Marseille wasn't a city anymore. It was a graveyard of ships.
Our stolen felucca drifted into the harbor. The water was choked with debris—charred wood, bloated crates, and the upside-down hull of a frigate.
"No flags," Marshal Ney whispered.
He scanned the docks with his telescope.
The Customs House was a blackened shell. The warehouses were looted, their doors ripped off like scabs. Smoke rose in thin, lazy columns from the Old Quarter.
"Where is the Tricolor?" Jean Chouan asked. He was rowing with one arm, his other hand resting on his pistol.
"Burned," I said.
I looked at the fort on the hill. A black flag snapped in the wind. A white skull painted on it.
"Pestilence Guard," I read the crude letters through my own glass. "Local militia. Or warlords."
We bumped against a rotting pier.
I climbed out first. My legs felt heavy. The ground swayed beneath me after days at sea.
"Cover the cargo," I ordered.
Chouan threw a tarp over the crate containing the Rothschild machine. Ney shouldered the pack with our meager supplies. I kept the flask of Golden Ichor in my inside pocket, against my heart.
We walked into the city.
The silence was wrong. A port city should roar. It should smell of fish and spices.
This city smelled of ash and unwashed bodies.
People huddled in doorways. They were thin, grey-skinned. The "Blue Drop" withdrawal had hit here too, but without a King to manage it, the chaos had burned itself out. The survivors were just ghosts.
"Horses," Ney said. "We need speed."
We found a livery stable near the market square. The doors were barred.
"Open up!" Chouan banged on the wood with his cutlass.
A slot slid open. Eyes peered out. Fearful eyes.
"We have no horses," a voice croaked. "The Baron took them all."
"The Baron?" I asked.
"De Sade," the voice whispered. "He rules the Ash now."
"De Sade?" Ney frowned. "The writer?"
"His cousin," the voice said. "Crueler. He has the guns."
"Where is he?" I asked.
"The Customs House," the stable master said. "But don't go. He collects a toll."
"We'll pay it," I said.
I turned to Ney and Chouan.
"Load weapons."
We walked to the Customs House.
It was the only building with armed guards. Twenty men in mismatched uniforms lounged on the steps. They held muskets, pikes, and a few stolen British rifles.
They saw us coming. Three ragged men. One boy. A mule.
"Halt!"
A man stepped out of the doors. He wore a velvet coat that was too big for him, stained with wine and grease. He had a powdered wig that sat crooked on his shaved head.
Baron de Sade.
He smiled. His teeth were black.
"Travelers," the Baron drawled. "Welcome to the Free State of Marseille."
"We are agents of the Crown," Ney said, stepping forward. His hand rested on his saber. "We require horses. Immediate requisition."
The Baron laughed. His men laughed with him. It was a jagged, ugly sound.
"The Crown?" The Baron mocked. "The Crown is silent. Paris is dark. The telegraphs are dead. There is no King here. Only me."
He walked down the steps. He eyed our mule. The tarp-covered crate.
"What's in the box?" the Baron asked. "Gold? Weapons?"
"State secrets," I said.
The Baron looked at me. He saw a boy. A dirty, sun-burned boy.
"A child spy?" he sneered. "How quaint."
He snapped his fingers.
"Open it."
Two guards moved toward the mule.
Ney tensed. Chouan's hand drifted to his pistol.
"Don't," I said softly to my team. "Too many guns. Bad math."
I stepped between the guards and the crate.
"You want to see?" I asked the Baron.
"I want to take," the Baron corrected. "This is a toll road. The toll is everything you have."
I climbed onto the cart. I stood on the crate.
I looked down at the Baron.
"You think Paris is silent because the King is weak?" I shouted. My voice echoed off the ruined buildings.
The guards paused.
"The King shut down the telegraphs to flush out traitors!" I lied. "He turned off the lights to see who would steal in the dark!"
I kicked the tarp off the crate.
The sun hit the brass gears of the Babbage Engine. The complex clockwork mechanisms. The punch cards. The glass lenses.
It looked alien. Advanced. Terrifying to men who had just lived through the EMP.
"What is that?" a guard whispered. "A bomb?"
"A transmitter," I said. "A recording device."
I pointed to the glass lens on the front.
"It is capturing your faces right now. It is storing your names in the Black Ledger."
The Baron took a step back. He looked nervous. He was a thug, but he was a superstitious thug. He had seen the sky turn to fire. He feared the "Great Flash."
"You lie," the Baron hissed. "It's just a clock."
"Is it?" I challenged. "Touch it. See if the King is watching."
I reached into the crate. I pulled a lever.
Click-whirrrrr.
The gears spun. The punch cards fed through the slot. It made a rhythmic, mechanical sound. Like a heartbeat.
The guards lowered their muskets. They looked at each other.
"It's alive," one of them muttered.
"Pierre!" Jean Chouan suddenly shouted.
He pointed at a scarred man in the back row of the Baron's guard.
"Pierre LeGros! You owe me for the tobacco run in '88!"
The man blinked. He recognized the smuggler.
"Jean?" Pierre asked. "You're alive?"
"I'm with the Audit," Chouan said, grinning like a shark. "And you're on the wrong side of the ledger, Pierre. The machine has seen you."
Pierre looked at the spinning gears. He looked at the Baron.
He lowered his rifle.
"I didn't know," Pierre stammered. "I just needed food."
"Traitors!" the Baron screamed. "Shoot them! Shoot the boy!"
He raised his own pistol. He aimed at my chest.
I didn't move. I calculated the angle. The distance.
Probability of hit: 60%.
Ney moved faster.
The Marshal of France didn't draw his sword. He didn't fire a musket.
He threw his bayonet.
It spun through the air. A silver blur.
THUNK.
It hit the Baron in the throat.
The pistol fired into the ground.
The Baron gurgled. He clawed at the steel spike in his neck. He fell to his knees. Then face down in the dirt.
Silence.
The twenty guards looked at their dead leader. They looked at the machine. They looked at Ney.
"The audit is complete," I said calmly.
I jumped down from the cart.
"We need three horses. Fresh ones. And water."
Pierre stepped forward. He kicked the Baron's corpse over.
"Take his stallion," Pierre said. "It's the fastest in the city."
"Thank you, citizen," I said.
We mounted up. Ney took the stallion. Chouan took a mare. I rode a gelding, leading the mule with the machine.
We rode out of Marseille without looking back.
The sun was setting. Long shadows stretched across the road North.
"500 miles to Paris," Ney said. "At this pace... twelve days."
I touched the flask in my pocket. It was warm.
I did the math.
Father had three days. Maybe four.
Entropy was winning.
"We can't ride to Paris," I said.
"What?" Chouan asked. "Then where?"
I looked at the map Ney held.
"The Rhone River," I said. "Lyon."
"That's still days away," Ney argued.
"We don't ride to Paris," I repeated. "We steal a steamship at Lyon. The current is against us, but the engines are strong."
"A steamship?" Chouan laughed. "With no coal?"
"We have coal," I said, patting the saddlebags filled with the fuel we stole from the ghost ship.
"And we have the machine," I added. "I can re-program the governor on the steam engine. Overclock it. Turn a 10-knot barge into a 20-knot speedboat."
"It might explode," Ney warned.
"Then we swim," I said.
I kicked my horse into a gallop.
"Ride!" I shouted. "Ride like the devil is chasing us!"
We thundered down the road, dust rising in our wake.
I imagined my father in his wheelchair. Coughing blood. Watching the clock.
Hold on, I thought. The Wolf is coming home.