by H. G. Parry
The dark and cold were like drowning in winter nights, and yet the worst part was the screams. The shadows called out to him, mocking him with the cries of his victims, and he couldn’t close his ears to them, because they spoke inside his head. He lay on the bed, curled in on himself, shuddering. He couldn’t breathe.
Perhaps he slept, or a dream came to him without sleep, because at one point he recognized the garden. His benefactor who was now his enemy stood by the dying rosebushes. Behind him, the Knights Templar were coming for his mother.
“Camille was right, wasn’t he?” Robespierre said. His tongue felt thick in his mouth. “I felt you in the Convention back there. You didn’t just abandon me. You stirred them to attack me.”
“Yes,” his enemy said. “I did.”
The ability to nudge and influence, Camille had said of vampires. It would have been so simple. He’d been using mesmerism in public for years. Mesmerism was very difficult to detect, but it was not impossible. All it would take was a whisper in an ear, a tweak of the eye. Look at him. The Incorruptible. Don’t his eyes seem a little too aflame? Don’t people seem to die at his word a little too easily? He had told them all to be suspicious, after all. He had urged them to share his fear.
“I felt your influence over the crowds, just as Camille described. I felt it for the first time at the Bastille, against the guards. You kept me away from the riots after that, but I wouldn’t be surprised if you were doing it all across France.”
“No,” his enemy said. “You shouldn’t be surprised.”
“You tried to stop Camille from working it out, didn’t you? He was right about that too. You were inside his head.”
“And you, Maximilien François Marie Isidore de Robespierre,” his enemy said, “you cut off his head, reanimated his corpse, and sent it to fight in the fields of Spain. I think neither of us can claim an unblemished conduct with regard to that gentleman, don’t you agree?”
“Why?” he asked, but the garden was gone, and then there was simply shadow after shadow, and all of them screaming. Robespierre curled up in a ball, but he couldn’t hide. They were inside him: they could haunt his dreams and follow him to the waking world. All he could do was endure, and perhaps he couldn’t even do that.
“Camille,” he said once, out loud. “Oh God, Camille, I am so sorry.”
He didn’t know what he was apologizing for. Even now, he could think of nothing else he could have done. But he was still sorry.
By the time his brother came to let him out, Robespierre was scarcely aware of time or place. It had, he thought, been only hours, but they had been hours spent somewhere he didn’t understand, somewhere far darker and colder than a mere prison cell.
“Maximilien,” Augustin was saying, low and urgent. Through the fog of shadows, he felt his brother’s hands on his shoulders. Two other men held the door, talking in low whispers. “It’s me. Us. Are you well? We need to go.”
It took a good deal to stir himself out of that place in his head and into the real world. He never quite made it all the way. “Go?”
“You surely couldn’t imagine any prison would agree to hold us for long?” His brother bent down and took up his wrist. Robespierre felt the bracelet loosen its grip, and then his brother slipped it off and threw it aside. “The National Convention may have turned on us, but this is the middle of Paris. You’re Robespierre. The Paris Commune forbade any prison to take us at all.”
So the government of Paris was defying the Republic of France—or, more accurately, the Republic was splintering yet again. It might almost be possible for Paris to seize control of the Republic: all the strongest magicians were in the city, and always had been. But it would depend on all of Paris being with them, and he had walked in suspicion too long to believe that was true.
“Maximilien…”
“Yes.” He blinked hard, willing the shadows to clear. “Who do you mean by ‘us’? Who else was arrested?”
“Don’t you remember? I was, for a start—I asked to go with you, but they separated us all. Saint-Just was taken, of course. Couthon, too, and Lebas. Hanriot tried to stop them, and so they took him too.” The names were coming too fast to fit to sense. Couthon had lost the use of his legs some time ago; he would make a pathetic figure at the guillotine. Lebas, of course, was Babette’s husband.
“Is Babette safe? And the rest of the Duplays?”
