The newspaper was garbage.
I didn't mean the content, though that was propaganda too. I meant the physical paper. It was thin, yellow, and smelled of sulfur. The ink rubbed off on my thumb, leaving a black smudge like a bruise.
VICTORY IN LOMBARDY! the headline screamed. GENERAL BONAPARTE LIBERATES MILAN!
I folded the paper and set it down on the wrought-iron table.
The garden of Saint-Cloud was quiet. Too quiet.
Three weeks ago, I was the King of France. I commanded armies. I balanced the national ledger. I held the weight of twenty million souls on my shoulders.
Now, I was just a retiree.
I picked up my coffee cup. It was real porcelain, Sèvres blue, a remnant of a life that no longer existed. The coffee inside was black, hot, and bitter.
It was also the most valuable thing within ten miles.
I took a sip. The caffeine hit my bloodstream, sharpening the edges of my vision.
"The engine is running hot," I muttered to the rosebushes.
My son—the Regent, the Boy King, the Wolf Cub—was winning battles. He was feeding the ego of the nation. But he was starving its stomach.
War costs money. Soldiers need boots. Cannons need powder.
To pay for it all, the new regime was printing Assignats—paper money backed by nothing but promises and gunpowder.
I looked at the smudge on my thumb.
Inflation was running at four hundred percent a month. The price of bread changed between breakfast and dinner. The government was insolvent.
But I wasn't.
I leaned back in my chair.
They had forced me to abdicate. They called it a "medical retirement." They thought they were sending a broken old man to die in the country.
They forgot who I was before I was King.
I was an auditor. And an auditor knows one thing better than anyone else:
How to cash out before the crash.
"Citizen Miller?"
I didn't turn around. I knew the voice.
Captain Bessières. The man assigned to guard me. Or to keep me imprisoned. The distinction was purely academic.
"What is it, Captain?"
"The... the supply wagon is late."
I turned then.
Bessières was a good soldier. He stood tall. His blue uniform was brushed, his buttons polished to a mirror shine. He held his musket with the discipline of a statue.
But his cheeks were hollow. His eyes were sunken, rimmed with red.
He was starving.
"Is it?" I asked. "I hadn't noticed."
Bessières swallowed hard. His Adam's apple bobbed. "The quartermaster says the roads are blocked. The peasants are rioting near Versailles."
"Rioting?" I raised an eyebrow. "But the paper says we won a great victory in Milan."
"You can't eat victory, Citizen."
The words slipped out before he could stop them. He stiffened, terrified he had spoken treason.
I smiled. It wasn't a nice smile. It was the smile of a man who sees a mistake in the spreadsheet.
"No," I said. "You can't."
I looked at the tray on my table. Next to the coffee pot sat a single hard-boiled egg.
It was peeled. The white was smooth, perfect, glistening in the morning sun.
Bessières' eyes locked onto that egg. He tracked it like a wolf tracks a wounded deer. His pupils dilated.
"Have you been paid this month, Captain?"
He blinked, tearing his eyes away from the food. "Yes. Yesterday."
"In gold?"
"Assignats."
"Paper," I corrected. "Toilet paper."
He flinched.
"How much?" I asked.
"Two thousand francs."
Two thousand. Three years ago, that was a fortune. A man could buy a house for two thousand francs.
"And what did the baker say when you tried to buy bread this morning?"
Bessières looked down at his polished boots. "He said he wanted silver. Or a pair of boots."
"So you have a pocket full of paper and an empty stomach."
I picked up the egg.
It felt heavy in my hand. Cold. Solid.
"This egg cost me five sous when I bought the chicken last year," I said softly. "Today, in the market at Saint-Cloud, it would trade for five hundred francs."
Bessières stared at the egg. He looked ready to cry.
"Supply and demand, Captain. The Board of Directors in Paris has flooded the market with supply. But the demand for food is inelastic."
I held the egg out.
"Take it."
