Read Chapter 23: The Revolution's Roar

The first shot cracked somewhere near the Pont Neuf, a sound like a dry branch snapping, but Élise knew better. She had heard gunfire before. Jean-Luc flinched beside her, his hand going instinctively to the bruise under his collar. Antoine was already scanning the rooftops, his journalist's eyes reading the city the way she read type.

"That wasn't a warning shot," he said.

The vegetable cart sat between them and the Rue de Seine, loaded with what appeared to be sacks of turnips and cabbages. Beneath the vegetables, wrapped in oilcloth and rope, lay the press—a hand-cranked iron beast that had printed more truth than half of Paris would admit to reading. Gabriel, their young apprentice, stood at the cart's front, gripping the shafts with white knuckles.

"We need to move," Élise said. "Now."

They were too slow. A second shot followed, then a ripple of them, then the deeper boom of a cannon somewhere toward the Tuileries. The street erupted around them. Men and women poured from doorways, dragging chairs, tables, barrels, a shattered piano that someone had wrestled from a ground-floor salon. Within minutes, the intersection ahead was a wall of improvised debris.

A man with a scarf tied over his mouth grabbed Antoine's arm. "You there—help us with this omnibus."

Antoine looked at Élise. She nodded. There was no route through that didn't cross the barricade now. Better to help build it than to look like someone running from it.

They spent the next hour hauling cobblestones and furniture while Gabriel guarded the cart. Élise's hands—bred for the delicate work of typesetting—blistered and bled through her gloves. But the work was a kind of cover. No one questioned the young woman and the tall journalist stacking paving stones. They were just more bodies for the revolution.

Then someone shouted: "The National Guard is coming up the Rue de Rivoli!"

The crowd scattered to their posts. Antoine pulled Élise behind the overturned piano. "This is wrong. We're trapped on the wrong side of the fighting."

"No," Élise said slowly. Her heart was pounding, but her mind was clear for the first time in days. She looked at the cart, at the press buried beneath the vegetables. "We're not trapped. We're positioned."

Antoine followed her gaze. "Élise. No."

"We have a working press, Antoine. In the middle of the most important moment Paris has seen in years. Every newspaper in the city is either shuttered or censored. We can print the truth of what's happening while it's happening."

"The cart weighs half a ton with the press in it. If we stay here, we'll either be shot or arrested. If we run, the press slows us down and they catch us anyway." He gripped her shoulders. "We have to abandon it."

"Abandon it?" The words stung. That press had been her father's. It had hidden beneath a false floor while Beaumont's men tore apart her home. It had printed words worth dying for. "We can't just leave it."

"We can't print from a prison cell either."

Gabriel appeared at Antoine's elbow, eyes wide. "The Guards are forming ranks. They're going to charge."

Élise's instincts took over. She ran to the cart and began pulling aside the vegetables, tossing cabbages into the street like ammunition. Antoine was behind her in an instant, hissing protests, but she had already ripped the oilcloth away.

"Help me get it onto the ground," she said. "The cart's too heavy to maneuver, but the press itself—if we set it up against that wall, behind the barricade—"

"Set it up? Here?"

"Where better?" She was already pulling at the ropes. "The people need to know what's happening. They need to know that the King has ordered his soldiers to fire on his own citizens. They need to know—"

A bullet whined past her ear, so close she felt its wind. Antoine slammed her to the ground, his body covering hers. Return fire erupted from the barricade. The National Guards were charging.

"Now or never," Élise gasped beneath him.

Antoine stared at her for a long, terrible moment. Then he grinned—that infuriating, wonderful grin she had once wanted to slap off his face. "You are going to get us both killed."

"Probably."

He rolled off her and grabbed the press. Gabriel took the other side. Together they hauled the iron frame to a recessed doorway near the barricade, where the angle of the walls offered some protection. Élise's fingers flew, fitting the type case from her satchel—she'd packed it without thinking, years of habit—and seized the hand-crank.

She set the headline first: LA RÉPUBLIQUE EST PROCLAMÉE.

It wasn't true yet. But she'd make it true with ink if she couldn't with lead.

Inside the barricade, a young student with a musket stared at her. "What are you doing?"

"Printing," she said simply.

The first sheet came off the press at the exact moment the National Guard broke against the barricade. Élise lifted a broadside, still wet, and held it up. The student read it. Then he shouted to the others, waving the paper like a banner.

"La République! Elle l'a écrit! La République!"

The cry spread through the barricade like fire. Men and women grabbed copies, folding them into their pockets, pressing them to their hearts. The words mattered. They always had. Her father had known it. She knew it now, in her marrow.

Antoine appeared beside her, a bleeding scratch across his cheek. "How many can you print?"

"As many as you can hand out."

He kissed her—quickly, fiercely, with powder smoke in his hair—and then he was gone into the chaos, spreading pages like a sower casting seed.

Élise cranked the press until her arms screamed. Gabriel fed sheets. The battle raged twenty feet away. The revolution roared like a river in flood.

And then the cannon fired.

Not at the barricade—at the doorway.

The world became splinters and fire. Élise felt herself lifted and thrown, heard Gabriel's shout cut short. When the dust cleared, she was on her back in the street, blood running from her forehead into her eyes. The press—her father's press, her press, the voice of everything—lay twisted and broken beneath a collapsed wall that had once been part of the bookbindery.

She crawled toward it, fingers reaching.

The press was gone.