Read Chapter 28: The Brother's Lie

The roar of the rapids was a constant, grinding sound in Étienne's skull. He lay on his stomach on a slab of wet granite, the spray cold against his face, and tried to remember how to breathe. His ribs ached. His right shoulder, where a musket ball had grazed it, burned like a brand. The river had taken them, smashed them against rocks, and spat them out onto this narrow, stony beach at the base of the gorge.

Nathaniel lay a few yards away, face down. For one terrible moment, Étienne thought he was dead. Then his brother stirred, coughed up water, and rolled onto his side with a groan.

"Alive?" Étienne's voice came out rough, barely above a whisper.

"Debatable," Nathaniel managed. He pushed himself up, wincing, and looked at his empty hands. "Lost my rifle. And my pistol. And my hat." He touched his bare head as if to confirm the loss.

Étienne sat up slowly, cradling his shoulder. The world tilted, then settled. He scanned the beach, the cliff walls rising sheer on either side, the churning white water behind them. Roche's men would not follow them into this. But they wouldn't need to. The river gorge was a dead end unless they climbed out, and climb out they would have to. With no weapons. No food. No supplies.

He said none of this aloud. Nathaniel knew.

For a while, neither spoke. The sound of the water filled the space between them. Étienne's mind churned, replaying the ambush. The precision of it. The way Roche's men had emerged from the treeline exactly where the river trail narrowed into a killing ground. They had walked into it like settlers into their own barn. Because Lemieux had known where they would be. Because Lemieux had been the bait, and they had bitten.

And they had only escaped because Étienne had seen the first flash of a barrel in the undergrowth a heartbeat before the volley. A heartbeat. Nothing more.

He looked at his brother. Nathaniel sat with his arms resting on his knees, staring at the river. There was something in his posture, a heaviness that the exhaustion alone did not explain. Étienne had seen that look before. On soldiers who had something they needed to say and were waiting for the moment when saying it would hurt the least. Or when hiding it would hurt the most.

"The trail," Étienne said. "Before the hills opened up. You were scouting ahead. You said the ground was clear."

Nathaniel didn't look at him.

"I scouted the same ground," Étienne pressed, keeping his voice level. "An hour before. I saw no sign. But you were ahead of me when the first ball came. You were forty yards ahead of the rest of us. You were already at the bend when Roche's men opened fire. And they let you pass."

Nathaniel's jaw tightened.

"They let you pass," Étienne repeated. "You were the vanguard, Nathaniel. You walked right past an ambush of thirty men, and you gave no signal. You raised no alarm. It was only because of Bouchard's warning that that scout turned and—" He stopped. Bouchard. The big ranger had thrown himself in front of Nathaniel, taking a ball meant for a heart. The image burned in the dark behind Étienne's eyes.

Nathaniel's voice was barely audible over the river. "I didn't see them."

"No. You didn't see them." Étienne slowly got to his feet, swaying. He stepped closer to his brother. "You know what I think? I think you did not want to see them. I think your eyes were on the trail ahead, looking for something else. Looking for a captain with a scarred face who thought he had escaped you."

Nathaniel's head came up. His eyes, the same brown as their mother's, met Étienne's with a flash of something that might have been anger but was closer to shame. He got to his feet, unsteady, water streaming from his clothes. "You don't know what you're talking about."

"Then tell me," Étienne said quietly. "Tell me what happened three days ago. At the fort. When Lemieux slipped out through the sally port in the middle of the night."

The Named fury of unquiet rage ... Étienne had asked himself this question a hundred times since that night. The sally port had been sealed. They had found the lock broken from the inside. But someone had let Lemieux through that door. Someone in the garrison had been his accomplice. And for three days, Étienne had wondered if that someone was the one man he trusted most in the world. His brother.

Nathaniel's breath came out in a long, shuddering exhale. He looked at the ground, then at Étienne, and the fight in his eyes collapsed. "I found him," he said. "The night before the attack. I was on watch. I saw him. He was in the armory, alone, no reason to be there. I confronted him."

Étienne felt the world tilt again, and it was not the rapids. He was unarmed. He was exhausted. And his brother was telling him that he had had the traitor in his hands and let him go.

