Sophia paused. It was excruciating being in this room; it nearly stopped her ticking altogether. She thought of Tom, and Jennifer, and pretended to be somewhere else. Pretended to be someone else. The wig came off and so did the dress, hidden quickly behind the hanging tablecloths, her black breeches and black shirt already underneath, cut low so as not to show beneath the lace of her former neckline. Her vest she fished out from the ironing pile, supplies already sewn in, the feathers from the party going into the bag with the others. The denouncement of the Bonnards she left in her shirt. Then she took her second knife and pushed the tip twice through the burlap that held the firelighter, making two holes, cut a cord from the washed curtains and strung the whole thing sideways across her chest. Her sword went from her leg to her back, for climbing; a soft black cap was pulled over her pinned hair; dark leather gloves onto her hands. And when the door of the linen closet opened again, the Rook peered out into the empty hall. She flitted across to the water room, shut herself inside, and opened the sliding panel to the lift.
She leapt up onto the ledge and looked down. The bucket was dangling one level below on the nearest rope. Hoping that meant the other bucket was near the bottom and full, she reached out, and that was when the door to the water room opened. Madame Hasard stood looking in at her, vivid hair piled high for the party, one red eyebrow raised.
Sophia met her gaze, grabbed the rope with both hands, and jumped. The rope swung out as she got a foot wrapped around, she bounced once off the bricks, and then she was gone, dropping down the shaft, water splashing somewhere below, leaving her stomach where she’d started. She passed the closed lift door for the flat below, and the next open one, showing a man’s turned back, and glanced up. The top of the shaft was still lit and growing smaller, but no one was trying to cut her rope. Surely Madame Hasard carried a knife? But Madame wasn’t going to have time to cut anything.
Air whistled around Sophia’s ears. She wondered if she would be able to keep her grip when the rope came to a stop, or if she was about to take a cold, wet bath in a cistern. She hung on, saw the bottom coming, got her knees bent, and the rope stopped with a jerk that nearly wrenched her arms from their sockets. But she was able to swing her feet to the edge of a cistern and hop down, and as René had said, landing her boots on the stone floor of the building’s cellar.
She looked around, wary, ready to reach for her sword, but no one was there. She took a moment to lean against the wall, the great turnstile of the four-man lift creaking somewhere behind it, probably taking people up to her engagement party. She had to think.
René knew her plans, and now through his mother, he would know she was gone. And yet the rope had not been cut, and there were no gendarmes waiting for her now. Which only confirmed what Spear had said, that they needed to catch her in the act, probably to satisfy Allemande’s twisted sense of justice. She remembered the look on René’s face just that middlesun, when he’d talked about losing the flat. What would she have done, what had she planned on doing, to preserve her family and home? Was it any different? Oh yes, she thought. What he had done was very different.
She walked quickly across the cellar and found the grate in the floor, just as he’d described, lifting it away to show a circular drain. The hole bore straight down into the ground, rungs of metal making a ladder down into a dark that was blacker than where she stood. One touch without her glove and she knew the surface was concrete, like some of the laddered tunnels in Bellamy House. Cool air wafted upward, smelling of earth.
She descended two rungs, dragging the grate back over the opening, and started her way down, thinking. The farther she went, the faster she went, rung after rung, quicker and quicker, despite the fact that it made no difference whether her eyes were opened or closed, or that she was in a deep hole that she couldn’t see the bottom of. She was smiling again, the reckless sort. Because she had just changed the plan.
René picked up speed down the hallway, holding a cold wet cloth to his bleeding lip, his face like bleached stone. Benoit followed after him.
“Is Uncle Émile watching LeBlanc?”
“Yes,” said Benoit. “He has told him that his lady friend is attending Mademoiselle Bellamy with a womanly complaint.”
“Does Uncle Émile think he’s telling LeBlanc lies or the truth?”
“Possibly the truth.”
“And she’s away down the shaft?”
“Madame says so.”
“And she still has the ring?”
“The one she has just hit you with? I would guess so. I only know that Hammond has spoken with her, and there is broken furniture as a result. I arrived in time to hear that he wished her to make a new plan, and she would not. She was not herself when she left.”
René let out a string of curses that would have made Uncle Émile blush. “Where is Hammond?”
“I have had Andre and Peter detain him. They have him in her room.”
René opened the last door in the corridor. He walked past Uncle Peter, who had a split on his cheek that was going to bruise, and Uncle Andre, who was gingerly pushing upward on a loose tooth, going straight to Spear. Spear had his hands behind his back, arms and legs tied to a chair. Benoit shut the door and turned the lock while René leaned down over the big man’s face.
“Tell me what you have done, you great, lumbering bag of filth, or I will cut off your ears.”
Spear looked up, and then he smiled.
It was a long time before Sophia found the bottom of the laddered hole, the ground coming as a surprise beneath her boot. She looked up into the darkness and smiled. Too bold. That’s what Tom would have said. She didn’t care. She had to feel with her hands until she found the next tunnel. The opening was small, not a real opening at all, probably an erosion of concrete. She wiggled until she was through, careful with her sword and the firelighter, and then moved quickly, first stooping, and then crawling in complete blackness, until she came to a paler shade of night from a drain above her.
