The rain over the Garden of the Triumphs was cold, gray, and relentless.
I stood by the open grave, the mud seeping over the toes of my boots. There was no priest. No incense. No choir singing hymns.
Just two gravediggers leaning on their shovels, smoking pipes, waiting for me to leave so they could fill the hole.
Inside the plain pine box lay Marie Antoinette.
The Queen of France. The daughter of Emperors. The Madonna of the Vendée.
And my wife.
I stared at the wood, listening to the rain tap-tap-tap against the lid. It sounded like a clock ticking down.
"She deserved better," Danton grunted. He stood beside me, holding a black umbrella. "A state funeral. A procession. Something loud."
"Loud attracts attention," I said, my voice hoarse. "The State doesn't mourn traitors, Georges. You wrote the memo yourself."
Danton shifted his weight. He looked uncomfortable. Even the butcher of the revolution felt the grim weight of this silence.
"Where is the boy?" Danton asked, looking back at the Tuileries Palace looming over the garden.
I looked up at the windows.
On the second floor, in the Solar, a light was burning. A small figure stood in the window, silhouetted against the candlelight.
He was watching.
He was wearing his blue uniform. He was dry. He was warm.
"I asked him to come," I whispered.
"And?"
"He said he had work to do."
I looked back at the grave. I grabbed a handful of wet earth. It felt like ice.
I threw it onto the coffin. Thud.
"Goodbye, Marie," I said. "I'm sorry I turned our son into a monster to save him."
The gravediggers started shoveling. They didn't care who was in the box. To them, it was just another job in a city of dead bodies.
I turned away. I couldn't watch the earth cover her face.
I walked back toward the palace. My chest hurt. A dull, grinding pain behind my sternum.
I was forty years old, but I felt ancient. My heart, the doctors said, was "tired." It was a polite way of saying it was giving up.
I entered the palace. The guards snapped to attention.
I didn't acknowledge them. I climbed the stairs to the Solar.
I needed to see him. I needed to make him understand what he had done.
I threw open the door.
The room was warm, smelling of wax and old paper. Maps covered the tables.
Napoleon Bonaparte stood by the fireplace, drinking coffee.
Louis-Charles sat at the big desk—my desk. He was studying a map of Northern Italy. He held a compass in his small hand, measuring distances.
He didn't look up when I entered.
"The supply lines through the Alps are too long, Captain," the boy said. His voice was calm, piping, matter-of-fact. "We should route through Nice."
"Agreed, Highness," Napoleon said. "But the Sardinians hold the pass."
"Then we buy the Sardinians," Louis-Charles said. "Or we kill them."
I walked to the desk. I slammed my hand down on the map.
Louis-Charles stopped. He looked at my hand, dripping with rain and mud. Then he looked up at my face.
"She was your mother!" I shouted.
The boy blinked. "I know."
"We just buried her!" I screamed. "In a pine box! In the mud! And you're sitting here measuring supply lines?"
"The war does not stop for rain, Papa," Louis-Charles said. "And it does not stop for funerals."
"You couldn't throw a handful of dirt?" I asked, my voice breaking. "You couldn't say goodbye?"
"Goodbye implies she is going somewhere," Louis-Charles said. "She is dead. She is biological matter returning to the carbon cycle. Grieving is an inefficient use of energy."
I stared at him.
He wasn't reciting a lesson. He believed it.
I had taught him to be an accountant of power. I had taught him to view people as assets and liabilities.
And now, he had filed his mother under "Liability: Liquidated."
Rage, hot and blinding, flooded my chest.
"You ungrateful little..."
I raised my hand. I was going to strike him. I wanted to slap the coldness out of him. I wanted to see him cry, just to prove he was still human.
My hand started to descend.
A grip of iron caught my wrist.
I froze.
Napoleon was there. He had moved across the room with terrifying speed. He held my arm in mid-air.
"Careful, Sire," Napoleon said softly.
He wasn't looking at me with deference anymore. He was looking at me like a guard restraining a drunk.
"You are striking the Regent," Napoleon said.
"I am striking my son!" I yelled, trying to pull away.
"He is the State," Napoleon said. "And the State does not get slapped."
He released my wrist. He shoved me back, gently but firmly.
I stumbled. The pain in my chest exploded.
It wasn't a dull ache this time. It was a sledgehammer.
"Argh!"
I grabbed my chest. My legs gave way.
I hit the floor. The world spun. Black spots danced in my vision.
"Papa?"
I heard the scrape of a chair.
I looked up. Louis-Charles was standing over me.
He didn't look scared. He didn't look worried.
He looked... curious.
"Is it the heart?" the boy asked Napoleon.
Napoleon knelt beside me. He pressed two fingers to my neck. He checked my eyes.
"Arrhythmia," Napoleon diagnosed. "Rapid pulse. Sweat. Pallor."
I gasped for air. It felt like I was breathing through a straw.
"Help... me..." I wheezed.
Napoleon stood up. He wiped his hands on his breeches.
"The engine is failing, Highness," Napoleon said to the boy. "The output is dropping. He cannot sustain the workload."
Louis-Charles nodded slowly.
"He is a liability," the boy said.
I stared at him from the floor.
Liability.
The word I used to describe Fersen. The word I used to describe the Church.
"Then we need to replace the part," Louis-Charles said.
He turned back to the map.
"Call the doctor," the boy said over his shoulder. "And summon the Ministers. We need to discuss the succession."
"No..." I tried to say. "I'm... not... dead..."
"Functionally, you are," Louis-Charles said.
Napoleon dragged me to the sofa. He didn't be gentle. He treated me like a sack of grain.
He laid me down.
"Rest, Louis," Napoleon said. He didn't call me Sire. He called me Louis.
He walked to the door.
He stepped out.
I heard the key turn in the lock.
Click.
I lay on the sofa, gasping for breath, listening to the rain beat against the window.
I looked at my son.
He was back at the desk. He was moving a wooden soldier across the map of Italy.
He didn't look at me.
I had spent three years building a cage to keep my enemies out. I had built a government of wolves to protect me.
I rattled the handle of my breath, trying to force air into my lungs.
I had built the perfect machine.
And now, the machine had decided that the operator was obsolete.