Read Chapter 34: The Martyr's Death

Hébert appeared out of the smoke like a ghost from the dead, and draped across his back was a body that should have been buried in the dungeon at Meaux.

"Léon!" Étienne lurched forward, nearly collapsing as the fever seized his legs. "He was—I saw him fall—"

"Not quite dead, citizen." Hébert—one of the printers from the cellar, blood streaking his face—lowered the apprentice gently onto a torn mattress dragged from a nearby shop. "Found him crawling along the road to Meaux. Man said he had to reach the barricade. Said he had something for you."

Léon's face was the color of tallow. His chest rose in shallow, rattling gasps, each one a death sentence. But his eyes found Étienne, and there was terrible clarity in them.

"Did you think… I'd let you carry that alone?" The apprentice's voice was barely a thread. "I had a bargain with the devil too. Made mine with God."

Étienne knelt in the mud beside him. The fever made the world swim, but this moment was mercilessly sharp. Claire appeared at his shoulder, and Marie behind her, both women silent as stone.

"The lead box," Léon whispered. "You have to… you know where it is. The well. You have to finish the read, Étienne. All of it."

"I can't do it without you." Étienne's voice cracked. The crowd pressed close, watching a boy die with the same hunger they watched everything. He hated them for it.

"You'll do it." Léon's hand moved weakly to his chest. "Because I'm done carrying what I carried."

His fingers found a chain around his neck and pulled. A ring, heavy and gold, caught the last light of the dying sun. The signet bore the crest of a rearing stag—the arms of the Comte de Vasseur.

"This was the Count's. He gave it to my father before he sent him to a firing squad." Léon's eyes met Étienne's. "He wanted his son to have it. But his son… his son was a coward who served the wrong master. I stole it from him before he hanged me. Before they hanged me."

Tears cut through the grime on Léon's face.

"You're a Vasseur's get, Étienne, but you're no longer a bastard. Not to me. Take it. It's yours. All of it—the name isn't worth much, but the *blood*—" He coughed, a crimson spray dotting his lips. "I watched you carry my blood on your hands since the château. I'm giving you mine now. Legitimate. Recognized. So you can carry the truth instead."

Étienne took the ring. It was warm from Léon's dying flesh. It fit his finger, as if forged for him.

"Léon—"

"I saw your broadsheets." A smile cracked the death-mask of his face. "I was always better with type than with Bible, anyway. Tell them, Étienne. Tell them *all*."

The breath left him. No grand speech, no last shudder. He was simply there one moment and not there the next.

A woman in the crowd began to keen. Étienne bowed his head, and when he looked up, his eyes were no longer fevered. They were fire.

"Citizens of Paris." His voice carried, rough and raw. "This boy died so that his ring might find my hand. He died so the world could know who *really* bears the name of Vasseur—and who stains it."

He lifted his fist. The gold caught the torchlight.

"My name is Étienne Vasseur. Legitimate son of the Comte de Valois. And I say to you now—the man who killed this boy, who orchestrated the slaughter of your people, who sold Paris to foreign gold, he rides toward us even now with mercenaries at his back."

A roar rose from the crowd.

"Then let him come."

The barricade shook with the drums of the advancing column. Above the rooftops, the first of the Swiss mercenaries appeared—rifles glinting.

"Drums!" a voice shouted from the forward position. "They're here!"

Marie was suddenly at his side, a pistol in her hand. "Étienne. You're burning up."

"Let me burn."

He pushed through the crowd, the ring heavy and righteous on his finger. The people parted for him like water before a blade. The barricade loomed ahead, and beyond it, the shape of riders on horseback—Gustave at their head, his white coat now sullied with dust and defeat.

Étienne climbed the barricade. He stood on its crest, exposed and alone, the ring glinting as he pointed directly at Gustave.

"Gustave de Rohan! I accuse you before God and this city of murder, treason, and the corruptions of tyranny. Come answer for your crimes."

Gustave laughed—but it was thin. Hollow. He saw the ring.

"Where did you get that—"

"From a boy you killed. A boy you tortured. A boy whose only sin was serving you before he learned to serve justice."

The crowd surged. The mercenaries raised their rifles. Gustave's hand drifted to his pistol.

"Don't. You'll be torn apart—"

"They'll all be dead before they reach me." Gustave drew. "I've had enough of your speeches, bastard son of a whore."

He fired. The bullet whined past Étienne's ear, clipping the crowd—a woman screamed.

Étienne felt the fever break. A clarity burned through him, icy and total. He drew his own pistol—Claire's, actually, pressed into his hand earlier that day.

The crowd fell silent. Two men, thirty feet apart, pistols raised.

Gustave fired.

Étienne didn't flinch. The bullet tore through his shoulder.

He didn't feel it. He raised his arm. Steady. Calm.

"The ledger read it first. Now I pronounce verdict with lead."

He fired.

Gustave's chest bloomed red. He looked down as if surprised, then toppled from his horse in a heavy, graceless heap.

The mercenaries froze. The crowd didn't.

It was a wave. Trampling over the fallen officers, pouring through the gap, weapons raised in triumph and fury.

Paris burned behind them.

Étienne slid down the barricade, clutching his shoulder, and the ring cut into his palm. Léon's ring. His ring.

Marie caught him before he hit the ground.

"Your revolution," she whispered.

He smiled at her, blood on his lips.

"*Our* revolution. Mine. Yours. For Léon."

Above them, the first of the fires caught the Hotel de Ville.