She blew out the candle, replaced it in her vest, unwrapped Mr. Lostchild’s glove, and dropped it on the floor below the window. Then she gathered up the rope and stepped out onto the casement. The night sky was still overcast, very dark, a stiff breeze gusting as the remnants of the storm passed. She left the window open, climbing hand below hand down the rope, her mind going much faster than her descent.
With the rain gone, Cartier should be on the run by now. He would have a decent start before the glove was found and they set the foxes on the scent. That was good. But would it be enough to divert suspicion from Tom? It should be easy enough to prove Tom hadn’t gone anywhere near the Holiday. Especially since he hadn’t. She thought of that subtle trap on the chessboard. Did René think he had engaged himself to the sister of the Red Rook, or could he have the first inkling that he was actually engaged to the Rook herself? And what were they going to do about it if he did?
A soft swish startled Sophia from her thoughts, a whisper of metal slicing through the air. The swing of a sword. She kicked at the wall and pushed off, turning half around, gasping as she caught what should have been a hack through her spine as a glancing cut to one side. The rope swung crazily, spinning the world in circles around her head. She let go and dropped beneath the next swing of the sword. The blade struck the wall of the inn with a dull tang, severing the rope, and Sophia hit the muddy ground as if she’d landed on ice. Her stockinged feet flew forward and out, the back of her head slamming hard into the limewashed stone, and suddenly the cloud-black night was full of stars and fire and lights that exploded in red and green before her eyes. Like they had in the Sunken City, confusing the gendarmes, making the mob around the bloody scaffold panic and scatter. Then the lights were gone, and it was black.
Sophia came back to herself in the dark, mind as thick and slow as the ground she could feel beneath her. The Holiday. LeBlanc’s room. Someone had tried to kill her when she climbed down the rope, and now the foxes were barking. Her eyes snapped open. She must have been out for only an instant because a candle or lantern was just beginning to glow from a window above her head, spilling out in a pool of curtain-filtered light. A form lay beside her, prostrate in the shadows, a man with a face she’d never seen. He was flat on his back, very still, sword in one hand, a knife handle-deep in his chest.
Sophia scrambled to her feet and her vision blurred. She swayed. There was pain in her head, a horrible pain in her side, and a commotion starting in the inn, sleepy voices raised in alarm. The foxes would be loose any moment. She grabbed the knife and wrenched it from the dead man’s chest, thrusting it quickly through her belt. Then she picked up her boots and ran, hand pressing her side, blood running through her fingers as she slipped and stumbled across the muddy yard of the Holiday inn like a drunkard.
Sophia slid down from the saddle, the jar of landing making her skull ache and her stomach sick. She was back in the woods of the Bellamy estate, she realized, in the little shelter she and Tom had created for stashing a horse. The horse had known to go there even if she hadn’t. Her head was fuzzy, the trees stretching and bending in odd ways, the light of a yellow sun cresting the horizon behind ragged clouds. There was something about dawn that needed remembering, something Tom had said, but she couldn’t think what.
She threw the reins over a post, and noticed that something was wrong with one of her hands. She opened her palm. Red. And sticky. Her whole left side was wet and stained, and it hurt. She left the mare to its hay, breaking out of the tree line in a slow, lumbering walk.
Bellamy House rose up before her in a mist, a mismatched hodgepodge of stone and concrete built around decorative arches of red and white brick from the Time Before, a building mostly made beautiful by its age. She could see the roof, and the ledge and lattice path that led to her bedroom window, but for some reason the drainpipe seemed daunting. She would climb it later.
She chose an unobtrusive little door instead, sunk into the wall stones around the corner of the house, its weathered wood half-hidden by ivy. Slowly, and with panting breath, she drew out a loose stone from the house wall and retrieved the key beneath it. She unlocked the wooden door, replaced the key and stone as she always did, ducked beneath the ivy, and pushed the door shut behind her.
