Rook(70)

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”

There was the hint of an irate smile around his mouth. “Then prove it. Prove that you trust me and tell me your plans.”

“You know all our plans.”

“Stop lying to me! Do you think I do not see all the things you choose not to tell us, how you have placed the others and how you have so exactly placed yourself? Do you really think I am what I pretend to be?”

The room had gone still. And just as suddenly as he had in Spear’s kitchen, René dropped his hands. “I am sorry,” he said, and got up to go stand in front of the window, arms behind his head. She could see him struggling for control, deep breaths that were straining the linen of his shirt. She missed the warmth of his palms.

“Tell me your plans, Mademoiselle,” he said, in the calm voice that was not, though this time the sound was full of gravel. “Tell me what the firelighter is for.”

“To blow up the Tombs,” she said. Just like that. How odd to hear those words coming from her mouth; it made her heart slam repeatedly in her chest. “I’m going to empty the prison holes, blow them up, and take down LeBlanc. If I can.”

René had gone absolutely still in front of the window. She counted several more breaths before he said, “This is why you wanted both the ships. Not as a decoy. You are going to fill them with prisoners.”

She didn’t need to answer.

“And, like tonight, you go on your own, you say nothing …”

“I … didn’t want to worry them,” she whispered.

“What you did not want, Mademoiselle, was to be prevented. Tell me I am wrong.”

She couldn’t. And then he spun around.

“You do not expect to come out. That is why you do not say.”

“I don’t know what will happen.” She jumped as he kicked a stray buckled shoe, making it bounce against the far wall, near the dead man.

“And Hammond does not know this, of course.”

“No.” Sophia got up, her temper back in control. “But this is not what we should be discussing.” She ignored the way René threw up his hands, as well as the word he’d said softly in Parisian. “We need to know who our enemies are, or we might not get to the Sunken City to do anything at all. Was the hotelier LeBlanc’s man?”

“I think he would have been anyone’s man who paid him.” René was pacing. “But you should consider that someone on this coast has been talking to LeBlanc. And for quite some time.”

“Do you think it was him?”

The hands went up to his head again. “I do not know.”

“And you think he wasn’t trying to kill you, but … what? Incapacitate you? Dissuade you from traveling to the city tomorrow? Who doesn’t want you in the city, and how did they find out where you are?”

He looked up. “It makes no sense. But I will say this to you, Mademoiselle. If this is LeBlanc’s doing, if I am the only thing standing between him and the Hasard fortune, then the person I should be worrying for most is Maman.”



LeBlanc twisted the signet ring with the seal of the Sunken City around and around his finger, light that was just past highmoon slanting in through the stone window. “I have finished waiting, Madame. Do we have an understanding?”

The woman nodded, flaming red hair still vivid beneath the prison dirt.

“One should never deny Fate, Madame.” LeBlanc’s smile came slow as he slid the pen and ink pot across his desk.





Sophia pushed out her breath, trying to endure Orla’s tightening of her clothing. Only Orla could arrange one’s traveling costume and bury a body in the same night, and with equal efficiency. It was still practically nethermoon. But they would need to leave soon to make the dawn ferry.

“You will … you’ll take care of Father for me?” Sophia said. She knew Orla would, she just wanted to hear her say it.

“I’ll be looking after Mr. Bellamy.”

“And St. Just?”

“As if I wouldn’t.”

“And yourself?”

“Well, really!” said Orla. “You’d think you weren’t coming back in just a day or three.”

Sophia grimaced as the last string of her corset was pulled, but she also smiled. She wasn’t positive she was coming back, of course. She never had been. She never was. But it seemed much more certain now, ever since René Hasard had pulled her out her bedroom window.

The others had been off dealing with the hotelier when the knock came on the glass; she’d nearly jumped from her skin. But when she threw open the window, René had merely stuck out a hand, offering to help her up onto the roof.

“What are you doing?” she whispered, once she’d gotten onto the thatch.

“I am on watch, remember?” he said quietly, his voice rough. “And I am guessing that you do not mind having a conversation on a roof, Mademoiselle.” She’d pulled up her knees, hugging them from both cold and nervousness while he settled himself, careful not to be too close. He had a mug of hot tea, though how he’d managed to climb a roof with it she wasn’t sure. He offered her a sip. Willow bark. For pain. Probably for his throat. Then he’d said, “I want you to tell me how you are going to blow up the Tombs.”