Rook (26 page)

On the far side, where partially derelict buildings created one edge of the space around the scaffold, LeBlanc opened the door to an empty warehouse, Renaud closing it behind him and turning the lock. Inside, in the orange flicker of torchlight, stood Gerard and a gendarme with a tiny mustache. Gerard appeared a little ill. The man with the tiny mustache did not. That was something to note. Behind them were two guards, both with crossbows, and on the far wall, six men and women, gagged, blindfolded, tied, beaten, and bloody. One still had the remnants of a red-painted feather on his cheek.

LeBlanc sighed. The Razor was a superior method. This was likely to take a little time. But Fate had instructed him to have it done this way, and she was a wise mistress. There would be no Allemande or other ministres to hear. He sighed again. Inefficient. He raised a hand, the crossbows aimed, and when he lowered it there was a soft swoosh of arrows.

He ignored the noises from the other end of the warehouse while the gendarmes reloaded. She would be here by now, wandering through his streets. The Red Rook was in the Sunken City. And it was time to move Tom Bellamy.

Just like in the cemeteries, Sophia was not seeing what she had expected in the Upper City. After dusk was when the restaurants filled, the last of the stores closing and theaters opening, when the fashionable people came out to see and be seen. It was the time she’d always been meandering back to Aunt Francesca’s with Tom and Spear, so Father wouldn’t realize where they’d been. But even though the sun had fallen away behind the buildings, these streets were empty, some unlit, more and more so as they followed the sloping pavements deeper into the Upper City, moving closer to the sunken center. They began passing windows that were boarded over, and charred barricades, broken glass, patrolling gendarmes, and a few buildings burned to an empty shell. The columns of the concert hall and the hospital were both splattered with circles of half black, half white. The sign of Fate. Obviously the
Monde Observateur
had not been reporting everything that was happening in the city.

René said, “I think I should ride outside with Benoit …”

“No,” Spear replied. “I’ll go. You’re a target with that jacket.” He half crouched as he left his seat, loosening his sword before pushing down the handle of the door and swinging himself onto the outdoor rungs that led up to the luggage rack. René pulled the door shut as the landover tilted and lurched until Spear got on top and evened out the weight.

“He is right,” René commented. “But I think we may be a target either way.” He settled Sophia back beneath his arm, staring out the window again. The city seemed to be in a state of unquiet calm, the kind that comes right before a storm. He pulled her a little closer and said, “Look, up on the high ground.” She craned her neck to see an industrial building of dark, brown brick on the top of a hill. She could just make out the enormous sign across its front in the light from the upper floors of other buildings. Hasard Glass. “I am glad to see it still standing. I …”

He went quiet. Sophia saw that he was looking at a passing chapel with a boarded-over door. That in itself was not so unusual; all the chapels had been closed since Allemande’s revolution. This one had been defaced on all its windows with the sign of the Goddess, but now, over each black and white circle, a long, curving slash had been painted, even brush strokes branching out on both sides of the main stem, red paint tipping the ends. It took Sophia a moment to realize that it was a feather.

“They are fighting back,” René said.

“Who is?” she whispered, turning her head to watch the passing chapel. Someone was setting themselves against Allemande, and using her symbol to do it. But what were they trying to do? Did they want to show support for the Red Rook, scheduled for execution the day after tomorrow? Or were they trying to start another revolution?

“I do not know,” René said, eyes on a smoking building. The landover wheels were bumping over debris and splintered wood. “But you may have more friends in the city than you thought.”

They turned the corner onto a ruined boulevard. This was not the result of rioting. There had been fighting here, bloodstains showing on the pavement in the light of the landover lamps. Were people dying for the symbol of that red-tipped feather? The symbol that she and Tom had created together in the sanctuary, mostly because the paint was already there from some long-forgotten project? The idea settled over her, heavy. What had she begun? She leaned into the corner made by René’s body and arm, breathing hard against the tightness in her chest, against the brokenness of this Upper City boulevard. She reached out without thinking and took René’s free hand, twining her fingers with his.

