Chapter 1: The Wrong Carriage.
According to Jean-Paul de Kirbé, running away meant advancing in a direction your enemy had failed to anticipate.
At present, that direction was west.
Very quickly.
Jean-Paul was being pursued by three men with swords drawn down Rue Saint-Antoine, which by Parisian standards was quite discourteous.
“Stop!” shouted the first.
Jean-Paul glanced over his shoulder. “No!”
He vaulted a vegetable cart piled high with cabbages. A cabbage achieved momentary flight, struck a passing clerk in the chest, and fell beneath the wheels of a brewer's wagon. The clerk cursed at Jean-Paul. The vegetable seller shouted at the clerk. A nearby brewer shouted at his horse. The horse ignored everyone and started eating a cabbage that landed near it.
Jean-Paul continued running. He was thirty-six years old, tall, lean, elegantly dressed, and possessed with a face that suggested he had remembered a joke. His broad black hat was still on his head. This was important because a gentleman might lose money, blood, reputation, employment, or property, but losing one's hat while legging it implied panic. Jean-Paul did not panic. He merely reconsidered geography at speed.
Boots pounded the street behind him.
“Kirbé!”
“Yes?”
“We'll kill you!”
Jean-Paul ducked beneath an awning. “Then there's no point in stopping, is there?”
A sword sliced through the cloth behind him. The awning collapsed onto a fishmonger in a disorderly mess. Paris in 1650 was deeply concerned with order. Therefore, it contained soldiers, magistrates, tax collectors, guards, clerks, priests, nobles, royal officials, municipal officials, guild officials, unofficial officials, and several thousand people whose occupation was avoiding all of them.
The city was in the middle of the Fronde, although no two Parisians could agree on what that meant. To some, it meant resistance to royal authority. To others, defense of royal authority against the wrong people exercising royal authority. To the nobles, it meant liberties. To shopkeepers, it meant soldiers stealing chickens. To chickens, political distinctions were largely academic.
Jean-Paul turned sharply into a narrower street. His pursuers followed. This was irritating because he had hoped they possessed less conviction and much less stamina.
Against the sage advice of his mother regarding running with sharp objects, he drew his rapier. Marguerite came free of the scabbard with a whisper of polished steel.
“Not yet,” Jean-Paul told the blade.
A woman carrying onions flattened herself against a wall. He passed her. Ahead, the street opened wider; crowds, carts, horses, confusion, civilization, all the useful things.
Jean-Paul had spent much of the Thirty Years War, discovering that survival depended upon identifying the nearest obstacle before the other man did. At Rocroi, the obstacles had included cavalry, artillery, Spanish infantry, and approximately half of Europe. Paris was easier, usually.
A carriage rattled toward the intersection, black lacquer, four horses, curtains drawn, driver hunched forward, moving briskly. Jean-Paul smiled. Providence arrived with wheels. He sheathed Marguerite, increased his pace, caught the iron rail at the rear of the carriage, and swung himself onto the footboard. One pursuer lunged. Fingers brushed Jean-Paul's boots. Jean-Paul kicked. There was a satisfying grunt.
“Nothing personal!”
“Va te faire foutre!” Cursed the stumbling man.
The carriage accelerated. Jean-Paul pulled open the door. He had intended to enter, sit down, apologize to whoever owned the carriage, and emerge several streets later. Instead, he found a pistol pointing at his face.
Jean-Paul froze halfway through the door. There are points in one's life that simplify things; a pistol at conversational distance is one of them.
A woman sat behind the pistol. She was around thirty, dressed in dark green silk beneath a traveling cloak, with black hair arranged beneath a small feathered hat. Her posture indicated aristocratic lineage. Her eyes suggested excellent aim. She looked at Jean-Paul unpleasantly.
Beside her sat a collection of circumstances shaped like a man. His wrists were tied, his ankles were tied, a canvas sack covered his head.
Jean-Paul looked at the pistol.
He looked at the woman.
He looked at the bound man.
The bound man made a muffled noise.
Jean-Paul climbed inside and closed the door.
“I feel,” he said, settling into the opposite seat, “I have entered this conversation rather late.”
The woman cocked the pistol. Jean-Paul viewed this as unnecessary punctuation.
“Who are you?”
“A passenger.”
“You jumped onto my carriage.”
“Ride sharing is the new fashion.”
Her pistol did not move. Jean-Paul smiled amiably. The smile had served him well in taverns, barracks, drawing rooms, battlefields, bedrooms, and once before a military tribunal. The tribunal had sentenced him anyway, but several officers had admitted afterward that they had enjoyed themselves enormously.
