Rook(120)

Why hadn’t she told him what she’d set out to do? Why had she never, ever looked to him? It didn’t matter, in the end. He’d driven her down this path. It was his fault she had died, as much as if he’d thrown the lever. Had she been frightened on that scaffold, he wondered? Or had she stood her ground? Both. Sophie had done both. And she had come so close to achieving the impossible.

Suddenly, Spear smiled. And so he would do this for her now. He would give her the last thing he could. Spear set the firelighter back in its barrel and pulled out the knob. Then he sat down on the floor, still smiling, surrounded by Bellamy fire, and closed the cool blue of his eyes, letting the mechanism tick, tick, tick …



The coin turned, and turned, and turned again in the air, flashing gold in the dawn light. Sophia gripped the rope, LeBlanc leaned out of his viewing box, the man with the mask of Fate tracked the coin with his eyes. René stepped back and Tom had his head in his hands. The people of the city waited. The coin hit the stone of the altar with the tiny echo of a clink, and there came a muffled BOOM from somewhere deep below them.

The Razor trembled, making Sophia sway for balance on its top, four more booms in rapid succession, and then one mighty explosion that rocked the wood beneath her feet. She swung out on the rope before she fell, hearing screams and panic and a roar that made her turn her head to the prison even as she spun crazily through the air. The building that squatted over the Tombs hovered for just a moment, and then it was falling, collapsing in on itself, sinking down and inward as if the earth had opened its mouth and swallowed, exhaling a thick, rolling cloud of dust.

Sophia shinnied down the rope. The world was shaking, the hole that had eaten the prison building slowly opening wider, the surface cascading down, creating a stampede of people running in the opposite direction. Another explosion, this one with a flash of fire and wind and a noise that left her ears ringing, and then rain fell, a heavy rain, all scattered bits and pieces. The panic of the fleeing crowd intensified as they were pelted, and Sophia saw a larger piece fly past and shatter on the scaffold. One part of her brain registered that what had just sailed past her head was a skull. That it was raining bones. But the bigger part of her was intent on surviving.

Her feet hit the wood of the platform and an arm came around her, pulling her into a run. René had her, Tom on his other side, and he was dragging both of them across a scaffold that was suddenly tilting uphill. The ground was giving way. LeBlanc’s viewing box fell, though whether he was in it or not she didn’t know. And then they were enveloped in a choking cloud of smoke and dirt.

“Jump!” René yelled.

Sophia pushed off the edge of the scaffold as it tumbled downward into a hole, the Razor collapsing with it. They hit the paving stones hard, but just enough to stumble; the ground had not been all that far away.

“Tom!” she said, pulling him upright. “Move!”

They all three began a slow run, tripping over bricks and bones, the rumbling beneath them slowing and softening to only the occasional fall of stone somewhere deep below. The prison yard had nearly emptied, but there was a thick ring of people around the edge of it, a fence of bodies. They stopped before them, and Sophia turned to look back.

The first light shone down on air that was hazy with dust, and where the prison building and the Razor had been was a great, smoking, rubbish-heaped pit. She looked up to the cliffs and saw people there as well, pressed against the iron fences, and even higher up, black specks thronging the balconies and air bridges. Above that was the white line of smoke pointing the way across the sky. She felt Tom grab her harder, his legs giving way beneath him.

She let him slide to the ground, and then looked to the semicircle of people, a buffer of awe making an uncrossable space between them. But when she spoke she did not sound like a spirit, or even the Red Rook.

“Can someone help my brother?” she yelled. “Please! Can you help my brother?”

“Sophie!” Justin was pushing his way to the front of the silent throng. “Here, come with me …” Tom’s eyes were rolling into the back of his head. René came around and got beneath his shoulders while Justin picked up Tom’s legs. René’s face and hair were dulled by dust, mouth pressed as he lifted Tom. But he was whole. Sophia had that feeling of being another Sophia, from another time; she couldn’t believe that he was here, that Tom was here. That the Tombs were gone.

“Make way!” Justin said, backing his way through the crowd. “Let us through!”

The people parted, one or two hands reaching out to touch her back as she followed René down the opening path. Something tickled her neck, and Sophia reached up and discovered the rook feather still perched in her hair.



Someone gave them a cart, and soon they were on Blackpot Street, carrying Tom into Justin and Maggie’s house, a small shanty of planks and scrap boards that had at one time been Mémé Annette’s. They put Tom on the bed, and Maggie went for water, dipping from the barrel in the corner, where they kept the boiled water. Where it had always been. Sophia helped her get some of it into Tom’s mouth, relieved when he sputtered and choked, his eyes flying open long enough to drink half of it on his own. Tom laid his head back on the coarse sheets, breathing deeply.

“He’s wasted to nothing,” Maggie said, while Justin shooed sleepy children back into the bedroom they shared. “I’ll heat some broth.” She kissed Sophia’s cheek.