"Insolent goat," she'd called him.
And worst of all—she'd told him to go to Carlo.
Napoleone hated that part.
His father's study smelled of paper, ink, and the faint ghost of wine—a smell of dreams that were not quite noble enough to become truth. Carlo Buonaparte sat hunched over a cluttered table lit by a tired oil lamp, his quill scratching like a rat in the walls. Documents lay scattered around him in organized chaos: petitions, receipts, letters stamped with French seals—those arrogant wax coins of authority.
Carlo didn't look up at first.
"Papa," Napoleone said, as if pronouncing the word cost him a coin.
The quill paused. Carlo's shoulders tightened, then relaxed, as though he'd expected a knife and received only a question.
He turned. The lamplight caught his face at the wrong angle, making him look older than he was—older than any man in a house run by Letizia ever deserved to feel.
"What now, Nabulio?" Carlo sighed. He forced a smile.
Napoleone didn't move. The child's eyes, dark and fixed, had the calm cruelty of a hawk that has spotted weakness and intends to remember it.
"I want to learn French properly," he said. "And I want books. Not scraps. Not Abbé Recco's dusty crumbs."
Carlo blinked, surprised by the directness. "Books," he repeated, tasting the word like it might be expensive. "French books?"
"Yes. Histories. Charlemagne. Clovis. Kings. Wars." Napoleone's voice sharpened. "I want to understand how empires are made."
Carlo let out a breath—half laughter, half worry.
"My son," he said slowly, leaning back in his chair, "you are seven, not seventy. Your empires are made of sticks and stones in the street."
Napoleone leaned forward a fraction. "Not for long."
For a moment, Carlo's amusement faltered. Something in the boy's voice—something ancient, something too composed—made the study feel colder.
Inside Napoleone, Marcus Aurelius stirred like a waking lion beneath snow.
The child speaks like a man, the inner voice observed. And the man will suffer for it.
Carlo cleared his throat, tapping the quill against his fingers. "And what does your mother say to this? Let me guess—she scolded you, laughed at you, and threatened to feed you to the goats."
"She said you're the one who simpers in French for scholarships," Napoleone replied, almost spitting the word as though it were an insult.
Carlo's smile stiffened. "Ah." He looked away, and for the first time in days the quill seemed heavier than a sword.
Napoleone watched him, sensing weakness.
He loved sensing weakness.
It was like smelling rain before a storm.
Carlo finally turned back, his expression shifting into something rarer than tenderness in that house: honesty.
"Nabulio," he said quietly, "you know what France is to Corsica."
"A chain," Napoleone answered instantly, Letizia's words loaded in his mouth like shot.
"Yes," Carlo admitted. "A chain. But chains can be used for more than binding."
Napoleone frowned.
Carlo reached beneath a stack of papers and pulled out a folded letter, the wax seal broken already—read and reread enough times to soften the paper like cloth.
He held it out like a bribe.
"This," Carlo said, "is your French. This is your tutor. Your books. Your future."
Napoleone hesitated, then snatched the letter as if it might run away.
French words crawled across the page like elegant insects.
He couldn't read most of it.
His face flushed with rage at his own limitation.
"What is it?" he demanded.
Carlo leaned forward. "A path. A ladder." His voice rose with controlled excitement. "The governor's secretary—through his connections—there is a possibility. A scholarship. For Joseph…and for you."
Napoleone froze.
Joseph's name landed like a slap.
"So Joseph gets everything," he growled. "Even France."
Carlo lifted a hand. "Listen. France is not a prize to be given to the favorite child. It is a weapon. And I intend it for both my sons."
Napoleone's nails dug into the paper. "A weapon given by the enemy is poison."
Carlo's eyes sharpened. "Only if you drink it. If you learn their language, read their books, walk their halls…you will know how they think. You will know their weakness."
Napoleone's breath quickened.
The vision hit him suddenly: French academies, maps, cannons, ranks…power.
Power that didn't smell like poverty and fig baskets.
Marcus' whisper came like cool water over fire:
Do not worship the ladder. Use it. A wise man makes fortune his servant.
Napoleone stared at Carlo, suspicion warring with hunger. "And what do you want for this bargain?"
Carlo's face tightened. "What do all fathers want? A son who becomes more than a footnote in someone else's empire."
Napoleone narrowed his eyes. "Or a son who becomes your shield. Your excuse. Your name."
Carlo flinched—just a little.
And Napoleone saw it.
He stood straighter.
He had struck true.
"Careful," Carlo warned, voice suddenly harder. "You speak like Paoli in a child's mouth."
"I speak like Corsica," Napoleone snapped.
Silence swelled between them like a storm cloud in the study.
Carlo rose slowly, stepping close enough that the lamplight carved deeper shadows into his face.
"I loved Paoli," he said quietly. "I fought beside him. I wrote for him. But Paoli is gone, and France is here. Your mother survived that truth with blood and hunger. Now I will survive it with ink and alliances."
Napoleone's eyes flashed. "Alliances with invaders."
Carlo's voice sharpened into steel. "Alliances with power. Do you think power cares about purity? Do you think Rome—your precious empire of stories—was built by polite men with clean hands?"
That landed.
Marcus did not deny it.
The soul of the old emperor only murmured:
Even virtue must live in the world.
Carlo placed a hand on Napoleone's shoulder. Not a soft hand. A calculating one.
"If you want those books, those histories…if you want to be more than a Corsican boy shouting at soldiers in the street—then you will go where the knowledge is."
Napoleone's voice came low.
"France."
Carlo nodded.
"And you will come back," Carlo added, "not to bow…but to command."
Napoleone stared at the letter again, the French script suddenly no longer insects.
They were keys.
He didn't know yet what locks they opened.
Only that he wanted every door in the world to swing for him.
He folded the letter carefully—too carefully for a child.
Then he looked up at Carlo with the cold clarity of a future conqueror.
"When?" he asked.
Carlo exhaled.
"Soon."