Winchester College, England.
Rain fell in sheets of gray. It wasn't the romantic, misty rain of London. It was cold, hard, driving rain that soaked into the stone walls and rotted the wood.
The library smelled of mildew and old damp wool.
Charles Capet sat alone at a scarred oak table.
He was twelve years old, but his eyes were ancient. They were the color of the Atlantic Ocean—cold, deep, and empty.
He didn't look like a King of France. He looked like a starved greyhound. Thin, wired, vibrating with a silent intensity.
His hands were stained with ink.
On the paper in front of him, he wasn't conjugating Latin verbs. He was drawing.
A cylinder. A piston. A valve.
Steam Pressure = Force / Area.
He sketched the linkage arm. He added a governor.
"Look at the little frog," a voice sneered.
Charles didn't look up. He knew the voice. Lord Harrington's son. Fourteen years old. Big. Stupid. Cruel.
"Drawing pictures, Capet?" Harrington slammed his hand onto the table. "Did your daddy teach you to draw before he shipped you off like a crate of wine?"
The inkwell jumped. Black ink spilled across the drawing.
It ruined the governor valve.
Charles stopped moving. He stared at the black puddle spreading over his work.
"My father," Charles said softly, his English perfect, clipped, and emotionless, "taught me efficiency."
"What?" Harrington laughed. He grabbed Charles by the collar of his rough tunic. "Speak up, beggar! Or did the Frogs cut out your tongue?"
Three other boys crowded around. They smelled of wet dogs and privilege.
"He's crying," one of them mocked. "Look, he's shaking."
Charles was shaking. But not from fear.
Adrenaline dumped into his system. His heart rate spiked. His vision narrowed to a tunnel.
He calculated the variables.
Target 1: Harrington. Mass: 60kg. Center of gravity: High. Weakness: Arrogance.
Targets 2, 3, 4: Spectators. Reaction time: Slow.
Charles reached into his pocket.
His fingers closed around cold steel. A geometric compass. Two sharp metal legs joined at a hinge.
"Let go," Charles said.
"Or what?" Harrington pulled him closer, spitting in his face. "You'll call your mommy? Oh wait. Your daddy chopped her head off!"
The trigger pulled.
Charles moved.
He didn't swing wild. He drove the compass upward.
Target: Quadriceps. Femoral proximity.
Thunk.
He buried the steel points into Harrington's thigh. Just above the knee. Deep.
Harrington screamed. It was a high, girlish shriek.
He let go of Charles and clutched his leg. He fell back, crashing into the table.
"He stabbed me!" Harrington wailed. "The freak stabbed me!"
The other three boys froze. They looked at the blood seeping through Harrington's trousers. Then they looked at Charles.
Charles stood up. He held the bloody compass like a dagger.
He didn't run. He stepped forward.
"Next," Charles said.
His voice was dead. No anger. No fear. Just a transactional offer of violence.
The boys stepped back. They saw something in Charles's eyes that didn't belong in a schoolyard. They saw the Tuileries. They saw the mob. They saw the guillotine.
"You're crazy," one whispered.
They grabbed Harrington and dragged him away, scrambling out of the library like rats fleeing a fire.
Charles stood alone in the silence.
He looked at the compass. The blood was mixing with the ink on his fingers.
His hand started to tremble.
He dropped the tool. It clattered on the stone floor.
He sank back into his chair. He pulled his knees to his chest.
"Variable resolved," he whispered to the empty room.
But it didn't feel resolved. He felt the phantom weight of a pistol in his hand. The memory of Saint-Cloud. The smell of gunpowder. The look in his mother's eyes before she fell.
"I am a monster," he thought. "Just like him."
He picked up the ruined drawing. He tried to wipe the ink away, but it just smeared, turning the steam engine into a black Rorschach test.
"Impressive," a voice said from the shadows.
Charles snapped his head up.
A man stood by the bookshelf. He was tall, thin, with a nose like a hawk's beak. He wore a coat of understated luxury.
"William Pitt," Charles said. He recognized the face from the newspapers. The Prime Minister of Great Britain.
"You know your politics," Pitt said, walking into the light. He looked at the blood on the floor. "And your anatomy."