"I had my pistol," Nathaniel said, the words spilling out now, too fast. "He was unarmed. I had him. I could have taken him. But I wanted to do it alone. I wanted to be the one to catch him, to show them that the name Roussel—" He stopped, swallowing hard. "I told him to surrender quietly. And he laughed. He told me to look out the window."

Étienne frowned. "The window?"

"There was a signal," Nathaniel said. "A lantern, shown twice from the treeline. Lemieux said it was for him. He said if I shot him, the message would go unanswered and a larger English force would have authority to storm the fort that night, not wait for the morning assault. He told me that if I let him go, he would carry word to call off that force, that the fight would be clean."

"And you believed him."

"I believed I had no choice." Nathaniel's voice cracked. "I thought—I thought if I could take him alone outside the walls, before Roche's men knew he was gone, I could bring him back myself. I let him slip out, and I followed, and I lost him in the dark. I lost him." He looked away, his face twisting. "By the time I returned, the fight had begun. I told no one. I told myself I would find him and make it right before anyone knew what I had done. And then—" He gestured weakly at the river, at the sky, at the empty place where the rangers had stood. "This."

Étienne stared at his brother. The river roared. Somewhere above the gorge, a crow called out, oblivious. Étienne's hands hung loose at his sides. For a long moment, he felt nothing at all—no rage, no sorrow, only a great and hollow recognition of the shape of the thing. The lie had walked beside them every step since the fort. The lie had cost him Bouchard. The lie had killed four good men and nearly killed them both. His brother had held the traitor in his hands, and he had let him go because he wanted a larger glory. Because he wanted a name.

"You let him go," Étienne said, his voice flat. "Because you wanted to prove you were worthy of it. Of the name. Of the legend." He took a step closer to Nathan, resting his eyes on him. "He killed our father, Nathaniel. He put his hand through his chest in a raid our father did not want to ride on, a raid that was sold to him by a lie. And you stood three feet from him with a loaded pistol and let him walk away."

Nathaniel opened his mouth, but nothing came out.

Étienne turned away. He looked at the cliff face that rose above them, the handholds worn into the stone from a century of hauling canoes around the gorge. He would have to climb. He would have to find a way out of this. On the other side of these rocks, Lemieux was regrouping with Roche's men, and they were heading somewhere. Lemieux knew the fort's secrets. He knew the supply lines. He knew the names of the French officers who could be bought.

"We need to reach the fort," Étienne said, still facing the cliff. "We need to warn Deschênes that Roche's force is larger than we thought, and that Lemieux is leading it to a target we don't know. He might head for Trois-Rivières. He might head for the depot at—"

"Étienne," Nathaniel said quietly. "He's not heading back to the English lines."

Étienne turned. His brother was holding something, a folded square of oilcloth that looked dry, sealed against the river. He must have had it tucked inside his coat, pressed flat. He might have had it the whole time.

"What is that?"

Nathaniel extended it, his hand shaking slightly. "I took it off his desk. Before the fight, at the fort. I thought I could use it—I thought it would help me find him, that it would tell me where he would go, and I could bring him to justice alone."

Étienne took the oilcloth and unfolded it. Inside was a piece of paper, creased and worn at the edges. His eyes scanned the words. A set of orders. Signed by Lemieux's own hand. Lieutenant-level orders to a French governor of a frontier outpost, seventy miles north, beyond the bend in the river. Issued with urgency, demanding immediate reinforcement and resupply of the garrison there to meet a rumored English advance.

Except the handwriting was too neat. The signature was sharp. And the orders were dated four days ago, from a fort that had already fallen to the English. Lemieux was carrying false intelligence to a French outpost to deliver a garrison into Roche's hands.

Étienne looked up. Behind his brother, far above the lip of the gorge, he saw a thin thread of smoke rising from the treeline, west of the river. Where the trail led north.

"He's ahead of us," Nathaniel said. "He's already moving north."

Étienne folded the orders and put them in his own coat. He looked at his brother, and the distance between them felt larger than the river. He wanted to say several things—things about truth, about trust, about the cost of a name. He said none of them.

"We have to split up," he said. "If we both chase him, Roche's men will cut us off. But if we take separate routes to the outpost, we stand a chance of arriving before he does. One of us will catch him before he sells that lie."

Nathaniel hesitated. "And if the one who catches him is me?"

Étienne met his brother's eyes. "Then you do not let him go," he said. "You do not let him walk away. You finish it."