Read Chapter 9: The Versaillais Counter-Offer

The drip of water from his soaked coat had finally stopped by the time the bells of Saint-Sulpice tolled three in the morning. Émile crouched in the recessed doorway of a shuttered charcuterie on the rue de Vaugirard, arms wrapped around himself against the chill that had settled into his bones. The Seine had done its work—cold, filthy, alive—but it had also washed away his pursuers.

He had no camera. No plates. No weapon. Just the glass negative pressed against his chest, wrapped in oilcloth torn from a fishmonger's stall, and the phantom weight of his brother's watch in his mind.

Lucien.

The thought burned through the exhaustion. Émile had spent years telling himself his younger brother was safe, tucked away in Lyon with their aunt, learning the printing trade. But Lucien had come to Paris. Lucien had been running messages between the factions like a fool caught between hammer and anvil. And now Lucien was gone.

A courier. For whom? The question had no answer, only sharp edges.

Émile pushed himself up. He needed to move. Sitting still in this city meant being found—by Delacroix's men, by the National Guard patrols that swept the Left Bank with increasing regularity, or by the plainclothes agents of Versailles who moved like rats through the sewers of the Commune. He began walking east, keeping to the narrow arteries where the gaslights had been smashed and the darkness could hide him.

The rue Mouffetard. The thought surfaced unbidden. Céleste had been asking about him there. A market street he knew well, where the fishwives flung insults as freely as offal and no one noticed a photographer with a heavy case. But Céleste would have eyes there now.

He needed ground he controlled. A darkroom, chemicals, paper—tools of his trade that had become weapons in a war he never asked to join.

The Baroness's mansion sat at the edge of the Luxembourg quarter, a hulking relic of the Empire that had somehow survived the chaos of the past months. Émile approached from the rear, through the service alley where the kitchen deliveries arrived. The gate was locked. He had expected as much.

He climbed.

The wall was old limestone, pitted and crumbling, and his fingers found holds that the damp had made treacherous. Twice he nearly slipped, the plate shifting against his chest like a second heartbeat. The second-floor balcony rail greeted him, and he swung over, landing with a grunt that he swallowed before it could become a sound.

The window into the library was unlatched. Of course it was. The Baroness kept her secrets in plain sight, confident that her station and her sex made her invisible to suspicion. Émile had exploited that confidence before.

He slipped inside, past the heavy velvet curtains, and stood in the darkness of a room that smelled of old leather and newer treachery. The camera obscura stood in the corner where it had always been—a mahogany box on a tripod, its brass fittings gleaming even in the gloom. The Baroness had purchased it years ago as a curiosity, a toy for her salons. She had never once asked what else it could be used for.

Émile crossed to it and knelt. His fingers found the hidden panel at the base, a modification he had made months ago when he first suspected the Baroness might not be the only one using her home for secrets. The compartment was empty.

It would not remain so for long.

He took the oilcloth from his chest and unwrapped the precious, damning plate. The image on it—Delacroix and De Valois, caught in the amber light of the café, their handshake a contract written in blood and gold—seemed to glow faintly in the darkness. He slid it into the compartment, sealed the panel, and stood.

There. Let them search his rooms, his person, his darkroom. Let them tear Paris apart looking for a photograph that no longer existed in any place they would think to look.

A floorboard creaked above his head.

Émile froze. His eyes darted to the library door, left ajar a finger's width. Voices now, muffled by the ceiling but unmistakable—two people, one with the clipped, nasal tones of the Baroness, the other a man's voice, deeper, with the hard edges of a military man accustomed to giving orders.

He moved to the doorway, pressing himself against the wall beside it, and listened.

"—cannot guarantee his discretion," the Baroness was saying. "He is a photographer. Photographers see what others wish to hide."

"Then this is simple." The man's voice carried the unmistakable accent of Saint-Cyr, the military academy. "He gives us the plate, we find his brother. If he refuses, we find his brother's body and then take the plate anyway."

"You misunderstand, Colonel." The Baroness's tone sharpened. "Chardin is not a man to be threatened. He is a man to be bought. I have purchased him before."

Émile's jaw tightened. Purchased. That was one word for the debt he owed her, the favor she had called in that had sent him to photograph her secret conclave of Versaillais businessmen and gold speculators. The debt was old, and she reminded him of it like a creditor with a ledger.

"Then buy him," the Colonel said. "But time is short. Delacroix's people failed last night on the Pont Neuf. The photograph is still out there, and if it reaches the wrong hands—"

"It won't. I know exactly where to find our photographer, and I know exactly what he wants."

Émile's breath caught. He heard the rustle of fabric, the click of a handbag latch. Then the Baroness's voice again, lower now, almost intimate.

"He has a brother. A printer's apprentice. Delacroix's people took him off a boat at Charenton three days ago, thinking he was carrying dispatches. The boy knew nothing, but he has become useful."

"Useful how?"

"As bait. Delacroix's security chief is a blunt instrument, but he understands leverage. The brother is being held at the Fort d'Issy, awaiting transport to Versailles. They intend to offer Chardin a trade—the plate for the boy."

"And you intend to offer the same trade, but better."

"I intend to offer Chardin a choice that favors me." The Baroness's voice had the silk-over-steel quality that Émile knew well. "He gives the plate to me, and I will not only locate his brother—I will deliver him, alive, to Calais, with passage to England. His debt to me will be settled. He will owe me nothing."

"Attempted a better offer, then." The Colonel sounded amused. "And your cut of the bargain?"

"When Delacroix falls—and he will fall, one way or another—the plate I give you will make me important to Versailles. Not merely tolerated. Important."

Silence stretched. Émile could hear his own heart beating in the darkness.

"Find him," the Colonel said finally. "Bring him here. I will make the offer formally."

"And if he refuses?"

The Colonel's voice dropped to something almost gentle. "Then the Fort d'Issy has deep cellars, and the Seine has a way of taking what Versailles does not want found. But I suspect Chardin will see reason. He is a businessman, like yourself. He understands the price of sentiment."

Footsteps. The library door swung wider, and Émile pressed himself flatter against the wall, breath held, as the Baroness swept past him so close he could smell her perfume—jasmine, incongruous with her talk of death. The Colonel followed, a tall silhouette in a greatcoat, and the two of them disappeared down the corridor toward the main staircase.

Émile stayed frozen until their footsteps faded. Then he exhaled, long and slow.

Fort d'Issy. The name echoed in his skull. A fortress on the southwestern edge of the city, still nominally held by the Commune—but if the Versaillais had access to its cellars, then the fortress's loyalty was already compromised. And Lucien was there. Alive, or at least alive as of three days ago.

The plate was hidden. The Baroness expected to summon him and offer her deal. She did not know he had been standing in her library, listening to her bargain over his brother's life like a horse trader haggling over livestock.

He could run. Take the plate, leave Paris, let the factions tear each other apart. But Lucien would rot in that cellar, and Émile knew—had always known—that the only currency that mattered in this city was the truth, and the only truth powerful enough to move men was the one trapped on glass.

He moved to the window, slipped through onto the balcony, and began the climb down into the predawn darkness. A plan was forming, ugly and half-baked but alive, beating like a second heart beneath his ribs.

Colonel Moreau. The name would be useful.

The Fort d'Issy would need watching.

And somewhere, caught between the Commune and Versailles, his brother waited for a rescue that no one but Émile would attempt.

That alone was reason to stay.