Rook (20 page)

She heard boots on the stairs, and René came in, Benoit just behind him. René paused in the doorway. He’d been avoiding her when he could, and she had just made that impossible. Good. Sophia peered once more through the curtains. “He’s at a trot,” she said, speaking Parisian for Benoit. “I’d say that was very well done. And where are my shoes?”

“Under the couch,” René replied, tossing clothes from the bed onto a chair, brows drawn down. He looked tired, as if someone had pulled the cork and let out all his effervescence. She glanced around. His room had so many foreign things in it. Large boots, an eyescope on the table beside the bed. A little bowl of soap for shaving a face. So was this the real room, she wondered, instead of the staged one he’d left for her in Bellamy House? Or only another carefully constructed set? She watched Benoit taking away the clothing René had put in the room’s only chair.

“And here,” René said, emptying his pockets onto the cleared bed. She came to look. Her necklace, a list of food items in her handwriting, a few letters, a brush with brown spiral hairs sticking out of it, and a pencil. She stared at the pencil.

“Because you bite them, Mademoiselle,” said Benoit, answering the unasked.

“I did not know if Halflife would know that,” René added.

She picked up the pencil, which did indeed have bite marks. She hadn’t known she did such a thing. “Do you think he knew I was here?”

“He knew someone was here,” René replied. “He heard me putting logs in the hearth. But the chimneys would tell him as much. Perhaps he did not know you were here. Necessarily. Otherwise I do not think he could have been so easily dissuaded.”

He sat down on the unmade bed and leaned back, one arm behind his head, propping all but the dirtiest end of his boots on the blankets. He was a mess. Sophia felt sure he hadn’t slept. He’d been moving near dawn, when she saw him behind the curtain, and he’d been splitting logs not long after that. She’d heard him from the stable, where she’d gone with her sword to render unwarranted destruction on three bales of hay. He had his coin out of his pocket now, flipping it into the air and snagging it easily with the same hand. He opened his fingers, and the coin was face up. He made a mess look rather good.

“Did you tell her?” René asked. Benoit shook his head while René caught the coin again. Face. “Benoit says there is someone watching the house.”

Sophia felt her forehead crease, remembering rustling, and branches that moved when there was no breeze. She looked to Benoit. “You think, or are you certain?”

“I watched a man leave the trees after you went into the house last night. He circled, and then went back through the woods. I did not see a man replace him, but there could have been one. I do not think there was.”

So Benoit had not gone back to the farmhouse after all; he’d been watching her. She wondered if he’d seen Cartier. Probably. Likely the whole time, from the footbridge on. Benoit did not like her, but this might be the second time she needed to thank him for her life. She sat on the corner of the bed and ran her hands through her hair.

“What did he look like?”

“Large,” Benoit said. “Muscled. Knitted hat. No beard. But that is all I can say.”

“Who outside this farmhouse knows you are here, Mademoiselle?” René asked. Flip. Three turns in the air. Face.

“No one. Other than Cartier, of course.” She tried to think. “Nancy and her husband must know I haven’t gone far, and they might guess Spear’s, but they wouldn’t tell anyone. I’d stake my life on that. Could it be Mr. Halflife, do you think?”

“Then why is he not the one sitting on my bed, Mademoiselle, pen and ink in hand? This man that was watching, he was right behind you last night, Benoit says.”

Sophia looked closer at René. He was tired, yes. But he was also ticked. What about, exactly, she was not sure. “LeBlanc, then?”

“Why?” he asked, without sarcasm.

She didn’t know. If LeBlanc knew she was the Red Rook, wouldn’t he also be right here in this room, with twenty gendarmes and a pair of shackles? Her gaze went to Benoit.

“What is your opinion, Benoit? Do we find out who he is? Or do we move?”

Benoit sat down in the chair. “It is my belief that men show more truth when they do not know they are showing it. When they know they are caught they will tell you all lies, everything lies. I have told René that I think we should go on as we are, aware that there are eyes, give them nothing to see, and see what they show us. And I will be watching back, of course. He is unhappy with this course, I think.”

Sophia turned her head. “Are you?”

“Yes. But that does not mean I think Benoit is wrong, because he is not.”