She felt him go still, and so did she. That had not been for show. No one could see their hands through the carriage window. She should take it back, say she was sorry. But she didn’t want to. She didn’t want to face the debris on the streets alone. Then there was the tiniest squeeze from the arm that was around her. She let out her breath, and laid her head on René’s shoulder.

They passed eight more red feathers, painted on shops and the gymnasium, one on the bottom of an air bridge. Then the landover turned onto a wide boulevard with planted trees, rolling to a stop before a building of white and gray carved stone. There wasn’t much that was Ancient in the Upper City, and here there was nothing at all. No vestiges of concrete or steel, just cut stone and marble, baked tile and stained glass. Very modern. And very protected. Six gendarmes had stopped to eye the landover, four swords and two crossbows out and ready. René frowned at them.

“You have a knife?” he asked. It was the only time they’d spoken since seeing the first painted feather. Since she’d held his hand. Sophia nodded. “Easily reached?” She nodded again. “Then follow my lead,” René said.

“Are those gendarmes here for me?” she asked.

“I do not know.”

They could feel Spear clambering off the luggage rack above them. It was time to go. But René didn’t move. Instead he lifted the hand that still held his and kissed it, holding it close against his lips before he let it go.

R
ené
pushed down on the door latch, and the blue eyes lifted to hers. “You are ready?”

She nodded, still feeling his mouth on her hand.

“Speak carefully before the bellman,” he added. “He reports to Allemande.” Then he leapt out of the landover and extended his hand with a flourish, not paying the slightest attention to the guards. “We are arrived, my love!”

Sophia allowed him to hand her out, holding up her skirts carefully for sake of the firelighter. Spear landed on the paving stones, and they both looked up. Stars were beginning to wink above the spire on the top of René’s building, the upper floors shrinking in size as if stacked, a relief of flowers and vines decorating the foundation and twining upward. The curving roofline was cut with round windows, small from her vantage point on the ground, though she knew they must be huge. The gendarmes watched, but made no moves. Two green doors opened, and the bellman appeared. Sophia took René’s arm.

“If he reports to Allemande,” she whispered, “then why is he here?”

“Because he also reports to us. Yes, yes, Monsieur Hammond,” René said loudly, as if Spear had asked. “It is, indeed, very tall. But, please, not to worry! My building has a four-man lift! Nothing less than a four-man lift for my lovely fiancée!” He spied the approaching bellman and began shouting. “Bellman! Bring help. At once!”

The gendarmes seemed a bit taken aback by all this, just as they had at the gate, swords dropping down and crossbows lowering. They were guarding only, evidently, not there for her. Sophia let a little tension out of her body, watching Spear’s face become expressionless with anger as René harassed the bellman and Benoit, who was unstrapping the luggage. Sophia reached out and put a hand on his arm.

“He’s doing what he has to, Spear. It’s a persona. You know that. Try not to let it get to you. Please. For me.”

The lines of Spear’s jaw grew even more rigid as he looked down at her. “Has it ever occurred to you, Sophia Bellamy, that I might not be here for you at all?”

She moved her hand, but found herself smiling up at Spear’s handsome face, which was for once showing its fury. “And that,” she said, “is a long overdue first installment on a number of sharp words you owe me, Spear Hammond. But you’re still far behind on your payments, I’m afraid.”

They left Benoit and a bellboy to deal with the landover, the luggage, and the gendarmes, and stepped into the lift. It was mirrored and carpeted, the edges painted gold. René chatted on and on, bragging ridiculously about the four-man lift, meaning there were all of four men pushing the turnstile around and around, powering the chains that would haul them to the top, rather than only two or three. Sophia listened to the familiar rattle and squeak of the vast pulley system as they started up, a sound that said “city” to her ears. The Commonwealth didn’t allow lifts. Too machinelike.

