The great wooden doors of the Royal Granaries groaned.
Dust fell from the iron hinges. They hadn't been opened in fifty years.
Torches flared in the darkness of the warehouse. The light caught the golden curve of wheat sacks. The dark oak of wine barrels.
"Open the market," I whispered from the balcony.
Napoleon stood in the courtyard below. He signaled the drummers.
Rat-a-tat-tat.
The sound cut through the chaos of the square.
The Blue-Eyed mob froze. They were animals, driven by pain, but the sound of military discipline triggered a deep, instinctual fear.
They turned toward the Granaries.
Napoleon stepped forward. He didn't have a megaphone. He didn't need one. His voice was a cannon.
"CITIZENS OF PARIS!"
The square went silent. Even the dying stopped screaming to listen.
"THE KING SELLS RELIEF!"
Napoleon drew his pistol. He held it up.
"ONE PISTOL BUYS ONE BOTTLE! ONE MUSKET BUYS ONE SACK!"
He pointed to the open doors.
"LAY DOWN YOUR ARMS! DRINK! EAT! SLEEP!"
The mob hesitated.
Their brains were flooded with chemicals. The Blue Prophet had told them to eat the rich. To consume our blood.
But the smell of the wine drifted across the square.
Cheap red wine. Mixed with laudanum.
The smell of sleep.
A man in the front row dropped his rusty axe. He ran. He scrambled up the steps of the Granary.
A soldier handed him a bottle. The man didn't uncork it. He smashed the neck and drank.
He chugged the whole thing. Red wine spilled down his chin, mixing with the blue stain on his lips.
He gasped. Then he slumped against the wall. His eyes rolled back. The shaking stopped.
"It works!" someone screamed.
The dam broke.
They dropped their weapons. Pikes, knives, rocks. A rain of steel on cobblestones.
They surged forward. Not to kill. To buy.
I watched from the balcony.
"A hostile takeover," I murmured. "We just undercut the competition."
"The competition isn't happy," Talleyrand noted. He was peering through the spyglass.
I looked.
In the center of the square, the Blue Prophet was screaming.
He stood on the overturned statue of Louis XV. He was naked, painted blue, muscles twitching with adrenaline.
"NO!" the Prophet shrieked. "IT IS POISON! IT IS THE DEVIL'S PISS!"
He saw his congregation leaving him. He saw his power dissolving in a vat of cheap wine.
He grabbed a torch.
"PURGE THE WEAK!" the Prophet roared.
He jumped down from the statue.
He didn't charge the palace. He charged the Granary line.
His "Hardcore Investors"—the fanatics, the ones too far gone to be saved—followed him. Two hundred of them. Armed with hammers and cleavers.
They hit the crowd of drinkers from behind.
It was a massacre.
The Prophet swung a blacksmith's hammer. Crunch. A woman drinking wine collapsed, her skull caved in.
"DO NOT DRINK!" the Prophet screamed, swinging again. "EAT THE FLESH! ONLY BLOOD CURES!"
The fanatics tore into their own people. They were butchering the customers.
"They are liquidating the assets," I said. My knuckles turned white on the armrest of my wheelchair.
Napoleon looked up at me.
He saw the slaughter. He saw the civilians being cut down.
He raised his hand. He was asking for authorization.
Engagement Rules:
If we fire into the crowd, we kill the customers.
If we do nothing, the Prophet kills the customers.
"Save the market," I ordered.
I pulled the red handkerchief from my pocket. I dropped it over the railing.
It fluttered down like a bloodstain.
Napoleon caught it.
He grinned.
He turned to the Old Guard.
"FIX BAYONETS!"
Clack-clack. Fifty blades snapped onto fifty muskets.
"NO PRISONERS!" Napoleon roared. "CHARGE!"
They hit the fanatics like a steam engine.
It wasn't a battle. It was surgery.
The Old Guard moved in a phalanx. Stab. Step. Stab. Step.
The fanatics were wild, swinging their weapons in wide arcs. The soldiers were precise. They didn't aim for the head. They aimed for the gut.