Stairs twisted downward, spiraling round and round in the dark. She took the steps one by one, unaware of time, until they ended in a room that was a cold blackness, smelling of earth and underground, wind moaning from blocked tunnels beyond the walls. But she didn’t need a light; she could walk this room blind. She knew exactly where the little cot was, and that there would be a blanket. Tom always had a blanket. It would be a good place to rest. Just for a little while. She sank down onto the chilly straw mattress and closed her eyes.
When she opened them again she knew immediately where she was. Tom’s sanctuary, as he called it, deep beneath Bellamy House, a room that was nothing but Ancient. Light moved over walls tiled with white and artificial red—the red seen only in artifacts from the Time Before—arched doorways blocked with gray stone making dull, ugly scars in the otherwise bright surfaces. The pillars that held up the ceiling were also arched, some with their steel exposed beneath chunks of missing concrete. Tom was very careful with that steel. He oiled it regularly, so it couldn’t, after all this time, decide to rust and let the roof collapse.
Sophia let her eyelids fall shut again. Her head, her side, everything hurt. She tried to move but there was a heavy blanket covering her, and something tight around her middle. And then she stopped any movement at all. There had been light. And she smelled fire. Her eyes flew open.
Flames were dancing in the little brick hearth just a few feet away, driving away the chill, and across the expanse of cracked and patched floor, a little farther down the tiled walls, there was a star of light flickering in the dimness. A man stood with his back to her, tall and lean, illuminated by a candle, white shirt untucked over brown breeches, boots to his knees, and hair loose to his shoulders. He was running a hand over the display shelves, where Tom stored the objects he’d dug up from the grounds around Bellamy House.
The man picked one up, such a vivid blue it could be seen from across the room, bat-shaped and the size of a hand, with some sort of knob on one side, a gray cross, and four small circles inlaid with yellow and unnatural red on the other. She’d watched Tom puzzling over this item many times. He thought the cross and brightly colored pieces were meant to be pushed, though for what purpose neither of them could imagine, and he’d had no success looking for the word “Nintendo” in the university archives. It was beautifully worked, though. Like a piece of art.
The man held up the artifact, examining it carefully from all sides and underneath. Then he looked over his shoulder.
“Bonjour.”
Sophia sucked in a breath. It was René. The René who was her almost-fiancé. The René who had come here to catch the Rook. And his hair, she saw, was indeed red. A dark russet in the candlelight. She hadn’t even recognized him. She turned her head on the pillow, making it ache. Some of her memories were clear, straight lines; others were blurred and smudged around the edges like cheek paint.
René laid the blue object back in its box and picked up the artifact next to it. He held up a round, flat disk, speared on his finger by the hole in its middle, flashing like a mirror as it caught the glow of flame. Sophia clutched harder at the blanket, torn between the desperate need to know what René knew, and hoping he was not about to break one of Tom’s precious things.
“Do you know what it is?” René asked without turning around.
“No,” she replied. Maybe she could get rid of him before he discovered she was hurt. She needed to get to Orla. And Tom. She struggled to sound more like herself. “But you should put it down. It’s made of plastic, and it’s delicate.”
“Yes, Mademoiselle. I am aware that this item is made of plastic.” She could hear that note of amusement in his voice. “I think I will tell you what my maman says about the
se disks. She says that her grand-mère told her that her grand-mère said there are messages hidden inside these, thousands upon thousands of pictures and words, so well concealed that we shall never find them.”
He glanced over his shoulder again. “Do you think that could be so? Do you think there are a thousand pictures inside this disk? Or were my ancestors only very imaginative?” He gazed at the artifact. “I think perhaps they were. My grand-mère was a terrible liar. She used to say …”
Maybe she should kill him first. “What are you doing here?” she demanded.
“Ah.” He set the disk down in its nest of soft cloth. “It was very curious. I was walking your grounds, watching for the sun, and then I see there is someone coming across the lawn …”
Her fiancé wasn’t to have left the north wing; Spear and Tom were supposed to be watching him—she remembered that. So he couldn’t slip out to LeBlanc, like the dawn before.
