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“What’s all this about?” another drunken voice called from the little shack that housed the guards at the gate. “Sergeant?”
“You should be ashamed of yourself, Sergeant,” Tristan went on, feeling righteous anger eclipse his better judgment. “If you were really concerned about the law, you might have looked at our papers. If we were not who we said, that would be a reason to detain us, but you are too much an idiot to think of that.”
“You don’t have to give him ideas,” the footman muttered out of the side of his mouth.
“If you had any sense at all,” Tristan said, pushing the man backward again, “you would let us pass. Doing so makes you a national hero. You will have saved the city from an outbreak of disease.”
The sergeant finally righted himself, and Tristan saw that his last words had fallen on deaf ears. If he’d said them earlier, they might have been effective, but now the sergeant’s cheeks were red and his breath huffed in and out with rage.
“I’ll see you on the scaffold for daring to touch me,” he said, spittle flying from his lips. “I’ll have the lot of you arrested and sent to La Force. You’ll be dead within—”
A hand came from behind Tristan and slammed the sergeant in the jaw. Tristan turned sharply, shocked to see Alexandra Martin behind him, looking quite recovered from her illness.
“That one!” she said to the footman, who had also been staring at her with some surprise. But now he raced after the other guard who had emerged from the shack and seeing his superior struck, turned to sound the alarm. Tristan held his breath for a moment, certain all was lost, before the footman made a flying leap and tackled the man just inches from the warning bell.
He punched the man, sending him sliding across the ground in a cloud of dust. Tristan looked down at the man Citoyenne Martin had struck and noted he was getting to his feet. “Sound the alarm!” he bellowed. “We are under—”
Tristan punched him, pulling his hand back sharply at the pain.
“Good work,” Citoyenne Martin said. “He’s out.”
Tristan looked at his feet, where the sergeant lay in a heap.
“Too bad you had to ruin everything else.”
Tristan gaped at her. “Me? Ruin everything? I tried to save our hides! I was the only one not pretending to die or pray. Without me, we’d be on our way back to the city.”
She glared at him. “Without you, we would be on the other side of this gate. All you had to do was keep quiet and let the man realize he had no choice but to let us pass.”
“He was too drunk to realize that.”
“He was not too drunk to want a bribe, which my man was prepared to offer. Before you jumped up and pushed your way out of the carriage, ruining everything.”
Tristan opened his mouth, then shut it again. How had he missed it? The sergeant’s mention of being poor. The way he had cited the law and held out his hand. He’d wanted assignats. But of course! Tristan had not considered a bribe. He forgot everyone did not have his principles. Not everyone cared more about liberty, equality, and fraternity as much as they did about greasing their own pockets.
“Now get back in the carriage.”
“I apologize,” Tristan said, knowing the sentiment was too little too late.
“Oh, I imagine you will be sorry enough,” she said. Tristan narrowed his eyes, not liking the way that sounded. But then she gestured for him to climb into the carriage again and he did. She followed, but the carriage did not move.
In the silence, he heard two muffled pistol shots, one coming almost right after the other.
“What was that?” he demanded.
“After that fiasco, we can’t have witnesses,” she said, her face looking pale and strained. The abbé began to pray in earnest then, and Tristan turned his head to stare out the window. But all he saw was the footman walking back to the carriage and climbing onto the back. The coachman called to the horses and they were away.
But Tristan’s thoughts lingered for a long time on the two dead men and the fact that though he hadn’t pulled the trigger, he was as much their murderer as the man who had.