The Prophet saw them coming.
He roared. He looked like a demon from a medieval painting. Blue skin, bloodshot eyes, covered in gore.
He charged Napoleon.
He raised the hammer.
Napoleon didn't flinch. He didn't even draw his sword.
He pulled a second pistol from his belt.
BANG.
The ball hit the Prophet in the knee.
The giant crumpled. The hammer flew from his hand.
He tried to stand up. He screamed in Coptic. Something about the Fire of God.
Napoleon stepped on his chest.
The Prophet clawed at Napoleon's boot. "I am... the voice... of the deep..."
"You are a noise complaint," Napoleon said.
He signaled two grenadiers.
"Hold him."
The soldiers pinned the Prophet's arms.
Napoleon walked to a barrel of the spiked wine. He grabbed a bottle.
He walked back to the Prophet.
"You said it was poison," Napoleon said.
He jammed the bottle into the Prophet's mouth. He smashed the glass against the man's teeth.
"Drink."
The Prophet gagged. He tried to spit it out. Napoleon clamped his hand over the man's mouth and nose.
The reflex kicked in. He swallowed.
And swallowed.
The laudanum hit his system. The adrenaline crashed.
The Prophet's eyes widened. Then fluttered.
His struggles weakened.
"The King's mercy," Napoleon whispered.
He let go.
The Prophet slumped back onto the cobblestones. He wasn't dead. He was snoring.
Around him, the fanatics were dead or fleeing. The rest of the mob was drinking in silence.
The square began to quiet down.
One by one, the bodies hit the floor. Not from bullets. From sleep.
Ten thousand people passed out in the Place de la Concorde.
It looked like a battlefield where death had been replaced by a coma.
"The silence," Talleyrand whispered. "It's back."
I wheeled myself back into the chamber.
The adrenaline was fading. The pain in my legs returned. A thumping, hydraulic pressure.
I coughed.
I covered my mouth with a napkin. When I pulled it away, it was soaked red.
Fresh blood. Arterial.
"Your Majesty!" Larrey rushed over.
"I'm fine," I lied. I shoved the napkin into my pocket.
I looked at the window.
I had saved the city. I had stopped the riots.
But I had done it by turning the population of Paris into state-sponsored drug addicts. I had bought peace with opium.
"We have a problem," Fouché said.
He was standing by the door. He held a ledger.
"What now, Joseph?" I asked. "Are the ghosts coming back?"
"No," Fouché said. "The bill."
He walked over. He opened the book.
"We promised a musket for a bottle. We promised payment to the Old Guard. We promised to rebuild the gates."
He pointed to the bottom line.
"The vault in the Bank of France is time-locked. The electronic seals fried in the EMP. We can't open it without blasting powder, and that risks collapsing the building."
"So we are liquid," I said. "Asset rich, cash poor."
"The soldiers won't work for free tomorrow," Fouché warned. "Napoleon is loyal today because he had a fight to win. Tomorrow, he will want his gold."
I rubbed my temples.
"We need capital," I muttered. "Fast capital."
I looked around the room. The gold leaf on the walls. The velvet curtains.
"Strip the palace," I said.
"It's not enough," Talleyrand said. "You need millions."
I looked out the window again.
Beyond the sleeping square, the spires of Notre Dame rose into the dark sky. The Church.
The Church had gold. Relics. Candlesticks. Years of tithes stored in the crypts.
And the Pope was in Rome. The telegraphs were dead. He couldn't excommunicate me if he couldn't hear me.
"Liquidate the Church," I said.
Fouché froze. "Your Majesty... that will cause a civil war with the clergy."
"The clergy didn't stop the Blue Prophet," I said. "I did."
I looked at Napoleon, who was walking back into the palace, wiping blood from his hands.
"Tell the General," I said, my voice cold as ice. "Tell him the Crusade isn't over. Tell him God owes us back taxes."
I leaned back in my chair.
The city slept. The monster slept.
But the Accountant never slept.
"Start the audit," I whispered. "Take everything that isn't nailed down."