He froze. "Citizen... I cannot..."
"It's a transaction," I said. "Not a gift. I don't give gifts. Gifts are liabilities."
He looked at me, confused.
"I am buying your goodwill," I explained. "The current market rate for a Captain's loyalty has dropped significantly. I'm getting a bargain."
He hesitated for one second. Then the hunger won.
He snatched the egg from my hand. He didn't chew. He swallowed it whole, like a snake. He choked it down, gasping for air, his eyes watering.
It was pathetic. It was horrifying.
It was the state of France.
"Thank you," he rasped, wiping his mouth. "Thank you, Sire."
"Citizen," I corrected. "My name is Alex Miller. I'm just a retired accountant."
He nodded, shame coloring his pale face. He stepped back to his post, gripping his musket tighter. He would kill for me now. Not because he loved me. But because I was the only one who could feed him.
I turned back to the garden.
"Cléry," I said.
My valet stepped out from the shadow of the trellis. He had been waiting.
Cléry looked better than the Captain. He was eating. I made sure of that. An unfed employee is an inefficient employee.
"Sir?"
"Did you get the report from the darker markets?"
"Yes, sir." Cléry pulled a small notebook from his vest. "The price of wheat in Paris hit fifty livres a bushel this morning. The mob burned down three bakeries in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine."
"Excellent."
Cléry winced. "Sir... people are dying."
"People die every day, Cléry. Numbers don't."
I stood up and brushed a crumb from my lapel. My heart fluttered—a quick, erratic drumbeat in my chest. Arrhythmia. My own personal ticking clock.
I didn't have time for sympathy. Sympathy was what got me deposed. Sympathy was why I hesitated to kill the Queen. Sympathy was why my son was now a monster.
I was done with sympathy. I was strictly interested in solvency.
"We are shorting the Assignat," I said.
Cléry blinked. "Sir?"
"The currency is going to zero. The Boy King thinks he can print his way to glory. He's flooding the engine with fuel, but the pistons are cracked."
I walked over to the supply shed I had converted into a warehouse. It was stacked to the ceiling. Sacks of flour. Barrels of salted pork. Jars of honey.
I had spent the last of my royal treasury buying commodities while the idiots in Paris were buying flags.
"Take the silver dining set," I ordered. "The one with the Bourbon crest. Melt it down. I don't want the crest visible. Turn it into bullion."
"And then?"
"Trade it for grain futures. Use the smugglers in Rouen. Avoid the official markets."
Cléry looked at the sacks of flour. "We have enough food for ten years, sir. Why do we need more?"
I looked at him. He didn't understand. He thought this was about hunger.
"This isn't breakfast, Cléry. This is leverage."
I picked up a handful of dry wheat from an open sack. The grains ran through my fingers like gold dust.
"In a month, Paris will be starving. The army will be eating their own horses. Napoleon will have all the guns, and my son will have all the crowns."
I let the wheat fall to the floor.
"But I will have the bread."
I walked back to the table and picked up the newspaper.
VICTORY.
It was a lie. It was a bubble. And bubbles always burst.
I felt a cold, hard knot in my stomach. It wasn't fear. It was the grim satisfaction of the auditor who finds the fraud.
They stole my company. They stole my son. They stole my legacy.
But they forgot to change the passwords to the bank accounts.
"Sell everything that isn't nailed down," I said, my voice flat. "If the Boy wants to turn France into a burning building, we're going to sell fire extinguishers."
I looked up at the sky. Dark clouds were gathering over Paris.
"And Cléry?"
"Yes, sir?"
"Get me a map of the Channel ports. And find out which British ships are patrolling the blockade."
Cléry went pale. "British, sir? But... that's treason."
I laughed. It was a dry, rasping sound.
"Treason is a political term, Cléry. I'm in the private sector now."
I sat back down and finished my coffee. It tasted like ash.
"And in the private sector, we call it a merger."