Read Chapter 37: The New Press

The air in the catacombs tasted of stone dust and old death. Étienne pressed his back against a pillar of human femurs and watched Armand move among the assembled figures, a lamp swinging from his hand, casting their faces in and out of amber light. There were nine of them—printers, compositors, two journalists he vaguely recognized from cafés that no longer existed. Their coats were ragged, their hands stained with ink that would not wash clean even in the dark.

"This is everyone," Armand said, setting the lamp on an overturned skull. The gesture was almost casual. "The ones who didn't run or turn."

A man with a drooping mustache stepped forward. He had the thick forearms of a pressman. "We heard you killed the Prefect's man with your bare hands."

"With a pistol," Étienne said. His voice came out rougher than he intended, the fever burning at his throat. "And it changed nothing. Paris is burning anyway."

The pressman's name was Bastien, and he looked disappointed. "They say you read names out loud. Named the ones who paid for the riots. Named the bankers."

"I named everyone I could prove." Étienne pushed himself off the bone pillar, willing his legs to hold. The wound in his shoulder throbbed beneath the bandage Madeleine had tied before he'd taken to the rooftops. He had not thought about her in—how long? An hour? He forced the thought away. "But a ledger only matters if people read it. And people only read what they can hold in their hands."

He looked at each of them in turn. "You know who I am. I was a crime reporter for La Lanterne. Now I'm a dead man walking, wanted for sedition, and I have a fever that may take me before the guillotine does. None of that changes the truth in that ledger. And the only weapon I have left is the press."

Bastien shifted his weight. "Armand says you want to set up a new paper. Underground."

"Not set up. Continue." Étienne reached into his coat and pulled out a folded sheaf of paper, stained with sweat and blood. He held it up. "I wrote this in the tunnels, by lamplight, while the police were sealing the exits above us. It's the full account of what happened at the barricade—not the version the government will print. Gustave's name, the names of the foreign agents, the Prefect's signature on the order that gave the rioters their first guns."

He let the paper hang in the lamplight. "I need a press. And I need men willing to die to run it."

There was a long silence. The bones around them seemed to lean in, listening.

A young woman stepped forward from the shadows. She was thin, with a printer's cloth cap pulled over dark hair, and her eyes were sharp. "I'm Juliette. I ran the presses at Le Peuple before they shut us down." She nodded at the paper. "How many copies?"

"As many as we can print before they find us."

"Then we don't need one press," she said. "We need five."

Armand frowned. "We don't have five."

"We have cellars," she said. "I know three printers who still owe me favors. And I know where they sleep." She looked at Étienne. "But they'll need to see proof you're worth the risk. One page. The first page. Tonight."

Étienne met her eyes. The fever made the edges of the world blur, but her gaze was steady. He handed her the first page of his account.

She read it in silence. Then she read it again. When she looked up, something had changed in her face.

"You wrote that the Prefect ate dinner with the English agent the night before the riots."

"I did."

"Gustave was at that dinner."

"He was."

"And you're telling me the Prefect knew the riots were planned before they started."

"I'm telling you he funded them." Étienne's voice cracked. "Then he crushed them so he could take credit. And he will do it again. After the report goes out—" He gave a hacking cough, and tasted blood. "After the report, all of this becomes a war. The rich will call it a revolution, the poor will call it a massacre, and the Prefect will dine out on both."

Juliette folded the paper carefully and tucked it into her shirt. "I'll be back by dawn."

She moved toward a narrow passage between two walls of stacked bones, and paused. "If I don't come back, you'll know they have me. Don't wait."

She disappeared into the dark.

Bastien stepped closer, lowering his voice. "You know she's a gamble. She was printing Le Peuple—that's socialist. There could be ears in her network that belong to the police."

"Then we'll need to be fast." Étienne turned to Armand. "Where is this press you promised?"

They moved through the tunnels for nearly an hour, the way lit only by Armand's lamp. The catacombs smelled of old mud and copper. Twice they heard footsteps above them—the dull stomp of soldiers patrolling the streets, unaware of the world beneath their boots. Each time, they stopped and pressed themselves against the walls, breathing shallowly.

Étienne's legs grew weaker. The fever was climbing. At one point, Bastien caught his arm.

"You're burning up," the pressman said.

"I'm fine."

"You're not." Bastien was close now. "If you die before we print, this is over. You know that."

Étienne pulled free. "Then I'll die after we print."

The press was hidden in a crypt beneath the chapel of Saint-Michel, far from any living parish. The bones had been cleared away, and in their place stood an iron printing press, bolted to the stone floor. It was old, heavy, a machine that had survived the Terror and the Empire. Beside it, stacks of dry paper and a case of type sat ready.

"A priest hid it here," Armand said. "He was our contact. The police took him yesterday."

Étienne ran a hand over the press. The iron was cold, smooth. He thought of the night he'd scaled the building at the barricade, throwing broadsheets to the crowd below. That had been improvisation, desperation. This was something else.

He turned to face the men who had followed him through the dark. "We set up tonight. We print until dawn. And when the sun rises, we distribute these papers across the city—every church door, every barracks, every café that still serves coffee to the rich. We make sure the Prefect reads his own name over his breakfast."

Bastien grunted. "And then they kill us."

"Then they kill us." Étienne permitted himself a smile, thin and sharp. "But first they'll have to find us."

They worked in silence for the next two hours. Juliette returned just as Étienne finished setting the first line of type, her cheeks flushed from running. She nodded once, sharply, and behind her came two men carrying wood cases on their backs—more type, fresh from other hidden presses across the city.

"They're in," she said. "Three cellars on the rue d'Enfer. They'll have their presses running in the hour."

Étienne looked at the stack of paper. Then he looked at the type in front of him, the letters gleaming in the lamplight.

He set to work.

The words came faster now than they ever had in his cramped office at La Lanterne. The fever burned them out of him. He wrote about the barricades and the dead; he wrote about the dinner in the Prefect's private quarters; he wrote the name of every mercenary, every banker, every foreign agent whose signature he had found in the ledger. He wrote about the catacombs and the hidden press, and the men and women who had risked their lives to bring the truth to the surface.

When the first copy came off the press, it was the hour before dawn. The paper was damp, the ink not quite dry. Étienne held it up to the lamp.

At the top of the page, in letters bold enough to be read across a square, was the title of his new paper.

THE TRUTH.

No ornament. No motto. He didn't need one.

Beyond the proofing table, the faint gray light of false dawn crept through the cracks between the skulls and femurs of the chapel floor. On the streets above, Paris was waking up to another morning of military rule.

His hand shook as he looked down at the wet ink in front of him, the fever raging in his veins. He had one press here, three more on the rue d'Enfer, and not one of them would stop printing until the soldiers broke down their doors.

Étienne looked back up at Armand. "How many men can we get on the streets before the patrols start?"

"At dawn? We can distribute to every district before the gates open."

Étienne set the damp page down carefully, as if it were gold leaf.

He had the proof. He had the presses. He had his name.

He had one more night to print the truth. And if the police wanted to stop him, they would have to do it with blood.

The press creaked, and the machine coughed out its next sheet.