Dawn broke over the Tuileries like a bruise. Purple, gray, and silent.
The screaming had stopped hours ago. Now, there was only the sound of water splashing on stone and the scrape of stiff bristles.
I stood on the balcony, watching the cleanup crew.
Servants in rough aprons were throwing buckets of water onto the cobblestones of the Cour du Carrousel. The water hit the stones clear and flowed into the gutters pink.
They were scrubbing away the massacre.
It reminded me of a factory accident I had handled once in Detroit. A press had malfunctioned. Three men dead. The next morning, the legal team was there with clipboards, and the janitors were there with bleach. The factory opened on time at 8:00 AM.
Business as usual.
"It is quite efficient, isn't it?" a voice said behind me.
I turned. Dr. Guillotin stood there. He looked gray. His kindly, spaniel eyes were rimmed with red.
"What is, Doctor?"
"The artillery," Guillotin said softly. "I spent ten years designing a machine to make death painless. To make it humane. A single stroke, faster than the nerve signal."
He looked down at the courtyard, where two soldiers were dragging a body by the heels toward a cart.
"You achieved the same result with two barrels of gunpowder," he said. "Wholesale death. No trial. No pain. Just... erasure."
"It was necessary," I said. My voice sounded mechanical, even to me. "They breached the gate."
"Of course, Majesty," Guillotin said. He bowed low, but he didn't look at me. "It is always necessary."
He walked away. He looked like he wanted to go home and burn his blueprints.
I gripped the railing. I wanted to call him back. I wanted to explain that I felt sick, that I hated the smell of copper and sulfur that clung to my clothes.
But a CEO doesn't apologize for protecting the company assets.
I turned and walked back into the palace.
The War Room was quiet. The maps were still rolled out on the table, marked with Napoleon's "kill zones."
Lafayette was waiting for me.
He wasn't wearing his blue uniform with the gold epaulettes. He was wearing a plain brown civilian coat. His white horsehair plume was gone.
He looked smaller.
"General," I said. "We need to discuss the perimeter for tonight. The mob will be back."
"I won't be here tonight," Lafayette said.
He reached into his coat and pulled out a folded piece of paper. He placed it on the map of Paris, right on top of the Tuileries.
"My resignation," he said.
I stared at the paper.
"You can't resign," I said. "You are the Commander of the National Guard. You are the hero of two worlds."
"I am a soldier of liberty," Lafayette said, his voice trembling with suppressed rage. "I fought for the rights of man. I did not fight to command a firing squad."
"They were looting the city!" I snapped. "They were burning the food stores!"
"Then arrest them!" Lafayette shouted. "Put them on trial! You fired canister shot into a crowd of starving citizens! You butchered them like cattle!"
"I saved the government!"
"You saved yourself!" Lafayette pointed a finger at my chest. "You have won the battle, Louis. Congratulations. You have your order. But you have lost the soul of the Revolution."
He stepped back. He looked at me with profound disappointment.
"I cannot serve a tyrant. Even a competent one."
He turned and walked to the door.
"Gilbert," I called out. It was a plea. "If you leave, who stands between me and the radicals?"
Lafayette paused at the door.
"You have your Corsican wolf now," he said bitterly. "Let him keep you warm."
The door slammed.
I stood alone in the silence.
Lafayette was my shield. He was the moderate face of the regime. The man the middle class trusted. Without him, I was just a King with a gun.
The door opened again.
I expected Napoleon.
It wasn't.
It was Maximilien Robespierre.
The "Incorruptible" wore his pristine green coat and his powdered wig. He looked like he had just come from a library, not a city in flames.
He walked to the table and looked at Lafayette's resignation letter. He didn't touch it.
"He was weak," Robespierre said. His voice was calm, analytical. "He wanted a revolution without blood. He wanted an omelet without breaking eggs."
I looked at Robespierre. This was the man who would eventually unleash the Terror. The man who would chop off ten thousand heads.
And right now, he was the only ally I had left.
"You approve of what I did?" I asked, wary.
"The people needed a strong hand," Robespierre said. He adjusted his glasses. "Anarchy is not liberty. If the mob burns the bread, the people starve. Protecting the supply chain is a revolutionary act."
He looked at me. His eyes were pale green, unblinking.
"But be careful, Louis."
"Careful of what?"
"Violence is a language," Robespierre said. "You have spoken it loudly. Now the people are listening. But they will judge you not by how you kill, but by who you kill."
He walked around the table, his fingers trailing over the map.
"Yesterday, you killed the poor. You killed the desperate. If you stop there, you are a tyrant. You are just another Bourbon king crushing the peasants."
He stopped and looked at me.
"To balance the scales... you must show them that your justice strikes the high as well as the low."
