Rook

by Cameron, Sharon

  “You, Monsieur, are a wreck. You know this?” When René didn’t answer, Benoit said, “Is there nothing you can do about it?”

  “No,” René replied. “I think not.”

  Sophia walked with Orla down the lane, grateful for the dark even if she was stumbling over the ruts. It hid the fact that she had tears on her face. Why did she never, ever know the right thing to say? She certainly had no trouble speaking out when she should keep her mouth closed.

  She pushed back her hair and paused. A light was streaking above her, a trail of fire across the sky, exactly as she’d imagined in her bedroom. She watched its path as she walked. René had asked her once what she would be willing to risk for a life she could want. She hadn’t known how to answer him then, either, and now she knew why. She hadn’t known how to answer because she hadn’t known just how much she would want it.

  “Really, child,” Orla chided. “You’re a mess. You know you are. What are you going to do about it?”

  Sophia shook her head. She didn’t know.

  Spear was quiet as he rode down the lane, watching Sophia’s slim back move wraithlike through the dark. What did Sophie see in this Parisian with his sly city ways? What could she be thinking? Sitting there alone in her bedroom, talking so close he couldn’t hear. And he’d seen the way she looked at him. If Sophia Bellamy had looked at him like that just one time, he would have forced Bellamy to let him marry her, at knifepoint if necessary. And this man was cousin to LeBlanc!

  What did she think was going to happen when Tom came home? Bellamy wouldn’t live much longer; he felt certain about that. And sorry. But Tom wasn’t going to let this marriage happen, even if Hasard did scrape up his blasted fee. Tom had said he’d let the land go first. That they would all start again. Spear adjusted his weight in the saddle, making a crisp, clean paper with the seal of the Sunken City rustle just a bit in his shirt pocket. He’d been right to be prepared. Sophia needed looking after, whether she knew it or not.

  He watched her push the hair back from her forehead, watched her staring up into the sky as she walked. But it wasn’t the Rook in the man’s jacket and breeches he was seeing. He saw the Sophia of the sitting room after dinner, in gauzy pink with her feet tucked up beneath her, St. Just in her lap, hair done up in ringlets. She’d been happy like that; they’d all been happy like that. And she would be happy that way again. Add two or three children playing on the floor, and that was exactly what Sophia Bellamy would want. Just as soon as this Parisian was gone.

  “Jennifer,” Tom called. “Tell me about … your first day of school.” The dark of the Tombs pressed down. “Jennifer?”

  The silence was so loud Tom wanted to cover his ears. But the shackles on his wrists were getting hard to lift. He was weakening, and he knew Jennifer was, too. He’d heard it in her voice the last time they talked. And now she wasn’t answering.

  She was sleeping. That was all. She needed to sleep, to slow her body down. It was the best thing for her. It was what he had to believe. Tom lay down in the dirt beside his dry water bucket, eyes squeezed shut though the dark remained the same. Was Sophie being smart? Had she found LeBlanc’s ally, or had LeBlanc found her? Was Sophie dead? Or was she coming for him? And she would get Jennifer, too, wouldn’t she? He wasn’t going without Jennifer, or whatever was left of her.

  “Jen?” he called. “Jen!” He was alone with his echo.

  Before, he hadn’t wanted his sister to come. Now he only wanted her to hurry.

  Sophia came running down the farmhouse stairs. René looked up from the Monde Observateur, while Spear straightened from over a trunk, adjusting his position so his head wouldn’t brush a ceiling beam.

  “Sophie. Good,” he said. “We should …”

  “I need to see the firelighter,” she said, hands on hips.

  “Sophie, I don’t—”

  René interrupted. “You are well, Mademoiselle?”

  “Yes,” she lied. Orla had stayed with her the night before, rubbing her back until she could stop crying. Then she’d slept like a brick, felt awful for it, and woken up guilty. Cartier was coming to drive a load into Canterbury, so their bags could travel ahead of them to the Sunken City. The luggage had to be on the dusk ferry, the same ferry they would catch themselves at dawn, and now it was nearly highsun and the sitting room was still littered with lists and half-packed boxes and trunks.

