Read Chapter 28: The Skein of Truth

The tunnel air had grown thick with smoke, but down here, in the stone bowels of the Bastille, it was still breathable. Alex leaned against the damp wall, his leg screaming beneath him, watching Camille de la Tour rifle through a dead guard's coat with the calm efficiency of someone who had spent her life in court intrigue rather than prison.

She found a stub of candle and a tinderbox, struck flame, and held the light to his face. "You look worse than I did when they brought me here."

"I've had a day." He gestured vaguely upward, where the roar of the mob had softened to sporadic gunfire and the crackle of burning timber. "They stormed the place. Killed the governor. I tried to stop it."

Camille's eyes narrowed. "You tried to stop a Parisian mob from tearing down a prison?"

"I tried to stop them from tearing down the governor with it." Alex shifted his weight, hisses escaping through his teeth. "It didn't work. Nothing I do seems to work the way it's supposed to."

She studied him for a long moment, then crouched beside him, the candle casting sharp shadows across her angular face. "The snuffbox. You said the old man gave it to you. Describe him."

"Old. Bent-backed. Smelled of turpentine and pipe smoke. He had a scar—" Alex touched his own jaw. "Here, running into his beard. He gave me the box in a coffee house, told me I'd need it where I was going. Then he just—"

"Vanished." Camille smiled, tight and knowing. "Henri Marchand. He was my grandmother's steward before the family fell out of favor. He's the one who kept our network alive after my uncle was exiled."

"Your network." Alex's mind raced, pulling threads together. "You said you were a royalist. Why would a royalist need a network in Paris?"

"Because not all royalists are fools." She settled onto a crate across from him, the candle between them. "My cousin Auguste is a fool of the first order. He believes the King's authority is divine and unassailable. He also believes that the only way to preserve the monarchy is to eliminate its enemies—decisively, and without trial."

The words hung in the smoky air. Alex swallowed. "The assassination plot."

"Auguste and his circle have agents throughout the city. They plan to strike the leadership of the Third Estate during the coming days, in a way that appears to be revolutionary infighting. They will blame the radicals for killing their own moderates, and when the chaos peaks, the King will be forced to send the army in to restore order. Paris will be crushed. The revolution will die in its cradle."

"That's not how it happened." The words left Alex before he could stop them.

Camille's brow furrowed. "How it happened? You speak as if these events have already occurred."

Alex opened his mouth, closed it. The candle flickered between them, and for a moment he saw his own reflection in her dark eyes—a man from two centuries in the future, bleeding in a tunnel beneath a burning fortress, holding the secrets of what was and what might be.

"I'm not from here," he said finally. "I'm not from this time. I don't know how much you know about Henri's methods, but he sent me here. Through—" He gestured vaguely at the stone above them. "Through something. A door in time."

Camille didn't laugh. She didn't even look surprised. "Henri found the door forty years ago, in the catacombs beneath the family estate. He was the only one who could open it, and he used it sparingly. He was afraid of what might come through."

"He wasn't afraid to send me."

"No." Her voice softened. "He sent you because I asked him to. When I learned of Auguste's plot, I begged Henri to find us someone from beyond—someone who could see the threads we couldn't see. Someone who could warn us whether the revolution would succeed or fail, so we might choose the right side before it was too late."

Alex stared at her. "You wanted to know if the monarchy would survive."

"I wanted to know where to place the family fortune." Her smile was wry. "I am a royalist by blood, Monsieur Renard, but I am a survivor by nature. If the revolution is inevitable, I would rather be its friend than its corpse."

"He sent me to you," Alex said slowly, understanding clicking into place. "The tunnel, the map, all of it—he set this up."

"He set the path. You walked it." Camille leaned forward. "So tell me, historian. Does my family survive this summer?"

Alex thought of the guillotine. Of the lists of names. Of the tumbrils rolling through streets that would run red before summer's end.

"Some of them do," he said carefully. "If they leave France."

Camille's jaw tightened. "And if they stay?"

"None."

Silence stretched between them, broken only by the distant crash of masonry above. Camille's face was unreadable, but her hands had stilled, clutching the candle so tightly her knuckles showed white.

"I was to be married this October," she said quietly. "To a man from a minor noble house. The alliance would have secured the family for a generation." She looked up at him. "I was imprisoned instead, for refusing to testify against the Third Estate leaders."

"Why would you refuse?"

"Because I knew what Auguste was planning, and I would not be part of it. When I refused, he arranged my arrest—family scandal, they said. Better for me to rot in the Bastille than to betray the cause." She laughed, bitter and broken. "He wrote to me yesterday, through my gaoler. He believes the fortress will fall and the mob will tear me apart. He sent his best agent to ensure it."

"His agent?"

"A man with a distinctive mark—he wears red heels. Old court fashion. Auguste thinks it makes his enforcer identifiable to allies and dangerous to enemies." She shook her head. "If he finds me before we reach the surface—"

"Then we need to move." Alex pushed himself upright, gasping as pain shot through his leg. The wound had gone from numb to burning, and he could feel the fever climbing his spine like a vine. "The tunnel exits somewhere in the city. Your cousin—"

"Auguste is at Versailles. He has the full list of targets, the agents' names, the timings." Camille rose and offered her shoulder. "Lean on me. We have perhaps an hour before this tunnel collapses."

"The map." Alex pulled the two fragments from his coat, the edges matching perfectly where Pierre had joined them. Camille took them, studying the markings in the candlelight, and pointed to a spot near the Bastille's southern wall.

"Saint-Antoine district. The tunnel opens beneath a vintner's cellar." Her finger traced a line through the streets. "From there, we can reach the river. Versailles is a day's ride."

"Versailles." Alex thought of the distance, of his leg, of the army that would be mobilizing even now. "You want to stop your cousin before he kills the revolution's leaders."

"I want to stop him before he plunges France into a war she cannot win." She tucked the map into her sleeve. "I may not share the revolutionaries' dreams, but I know a tide when I see one. Auguste is trying to hold back the sea with his bare hands."

"And you're trying to ride the wave."

"I am trying to survive the ocean." She steadied him as he limped forward. "As are you, I suspect."

Alex thought of the timeline unraveling around him, of the history he knew dissolving into something new with every step he took. He'd tried to save De Launay and killed him instead. He'd tried to prevent a massacre and accelerated it. Maybe Camille was right. Maybe the only way forward was to embrace the current.

Or maybe he was just too tired to fight it anymore.

"The door," he said as they reached a junction in the tunnel. "Henri's door. Do you know how to open it? Can you send me home?"

Camille paused. Turned. In the candlelight, her face was a mask of calculation.

"I know where it is. But you cannot go home, Monsieur Renard." She held his gaze, steady and unblinking. "You've already changed too much. The door only opens once per journey, and yours opened the day you arrived. The way back closed the moment you stepped through."

Alex felt the walls close in around him, the tunnel suddenly suffocating. "Then how do I get back?"

"You don't." She began walking again, pulling him with her. "You find another door. And there is only one left in all of France."

"Where?"

"The catacombs beneath Versailles. The same place where Auguste holds the secrets of his plot." Her voice was quiet, almost apologetic. "Congratulations, Monsieur Renard. You were always going to end up there. The question is only whether you arrive with the revolution behind you—or the king's enforcers."

The ceiling above them groaned, and a shower of dust rained down. Somewhere in the darkness behind them, Alex heard footsteps that did not belong to the mob.