Rook(68)

Sophia turned the latch and threw her jacket on the bed. She was cold, but it was a clean cold, so much better than the horrible warmth of her father’s room. St. Just cracked open an eye from his basket, then went right to sleep again, as if girls crawled through his window all the time. She supposed they did.

Sophia unbuckled the short sword she was wearing, the knife on the other side, pulled the smaller knife from her boot and the cheesewire from around her laces, making a pile of metal on the mattress. She kicked off her boots, and then paused, listening. She had heard one hard thump from outside her locked door.

She stole softly across the room, avoiding the third and fifth floorboards, where the creaks were hiding, turned the lock, and peered into the hallway. It was empty, dimly lit by the overhead lantern. And then there was another soft bump, as if someone had stomped, just once. The noise had come from René’s room.

Sophia ventured into the hall and put her hand on the doorknob. She thought better of that, and was going to lift it away to knock when the door suddenly shook, an impact she could feel through the metal against her palm. And she knew exactly what that had been. A body hitting oak wood. She threw open the door.

A man in dark cloth, big, balding, and with bulging arms, had a rope around René’s neck from behind, and they were staggering backward, struggling in a macabre sort of dance. René had managed to get a hand between the rope and his neck on one side, and he was trying unsuccessfully to get a foot behind to knock the man’s feet out from under him. Sophia made a lightning scan of the room. No weapons she could see, no time to go for the pile on her bed. The two men lurched around again, and she did the only thing that occurred to her. She threw her body at the back of the stranger’s legs, aiming low and behind his knees.

The man’s feet flew over her side, a boot heel catching her hard in the ribs, and both men went down backward, slamming the floor with René on top. Furniture rattled, the man lost his grip on the rope, and as Sophia was rolling free from the tangle of feet, René flipped around, gasping in a breath as he got a knee on the stranger’s arm. He brought up an arm to hit the man in the face, the rope now dangling from his hand, but then he hesitated, and so did Sophia, midscramble to get herself upright.

The stranger had gone still, his eyes open and unblinking, staring at the ceiling, the bald head raised slightly from the floor. He had landed on the iron grate surrounding the fireplace, a small pool of blood forming below it on the hearthstone. René put a hand first on the open mouth to feel for breath, then on the man’s neck, searching for a pulse. He dropped the rope and climbed off the thick chest, coughing, looking around until he found Sophia. He shook his head.

Sophia let a small shock wave pass through her. It wasn’t as if death was something unfamiliar. She wished it was. But she hadn’t expected to encounter it here, tonight, on the floor of Spear’s spare bedroom.

Instead of standing, René stayed on his knees, coughing spasmodically, and stuck a hand in the man’s pocket. Sophia saw what he was doing and quickly did the same to the other side. Empty. She looked more closely at the clothes, the dark cloth, examined the bald head, shaved to remove any telltale sign of a hairstyle. He could have been from anywhere. He could have been from anywhere so deliberately that he must have come from somewhere significant.

“Do you know him?” Sophia whispered. St. Just was barking full force, clawing from the inside of Sophia’s room, and footsteps were coming up the stairs.

“No,” said René, voice gruff. “He was in the room, waiting …”

Then Benoit was through the doorway, candle in hand. He looked at the dead man’s eyes, then spotted the reddening mark on René’s neck. He turned to Sophia. “êtes-vous bien?”

“I’m fine,” she replied as Spear came at a run to the door. He stopped, Orla moving around him and into the room from behind. Sophia saw Spear’s eyes widen at the sight of the dead man, his hand grab the doorjamb, and for a moment she couldn’t decide why he looked so odd. Then she realized it was because his hair was mussed. Orla pulled her to her feet, lifting and pinching her arms, checking for injuries without comment.

“What happened?” Spear asked. He sounded dazed.

“A man has attacked me.” René stood up. He was a little breathless, voice full of sand, but very calm, so much so that Sophia was not fooled. “We fell …” His gaze darted once toward Sophia. “… as you can see.”

Spear did not miss where René’s look had gone, and then he took in Orla, brushing off Sophia’s clothes and checking her limbs. “Sophie?” he said. Now he had both hands on the door frame, as if he might push the opening apart. “Were you in here?”

She narrowed her eyes at Spear’s tone. “I heard a noise and came to see what was wrong.” She glared back, defying him to ask her more. When he didn’t, she turned to René. “Is he Parisian?”

But before he could answer, Orla said, “No.” She stood looking over Sophia’s shoulder. “He’s shaved off his beard and what little hair he had, but that’s the hotelier of the Holiday.”

Benoit asked René for a translation, then knelt down, studied the man again, and nodded his agreement. Sophia turned to Spear. “Are they right?”

“Yes,” he said, ducking beneath the door. “He looks so … I didn’t recognize him. But …” Spear looked around at them all. “Why would he try to kill Hasard?”