Rook (39 page)

“Hammond!” René yelled. His hands were gray and stained with powder, but this time he had hit something hard inside the barrel. He felt carefully and realized it was the lid, a few inches of the black powder concealing it. Spear came running. “She has made a space beneath,” René said, his fingers scrabbling at the edges of the lid, where she had left it tilted inside.

“Try not to spill it,” said Spear as René lifted the lid away. The firelighter was beneath, nestled in powder, the burlap sack Sophia had carried now arranged beside it, the edges exactly where the flame would come. Spear put his hand around the machine and swiftly pushed the knob back in.

René set down the powder-covered barrel lid, sweat dripping from his face. “What time was it set for?” Spear picked up the firelighter and looked at the back.

“Highmoon,” he replied.

And then, in the quiet of the empty prison, they heard, very faint, the sound of the highmoon bells falling down through the drains.

René laughed, and then Spear laughed with him.

LeBlanc felt his cheek, bleeding from a small cut, and chuckled once. “Tell me, Miss Bellamy, do you consider yourself clever? Did you do well with your schooling?”

“She seems clever enough to beat you in a sword fight, LeBlanc,” said Tom from behind her. But she wasn’t beating him, not quite. LeBlanc was covered in blood and sweat, but he was on his feet. She could cut him, but not incapacitate him. Or at least not yet. She was sweating as well, one small prick stinging on her forearm. And she had lost sight of the rat Renaud. She hoped he had run. She hoped Tom had gotten the lock picked on his other ankle. She grinned at LeBlanc.

“Have you happened to notice that your own Goddess is female, Albert?”

“Of course! And being female, she naturally prefers the male, which is much to my advantage.”

This line of reasoning was so daft that Sophia dismissed it.

“I have noticed that more women beg beneath the Razor than men, especially when their children are climbing the scaffold next. Why do you think that is, Miss Bellamy? Will you beg, do you think?”

“And will you beg, Albert, when Allemande finds out your bloody prison is empty?”

He came after her again then, and the chamber flickered in the lantern light, loud with the clash of steel. She blocked again, and again, three times, and then LeBlanc was in close, trying to push her sword out of her hand. She knocked his arm away and kicked hard with her boot heel, catching him in the middle and knocking him into the dust. He tried to raise his sword but she got a foot on his arm, her sword tip at the base of his throat.

LeBlanc laughed against the pointed end of the blade, an eerie sound, especially in a place full of death. And then Sophia heard a yell behind her. Her head whipped around. With a glance she took in the fact that Renaud had a knife to Tom’s throat, and that the picklock she’d given Tom was now sticking out of Renaud’s leg. She pressed down with her boot, stopped LeBlanc’s arm from squirming, and made sure the very tip of her sword was piercing his skin.

“Call him off,” she said to LeBlanc.

“No,” said LeBlanc, his smile curling.

“Kill him, Sophie! We’ll die anyway if you don’t!”

She leaned closer to LeBlanc’s bloody face. “Call him off, or I will carve you up bit by bit, just the way you like to do to others.”

“Whatever you do to me,” LeBlanc said, “will be done to your brother. Won’t it, Renaud?”

“Kill him, Sophie!” Tom yelled. “Quick!”

Sophia pressed the sword in a little harder, and then a voice from the chamber entrance said, “I would not follow that suggestion, Miss Bellamy. I really would not.”

Sophia looked up to see a very small man in the doorway, neat in his spectacles and city-blue suit, surrounded by gendarmes. She wouldn’t have known the face if she hadn’t seen it on a coin, but she had. It was Allemande.

G
erard
mopped his head. The Rook couldn’t have been more mistaken about those tickets to Spain. He would gladly take the tickets, but as soon as Madame Gerard was safely on board, he would be trading his for one to the Commonwealth. Now that he’d thought it all over, he was more than reconciled to going. The bells of highmoon still seemed to echo in the air, the mob shouting loud and impatient in the prison yard on the other side of the empty warehouse. The last landover had arrived, and there was only himself, the twin gendarmes, and the boy they called Cartier left to get in it. They would be away to the coast with the flick of the horsewhip. But none of them would go. Or let him.

