Traitor's Chase (2 page)

Paris

G
REG
R
ICH CREPT SLOWLY THROUGH THE
L
OUVRE
, clutching his sword tightly, fearing an attack at any second. Flickering torches lighted the rough-hewn stone walls as he made his way along the dirt floor. A rat scurried past him, no doubt to its burrow between the gaps in the stone, while clusters of bats hung from the high, shadowed ceiling. Although clad in his Musketeer's uniform—bright blue with the emblem of the king, a white fleur-de-lis, embroidered on it—the chill air made Greg shiver.

He was in the oldest section of the palace, a remnant from when the Louvre was a fortress on the western edge of Paris. It was hard to believe this was actually part of the home of the king of France.

The bells of Notre Dame chimed in the distance. It was seven o'clock at night, and although back in the twenty-first century, it wouldn't have been late, here in the seventeenth, most people were already turning in for the night. The sound of the bells made Greg uneasy; two months before, he'd nearly been killed by Michel Dinicoeur in that bell tower.

As Greg edged through the dim corridors, he struggled to remain calm, practicing what Athos had taught him: breathe slowly, be alert to everything around you, keep your sword unsheathed so you're always prepared for …

Trouble. Bat squeaks and the flutter of wings alerted Greg that someone was approaching from behind. He spun, his sword at the ready, just as his attacker lunged from the dark passage. A blade glinted in the torchlight, clanging against Greg's own.

Greg took a swordsman's stance, right foot forward, and parried. Athos's lessons filtered through his mind.
Stay in the moment. Focus. No matter how hard he tries not to, your attacker will always signal what he's going to do next. Predict, prepare—and counter
.

Greg watched his opponent's hands and feet, guessed where the strikes would come next, and responded. They ducked and dodged, steel hitting steel. Still, Greg was on the defensive, forced to back down the passage as his attacker surged forward. But then, Greg saw his opening. He deflected a slash at his head, twirled to the right, and attacked.

His instincts were dead on. He had a direct shot at the heart....

“Drop it,” a voice hissed in his ear. Suddenly, there was another sword at his throat, cold metal biting against his skin.

Greg let his sword clatter to the ground.

“What'd you do that for?” the voice behind him asked, far less sinister this time.

“Uh …” Greg said. “Because you told me to.”

“Why would you do what the bad guy tells you to?” The sword lowered from Greg's neck, allowing him to face the second attacker: Porthos. “After all, he's the bad guy. He's not looking out for your best interests.”

“Well, what was I supposed to do?” Greg asked. “Out-duel two men while there's a sword pressed to my neck?”

“Yes.” Athos—the first attacker—emerged from the shadows. “If that had been Michel Dinicoeur or Dominic Richelieu behind you, your head would no longer be attached to your body. How do you expect to catch the madmen if you give up so easily?”

“Maybe
you
can beat two men in that situation,” Greg said. “But I can't.”

“Then I'd recommend not getting into that situation,” Athos replied coolly. “You should
always
be prepared for an attack from behind. No matter what.”

Greg sighed and picked up his sword. Athos was right, of course. Which only reinforced the fact that, even after two months of training, Greg still felt way out of his league in a swordfight.

“Hey”—Athos put a reassuring arm around Greg's shoulders—“you're doing great. Honestly. If it hadn't been for Porthos, you'd have got me right in the chest.”

“Yeah. I would have.” Greg mustered a smile. “I almost did you in.”

“Oh, I wouldn't say
that
.” Athos thumped his hand against the metal breastplate concealed beneath his tunic. “This is
me
we're talking about. I still had a few tricks up my sleeve. But virtually anyone else, you would have beaten. You've come a long way in a short time.”

Greg appreciated the praise, though he was also daunted by it. Sometimes he forgot this wasn't just for sport, like all those years of fencing lessons had been back in prep school. Now that he was a Musketeer, knowing how to handle a sword could be the difference between life and death. Especially when Michel Dinicoeur and Dominic Richelieu were out there somewhere, plotting against him.

It had been two months since Michel had sprung Dominic from the Bastille. The attack had come mere minutes after Greg and the others had been sworn in as Musketeers by King Louis XIII. Even though the Bastille was a massive protected fortress, it had proven little challenge for Michel. The guards had claimed Michel had used sorcery, rendering men unconscious with a mere touch and making the walls explode with a single incantation. Once free, both men had ridden north of the city and crossed the Seine—and when the guards had tried to follow, they'd been repelled by a fusillade of arrows, courtesy of René Valois, a staunch supporter of Michel and Dominic who had once been a leader of the King's Guard. By the time the Musketeers arrived on the scene, Michel and Dominic were long gone.

Greg still had no idea where they were, although he assumed they'd gone off to recover the Devil's Stone. Michel needed it to make his younger self, Dominic, immortal—for if Dominic died, then Michel would cease to exist. Greg wanted to find the stone just as badly as they did—perhaps more—for without it, he couldn't return to his own time. But now his enemies had a two-month head start tracking it down—and once they had it, Greg suspected he'd never get it back. He and his parents would be trapped in 1615 France.

Of course, there was always the possibility that Michel and Dominic hadn't gone after the stone at all but were merely lurking about Paris, waiting for the best opportunity to kill Greg and the Musketeers—a scenario Greg found equally unsettling.

Therefore, Greg had spent the past two months doing two things: training with Athos and Porthos—or sleuthing with Aramis, the brains of the Musketeers. Aramis had gone out today to follow up on a lead, but Greg feared that this would end like all the others: nowhere.

“All right,” Athos said, brandishing his sword. “Let's try this again, shall we? Porthos and I will set up another ambush....”

“Another?” Porthos groaned. “Haven't we ambushed him enough?”

“Practice makes perfect,” Athos replied. “Besides, it's not like we have anything better to do.”

