Read Chapter 14: The Crowded Printemps

The department store smelled of sawdust and spoiled fruit, a perfume of abandoned prosperity. Printemps’ grand atrium rose four stories above Émile’s head, its ironwork galleries now strung with laundry instead of silk. A hundred Communards moved through the aisles—women with rifles slung over their shoulders, children chasing each other between overturned mannequins, a man in a National Guard coat sorting through a case of opera gloves as if they were ammunition.

Émile leaned against a pillar, his left arm bound tight against his chest in a sling improvised from a curtain torn from Vautrin’s window. His camera hung from a leather strap across his back, wrapped in oilcloth, heavier than it should have been. The wound in his shoulder throbbed with each heartbeat, a dull percussion that kept time with the distant crackle of artillery.

He counted faces. Forty-three people in his line of sight. None of them Lucien.

The photograph he’d taken at the door—a quick shot of the barricade workers hauling sandbags past the entrance—was already a calculation. Vautrin’s debt demanded documentation of the Commune’s defenses. But Émile had his own reasons for raising the camera here. A man photographing strangers in a department store was just a man. A man photographing specific strangers was a spy.

He crossed the floor slowly, pausing at a display table where someone had laid out confiscated silverware. A woman counted spoons with one hand and held a nursing infant with the other. She looked up at him, took in the sling, the hollow cheeks, the bloodstain seeping through the bandage.

“You need a doctor, not shopping,” she said.

“I’m looking for someone.”

“Aren’t we all.” She returned to her counting.

The mezzanine above showed more movement—a cluster of men in Communard uniforms gathered around a table spread with maps. Émile climbed the stairs, each step sending a spike of fire through his shoulder. At the top, he paused to raise his camera, framing the men below. Click. The shutter opened and closed with a sound like a kiss.

The plate holder was nearly empty. Three shots left, then he’d need to find somewhere to develop. He’d promised Vautrin barricades. But barricades could wait. Lucien could not.

He moved along the gallery, peering into the stockrooms that had been converted into dormitories. Blankets piled on counters. A chess game abandoned mid-match. A young woman brushing her hair by the light of a window, humming a song Émile didn’t recognize. She caught his eye, smiled, and he looked away.

The basement stairs were blocked by two sandbags and a young man with a bayonet who couldn’t have been more than sixteen.

“No further,” the boy said, trying to make his voice deep.

“I’m looking for someone.”

“Everyone’s looking for someone. Name?”

Émile hesitated. Giving Lucien’s name to a stranger holding a bayonet felt like signing his brother’s death warrant. But Lucien had been seen here. The boy might know something. “A man called Lucien. Works for the Commune. Used to be a courier.”

The boy’s eyes flickered—not recognition, but something close. “I don’t know any Lucien.”

“He’s my brother.”

The boy’s grip on the bayonet tightened. “I said I don’t know him. Move along.”

A hand landed on Émile’s good shoulder. He spun, the pain in his arm nearly dropping him to his knees.

The man was tall, bearded, with the stained hands of a printer and the wary posture of someone who’d learned to watch doorways. Émile knew him. Pierre Marchand, Lucien’s friend since childhood. They’d shared a bottle of wine in this very district two years ago, when the world had been different and the only war had been in Prussia.

“Émile.” Pierre’s voice was barely a whisper. “You shouldn’t be here.”

“Where’s Lucien?”

Pierre looked past him, scanning the floor below. His jaw worked. “Not here. Not where anyone can see.”

“Someone told me he was brought here. Wounded.”

“He was.” Pierre grabbed Émile’s elbow and steered him toward a narrow door half-hidden behind a rack of coats. “Three days ago. He fell through that entrance with blood on his shirt and a Communard on each arm. We got him downstairs before anyone asked questions.”

The door opened onto a stairwell that smelled of coal dust and damp. Pierre lit a stub of candle and led the way down. Émile’s camera banged against the wall with each step, and he clutched it with his good hand, protecting it more than himself.

“Why is he hiding?” Émile asked. “The Commune should have sent for a surgeon. Given him a bed.”

Pierre stopped on the landing. In the candlelight, his face was all shadows. “The people who brought him in weren’t helping him. They were hunting him.”

“Then why didn’t they take him?”

“Because he made them a promise.” Pierre started down again. “A promise about what he knew, and what he’d do with it if he died. He’s been holding that over their heads ever since.”

The basement was vast, a cathedral of crates and abandoned mannequins lying like casualties on the floor. Pierre moved between the shelves with confidence, stopping at a stack of shipping crates that looked no different from any other. He tapped twice. A pause. Then a rustle from within.

The crate opened from the inside. A face emerged—pale, bearded, with dark circles under eyes that lit up the moment they saw Émile.

“You came,” Lucien said. His voice was cracked with thirst and exhaustion.

Émile dropped to his knees beside the crate. His brother was thinner than he remembered, and there was a bandage wrapped around his ribs visible through his torn shirt. But he was alive. The relief hit Émile like a physical blow, loosening something in his chest he hadn’t known was clenched.

“I came,” he said. “And I’m taking you out of here.”

Lucien shook his head. “I can’t leave.”

“Like hell you can’t.”

“Listen to me.” Lucien grabbed Émile’s wrist with surprising strength. “I’ve been working with the negotiation committee for two months. Quiet work. Committee work. Meeting with people from both sides—Communards who want a way out, Versaillais who don’t want to be remembered as butchers.”

“You’re telling me you knew about the pact?”

Lucien’s eyes widened. “You know about it?”

“I photographed it. The meeting at the Baroness’s salon. Versailles and the Commune’s leaders, trading amnesty for surrender.”

Lucien closed his eyes. For a long moment, he didn’t speak. When he opened them again, they were wet. “I’ve been carrying the financial records. The bribes, the accounts in Switzerland, the names of every officer who’s been bought on both sides. It’s not just a pact, Émile. It’s an exchange. They’re planning to hand the Commune’s fortifications to Versailles in exchange for pardons and gold.”

He reached into his shirt and pulled out a folded scrap of paper, crumpled and stained with sweat and blood. His fingers shook as he pressed it into Émile’s hand.

“These are the names. Twelve double agents who sit on both sides of every negotiation. Give it to the right people and the whole arrangement collapses.” He let out a breath. “I tried to deliver it. Three days ago, I tried. They caught me before I could cross the barricade.”

Émile looked at the paper. Names in Lucien’s careful handwriting. He recognized three of them. One was a colonel in the National Guard known for giving rousing speeches about refusing to surrender.

“And the records?” Émile asked. “You said you had them.”

Lucien’s smile was thin and tired. “I do. But they’re not here. They’re somewhere the negotiators won’t find them unless I’m alive to say where.”

Boots thundered on the stairs above. Pierre’s head snapped toward the sound.

“They found us,” Pierre whispered. “They always find us.”

Lucien grabbed Émile’s arm. “You need to go. Now. Take the names, find the photographs, and if you can’t use them—” He pressed something else into Émile’s palm. Cold metal. The key Émile had given him a lifetime ago, when they had believed in different things.

“Then we both burn,” Lucien said.

The boots were at the bottom of the stairs now. A voice shouted Lucien’s name. Not a friend’s voice. A hunter’s.

Émile looked at his brother, then at the stairs, then at the paper in his hand.

Three days ago, he would have run. But three days ago, he hadn’t known whether his brother was worth saving.