Read Chapter 22: A Traitor's Ruse

The pain in Étienne's shoulder had settled into a dull, throbbing ache, but he hardly noticed it anymore. He lay prone on the ridgeline east of the fort, watching the last of the afternoon light bleed from the sky. Behind him, Corbeil and Gagnon waited in the brush with the rangers, their breathing slow and even.

The plan had been simple. Move at dusk. Find another way in. But the sealed sally port had thrown everything into question, and now they were scrabbling for alternatives with the sun nearly gone.

Étienne was about to signal a withdrawal when a flicker of movement caught his eye in the fort's yard below. A figure crossed the open ground between the storehouse and the main blockhouse, moving with purpose. He adjusted the focus of his gaze—no spyglass, just the sharp eyes his father had trained since childhood.

The figure stopped at the blockhouse door. It was the English captain. Étienne recognized the set of his shoulders, the way he carried himself like a man who had never once doubted that the world would bend to his will.

But it was not the captain that made Étienne's breath catch. It was the figure who stepped out of the shadow of the blockhouse to meet him.

The new man wore a French officer's coat, its blue faded and stained. He moved with a casual familiarity beside the English captain, and the two stood close together, speaking low, their heads bent like old conspirators.

Étienne felt Gagnon's hand clamp on his arm.

"Do you see him?" Gagnon whispered, his voice gone tight and strange. "The one in the blue coat?"

"Aye."

"That's Captain Roche's adjutant. Man named Toussaint. He was my friend."

Étienne heard the crack in Gagnon's voice, the sound of something breaking that had been held together by hope alone. He did not look away from the two men below.

"Friend," Étienne repeated, tasting the word. "He is the one who sealed the sally port, then. And the one who sold the loyalists."

Gagnon said nothing for a long moment. Then, quietly: "He knew the fort's secrets. Every last one of them. I introduced him to your father myself when he first came to Montreal."

Étienne forced himself to watch, though every instinct screamed at him to move, to act. The two men talked for another minute, then Toussaint reached into his coat and pulled out a folded paper. The English captain took it, read it, and nodded. He clapped Toussaint on the shoulder before turning and walking away toward the main gate.

Toussaint lingered a moment. Then he looked directly at the ridgeline—directly at Étienne, or so it seemed—and smiled the slow smile of a man who had already won. He walked into the storehouse and closed the door.

Étienne slid backward down the slope, the others following. When they were safely hidden in the trees, he turned to Gagnon. "What did Toussaint believe he was doing in there?"

"Betraying Canada," Gagnon said. The words were flat, lifeless. "He was Roche's man through and through. He knew everything—the troop strength, the supply routes, the buried caches. When the English took the fort, he must have walked out with his hands up and a bargain already made."

"A bargain for what?"

The rangers had gathered close, their faces hard in the failing light. Laroche's men had followed Bouchard's lead, but Étienne could see the doubt creeping into their eyes. Another betrayal. Another dead end.

"We have to move," Corbeil said quietly. "They'll send word to the garrison—"

"No," Étienne said. "He already gave them whatever he had. The captain smiled when he read it." He stopped, replaying the scene in his mind. The way the English captain had nodded, the way Toussaint's smile had grown when he turned to leave. "They're not waiting for reinforcements. They're expecting something."

From the edge of the camp came a rustle of movement. Étienne's hand went to his knife, and the rangers spread out in silent reaction. But it was only Jean-Baptiste's boy—the young loyalist who had stayed behind to tend the wounded—crawling through the brush on his belly.

"The sergeant sent me," the boy whispered. His face was pale with fear and urgency. "I saw something while I was gathering water. There's a man coming down the river trail. A French officer, in a canoe, moving fast."

Étienne exchanged a look with Gagnon. "Single canoe?"

"Aye. Just him, but he's got a bundle of papers strapped to his chest, wrapped in oilcloth. He's following the old portage route, the one that leads past the marsh to the fort."

"Who is he?"

"I don't know, sir. But he's wearing the king's colors, and he's keeping to the cover—he knows the way. He'll reach the fort before the hour is out."

Étienne's mind raced. A single courier moving fast with papers—that was how word traveled on this river. Orders. Reinforcements. A relief column on its way, perhaps, arriving sooner than the English expected. And Toussaint had just handed the English captain a paper the contents of which Étienne had been unable to see.

"The boy found something else," Gagnon said, and the boy nodded, reaching into his shirt.

"He dropped this. He was crouched by the river, taking a drink, and it slipped out of his pocket." The boy held up a folded piece of paper, creased and worn at the edges. "I didn't read it. It fell open when I picked it up, but I didn't take in the words."

Étienne took the paper. It was written in a neat, practiced hand—the hand of a clerk or an adjutant who had spent years copying orders. At the top, in bold letters: *Disposition of the Powder Magazine—Action Upon Signal*.

He read it twice, then a third time, feeling the blood drain from his face.

"What does it say?" Bouchard asked.

Étienne looked up at the circle of men. The fading light threw their faces into sharp relief—the doubt, the exhaustion, the desperate hope that had brought them this far.

"Toussaint is planning to blow the powder magazine," Étienne said slowly. "When the French relief force arrives at the fort. He's set the charges already, and he's been waiting for the signal from the English captain to light the fuse. But the timing is on this note." He tapped the paper. "The English captain ordered it kept out of the fort until the last possible moment—they don't trust their own matches. Not with the powder they've hoarded."

"The courier," Gagnon said. "He's the signal. When he arrives, they light the fuse, and the relief force walks into empty air where the walls used to be."

Étienne nodded slowly. "The relief force doesn't know the fort has been undermined. They'll come up the river trail expecting a fight. And instead, the whole magazine will go up under their feet. Toussaint doesn't want to win a battle. He wants to erase an entire French column from the map."

A long silence fell over the camp. Somewhere in the trees, a bird called out once and fell quiet.

"How long until the courier reaches the fort?" Étienne asked the boy.

The boy thought about it. "Half an hour, maybe less. He's moving hard."

"Half an hour," Corbeil repeated. "And we're sitting here without a way in."

Étienne's hand tightened around the note. The paper was thin and cheap, the ink already smudging at the edges from the boy's damp hands. But the words were clear enough.

*Disposition of the Powder Magazine—Action Upon Signal.*

He turned the paper over. On the reverse, scribbled in the margin, nearly invisible in the fading light, was a secondary notation: *Sally port collapse was bait. True entrance lies under the root cellar, stones shifted at the north corner—he believes it is hidden, but we prepared for this contingency.*

Étienne read it again, his heart suddenly hammering in his chest. "Toussaint dug his own entrance," he breathed. "He sealed the old tunnel to make us give up. But he wouldn't trust the English any more than they trust him. He made a second way in, for his own use."

"Then the root cellar—" Gagnon began, but Étienne was already turning, already moving, the plan reshaped in his mind with sudden, terrible clarity.

"We don't blow the magazine," Étienne said. "We take it. Toussaint thinks he's built a trap. But a trap needs a door, and he's just handed us the key."