“So now they say this revolution has been decreed by a Goddess, that Fate has chosen new recipients for her blessings. And the poor will follow, because Allemande has promised them all they wish to have, and because now those promises are backed by a deity. But even if they do not believe, they will follow, do you not see? They will follow out of fear of the Razor, and they will follow because there is no responsibility. For anything. All can do as they please, because all is as Fate has willed. There is no wrong. It is madness!” He threw up a hand. “A very clever madness.”
Sophia watched him, mesmerized. Just a few days ago she would have bet Bellamy House that there weren’t any such ideas in René Hasard’s powdered head. Now it was as if he’d been possessed by Tom.
“Allemande will only take now,” he continued, “as the Goddess decrees, with LeBlanc as his ‘holy man’ to make her wishes known. He will keep himself in the chair of the premier, hold the poor of the Lower City exactly where he wants them, and execute Jennifer Bonnard and the Red Rook in a ceremony of thankfulness to the Goddess.”
No, they will not, Sophia thought. She glanced down at the newspaper. “And they will draw lots from the prison. Fate will choose one out of three. One to live …”
“And the other two will die,” René finished. “Two-thirds of the Tombs will lose their lives on an altar. The gutters will run with the blood.” The fire settled, the weight of this news doing the same in Sophia’s mind.
“La Toussaint,” Spear said from the doorway. He’d been so quiet Sophia had almost forgotten he was there. “Sixteen days from Tom’s arrest will be the end of the festival honoring those lost in the Great Death.”
René sat back, thoughtful. “That is so.”
“La Toussaint is also when the saint in the form of a rook led survivors to the underground, before the city sank,” Spear continued. “That’s why they wait to execute Tom. LeBlanc has shut down the chapels, but Sophie has been leaving rook feathers. He wants to disprove the story.”
“Hammond is right,” René said, showing only the slightest surprise.
Sophia thought of that rumbling thunder, and the streaking ball of fire she’d seen moving across the sky the night she’d gone to the Holiday. The same as the iconography on the chapel walls. “It’s also the night the Seine gate will be open, so the Lower City can visit the cemeteries,” she mused. She’d never been in the city for La Toussaint. They’d always returned to Bellamy House by the equinox. But she knew there were coffins, and music and a parade, and that the graves were decorated with flowers. And feathers. She looked again at the paper. “Allemande will provide free landovers, hundreds of them, so that all may come to the Upper City and attend …”
“He is turning the mob loose on the Upper City,” Spear commented. “No one is going to put on a parade down the boulevard, much less show up for one.”
“And two out of every three will die …,” Sophia whispered.
“The gutters will run,” René repeated.
Orla picked up the vest again and started sewing. “Allemande is not mad,” she said. “He is evil.”
“I believe he is both, Madame,” René answered. “Every day the execution bells ring, and if I raise the windows of our flat, I can hear the noise of the mob echoing out of the Lower City, chanting while families are put to the blade. Half the children I went to school with are dead, along with their families, their property given over to supporters of Allemande or the ones that denounced them. When you live in the Sunken City, you look evil in the face.” He paused. “But you, Mademoiselle …” The blue eyes lifted until they found Sophia’s. “You can see the … possibilities?”
“It will be chaos,” she said thoughtfully. Her mind was already humming.
“Sophie,” Spear said. “We can’t delay. We should go as soon as the twins get the number of Tom’s cell, do it as we’ve done before. If we’re ready to go when the information comes, we could have both Jennifer and Tom, and even his mum …” He jerked his head at René. “We could have them out in two days.”
René kept his gaze on Sophia’s face. “Take your best chance, Mademoiselle.”
“Can Tom wait that long, Sophie?” said Spear. “And how long will Jen last?”
“They are sacrifices now,” René countered. “They must walk to the scaffold. And if you go before you are ready, perhaps you will not be able to stop them from walking to the scaffold. Or the Razor from coming down for their heads.”
