Read Chapter 2: A Visitor

The drizzle had begun by the time Lise reached the Rue des Rosiers, a thin, cold needles-thread that soaked through her shawl and clung to her collar. The street was quieter than she remembered—shutters drawn, doors bolted—and the smell of damp wool and rotting cabbage hung in the air. She kept her head low, her steps quick, the kind of walk that said *I belong here* even when her heart hammered against her ribs.

The workshop stood at the end of the row, its sign—*Marchand, Tailor & Fitter*—still hanging by a single rusted nail, swinging slightly in the wind like a hanged man's last dance. The windows were dark, smeared with grime, and the door was sealed with a heavy padlock and a strip of red wax bearing the seal of the Republic.

Lise stopped a few paces short. Her breath fogged the air. Three days. The words had been chasing her since the Conciergerie, since she'd read her father's name in that neat, damning script. *Pierre Marchand. Conspiracy against the Republic. 19 November.* Three days from now, unless she did something.

She reached for the padlock, then hesitated. The wax seal was intact. If she broke it, someone would know. But someone had already known enough to put her father on that list.

"It's empty, you know."

Lise spun. A guard stood in the doorway of the neighboring shop, arms crossed, a musket slung over his shoulder. He was young—younger than her, maybe—with a pockmarked face and the dull, swollen eyes of a man who'd seen too much and understood too little.

"The tailor's," he said, nodding at the workshop. "They came for him three weeks ago. Took his papers, his ledgers, everything. Left the furniture to rot."

"Did you know him?" Lise asked, keeping her voice steady. "The tailor?"

The guard shrugged. "Kept to himself. Didn't raise a fuss when they took him. Just asked if someone would feed his cat." He spat into the gutter. "Cat's gone now. Probably ate the rats."

Lise forced a small, grateful smile. She turned to leave, but the guard's voice stopped her.

"You're a long way from the Palais, mademoiselle. You a relation?"

"Client," she said, too quickly. "He owed me a fitting. A waistcoat for my brother."

The guard studied her for a moment, then laughed—a short, ugly sound. "Your brother should buy new, then. That one's not sewing anything for anyone, except maybe his own shroud." He gestured with his chin toward the wax seal. "And if you've got any sense, you'll stay away from that door. The Committee doesn't like family sniffing around their prisoners. They call it 'conspiracy.' And conspiracy," he said, tapping the musket, "has a way of finding the whole family."

Lise's blood went cold. She thanked him again, her voice thin, and walked away without looking back.

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The boarding house on the Rue de la Harpe was dim and narrow, its staircase smelling of boiled cabbage and tallow. Lise climbed to her room—a cramped garret under the eaves, just large enough for a bed, a washstand, and her sewing table by the window. She closed the door, bolted it, and pressed her back against the wood, breathing hard.

The guard's words echoed. *Family.* She was Pierre's only daughter. If they traced her to him—if anyone had seen her at the Conciergerie today, recognized her face from the shop—she would be next. And then who would be left to save him?

She crossed to the window and looked out at the gray rooftops of Paris. Somewhere below, the city churned with rumor and fear, every street corner a stage for denunciations. She had spent years dressing the condemned, measuring their necks, their shoulders, their last fine clothes. She had learned to look at their faces without seeing them, to thread her needle with steady hands while they wept or prayed or cursed the Republic. But her father was not a name on a list. He was the man who had taught her to stitch a hem, who had hummed old songs while he cut patterns, who had whispered—when she was small and the world was safer—that a well-made seam could hold a family together.

A knock at the door made her jump.

"Lise? You there?" It was Madame Chenal, the landlady, her voice a wheeze through the wood. "I've got your milk. And there's something for you—a note someone slipped under the door. Folded up nice. Looked important."

Lise opened the door a crack. Madame Chenal thrust a chipped cup of milk and a folded square of paper at her, her eyes bright with curiosity.

"Who left it?"

"Didn't see. A boy, I think. Ran off before I could ask." She waited, hoping for gossip, but Lise closed the door.

She set the milk aside. The paper was cheap, unmarked, folded neatly into thirds. Her name—*Élisabeth*—was written in the center in a hand she didn't recognize. Careful, deliberate strokes. Educated.

She unfolded it.

*If you want the truth, meet me at the Pont Neuf at dusk.*

No signature. No explanation. Just the promise of truth, dangled like bait.

Lise read it three times, then read it a fourth. Truth. What truth did a stranger think she was missing? That her father was guilty? That he was innocent? That he had already confessed, already named other conspirators, already bought his life with someone else's blood?

And yet the words stirred something beneath her fear. The guard at the workshop had said they took his papers. His ledgers. Everything. Why would the Committee need ledgers if the crime was open and shut? And the note said *truth*—not *help*, not *rescue*, but *truth*. Whoever wrote it knew something she didn't.

But the Pont Neuf at dusk. The bridge was a public crossing, busy with carts and messengers and lovers hurrying home before curfew. Not a good place for an ambush—or at least, not an obvious one. And whoever had written the note had known where she lived. That alone was a threat she couldn't ignore.

She looked out the window again. The rain had stopped, and the sky was bleeding into a bruised orange. Dusk would come in less than an hour. If she went, she risked a trap. If she stayed, she risked the silence.

Her father had three days. Three days, and a sister she had never known about—no, that wasn't right. A brother? The lie to the guard had come too quickly, but it had stirred something. Her father had been a private man, but not a secretive one. She had grown up in his workshop, learned her craft at his side. If he had a hidden life—debts, enemies, a second family—she had never seen it.

The note trembled in her hand. She forced herself to breathe.

*He's not the man you think.*

No. The note didn't say that. But the thought arrived anyway, unbidden, and settled in her chest like a stitch pulled too tight.

She reached for her sewing basket and found the small pair of scissors she kept for snipping threads. Then she pulled on her cloak, her darkest one, and slipped the scissors into her pocket. The blade was short, barely four inches, but it was sharp, and she knew exactly where to aim it.

The Pont Neuf at dusk. If this was a trap, she would walk into it with open eyes.

But first, she would do what her father taught her. She would measure the risk, mark the danger, and cut her thread only when she was certain of the line.

At the door, she paused. The note was still in her hand. She folded it carefully, tucked it into the lining of her cloak, and stepped out into the fading light.

The city was waking to its evening terrors—the lamplighters moving in pairs, the patrols beginning their rounds, the whispers of *watch your words, watch your neighbors, watch your own family.* Lise pulled her hood over her hair and walked toward the bridge, her heart beating time with the distant drums of the National Guard.

Her father had three days.

And someone on the Pont Neuf was about to tell her who he really was.

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