“
I
do,” Porthos shot back. “A lady friend of mine needs an escort to a ball this evening. And she has some friends who could use escorts as well, if you're interested.”

Greg glanced at Athos, thinking that a ball might be a nice change of pace from the endless training, but the young swordsman frowned. “There are deadly enemies on the loose,” he said. “We have no time for dancing.”

“I'll bet you wouldn't say that if Milady de Winter needed an escort,” Porthos replied with a smirk.

Athos flushed red at the mention of Milady, though Greg couldn't tell if it was from embarrassment or anger—or both. “I have no interest in the queen's handmaiden,” he snapped.

Before Porthos could reply, footsteps echoed through the passageway. The three boys immediately raised their swords.

A palace messenger boy rounded the corner and shrieked in fright upon seeing the three blades pointed his way.

“Sorry!” Greg said, lowering his sword. “Didn't mean to scare you!”

“It's my fault,” the boy apologized. “I'm sorry, sir.” He knelt and bowed his head reverentially.

Greg and the others had been getting a lot of this type of respect since becoming Musketeers. Greg found it a little creepy, although the others ate it up. Even Aramis, who felt that pride was a sin.

“What brings you to interrupt our training?” Athos asked the messenger.

“The king requests a presence with D'Artagnan,” the boy replied.

After all his time in France, Greg was finally getting used to being called D'Artagnan. His real name was only known to Aramis, one of many secrets he was forced to keep.

“Guess you'd better make haste, then.” Athos tried to sound light of heart, although Greg could hear the jealousy beneath it.

“All right.” Greg sheathed his sword and followed the messenger down the passage. He could feel the others staring after him, wondering what King Louis could possibly want with him this time.

The messenger led him from the old fortress into the true palace. The dirt floors became wood, and the stone walls gave way to painted plaster. They passed through the section that housed the King's Guard, where Dominic Richelieu himself had once had an office.

Greg found himself wishing that he could tell his friends the truth about himself and where he'd really come from, but he knew he couldn't. How could he possibly explain that he wasn't from the distant town of Artagnan at all—but was instead from four hundred years in the future? Or that Michel Dinicoeur and Dominic Richelieu were actually the same person? Or that Michel was an immortal madman who'd traveled back through time to kill the Musketeers as revenge for something they hadn't even done yet? These were superstitious times, Aramis had warned. Greg's friends wouldn't understand. They'd think him a sorcerer or a madman or both.

Greg followed the messenger up a wide wooden staircase, and the Louvre suddenly became alive with activity. Greg had always assumed that the palace was only the king's home, but in fact hundreds of servants lived there as well—including the Musketeers themselves. The route took Greg right past their quarters. It was a small room and they all had to share it, but compared to the living conditions of most people in 1615 Paris, the accommodations were amazing. The boys all had beds to sleep on, rather than mere thatches of straw. And there was even indoor plumbing—as long as they didn't mind going down the hall and using a communal—and coed—bathroom that didn't have a lock on the door.

Greg's parents' room was right next door to his. King Louis had graciously allowed them to move into the castle as well after their rescue from La Mort. The door currently hung open, revealing that Greg's parents weren't in. Greg was wondering where they'd gone when Aramis burst out of the Musketeers' quarters.

“D'Artagnan!” he crowed. “Just who I wanted to see! You'll never believe what I learned today!”

“Actually, can it wait?” Greg asked. “The king asked to see me.”

“I'll walk with you. It's too exciting.” Aramis dropped in beside Greg and held up a tiny scrap of black fabric. It was two inches long, an inch wide, and torn on three sides—as though it had been ripped from a piece of clothing. “Remember this?”

“Of course,” Greg said. “I found it.”

The shred of fabric was the only clue the boys had to Dominic and Michel's whereabouts. A few months earlier, Michel had forced Milady de Winter to deliver a letter to a messenger at an inn. Under questioning later, Milady claimed that she had no idea what was in the letter or where the messenger was from—only that he was a foreigner. Aramis had believed her—but then, Aramis was smitten with Milady. Athos hadn't believed her at all—but then, Athos was also smitten with Milady, and he knew she liked Aramis more than she liked him.

The day after Dominic had escaped from prison, Greg had asked Milady to take him to the inn. She had led all the Musketeers there on horseback. The inn only had a single room for guests, and there Greg had found the scrap of cloth snagged on a jagged splinter of wood that jutted from the wall. The innkeeper's wife said it
looked
like it was from the clothes the mysterious man had worn.

“It's silk,” Aramis said proudly, as he and Greg followed King Louis's messenger through the palace.

“So?” Greg asked.

Aramis frowned. “Is silk not a big deal in the future?”

Greg thought about the clothes his family had owned. His mother had several silk dresses and his father probably had some silk ties as well. “I don't think it's cheap, but I don't think it's rare, either.”

“Well, it's rare here. And expensive. Silk comes all the way from the Far East, and only a few shipments reach Europe every year. What arrives tends to stay in the port cities—usually Venice or Barcelona. Only the tiniest amounts of silk ever make it to Paris.”

Greg stopped walking and examined the scrap of silk more closely. “So whoever Milady met at the inn that night was no common messenger?”

“Exactly. Anyone wearing such fancy clothes would most likely be the emissary representing the king of a foreign nation.”

Greg's heart thumped in his chest. France was surrounded by countries that were always on the verge of invading: England, Spain, the duchies of Italy, and the Holy Roman Empire, which controlled Germany, Switzerland, and Belgium. If Dominic had dealings with
any
of them, it was reason for concern. “Which one?”

“I don't know yet.” Aramis took the scrap of silk back and carefully tucked it away. “I need to figure out where this silk was made. I'll bet a month's wages that, wherever it is, Dominic and Michel have fled there.”