Sophia looked at him carefully. “Unhappy” was not near as accurate as her assessment of “ticked.” Then a letter caught her eye, on top of the pile of things René had rescued from the sight of Mr. Halflife. It was that day’s post, freshly fetched from Bellamy House. She snatched the envelope, tore it open, glanced through the contents, and looked up.

“I have the numbers of the prison holes.”

“That has not been posted straight to here?” René sat forward to look at the address.

“Of course not. There’s a … Never mind. It’s forwarded twice.” She read on. “And it’s no wonder it took so long. Jennifer and Tom aren’t in the normal tunnels. They’re deep, in a separate shaft.” Sophia bit her lip. That was a complication. She’d never been down to those cells. “And Madame Hasard is in a cell alone,” she continued, “on the first level …”

“Have they seen her?” René asked, voice very calm. A certain sign, Sophia was learning, that he wasn’t.

“They don’t say. Probably not.”

She watched him frown. He was elbows on knees now, rubbing a hand hard over his rough jaw. He’d been much gentler with hers, she thought. She looked back at her letter.

“We have two days before we sail for the city. I need to go to the sanctuary to get the last odds and ends, and it will take a good part of a night to mix up all the Bellamy fire.” René leaned against the headboard, flipping his coin. “So,” she said, looking back and forth between them. “Do either of you know when Spear will be back?”

The coin flipped, and René cursed softly at the minted silhouette of the premier’s building in the Sunken City. Facade.

“I know you had him followed,” she added.

Benoit replied vaguely, “I do not think we should be worried about Hammond.”

Sophia sighed. That was all the answer she was going to get. And since she didn’t quite think Benoit a murderer, she decided to be satisfied.

René said, “For now, none of us should be alone outside of the house.” A thought of a smile hovered around that corner of his mouth. “And that means no more climbing out of the windows, Mademoiselle.”

So he knew she’d gone out the window, did he? And what was it about her that he hadn’t noticed? She said, “No more climbing out of windows, or just no more climbing out of them all by myself, Monsieur?”

That made him grin. A real one, and it gave her a secret little thrill.

“As for your tasks, we will all go,” said Benoit. “A walk to Bellamy House for some of your things should not give anyone watching much to think on.”

“And what about Mr. Halflife?” she asked.

“Ah,” René said. The coin flipped to face. “We should not go until highmoon. Your member of Parliament will be sleeping well by that time, do you not agree?”

“I have no idea. Where is he sleeping?”

“Did I not tell you?” The grin widened. “Monsieur Halflife has invited himself to sleep at Bellamy House tonight.”

I
t
was strange to see the sanctuary—a place Sophia had always associated with secrets and shadows—so brightly lit and filled with people. The room was deep under Bellamy House, no danger of Mr. Halflife knowing they were there, unless he’d seen them coming across the lawn, which he hadn’t. René had skirted around to Nancy’s flat at the back of the house and found that Mr. Halflife was on the opposite side, near her father’s wing. They hadn’t spotted anyone watching their progress on the road, either, though it was impossible to know who might be wandering the woodlands. Mr. Halflife could be wandering, too, she supposed, but nighttime guests of Bellamy House tended to favor locked doors, an extra candle, and a blanket pulled up to their chins.

Sophia bit her lip, rolling her thick paper into a tube, ready for filling with her brother’s recipe of powders. She wondered what Mr. Halflife expected to accomplish by staying there. If he hoped to find the deed to the Bellamy land lying about on her father’s desk, he would not, as it was currently tucked into the hidden drawer in hers. Or perhaps he was waiting for her to appear one day at the breakfast table, where he could courteously convince her not to marry the man who could save her family and sign away her home instead. She might undo the Bellamys when she blew up the Tombs, but she was fairly certain she would not ruin them out of polite obligation over middlesun scones. And it was hard to seriously fear a man who was afraid of fleas.

She rolled another tube. Tom had left everything written down so they were able to work quickly and almost in silence, Orla waxing and gumming the tubes together, Benoit trimming and greasing the fuses, while René measured the powders and salts carefully per Tom’s instructions. A good job for him, Sophia thought, considering how careful and precise he was being with her. Making sure they were not long in the same room, walking just a little back as they made their wary trip down the road. And he’d chosen the opposite end of the tall worktable now, sleeves rolled up and brows drawn down. It wasn’t very different from the way she’d behaved their first days in the farmhouse, and somehow this seemed to make her paper tubes more uncooperative.