Gerard tried to speak, but one of the twins jabbed him with the hilt of a sword. They seemed to enjoy that. Gerard shut his mouth and mopped his face again while the other three put their heads together and conferred. When they were done, Cartier trotted out to the street and opened the door to the landover. Gerard sighed with relief. He hurried inside, the twins escorting him one on each side, as if he now had a wish to stay and face LeBlanc.

Cartier shut the door behind them, and when Gerard looked back he saw the boy standing in the rubbish-strewn street, watching them escape.

“Well,” said Allemande, eyeing LeBlanc as he got himself up out of the dust. He was covered in dirt and blood. “We cannot have any escaping, can we, Albert?” Allemande turned to the soldiers who were holding Sophia. “Search her,” he ordered.

And they did. Thoroughly. Sophia stared up at the shadowy darkness while they removed her vest, her gloves, her boots—she had stashed tinder, flint, and steel in the newly hollowed-out heel, and the steel could have been used as a file—the knife strapped to her thigh, the one beneath her shirt, the document from beneath her shirt, and the wire she’d threaded into her hair. They even took out the rest of her hairpins, which was a shame, because she could have picked a lock with those as well, in a pinch. There was some sort of commotion going on with Tom that she could not see, and she assumed he was being searched again as well. She hoped he’d buried the ring well enough that they would not find it. Perhaps LeBlanc did not yet know they’d been forging passes, and the landovers could get away.

“I am surprised, Albert,” Allemande was saying. His voice was soft, oily-slick as he wiped his glasses on a lace-edged handkerchief. Sophia wondered if Allemande was imitating LeBlanc’s voice, or if LeBlanc had been imitating Allemande’s. Or maybe they were just two of the same species of evil. “You are usually so punctual. When the bells rang, I thought perhaps you had become overzealous in your devotions again.”

Sophia saw LeBlanc’s pale eyes widen, and he snatched up the pendant from around his neck and flipped it open. “But … it’s not …”

“Oh no, Albert. Depending on technology? That is such an imperfect system. One can be executed for things like that.”

Sophia closed her eyes, knowing what this must mean. It was definitely past highmoon. The firelighter was not going to ignite anything. René had turned it off.

René finished laughing, head in hands as he leaned on a cask, Spear looking no less relieved. Then he looked at the firelighter, still in Spear’s hand.

“It is an interesting thing, is it not, that we can use a machine like this to control the time?”

“I suppose,” Spear replied.

“And Sophia has done an excellent job of ridding this prison of its occupants. It is quite empty, yes? And she has gotten herself away as well.”

“Yes. So?”

“Do you not think that after reinventing her plans with such success, it would be a shame to leave the best of them undone?”

Spear stared down at the firelighter, his eyes narrowed.

“What I mean to say, Hammond, is that I think we should blow this hole to bits. We have the time right here, in our hands.”

“Yes,” Spear nodded slowly. “I think you’re right. For Sophie. What time do we set it for?”

It didn’t matter what time she had set it for, after all. René would have found it too soon. The ache this knowledge caused was so strong it almost made the groping hands of the still searching gendarmes go away. Why did that tiny little sliver of hope keep dying only to be reborn? Then she took note of LeBlanc. He was staring down at his clock, an expression of frantic, hysterical disbelief on his face, a complete contrast to the clinical calm when she’d been slicing him with her sword.

“It is past highmoon?” LeBlanc looked at their faces, his voice rising to a shriek. Renaud took a step back. “We have missed the execution! The time that Fate herself decreed!”

Allemande pushed up his glasses, the gendarmes paused their further explorations, and then LeBlanc picked up his sword by the blade and inexplicably struck Renaud in the head with the hilt. Renaud crumpled, the picklock gone from his leg, Sophia saw, and then LeBlanc walked toward Tom, now with the proper end in his hand, blade out.

Sophia moved before the gendarmes knew she’d left their slackened grip. She barreled into LeBlanc with a yell, knocking him sideways before they were on her again, dragging her up by the arms.

“This is unseemly,” said Allemande. He waved a casual hand at the gendarmes. “Sit both the Bellamys down and use those chains. And Albert. Calm yourself and stop striking things.” Renaud picked himself up from the dirt, a small wound on his head.

“I will kill her,” said LeBlanc. He was shaking, a dirty, bleeding mess, and almost completely out of control. “I will kill them both!”