“I thought it was your brother. I thought he was unwell, that he had been … what do you call it in the Commonwealth? ‘Out for a bender’?”
Sophia did not correct him. How was he moving in and out of Bellamy House?
“I watched him take a key and unlock a door. And so through the door and down the stairs I came, thinking to be a useful future brother, and who is it that I find?” He turned fully around then, a grin on one side of his mouth. “And how are you feeling, my love?”
Some of the more hazy recollections in Sophia’s mind were taking on their proper shapes. The rope coming down from the window. The man with a knife in his chest. She must have done that, though she didn’t remember. The strange, foggy journey on the horse. But the memory she was having the most difficulty reconciling was the man holding the candle on the other side of the sanctuary. The voice was different. Deeper, not as smooth, and not nearly as Parisian. As it had been for just a little while in the sitting room the night before. And that was the only thing about René Hasard that was anything like the night before.
She lifted a hand to touch the back of her head. A large knot had risen at the base of her skull, just inside the hairline. She said, “I took a fall, I’m afraid. From my horse. I think I’ve hit my head rather hard.”
“Yes.” René was moving across the room now, lithe, and with very little noise from his boots. He used his candle to light an oil lamp that was hanging from one of the exposed crossbeams. “And you also seem to have fallen on that knife you were carrying.”
Sophia reached down to her side. The sword cut. Who had the man with the sword been, and was he still alive? Surely not. And just how much had she bled? She looked beneath the blanket. Her vest was gone, her knife gone, and there was a gash in her shirt, the cloth around it soaking in a large, dark circle. Blood had also run down the side of the breeches, all the way to the knee. Then she saw that another strip of cloth had been tied tight over the wound beneath her shirt, circling her waist. She lifted her eyes to René.
“Did you bandage me?”
It was not an inquiry; it was an accusation. He had taken off her clothes. Or at least taken them off a little. The line of René’s jaw flickered as he bent over another candle, a grin lurking again in that corner of his mouth.
“Please don’t think me impertinent, my love. We are betrothed, after all. And Monsieur Hammond was not here to do the job this time.”
Sophia clutched the blanket, watching René closely. He lit more candles, flame to flame from the one in his hand. The words KINGS CROSS ST. PANCRAS spelled inside a circle of Ancient red leapt to visibility on the side wall. Even the way he held his body was unfamiliar, controlled, with no embellished movements.
She tried to think. The rope and hook would be found, and the glove. That was to plan. The wounded—or more likely dead—man was not. And neither was this living one. They would have the foxes following the scent on the glove, the scent Cartier was leaving in a zigzag trail across the Commonwealth. But it would not take long for news about the events at the Holiday to reach Bellamy House. The net had drawn tight, and now she was the one caught.
“It does seem careless of you, my love,” the different René said, still grinning as he moved toward the cot. “Riding alone, in the dark, with a knife out of its sheath. Will you make a habit of such things after we are married?”
She’d spotted her knife now. It was on the floor beside her vest. Well out of reach. “I don’t know,” she replied. “Do you often take walks before dawn?”
He stood over the bed. “I do not know. Do you often go riding past nethermoon?”
Sophia raised her eyes. René Hasard was dirty and mussed, with an open collar and stubble around his mouth, as unpredictable as his hair color. She raised one arm over her head, covering her eyes. The best shield she had at this moment was her charm, and, if he was anything like his cousin, the belief that a female would be incapable of climbing up a rope, sinking a knife into a strange man’s chest, and spiriting innocent souls out of the Tombs. But surely even René was not this stupid? She was beginning to be afraid that he wasn’t. She had to keep him distracted, at least long enough to find a way out of this room.
He pulled up a stool. “Are you in pain?”
“Some,” Sophia whispered, giving the word the tiniest tremble.
