Rook(135)

“Enough to make him run, yes?” He smiled with half his mouth. “I have hesitated to ask, my love, but do you normally wear spectacles?”

“Oh!” Sophia jerked off the glasses. They were made with clear lenses, and she’d completely forgotten their presence on her face. “They were just for delivering soup.”

“Ah.”


She pulled the kerchief from her head as well, running a hand through wild hair. “I never thought I would marry,” she whispered. “Especially in Orla’s old dress and with dirt on my nose.”

He took her hand, bringing her close and putting his lips on the inside of her wrist, paying no attention to Tom or the vicar. “I love you best that way,” he whispered. “When you come down the stairs with your painted eyes and caramel skin and you make every man stare, I still think of you with mud in your hair and a sword strapped to your thigh and a rook feather in your hand. Are they not both one and the same?”

Yes. Just as he was the man of the magazine and the smuggler and also the man of the roof who had stood on the scaffold. She looked into the fire-blue of his eyes. “Do you think this was meant to happen?”



Was it meant to happen, or could he have chosen differently, LeBlanc wondered, his hands tied behind him. Or was the world one great, repeating pattern destined to flow in the same lines? That was the teaching of Fate, the cold mistress that had taken Luck from him, that cared nothing that he was lying here, head on a block, surrounded by the faces of the Sunken City and a new premier. A female premier! Sanchia, reading his charges …

He was supposed to accept the will of Fate, but this could not be right. What if he had chosen a different thread of the pattern?

“Wait,” he called. “Wait!”

He had to ask. He had to know. He wanted to count the drops of blood, to toss a coin. He struggled.

“Wait! Wait!” he screamed.

The executioner raised his ax.



“I think it was meant to happen,” René said, “but I also say that if we had chosen differently, it never would have. Tell me I am wrong.”

She smiled. She couldn’t.





Sophia climbed out of the water-lift shaft, shaking her arms, wondering why they had to live on the twelfth floor. She’d been up the water-lift shaft three times since the Hasards got the flat back. She pulled off her black cap and jacket, but not before she had retrieved a cloth bag from her vest and set it aside on the table. The rope in the water lift was jiggling, and by the time she had washed the grime from her hands and was back in her embroidered yellow skirts, René was swinging his legs through the opening.

“Hello,” she said.

His boots hit the floor and he grinned. “Have you looked yet?”

She shook her head, the brown curls grown longer but no less wild. “I waited for you. No, let me. You’re still dirty.” She pulled a little hinged box from the cloth bag and opened it.

“Ah,” said René. “It is in excellent condition.”

They stared at a small plastic man, his colors of red and blue still unnaturally bright, strange, plastic clothes tight to show a body oddly bulged and top-heavy with muscles. Was this the way Ancient men had wanted to look, she wondered? Because surely they hadn’t. But that wasn’t even the part that amazed her. The man sat in a vehicle, something like a landover, only longer, elaborate, no horse attached, and with no visible way to hitch one.

René ran a finger along a yellow wheel. “Sanchia told me tonight that she thinks this little man should be destroyed because he is an Ancient idol. Do you think he is a god?”

“Sanchia thinks that she is a god,” said Sophia, closing the box.

“Sanchia is half-afraid you are,” René teased. “Are you aware that the Red Rook actually flew to the top of the scaffold, my love?”

“That’s a new one. Where did you hear that?”

“From Sanchia. She was showing me her new tattoo.”

“Was she?” Those who had fought against the revolution and in support of the Red Rook had taken to tattooing a red and black feather on their forearms. And so had some who had not fought. Like Sanchia, Sophia suspected.

René sighed. “Ah, well. She has opened the chapels and the Lower City, so we will extend her some forgiveness, even if her council is corrupt.” His smile became devilish. “I wonder how soon she will miss her artifact.”

“What did she think of your suggestion for a representative parliament?”

“She seems to prefer five council members to five hundred. I would have talked with her more had you not slapped me so soon.” René tugged off his black trousers to show blue satin breeches underneath. “Is it necessary? To hit so hard?”

“You shouldn’t have flirted so hard with Commandant Napoléon’s wife. And you know those breeches are vile?”

“Of course I know my breeches are vile. And if I had not flirted so hard, you would have had no reason to hit me. It is only your enthusiasm I question.”

She smiled sweetly. “But your maman recommends it.” She waited a beat, and then they both laughed.

“Maman needs to come back to the city,” René said. “Tom manages the glass factory too well and it makes her testy. She has no one to fight with.”