Rook(18)

LeBlanc shook his head. Women were so foolish.

“… and I thought I would go mad inside. The walls are too close …”

“It’s not safe, Jen, rain or no. Come back to the house. Quickly, now.”

Ministre Bonnard took the lantern in one hand and his daughter’s arm in the other, pulling her away from the stamping horses. They left the stable in darkness.

LeBlanc rose up from his crouch, still smiling, and when the door to the Rathbone house had closed, he stole out into the rain and back to the woodlands beyond the fields, where he’d left his own horse tied beneath a thick canopy of branches. Fate, he sensed, was moving her divine fingers.



Orla flexed her cold hands, a towel beneath her dripping steel-gray hair. “I argued with the man, but there was nothing doing,” she said.

Sophia was tugging her boots over tight breeches while the rain beat the roof tiles. “LeBlanc is being cautious, that’s all,” she said. As he should be.

“I don’t like it, Sophie.” Tom leaned on his stick, frowning at the pale pink, gauzy gown she’d left in a heap on the floor. He said no more words, but Sophia discerned the rest of his thoughts clearly. Too bold. “What Hasard said tonight was odd,” he continued. “There’s too much here that we don’t know.”

“Which is exactly why we must know what LeBlanc knows,” Sophia said, now tying back her hair. Her ringlets were brushed away, a knife worn sheathed at her side. With a very deliberate fit of shirt, she stood on the hearth rug looking for all the world like a slightly younger copy of her brother, and she understood his hesitation; she was feeling it, too. A net, coming from all sides, and drawing tighter. “Really, Tom. You know there’s no choice.”

The truth was, she’d been hoping Orla’s part of the plan would fail. Counting on it. She’d been sitting in the house playing polite for far too long. She wanted nothing more than to be out alone in the night and the rain. She tugged on an oil-slicked coat. “Do you have Mr. Lostchild’s gloves, Orla?”

Orla handed her a package wrapped in a freshly laundered piece of wool with leather over that, the bundle tied tight with string. Sophia tucked it into her vest.

“And here, child,” said Orla simply, holding out a leather string. Sophia nodded, twisting her ring from her forefinger, its large, pale stone winking in the lamplight. She strung it on the leather and pulled it over her neck, letting it dangle beneath her shirt.

Tom sighed and turned the iron latch on Sophia’s window, letting in a wet and salty wind. “The rain is unfortunate,” he commented. “Cartier won’t be able to start his run until it lets up or the foxes might lose his scent. He won’t have enough of a start.”

Cartier had been born in the Sunken City, along with an elder brother who’d gone beneath the Razor a year earlier. Tonight Cartier was running all the way to the hills above Mainstay in Mr. Lostchild’s shoes, coat, and pants, leading LeBlanc on a chase that would hopefully turn the man’s gaze from Bellamy House.

“Cartier’s fast,” Sophia said. “And willing, and you know as well as I do that the storm will have blown itself out before dawn. It’s a good plan, Tom.”

“I think we should be sending Spear.”

“Spear drinks at the Holiday much too often for this!”

Orla shook her wet head. “Do you think your sister is going to pass up the chance to have all the risks to herself?”

Tom’s frown deepened, and Sophia nearly stomped a foot. “Stop being such a grandmother, Tom! When will we have another opportunity to search LeBlanc’s room and put him off the scent?”

Tom shook his head. He knew there might not be another opportunity. “By dawn,” he said. “And don’t be reckless.”

“Reckless? Of course not!” She hopped onto the windowsill. “And keep an eye on my fiancé!”

“Two of them,” Tom replied.

Sophia gave them both one last grin, and jumped out the window.



The roof tiles were slick with rain, but the slope was gentle, and even in the dark Sophia knew exactly when to turn and how far to slide to the edge. She made another jump and landed softly on the flatter roof over her father’s study, ran across this, shinnied down a gurgling drainpipe, swung herself around to a window ledge, and dropped. Her boots thumped on a flat stone, placed there years ago for the purpose by Tom. She had the instinctive urge to move to one side so Tom could jump down after her. But there was no need for that, not anymore. She knew he missed it, the same way she missed him now. It had always been the two of them. And Spear.

The sea boomed on the edge of hearing, churned by the rain, filling the air with the smell of brine. Sophia lifted her face, letting the water pelt her cheeks until they stung. Then she took a deep breath and ran full tilt through the night, splashing across the lawns, around the derelict print house, taking the fence in one leap. She sloshed her way toward the woodlands, where her horse stood sheltered, saddled, and waiting for her.



It was well after middlemoon when Sophia tied her horse in another woodland, this time in a thick copse well off the road. The rain had finally poured itself out, only the occasional fat drop smacking against her shoulders and back. She left her wet coat on the horse, making the final part of her journey on foot. There was little danger in this. To come down the A5 was to take the long way around to anywhere unless you were headed to the Holiday inn, and even that was more of a pause than a destination, a place to stop on your way to somewhere better. No one ever used the lane except the vicar, and that was only after chapel, because he liked to shuck off his robes and have a dip in the sea on his way to the pub.