“If you wait two weeks, you leave no room for mistakes, Sophie.”
“That wound must heal, Mademoiselle.”
Orla picked up her sewing, keeping her opinions in her head, while Sophia stared down at the printed words of the newspaper. Death for two out of three. What would LeBlanc do? Draw lots? Number them randomly? René leaned forward again, elbows on knees, almost coming out of his chair.
“Take your best chance and I swear that I will help you. Do you believe me?”
She met his eyes again. Whatever else he might be, she did believe that he would help her in this, especially where it concerned his mother. But René could not know that in the past ten heartbeats, her thinking had changed.
She got up and went to the hearth, running a finger along the steel girder, a part of some long forgotten, Ancient building incorporated into the new. But what she was seeing was cell number 1139. Not only had the Bonnards been there, blinking and starving and dazzled by her dim lamp, but a teacher who would not repeat the oath of Allemande, a smith who had taken five francs to repair an undermarket clock, along with four of his grown children, who had apparently done nothing at all, and a set of grandparents unlucky enough to have raised their children in a moderately nice flat near the top of an Upper City building. A flat someone else wanted.
Sophia felt her anger rise, a pressure cooker of rage that had been simmering inside her every day since the first time she entered the Tombs. Now it was turning her resolve into something diamond hard. She hadn’t been able to turn the lock on the people of cell 1139, and she would not leave two-thirds of the prisoners to their deaths this time, either. It might kill her. It probably would. The land would be gone, there would be no respite for her father whether he got better or no, and nothing left for Tom. The Bellamys would be undone, but she wasn’t sure that mattered anymore, not in the light of LeBlanc’s planned bloodbath. What was the point of emptying three small cells? She was going to walk into the Sunken City and empty every stinking hole in the Tombs. Let LeBlanc’s Goddess explain that to the mob.
“Spear,” she said slowly, “when was the last time you went to Mainstay?”
“Yesterday. For supplies. Why?”
“Then we’d better go into Kent. Is the woman who forges our paperwork still in Brighton?”
“As far as I know. But, Sophie …”
“Would you be able to go to the undermarket? I’ll have a list, and I can’t run into Mr. Halflife. We’re supposed to be in the Midlands.”
Spear’s shoulders sagged just a little. “Yes, I can go.”
She turned to René, and again met his gaze. She had a feeling his had never left her. There was a grin beginning to show on one side of his mouth. “Do I remember that you have a ship, Monsieur?”
“Yes. I do have a ship.”
“And do you have two ships?”
“Yes, I do.” The grin had stretched to both corners before he added, “Mademoiselle.”
“Sophie?”
She looked around to Spear. He was leaning back on the door frame, holding a mug gone cold, blue shirt tucked into darker blue pants, not one hair straying from its fellows. He would try to stop her if he knew what she was going to do. He probably should. The whole idea was ludicrous.
“You’re sure this is what you want?” he asked.
“No, I’m not sure it’s what I want. But it’s what I think I should do. And, yes, I am absolutely certain about that.” There would be two plans: the one everyone knew, and the one known only to her. Spear was still gazing
down into his mug, wrinkles in the marble of his forehead.
“Are you with me, Spear?” she asked. When he didn’t answer immediately she said, “You don’t have to be. Hasn’t that always been our bargain? Your choice, either way, and no blame.”
Spear’s face showed her nothing. “I’ve always been with you, Sophie. You know that.”
She hid her breath of relief. For a moment she’d been afraid Spear wasn’t coming. And she was going to need him; she’d never been to the Sunken City without him.
“Then we should plan to be in the city in something like twelve days. Orla, would you mind popping up to my room and getting Tom’s maps, since you won’t let me on the stairs?” Sophia was already sitting carefully at the low table, moving her knife and mangled boot and swiping away the bits of leather heel, purpose making her movements swift. “Spear, why don’t you come and sit down. And you, Monsieur,” she said, “what can you tell me about smuggling?”