“I think they’re safe. Their house is boarded up. Now there’s an uprising out there. The—”
Augustin stopped as Robespierre laughed once, shortly and hysterically.
“I’m sorry,” he said as he caught himself. “But you have to admit those are in the air these days.”
Augustin smiled, perhaps in relief that his brother seemed to be coming back. If so, he misjudged. “This one is for us—for you, really. The Paris Commune are rising against the Convention in support of you. I’ve just been there, talking to them. The city gates are closed. Listen. Can you hear the tocsin ringing from the Hôtel de Ville? It’s a call to battle.”
Robespierre didn’t bother to tell his brother that he could hear little at that moment above the whisper of ghosts. He shook himself, his brief hilarity gone. “It can’t be. Not again. Let me talk to the Convention. Surely—”
“You have talked to them. That’s what started this,” Augustin said bluntly. He tightened his grip on his shoulder at once, comforting. “No, no, not really. It would have happened anyway. It was inevitable. But it can’t be undone. We need to leave, and get to safety.”
His limbs were like water; his brother needed to haul him physically to his feet, and still his head swam.
“The Commune don’t have control of all the districts of Paris,” he said when he was capable. “And they can’t stop the people from rioting. If the Convention finds enough support within the city, closing the gates won’t be enough.”
“I know,” Augustin said. “That’s why we need to leave quickly.”
They were hunted men in a city that could at any moment turn on them. In a similar position, the Girondins had scattered and fled, melting into the stones of Paris and the surrounding country. It was madness for them to return to the Hôtel de Ville. Yet Robespierre raised no protest as the carriage bumped and jolted its way across the Seine. The Girondins had not escaped death either—perhaps one or two had survived, but not in any way that mattered.
It was night, yet the streets were blazing with lamps and candles. Once, as he leaned against the window to fight a wave of faintness, he saw a cannon being rolled past. The rumble of its wheels on the cobbles shook the carriage.
“Everything that hasn’t already been sent to the front is being brought to the Hôtel de Ville,” Augustin said when he caught his glance. “I told you, this is war. The call has gone out to the city to rally in your defense.”
The Hôtel de Ville looked glorious at night. Every room was lit up from within, and the great bell sounded like a chime from the stars.
Robespierre and his brother were shepherded upstairs, to a room with only one small window and a fire blazing. There seemed to be people everywhere, coming and going and whispering. Three of the other members of the Convention were waiting for them in the same room: Lebas, Couthon, Hanriot. He managed to acknowledge them; they barely managed to return it. All were pale and determined. Saint-Just was still missing.
Augustin helped Robespierre sit down and handed him a glass. He drained it without tasting; the rim clinked against his chattering teeth. He couldn’t stop shaking.
“It’s all right,” Augustin said, over and over. Perhaps, even in the circumstances, he could find some comfort in the novelty of looking after his elder brother. “It’s all right now. Rest here. We’re safe.”
They weren’t safe. He knew this too well. If his own intellect and experience were not enough to tell him so, he could still feel the presence in his head, and it was not at all concerned about his escape.
“Where’s Charlotte?” he managed to ask. �
�Did she get out?”
“She’s gone into hiding for now. A friend is helping—even I don’t know who. She’ll be safe.”
That was something, at least, if it were true. He tried to feel that. But the shadows were thick about him, and he was so cold.
“They don’t understand,” he heard himself say. “It wasn’t me. It was France. It was the Revolution.”
“You are the Revolution to them,” Augustin said. “You made yourself the Revolution. They can’t see where you end and it begins.”
He wasn’t sure if this was what he had meant to do. It didn’t matter.
Saint-Just came in only minutes later. He alone of them looked much as he ever had: proud, contemptuous, ice-cold and marble white. The Angel of Death. Their own death was coming very close, and he didn’t seem to notice or care. He didn’t acknowledge the others or talk to them, not even to Robespierre. Perhaps he was right. They had been friends before, even close friends; now they were strangers in a waiting room, and the gulf between them could have spanned a thousand miles.