Since all René’s babble was for the benefit of the bellman, Sophia jumped in, recounting how she and her brother had once seen a liftman when she was a little girl, a big man with very big arms, and how she’d been frightened at first but then found how jolly he was. It was true that she and Tom had once snuck into the cellars of Aunt Francesca’s building to take the liftmen bread, and those men had not been jolly. But she struck a pose of confused sadness at the mention of her brother, and knew that this juicy bit of information—that the Red Rook and his sister had once lived in the Sunken City—would seep into every flat like the city smogs. A bellman was the best source of gossip there was. René gave her a grin from behind the man’s back.

“All the way to the top, René?” she said idiotically as the lift doors opened onto the twelfth and last floor.

“Of course, my love! Now, please, watch your hem …”

The landing outside the lift was square, walls painted in pale green and blue stripes, the number 1250 in iron above only one set of double doors. René’s flat must have the entire top floor. The bellman handed René a tiny covered lamp, to light the candles, and then yanked a silken pull. A bell rang far below, and the chains and pulleys clanked as he started down again, his expression rather eager, Sophia thought. When his head had disappeared down the shaft René put a key to the lock and pushed open the double doors.

Sophia walked into the flat first, Spear behind her, René locking the door again after them. The room was dim, only the smallest light coming from the lantern René held, but she could feel that it was huge and, to her surprise, semicircular, the entire wall in front of them a curving sweep of windows, showing a panoramic view of the Sunken City. Sophia moved silently across the polished floor, a floor spotted with reflected points of light from the buildings on the other side of the windowpanes. It was like walking the Bellamy ballroom, only with a few sparse pieces of furniture added here and there.

She stopped before the wall of windows, Spear doing the same just a few feet away, hands in his pockets. They were right on the edge of the cliffs, looking far down into the fogs of the Lower City, lights twinkling in the smoky darkness. She put a hand on the glass. Tom was down there somewhere, buried deep below that vast hole. And by highmoon tomorrow she would have him. Sophia lifted her eyes to the lights encircling the rim of the chasm, then turned her head to the lamps and flying bridges of the Upper City, spreading below and around them as far as the eye could see, a maze of streets in the air. Who were those others out there, leaving the symbol of the Red Rook across the city, weighing their lives on the scales for the same thing she was? This had been her own private war for a long time. She spun around at the smell of smoke.

René stood at a long table near the doors, now in a swath of light from a newly lit lamp, thumbing through a stack of letters. There was a glass bowl of fading flames near him, what she assumed were the gendarmes’ orders now becoming ash. A small gallery hung above the doors and over René’s head, a curved stairwell leading up to the second level of the flat. Beneath that was a familiar stack of boxes, the items they’d sent on from Spear’s farm.

“Is anyone here?” she asked René.

He looked up and smiled, the white hair and gold jacket looking far less exotic in this setting than at Bellamy House. But he looked different as well. At his ease, more relaxed. “The staff do not live in anymore …” His voice was again a surprise, after the ride in the lift. “… and I wrote for them not to come until middlesun. They will have a long day tomorrow.”

Sophia threw her hat onto a backless couch and kicked off her slippers. They went flying in two different directions, making Spear glance around from where he was gazing dourly at the view. She sighed in relief, done with being hemmed in by a boat and a landover all day. She turned her back to both of them, hiked up her navy skirt, and quickly pulled the tie of the heavy white underskirt. She stepped out of it, careful not to let the sewn-in firelighter hit the floor.

“Really, Sophia,” Spear said. “Can’t you wait?”

“You haven’t been wearing that weight since nethermoon, and I am perfectly decent, thank you.” But she couldn’t help smiling as she carefully folded the fluffy white material around the precious firelighter. That was three censures in one day from Spear. Somebody should write a song about it.

“Monsieur Hammond,” said René. “Do you prefer that we speak in Commonwealth?”

“Parisian is fine. The luggage is coming up?”

“Benoit is on his …”

“Then I’d like to see the flat,” Spear said. “All of it. Is there a way down other than the lift?”

Sophia saw a frown brush across René’s forehead, but he only nodded and picked up the light. “Come, and I will show you.”