She counted three more of these, and on the fourth, instead of following the tunnel as they’d planned, she carefully pushed up the grate of the drain, panting from her efforts. She saw a back alley behind a squalid structure of ill-formed bricks, one of the buildings that formed the loose open square of the prison yard. It was also the building that squatted over the entrance to the Tombs.
She pulled herself up to the surface, hugging the dark, replacing the grate with the soft scrape of iron on stone. Then she slipped around the corner and crouched down, where the shade of the scaffold hid her from the rising moonlight and the gendarmes patrolling the yard. The scaffold had been decorated, she saw; there were shadows hanging from it, twisting around the timbers and fluttering in the breezes like tattered souls. She wondered if those decorations were for her. She waited for the guards to pass, then circled the building, slowly lifting her head to peek through a lit window.
A stout man sat with his back to her before a rickety desk, the fire low and smoldering in the hearth, his head tipped forward and still. Either sleeping or dead, Sophia thought. Silently she pushed open the window—why did no one ever think of the windows?—grateful that the holy man had had the foresight to grease it before rescuing the Bonnards. She dropped to the floor without noise, shut the window again, drew the curtain and her sword, and moved toward the man’s back. He woke with a start, a red-tipped feather before his eyes and a blade at his throat.
“Hello, Gerard,” she said, low in his ear.
Renaud slid to the rear of the crowd, where LeBlanc was standing, and whispered in his ear. A dark-skinned woman in a simple high-waisted gown was providing the singing entertainment for the Hasard engagement party, the cityscape twinkling behind her. LeBlanc did not like the woman; she was blocking his view of the moon. He straightened as Renaud finished his whispering.
“Then we can assume the Red Rook has flown, Renaud, and that she has taken my little bird with her.” He laughed softly, though loud enough that a few heads turned,
frowning at the interruption. LeBlanc glanced about him once, flipped open the top of his pendant, then shut it after a quick glance. More than halfway to middlemoon.
“It is earlier than I thought. I think I will spend a little more time in my flat, Renaud, at least until the execution bells. I am curiously happy. That slap was very convincing, wasn’t it? And it is Sophia Bellamy’s last night to fly. I will listen to the performance, and enjoy the thought of the Red Rook’s struggles as she tries to find her brother.” He sighed with satisfaction. “All is as Fate has ordained. There is no hurry.”
Enzo sat on the other side of the room, not listening to the singer perform, instead watching the one-sided conversation between LeBlanc and his secretary. He frowned, leaning forward just a little, waiting for an opportunity to leave his chair. He had the sudden feeling that he might be in a hurry.
Gerard could not move from his chair.
“I have no time for negotiations, Gerard. Do we have a deal?”
He couldn’t nod. The sword at his throat did not allow it. “How do I know I can trust you?” he whispered.
Sophia was using the gruff voice of the holy man. “Should you trust the one who puts the people in the prison, Gerard, or the one who breaks them out? I will cut your throat, but LeBlanc will cut you up, piece by tiny piece. How is your finger healing?”
Gerard glanced down at the bandage on his hand. “I will lose my job!”
“You will lose your head. And, frankly, you’re due a career change, Gerard.” The Red Rook waited, and when Gerard didn’t respond she gave him a tiny prick with the sword edge.
“Yes, yes! I will do it!”
She eased the sword away from Gerard’s throat. “Your wife will thank you. Now remember the rules. Clear the prison of gendarmes but for the two I have named, and then you are to unlock the doors. Understood?”
He waited in his chair, shoulders shaking as he breathed, the sword in her hand tickling the place between his shoulder blades. “Are you a man,” he whispered, “or a spirit?”
The Red Rook smiled. “I am neither, Gerard.”
“He knows you are coming.”
She gripped the sword hilt harder, feeling a last tiny something shrivel up inside her. Where had that treacherous little bit of hope been hiding, and why had it existed? LeBlanc would have known she was coming for quite some time now. “I know he does, Gerard. But I am going to outsmart him, and you and your wife will have a new life in Spain. Now stand up. And leave your sword on the desk. Do it!”
He did.
“Call your man and give the orders. Stay behind the desk, keep him in front. Your man will not see me. Do you understand?”
“Claude? Claude!”
A jingling noise indicated a guard coming toward LeBlanc’s door. The gendarme who had cut off Gerard’s fingertip strode into the room, stroking his tiny mustache.
“We have new orders,” Gerard said. “Bring the tunnel leaders to me. One at a time, if you please.”
Sophia glanced out the window from where she was crouched behind Gerard’s desk, the sword tip now at the back of his knee. A round, rising middlemoon was just cresting the edge of the cliffs.
Light that was almost to middlemoon poured through Sophia’s bedroom window before Spear stopped talking. René stood still, inhaling five full breaths before he turned and went to the clothes cupboard, yanking open the doors and ransacking Sophia’s dresses until he found the white underskirt.
Andre frowned, still worrying his tooth. “What is this man talking about, René? What is happening? And if you put that on, I’m telling Émile.”
