Rook (40 page)

“Dawn,” said René. “The Tombs will explode at dawn.”

Spear turned the wheel of the firelighter and pulled out the knob.

“They will die at dawn,” said LeBlanc. “The Goddess has spoken.”

“I appreciate a deity with a proper sense of my schedule,” Allemande commented. “We won’t even have to change the bells. Now, if you are ready, Albert? I have some questions I’d like to ask you.”

Cartier slipped unobtrusively through the torchlit crowd. He’d like to have asked directions, but he was hearing sounds that sealed his mouth. Screaming, yelling, and the clash of metal. He turned the last bend in the cliff road and saw a small war at the Seine Gate. Men and women in masks of black and white against others with red paint on their cheeks, a melee of swords, bows, clubs, bricks, and broken bottles. Fate against feathers.

Cartier ducked as someone in a mask went over the cliff edge, down to where the fogs were beginning to roll off the river. He’d never heard such noise, even in the prison yard. But the best thing the red feathers could do for the Rook, Cartier thought, was let him through and show him the fastest way to the flat of René Hasard. He darted forward, fast, avoiding an ax, slid his thin body through the boundary fence, and fled into the Upper City.

“I think we will need another route,” René commented. They were far below the Seine Gate, walking the zigzagged road. They couldn’t see the fighting, but they could hear it. “How are you at climbing?”

Spear paused, hands in pockets, and shrugged. “Not as bad as you’d think.”

René led the way back down the road, through alleys that were empty and quiet, down streets with their lights out, doors barred, until they came to a strip of no-man’s-land along the edge of the Lower City, behind a row of slanting wooden shanties. Bare dirt was sprinkled with blades of grass, and an immense composting rubbish heap was piled to their right, pushed into a mound that was higher than Spear’s head. The stench was unbearable even with the wind blowing in the other direction. Spear looked up at the rising cliff face, glowing in a light now on its way to nethermoon.

“It is an easy climb at first,” René replied. “After that there is rope to the top.”

“When was the last time you checked the rope?”

“It is tested once a week.” René smiled at Spear’s expression. “It is not always convenient to use the Seine Gate. Have you not found it so?”

Spear got a handhold on the rough, tumbled rock at the bottom of the cliff and started up.

“Do you not want me to show you the way?”

“No.” Spear’s long arms and legs had him nearly a third of the way to the rope.

“To your right!” René called. When he saw Spear grab the rope, René took another look around at the bare and empty yards, the fogs tumbling off the river. He started climbing, moving fast on a course he knew almost by feel. If the fog got too thick, he would have to know it by feel, because neither of them would be able to see the cliff face.

Sophia felt for the wound in Tom’s leg that she could not see, pressing her fingers against it in the dark, trying to stop the bleeding. They were alone. The leg beneath her hand was thin, and she could hear the weakness in his voice.

“I’d hoped he was going to forget he’d done it,” Tom was saying, “and leave the … blasted thing in my leg. A picklock would have been dead useful about now.”

“I’m sorry,” Sophia whispered.

“Sorry that I don’t have a picklock in my leg?”

“I’m sorry about everything.”

He didn’t reply right away. “I don’t think you have anything to be sorry for, my sister. How did you leave Father?”

He was talking like he’d just sat down to have a chat on her window seat in Bellamy House. But now it was her turn not to respond immediately. She wondered if it was for the same reason: because they were both telling lies. “He was fine.”

“And you got Jennifer out? Was she all right?”

“She’s out, but she was … very sick. I’m so sorry, Tom.”

“Sophie,” he said, pulling her over so she could put her head on his shoulder. “Tell me what you have to be sorry about.”

And just like that, the inner mechanism that had been propelling her forward sputtered and seized, its ticking stopped, and all that had been held at bay came flooding out, spilling pain and remorse onto Tom’s filthy shirt. She told him everything, unable to see his face, and she thought maybe that was best, because she wouldn’t be able to see the condemnation there. When there was nothing left she said, “I was just … so stupid.”

Tom stroked her head and said, “Sophie, do you trust Spear?”

“What do you mean?”

“Because …” Tom hesitated. “It’s just that I know he has other motives.”

“I saw the denouncement, Tom,” she whispered, trying to suppress the memory of René telling her almost the very same thing on Spear’s steps, his mouth and jaw so angry in the dark. She took a breath of bone-dusted air. “And I know about Spear.”

“Did he tell you?”

“No, or not at first. René told me. I don’t know how he knew …”

“Sophie, everyone knew about Spear and you. Except for you.”

“Then why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because it was Spear’s business to, not mine. What did you say to him?”

“That I thought of him as my brother. And that I was going to marry René Hasard whether there was a marriage fee or not.”

“I see. And what did he do?”

“Knocked over some furniture.” She could feel Tom’s breath coming shallow in his chest. She should make him stop talking. But how long did they have before they would never talk again?

“I don’t know what Hasard is, Sophie, except that he’s been raised to be excellent at what he does. But I do know this. Spear is a good man, but when he gets something in his head, there’s … there’s just no getting it out again. And if he thought he was doing what’s right … Well, he could be ruthless.”

“Ruthless? That doesn’t sound like Spear.”

“Doesn’t it?”

This was just like Hammond, wasn’t it? René felt the vibrations traveling down his rope as he climbed. A knife. And he was hanging halfway up from a smooth piece of cliff, nothing to clutch on to, nowhere to go but down. René sighed when he felt the rope slacken to nothing beneath his hands. He pushed his feet against the cliff face, spread his arms like wings, and fell backward, the cold night air whistling past his head.

A draft blew cold through the bones, a weird noise in the dark. Sophia shivered, wondering where it had come from. “Are you in pain?” she asked.

“I’m so thirsty I don’t think it matters,” Tom replied. “Are you in pain?”

She could feel the blood from the scratch LeBlanc had given her trickling down her arm. She shook her head.

“So who’s out there, Sophie? Any chance someone will come to find us?”

“I told Cartier to get on the last landover whether I came or not. And Spear will think I’m on a landover, too. He’ll be leaving the city by now.”

“And what about Hasard?”

Sophia closed her watering eyes. “He’s exactly where he wants to be, Tom.”

René kept his eyes closed. He hated landing in the compost heap. It might not break bones like the ground would, but it did knock the wind out, which was useful only for avoiding a few moments of the stench. He supposed he should thank Uncle Émile for making him take this fall so many times. Tonight it had saved his life. But he was too angry for justice at the moment. He waited for his air to return, and when it did and his temper had settled, he opened his eyes.