I understood immediately.
He was right. In a twisted, Machiavellian way, he was absolutely right.
If I massacred the mob and let the rich plotters go free, I was a monster. But if I massacred the mob and crushed the elite traitor who started the fire... I was a force of nature. Justice. Blind and brutal.
"Philippe," I whispered.
"The Duc d'Orléans," Robespierre nodded. "He funded the agitators. He leaked the letter. Everyone in the Assembly knows it. They are just waiting to see if you have the stomach to touch a Prince of the Blood."
He leaned in close.
"You have the cannon, Louis. Do you have the will?"
I thought of Philippe sitting in my chair. I thought of the burnt lace in my fireplace. I thought of his smirk when he told me I was alone.
He was betting on the old rules. He was betting that a King wouldn't arrest his own cousin without a six-month trial in the Parlement of Paris.
But the old rules died yesterday when the grapeshot flew.
"Jean!" I yelled.
The door to the secret passage opened instantly. Jean was already there.
"Get Captain Bonaparte," I ordered. "And bring me a blank Lettre de Cachet."
Jean's eyes widened.
The Lettre de Cachet. The symbol of royal tyranny. The blank arrest warrant that allowed the King to imprison anyone, indefinitely, without trial. The Revolution had banned them.
Using one was illegal. It was impeachable. It was political suicide.
Unless you had an army.
"Sire," Jean hesitated. "That is... unconstitutional."
"So is burning a warehouse," I said coldly. "Get the Captain."
Napoleon arrived five minutes later.
He was still wearing his uniform from yesterday. It was stained with gunpowder smoke. He looked energized, vibrant. While Lafayette looked broken by the violence, Napoleon looked fed by it.
"Majesty," he saluted.
I handed him the paper. I had filled in the name.
Louis Philippe II, Duc d'Orléans.
Napoleon read it. He smiled. A shark smelling blood.
"A high-value target," he said.
"He is at the Palais-Royal," I said. "It is a fortress of vice. He has his own private guards. He has immunity as a Deputy."
"Immunity is a legal concept," Napoleon said, tucking the warrant into his belt. "I deal in physics."
"Take your grenadiers," I said. "Go to the Palais-Royal. I don't want a siege. I want a raid."
"Dead or alive?" Napoleon asked. It was a casual question, like asking how I wanted my steak.
I paused.
Robespierre was watching me from the corner, judging my resolve.
If I killed Philippe, I was a murderer. If I let him live, he would keep plotting.
"Alive," I said. "I need his records. I need to know who he paid."
Napoleon nodded. "Understood."
"I'm coming with you," I added.
Napoleon raised an eyebrow. "It will be messy, Sire. Not a place for a King."
"I'm not going as a King," I said, checking the pistol Jean handed me. It felt heavy and cold. "I'm going as the Auditor."
I looked at Robespierre.
"You wanted balance?" I said. "I'm going to balance the books."
Robespierre smiled. It was a terrifying expression.
"Go," he said. "The Republic is watching."
We marched out of the Tuileries.
The sun was fully up now. The city was holding its breath. The streets were empty, the shops shuttered. Paris was terrified of the silence.
We broke the silence with the sound of boots.
Two hundred grenadiers. The elite shock troops. Big men with bearskin hats and muskets.
We marched down the Rue Saint-Honoré.
I walked in the center. I wasn't wearing my crown. I wasn't wearing my velvet cape. I was wearing a simple military coat.
I felt a strange calm settling over me.
For months, I had been reacting. Dodging accusations, putting out fires, spinning lies. I had been playing defense.
Today, for the first time, I was playing offense.
We reached the gates of the Palais-Royal.
It was a sprawling complex of arcades, cafes, and brothels. The headquarters of the radical chic. Philippe's personal kingdom.
Two guards in Orléans livery stood at the gate. They looked bored. They saw the column of grenadiers approaching. They saw the short officer in front and the King behind him.
Their jaws dropped. They fumbled for their weapons.
"Open the gate!" Napoleon barked.
"This is private property!" one guard stammered. "The Duke—"
Napoleon didn't slow down. He signaled his sergeant.
The sergeant stepped forward and smashed the butt of his musket into the guard's face. Bone crunched. The guard went down.
The other guard threw his hands up.
"Breach," Napoleon ordered.
The grenadiers kicked the gates open.
We swarmed inside.
Gamblers in silk coats scattered, overturning tables. Courtesans screamed and ran. It was like kicking an anthill.
I didn't look at them. I kept my eyes on the main residence at the end of the courtyard.
Philippe was in there. Probably eating breakfast. Probably laughing about how he had checkmated me.
He didn't know the rules had changed.
He thought this was a chess match.
He didn't know I had flipped the board.