They didn’t have long to wait. A man, one of the mayor’s staff, put his head in the door as the clock was striking one in the morning. Augustin rose to speak to him; their voices were low, but not so low that Robespierre couldn’t hear through the shadows.
“They’re coming,” the man said. “Soldiers are marching on the building. Some of them are being stopped. Many are being let through.”
Augustin closed his eyes briefly. “How many men do we have?”
“Only thirteen sections have sent men to fight for us. The rest are either neutral or with the Convention.” He glanced sideways at Robespierre. “What’s wrong with him?”
Augustin followed his glance. “He’s—”
“Nothing,” Robespierre said suddenly. His pride flared inside him, enough to pull together the shattered fragments of his identity and his sanity. The shadows were blown back. He got to his feet and stayed there. “Why do you ask that? How many are with the Convention, for certain?”
The man flushed, and his voice was more respectful when he replied. “We don’t know yet. But they’ll be here soon enough.”
“Then we need to be ready for them.”
Augustin spoke up tentatively. “I hate to ask. But—if circumstances allow it—if we manage to kill any of them before they kill us—could you give us an army of the dead? We have the two of you. The Incorruptible and the Angel of Death. You and Saint-Just, between you—?”
He hadn’t thought his heart could sink any further. He hadn’t even been certain he still had a heart. But he did.
He glanced at Saint-Just. His friend met his eyes for the first time since he’d entered the room, and nodded slowly.
“We don’t have the corpses yet, of course,” Augustin said. “But if we do—I mean, I know you’re unwell—”
“Of course I can,” Robespierre said. “If circumstances allow it. Of course.”
He knew he couldn’t. But perhaps he was wrong. Perhaps he could. That power was his own; it didn’t come from his benefactor. Perhaps, even if it killed him, he could. For France, or at least the France in his head, which still was not quite dead.
He had to sit down again after the man disappeared, and the shadows flocked back the thicker in payment for his brief moment of clarity. His brother put his hand on his shoulder, and recoiled.
“My God,” he whispered. For the first time, he sounded frightened. “You’re freezing. Is there—Can I do anything? What can I do?”
“Nothing.” Robespierre rubbed his brow, which was aching. “There’s nothing. Just—”
He didn’t finish his sentence. His pride wouldn’t allow him to ask his brother to stay near and drown out the voices, and besides, they were his voices. He had agreed to hear them when he had agreed to raise the dead. He had no regrets about what he had done, but he deserved to hear them all the same.
Very soon, the voices were mingled with the sound of soldiers at the door.
Five thousand miles away, Fina heard no voices. But she was watching. Her body sat, knees drawn to her chin, on the ground of a storehouse within the British fort. Her mind looked through Robespierre’s eyes. Her magic had strengthened lately with use, like a muscle; now she could feel not only his cold but his fear, humming like a vibrating string pulled too tight.
“What’s happening?” she whispered. “What did it make you give?”
The French room shook, as if from a cannon blast; even without sound, her eyes flew open with a start.
In the Caribbean, night had not yet fallen, and she opened her eyes to a storeroom bathed in gold. Toussaint was standing in front of her. He might have been there for an hour, or for a few moments: she had lost track of time. It was the first time she had seen him close since the stranger had come to their camp.
“I was looking for you.” His voice was softer than she had heard it in weeks. “Where were you?”
She had been right here, in body, but she knew he didn’t mean that.
“The stranger betrayed him.” Her words came clumsily as her mind came back to her body. “The other man, the little French necromancer. Right now, half a world away, he’s killing him. I still don’t understand why, or what it has to do with Saint-Domingue. But whatever else the little Frenchman was, he started out by wanting to help us.”
Toussaint sat down on the crate opposite her. He was dusty from the road, and his hair seemed more grizzled without him seeming particularly older. “You saw the stranger with him?”
