Read Chapter 28: The Arrival at Vilna

The road forked through a stand of skeletal birches, and there, beyond the last treeline, Vilna sprawled under a low iron sky. Smoke rose from a hundred chimneys, but it was thin, apologetic smoke, as if the city itself were holding its breath.

Marchetti reined in his stolen horse. The gelding’s flanks were lathered despite the cold, its breath pluming in ragged bursts. Two days of hard riding had brought them here, and two days of watching Lefebvre’s brother Jacques sway in the saddle, wrists still raw from the manacles, had worn every nerve in Marchetti’s body to the quick.

“French patrol,” Gerhard muttered, nodding toward the road.

Marchetti saw them. Four horsemen in the blue coats of the Imperial Guard, carbines slung across their backs, riding a slow circuit past the customs post. Their officer—a thin man with a waxed mustache—was checking every cart, every traveler, with the bored efficiency of a man who had been doing this for weeks.

“Looking for uniforms,” Lefebvre said from behind him. The big man’s voice was a rasp now, each word costing him. His leg was bound in fresh bandages from Volkov’s camp, but the wound had gone angry overnight, the skin around it hot and red even through the wrappings. “They know deserters ran this way. The Emperor’s men don’t walk into Vilna with rifles and cockades.”

“We’re not wearing cockades,” Bertrand said. The young soldier’s voice cracked as he said it, and Marchetti saw him look at his own tunic, the faded blue wool that still bore the insignia of the Third Line Infantry.

“We’re wearing what they’ll see from a hundred paces,” Marchetti said. He scanned the road ahead. A family of peasants was being waved through the checkpoint—a woman, two children, a cart piled with sacks. The gendarme barely glanced at them. “We need to look like we belong to this place.”

“And how do we do that?” Jacques asked. He had spoken little since they pulled him from the stockade, but when he did, his eyes had the flat look of a man who had stopped being afraid. “We’re five French soldiers with a wounded corporal, a woman who speaks like a general’s daughter, and a prisoner in chains. We’ll be shot before we reach the first street.”

“The prisoner stays here,” Anya said.

Everyone turned. She was standing at the edge of the treeline, her hood pulled low over her face. The cold had pinched her cheeks pink, but her eyes were steady, and Marchetti noticed she had her hand inside her coat, where she kept the small pistol she’d taken from the gendarme captain.

“He’s bait,” she said. “You said so yourself. The conspirators in Vilna know you’re coming. So they’ve set their trap at the gate, not inside the city. If we march in with a chained prisoner, we announce ourselves. We might as well wear a banner.”

“Then we go in empty-handed,” Gerhard said. “And we have nothing to show Yorck except a story about a cipher we already lost.”

“We have the cipher in our heads,” Marchetti said. “And we have the man’s name. The name of the conspirator in Vilna. Jacques heard it from the gendarmes, and the gendarmes heard it from the prisoner himself, before they gagged him.” He looked at Jacques. “Repeat it.”

Jacques shook his head. “I told you. They never said the name outright. They only said—” He stopped, wincing, pressing a hand to his side where a rib had been cracked during his capture.

“Said what?” Marchetti pressed.

“Said he was a man who dined with the Emperor’s mistress,” Jacques said. “That’s all. No name. But he’s important enough that the conspirators want him alive, and they want us dead. That’s all I know.”

Marchetti looked back at the checkpoint. Another cart was being waved through. The gendarme officer had stopped a traveler on foot, a man in a heavy coat who was showing papers with trembling hands.

“We go in as refugees,” he said. “Fleeing the pursuit. We’re not soldiers. We’re survivors of a village burned by Cossacks. We have no papers because we lost them in the fire. We have a wounded man on a cart—Lefebvre plays the father, Anya plays his daughter, the rest of us are hired hands.”

“And the prisoner?” Bertrand asked.

