Read Chapter 15: The Aide's Tale

The chimney passage was barely wide enough for a man’s shoulders, and Moreau had scraped his knuckles raw squeezing through it. But now he sat on the floor of his cell—the marshal’s former quarters, though it amused him to call it that—with Captain Paul Duval crouched opposite him, a candle stub between them, its flame trembling with each word the man spoke.

Duval was thinner than when Moreau had last seen him at Austerlitz. The disgraced aide’s uniform hung loose on his frame, and his eyes had the hollow look of a man who had spent too many nights staring at ceilings, waiting for the knock that never came. But his voice was steady.

“You must understand how it works,” Duval said, tapping the leather-bound ledger in his lap. “Lefebvre doesn’t sell maps or troop strengths. That would be too simple, too easy to trace. He sells *timing*.”

Moreau’s jaw tightened. “Explain.”

“Before every major engagement—before Friedland, before Eylau, before Austerlitz even—he sends a coded message to a contact in Vienna. Not the battle plans themselves. The Austrians have their own intelligence for that. What he sells is when we will strike, from which direction, and with how much force committed. He lets them adjust their deployments just enough to make our victory costlier than it should be.”

“Costlier for whom?”

Duval’s smile was grim. “For the men who die taking ground that should have fallen easily. For the colonels whose reputations suffer when their regiments bleed for a hill that should have been abandoned. For the generals whose stars dim while Lefebvre’s rises. Every costly victory makes him look more essential. Every stalemate makes his rivals look incompetent.”

Moreau’s hands had curled into fists without his noticing. He forced them open. “How long?”

“Since 1804, as far as I can trace. The ledger goes back further, but that’s where the entries become clear.” Duval opened the book to a marked page, angling it toward the candlelight. “See here—this cipher marks the date and time of transmission. And here, the sum paid. The amounts increase with each battle. He was bought cheaply at first. Now he commands a fortune.”

“But why?” Moreau heard the question leave his mouth before he could stop it. He, of all men, should not need to ask why a man would betray his comrades. He had watched Lefebvre send his squadron to die for no reason other than spite. But this—this was different. This was treason on a scale that made Moreau’s own grievances look like a child’s quarrel.

Duval’s eyes met his. “Why does any man sell his soul? For the same reason he sold yours. Power. Leverage. When the war ends—and it will end, one day—Lefebvre wants to be standing on the right side of the table. The Austrians will remember who helped them. The French will remember who won their battles for them. Either way, he wins.”

“Unless both sides learn the truth.”

“Then he’s a dead man twice over. Which is why he needs you destroyed.” Duval closed the ledger with a soft thump. “You have proof of his fraud. He suspects you have more. The treason letter is his insurance—if you produce what you have, he produces what he has. Your word against his. A sergeant-major’s word against a division general’s.”

Moreau’s mind raced. “But this—” he gestured at the ledger “—changes everything. This is not a personal quarrel. This is state treason. The Minister of War would move against him regardless of my testimony.”

“Would he?” Duval’s tone was gentle, almost pitying. “Consider who Lefebvre reports to. Consider whose favor he has cultivated. The minister receives denunciations every day—most of them false, many of them from disgruntled subordinates seeking revenge. Your anonymous letters were about fraud. If you now produce a ledger claiming treason, what do you think the minister will see?”

Moreau’s stomach turned cold.

“He will see a disgraced sergeant-major attempting to escape a court-martial by accusing a decorated general of the worst crime in the military code,” Duval said. “He will see exactly what Lefebvre wants him to see.”

“Then what good is this?” Moreau’s voice came out sharper than he intended. “You risked your life to bring me this, and it changes nothing?”

“It changes everything,” Duval said, leaning forward, his voice dropping to a near-whisper. “But not through the Minister of War. Through someone higher. Someone who answers only to the Emperor himself.”

Moreau stared at him.

“There is a man in Paris,” Duval continued. “A senior aide on the Emperor’s staff. He is not Lefebvre’s friend—far from it. For years, he has suspected that someone in the army’s upper command is feeding intelligence to Vienna. He has been watching, waiting, collecting his own evidence. But he needs conclusive proof. He needs names, dates, transmissions. He needs this ledger.”