They followed him through the echoing main room to a door that led into a long, bending corridor, carpeted in cream and midnight blue, continuing the curved shape of the window wall. There were doors on both sides, opening onto grand, windowed rooms on their left, utilitarian, interior rooms on their right. The entire flat was almost a complete circle, spiraling on two different levels around the central lift shaft.

“Attic space?” Spear asked.

“Yes,” René said, “but it is small and unused. There is a trapdoor in the ceiling of the linen room. You can get onto the roof from there, but it is steep. Very dangerous, and of no use unless you wish to fly or elude your tutor. But at the end of this hall is the kitchen, and a back stair that leads to the ground. That door will lock from the outside, and there is a drop bar on the inside. So you may leave that way, if you wish, but if for some reason you wish to return by climbing all twelve floors, you will have to make much noise until someone lets you in. And here is the water room.”

René opened the door of a small, closet-like space that had a rectangular wooden panel built into one wall. He slid this up and there was the water lift, a bricked shaft, two ropes inside, a water bucket dangling from one of them. Sophia stuck her head in the opening and touched the rope. The walls were slimed from constant splashing, and it smelled a bit musty, but the rope seemed to be in decent condition. She couldn’t see the bottom.

“Did you hear a door?” Spear asked from the hallway. The little room wasn’t really big enough for him and anyone else.

“That will be Benoit with the luggage. He has a key.”

“And where are you putting us to sleep?” he said. “I need to see to my things.”

René looked at Spear closely, but again he only said, “This way.” They left the water room and followed René back down the hallway to a set of stairs, also following the curve of the inner wall. At the top of the stairwell was another corridor, straight this time, the wall space that was not interrupted by doorways gleaming dully with hanging weapons.

“The rooms we use most often are here,” he said. “This is my room.” Sophia looked with interest at the closed door. “Benoit is the next door down, and you are the next from that, Hammond. Mademoiselle, across the hall. Take the last door, that is the better room.”

Spear started asking about the roof again while she examined a sword hung near her head on the wall, a bit shorter and lighter than the others, with a hilt of twisted silver. The hilt had been worn smooth by hands.

“Sophia,” said Spear. “I assume you’re tired and going to bed. I’ll have Benoit bring up your bags and something for you to eat.” He started down the hall, then looked back. “Are you going?”

Sophia raised a brow. “No, I don’t plan on locking myself in my room just this moment. Am I confined to quarters?” Spear hesitated. “Really, Spear, what is wrong with you? I’ll go in a bit, when the bags come up.”

He stood still, torn by some decision that Sophia could not fathom. “I need to see to my things,” he said. And before she could close her mouth or even say a word, Spear was away down the hall and through the door at the end, the door she assumed led to the gallery and stairway she’d seen in the flat’s main room. Never had she seen Spear behaving this way. She was surprised he hadn’t ordered her to brush her teeth.

René watched Spear go, then put his gaze on Sophia. “Do you like that one?” he asked. She turned to the sword she’d been examining, with the twisted silver hilt. “You can try it, if you like. These are not decorations.”

His eyes stood out bright in the dim. She smiled and lifted the sword from its hooks. She held it out, feeling the weight, swung it once, twice, and turned to find René where she had left him, only now the gold jacket was on the floor and he had a sword as well, loose and ready in his hand.

“Come. I do not think you wish to sleep. I think you would much rather hit something. Tell me I am wrong.”

“You want to fight me? Right now. In the hallway?”

“Unless you are frightened, Mademoiselle.”

“I’m wearing a dress. And you are much taller than me.”

He tsked as he approached in his vest and shirtsleeves, looking every inch a gentleman thief. Or assassin. “Your disadvantages are many. I can understand your fear.”

She smiled at him from beneath her lashes and raised the sword. So did he, fiery blue on either side of his blade. She moved forward, bare feet silent on the carpet, as if trying to ascertain his reach, and then she darted ahead quickly, getting her sword over his on the inside, but he was back and away before she could get it out of his hand. She cursed once beneath her breath. She’d wanted to take it on the first try. René’s smile was devilish, and it was distracting.