The flag of truce was a bedsheet tied to a pike.
It waved in the smoky air above the French barricade.
"Administrator," the telegraph operator called out. "Message from the British lines. General Abercrombie requests a parley."
I leaned against the stone wall, the oxygen tank hissing against the rock.
"Abercrombie?" I rasped inside the mask. "He wants to surrender?"
"No, Sir. The message says... 'The King demands an audience.'"
I froze.
The King.
Not the British King. My King.
"He's alive," I whispered.
"It's a trap," Fouché said immediately. He was reloading his pistol. "They want to draw you into the open. One sniper shot, and the war is over."
"If they wanted to kill me, they would have shelled this position an hour ago," I said.
I checked the pressure gauge on my chest.
30 PSI.
Low. dangerously low. I had maybe twenty minutes of air before I suffocated in my own fluids.
"I'm going," I said.
"You can't!" Fouché grabbed my arm. "You are the Head of State!"
"And he is my son."
I shook him off. I grabbed a shovel from the pile. I tied my own white handkerchief to the handle.
I stepped out from behind the barricade.
The bridge between the town and the beach was a ruin. The cobblestones were scorched black. The railings were twisted iron.
Smoke drifted across the river, thick and purple.
I walked into the smoke.
Clank. Hiss. Clank. Hiss.
The sound of my breathing was the only noise in the world.
To my left, thousands of French soldiers watched. To my right, thousands of British Redcoats watched.
They crossed themselves as I passed. They stared at the black rubber mask. The brass tank. The hose.
They thought I was a golem. A machine built for war.
I reached the middle of the bridge.
A figure emerged from the smoke on the other side.
He was small.
He wore a blue coat with gold braiding—a royal uniform cut down to fit a child. But it was ruined. Soot stained the silk. Blood splattered the cuffs.
He held a torch in one hand.
Charles.
He stopped five paces away.
We stood in No Man's Land. The river rushed beneath us, carrying the debris of the battle.
He looked at me. He looked at the mask. He didn't flinch.
"You look terrible," Charles said. His voice was calm, clipped, carrying across the silence. "Your respiratory system is failing."
I adjusted the valve on my chest. Khh-hhuuu.
"And you look messy," I said. The voice modulator made me sound like grinding gears. "That blood isn't yours."
Charles looked at his sleeve.
"It's my nanny's," he said. "She was inefficient. I liquidated her."
He raised the torch. The flame reflected in the glass eyes of my mask.
"I have the ammo dump rigged," Charles said. "One signal, and the British fleet burns. I control the board."
"I know," I said. "I saw the formation change."
"Why shouldn't I do it?" he asked. The torch trembled slightly. "Why shouldn't I drop this torch and end it? End the British. End the French. End you."
"Because of the wind," I said.
Charles paused.
"The wind?"
"I saw you on the beach," I said. "When the rockets misfired. You checked the wind. You knew the gas cloud would blow back."
I took a step forward.
"If you blow the dump now, with this North wind, the chemical cloud hits the town. It kills twenty thousand French civilians. Women. Children."
I pointed at the torch.
"You aren't a butcher, Louis. You're an auditor. You don't create deficits. You fix them."
Charles stared at me. His eyes were hard, but the trembling stopped.
"You saw the wind too," he whispered.
"I taught you to look for the variables," I said.
He lowered the torch.
"I thought you sent me away to die," he said. The childish vulnerability cracked through the warlord persona for a split second.
"I sent you away to learn," I rasped. "To survive. I couldn't protect you here. I had to make you sharp."
I reached out a gloved hand.
"And you learned. You passed the test."
Charles looked at my hand. Then at the mask.
"I hated you," he said.
"Good," I said. "Hate is a fuel. It kept you alive."
Suddenly, a red dot appeared on Charles's chest.
It was faint. A tiny speck of light dancing on the gold braid of his coat.
My accountant brain processed the anomaly instantly.
Laser sight. Ruby crystal amplification. Anachronism.
"Get down!" I roared.
I didn't think. I moved.
The oxygen surged. I lunged forward, slamming into Charles.
My weight hit him hard. We crashed to the cobblestones.
CRACK.
A bullet sparked off the stone where his heart had been a second ago.
"Sniper!" I yelled, rolling on top of him.
I covered his small body with my own. The brass tank on my back was exposed to the sky. I was a human shield.
"Where is it?" Charles shouted, struggling under my weight.
"Church tower!" I gasped. "West side!"
We lay tangled on the bridge. The armies on both sides were shouting, confused. They didn't know who fired.
"Can you calculate the angle?" I asked. My lungs were burning. The impact had jarred the regulator.
Charles reached into his coat. He pulled out the flintlock pistol.
He didn't panic. He looked at the church tower looming through the smoke.
"Elevation 30," Charles said instantly. "Distance 200 yards."
"Wind?" I asked.
"Negligible," he said.
"Take the shot," I ordered.
Charles didn't try to stand. He used my shoulder as a rest. He jammed the pistol barrel into the leather of my coat to steady his aim.
A pistol shot at 200 yards was impossible. It was luck.
But Charles didn't believe in luck. He believed in math.
He breathed out.
He squeezed the trigger.
BANG.
Smoke puffed from the pistol.
We watched the tower.
For a second, nothing happened.
Then, a dark shape toppled from the belfry. It fell silently, twisting in the air.
Thud.
It hit the roof of the nave and rolled off.
"Target eliminated," Charles whispered.
We lay there for a moment. Father and son. The monster and the king.
I rolled off him. I sat up, wheezing.
Charles holstered the smoking pistol. He stood up and brushed the dust from his royal coat.
He looked down at me. He looked at the dented tank, the rubber mask, the dying man inside the machine.
He reached out a hand.
"Get up, Administrator," he said.
I took his hand. He was strong. Surprisingly strong. He pulled me to my feet.
We stood back to back.
In front of us, the British army was shouting orders. Behind us, the French were racking their muskets.
And somewhere in the shadows, Cagliostro was laughing.
Charles looked at my mask. He saw his own reflection in the glass eyes.
"We have a discrepancy in the ledger, Father," Charles said. His voice was cold, precise, and terrifyingly adult.
I reached for the oxygen valve. I turned it up.
HISS.
The power flooded back.
"Then let's liquidate it," I growled.