Rook(39)

“Say to your mother that I have sent you to your room,” he said. “And that she is to tell Orla you’re to have no dinner. Mind that you do that, Sophia! Tell your mother I said you must do as you’re told!”

Sophia felt Orla’s hand on her back, tugging gently on the musty blanket she still held around the gold jacket. “Come away,” Orla whispered. “Come, child.”

Sophia turned away from her father and walked carefully through the debris, Orla’s arm around her waist. Spear moved toward them but Orla held up a hand. “Let me,” she said simply. Spear stepped back, running a hand over his unmussed head. Nancy was still standing in the doorway.

“I’ll watch over him tonight, Miss Bellamy,” Nancy whispered. “And, Miss Bellamy …”

Sophia looked up. Nancy had been cooking her meals since she was eight years old, her face as much a part of Bellamy House as the red and white bricks.

“I just wanted you to know that it’s a shame … a terrible shame that I couldn’t hear a word that was said just then.”

“Thank you, Nancy,” Sophia said, kissing her once on the cheek. She hadn’t done that since she was little.

Orla guided Sophia away from her father’s room and through the dark hallways of Bellamy House, walking slowly. Neither of them spoke for a long time, until Orla said, “He doesn’t know what he’s saying. He hasn’t been right since your mother died. His mind has been failing for a long time, and this business has pushed things to the edge. You know that’s so.”

Sophia nodded. Knowing did not make the pain of it any less. “What do I do?” she whispered. “I don’t know what to do.”

“First is to eat. Second is to sleep and let that cut heal,” Orla said sensibly, her no-nonsense approach to life unshaken. She pushed open Sophia’s door. “I’ll sit by your bed until you do. And third, we’ll just see about bringing him his son back.”



LeBlanc pushed open the door to Tom Bellamy’s cell. The sound of Jennifer Bonnard’s screaming rang from her prison hole, echoing through a round, open space carved deep within the Tombs. There were just five cells here: Fate’s special place for special prisoners.

LeBlanc waited, examining his manicured nails as Tom Bellamy struggled down a long winding set of stone stairs, his bad leg bloody, only kept from falling by the two gendarmes that were escorting him. It took a long time before they got Tom to the open cell door and tossed him through. He landed on his bloody leg with a grunt. When he was shackled LeBlanc shut the door and Gerard turned the key.

But LeBlanc did not go. He stood still, frowning at the sandy floor while Jennifer cried and Gerard and his gendarmes waited. Renaud, standing just a few steps behind, ran a nervous finger beneath his collar, sensing the disquiet.

LeBlanc said, “I think I would like to hear again from our informant in the Commonwealth, Renaud. Send the message tonight with the fastest rider we have, and I will require an immediate reply. And, Gerard, have one of your gendarmes quiet that girl.”

Gerard nodded to his men, Renaud bowed, and LeBlanc seethed until well past nethersun the next day, when the answer from his informant arrived. He read the contents, read them again, then hurled the message into the fire, watching the paper writhe until it blackened and disintegrated into ash.

He walked out his office door, waving Renaud away, and stepped into the lift, taking it all the way down the center of the white stone building, through the ground level of the Upper City and down through the cliff itself, where it stopped at the first level of the Tombs. He walked alone through the tunnels, listening to the burble of misery that was the music of the prison, and unlocked a metal door. Down the steps, down and down again to Fate’s special cells, savoring the quiet in which he would vent his anger. He turned the key, and the door of Jennifer Bonnard’s prison hole swung open.



Spear pushed open the door of his farmhouse, hinges creaking in the dim. He strode forward to light a lamp while Sophia waited, the others filing in behind, bringing the sharp air of an autumn night with them.

When Sophia had finally opened her eyes earlier that day it was to Orla packing her things in the light of a sun that was long past its height. Her fiancé, Orla had informed her, had not slept the day away. Instead he had met early with Spear, and then had a talk with Mrs. Rathbone, asking the woman to do him the personal favor of letting it be known that Sophia Bellamy and Monsieur Hasard would be traveling with her the next day to her sister’s home in the Midlands—when, in fact, they wished to remove to an undisclosed part of the Commonwealth to “discuss their options.”

Mrs. Rathbone had been more than happy to be included in one more piece of subterfuge, René had reported, especially if it meant keeping Sophia away from Mr. Halflife. If Mr. Halflife couldn’t find Sophia, then no deeds could be signed, and Sophia could consider Mrs. Rathbone’s offer to buy Bellamy House and its lands.

“She’s better off selling it to me than giving it to Halflife,” Mrs. Rathbone had said, “but don’t forget, there’s not many days left, and they’ll take Bellamy to prison no matter what he says or what he doesn’t …”

Bellamy had stopped speaking, Nancy had said, and did not move from his chair.

“… and she can’t hide forever. So don’t be away for long! You leave at dawn, I presume? Or middlesun? And where are you going again? I can recommend some excellent little places in Manchester …”