Rook(56)

“Double to you, Miss Bellamy.” He took off like a young fox into the trees.

Sophia looked up again at the farmhouse, the vague silhouette walking back and forth between the candle flame and the curtain. She supposed she’d always thought of things like marriage and love as a trap, like René had said, something clever girls didn’t let happen to them. Mrs. Rathbone, for all her prattling, had never struck her as happy. Nancy she could envision nowhere but in a kitchen, and the loss of her mother seemed to have all but destroyed her father. Not, perhaps, the best of examples on which to form all her judgments. But now she wondered.

Leaves rustled, and Sophia turned her head, thinking Cartier had come back. But he hadn’t. She went still, eyes scanning, hand to her belt buckle. She waited, but there was nothing, only trees combing the wind with half-naked limbs.

She took Benoit’s route back to the farmhouse, watching black shadow arms stretch up high behind a head in a room filled with candlelight. She wanted to know if what René had said could be true, and if so, what she would risk to have it. She wanted to know if Benoit meant what she thought he might, that René was showing her something real. She wanted to know if he was real. Preferably before she risked death in the Tombs.



Life. Or Death. LeBlanc pressed his hands together, waiting for Fate to declare the Red Rook’s destiny as the Ancient bottles bobbed in the boiling water, warping and collapsing in on themselves. It took some time, as if the Goddess was suffering a fit of indecision. But then, suddenly, a bottle broke.

LeBlanc straightened. “The water is white. The answer of the Goddess is life.”

Renaud’s face showed a slight eye-widening of surprise from his place behind Allemande’s chair.

“I am of the same opinion, Renaud. I …”

Allemande got up, voice smooth and even softer when annoyed. “So you wait to send Tom Bellamy to the Razor until the last day of La Toussaint. That was the answer of your Goddess? Isn’t that the date you have already set, Albert?”

LeBlanc ignored Allemande’s pique and bowed over the pot. “The will of Fate is absolute.”

“I think you will find that my will is also absolute. The Red Rook dies at the appointed time, no matter how many more rituals you perform. Is that understood?”

Allemande turned to go after LeBlanc had directed another bow his way, spectacles flashing with the tiny flames of half-burned candles. But then he paused and turned back, using a voice so muted it forced the attention of the room.

“I am glad to have seen this little demonstration. I believe the idea of being fated to die will capture the imagination of the people nicely. Set up something especially dramatic when you reduce the population of the Tombs, Albert, and I don’t think you’ll have trouble filling the chapels with your believers. What think you of a lottery wheel?”

“A wheel,” said LeBlanc quietly, “is not an object of Fate.”

Allemande dismissed this with a hand. “Present your ideas to me, then. Tomorrow, if you please. I hope your paperwork is in order?” LeBlanc nodded, lowering his eyes. Allemande looked him over for a few moments more, then opened the door and left with his escort, weapons jangling as they filed out of LeBlanc’s office.

LeBlanc waited until he heard the bell of the lift taking Allemande back down the center of the white stone building. Then his smile curled, long and slow.

“And now we let her come to us, Renaud. Every move that Sophia Bellamy makes is one step up the scaffold.”



Sophia came down the steps of the farmhouse, turned at the landing, and immediately turned again and went silently back up. Mr. Halflife was coming through Spear’s front door, and René was letting him in. Sophia froze on the stairs, out of sight around the corner of the landing, but trapped by the creakiness of Spear’s floors.

“Good day to you, too, Monsieur Hasard!” Mr. Halflife’s posh Manchester accent was strange in the house, especially in comparison with the ballroom Parisian René was affecting while inviting him in. “This is such a pleasant surprise, such a pleasant thing. I had thought you and Miss Bellamy were holidaying in the Midlands … discussing. I am happy to find I was wrong. Might I speak with Miss Bellamy? I have business with her that I want to conclude posthaste.”

“I wish that I could help you, Monsieur. But Miss Bellamy still travels. I came before her, to stay with my good friend Monsieur Hammond. He is nearly a brother to me now, of course.”

Sophia stood silently, hearing the pause this last sentence gave Mr. Halflife. She stuck one eye very carefully around the corner of the landing, where she could see the back of Mr. Halflife’s slicked head sitting on the couch. He was wearing a gray jacket, very tasteful, the cut of which was not at all Ancient, René nearly facing her in the other chair. He was sweaty, wood chips sticking all over his shirt, and yet somehow managing to pull off ballroom René very well. She saw the blue eyes make a quick, general sweep of the room that included the stairs.

“Then, I am to suppose …” Mr. Halflife collected himself. “I take it you are still contracted to marry Miss Bellamy, despite her brother’s misfortunes, and your cousin’s …”

“But of course! We are so very in love.”

“And what does Mr. Hammond think …”

Sophia watched René make an elegant gesture with his hand. He slid so easily from one role into another that it gave her pause. Then she felt her stomach tighten. Her silver shoes for the second engagement party, with the heels so high she’d had to practice walking in them, were still on the floor at the end of the couch, just out of Mr. Halflife’s sight. She focused her gaze, willing René to see what needed to be done, and then she heard St. Just’s claws come clicking down the stairs.