Rook(4)

The tall man’s face broke into a brief, perfectly formed smile, then fell back into worry. “We’re late, and there are too many. You shouldn’t have taken them all. I don’t think we can be out of sight of the coast by dawn.”

Sophia frowned, running a hand through curling brown hair still damp from the wig, shaking it out once like a dog. A girl of seventeen or so, one of the Bonnards, had been watching this intently, her eyes large and staring through shorn strands of dingy blond hair that was much like her little sister’s. She stood so close, the starlight showed a spatter of freckles through the prison dirt on her nose.

Sophia turned away, quickly tying her brown curls back in the way of an Upper City man as the girl was bundled onto a horse. “It was not possible to take some and turn the key on the others, Spear,” Sophia hissed.

“Not possible for you,” Spear sighed, clicking the loose board into place across the back of the haularound. The horses with the Bonnard family and two other prisoners cantered away from the clearing. The other six residents of hole 1139 clung to one another on the ground, family or no, waiting for their turn.

“Send the twins to lay the usual false trail,” Sophia said, climbing up into the seat, “though it may not help us this time. If LeBlanc is clever, he’ll ride straight to the coast. And I think he is clever. Don’t try to leave together. Push off and get them out to sea as soon as you can. Have them lie down in the bottom of the boats. And tell Cartier to use the fishing nets. Maybe LeBlanc won’t know what he’s seeing. You’ll …”

“Wait.” Spear’s chiseled face, level with her own despite the climb into the haularound, narrowed to a scowl. “You’re not coming in the boats?”

“No room.” Sophia lifted a brow at his expression. “You think I can’t get back to the Commonwealth on my own?”

He stepped closer to the haularound. “I know you can. I just don’t like that you have to, that’s all.”

Sophia picked up the reins. “As if I’d be late to my own engagement party!” she whispered. “What would the neighbors say?” But this only made the young man’s face darken further. “Move them as fast as you can, Spear. LeBlanc will be on your heels. Be careful.” Leather snapped, and the horses jerked forward. “And save me some cake!” she said over her shoulder as the haularound lurched away down the track.

When the woods ended, Sophia took the turning to the sea and picked up speed. The Désolation had not been desolate for many generations, not since the turbulent centuries following the Great Death, and for two miles the horses ran past harvested fields on one side, cliff and booming sea on the other, any ruins long ago hidden by time and turf. Then the haularound turned back inland, drove through a small, sleeping village and straight into the open shed behind a wheelwright’s house. It was not dawn but the sky was paling over the roof tiles, the north lights gone, a sea fog wisping past dark and silent windows. Sophia hurried.

The horses were left to hay and water on one end of the shed, where a fresh, bridled mare stood waiting, already hitched to a tradesman’s cart. The robes of the holy man came out of the haularound, now turned inside out to show a soft green cloth, and the pins of the wig were pulled, releasing a woman’s long, dark curls.

Soon after the arrival of a haularound full of potatoes, a trader’s daughter drove out of the wheelwright’s shed with a cart full of lettuce. Long, dark hair, honey-colored skin, wearing the distinctive green of one with permission to barter in the Sunken City. Sophia clucked to the mare and took the fast road to the coast.



LeBlanc ran his lathering horse down the road to the coast, lifting two pale eyes to a sky that had become a gold-red glory, an escort of gendarmes jangling fast behind him. It was dawn, and they were nearing the sea. Then his gaze came back down to the road and he jerked the reins to one side, only just missing the small cart driven by a girl in trader green, coming at him fast from around the bend. The cart carved a path through his galloping escort like a ship’s prow, the young woman at the reins winking boldly at his men. Then they were off again, never slowing until the road ended suddenly with a cliff.

Horses fanned right and left, but LeBlanc brought his heaving mount to the edge, its breath steaming the air, bending sideways in the saddle to peer down at the rocks and empty beach below. He straightened, pulling an eyescope from his pocket and yanking it to full length. The glass end of the eyescope roved, searching the sea and thinning fog, pausing at the sight of two small boats riding the waves near the horizon. A single figure sat in each bow. One was rowing, the other throwing a casting net, a spiderweb of black against the glowing, orange sunrise.

LeBlanc clicked the eyescope shut against his palm. Then he reached into his pocket and removed a single potato he’d found in a clearing in the woods. He tossed the potato up and down, up and down, a thin smile creeping out from the corners of his mouth.

There would not be many places they could land. Luck had been with him. The Red Rook, it seemed, was only a man after all.





Sophia Bellamy leaned over the rail, looking down at her engagement party with disgust. The ballroom below her glittered with candlelight and wineglasses, alive with people and music and the excited chatter of distant neighbors and her father’s friends. Ribbons, elaborate hair, billowing skirts, and embroidered coats jumbled into a riot of color, every garment she could see copied straight from Wesson’s Guide to Paintings of the Time Before. The Parliament of the Commonwealth did not choose to print the Wesson’s Guide. Because a printing press was a machine, and machines were technology, and because technology clouded minds, weakened the will, and took away the self-reliance of the Ancients—or so their Parliament said—such dangerous items could be used only by a special license. And since the last license for private printing in the Commonwealth had been removed from the Bellamys, taking their sole source of income with it, the Wesson’s Guide was a thoroughly illegal item, leaving the power to cloud minds firmly in the hands of Parliament.