The summer of 1789 smelled of smoke and bread and broken promises.
Marcel pressed himself against the cold stone wall of the alleyway, listening to the distant roar of the crowd surging toward the Bastille. He had come to Paris as a wine merchant, a connoisseur of Burgundy vintages who could distinguish a 1774 from a 1776 by scent alone. He had not come to witness a revolution.
His business partner, Édouard, appeared from the shadows and launched into his familiar spiel about opportunity — how upheaval created markets, how chaos favored the bold. Marcel had heard the speech a hundred times in a hundred taverns across France.
"We must separate ourselves from this madness," Marcel insisted, grabbing Édouard's sleeve. "Take different routes. Meet at the inn by nightfall."
But Édouard shook his head. The streets had already narrowed into a maze of shouting men and overturned carts. Royalist soldiers advanced from the east while revolutionary militia stormed from the west, and Marcel realized with cold clarity that they were caught directly in the crossfire — not soldiers, not martyrs, simply two merchants in the wrong place on history's most inconvenient afternoon.
It was inevitable, Marcel thought, that a country starving while its king feasted on pheasant would eventually shatter like poorly made glass.
He grabbed Édouard and pulled him through a bakery door, slamming it shut behind them. The baker, flour-dusted and trembling, simply gestured toward the cellar.
They descended into darkness together, listening to France remake itself overhead.