Sophia did not have to force herself to remain at Spear’s table until highsun; she was still there at dusk, and long after nethermoon, sometimes with Orla, sometimes Benoit, always with René and Spear. Spear’s table was littered with sketches and lists, mugs and plates, but there was an acknowledged plan now, simple yet elegant. And there was an unacknowledged plan, too. Perhaps just as elegant, Sophia thought, but not at all simple.
René was stretched full length on the floor, hair undone, one arm behind his head, spinning a coin on the wooden planks, or sometimes tossing it to the air and catching it on an open palm. Sophia had been schooling herself not to notice this, even though his coin had been landing with Allemande’s face up ever since the moon set.
Spear rubbed his chin, voice scratchy and hair miraculously in place. “I don’t know, Sophie,” he was saying, “I’m just not sure it will work.”
The coin glinted and landed face up. “It will work, Mademoiselle,” René said.
“How are you doing that?” she asked him, curiosity too piqued to stop herself.
“The coin is weighted,” Spear replied for him.
René sat up on an elbow. “That is true. The spin is easy, but there is skill in the toss. I will show you sometime. If you wish.”
Sophia sensed danger and looked quickly back to the maps in front of her. “Well, I think the plan is brilliant, Spear. And, anyway, you’re forgetting our biggest advantage.”
Spear sighed. “And what is that?”
She smiled as she blew out their candle. “If LeBlanc thinks he has the Red Rook, then he won’t have any reason to expect that the Red Rook is coming.”
LeBlanc blew out his candle. Dawn was filtering through the tall stone windows, throwing yellow light on the plain, polished floor of his office. There was a light knock at his door. “Come,” he said softly.
Renaud ushered in an elderly Parisian in a neat black suit, the scent of the Tombs still hanging faintly about his clothes. LeBlanc stood, his politeness oily.
“Dr. Johannes,” he said. “Thank you for coming so early. Please, sit.” He gestured to Renaud, who brought a wooden chair before LeBlanc’s desk, the same chair Gerard had used ten days earlier.
“I’ll admit it was a surprise to be asked,” replied the doctor, who had woken to four gendarmes breaking down his door. He sat stiffly, mouth in a straight line. LeBlanc smoothed the long, black, white-collared robes he now wore instead of a jacket, positioning them so as not to wrinkle when he slid into place behind the desk.
“And what is your opinion of the prisoner?”
“A little dehydrated, nothing that access to water would not correct, and crawling with vermin, which is no different than the others. There is significant bruising, and three ribs on the right side are broken. I have wrapped them, and he will need to be still and left strictly alone if he is to walk upright, especially with the leg.”
“And what about the leg, Doctor?”
“A bad break that did not set well. Nearly two years ago, according to him, and that seems right. Still gives him a good deal of pain, I am sure.”
LeBlanc’s fingers tapped the desk. “So in your opinion, Dr. Johannes, could a man with a leg such as the prisoner’s perform … certain tasks? Sword fighting, for instance? Jumping, running, or climbing a wall?”
“There is nothing wrong with the arms, but anything that involves agile movement of the legs is in my opinion impossible. The limb will not bear the weight.”
“Could the prisoner walk without the limp? Even for a short distance?”
“No. The leg is physically shorter now, after the injury.”
“And the more recent cut? It was made by a sword?”
“If so, it was a small and dull one. There is no infection, though how that’s so I cannot say. But the edges of the skin are ragged, not clean. I’d say a knife. Serrated.”
“Like a table knife.”
“Just so. I have wrapped that wound as well.”
LeBlanc glanced toward the back of the room, where Renaud stood along the wall, his long face impassive, then at the doctor, grim and assured of his facts, hands on the bag of medical tools in his lap. LeBlanc smiled.
“Thank you, Doctor. Just one more question, to appease a little curiosity of mine. Some of these tasks we were discussing, could the more … arduous of them, could they be performed by a woman?”
