Too hot to see. Her eyeballs hurt.
She was going to die.
Hawker’s head pressed under her belly. He was seeing nothing but his work. Not a move out of him but the dance of his hands.
In the room behind her the fire growled like an animal.
She heard the tiny click when the lock turned. Hawker jerked the handle, freed the door, and pushed. The door moved an inch. Stopped. There was a barrier outside the door. Heavy. Immovable.
“It’s blocked from outside.” Hawker was calm, even as he choked.
He turned. Light rippled grim and red on his face. He said, “Owl. I’m sorry.”
Then he set his back to the door. Braced his feet. “You and you. Here. Back to the door. Push.
Four men pushed now, using all their strength. She stepped away and covered her face with her skirt. Bowed her head against the heat.
The door didn’t budge. Not much longer for any of them. Across the room she heard screams and banging. The other door—yes—the other door was locked too, and no one to get it open.
Then Hawker and the desperate, heaving men beside him fell backwards. The door opened outward, abruptly, five inches. Yelling, they pushed again and the door screeched and shuddered an inch more. Then opened enough for the men to edge sideways and through.
She heard the rumble of something being dragged aside. The door flung wide.
The rush of panic and shoving carried her past Hawker and down the hall. Paxton and the first men out of the burning room struggled to shove a heavy bureau out of the way. The guard was limp on the ground next to the wall.
The crowd tumbled out of the room, pushing and choking. Staggering to safety.
She tripped a madman who yammered and tried to run into the blaze. Elbowed him in the belly when he got up and tried again. Saw him held and dragged off by others. She beat at the dress of a woman whose light printed cotton had caught fire. A man—brother or lover or passing stranger—pulled his jacket off and closed it around the girl, smothering the flames.
She yelled at him, over the shouting and the howl of the fire, “Get her out of here. To the fountain outside. Soak her with water.”
Those who had escaped were blocking the path of those still in the room. She pushed one man and another. “Go. Get out of the way.” Sent them down the hall. And still Napoleon did not come.
It was bright as fireworks inside. Men and women ran for the door through a corridor of the fire. Through flames that poured like rivers, going upward.
The First Consul was the last man out. His guard pushed two women, a gasping man, and a boy carrying a baby ahead of them. Then Napoleon emerged, even after his guard, covering his face with his arms.
Behind him, in the open doorway, smoke descended like a slow curtain. A hollow roaring built. The fire became solid, flames fingering the doorway. Wind blew from the hall behind her toward the fire.
An inferno of heat. Such heat that she retreated from it. Anyone left inside that room was dead.
Men ran past her, toward the fire. Soldiers carrying buckets of water and sand. Down the hall, outside in the courtyard, men yelled, “Fire,” and “Get the pumps,” and “This way.”
She followed the black, ash-smeared figure of Napoleon. He strode, upright and rigidly controlled, his square, pale countenance set. Men gave way before him. Anyone with clear eyes looked around for orders now. They trailed in his wake or stopped to help the survivors of the Green Salon who coughed and cried out, faces covered with soot.
Smoke snaked over her head, down the corridor, filling the space beneath the ceiling, covering the nymphs and gods.
“Owl.” Hawker was in her path. “Your hair’s on fire. Hold still.” He slapped around her face. Pulled her fichu out from around her neck and pressed it to her head. “You’re burned.”
Now she felt stinging points of pain. Pieces of falling fire had burned through her clothes. The damage was on her back where she couldn’t see. It didn’t matter.
“It’s nothing.” Her throat was raw from breathing in the smoke. She swallowed and tasted ash. “At the other door. There will be a soldier. Go.”
“There are men headed that way.” Hawker pulled out a handkerchief, spit on it, and swiped across her eyes. “I’ve got to find the Englishman. For God’s sake, get away from the fire. And move these damn idiots along.” He was gone, dodging through the crowd, his friend Paxton at his back.
She ran to catch up with Napoleon. He strode through this tumult alone, sending his soldiers to help others. It would be easy, easy, for someone to slip toward him and shoot. That might be their plan all along. In the madness of the fire, to kill him and escape.
Napoleon took his place in the center of the marble entry hall under the great chandelier. Men rushed by in this direction and that, shouting. Then they saw him, and chaos ceased.
Suddenly, officers’ voices could be heard. Men formed quickly moving lines, passing buckets. The injured and grimy survivors of the fire were helped outside. The doors cleared.
Napoleon treated this as he would a battlefield. He stayed where he could be seen and consulted. He issued orders to one man and sent him on his way. Spotted another and motioned him forward. Gave more orders. Men came to him in panic and departed with purpose.
She set herself four feet from his back and drew her gun from her pocket, cocked it, and held it at her side, pointed to the floor, hidden by the folds of her skirt. Ready. She studied the eyes of every man who approached him, watched the hands of every man and woman who hesitated in the corridor and stared.
The First Consul had escaped one threat. He must be guarded from the next. That was her job, in this confusion, to guard his back.
Leblanc came from the courtyard outside. He’d washed his face somewhere, but his hair was still full of black ash. He breathed raggedly as he approached the First Consul, whether from exertion or fear, she did not know. “The Englishman got away. We’re searching the building for him. I will send—”
“It is not the English.” Napoleon commanded armies in the field. Now he raised his voice so it could be heard above the shouting, over the weeping of women who had collapsed on benches in the corridor, over the tromp of soldiers. “This is an unfortunate accident. The fire has been controlled.” In a lower voice, he said to Leblanc, “See that nothing else reaches the papers. This is a small fire that accidentally broke out.”
“The Englishman lit the—”
“There is no Englishman. This is a plot of the Jacobins. There are a number already under suspicion of treasonous activities. I want them arrested. Find Fouché. I must talk to him.”
“Of course, First Consul, I—”
The First Consul would naturally blame the Jacobins. He would take any excuse to harass them. And he did not wish to go to war with England. Not at this minute. Not before he prepared.
Leblanc tried to say more, but Napoleon had already turned away to listen to a sergeant who spoke of pumps. Then he called over to him a man in the clothing of a clerk, saying again that this was an accident only. Not the first fire in these old buildings. This information must appear, just so, in the press.
Vezier came from the direction of the fire, his face smeared, his eyes tearing tracks down to his mustache. He saw the gun she held ready, and at once understood the danger to the First Consul. He gestured three men from the work of carrying buckets to set them in a phalanx around Napoleon. They were ordinary soldiers, but they took up positions, as if by instinct, putting their own bodies between the threat of an assassin and the future of Europe.
Leblanc stalked toward her, determined and furious, and closed his fist around her arm. “We will find the Englishman who did this. Come with me.”