Read Chapter 30: The Betrayer's Face

The city reeked of smoke and fear. The fires that had gutted Vilna's outskirts still smoldered in patches, throwing orange light against the snow-choked streets. Marchetti pulled his collar high and kept his eyes forward, one hand resting on the pistol hidden in his coat. Around him, the squad moved like shadows—Boucher's booming voice reduced to a whisper, Petit's eyes darting from window to rooftop, Lefebvre leaning heavily on Delacroix's shoulder, his face gray as ash.

Anya walked beside Marchetti, her hood pulled low. She had not spoken since they entered the city gates, and that silence sat in Marchetti's chest like a stone.

They found shelter in a burnt-out warehouse near the river. The roof had collapsed in one corner, but the walls held. Marchetti posted Delacroix at the door and gathered the others in the shadows.

"We need a name," he said. "The prisoner is bait. Jacques said the conspirators know we're coming. That means someone in Vilna is watching the roads."

"Watching the roads," Boucher repeated. "Watching for five French soldiers with a girl and a dying man. We stick out like a priest in a brothel."

Lefebvre coughed, a wet, rattling sound. "My brother died to get us here. I won't waste that."

Marchetti looked at Anya. She sat apart from the others, her arms wrapped around her knees. Whatever she knew, she was holding it close.

"Your father's name was on the list," Marchetti said. "But he's not the head. A general in the field doesn't coordinate with Napoleon's mistress from a camp in the frozen woods. There's someone in Vilna pulling the strings."

Anya's eyes met his. In the dim light, they were impossible to read.

"The surgeon," Marchetti pressed. "He treated Lefebvre. He warned us about the nineteenth. He knew too much. That camp was a trap, and your father—"

"My father didn't know about the surgeon's warning." Anya's voice was sharp. "He wanted the prisoner dead to bury his own name, but he wasn't running the operation."

"Then who?"

She was silent for a long moment. Then she said, "There is a name not on the list. One that changes everything."

"For a girl who betrayed her father, you're generous with your secrets," Marchetti said.

Anya's face flushed. "I didn't betray him. I chose the truth."

"Same thing, from where he's standing."

A cough from Lefebvre cut the tension. His breath came in short, ragged gasps. The surgeon's treatment had bought them time, but not much. Petit knelt beside him, pressing a hand to his forehead.

"He's burning up," Petit said.

Marchetti swore. "We need to move faster." He turned back to Anya. "You said you'd lead us to help. We're in Vilna. Lead."

Anya stood. For a moment, she looked impossibly young—a girl caught between her father's sins and her own conscience. Then her jaw tightened, and she was the general's daughter again.

"Rapp," she said.

The name landed like a blow. Marchetti stared at her.

"General Rapp?"

"Napoleon's aide. The one who negotiated with the Russians at Tilsit. Most trusted man in the Emperor's inner circle." Anya's voice dropped. "He's been in Vilna for three weeks, overseeing the retreat. My father's letters to him were careful, coded. But the prisoner knows something about Rapp that would destroy him. Something involving the Emperor's mistress."

Boucher let out a low whistle. "Rapp. The man the Emperor trusts with his life."

"And he's been using that trust to undermine the retreat," Anya said. "To feed information to the Russians, to slow the army's movements, to make sure the Emperor walks into a trap."

Marchetti's mind raced. Rapp was everywhere—in Vilna, in Paris, at the Emperor's side during the invasion. If he was corrupted, the entire campaign was a corpse rotting from within.

"How do you know this?" Lefebvre's voice was hoarse but steady. "You're a general's daughter, not a courtier."

"I read my father's letters. The ones he thought he'd burned." Anya's eyes were flat. "And I listened when he talked in his sleep about what he'd done. He thought what they were doing was necessary, that the Empire had to fall for France to survive. Rapp made him believe it."

Marchetti paced the length of the warehouse. The snow drifted through the broken roof, and his breath fogged in the cold.

