Rook(105)

René had already dashed inside, careful to set the lantern well away from the barrels as he turned a circle, surveying the room. “Where she thinks I cannot find it,” he replied.



“I didn’t think you’d find me,” Tom said. “And careful, Sophie. My ribs are broken on that side.”

Tom was upright now, and Sophie had her arms around him. He was dirty and thin, and had a full beard, but other than that, he was Tom. He kissed her once on top of the head. “I assume you have your picklocks?”

Sophia let her brother go and nodded, coming back to herself. She wiped the wet off her cheeks and stripped off her gloves. There was no time. None at all.



“Hurry!” René said. Spear pried open a barrel that was full of Bellamy fire and nothing else, threw down the lid, and went to another one, but René said, “Wait! We should listen.”

Spear went still and they stood in the prison hole. The silence beat down on their ears. “If we are about to die,” said Spear, his tone matter-of-fact, “I want to tell you I was not informing LeBlanc, no matter what he told you.”

“And neither was I. No matter what he told you.” René was running his eyes over the cell, trying to think what he would have done in Sophia’s place. He looked up to the ceiling in sudden inspiration, but there was nothing there.

“But I would forge that document again,” Spear continued. “To keep her from you.”

“It is good to have no regrets.” René kicked the floor. Hard stone.

Spear was shaking his head. “I’d do it again.”

“I will kill you for it later, then, after we …” René grinned suddenly. “We cannot hear. That is just so, is it not?”

“What do you mean?”

“Do you not see? We cannot hear the clock. She has buried it!” René ran a hand through his hair, then cursed a Parisian streak that made Spear’s brows rise. “The barrels, Hammond! She has put it in a barrel! Where we cannot hear. No need for the fuse …”

Spear frowned, then raised his brows again, this time in recognition of the truth.

“Quick!” said René, spinning on his heel. “Were any of these barrels open already?”

“There was one …” They both looked around the room at the mass of barrels that had now been pried open.

“Which? Which!”

“Just start putting your hands in!” Spear yelled. “She wouldn’t have had much time, maybe she didn’t get it buried too deep …”

René shoved his hands into a barrel of coarse black powder, certain he was about to die. But he was still grinning. Sophia Bellamy was such a clever, clever girl.



Sophia worked frantically on Tom’s ankle restraint with the picklocks. “Have you gotten Jennifer?” he asked.

“Yes. Everyone is away except for us.” She hoped it was true. If no one had found the firelighter, then this place was going to explode just like the rest of the Tombs.

“What do you mean, everyone?”

Her fingers fumbled with the picklocks. “We’re the last ones left.”

“LeBlanc knows you’re the Red Rook, Sophie. He knew you were coming …”

“Yes, I know it,” said Sophia, cutting him off. There was no time to feel, and she wasn’t ready to spill out her misery to Tom. She thought she’d better save their lives first. His shackle gave, and she started on the next one. “Where else are you hurt?”

“Nowhere much. Do you have water?”

She shook her head. “When was the last time you ate? Or drank?”

“A while. But I don’t know when now is.”

“How fast can you move? Because we …”

Her voice trailed away at the direction of Tom’s brown eyes, still darker than the skin of his dirty face. They had moved to beyond her shoulder, where the entrance to the chamber was. And she knew what it meant.

She kept working the picklocks, and the shackle around Tom’s ankle clicked open just as the voice she had been anticipating said softly, “So. Fate has finally brought the Red Rook to me.”

Sophia met Tom’s eyes. She slid the picklock she had been using into his hand, and the ring from her forefinger. “Bury that,” she whispered. Then she stood slowly, and reached over her shoulder to draw her sword.

Sophia turned with the sword in front of her while Tom stayed exactly where he was on the ground. It was only LeBlanc, she was surprised to see, with his disgusting secretary shrinking near the wall of bones, holding another lantern. No gendarmes. Maybe LeBlanc had thought they wouldn’t be needed; maybe he was going to be wrong about that.

LeBlanc also drew his sword. He was not quite himself, Sophia thought. His usually sleek hair was ruffled, the cold, colorless eyes a little wild. She wondered just for a moment what could have been happening at that party after she slapped René. LeBlanc circled to her right, but she kept her feet planted in front of Tom.

“I am glad to find you here,” he said, “among those that have accepted Fate.”

“Accepted it or been a victim of it, Albert?” she said.

He smiled. “You realize, of course, that you have already lost.”

“Have I?”