“I tried to look through the stranger’s eyes,” Fina said. “I wanted to see him when he was awake. I couldn’t—I couldn’t even when he was in the tent with you. But part of him is still in the head of the Frenchman, half a world away, and so I saw through the Frenchman’s eyes instead. I saw the shadows around him. And just once, I heard the stranger laugh. You have no reason to believe me—”
“I believe you,” Toussaint interrupted. “I owe you an apology for speaking to you the way I did the day the stranger came to the camp.”
“I don’t care about that,” she said, which wasn’t true. It had hurt deeply—and, what was worse, disappointed her. She felt the rift between them begin to knit together now, like skin healing over. But it wasn’t the most important thing. “It doesn’t matter how you spoke to me. I wanted you to listen to me. I still do.”
“I should have,” he said. “I didn’t want to hear. I know you tried to warn me about the stranger; I know you have doubts about his intentions. I share them. Whatever he meant by helping us to freedom, I don’t think he did it to be kind.”
That put into perfect words exactly what she had felt from his head. It surprised her—not that Toussaint had understood, but that until now she hadn’t.
“No,” she said slowly. “He isn’t kind. Perhaps that doesn’t matter, in itself. After all, Dessalines isn’t kind either, in battle.” Toussaint’s mouth twitched, and she smiled faintly at the understatement. “But it’s different. Dessalines is angry. The stranger turns people’s own anger against them. He uses it, and them, and then he throws them away. And whatever his plans are, they aren’t for us.”
“And you think we shouldn’t be a part of them.”
She might have said so, even a few minutes ago. But the horror of being inside the French necromancer’s head was fading; so, too, was some of her fear, now she knew she was being trusted and believed. It was easy to concede that she knew nothing about the man the stranger was killing as they spoke; nothing but that he had believed in their freedom, and that he had killed thousands of people. It was hard to forget that she had come here, after all, because a cry for revenge had gone out across the ocean and she had wanted to answer. Perhaps she still did. Revenge and justice were still very confused in her head.
“I’m sorry for speaking when I shouldn’t have, before,” she said, and knew she was delaying.
“When you shouldn’t have? You mean when I didn’t want to hear it? They’re not necessarily th
e same thing.” He didn’t take his eyes from her. “I’m asking you to speak now.”
She knew it. It became so much more difficult to speak when someone would actually listen.
“I don’t know,” she said at last. “I don’t know what he promised you, or what you promised him—beyond his safe passage, and your allegiance to France. That is why we’ve allied ourselves with the French, isn’t it?”
“It’s part of it,” he agreed. “Though I wouldn’t have done it without a guarantee that France had already outlawed slavery.”
“The necromancer wanted to outlaw slavery a long time ago. The stranger stopped him. I think he let him do so now only to secure your allegiance.”
“That would be no difference to most of France,” Toussaint said. He wasn’t arguing, just listening. “Most of the Convention don’t want us to be free. They want us to help them keep the island from Spain and England, and our freedom is the price they’re finally willing to pay.”
“But we know that,” Fina said. “We know the worst that could happen from them when we’re no longer useful. We don’t know what the stranger plans for us.”
“True. Yet we have plans of our own, and we might need him to accomplish them.”
“That’s what I need to understand,” she said. “Before I answer your question. Even when I wanted his help, when I first came here, you didn’t trust him. You still don’t. And you would never be guided by anger or fear. So what has he promised you?”
“That’s why I came to fetch you. I wanted to show you. I told you, didn’t I, that I had weather magic in my blood? Barely awakened, but there.”
“I know. It’s useless.” She was half joking, and he smiled.
“The stranger offered to awaken it. To make it less useless—to set it free, perhaps, as we were set free.” He stood. “I promised you that I would never ask you to stand by my side in battle. I still won’t order you; as you so rightly said, you’re free to do as you want. But I’m afraid I’ve come to break my promise, nonetheless. I have a battle before me now, this very moment. Will you stand with me?”