Read Chapter 35: The Sister's Vengeance

The printing press stank of oil and ink, a smell Marchand had come to associate with lies. They had found the place through Louise—a cramped basement in the Eleventh where a syndicalist sheet still ran off plates in defiance of the censors. Anna moved through the room like a general surveying a field, her coat thrown over a chair, her fingers already stained black with newsprint.

“This will do,” she said. “I know the editor. He ran Pavel’s pieces before the war.”

Marchand watched her from the doorway. The gaslight caught the hollows beneath her eyes. She had not slept in two days, not since the armory, not since Renaud’s face had appeared in the crossfire like a ghost from another life.

“London was the plan,” he said quietly. “Your contacts there. The presses that can’t be touched.”

Anna did not look up. She was sorting through a stack of blank paper, her movements sharp and brittle. “London is a week away. A week of trains and ports and checkpoints. Every hour we wait, they get closer.” She stopped, her hand resting on the paper. “Pavel died for this list. He did not die so I could run to England and ask permission.”

Marchand stepped into the room. The editor, a thin man with spectacles and a nervous twitch, hovered at the far wall, pretending not to listen.

“Your brother’s death is not a reason to rush into a grave of your own.”

Anna turned on him. Her eyes were wet, but her voice did not shake.

“You think I do not know that? I have watched everyone around me die, Marchand. My family. My comrades. My—your own people tried to kill you in an alley two nights ago.” She took a breath. “The only thing I have left is this.” She touched the folded sheets in her coat. “And I will not let them bury it with me.”

Marchand opened his mouth to argue, but the words died. She was right. Every road they took was watched. Every mile was a gamble. At least here, the fight could be theirs.

“Tomorrow dawn,” he said. “We print. We distribute. We vanish before noon.”

Anna nodded once. Then she smiled—a thin, tired thing that did not reach her eyes. “You are learning, soldier.”

They worked through the night. Marchand set the type himself, his scarred hands clumsy against the metal slugs, while Anna wrote and rewrote the introduction in furious longhand. The editor kept glancing at the street door. The city outside was quiet, too quiet, the kind of silence that preceded a storm.

By three in the morning, the pages were ready. Marchand pulled the first proof, the ink still wet, and held it up to the light. The words glared back at him: NAMES OF THE DEAD. He let the paper drop.

“It will cause a war,” he said.

“There is already a war,” Anna replied. “We are simply telling people who is fighting it.”

They heard the footsteps at the same moment. Marchand spun, his hand going to the pistol Louise had given him, but the door exploded inward before he could raise it. A man in a dark coat came through first, a Mauser in his fist, and Marchand fired without thinking. The man crumpled. Behind him, a second shape filled the doorway, and then the basement erupted.

The editor screamed. Anna dove behind the press, and Marchand rolled to the left, bullets chewing the floor where he had been standing. Dust and paper filled the air like snow. He fired twice more, blind, and was answered by a volley that split the wooden frame above his head.

“Anna!” he shouted. “The back!”

He saw her move—a shadow against the glare of the muzzle flashes—but she stopped halfway. In her hand, she clutched the wet proofs, the ink still sharp upon them. She looked at the stack of printed pages scattered across the floor, and Marchand understood. She would not leave without the truth.

He emptied his pistol toward the door and scrambled to her. His hand closed on her wrist. “Now!”

She pulled free. But she did not run. She turned to face the men at the threshold, the proofs held before her like a shield, and her voice rang out over the gunfire.

“Pavel never lied to you! Do you hear me, you murdering bastards? My brother was the only honest man in Europe!”

The bullet took her in the chest.

Marchand watched her fall, the papers scattering from her hand like wings. For a single, frozen moment, the world was silent. Then the shooting stopped as suddenly as it had begun, and the men in the doorway stood still, their work done.

Marchand crawled to her. He did not see the men, did not hear the editor weeping, did not feel the splinters cutting into his knees. He only saw Anna, her eyes wide and fixed on the ceiling, her mouth open around a breath that would not come.

“Anna,” he said. “Anna.”

Her hand found his. Her grip was shockingly strong.

“The list,” she whispered. “You have it. You always had it.”

Her fingers went slack. The light in her eyes dimmed, and then was gone.

Marchand knelt there, holding her hand, as the men in the doorway withdrew. He heard their boots on the stairs, the sound of retreat, the slam of a van door in the street. He did not move. The basement was silent save for the drip of water and the faint hiss of the gas lamp.

After a long time, he reached into his coat and touched the ledger, still safe against his chest. He lifted it out, the leather warm from his body, and looked at it. Then he looked at Anna’s face, calm and still and unbearably young.

He kissed her forehead. He folded the proofs and tucked them into the ledger’s pages, beside the compass that had led him this far and would lead him farther still, into a darkness he had only begun to understand.