Rook(121)

Justin came back out and spoke to Maggie quietly while Sophia sponged some of the dirt and blood away from Tom, but Sophia could hear them planning. No one knew what had become of LeBlanc, or who was taking orders from whom. All the children but the baby would go to Maggie’s sister. The neighbors would make sure they had warning. Just in case.

And then Sophia’s head swiveled around, a little panicked, but she found René almost immediately, standing against the wall with his hands in his pockets and a great rent in his shirt, looking a little out of place. He held out an arm, and she crossed the tiny room as if she’d been pulled. He held her tight, cradling her head while Maggie cleaned Tom’s face and stirred a pot, and the newest baby cried in the other room. They sank down to the dirt floor, a surface so shiny it looked polished, without ever really letting go. René leaned back against the wall, her arms around him, and held her chin so that she had to look at him.

“You believe me?” he said.

“Yes. And you won’t leave me?”

“No,” he whispered. He drew her head onto his chest. “My love.” Sophia closed her eyes. A drowsy contentment was flowing through her, a sense of the poles of the world shifting again into their rightful place.

“René,” she whispered, a little surprised. “I’ve gotten your shirt wet.” She hadn’t even realized she was crying.

“It could only be a help.” He sounded exhausted.

“What did the coin say?”

“Hmm?”

“You didn’t catch it; you let it fall. On the altar.”

She felt him smile against her head. “What is it you say? I think it is, ‘No bloody idea’? Everything blew up and I did not even see it.”

She laughed once, a sound that was mostly breath, and tightened her encircling arms. “I’m glad you had it with you.”

“What?” he murmured.

“Your trick coin.”

“Ah. I think … I left that in my other pants.”

Sophia frowned in the darkness behind her eyelids. “Then what did you toss?”

“A coin I found in the … gendarme’s pocket.”

Something in her mind registered that he had risked everything on that toss. She clung a little tighter, cheek against the warm skin of his chest where the cloth was ripped, listening to a heartbeat, feeling the rise and fall of his breath as it slowed.



Tom opened his eyes to slivers of sunshine peeking through the tiny holes in the roof and the smell of broth on a fire. And when he turned on his side he saw his sister sitting on the floor, her face on René Hasard’s chest, the back of her head covered with his hair. They were both asleep.





The sun was high when Justin came again, saying he’d found a landover driver willing to take them to the coast, though the driver would not enter the Lower City. So they would borrow a trader’s cart to get Tom to the Seine Gate.

“But the gates are all open,” Justin said. “No gendarmes anywhere. And there’s a crowd outside.”

Sophia looked back to the fire. René was on his knees beside her, tending the cut LeBlanc had put on her arm, while Tom sat up in the bed, cleaner now but still with a beard, wearing René’s gendarme coat to cover up some of his prison raggedness. She didn’t want to think about a crowd. She was no deity, and certainly no saint. She winced as René tied the cloth tight. At least she had not needed stitches.

Justin said, “They’re also saying in the market that LeBlanc has been taken.”

Sophia frowned. She’d hoped LeBlanc was lying crushed beneath the rubble of his own prison. “Who has taken him?” René asked.

Justin shrugged. “The mob. The Lower City. They say they have him locked in a loo.” Justin glanced at Sophia once, before he looked to Tom, shifting his feet. “Do you want to see him, before you go?”

Sophia met Maggie’s quick gaze, where she sat rocking her baby. Justin was asking if Tom wanted an eye for an eye, so to speak. It was Lower City justice.

“René?” Tom said. “You have as much reason as me.”

René paused his tying and looked around at Tom, and shook his head. Tom turned back to Justin.

“Who is in charge of the city?”

Justin shrugged. “No one knows. But in the market they’re saying that the Rook has given them leave to choose a new leader. That we will choose a new leader.”

Tom said, “Then let them keep on choosing. And let the people of the city decide what to do with him.”



Sophia hugged Maggie and kissed Justin’s cheek before climbing into the cart. Blackpot Street and its alleys were swarming, gathering even more bodies as they wound their way up to the Seine Gate. But it was a quiet multitude, introspective rather than raucous, and Sophia found it uncomfortable to be the center of their undivided attention. She was relieved when they switched to the landover and could close the curtains, but René leaned over and opened them again.

“I think your brother would like to see the sun,” he said.

So Sophia watched the passing streets of a quiet Upper City from the shelter of René’s arms, which she seemed unwilling to do without for very long. One or two people were on the streets, repairing doors and sweeping up the mess, but it was like the city was at rest after a sickness. Or maybe like a field after the battle: a needed pause, almost blissful after the chaos, but with the ramifications of all that had happened still yet to be understood. They passed a young gendarme, the first she’d seen all day, uniform covered in dirt and mud, walking down the sidewalk with a small pack over one shoulder.