Rook(107)

“Have you happened to notice that your own Goddess is female, Albert?”

“Of course! And being female, she naturally prefers the male, which is much to my advantage.”

This line of reasoning was so daft that Sophia dismissed it.

“I have noticed that more women beg beneath the Razor than men, especially when their children are climbing the scaffold next. Why do you think that is, Miss Bellamy? Will you beg, do you think?”

“And will you beg, Albert, when Allemande finds out your bloody prison is empty?”

He came after her again then, and the chamber flickered in the lantern light, loud with the clash of steel. She blocked again, and again, three times, and then LeBlanc was in close, trying to push her sword out of her hand. She knocked his arm away and kicked hard with her boot heel, catching him in the middle and knocking him into the dust. He tried to raise his sword but she got a foot on his arm, her sword tip at the base of his throat.

LeBlanc laughed against the pointed end of the blade, an eerie sound, especially in a place full of death. And then Sophia heard a yell behind her. Her head whipped around. With a glance she took in the fact that Renaud had a knife to Tom’s throat, and that the picklock she’d given Tom was now sticking out of Renaud’s leg. She pressed down with her boot, stopped LeBlanc’s arm from squirming, and made sure the very tip of her sword was piercing his skin.

“Call him off,” she said to LeBlanc.

“No,” said LeBlanc, his smile curling.

“Kill him, Sophie! We’ll die anyway if you don’t!”

She leaned closer to LeBlanc’s bloody face. “Call him off, or I will carve you up bit by bit, just the way you like to do to others.”

“Whatever you do to me,” LeBlanc said, “will be done to your brother. Won’t it, Renaud?”

“Kill him, Sophie!” Tom yelled. “Quick!”

Sophia pressed the sword in a little harder, and then a voice from the chamber entrance said, “I would not follow that suggestion, Miss Bellamy. I really would not.”

Sophia looked up to see a very small man in the doorway, neat in his spectacles and city-blue suit, surrounded by gendarmes. She wouldn’t have known the face if she hadn’t seen it on a coin, but she had. It was Allemande.





Gerard mopped his head. The Rook couldn’t have been more mistaken about those tickets to Spain. He would gladly take the tickets, but as soon as Madame Gerard was safely on board, he would be trading his for one to the Commonwealth. Now that he’d thought it all over, he was more than reconciled to going. The bells of highmoon still seemed to echo in the air, the mob shouting loud and impatient in the prison yard on the other side of the empty warehouse. The last landover had arrived, and there was only himself, the twin gendarmes, and the boy they called Cartier left to get in it. They would be away to the coast with the flick of the horsewhip. But none of them would go. Or let him.

Gerard tried to speak, but one of the twins jabbed him with the hilt of a sword. They seemed to enjoy that. Gerard shut his mouth and mopped his face again while the other three put their heads together and conferred. When they were done, Cartier trotted out to the street and opened the door to the landover. Gerard sighed with relief. He hurried inside, the twins escorting him one on each side, as if he now had a wish to stay and face LeBlanc.

Cartier shut the door behind them, and when Gerard looked back he saw the boy standing in the rubbish-strewn street, watching them escape.



“Well,” said Allemande, eyeing LeBlanc as he got himself up out of the dust. He was covered in dirt and blood. “We cannot have any escaping, can we, Albert?” Allemande turned to the soldiers who were holding Sophia. “Search her,” he ordered.

And they did. Thoroughly. Sophia stared up at the shadowy darkness while they removed her vest, her gloves, her boots—she had stashed tinder, flint, and steel in the newly hollowed-out heel, and the steel could have been used as a file—the knife strapped to her thigh, the one beneath her shirt, the document from beneath her shirt, and the wire she’d threaded into her hair. They even took out the rest of her hairpins, which was a shame, because she could have picked a lock with those as well, in a pinch. There was some sort of commotion going on with Tom that she could not see, and she assumed he was being searched again as well. She hoped he’d buried the ring well enough that they would not find it. Perhaps LeBlanc did not yet know they’d been forging passes, and the landovers could get away.

“I am surprised, Albert,” Allemande was saying. His voice was soft, oily-slick as he wiped his glasses on a lace-edged handkerchief. Sophia wondered if Allemande was imitating LeBlanc’s voice, or if LeBlanc had been imitating Allemande’s. Or maybe they were just two of the same species of evil. “You are usually so punctual. When the bells rang, I thought perhaps you had become overzealous in your devotions again.”

Sophia saw LeBlanc’s pale eyes widen, and he snatched up the pendant from around his neck and flipped it open. “But … it’s not …”

“Oh no, Albert. Depending on technology? That is such an imperfect system. One can be executed for things like that.”

Sophia closed her eyes, knowing what this must mean. It was definitely past highmoon. The firelighter was not going to ignite anything. René had turned it off.