“They could be done by anyone with the proper strength.”
“Even sword fighting, Doctor?”
“Size and muscular development make a difference, of course, but both the male and the female respond to training, Monsieur.”
“And the mental training that goes with such skills? The agility of the mind?”
“No difference under the sun.”
“I see. And others in your profession, would they say the same?”
The doctor, whose brows had gone up at the odd line of questioning, frowned now, confused. “Of course they would. Why shouldn’t they? The idea that women are not fit for certain tasks is based on cultural expectations, not the science of fact. It is an old-fashioned belief coming from the less civilized centuries after the Great Death, and has nothing to do with medicine. Any man of science knows that.”
“Oh, that is unlucky,” LeBlanc said. He waved a hand toward Renaud, who moved quietly forward. “Thank you, Doctor, for giving me so much to think on. Renaud will take care of you. And, Renaud, when you are done, I will need another message sent to our informant in the Commonwealth.”
LeBlanc drummed his fingers on the desk, contemplating one or two things he would have to say in his letter while Renaud came up behind the wooden chair and, with quick and silent efficiency, slit the doctor’s throat.
“Now, Mademoiselle,” René said, adjusting the angle of her body carefully as they stood in front of the sitting-room fire, the slanting rays of nethersun glowing through the filmy windows. He was in his linen shirtsleeves, the plain jacket tossed onto a chair, hair tied. “Hit with an open palm, and aim for here.”
He put her fingers against the lower edge of his cheek. She’d wondered what that would feel like. It prickled.
“Do not hold back,” he instructed. “There must be no doubt that we are having a fight of passion. That will be essential. Unless you are pulling on your wound?”
She shook her head. She was going to slap him with her right and her cut was on the left, but overall she thought this situation particularly unjust. What she wouldn’t have given to do this one week ago, and René was ruining it with sheer willingness.
“Hit him hard, Sophie,” Spear said, chuckling as he watched from the couch. Even Benoit had come to see, a man-shaped outline easy to overlook in the corner.
René waited, almost daring her, while she was trying to ignore the little pulse beating at the base of his throat. It was beating rather fast. She took a deep breath, pulled her arm back, and slapped. Her skin on his made a solid, but faint, smack.
“Oh, no,” René said, shaking his head. “I do not think you meant that.”
“And he would know when a woman slaps him and means it, Sophie, don’t you think?” said Spear, still chuckling. He put a hand to his shirt pocket, as if checking to see that something was still there.
René was looking over his shoulder toward the couch, an amused half smile on his face, and something about the expression put Sophia in mind of their Banns, and Lauren Rathbone, and that gaggle of women he had so expertly flirted with.
This time her slap turned his head.
“Ah,” René said after a moment, hand to his cheek. “That was much better.”
He rubbed his face, where a patch of skin was beginning to show the shape of her hand. Sophia would have sworn the blue fire in his eyes was pleased. She almost smiled before she could stop herself.
“This will be about the timing, I think,” he said. “You should come across the room, pause, step one, two, three, and hit. Let’s do that, Mademoiselle, without the hitting …”
They did it without, and then they did it with, adding dialogue, working for the actions to be automatic, for René to turn slightly just in time to deflect the worst of the blow, until Benoit could tell them the level of preparation was not obvious. René would accept no one else’s opinion on that subject. She was afraid she must be bruising his face, but René’s enthusiasm, she discovered, was a force of nature, not to be diminished or controlled. They kept at it.
Spear seemed to forget that there was a rehearsal going on, and it made him bold. He flattered her, shielded her when it wasn’t needed, sat too close when she let René’s cheek have a rest. “Staking a claim,” that had been Orla’s single comment in her ear. Sophia did not want to be “staked.” And René was aware of it, too. He kept giving her that knowing look, as he had that first night in the farmhouse, which made him much easier to hit. Especially when she called up the image of the way he had smiled at Lauren Rathbone’s smudgy eyes.
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