Rook(103)

Spear was just ahead, forging a path, and René turned in time to see a flash of metal, a sword arm in midswing, ready to curve an arc straight into Spear’s back. René caught the man’s arm from below with the club, the sword flying upward with an audible crack. Spear looked over his shoulder. The man with the broken arm was crumpling to his knees.

“Go!” Spear yelled. “We’re almost there!”



Claude thought he must be almost there. Then he knew it was so when he saw a troop of gendarmes beating back a crowd in front of a gray-and-white stone building that was very elegant. If those gendarmes were protecting the building, then LeBlanc must be inside it.

He whistled and got one of the gendarmes’ attention, straightened his jacket, and smoothed his tiny mustache. Then he pushed his way into the crowd. In the Upper City, his uniform was respected, would guarantee him safe passage. But Claude quickly found that he was mistaken.



Sophia bent over in frustration, staring at the hole she’d carved in the skull. She’d been mistaken. It shouldn’t have been a left turn. She would have to start again. Yes, that was all. Start again when she couldn’t find Tom, when the prison could explode. She took off at a run down the path of bones, wondering how high the moon was.



René slowed his run, wondering how high the moon was. They were beneath a passing bank of fog, the sky lost to them. He stopped in a small space between two shacks, across the street from a dilapidated warehouse just outside the prison yard. Spear jogged up behind him, sliding the mask from his face.

“Look,” René said. “Allemande’s landovers.”

“And there is Cartier,” Spear whispered. “How many drivers did he bribe?” They watched as one landover driver slapped the reins and drove away, the next one taking its place, three bedraggled people rushing inside just as soon as it had stopped. The window curtains jerked closed from inside. Cartier turned to usher in the next group, his head swiveling right and left in the mostly deserted street. The riots in the marketplace were keeping this area quiet, at least.

“Hurry,” said René.

They darted down the street when Cartier’s back was turned, only for the purpose of avoiding explanations they had no time to give, skirting the buildings that formed a loose square around the prison yard. People were gathering there, joking and jeering, a peaceful crowd compared to the others they had seen that night. René swore when he saw the Razor in its new finery, and the chapel altar with its wheel.

“Walk as if you have a reason,” he told Spear, striding purposefully across the flagstones, toward the brick building that sat over the entrance to the Tombs. There were no gendarmes in sight, so they circled to the back, where the building met the cliffs. There was a window there, not far from the ground.

Spear lifted his club, ready to smash it in, but René put out a hand and pushed upward. The window slid open. “He relies on his guards,” René commented, “otherwise, there would be no window here at all.” René paused. “I suppose it has occurred to you, Hammond, that if we do not find the firelighter, we may die in this prison?”

“We nearly died in that marketplace.”

“The prison seems more certain at the moment.”

Spear tilted his head in agreement.

“You might wish, then,” René said, “not to come inside.”

“Maybe that’s what you want, too, Hasard.”

René sighed and swung a leg through. “I hope she is not in here,” he said.



She shouldn’t be here. She should have been with the landovers by now. And she should have reset the firelighter. Sophia knew all these things, so she ran with the lantern down the path of bones. The way was so narrow compared to the unbelievable height of the stacks that even though the cavern must be immense, Sophia felt almost claustrophobic, her need to find a way out beginning to resemble panic.

She passed the second twisting column of skulls at a crossroads, where the path branched into three. She put a hole in a skull with the sword, and this time went straight. Immediately she found a short stair going up, and then came to another pyramid of heads. But instead of a crossroads, this pyramid marked a fork, one way veering to the right, the other left.

“Tom,” she called, letting her voice echo. “Tomas!”

The cavern settled back into silence. She chose left and ran down the path, wiping the grit of bone dust from her mouth.



LeBlanc wiped his mouth with a napkin, frowning down in confusion at the coin on the table. émile frowned as well, not concerned with the prediction but by the look of lucidity that was returning to the colorless eyes of his cousin-in-law.

“More wine?” he asked.

“No, émile, I think I have had quite enough.” LeBlanc felt for the pendant at his chest, brows drawing even closer together as some memory came to him. “Renaud!”


Renaud scuttled forward, the front of his shirt damp.

“Renaud, where is the moon?”

Enzo and Andre hovered a little closer, and then the door of the flat burst open, making music fly from the violinists’ stands. LeBlanc turned, and then stood, a little shaky, catching his balance on the arm of the settee. The sudden quiet stretched, every eye on Claude, who had an eye swelling and blood spattering the front of his uniform. He surveyed the clean cloth and lace, the tall hair and made-up faces.