  But it had occurred to her midcry the night before that all her plans for blowing up the Tombs were based on Spear’s firelighter working as they had discussed. What if it did not work as they had discussed? What if it did? To come out of the Tombs or not, she hardly knew which she wanted anymore. But what she did want was to understand her possibilities. She wanted to know if her scales had tipped.

  “I need to see the firelighter,” she repeated.

  Orla came through and set down a basket of laundry for packing, shaking her head when Spear turned to René and said dismissively, “Sophie and I have plans to discuss.”

  Hot blue eyes met hers, and René inclined his head, a stinging smile in one corner of his mouth. He stood to move away just as Orla passed Sophia at the bottom of the staircase.

  “Do something about it, child,” Orla whispered as she brushed by.

  “No,” Sophia said. “Wait.” Both men turned their heads, but it was Spear she was speaking to. “I think he needs to see.”

  Spear didn’t say anything.

  “It would be for the best. Neither one of us will be close by if something goes wrong, or if it doesn’t go off …”

  “It will go off, Sophie,” Spear said stiffly.

  “I know. But we haven’t gotten this far by not having a plan B, have we?” She planted her feet a little more firmly, listening to Orla continue her trip up the stairs after a long pause to listen. René stood with his shirt untucked and hair undone, hands in pockets, watching Spear, whose practiced expression was impossible to read.

  She must have looked a little fierce because Spear did not argue, only said slowly, “Of course, Sophie. If that’s what you want.”

  Spear ducked through the open door of his bedroom while Sophia came to the couch and sat. René dropped into his usual chair, neither of them looking at the other. But she could feel him sitting there, like a redheaded, smoldering fire.

  Spear came back with his bundle from the night before. They watched as he untied the sacking, and on the low table in front of the couch he set a small wooden box with an odd mechanism attached to its top. On one side was a clock face, painted with simple symbols for the times of the sun and moon, a skinny black pointing finger pivoting out and around from the middle. Spear sat down on the couch next to Sophia, and they all leaned forward. The box made a strange tick, tick, tick in the quiet room.

  “You have to make sure it’s wound,” Spear began. “Use this key, here.” He put a blunt-ended key in a hole on the side of the clock, and turned. The clock made a sharp clicking noise above the ticks. “Turn until it’s tight, no more. Then start with the finger pointing to the time that is now.” Spear glanced at Sophia. “You know how the symbols work? Dawn at the bottom, then around to middlesun, highsun, to nethersun, and then dusk, and the same for the moon, middlemoon, highmoon, nethermoon, and then you’re back to dawn …”

  Sophia bit her tongue. Of course she knew how time worked.

  René was leaning forward, his curiosity on display. “Ancient clocks were marked with numbers,” he said, “but I have never understood how time can be held to a number. Every night it takes a little longer and a little longer for the moon to reach its height, or else a little less and a little less, but a clock makes the same number of ticks each day to get to the marking of highmoon. It cannot be accurate.”

  “That’s why clocks will never really work,” Spear said. “Technology can’t keep up with those kinds of changes. It does better with the sun, of course, the sun being more regular, and when the moon is full it’s not too far off. We’re only two or three days out from a ful
l moon, so by the time we get to the city we should be able to go by the times marked, which is good. Another week and we’d be making guesses, especially at night …”

  “Well, I think you’re looking at it all wrong,” Sophia said, chin in hand, eyes on the symbols of sun and moon. “I’ve always thought that the Ancients could have used the clock to mark the time of day, instead of marking the time of day on a clock.”

  René leaned back. “Tell me what you mean, Mademoiselle.”

  “I mean that a clock is precise, divided up into even ticks, right? What if the Ancients used the number of ticks to mark the time of day, instead of the height of the sun or moon? So highmoon could happen here …” She put a finger on the space between middlemoon and highmoon. “… or even here.” She pointed to the area close to nethermoon. “That way highmoon is not the time; highmoon is happening at a different time every night. If you’re counting the ticks as time.”

  Spear chuckled. “You mean that two Ancients could agree to meet at highmoon, wait until the clock says it’s highmoon, look up in the sky, and see the moon still rising?”