“Tom,” Sophia commented, scowling at her unrolling paper, “is much better at this.”

“These kegs are nearly empty, child,” said Orla. “Go and fill them.” She shoved two small kegs toward Sophia and went back to waxing the tube ends. Sophia knew exactly what this meant. It was, “We’ll go faster without you, so go do something useful instead of something that isn’t.”

She took the kegs and went to the dim end of the room where
KINGS CROSS ST. PANCRAS
glistened in white and red, the bigger barrels of saltpeter and charcoal lined up beneath it. She ducked behind one of the concrete columns near the wall, taking advantage of a small sliver of privacy from the people across the room, and leaned back her head. Making Bellamy fire was the last thing she’d done with Tom before the Red Rook crossed the sea to rescue the Bonnards. It made her plans, the acknowledged and unacknowledged, seem very tangible.

Then she realized there were booted footsteps coming across the broken tiles. Too heavy for Orla, and Benoit she wouldn’t have heard in the first place. She straightened as René came around the corner of concrete, ceramic bowl in his hand, though not in time to look as if she had some purpose for standing still in the near dark behind a column. He paused, looking her up and down.

“You are not in pain?”

She shook her head, failing to think of a single thing to say. His gaze moved away to the ground at her feet.

“If we are to make more I will need the sulfur as well.” He waited. “Do you know which …”

“Oh, yes. Over here.” She led him to the small cask of sulfur, sitting on top of the saltpeter, and pried open the lid.

“How did your brother learn this?” he asked, wrinkling his nose at the smell.

“Tom? He didn’t. My father did.” She glanced up as she poured a spoonful of yellow powder into the bowl. “Hard to imagine, I know. He must have been like Tom, I think.”

There was silence before René said, “In what way?” She heard the caution in his tone. Interested, when he knew it would be better if he wasn’t. She knew the feeling.

“They were both curious about the Time Before,” she replied. “But for Father, it was the stories of guns that interested him, and the noises they were supposed to have made. He thought they must have needed an explosion of some kind to work. He didn’t believe they were just stories.”

“Sometimes legends can be true, I have found.”

This made her smile. But she was afraid to look up, in case it might scare him away. She talked quick and spooned slow.

“Father studied about it in the Scholars Hall in the city every summer, and he experimented. Down here, I would think …” She hadn’t really considered that before, her father in Tom’s place in the sanctuary, actually striving for something. “And finally … he did it. He made a powder that would explode. He said it was what made a gun work, and that enough of it could blow Bellamy House right off the cliff. That’s what he told Tom, anyway. When we were young.”

René looked back over his shoulder at the worktable.

“That’s why the lamps are covered,” she said. “But it was Tom who learned how to make the explosions smaller, to mix the salts in for sparks and color.”

“But, Mademoiselle.” René had set down the bowl of sulfur and picked up one of her casks, moving to the open barrel of saltpeter as he talked. She followed him. “Would the Commonwealth not pay your father well for such a discovery? A weapon that is not a machine?”

“I think any country still honoring the Anti-Technology Pact would. But Father thought about what could be done, what had been done with such things and … he didn’t want to tell anyone what he’d found. It’s part of what torments him, I think. That if he had gone against his conscience, that maybe … that we wouldn’t be in the predicament we are.”

“I see.” For a moment there was no sound but the dry, grainy swish of the black powder pouring into the wooden cask. René said, “But Tom could sell what his father did not wish to, is that not so?”

“Tom agrees with Father. He thinks the world is better off without it. And I agree, too, actually.”

“But, Mademoiselle …,” René said again. She could see his curiosity. It was in the intensity of his gaze and the way he held his body, in the way he angled toward her, forgetting to fill the barrel. “Tell me this. What if the powder is the true thing, but it is the weapons that are the legend? What if a gun is a … a story my
grand-mère
would have told?”

“You mean the one who was a liar?”

He cracked a sudden half grin. “You did not have as much concussion as I thought. But how do you answer the question? How do you know what is real, and what is not?”

And wasn’t that the matter of the moment, Sophia thought wryly, eyes on his. They were the same color as that tiny bit of blue in the bottom of her candle flame. She glanced over at Orla and Benoit on the other side of the room, working with perfect understanding despite the lack of a common language, and then back to René.

“If I asked you to go somewhere with me, would you come?”