“Look up at me, and watch the candle.”
He held up the light and put a finger to her chin, peering down into her eyes. She watched the candle, but mostly she was watching him, trying to see any remnants of the man she thought she’d been engaged to. Even with the polish gone, René Hasard still looked more than capable of flirting with a girl at a Bann’s ball. He raised and lowered the candle, moving it from side to side, the wandering light and shadows making the fire-blue gaze into something wild. Sophia revised her earlier assessment. This René would definitely flirt with a girl, but then he might also nick her purse. He sat back suddenly, and Sophia let out the breath she’d been holding.
“You have some concussion, I think,” he said, setting the candle on the little table beside the cot. “Your eyes, they do not change quickly for the light.” He reached for the edge of her blanket, and Sophia gripped it harder. This time his smile was a little sly. “You will permit?”
She permitted. She’d thought better of it, anyway. She watched as he pulled down the blanket, bashful through her lashes. The act of being coy was costing her, but at least she wasn’t manufacturing the embarrassment; that much was real.
“And turn,” he said, adjusting her body so that she was almost completely on her unwounded side. Sophia winced, this expression also unfeigned. He lifted the end of her bloody shirt, exposing the bandage and also her skin from her breeches to about halfway up her rib cage. She concentrated on the movement of the flames in the hearth as he undid the knot in the cloth.
“Where did you get the bandage?”
“My shirt, it is not as long as it once was,” he said. “It is very sad.”
She glanced at his face, but it was inscrutable in shadow. Then the air hit her cut and she hissed. She tried to raise her head up to see, but that was painful as well. She dropped it back onto her arm, and remembered to use the tremble. “How … badly am I hurt?”
René didn’t answer, and still she could discern nothing from his face. He began probing the wound, cool air and warm fingers gently moving across her skin. His palms were calloused. She tried not to shiver. The fingers left her, and when she looked up, there, all at once, was the René she knew, the one from her Banns. If not in dress, exactly, at least in expression.
“Well, my love,” he said brightly. “I am guessing that you would like to keep this little accident to yourself, with no one the wiser, yes? Do tell me if you disagree.”
Warning bells went off in Sophia’s head. “Yes, it would be better,” she replied, casting her eyes down in a way that she hoped was demure. “My father would worry so.”
“And your brother?”
“Yes. He would worry.” What she really wanted was for Tom to come banging down th
ose steps with his stick and tell her what to do with this enormous package of enigmatic trouble that was René Hasard.
“And what about my cousin? He comes to dine with us tonight, does he not?”
The warning bells were at full tilt now, and Sophia’s head throbbed. She had completely forgotten LeBlanc’s intended presence at their dinner table. Perhaps he would be caught up in his cross-country pursuit and not make an appearance. But that, she knew, was too much to hope for. She lifted her eyes to René. The blue was almost hidden by heavy lids.
“I do not see why this cannot be our little secret, my love.” He leaned close and gave the end of her nose a tap with his finger. “When we are married you will keep all my secrets, yes?”
Then he was on his feet. Sophia bit her lip, watching him move to one of Tom’s cabinets near the workbench. It was amazing that he could look so different, so different she was having a hard time looking elsewhere, and yet still manage to be so incredibly irritating. And dangerous. Very, very dangerous.
René was bent down now, rummaging inside the cabinets. He seemed to have already explored the place fairly well because he straightened almost immediately, emerging with a bottle in one hand and a glass in the other. He bit the cork, pulled it out with his teeth, and spat it onto the floor. Sophia felt her eyebrows rise.
“I do not share your brother’s taste in drink, I fear,” he said, wrinkling his nose. “But this should ‘do the trick.’ That is what they say in the Commonwealth, is it not?”
It certainly would “do the trick.” The bottle was one of Mr. Lostchild’s homebrews, used for cleaning the artifacts Tom dug up on the estate. Sophia had never known anyone to drink it but Mr. Lostchild, and he was no longer living.
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