“Who is he?”

Duval hesitated. “I cannot tell you his name. Not yet. What I can tell you is that he is expecting you. If you can reach Paris, if you can put this book into his hands, Lefebvre is finished. Not demoted, not disgraced—executed. And your name will be cleared in the same stroke.”

Moreau felt the weight of the moment pressing down on him. The waterproof tube he had crafted lay hidden in his mattress, containing copies of the letters and reports that had started this entire affair. The original oilcloth bundle was concealed in a gap behind the hearthstone. And now this ledger—this damning, deadly ledger—sat between them, waiting to be carried.

“You say I can reach Paris,” Moreau said slowly. “I am under house arrest. Guards at the door, patrols in the street. And Lefebvre knows what I possess. He will have men watching every road.”

“He will have men watching for a soldier,” Duval said. “You will not be a soldier.”

Moreau’s eyes narrowed.

Duval reached into his coat and produced a folded packet of clothing. “Civilian dress. Papers identifying you as a merchant traveling to Paris on business. Coin enough for passage, if you avoid the main roads.” He paused. “There is also a horse, waiting in a stable three streets from here. The ostler is loyal to me—he asks no questions.”

Moreau took the packet. The cloth was rough homespun, a far cry from the fine wool of a cavalry uniform. He would feel naked without his saber, without his epaulettes. But he had been naked before—stripped of rank, of honor, of everything but his own stubborn refusal to die. He knew how to survive without the trappings of the man he had been.

“When?” he asked.

“Tonight. Within the hour.” Duval glanced at the window. The sky beyond was still gray with pre-dawn light; the deep blue of false dawn. “The guard changes at six. The new man is lazy—he will check the door once, then sleep until morning. You will have a window of perhaps twenty minutes.”

“And Roland?”

The name hung between them like a blade.

Duval’s expression flickered. “Lefebvre has him in the garrison prison. He is being pressured to testify against you. I do not know how much longer he will resist.”

Moreau’s jaw clenched. He had not forgotten the boy who had ridden beside him through the hail of Austrian grapeshot, who had welcomed him when he arrived with the forged dispatch, who had believed him when no one else would. To leave him behind—to abandon him to Lefebvre’s tender mercies—

“If you stay,” Duval said quietly, reading his thoughts, “you both die. Roland breaks under torture, testifies against you, and Lefebvre destroys the boy as a witness to silence him. You hang for treason, and the ledger rots in a hole somewhere. But if you go—if you reach Paris—you clear your name, and Roland becomes a liability Lefebvre must keep alive. A living witness with a pardon is dangerous. A dead witness raises questions.”

Moreau hated the logic of it. Hated that he knew it was true.

“One more thing,” Duval said, sliding the ledger toward him. Moreau took it, feeling the weight of its leather cover, the pages thick with damning entries. “The coded messages Lefebvre sends—they are not all to the Austrians.”

Moreau’s hand froze on the book.

“According to my notes, some transmissions go to an address in Paris. A private address. I could not trace who receives them, but the timing is too regular to be coincidence.” Duval’s eyes were dark. “I believe Lefebvre is not merely selling to the enemy. I believe he is building his own network. His own intelligence service. His own—reputation—independent of the army’s command.”

Moreau felt a chill that had nothing to do with the morning air. “He’s not playing both sides because he wants to survive the war. He’s playing both sides so that when it ends, he will be powerful enough to write its history himself.”

“Yes.” Duval’s voice was barely a whisper. “And men who dream of writing history do not stop because one inconvenient sergeant-major stands in their way. If you run, he will pursue you with everything he has.”

Moreau looked at the ledger in his hands, then at the window beyond which the world was slowly waking. Somewhere out there, Lefebvre was probably already drafting the charges that would send him to the firing squad. Somewhere in the garrison prison, Roland was waiting to see whether the man he had risked everything for would abandon him.

Moreau tucked the ledger into his shirt.

“Then I will make him chase me,” he said. “And I will make sure he regrets every step.”