“Yes, yes,” said Allemande, “of course you shall. Albert, you look rather worse for wear. Am I right in thinking that you have arrested the wrong man … person?”

Sophia watched a spasm of genuine fear flit across LeBlanc’s face as she was thrown back against the stone pedestal. She glanced at the little man with the glasses. What must Allemande be if a monster like LeBlanc could fear him? LeBlanc struggled to smooth his cut and filthy robes.

“I … I can assure you, Premier …” His softness returned. “… that the Red Rook will soon die, and that the people will know it. And these red feathers that fight in the streets will be crushed.”

“Can you promise me that? Can you really? You know I take my promises seriously.”

LeBlanc nodded, eyes on the ground.

“And no more mysterious disappearances from the prisons, to keep you begging and consulting your Goddess? Can you promise me that as well?”

Sophia blinked as her shackle clicked shut. Allemande doesn’t know the Tombs are empty, she realized. He must have come straight down the lift and into … whatever this place was. And LeBlanc, she saw, hadn’t realized that Allemande didn’t know it, either. His hands worked in and out, clenching and unclenching as Allemande came and stood close to his back, head barely reaching his shoulder. Allemande spoke so softly it was difficult to hear.

“How, exactly, do you expect me to put stock in any promise you make, Albert? You did not even arrest a person of the correct gender. You know I do not tolerate disorder. This mob you have created is serving its purpose, but that will soon be done with. I do not care for your revenge, or your Goddess, or which Bellamy the people think is the Red Rook. As long as they see the Rook climb the scaffold and place his or her head on the block. We must be seen to be doing this properly. That is the essential thing. But you know what I like to do when it cannot be seen, don’t you, Albert? What I like to do when I am … disappointed in my friends.”

Sophia watched LeBlanc shake. Allemande pushed up his glasses, put his hands behind his back, turned, and started across the round room of bones. Then the spectacled eyes swiveled back to Tom. “Can that one walk?”

“Yes,” LeBlanc replied slowly. “But not well.”

“Be certain that he can make a decent show of himself on the way to the scaffold. Both of them. Are we clear on this?”

“Yes, Premier,” said LeBlanc. “But … we are agreed that this one limps, yes?” He indicated Tom, though his eyes slid over to Sophia.

“Yes, Albert, we are agreed on that.”

Allemande gathered his gendarmes while LeBlanc moved close to Sophia. LeBlanc’s voice was every bit as soft as Allemande’s, his breath in her face. “Tell me where the prisoners are, and I will spare you pain until your execution.”

She looked back at him and whispered, “I don’t think Allemande would approve.”

LeBlanc smiled. “There are many kinds of pain, Miss Bellamy.” Then his hand struck like a snake and Tom gasped. The picklock that had been in Renaud’s leg was now in Tom’s. Tom put a hand on Sophia’s arm, squeezing, not with pain but in warning. Allemande craned his neck as she leaned forward, getting even closer to LeBlanc’s face.

“That was unintelligent,” she hissed. “Because now I am going to tell Allemande that his prison is empty. In fact, I wrote a letter yesterday telling him so. It was my fate to rescue all the prisoners, so therefore I’d already done it, don’t you see? It should have arrived with the night post. So what to do, Albert? Keep him from his desk, or get there before him?”

She watched many things flit through LeBlanc’s manic eyes. Murder, loathing, the desire to hurt her, the desire not to lose his life.

“He’s waiting,” she whispered.

LeBlanc got to his feet, oozing blood everywhere. “One moment more, Premier,” he said loudly, “and I will personally escort you to my rooms, where we can discuss all that you wish, and make you comfortable until the proper time.”

Allemande watched as LeBlanc hurried around the pedestal. Sophia tensed at LeBlanc’s presence behind her, ready for a picklock or something else to pierce a part of her body she did not immediately need, but LeBlanc only ran his hands over the stone basin above her head, humming. She glanced sideways. Tom was grimacing, eyes shut, hand still squeezing her arm.

LeBlanc’s humming changed to a murmur as he chanted his question to Fate. Sophia caught the words “Bellamy” and “die,” followed by the clank of a casting piece on the stone bottom of the pedestal.

“Dawn,” LeBlanc said.