Chapter One:
Hoofbeats hammered the cobblestones, echoing between the stone walls like musket fire.
“Catch him! Don’t let the bastard escape!”
Voices scattered in the dark, too many, too loud, chasing their own echoes. Gabriel pulled his horse around the corner, the reins slick with rain, his jaw set tight. A shadow flitted through the orange haze of a streetlamp. The cape. There.
“He’s headed north!” He kicked his heels; Apollo surged forward, hooves skidding.
The streets here were a narrow, twisting warren built for ghosts. Even by day they confounded him. At night they felt almost deliberate in their confusion, as if Paris herself was laughing at him. Behind him, his men’s shouts tangled into nonsense. He was alone.
He slowed to listen. Nothing. Just his own breath and the muffled groan of the saddle.
Twelve years in this city, and he still lost his way. They’d whisper it again tomorrow: the country boy playing inspector, the lion of the Committee gone chasing his own tail. He could hear the laughter already. Le bouseux. The bumpkin.
If the fugitive escaped, it wouldn’t just be another failure. The Committee would smell weakness. And weakness got people killed.
He tugged the reins, forcing Apollo to a halt. The cobbles glistened black beneath the mist. The smell of soot and horse sweat filled his lungs.
“Where have you gone, Josquin?”
No answer.
The quiet pressed too close. Gabriel’s pulse thudded in his ears. He hated waiting, the stillness between knowing and not. It always felt like punishment.
Something scraped above him.
A gunshot broke the silence like a thunderclap.
Apollo reared, screaming. Gabriel hit the ground hard, breath knocked loose. Pain shot down his arm. He rolled just in time to see the horse bolt, shoes sparking against the cobbles.
“Come out!” he shouted into the dark. His voice sounded smaller than he’d meant. He raised it. “Come out, you coward!”
A laugh answered him, disembodied and echoing. “The lion himself, hunting poor little me.”
He turned toward the sound, pistol raised, scanning the rooftops. The air shimmered with fog. His blood was loud in his throat.
“You can come quietly,” said Gabriel. “Though I’d prefer to kill you now.”
“I’ll have to disappoint you,” the voice replied.
His eyes caught movement on the rooftop. Black on black. He fired. The muzzle flash briefly blinded him, but the trigger felt wrong. Misfire.
“Damn it.”
Josquin dropped from the roof. Steel hissed free. Gabriel barely drew his saber before the first strike came. The blades met with a shriek that made his teeth ache.
He pushed forward with cold efficiency. This, at least, made sense. The clarity of combat. No laws to quote, no speeches, just physics and blood.
When Josquin’s blade caught his shoulder, he hardly felt it. When his own found the man’s thigh, he did. The tremor through the hilt, the shock in the other man’s eyes, that was truth.
They broke apart, panting.
“You fight well,” Josquin said.
“As do you.”
Another flurry. Gabriel feinted left, caught a blow to the knee, stumbled back, drew the second pistol, and fired before the thought finished forming.
The ball struck home.
“You cheat,” Josquin wheezed.
“You mistook honor for virtue,” Gabriel said, steadying the sword as he drove it through the man’s chest. “They’re not the same thing.”
Josquin’s body hit the cobbles with a hollow thud.
The street went still again, only the whisper of fog moving through the alleys.
Gabriel wiped his blade on the man’s coat. The motion was automatic. Precision steadied him when his pulse refused to. He sheathed the sword and let out a slow breath, watching it cloud white in the cold air.
Somewhere ahead, a horse screamed.
He froze.
“Apollo.”
The sound erupted again—hooves scraping stone, the desperate thump of something trying and failing to rise. He ran. The sword knocked against his thigh with every stride until he reached the corner and saw the dark shape thrashing in the road.
The gelding’s leg was bent at an unnatural angle, a black shard against black stone. He was trembling all over, eyes wide and wet.
Gabriel’s throat tightened. “No, no, my friend.” He crouched beside him, running a hand along the heaving neck. The warmth there, the life pulsing frantically just under the surface, almost hurt to feel.
“Easy now. You did well.”
He searched for the wound, praying for something simple, fixable. There was none. Just the ruin of that leg. The cobblestones around them were slick with rain or blood. He couldn’t tell anymore.
“You’ll mend,” he said, but his voice betrayed him. It broke on the word.
The horse snorted, ears twitching toward the familiar sound.
Gabriel stood, turning away for a moment, trying to make his face blank before anyone saw. He heard boots behind him. One of his men, breathless.
“Inspecteur Allard!”
He didn’t look. “Here.”
The young man nearly tripped over Josquin’s corpse. “Was that—?”
“Your pistol,” Gabriel said.
“Pardon?”
“Your pistol,” he repeated, quieter.
The sergeant hesitated, then placed it in Gabriel’s outstretched hand.
Gabriel stroked Apollo’s muzzle. “Goodbye, old boy.” The horse shivered under his palm, as if trying to shake the words away.
He pressed the barrel to the base of the gelding’s skull and fired.
The crack rolled down the street, scattering the fog.
Silence followed—heavier than before.
He handed the pistol back, his hand steady now that the worst was over. “Find the others. Clean this up. Then go home.”
“Sir. Should I fetch another horse?”
“No.” Gabriel looked at the still shape on the cobbles. The word came out too fast. “No. I’ll walk.”
He turned toward the river and started down the empty street. The air smelled of gunpowder and rain. His arm burned where the blade had cut him, but it was a clean pain, and he welcomed it.
He didn’t look back. The echo of hooves was gone, and Paris was quiet again.