  “Hence the preference for numbers on a clock,” she said, “rather than the symbol for highmoon.”

  “That’s mad, Sophie,” Spear said.

  René stretched his arms up behind his head. “No,” he said, holding Sophia’s eyes for a moment. “It is brilliant.”

  She dropped her gaze back to the clock, so he could not see how ridiculously pleased that comment had made her.

  “So, you start by pointing the finger at the time it is now,” Spear said quickly, “and by that I mean the time it really is …” He glanced once at the filmy windows, and moved the finger to just past the full yellow circle, the symbol for highsun. “And then you turn the wheel …” He spun the clock around to show a small, flat wheel on the back of the box, sun and moon symbols also neatly painted. “… and point it to the time you want the machine to work.”

  Sophia looked at Spear sidelong, smiling a little, watching him turn the wheel to just past highsun. He really was clever to have made this, and it was obvious that he was enjoying the opportunity to show off the firelighter, whether he had wanted René to see it or not.

  “Then pull out this knob here …” He put a finger on the knob beside the wheel. “… and the machine will be set.”

  “And what does it do, Hammond, when you set the time?” René asked.

  Spear pulled out the knob instead of answering, the iron arm of the apparatus on top of the box moving upward on its own. They waited, listening to the rhythmic ticks, like a fingernail on glass, or sharp-heeled shoes clacking across the Bellamy ballroom tiles. Then there was a sudden bang and flash of fire. Sophia jumped, caught her breath, and smiled.

  “Oh, Spear, that’s really very good.”

  Spear grinned back at her. He looked just like he had when he was thirteen and her father had given him a colt for his birthday. “I put a little bit of the black powder from the sanctuary in it,” he said, holding up a small bottle from the sacking. “It’s loud, but it works much better that way.”

  René had recovered from any surprise and was on his knees at the table, peering at the mechanism closely in the sunlight. “And where did you put the powder, Hammond?” When Spear pointed, he said, “May I?”

  Spear reluctantly handed over the bottle and René sprinkled just a little where Spear had shown him. He checked the time, turned the wheel in the back to only a little past where Spear had set it, and pulled out the knob. They waited. A whir, a snap from the iron arm, another startling bang as the flame flared.

  “This is to light the Bellamy fire?” René asked, gaze still on the machine. He hadn’t moved, even when it flashed.

  “Yes, that’s right,” Sophia said when Spear didn’t answer. The smell in the air was sharp in her nose. “It will catch the greased fuse on fire, so the tubes can explode while we’re well away.”

  René straightened, sitting back on his boot heels. “I see.”

  Sophia tucked her feet beneath her, watching her hands. That story had sounded feeble even to her. The firelighter was going deep into the Tombs, where the barrels of Bellamy fire she’d been having delivered were disguised and stored. But she would not set it until the mob had cleared from the prison yard, and that could take a long time if they were expecting an execution, especially the Red Rook’s execution. Especially an execution that wouldn’t happen because the Red Rook was not there. She might spend all night playing hide-and-seek with LeBlanc. And the Tombs would be swarming with gendarmes after the prisoners were gone. An anthill stirred with a stick.

  Spear leaned into the couch beside her and threw an arm along the back of it, as if they were sitting there … together. Sophia closed her eyes, absorbing her frustration.

  “You should think about how the firelighter will be packed,” René was saying. “They may be searching at the gates, and they will not let this through, I think.”

  He was right. The firelighter had to be breaking at least ten anti-technology laws at once.

  “And there is another thing we should discuss.”

  Sophia opened her eyes. Everything about him was fiery where the sunlight hit, but his tone had gone cold. He dropped into the chair again.

  “You may remember that in the Upper City I am known as something of a … pleasure seeker. And Miss Bellamy will be coming as my fiancée, to an engagement party which my cousin must attend. It is essential that this part of our ruse is successful, yes? Or the plan will not work at all.”

  Sophia got up from the couch and went to the window, where she could see the vague forms of trees. “What are you getting at, Hasard?” Spear asked.