Marchetti looked at the man they’d freed. He was older, maybe fifty, with a face etched by years of service and a silence that seemed to have swallowed his voice entirely. He had not spoken since they cut his chains, had only looked at Jacques with something like recognition when they pulled him from the gendarme column.

“He stays with Jacques,” Marchetti said. “They’re both wounded. They’re brothers. One cart, two brothers, both sick with fever. The gendarmes won’t look twice at a dying man.”

Anya shook her head. “Your accent will give you away. You speak French like a Parisian.”

“I speak French like a printer’s apprentice,” Marchetti said. “And I can speak Russian well enough to lie to a guard who’s half-frozen and hoping for a bribe. Leave that to me.”

He dismounted and handed the reins to Bertrand. The horse was too fine for a refugee—they’d have to leave the animals at the treeline and walk the last quarter mile. Marchetti pulled off his greatcoat and turned it inside out, revealing a lining of rough wool that could pass for a peasant’s cloak. He did the same for Lefebvre, who grunted in pain as he swung down from his horse, his leg buckling before Jacques caught him.

“I can’t walk,” Lefebvre said.

“You’ll lean on Jacques,” Marchetti said. “You’re brothers. He’ll hold you up because that’s what brothers do.”

Lefebvre looked at Jacques. For a moment, the two men just stared at each other—the younger brother who had been captured and chained, the older brother who had crossed half of Russia to find him. Then Jacques nodded.

“I’ll hold him up,” Jacques said.

They walked the last stretch in silence. The road was churned with frozen mud, the ruts deep enough to turn an ankle. Marchetti took the lead, with Anya at his side, her hand still inside her coat. Behind them came Jacques and Lefebvre, locked together in a painful embrace that looked, from a distance, like nothing more than two brothers helping each other through the snow. Bertrand and Gerhard brought up the rear, carrying sacks of dried bread they’d taken from Volkov’s stores.

The checkpoint loomed closer. Marchetti could see the gendarme’s face now—thin, sallow, with the hungry look of a man who hadn’t eaten well in weeks. He was watching them approach with the flat disinterest of a man who had seen every lie the retreat had to offer.

“Papers,” the gendarme said in French.

Marchetti spread his hands. “We have none, monsieur. We fled from a village north of the Berezina. The Cossacks came at dawn. We barely escaped with our lives.”

The gendarme’s eyes flicked to Lefebvre, who was sagging against Jacques, his face gray.

“What’s wrong with him?”

“Fever,” Marchetti said. “The cold got into his wound. He’s my brother’s son. We’re taking him to the hospital in Vilna, if there is one.”

The gendarme grunted. He walked around the group, pausing at the prisoner, who kept his head down, his face hidden by the hood Jacques had pulled over it.

“And this one?”

“The boy’s father,” Marchetti said. “He was wounded—look at his hands. He can’t work. We’re all that’s left of the family.”

The gendarme looked at the prisoner’s hands. They were wrapped in bandages, but Marchetti knew that beneath them were the marks of chains. If the man looked too closely, if he pulled back a single strip of cloth—

“Go on,” the gendarme said, waving them through. “Before the fever spreads to the rest of you.”

They walked. Marchetti could feel the gendarme’s eyes on his back, and he did not breathe until they were a hundred paces past the checkpoint, into the narrow streets of Vilna, where the snow was piled high against the walls and the windows were shuttered against the cold.

It was then that Anya touched his arm.

“Étienne,” she said, her voice low. “The gendarme we passed—I’ve seen him before.”

Marchetti looked at her. Her face had lost its color, and her eyes were fixed on the checkpoint behind them.

“Where?”

“In my father’s camp,” she said. “He was there the night you left. He was in the tent with my father when we arrived.” She turned to look at him, and her eyes were bright with fear. “He knew who I was. And he let us through anyway.”

Marchetti’s hand went to his pistol.

Ahead of them, Vilna’s streets stretched into the gray morning. And somewhere in the city, waiting for them, was a conspirator who controlled the gates.