"Rapp knows we're coming," he said. "He's the one who set the ambush at the gendarme column. He's the one who knows about the prisoner. Which means he'll have guards, spies, men who know our faces."

"We need Surgeon's papers," Delacroix said from the door. "Something to get us into the compound."

"We have something better." Marchetti looked at Anya. "We have his co-conspirator's daughter."

Anya's face went pale. "You want to use me as bait."

"I want you to get us an audience," Marchetti said. "You tell Rapp your father sent you with a message about the prisoner. That Volkov wants to meet, to finish the job himself. Rapp will want to talk to you. We'll be waiting."

"He'll recognize me as a threat," Anya said. "He knows I ran from my father's camp."

"Does he? Your father wouldn't have told him. Too ashamed." Marchetti stepped closer. "Or do you have a better plan?"

Anya looked at Lefebvre, who was fading fast. Then at Boucher, who watched her with quiet suspicion. Then back at Marchetti.

"Rapp is in the governor's mansion, near the cathedral. He'll have guards on every street."

"That's not a no."

She exhaled slowly. "It's not a no."

---

The governor's mansion stood at the end of a tree-lined boulevard, its columns wrapped in frost, its windows glowing with the warmth of fires inside. The contrast was obscene—a pocket of comfort in a city dying of cold and hunger.

Marchetti watched from the shadows of a burnt-out chapel. Anya stood at the mansion's gates, speaking to a guard. Her posture was straight, her voice clear. Even from a distance, he could see her hands trembling.

Boucher shifted beside him. "She's a good liar," he muttered. "Makes me wonder what else she's hiding."

"She's hiding everything," Marchetti said. "But she's the only way in."

Anya turned and walked back toward them, her face unreadable.

"He'll see me," she said. "Alone."

"Of course he will." Marchetti checked his pistol. "We'll be in the crowd. When you give the signal—three taps on your thigh—we'll move."

"That's not enough time."

"It's all we have."

Anya searched his face, looking for something—reassurance, truth, a reason not to run. Marchetti didn't know if she found it. She turned and walked back to the gates.

The mansion swallowed her whole.

Marchetti counted his heartbeats. Fifty. A hundred. The cold crept into his bones, and Petit beside him shivered violently.

"She's been in too long," Boucher whispered.

"Give her time."

"She's been in ten minutes. Rapp talks fast when he's nervous."

Marchetti was about to move when the mansion doors burst open. Anya came stumbling out, her face white. Behind her, a figure in a colonel's uniform stepped onto the portico—a tall man with a strong jaw, his hair graying at the temples, his eyes sharp and cold.

General Rapp.

He moved with the fluid grace of a man used to command, his hand resting on the pistol at his belt. Anya was shoved forward, and she fell to her knees in the snow.

"Volkov's daughter," Rapp called out, his voice carrying across the boulevard. "You're a fool to think I wouldn't know. Your father wrote to me the moment you fled. He wants you brought back alive."

Marchetti cursed and broke from cover, the squad fanning out behind him.

Rapp's eyes found them immediately. For a heartbeat, the two men locked gazes across the frozen distance. Rapp smiled—a thin, knowing smile that made Marchetti's blood run cold.

"Marchetti," Rapp said. "The printer's apprentice. I've been expecting you."

He raised his pistol—not at Marchetti, but at Anya. Before Marchetti could fire, a volley of shots erupted from the mansion's windows. The squad dove for cover as lead whistled past their ears.

Rapp turned and disappeared through the doors.

Marchetti scrambled to his feet and ran toward Anya. She was still on her knees in the snow, her hands shaking, her eyes fixed on the door where Rapp had vanished.

"He knows," she whispered. "He knows everything. He knows about your past, about the prisoner, about the list. He's not running from us."

Marchetti pulled her to her feet.

"He's running to something," she said, her voice cracking. "He said you've been following a ghost. He said the prisoner isn't who you think."

She looked at him, and the fear in her eyes was real.

"He's already killed the prisoner. And he's coming for you next."