Read Chapter 32: The Last Card

The crowd at the Barricade Saint-Antoine had thinned since the first days. What remained were the stubborn, the starving, and the angry—and Étienne needed all three.

He stood on the overturned omnibus that served as the barricade's command post, his voice raw from fever and shouting. Behind him, Claire held a lantern though the afternoon sun still burned. Marie stood at the edge of the crowd, arms crossed, watching him with an intensity that made his chest ache.

"Citizens of Paris!" Étienne's voice cracked, and he swallowed against the fire in his throat. "You know my name. You know my paper. You know what I promised you."

A few men cheered. Most just watched, suspicious.

"Three weeks ago, I stood here and told you the government was lying. I told you the reformers were lying. I told you the bankers were lying." He paused, letting the words settle. "I was right about all of them. But I was not right about everything."

A mutter rippled through the crowd.

"I told you to trust the revolution. To trust that if you bled enough, if you died enough, something would change." He pulled the ledger from his coat—the stained, battered book that had cost him so much. "This is the ledger I found in Gustave's files. I have read every page. I know who paid for the guns. I know who paid for the martyrs. I know which of you were meant to die on which days, and which of the dead were meant to be blamed on the other side."

The mutter grew louder. Men shifted, hands moving to weapons.

"Tonight, I will read it. Every name. Every coin. Every betrayal." He raised the book above his head. "At the barricade where it all began. Where I first told you the truth. Here."

A woman in the crowd shouted: "Why wait until tonight? Read it now!"

Étienne lowered the book. His hand trembled—fever, or fear, or both. "Because I am not the only one who knows what this book contains. And there are men who will try to stop me before I reach the end of the first page." He let that sink in. "By tonight, they will have had time to send their soldiers. Their mercenaries. Their killers. And when they come, you will see them for what they are."

He searched the crowd for a familiar face, found the captain of the barricade guards—a man named Rousseau who had lost his brother in the first week. Rousseau nodded slowly.

"You want a battle," Rousseau said. Not a question.

"I want witnesses," Étienne replied. "I want the men who ordered the slaughter to walk into a crowd that knows what they've done. And I want"—he pressed his hand to his chest, felt the burning there—"I want them to know that even dying, I have beaten them."

Rousseau studied him for a long moment. Then he turned to the crowd.

"You heard the man. We hold the barricade until nightfall. Anyone who wants to leave, leave now—and don't come back."

No one moved.

Étienne stepped down from the omnibus, and Claire was there, pressing her hand to his forehead. "You're burning up."

"I know."

"You can barely stand."

"I know."

"You're going to read a book for hours while the entire army of Paris tries to kill you."

He managed a smile. "I've had worse days."

"Have you? Because I haven't." She kept her hand on his forehead a moment longer, then let it fall. "When this is over—"

"When this is over, we'll talk about it."

She held his gaze, then nodded, and walked away to help with the barricade's defenses.

Marie appeared at his elbow. "She loves you."

"Marie—"

"I know." She smiled, but her eyes were sad. "I've known since Meaux. Probably before. You look at her like she's the only real thing in this world." She pressed a small flask into his hand. "Brandy. For the voice. Not for the courage."

He took it. "Thank you."

"Don't thank me yet." She glanced toward the rooftops, where men were already positioning themselves with rifles. "Gustave knows. He'll come with everything he has. The man you humiliated in Meaux, the man whose name you'll read to ten thousand people tonight?" She shook her head. "He'll burn all of Paris to stop you."

"Then he'll burn Paris."

Marie studied him for a moment, then nodded slowly. "You really have changed, haven't you? The man I met in the brothel would have bartered this ledger to the highest bidder."

"The man you met in the brothel is dead." Étienne took a sip of brandy, coughed, took another. "The fever killed him."

"Good." She patted his arm. "I liked the dead man well enough. But I think I'll like the live one better."

---

The sun took an eternity to fall.

Étienne spent the hours reading the ledger again, memorizing the passages he'd need to emphasize, the names he'd need to repeat so the crowd would never forget them. He marked the pages that implicated Gustave directly, those that implicated the Prefect, those that revealed the British and Prussian agents who had funded both sides of the conflict.

Claire organized the defenders into shifts. Marie moved among the crowd, telling stories of what she'd seen in Meaux, fanning the flames of outrage until the air itself seemed charged.

The barricade was not what it had been in the first days. It had been built up, reinforced, strengthened with rubble and overturned wagons. But it was still just a barricade—wood and stone and hope against trained soldiers with artillery.

"Étienne." Rousseau approached as dusk began to purple the sky. "We've had word from the lookouts. Soldiers are massing at the Place de la Bastille. Swiss mercenaries, from the look of their uniforms."

"How many?"

"Too many."

Étienne looked out at the barricade, at the men and women who had stayed. Three hundred, maybe. Armed with muskets and pistols and whatever else they'd scavenged.

"I need until full dark," he said. "Maybe an hour. Can you give me that?"

Rousseau spat. "We'll give you whatever we have. Just make sure you read fast."

---

They came at sunset, just as the last light bled red across the rooftops.

Étienne heard them before he saw them—the drumbeat, steady as a funeral march, and the tramp of boots in unison. Swiss mercenaries, the best money could buy, their bright uniforms stark against the grey streets of Paris.

And at their head, on horseback, sat Gustave.

Even from this distance, Étienne could see the bandage on his shoulder where Claire's shot had grazed him. Could see the fury in his posture, the way his hand kept straying to the pistol at his belt.

A rider broke from the column, approaching under a white flag. He stopped at the edge of musket range and called out: "Étienne Vasseur! My master offers you a deal. Surrender the ledger, surrender yourself, and he will let the others leave in peace. Refuse, and your corpses will pave the road to the guillotine."

From the barricade, Claire shouted: "Tell your master his mother should have drowned him at birth!"

Someone in the barricade laughed. The tension cracked, just for a moment.

The rider sat his horse, waiting.

Étienne climbed to the top of the barricade, walking slowly along its crest, letting them all see his fever-pale face and burning eyes. He raised the ledger over his head.

"Tell Gustave," he shouted, his voice cutting across the distance, "that the reading begins in one hour. And that this book"—he shook it—"contains his confession, signed in his own hand. Tell him that if he wants it back, he'll have to kill me for it."

The rider said nothing. He wheeled his horse and galloped back to the column.

"They'll attack before the hour," Rousseau said quietly.

"No." Étienne shook his head, descending from the barricade. "He wants to stop me before I read. But he also wants the crowd to see me die. He'll let me begin. He'll let me read the first few names. And then—"

"Then we die," Claire said.

"No." Étienne touched her cheek. "Then we write the last page of this story."

He moved to the center of the barricade, where a clear space had been cleared, where the lanterns had been hung so that a single man could be seen and heard from every corner of the square.

He opened the ledger to the first page.

"Citizens of Paris," he began, his voice rising with the last of his strength, "let us begin at the beginning. The revolution was never yours. It was bought and paid for before the first shot was fired. And this is the bill..."

The crowd pressed closer. The barricade quieted. Somewhere in the distance, Étienne heard the drums begin again—Gustave's men, preparing to march.

He had one hour.

He read faster.