He hesitated, as she’d thought he might.

“You don’t have to, of course. But if you don’t …” She smiled. “Just think of the curiosity you will suffer.”

René followed her up the long, winding stair, out the door of the sanctuary, and onto the starlit lawns. She’d felt Orla’s surprise when they’d gone, her excuse of “getting something upstairs” evidently not carrying much weight. And she’d seen the look exchanged between Benoit and René, reinforcing their agreement that no one was to go anywhere alone. She looked at the amount of light, and then at René.

“Long way, or the short?” she whispered.

René glanced at the expanse of wall they would have to walk around to get to a door, then the distance up, questioning.

“I’ve been doing some climbing already,” she said. She didn’t choose to tell him why. “My cut hasn’t bothered me, and it’s bound tight.”

She watched him consider the presence of Mr. Halflife, but he only waved a hand. “After you, then.”

Sophia took hold of the window ledge and was up on it like a cat. She scooted across, grabbed the drainpipe, and shinnied up, using the toeholds she and Tom had placed there as children. As soon as she was off the drainpipe and on the roof, René came up after her from the window ledge, taking every other toehold. Sophia crossed the flat roof over her father’s study and started up the latticework that would get her to the more angular sloping gable below her window. She always jumped from the gable to the study roof on her way down, but gravity didn’t allow for such an easy approach from the other direction.

At the top of the lattice she got a knee over the gutter at the edge of the roof, and only just bit back a scream. A hand had come out of the darkness, very near her face. She looked up and there was René, sitting on the sloping tiles, grinning like he’d just nicked her purse. She took his hand and let him pull her the rest of the way up. When she was on her feet she looked back down to the study roof. He must be able to jump to the eaves, she thought. Cheater.

“It is good to be tall, Mademoiselle.” He was still grinning.

“Unfair, you mean.” But she smiled when she said it.

They walked carefully up the gable. Sophia crouched before her dormer window, took a sliver of metal from a small hook under the gutter, and used it to trip her latch. She pushed open both windowpanes, swung her legs through, and hopped inside, René after her. Her room was very dark, and with that slightly stale smell that meant no one had been living inside it for a few days; she hated it when a place that was hers smelled that way. She went to the mantel over the hearth—a formal thing of white marble, glowing ghostly in the starlight from the window—took the tinderbox, and put it in René’s hands.

He accepted it without comment, and she walked across her rugs to the tune of flint on steel. She knelt and pulled a wooden box from beneath the bed. By the time she had brought it to the hearth there was a small fire just kindling, the mantel candles brightening their end of the room. René held one of them up.

“This is your room?”

“Yes.” They were holding their voices low. The quiet seemed to dictate it, even though there were two levels and many layers of hallways and stairs between themselves and Mr. Halflife. She put the box on the hearth rug, settling herself down beside it. René was gazing at everything, turning a half circle with the candle, his hair coming loose from its tie. “What?” she said.

He looked down. “There are little blue flowers. Painted on the walls.”

“Yes,” she said slowly. “Did you forget that I’m a girl? Is it the breeches?”

“No, Mademoiselle, I had not forgotten.” One corner of his mouth lifted. “And that is the fault of the breeches, I think.”

Sophia decided not to ask him what he meant by that. She busied herself with the box, so her hair would hide her telltale flush. “My mother painted the walls, so I don’t want to have them changed. And the curtains are lace, too, by the way. I thought I’d point that out first and save you the astonishment.” When she peeked up, both corners of his mouth were turned up. “Sit with me,” Sophia said, “and I’ll show you what I made you climb a roof for.”

He sat on the opposite side of the box from her, as if suddenly remembering caution, setting the candle on the safer surface of the hearthstone. What had she hoped to accomplish by bringing him up here? What she wanted was to understand him, and this was only going to reveal herself. He pulled up his long legs, waiting.

She brushed the dust from the box—her room was not as immaculate as Spear’s—and opened the lid. Packed inside in soft cloth were pieces of clear glass, square, about the size of a windowpane, leaded together in sets of two. Trapped between the pieces were fragments of paper.

René lifted a pane, holding it near the candlelight. The paper inside the glass was brown, in bits and cracking. “There is writing,” he said. “Printed.” He turned the glass over. “On both sides. How old is this? Did the Bellamys print it?”