René didn’t answer. He rifled through the cloth, going still when his fingers slipped through the fresh white rent made by Sophia’s knife, where the firelighter had been.
Benoit opened the door to a soft knock and Enzo slid inside, taking in the scene with a swift glance before he crossed the room to his nephew. “René,” he whispered, “why does LeBlanc think your fiancée is the Red Rook? I thought it was her brother.”
René clutched the cloth in his hand. “He has said so?”
“Yes, to that little viper of a secretary.”
René looked down at the golden carpet, his hand through the cut in the white cloth. Then he turned his face to Spear. Spear was still tied to the chair, defiant, ears intact but with blood flowing from the corner of his mouth.
“You understand that you have killed her,” René said.
No one spoke. Andre and Peter shifted their feet, curious and impatient, while Benoit, who had been inexplicably searching Sophia’s suitcase, suddenly held up a ring with a single pale stone. René threw down the white cloth, walked across the room, and kicked the legs out from under Spear’s chair.
“Oh, really, René,” said Madame Hasard from the doorway. She shut the bedroom door behind her. “Stop being so dramatic. Pick that man up again and we will discuss what is to be done.”
“Yes,” René replied, glaring down at Spear lying sideways on the floor, jaw clenched so tight he could hardly speak. “Yes, pick him up, Uncle Andre. And someone hand him a sword.”
“René! I …”
“Shut up, Maman!” He threw off his jacket while Spear was cut loose from the chair, yanking off his cravat and tossing it to the floor.
“Great Death, René,” said Peter at the sight of his neck. “Who tried to strangle you?”
“That,” René said, eyes on Spear, “would be his fault, I think.”
Spear just smiled as he got to his feet, wiping the blood from his mouth onto his sleeve, swinging some feeling back into his hands. “Not me.” He took the sword Andre handed him, sizing it up. “But I wish it had been.”
“Men,” muttered Madame Hasard, though none of the men present paid any attention to her. “You cannot have a proper duel in a bedchamber. It is ridiculous.”
“I will be happy,” Spear continued, “to slice you to pieces, Hasard. But I want you to know I won’t wait. I’m in a bit of a hurry.”
René’s grin lurked as he lifted his sword. “I also have an appointment, Monsieur.”
“But it is certainly worth a few moments of my time,” Spear continued, “to carve up any man who lifts a hand against Sophia Bellamy.”
“How much we have in common.”
Spear brought up his blade and they watched each other, blue gaze on blue gaze, one of ice and one that was fire. René struck first and Spear blocked with a clang of metal.
Gerard walked the subterranean passage, keys clinking, the heavy locks clanging as they were turned. Light from the ever-rising moon poured down the drains from a prison yard that was empty of everyone, even his guards. He was not whistling this time, or searching for the right door. He was unlocking them all. Silence spread from hole to hole as the people inside tried to understand what was happening. There would never be a promotion, Gerard thought, but it certainly was a fine night for an execution. His.
One brave prisoner finally pushed open her door.
Sophia found the door to prison hole number 522 deep within the Tombs and thrust it open, scattering the rats inside, panting from her run and from the stench. The prison was a maze, the numbers nonsensical, and it always took some time to stop smelling the tunnels; she’d never yet been able to stop smelling a cell.
But there were no prisoners in here. This hole was being used as a storage room, for distributing the little food that LeBlanc chose to dole out. Sacks of potatoes, a few evidently rotting, sat beside the door, a water cask and buckets in the corner, and an unusual number of barrels of the hard, almost bread-like pain plat. Most of them, Sophia knew, did not contain pain plat. They were full of her father’s Bellamy fire.
She set the lantern far away from the barrels and drew the cord with the hanging firelighter over her neck. She was surprised to find the casks still here, but since René was the one who was supposed to set the firelighter—the task he had so carefully made sure was his—she supposed LeBlanc thought there was no danger. Or maybe he want
ed to study the powder’s uses for Allemande. Another very good reason for blowing it all up.
The noise of prisoners being released was coming to her ears, and the cries of those who did not yet know if they would join them. Time to go. She scanned the dim, dank room. Would René find the firelighter gone, and try to come in time to turn it off? She was certain he would. And she had no intention of making it easy for him to find.
Sophia turned the pointing finger to middlemoon, or just a little before, the time she hoped it was now. She’d told René to set it for dawn, so she turned the wheel to the full, silver circle of highmoon. They should be away by then, the prison yard still empty before the execution that was not going to happen, and that would give René the least amount of time to find the firelighter and turn it off again.
She pulled out the knob. When the moon reached its height, the Tombs would explode into chunks of rock and wicked dust, and LeBlanc would be explaining the loss of a prison to Allemande.
Or maybe it would be just a little before.
The entertainment was over, the low hum of conversation resuming. LeBlanc settled down on the settee, Renaud standing, as ever, just a few paces behind. LeBlanc leaned back, taking in the view of his city outside the curving windows. Almost middlemoon. The gates would be opening soon for the Festival of Fate, a few carefully chosen leaders of the mob given the addresses of those that still required removal from the Upper City. Quick work, and for what would have otherwise taken him weeks of paperwork for Allemande. He smiled, studying the windows, mentally measuring them for new hangings.
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