Read Chapter 32: The Prussian's Pleasure

The Prussian officer was a study in patience. He sat behind a camp table piled with maps and regimental rosters, his collar starched white even here at the edge of a burning city, and he watched Émile set up his tripod without a word of assistance. The man’s name was von Richter, and he had the flat, unreadable eyes of a man who had spent ten years staring at other men’s battlefields.

“You understand the terms,” von Richter said, not a question.

“Photographs of the barricades. The ones your artillery keeps missing.” Émile leveled his camera, a heavy Voigtländer that had survived two wars and one house fire. “And my friend goes free.”

“Friend.” The Prussian let the word hang. “An interesting term for a man I found crawling through the east drains with a dead man’s watch in his teeth.”

Émile didn’t flinch. He adjusted the bellows, checked the plate holder, and forced himself to breathe slow. The watch was not in Luc’s teeth. The watch was in Émile’s coat, pressed against his ribs like a cold second heart, and the true plate was inside it. Luc had swallowed his own decoy—a worthless scrap of glass wrapped in wax—to buy Émile time.

That was the plan, anyway. That was the lie Luc had performed so beautifully.

“The barricades are falling,” Émile said. “Your side is winning. Why do you want photographs of ruin?”

Von Richter smiled, and it was the first human thing he had done. “Because in twenty years, some historian will want to argue about who fired first. You will give them the answer. I will give them the image.” He stood, walked around the table, and examined Émile’s camera with genuine reverence. “Photography is the only honest ledger of war, monsieur.”

Émile almost laughed. Almost told him the truth: that the camera was a machine for lying, beautifully machined. That he had spent the last month trading false images to men who killed for them. That the honest ledger von Richter wanted would be paid for with a lie.

“Where is he?” Émile asked.

Von Richter gestured. Two Prussian soldiers dragged Luc forward from a canvas tent. He was pale, shaking, but on his feet. His coat was torn at the shoulder, and there was a bruise flowering across his jaw that hadn’t been there when they’d parted in the sewer.

Luc met Émile’s eyes. A question. Émile gave a small shake of his head: *no, not yet. Trust me.*

“He talks too much,” von Richter said, almost apologetic. “Told us four different stories about a watch before we decided not to listen anymore.”

Émile turned back to his equipment, hiding the cold spike that went through him. Luc had fed the lie deep. Good.

“Three plates,” Émile said. “I’ll need to develop them on site.”

Von Richter raised an eyebrow. “You’ll forgive me if I don’t invite you into the mess tent with chemicals and glass.”

“Then I work here.” Émile already had the developing box out, a shallow wooden tray lined with felt, and the bottles of collodion and silver nitrate. “Your men can watch. I doubt I can assassinate anyone with a jar of acetic acid before your crack shots put a hole in me.”

Von Richter considered this, then nodded. Two soldiers took positions behind Émile, rifles cradled loose. Luc was allowed to stand ten feet away, between two more guards.

The barricade was a good one. Émile had to admit that much as he sighted through the lens. Beams and paving stones and an overturned omnibus, held together by the stubbornness of men who had died there. The bodies were gone now—the Prussians were tidy about that—but the blood was still wet on the cobbles.

He exposed the first plate. Then repositioned, exposed the second. He worked with calm, exacting hands, the way he had worked at Sedan and Metz, the way he had worked outside the prison wall when Jules had been shot for his trouble.

The third exposure was the important one.

Émile moved the camera, angled it slightly east to catch the morning light through the smoke, and pressed the plate holder open. Inside his coat, beneath the false lining Céleste had sewn back after the sewer, was a dummy plate. Same size. Same glass. A photograph of a doorway in Montmartre he had shot days ago, developed, and never used.

He swapped them in one motion, his body blocking the view of the soldiers. His fingers were slick with collodion, so the glass stuck, and for a heartbeat he felt the true plate—the massacre, the soldiers, the secret in the smoke—slide against the dummy. Then it was done. The false image was in the camera. The truth was back against his ribs.

He exposed the third plate.

“Fifteen minutes,” he said, sliding the holder into the developing box. “I’ll need to let them set.”

Von Richter watched him work, curious as a cat. Émile poured the chemicals in the dim light of a canvas shade they had rigged, watching images rise from the silver like ghosts surfacing from murky water. Three barricades. Three ruins. The Prussians would get their honest ledger, and it would show them exactly what they already knew: that the Commune had fought, and the Commune had died.

He fixed the plates, washed them, and laid them side by side on the table.

Von Richter examined each one with a jeweler’s care. He picked up the third—the dummy, now developed into a doorway that had nothing to do with war—and squinted at it.

“This is not a barricade,” he said.

“It’s a barricade’s ghost,” Émile said. “The one they built yesterday at the end of the Rue de Rivoli. It fell before I got the shot straight.”

Von Richter held his gaze for a long moment. Then he laughed, short and sharp. “You photographers. Always chasing the perfect image.” He slid the plates into a leather folder. “Take your friend.”

Émile didn’t move. “Just like that?”

“Just like that.” Von Richter tucked the folder under his arm. “I already got what I paid for. Why would I keep a man who eats watches and a liar who photographs them?”

Luc stumbled forward, and Émile caught him by the arm. The guards stepped back. The gate beyond the camp swung open onto the muddy road south.

Too easy. Émile’s instincts screamed it. Men like von Richter did not release valuable prisoners for three photographs of rubble. The plates were worthless to anyone but a historian. Luc—

Luc knew things. Luc had built the bomb that killed the Versailles legate. Luc had been there at the massacre, had taken the photograph, had hidden the plate in Jules’s watch and swallowed his own decoy to protect the truth.

And von Richter had just let him walk.

Émile turned to go, Luc leaning against him, and it was then that von Richter spoke again.

“A small courtesy, monsieur,” the Prussian said. “Your friend swallowed something in the drain. My surgeon thought it unwise to cut him open over a watch.” He held up a small object—a brass casing, crushed and empty. “We made him give it back. He resisted at first, but the men persuaded him. You can bury it if you like.”

Luc’s hand tightened on Émile’s arm. Not from pain. From horror.

Émile looked at the watch casing in von Richter’s palm. Empty. Stripped of its disguise. There was only one reason the Prussians would take the time to pry it open.

“Where is the plate?” Émile asked, his voice flat.

Von Richter’s smile was no longer human at all. “Already on its way to Versailles, monsieur. Consider it my wedding gift to the new republic.” He tucked the watch case into his pocket. “You should have lied better.”