Read Chapter 17: The Questioning at Saint-Denis

The corridor stank of damp stone and burnt oil. Versaillais guards marched Émile past a row of iron doors, each with a small grate at eye level, each revealing nothing but darkness beyond. His shoulder throbbed where de Valois' men had bound it too tight, and the list of twelve names pressed against his ribs inside his coat like a brand.

They shoved him into a room at the end of the hall. A single oil lamp burned on a wooden table, and behind it sat Commandant de Valois, his uniform immaculate despite the hour, his gloved hands folded over a folder Émile recognized—his own portfolio, recovered from the Printemps basement.

"Citizen Chardin," de Valois said, not rising. "Or should I say, photographer to the Commune. You've had a busy week."

Émile's captors forced him into a chair. The wood was cold through his torn trousers. He said nothing.

De Valois opened the portfolio. Inside lay prints Émile had made in the last months—barricades burning, Communard women loading rifles, children collecting spent cartridges for their fathers. De Valois flipped through them with the detached interest of a man examining insects.

"Remarkable work. The composition is fine, the shadows dramatic. You have an eye for the tragedy of it all." He closed the portfolio. "But this isn't what I want."

Through the thin wall, Émile heard a muffled groan. Lucien. His brother's leg had bled freely through the bandages the Versaillais had grudgingly applied, and his broken arm hung in a rough sling. They'd separated them on arrival, Lucien carried to a cell at the far end of the corridor, Émile dragged here.

"I don't know what you want," Émile said.

De Valois smiled. It didn't reach his eyes. "I saw the photograph in the Hôtel de Ville before the fire, Citizen Chardin. I know what it shows. I know who stands in it, and I know they are not the sort of men who tolerate being seen."

He leaned forward. The lamplight carved shadows into his face, making him look older, harder.

"I also know you no longer have it. Lovely as these prints are, they are not the negative."

Émile's heart staggered. The negative. The glass plate he'd hidden beneath a loose floorboard in his old studio, if the building still stood, if the fire hadn't reached it.

"You look surprised," de Valois continued. "Did you think the Communards would keep my correspondence private? They burned their own records, yes, but men talk before they die. I've had my people watching you since the Rue de Rivoli. You buried something under the floor of your darkroom. I sent men to retrieve it this morning."

He opened a drawer and withdrew a glass plate wrapped in muslin. Held it up to the lamp.

Émile's breath caught. Through the cloth, he could see the familiar rectangle, the emulsion dark at the edges. His hands remembered the weight of it, the terrible burden of what it captured.

"You're wondering if it's the same one," de Valois said pleasantly. "It is not. My men found a plate, but it was a portrait of a woman with a child. Charming, sentimental, useless." He set it down. "You're too clever to keep the real one in so obvious a place. So I ask again: where is the photograph?"

Émile's mouth was dry. His shoulder screamed. He thought of the image burned onto that remaining plate—the huddle of men in the cellar beneath the Hôtel de Ville, their uniforms a mix of Communard red and Versaillais blue, their hands clasped over a map of Paris. He thought of the faces he could name.

"If I give it to you," Émile said slowly, "I'm dead."

De Valois raised an eyebrow.

"You'll kill me the moment I tell you where it is. You'll kill my brother too, or send him to rot in a camp." Émile forced a thin smile. "The photograph is the only thing keeping us alive. I'm not foolish enough to trade it for a promise."

"Your brother will be sent to a detention camp regardless, Citizen Chardin. Versailles has no patience for spies of any allegiance." De Valois leaned back, tapping the table. "But I am a reasonable man. I can arrange for him to receive medical care. A clean cell. Perhaps, in time, a transfer to a hospital where his leg might be saved."

"His leg will be saved if you let him walk out of here."

"He won't walk out of here." De Valois's voice flattened. "France is at war with itself, and your brother was a double agent. Even if I wished to release him, the government would hang him for treason. The Commune would do the same. There is no future where Lucien Chardin walks free."

