The last time I saw the Chevalier, I'd left him bleeding in an alley. Now he looked at me like I was something he'd scraped off his boot.
His hatred was a living thing in the room, so thick you could taste it. My men bristled, hands on their weapons. I waved them back. This was not a military problem. This was an information problem.
"Get him a chair," I ordered. "And a glass of wine."
One of my men shoved a rickety chair behind the Chevalier. He collapsed into it, his pride the only thing holding him upright. Another man poured a cheap, sour red wine into a cup and placed it on the table in front of him. The Chevalier stared at it with disgust.
"I will not drink your gutter swill," he hissed.
"Suit yourself," I said, pulling up my own chair. I didn't sit like a king. I sat like an auditor, leaning forward, my hands clasped on the table.
This was an interrogation, but I wasn't going to ask him a single question about troop movements or my brother Artois's plans. That's what he was prepared for. He was an aristocrat, trained to die bravely with his secrets intact. But he wasn't trained for what I was about to do. I was going to critique his work.
I spread the inventory sheets from his captured convoy across the table. They were crude, written by Fournier's semi-literate clerks, but they were detailed.
"This is a disaster," I said, shaking my head with genuine professional disappointment. "An absolute mess."
The Chevalier stared at me, his lip curled in a sneer. "Your opinion means less than nothing to me."
"It should," I countered, tapping a line item on one of the sheets. "Look at this. 'Twelve chests of gold coin.' No weight listed. No denomination. No seal of origin. It's just a number. It's amateurish. You were practically begging to get caught."
I picked up another sheet. "And this. 'A box of unmounted diamonds.' Tucked away in a carriage full of dresses. No proper shielding. No manifest. Any competent customs agent would have found this in minutes. My brother Artois needs a better class of logistician. This is just sloppy."
His sneer faltered. I wasn't attacking his loyalty. I wasn't threatening him with torture. I was insulting his professional competence. For a man of his arrogance, it was a deeper wound than any sword could inflict.
"You think this little victory matters?" he spat, his voice tight. "You think stopping a few carriages stops anything?"
"It's not about stopping it," I said, leaning back. "It's about the incompetence of the attempt. This is pocket money, isn't it? A slush fund for bribes and expenses. The real financing for the invasion is coming from somewhere else."
He flinched. A tiny, almost imperceptible reaction. But I saw it. I had hit the mark.
"You think you are clever, you little clerk," he snarled, his composure cracking. "But you know nothing of the real world. The real plan is already in motion. And it doesn't rely on boxes of coins."
He leaned forward, his eyes burning with a feverish, triumphant hate. He wanted to hurt me, to show me how out of my depth I was.
"The King of Prussia doesn't take payments in diamonds," he whispered, his voice a venomous hiss. "He takes them in promises. Promises of land. Alsace. Lorraine. That is the price of your head, accountant."
He had just confirmed my worst fear. They weren't just seeking aid. They were actively negotiating with foreign powers to carve up France in exchange for military intervention. They were willing to destroy the country to get it back. It was treason on a scale I could barely comprehend.
"Thank you, Chevalier," I said, my voice dangerously soft. "Your testimony has been most helpful."
His face went white as he realized what he'd just done.
I stood up. "Take him away," I ordered. "Put him in the deepest cell in the Châtelet. He is no longer an enemy combatant. He is a material witness for the state."
As they dragged him out, Fournier and Lafayette returned. The energy coming off them was electric. The operation had been a staggering success.
"We've sealed a dozen of the great houses," Lafayette reported, his face flushed with a mixture of excitement and disbelief. "The Duc de Montmorency's, the Rohan estate... they left everything."
"And we've stopped over thirty carriages on the roads," Fournier boomed, slapping a heavy sack onto the table. It landed with the solid, clinking thud of gold. "They were packed to the rafters with this stuff. We've got wagons full of it."
The sheer amount of confiscated wealth was intoxicating. It was also a massive new problem. Fournier's men, who had been a hungry mob this morning, were now guarding a fortune. They were still hungry, and now they were surrounded by temptation.
"This wealth does not belong to me," I declared, my voice cutting through the rising excitement. "It does not belong to the National Guard. It belongs to the Nation."
I looked from Fournier's greedy eyes to Lafayette's worried ones. "And the first debt the Nation will pay is to its protectors."
I authorized them on the spot. "Take the silver coins. All of them. Give every man who answered the call, who stood a post, who followed an order today, his first official wages as a soldier of the National Guard."
A roar of approval went up from the men in the tavern. I had just funded my revolutionary army with the money of the very people who wanted to destroy it. It was the most satisfying transaction of my entire life.
With the day's crises finally over, a bone-deep weariness settled over me. I found a moment of quiet, stepping out onto a small iron balcony overlooking the street below. The smoke had cleared from the air. The chaotic shouting had been replaced by the steady tramp of booted feet on cobblestones. National Guard patrols, with Tricolore cockades on their hats, moved through the torch-lit streets. For the first time, Paris felt secure. It felt like it was mine.
De La Tour appeared at my elbow, silent as a shadow. He handed me a small, sealed letter. "From the Queen, Your Majesty. It arrived an hour ago."
My heart clenched. I broke the wax seal. Her handwriting was elegant, but the strokes were hurried, anxious. It wasn't a long letter. It was only three sentences.
I do not know what madness you are performing in that city. I only know that you must come back in one piece. The children miss their father.
The words were a punch to the gut. Their father. Not their king. It was a raw, powerful reminder of the personal stakes behind all this grand, historical maneuvering. Of the life I was fighting for.
Before I could even fold the letter, another messenger pushed his way forward. This one wore the livery of the foreign ministry at Versailles. He carried a single, heavy parchment with an imposing wax seal.
"From the Austrian ambassador, Your Majesty. Marked with the highest urgency."
This was it. The first international response. I broke the seal. The letter was from Leopold II, the Holy Roman Emperor. Marie's brother.
It was couched in the flowing, polite language of diplomacy, but the message was as subtle as a hammer. He wrote of the deeply troubling "reports of lawlessness in Paris." He spoke of his profound concern over the "effective imprisonment of the royal family." He ended by demanding, in no uncertain terms, an immediate explanation and a personal guarantee of the safety of his sister, the Queen of France.
The threat was perfectly clear, written in the ink between the lines. Harm a hair on her head, and my armies will burn your revolution to the ground.
I walked back into the tavern. Lafayette and the Assembly delegates who had remained read the letter, their faces growing grim.
"This is a prelude to war," one of the delegates said, his voice trembling. "He is laying the groundwork for an invasion."
"We must send a harsh, defiant reply!" another argued. "Show them that the French Nation is not afraid!"
They started debating, arguing over phrasing, over threats and counter-threats.
I waved them to silence. "You are thinking like politicians," I said. "He has sent me a threat disguised as a letter. We will send him a message disguised as one."
I pushed aside the inventory sheets and pulled a clean piece of parchment towards me. I was not going to write to the Emperor. I was not going to engage in their game of diplomatic chess.
I dipped a quill in the ink. I was going to write a personal letter.
I handed the parchment to a stunned Lafayette. He read the opening line aloud, his voice filled with disbelief.
"My Dearest Brother Leopold..."
I was bypassing every chancellery, every ambassador, every protocol in Europe. I wasn't writing as a King to an Emperor. I was writing as a husband. A brother-in-law. A man trying to protect his family.
And I was about to tell him a version of the truth—about Artois, about the émigrés, about the assassination attempt on my son—that he would never hear from his spies. I was going to turn their greatest weapon, Marie's safety, into my own.
I was about to audit the balance sheet of an entire continent.