Rook(118)

“Sophia! It was real! Do you believe me?”

She leapt up from the wooden slab, knocked the executioner to one side, wrapped the hauling rope around one leg, and tripped the lever herself. The Razor came down and Sophia rose, jerked from her feet, flying fast into the air. She hung on to the rope, and the blade hit the block with its usual thump.



Spear fell to his knees in the muck of the prison tunnel at the sound of the blade.



Sophia got her knee up and over the wooden framework that formed the top of the Razor, knocking black and white flowers to the crowd below. She put her feet beneath her and stood, still with a handful of rope, legs apart for support against the breeze. Her gaze went to Tom, leaning against the rail of the haularound, his eyes riveted on her—just what she’d told him not to do—working his knots free while no one was looking.

And then she spotted the red head, swimming frantically through the humanity of the Sunken City, dressed in the blue of a gendarme. He finally gained the scaffold and came careening up the steps to stand before the Razor, chest heaving and face turned upward.



Spear dropped his eyes from the ceiling drains, got to his feet, and went stumbling deeper into the Tombs, looking for prison hole number 522.



Sophia swayed on the narrow framework, high above the crowded prison yard, muscles tensed to keep her balance.

“Shoot her!” LeBlanc was shouting, but she couldn’t think of that now. René was staring up at her, angry and with his jaw clenched.

“I did not lie to you,” he said.

She gripped the rope in her hand. She thought she could see the cut she had put on his lip.

“Do you believe me?”

“Why should I?”

“I do not know.” Then René actually smiled, while she was standing on the Razor and he was on the scaffold and a dozen arrows were probably trained on the both of them. He said, “Because you choose to.”

And just like that, she believed him. She chose to believe because she knew what was real. It didn’t matter what name a paper said, or what role he’d been playing. He had shown her who he was. He was showing her now. And that just … was. She met his eyes, blue even from her height, and they understood each other. He knew that she believed, and the pull to him was like gravity, nearly toppling her from her perch, and then together they looked to the sky.

The last of the night had brightened, though not with dawn. This light was white and glaring, every face and stone in the prison yard jumping into stark clarity. The air rumbled, the white light flashed, and Sophia shielded her eyes from a sudden ball of flame, a small sun streaking so low and straight across the sky that she felt the need to duck from her high place on the Razor. Sound popped in the air, a clap of thunder that brought some screams from the mob, and a trail of fire and smoke traced a pale line across the sky.

The rumble faded as the ball of fire flew from view. Sophia watched it go, and instead of death and a mob and LeBlanc, she thought of hope, a path marked out for her in the sky. The translucent dark came down again, though not in the northeast. That part of the night was blushing pink. The mob had gone dead silent.

“Shoot her!” LeBlanc screamed. “Gendarmes, shoot her!”

René turned to the crowd and lifted his hands. “Are you the playthings of Fate, or can you make your own choice?” The slow, shouted words echoed in the silence, bouncing between the buildings and cliffs. “And if you can choose your answer, does that not answer the question already? Fate has no power when the people choose!”

“Shoot him! Now!” ordered LeBlanc. Men in city blue filtered forward to the scaffold, crossbows raised. One arrow came, but it was halfhearted and flew wide. René pointed at the viewing box.

“Did LeBlanc become premier by the will of a Goddess, or did he choose to rid himself of Allemande and seize the Sunken City?” The ministres stirred in their seats, the prison yard a mass of still bodies. Indecision hung like smog. René yelled, “What do you believe?”

LeBlanc leaned out of the box. “Look at him! Look at how the rich of the Upper City try to protect their own! If you do not leech out their blood, they will leech the life out of you! As they have always done!”

The mob stirred at this, a few murmuring agreement, and then someone shouted, “But she’s Commonwealth!” The words released a small storm of noise, and Sophia heard “girl,” and “Tom,” and “Blackpot Street,” and a woman shouted, “She wasn’t leeching then!”

Sophia looked down on the restless mob, wondering when the arrows were going to knock her from her perch. LeBlanc appeared to be wondering the same. René caught her eye. The look had been a warning, but for what she didn’t know. He walked to the edge of the scaffold, pointing up to LeBlanc.

“Then let him prove it to you!” René shouted. The mob settled back into an agitated listening. “He wants to rule the Sunken City. Then make him prove it. Make LeBlanc prove whether Fate is a Goddess!” He looked back at the box. “Are you willing?”

LeBlanc leaned forward until Sophia thought he might fall out of the box. “I need to prove nothing! I am the premier!” He sounded like a maniac.

Sophia’s eyes darted to the base of the scaffold. Tom had gotten free of the post, but his hands were still tied, and between weakness and his bad leg, he was hobbling up the steps, unhelped, and yet unimpeded by the guards. René ran over and grabbed Tom’s arms, pulling him up onto the platform. “Prove it!” Tom shouted at LeBlanc. “For your divine right to rule them!”