"He attacked me," Charles said. "I defended my position."
"You struck the vastus medialis," Pitt observed. "Painful. Debilitating. But not lethal. A few inches higher, and you would have hit the artery. He would have bled out in three minutes."
Pitt looked at Charles.
"Did you miss?"
Charles met the Prime Minister's gaze.
"I never miss."
Pitt smiled. It was a cold smile. The smile of a man who just found a sharp knife in a drawer.
"Your father is dying, Charles."
The words hit Charles harder than a fist.
He kept his face blank. "My father is the Administrator of France. He is indestructible."
"He is a man," Pitt said. "And his heart is failing. My spies say he has weeks. Maybe days."
Charles looked down at his ink-stained hands.
Dying?
The man who treated nations like spreadsheets? The man who sold his own son for political stability?
"Why tell me?" Charles asked.
"Because when he dies, France falls," Pitt said. "Napoleon will take the army. Robespierre will take the terror. Chaos will return."
Pitt leaned closer. He smelled of tobacco and power.
"Unless the rightful King returns."
Charles laughed. It was a bitter, jagged sound.
"You want to put me on the throne?" Charles asked. "A twelve-year-old boy?"
"I want to give you an army," Pitt said. "British ships. Royalist troops. We will land in Normandy. We will march on Paris. You will reclaim your birthright."
"And then?" Charles asked. "Then I sign a treaty? I give you the colonies? I dismantle the fleet?"
"You bring order," Pitt said smoothly. "You end the madness."
He placed a hand on Charles's shoulder.
"He killed your mother, Charles. He stole your life. Don't you want justice?"
Justice.
Charles looked at the bloody compass on the floor.
He wanted to kill Alex Miller. He had dreamed about it every night for five years. He wanted to look him in the eye and pull the trigger.
But looking at Pitt, Charles saw something else.
He saw a user.
Pitt didn't care about justice. He didn't care about Marie Antoinette. He just wanted a puppet.
And Alex Miller had taught Charles one thing above all else.
"Never be the asset, Louis. Be the shareholder."
Charles stood up. He brushed Pitt's hand off his shoulder.
"I accept your offer, Prime Minister," Charles lied.
"Excellent," Pitt said. "Pack your things. We leave for London tonight."
"I need one hour," Charles said. "To say goodbye to... my studies."
Pitt nodded. "One hour. The carriage will be waiting."
The Prime Minister turned and walked out, his boots clicking on the stone.
Charles waited until the footsteps faded.
He didn't pack.
He walked to the window. He looked out at the rain-lashed courtyard.
He pulled a small metal box from his pocket.
It was a telegraph receiver. A toy, really. He had built it himself from stolen scraps of copper wire and a magnet filched from the physics lab.
He connected it to the lightning rod running down the side of the building.
It was crude. It shouldn't have worked. The static from the storm was deafening.
But Charles knew the frequency.
He had sent the trajectory formula an hour ago. A message in a bottle thrown into the electronic ocean.
He put the earpiece to his ear.
Click... hiss... crackle.
Silence.
"Answer me," Charles whispered. "If you're still the Administrator, answer me."
And then, through the static, it came.
Click-click-click.
Short. Sharp. Precise.
x = Range.
Charles let out a breath he didn't know he was holding.
The solution.
His father had received the variables. He had solved the equation.
"He's alive," Charles whispered.
He looked at the carriage waiting in the courtyard below. Pitt's carriage.
The British wanted a King. They wanted a figurehead to wave a flag while they dismantled France.
Charles looked at his ruined drawing of the steam engine.
He picked up the compass again.
He carved a new equation into the wood of the library windowsill.
Force = Mass x Acceleration.
He wasn't going to be Pitt's puppet. And he wasn't going to be Alex's victim.
He disconnected the telegraph. He shoved it into his pocket.
He grabbed his coat.
He would go to London. He would take Pitt's army. He would take the guns and the gold.
But when he got to France...
Charles smiled. It was the smile of the Wolf Cub realizing his teeth had finally grown in.
"I'm coming home, Papa," he whispered. "Get the books ready."
"I'm going to audit you."