Read Chapter 7: The Bargain

The rain had stopped, leaving the cobblestones slick and gleaming under a bruised sky. Lise stood with Jean-Luc in the shadow of a closed bookshop, the diary pressed against her ribs beneath her cloak. He had insisted on walking her away from the Pont Neuf, his eyes darting to every shadow.

"The Committee of Public Safety will not see us," he said, low. "Even I cannot get you past their doors without a name they trust."

"I don't want the Committee," Lise said. "I want a lawyer."

Jean-Luc stopped. "A lawyer is a liability. They talk. They barter with information."

"Then you don't know Dumas." She looked at him squarely. "Maître Augustin Dumas. He defended my father ten years ago in a dispute over guild rights. My father spoke of him as a man who kept his word. And," she added, "Dumas still owes him a debt."

Jean-Luc's brow furrowed. "What debt?"

"I don't know the details. Only that my father once said Dumas's signature was worth more than gold, and that one day he might need to call it in." She resumed walking. "If anyone can navigate the Tribunal's legal corridors, it's him."

They found Dumas in a cramped study above a print shop on the Rue Saint-André-des-Arts. The old advocate was thin as a reed, spectacles perched low on his nose, a half-eaten bowl of soup cooling at his elbow. He looked up when Lise entered, recognition flickering behind his tired eyes.

"Mademoiselle Marchand." He rose, gesturing to a chair. "Your father—I heard his name was on the list. I assumed you'd come sooner."

"You know, then." Lise sat, Jean-Luc lingering by the door.

Dumas settled back into his seat, folding his hands. "I know Pierre Marchand was a man of secrets, and that the Tribunal does not add names to its lists without cause." He looked at her over his spectacles. "What do you need from me?"

Lise withdrew the diary from her cloak and placed it on the desk. Dumas's eyes widened; he touched the leather cover with reverent fingers.

"Where did you get this?"

"From his cell," Lise said. "He escaped before they could take him." She watched Dumas's face shift—surprise, then calculation. "You owe him a debt. He told me once that you would honor it."

Dumas exhaled slowly. He opened the diary, scanned a few pages, then closed it with a snap. "This is dangerous ground, mademoiselle. What your father has written here—" He shook his head. "If Robespierre knew this existed, no lawyer's argument would save you."

"But you'll help."

Dumas looked at her for a long moment, then nodded. "I owed your father more than I can repay. He defended my brother's name when no one else would, at no small cost to himself." He pushed the diary back toward her. "However, this diary is incomplete. Pages are missing."

"We know," Jean-Luc said from the door. "The question is where they are."

Dumas leaned back, rubbing his chin. "I knew Pierre's habits. If he kept this diary in his cell, he would have hidden the missing pages somewhere he considered safe. Not in his workshop—that would be the first place they'd search." He paused. "What about his rooms above the shop?"

Lise's hand went instinctively to her pocket, where the locksmith's copy key sat cold and heavy. "They're padlocked. The authorities seized them."

"Then you'll need to enter without being seen." Dumas wrote an address on a scrap of paper and slid it across the desk. "There's a rear alley behind the shop. The drainpipe is loose; it would hold a child's weight, not a grown man's. But there's a window in the stairwell that was never properly latched, and the lock on the service door is old."

"How do you know all this?" Lise asked.

"Because I helped your father install his hiding spots," Dumas said. "Fifteen years ago, when he first took those rooms, we spent a long night reinforcing the floorboards and building a false panel in the hearth. He was preparing for a day like this, even then."

Lise's heart hammered. "What's behind the panel?"

"That, I never knew." Dumas shook his head. "He was careful even with me. But I can tell you this: whatever is there, he considered it more valuable than his own life." He looked at Lise with grave sincerity. "Find those pages, mademoiselle. Without them, the diary is a sword without a hilt—dangerous to hold, impossible to use."

Jean-Luc stepped forward. "And if we find them?"

"Then you have leverage," Dumas said. "Names, dates, connections. The Committee may not bargain, but men within it are not all alike. There are factions, rivalries. Evidence that could topple Robespierre would be purchased dearly by those who wish to see him fall."

"Or we'd all be dead by morning," Jean-Luc muttered.

"That risk exists." Dumas returned the diary to Lise. "But you came to me for legal counsel, and my counsel is this: the Republic does not negotiate with the powerless. You must find something they want more than they want your father's head."

Lise tucked the diary back beneath her cloak. "When should we go?"

"Tonight," Dumas said. "The National Guard patrols that quarter heavily, but they change shifts at the third hour. You'll have a narrow window." He looked at Jean-Luc. "Can you get her there safely?"

Jean-Luc hesitated, then nodded. "I know the alleyways."

Dumas turned back to Lise, his expression softening. "Your father was a good man, mademoiselle. Whatever secrets he kept, I believe he kept them for love of his country—not in the way the Committee would have it, perhaps, but for the idea of what France could be." He pressed her hand. "Bring him home."

They left the study into the growing dusk. Lise's fingers closed around the key in her pocket, the metal still cool despite the warmth of her palm. Beside her, Jean-Luc walked with his head low, collar turned up.

"My pass expires at midnight," Lise said. "If we're caught after that—"

"Then don't be caught." Jean-Luc glanced at her. "And Lise—whatever we find in those rooms, do not touch anything else. There may be traps we don't know about. Your father was careful, but so are the men who hunt him."

They turned into a narrow passage, the smell of wet stone and rotting vegetables thick in the air. Overhead, a line of laundry hung frozen between buildings, ghostlike in the fading light.

Lise thought of the diary, of torn pages, and of the false panel behind the hearth that Dumas had helped build. Her father had known this day might come. He had prepared for it with a watchmaker's precision, hiding pieces of himself across Paris like breadcrumbs.

But breadcrumbs led somewhere, and Lise was no longer certain she would like where they ended.

She paused at the mouth of the alley, looking back toward the distant silhouette of the Tribunal building. Somewhere in its depths, her father's name still waited on a list, a death sentence waiting to be carried out.

"Jean-Luc," she said quietly. "The man who left my father's cell before I arrived. Who knew about the diary?"

Jean-Luc's face tightened. "I don't know."

"But you have a suspicion."

He was silent for a long moment, then said, "There's a clerk at the Tribunal, older than most. He was close to your father. When Pierre was arrested, this man disappeared for three days. He returned the morning your father escaped, and I saw him burn a stack of papers before anyone could read them."

Lise felt a chill that had nothing to do with the evening air. "What was his name?"

"Célestin Fournier." Jean-Luc met her eyes. "And he's still working there, Lise. He sits two desks from mine. Watching."