  “I am saying that when LeBlanc hears my marriage to the sister of the Red Rook goes forward, he will be filled with suspicion. But when he hears that it is a match of love, he will be curious. And it is this curiosity that will bring the guests, and LeBlanc, to the door of my flat. Our upcoming marriage must be the talk of the Upper City. It must be in the newspapers. That should not be so difficult. Most of the reporters who write these things are … friends …”

  Sophia wondered what Madame Hasard paid them.

  “They know what to print and what to not. But they must have something to write about, yes? And we must give it to them. So I am saying that starting at dawn, at the dock, Miss Bellamy and I will have to behave in a way that is … very engaged. Can we do this?”

  An uncomfortable silence spread. Sophia hadn’t considered this part of their plan, especially in light of that magnetic force that she was currently trying to resist by standing at the window. René would go back to being the man of the Parisian magazine, and with a bride-to-be to show off. Should she pretend to like it, when she really did, all while pretending that she didn’t? She fiddled with a shirt button. What a strange torture.

  “But it is not only the papers that should concern us. We must assume we are being watched,” René continued. “LeBlanc will be watching. On the ferry, on the road, every step we take in the city. No one must doubt my relationship with Miss Bellamy, not until the fight we have planned. To do otherwise would endanger the Rook and those that wait for her in the Tombs. So I cannot afford to have my behavior questioned.”

  “You are not to kiss her,” Spear said. Sophia’s head whipped around.

  René was slouched into the chair now, his grin a little wicked. “As chaperone, you must feel it your proper duty to make such rules. But I wonder, Hammond, just how good you will be at enforcing them?”

  Spear and René glared at each other like two boys with one cake between them. It woke her temper. Sophia left the window, snatching up her fluffy white underskirt from the laundry basket on the way, and sat herself down before the low table in a cloud of white cloth.

  “I’ll be the one making my own rules, thank you,” she said, pulling out a knife. “And I think you both know I’m perfectly capable of enforcing them.” What was wrong with them? What was wrong with her? Since when ha
d she ever wanted to marry anybody? “Spear, I’ll die happy if I never hear your opinion on this again,” she said, mentally gauging the size of the firelighter. “And as for you, Monsieur …” The cloth of the underskirt made a soft ripping sound as she slid the knife through the seam. “Tomorrow we will be exactly as engaged as I say we are.”

  LeBlanc set down a goblet of wine and cut a slit beneath the seal of a small invitation. His desk was littered with reports of insurrection and red feathers, but his interview with the Upper City commandant had left him in a good mood. He read the invitation’s neat Parisian, drumming his fingers on the top of the plain, polished desk.

  “Well, Renaud. It appears the marriage with Miss Bellamy goes forward. Isn’t that charming?”

  Renaud was on his knees on the other side of the desk, scouring blood from the floor.

  LeBlanc read through the invitation again, drumming harder on the desk. “They are to give an engagement party, on the eve of Tom Bellamy’s execution, and we are invited. How kind of them.” He chuckled. “I don’t think we need to attend such a farce, do you? And what funds does my young cousin think to use for this marriage?” His pale eyes became slits. “Exactly whose side is he playing on, Renaud?”

  Renaud always kept his opinions to himself. It’s why he was alive.

  After a time LeBlanc sighed. “It is unwise to tempt Fate, and I admit I am curious. We will have the landover road to the city watched, and a personal search at each gate, I think. The Goddess may have declared life for the Rook for three more nights, but there is no need to make that time easy for her, Renaud. And perhaps it is also time to have another talk with Madame Hasard. She may be very interested to hear this happy news about her son.” LeBlanc’s smile curled as he looked at René’s looping script. “The love of a parent often affects good judgment.”

  Sophia lifted the trapdoor to her father’s room and silently pushed aside the rug. It had been a difficult trip to negotiate. She’d had to go out the farmhouse window, onto the roof, across and down the outside of the chimney stones. And then she’d taken to the woods and fields instead of the road, ways that were almost as familiar, all of it armed to the teeth. For all she knew Mr. Halflife was still lurking about, hoping for that breakfast meeting with signatures and scones. But she would not leave the Commonwealth without seeing her father, and she wasn’t in any mood to ask permission, or make the trip with fanfare and an escort.