Read Chapter 26: The Escape

The surgeon’s fire had barely dimmed to embers when Marchetti opened his eyes. The tent smelled of blood and pine sap. Volkov’s camp slept around them, a hundred Russian soldiers wrapped in blankets and snow, trusting the cold to keep them safe. He did not trust the cold. He did not trust the warmth. He trusted nothing that came easy.

Lefebvre lay on a raised pallet, his leg bound in clean linen, the flesh around the wound pale but not yet black. The surgeon had said the bone was sound. The surgeon had said many things. Marchetti had watched the man’s eyes when he spoke of Vilna, of roads, of the nineteenth. There was a calculation there that had nothing to do with medicine.

He rose. His boots made no sound on the packed earth. Anya slept against the far wall of the tent, wrapped in a fur that had once belonged to a Russian officer. Her breathing was even. Her hand rested on the hilt of a knife she thought no one had seen her take.

Marchetti crossed to Gerhard, who sat awake near the entrance, his back to a stack of crates.

“You sleep?” Marchetti asked.

“I watch.”

“Good. Wake the others. Quiet.”

Gerhard’s eyes moved to the tent flap. “The girl?”

“Leave her.”

Gerhard did not argue. That worried Marchetti more than if he had.

They moved like ghosts through the Russian camp. Brandt led, his long legs eating the ground between tents, his head swiveling to track sentries. Marchetti counted the horses first—a picket line of twelve, saddled and ready, as if Volkov expected to ride at dawn. He found the three strongest mounts and began cutting them loose.

“You’re stealing from a general who saved your man’s leg.” Gerhard’s voice was barely a breath.

“I’m stealing from a general who wants the prisoner for himself,” Marchetti said. “Volkov doesn’t care about the dispatch. He cares about leverage. If we hand him the prisoner, we hand him the plot. Then we’re witnesses. Witnesses are a liability.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I know he didn’t ask about Lefebvre’s wound once after the surgeon spoke. He asked about the gendarmes’ route. Twice.” Marchetti swung into the saddle. “That’s not a man who wants allies. That’s a man who wants assets.”

Brandt mounted without a word. Lefebvre needed help, his face going gray as Marchetti and Gerhard lifted him into the saddle, but he did not cry out. He gripped the pommel with both hands and nodded once. Good enough.

Marchetti took the lead. They rode south along the treeline, keeping the camp’s dying fires at their backs. The cold bit through their coats, and the horses’ breath plumed like smoke from a burning village. No one spoke. The only sound was the creak of leather and the crunch of snow beneath hooves.

They had covered perhaps two miles when Marchetti heard it—a high, thin whistle, cut off almost before it began. He reined in. The others stopped behind him.

“What was that?” Gerhard asked.

Marchetti listened. The wind moved through the pines. Nothing else. He was about to signal them on when a shape detached itself from the darkness ahead, stepping into the faint moonlight. Small. Wrapped in fur. The knife was in her hand, but she held it low, at her side, like someone who did not intend to use it unless she had to.

Anya.

“You left me,” she said. Her voice was flat. Not angry. Not hurt. Just stating a fact.

Marchetti did not dismount. “You’re Volkov’s daughter. You’re his hostage on us. That cuts both ways.”

“I’m his daughter.” She stepped closer, and the moonlight caught her face. She was not cold. She was not tired. She looked like someone who had been waiting for this moment. “I’m also the reason you’re still alive.”

Gerhard shifted in his saddle. “What do you mean?”

“My father’s orders were to take the prisoner from you the moment you found him. Not to help you. Not to escort you. To take him and dispose of the evidence.” She looked at Marchetti. “I changed the orders. I told the sentries to let you pass when you left. I told the surgeon to give you the strongest horses.”

Marchetti studied her. “Why?”

“Because my father doesn’t know what the prisoner knows.” She walked to the side of Marchetti’s horse and put a hand on the animal’s neck. “I know more. I know who’s waiting in Vilna. I know what Fouché’s men were carrying when they burned our village. I know why the prisoner is worth more than the dispatch.”

“Then tell us.”

“The prisoner is not a soldier. He’s a clerk from the Ministry of Police. He copied the entire correspondence between the conspirators and Fouché’s office before he was caught. He knows every name. Every rank. Every payment.” She paused. “He also knows my father’s name is on the list.”

The words hung in the cold air. Marchetti felt the weight of them settle on his chest.

“Volkov is part of the plot,” he said.

“He was. Before he realized Napoleon was going to lose this war and the plot would be blamed on everyone who signed. He’s been trying to bury his name ever since. That’s why he wanted the prisoner. Not to expose the plot—to execute it. To make sure the only copy of that list died in the snow.” She looked at Marchetti, and for the first time, he saw something beneath her composure. Fear. Real fear. “If you take the prisoner to Yorck, my father’s name goes to the Prussians. He’ll be tried as a traitor to the Tsar. He’ll be hanged. My mother is still in Petersburg, Marchetti. My sisters. They’ll go with him.”

“So you want us to give him to you instead.”

“I want you to let me speak to him first. Before you decide what to do with him. There’s a name he carries that isn’t on the list. A name that changes everything.”

Gerhard leaned forward. “What name?”

Anya opened her mouth, then closed it. She shook her head. “Not here. Not until we’re on the road. But I’ll ride with you. I’ll help you find the gendarmes. I’ll help you take the prisoner. And when you hear the name, you’ll understand why I couldn’t let my father kill him.”

Marchetti looked at Brandt. The Prussian’s face was unreadable, but he gave a small nod. Lefebvre was too weak to offer an opinion; his head had dropped to his chest, his grip on the pommel loosening.

“You betrayed your father,” Marchetti said.

“I’m saving him.” Anya’s voice cracked, just once. “He doesn’t know what the prisoner knows. If he kills him, he kills himself. If he hands him to the Tsar, he hangs. The only way my father survives is if this plot is exposed before he can be implicated, and the only way to expose it is to let the prisoner speak to someone who can act.”

“Yorck.”

“Or you.” She met his eyes. “You’re French. You have a general’s ear, if you can find one who hasn’t sold himself. You have a dead man’s dispatch. You have the prisoner’s testimony. The only thing you don’t have is time.”

Marchetti glanced at the eastern sky. The first gray light was bleeding over the treetops. Behind them, Volkov’s camp would wake soon. Ahead, the gendarmes were marching toward the rendezvous, unaware that their cargo held the fate of empires and the name of a man who would kill his own daughter to keep it quiet.

“You ride with us,” Marchetti said. “You don’t touch the prisoner until I say so. And if you run, I’ll put a ball in your back and tell your father you died in the snow.”

Anya smiled. It was not a warm expression. “I expected nothing less.”

She swung onto the horse behind Brandt without waiting for help, wrapping her arms around his waist. Brandt stiffened but said nothing.

Marchetti turned his mount east, toward the road to Vilna. The wind had shifted, carrying a new smell on it—smoke, and something else. Something like iron.

Blood.

Somewhere ahead, the gendarmes were close. And they were not alone.