soft. “I did. I scratched it into every piece of brass I could find that year. Mother was furious.”

“Then how did it end up in the pack of a dead soldier serving Roche?”

“I gave it to him.” Jean-Baptiste’s eyes met his. “His name was Valcourt. He was my contact inside Roche’s circle. I passed him messages for months, things I learned from Hart’s officers. He was supposed to carry word south to the governor. But he was careless, or unlucky, and Roche found out. Roche killed him and left the badge on his body to send me a message.” He paused. “You killed a man who was already dead, it seems.”

Étienne did not move. His brother’s story was plausible. Too plausible, maybe. It fit the pieces he had found too neatly, the way a well-made trap fits its trigger.

“You expect me to believe you walked into an English camp willingly,” Étienne said. “That you let them chain you in a cellar and beat you—for months, maybe—just to catch one man.”

“I expected to be in and out within a week,” Jean-Baptiste said. “I didn’t expect Hart to be so suspicious of everyone. He trusts no one, not even his own men. He had me questioned twice a day for the first month. Then the beatings started.” He lifted his bound wrists. “He still thinks I’m just a guide who got lost in the woods and offered his services. If he knew what I was, I’d be dead already.”

“And the fort? He stripped it bare. Moved the garrison north. Did you know that?”

Jean-Baptiste nodded slowly. “He sold the men north to the mines. The fort was the prize—the position, not the soldiers. He has a new garrison coming down from Quebec, English regulars who’ll hold the bend against French supply boats. Once they arrive, this fort will be the strongest English position on the river.”

“When?”

“A week. Maybe less.”

Étienne absorbed this. A week. Perhaps less. The English would be here soon, and he was standing in a cellar with the fort’s walls manned by a skeleton crew of Hart’s men. Above them, Gagnon was waiting by the postern, ready to help however he could. But one sergeant and two guides could not hold a fort against a garrison of regulars.

He looked at his brother again. The chains. The bruises. The story that fit so well.

“Why should I trust you?” Étienne asked quietly. “You chose the English camp. You chose to play this game. And now you sit here, claiming it was all for France. But I’ve seen what loyalty to France costs. I’ve watched it bleed men dry for nothing.”

Jean-Baptiste met his eyes. There was no defiance in them, no shame. Only a weariness that seemed older than his years.

“You don’t have to trust me,” he said. “You have to trust that I want the same thing you do. Roche destroyed this fort from the inside. He sold the men who served him, and he sold their families, and he did it for silver. I want to see him hang. You want”—he glanced at the badge still in Étienne’s hand—“to know whose blood is on that thing. We want the same thing, brother. We’ve always wanted the same thing.”

Étienne’s chest ached with the weight of it. The same thing. He wasn’t sure that was true. He wasn’t sure he knew what his brother wanted anymore. He only knew that Jean-Baptiste was the last family he had, and that the chains on his wrists were not the only things binding him.

He reached down and drew his knife. Jean-Baptiste stiffened, but did not flinch.

“If you’re lying to me,” Étienne said, “I’ll be the one who cuts your throat. Not Hart. Not Roche. Me.”

“I know.” Jean-Baptiste offered his wrists. “Do it.”

Étienne sawed through the rope binding his brother’s hands. The strands parted, and Jean-Baptiste pulled his arms free with a hiss of pain, rubbing the raw flesh where the rope had bitten.

Above them, a distant shout echoed through the fort’s stone. Corbeil appeared at the top of the stairs, face tight.

“Someone’s coming,” he whispered. “Two men, maybe more. They’re heading this way.”

Étienne looked at his brother, then at the badge in his hand. The scratch mark caught the lantern light, small and old and familiar.

“Move,” he said. “Now.”