Émile stared at him, feeling the weight of that truth settle in his chest.

"What there is," de Valois continued, "is a future where he dies slowly in a camp—or where he lives long enough to see the war end, perhaps to be exchanged in a general amnesty. Comfortable, cared for, intact. That is my offer. Tell me where the negative lies, and your brother's suffering ends."

The words hung in the air. Through the wall, another groan, thin and pitiful.

Émile's hands clenched beneath the table. His brother had given him the list, hidden in his coat. His brother had risked everything to warn him about Delacroix, about the pact, about the men who would burn all of Paris to keep their secrets.

And now his brother was bleeding through bandages in a cell down the hall, while a Versaillais commandant offered him survival at the price of the only leverage Émile had.

"The last time I trusted a man's promises," Émile said, "it cost me my brother. I'll make my own bargain."

De Valois regarded him with something like disappointment. "You're making the mistake artists always make, Citizen Chardin. You think your work matters so much that its value will protect you. But a photograph is a piece of paper. It can be destroyed, lost, forgotten. What I'm offering you is flesh and blood."

"Then let me see my brother."

"If you give me the location."

"Let me touch his hand through the bars, and I'll tell you."

De Valois laughed. It was a dry, humorless sound. "You'd tell me anything to get a moment alone with him. You'd invent a location, send my men on a fool's chase, and use the time to plot your escape. I've known a hundred men like you, Citizen Chardin. They all think they're cleverer than me."

He stood, buttoning his tunic. "Take the photographer to cell nine. Put the brother next to him—close enough to hear the truth in each other's voices, not close enough to conspire."

Two guards seized Émile's arms and hauled him upright. As they dragged him toward the door, de Valois spoke again, his voice carrying easily across the room.

"There is a camp outside Saint-Denis where we send the most dangerous prisoners. Men who have plotted against the government, who know too much to be released but too little to be shot. Your brother will be on the next transport unless I intervene. You have until dawn to change your mind."

The guards marched Émile down the corridor, past the iron doors, past the grate through which he heard Lucien's ragged breathing. They stopped at a cell whose door hung ajar, pushed him inside, and slammed it shut behind him.

The lock clicked with terrible finality.

Émile stood in the darkness, waiting for his eyes to adjust. A thread of moonlight came through a high window, barred and grimy. The cell was small—four strides wide, six long—with a straw pallet in the corner and a bucket for waste. The walls wept moisture.

He crossed to the bars at the far side of the cell. Through them, he could see a similar cage, and in it, a slumped figure.

"Lucien."

His brother stirred, lifting his head. The moonlight caught his face—bloodied, bruised, but alive. His broken arm lay awkwardly across his chest, and his leg was bound in a crude splint.

"Émile." Lucien's voice was hoarse. "What did he ask you?"

"The photograph."

"And you didn't tell him."

Émile shook his head, though his brother could barely see it.

Lucien's laugh was a bitter rasp. "Good. You should never have been caught in this, Émile. You should have burned it the day I gave it to you."

"Burned my only bargaining chip?"

"Dawn comes fast," Lucien said quietly. "And you're in a cage. What good is a photograph to a dead man?"

The words settled over Émile like a cold cloth. He gripped the bars, pressing his forehead against the rusted iron. Through the narrow gap between their cells, he could almost touch his brother's hand.

Almost.

"You'll get out," Lucien said. "You always do. You climbed out of coffins in Paris. Out of burning buildings. You'll find a way out of this."

"Without you?"

Lucien was silent for a long moment. When he spoke, his voice was barely a whisper.

"I was already dead the day I signed that list, brother. I sold myself to both sides, and both sides will hang me for it. Don't trade the truth for a corpse."

Émile closed his eyes. Against his ribs, the list of twelve names rustled with every heartbeat.

Far above, through the grime of the high window, he saw the sky beginning to gray. Dawn was coming.

And he had nothing to offer but a photograph he hadn't yet decided he was willing to die for.