“My name is Jean-Paul de Kirbé.”
The woman's eyes narrowed, “The musketeer?”
Jean-Paul placed one gloved hand against his chest. “I am touched.”
“The King's Musketeers were dissolved four years ago.”
“I am less touched.”
“You are no longer a King’s Musketeer and have no right to board a private carriage.”
“Madame, bureaucracy has been attempting to convince me of this since 1646.”
Technically, she was correct. The famous royal company had been disbanded. Jean-Paul regarded this as an administrative condition. A government might abolish a regiment with a signature, but this did not cause the men involved to evaporate. He still owned the sword, the musket, and the scars. In Jean-Paul's opinion, he remained a musketeer.
The bound man groaned.
Jean-Paul glanced at him. “Is he comfortable?”
The woman's expression hardened. “No.”
“Ah, so it is deliberate then.”
“You ask too many questions.”
“I have asked three.”
“You have been here less than a minute.”
“A productive minute.”
Outside, hoof beats pounded behind them. Jean-Paul leaned toward the window and lifted the curtain slightly. His three pursuers had acquired horses. He sighed. Persistence was one of those virtues that became much less admirable when practiced by enemies.
The woman noticed. “Friends of yours?”
“I have always believed friendship required affection.”
“Who are they?”
“Dreadful people on horses.”
“Why are they chasing you?”
Jean-Paul mulled over this. The truthful explanation was long. It involved a card game, a lieutenant of the city watch, the lieutenant's cousin, a disputed ace, an accusation concerning marked cards, a chandelier, and Jean-Paul’s insistence that a man should not draw a sword before dessert.
“They misunderstand me.”
The woman gave him a flat stare. Behind the sack, the prisoner laughed. It was muffled, but unmistakable.
The woman struck him sharply in the shoulder. “Quiet!”
Jean-Paul raised an eyebrow. “Please don't strike the luggage.”
“He is not luggage.”
“Then I have misunderstood the seating arrangement.”
The pistol shifted slightly. Jean-Paul noticed. He also noticed the powder staining around the pan, The gun was loaded, and primed. A fine weapon, too. Italian manufacture. Expensive. The woman's finger rested correctly outside the trigger guard. Amateurs tended to clutch firearms as though squeezing courage out of them. This woman knew pistols.
Jean-Paul's expression remained lazy, but his mind ceased being lazy several minutes ago.
The carriage turned hard. The bound prisoner toppled sideways.
Jean-Paul caught him before his head struck the door. “Careful.”
The woman hesitated.
Jean-Paul righted the man.
“Kidnapped people are surprisingly fragile,” he said.
“I did not kidnap him.”
The prisoner began nodding his head violently. Jean-Paul looked at him, then at her.
She sighed. “He is mistaken.”
The prisoner shook his head in negation.
“I find his argument persuasive.”
“He tried to have me murdered.”
The sack became still. That was different. Jean-Paul leaned back. The carriage bounced along the cobbles. Outside, Paris went about its business.
Jean-Paul studied the woman. She studied him. The prisoner breathed through the sack. The three horsemen were gaining.
The woman said, “Get out.”
Jean-Paul glanced toward the window. “At this speed?”
“Yes.”
“That seems severe.”
“I don't care.”
“Madame, that is precisely what makes it severe.”
She aimed directly between his eyes.
Jean-Paul sighed. “Very well.”
He reached for the door, then stopped. The carriage slowed, but not by much. Jean-Paul heard hoofbeats ahead, several horses, and men shouting. The driver cursed.
The noblewoman's eyes flicked toward the front. Jean-Paul’s did not. That was why he saw the prisoner's hand. It had emerged from behind his back, the rope around his wrist had loosened and something small gleamed between his fingers; a knife.
Jean-Paul moved. The prisoner lunged. Jean-Paul caught his wrist. The pistol fired.
Inside a carriage, a pistol shot is not a sound. It is an event.
Smoke filled the compartment. The horses screamed. The noblewoman recoiled. The carriage lurched violently. Jean-Paul twisted the prisoner's wrist. The knife dropped. The carriage struck something large and wooden. Everything tilted.
Jean-Paul had time to think. This is becoming an unusually complicated ride. Then the carriage overturned.
There are people who believe fate announces itself with trumpets. It seldom does. More often it arrives looking like the wrong carriage, and by the time one discovers the mistake, the horses are already running.