Rook(74)

The gendarme with the eye patch stepped out of the landover, and suddenly René called, “My love! I have found it! I have found your handkerchief!”

He came springing over to where she stood and, before she knew what was happening, had thrown his arms around her in celebration, one hand full of lacy white cloth. The gendarme’s unpatched eye looked them over once, then the man made a sudden decision to go help with the luggage inspection. As soon as the guard was out of earshot, René said, “That hurt. Your skirt is very bumpy.” He tightened his grip. “They say they will search you.”

“Prevent them,” she said in his ear.

René released her a little to swipe hair powder off her nose with the handkerchief. “What news, Hammond?” he asked beneath his breath, eyes still on Sophia. Spear was back beside them, jaw tight.

“The gendarme wouldn’t say why everyone is trying to leave the city, or why we’re being stopped,” he replied.

“Ah.” René held her gaze. “I will be back,” he said, right before yelling, “Wait! You there, Monsieur! Do not touch those!” He strode quickly over to the rummaging guards.

“They want to search me,” Sophia whispered.

“Looks like he already searched you himself.”

She held in a frustrated sigh. Spear had no way of understanding why it would be such a disaster to have the firelighter confiscated. She watched René foment an argument with the gendarmes, the tempo of her pulse increasing. She might have to do something about this. And then she turned and found Benoit beside them. “Best to get back in the landover,” he said quietly. “We will be leaving soon.”

Sophia frowned, puzzled as to why Benoit would think this. One guard had already stripped René’s jacket off, running hands along his shirtsleeves, and the gendarme with the patch was returning to the group with a determined step, his one eye on Sophia. She felt her back straightening. She could cause a scene just as well as René; she could cry, or be sick, and she had her knife. She was not about to give up the firelighter.

Sophia felt a hand on her arm, light but restraining. Benoit shook his head once, his attention not on the approaching guard but on René. Sophia followed his gaze. The gendarme had moved down to René’s legs, patting them for hidden weapons, and René, so fast she almost didn’t see it, grabbed the man’s head and brought a knee up beneath his chin. The guard hit the ground, out cold.

“Monsieur? Monsieur?” René said loudly, reaching down to slap the unconscious man’s cheeks. The gendarme with the eye patch spun on his heel, hurrying back to the man on the ground. “Your friend here is ill!” René said, his expression all concern, and as soon as the man bent down to look at the unconscious guard he got the same treatment and joined him on the ground.

“Time to get in, Mademoiselle,” Benoit said in his soft Parisian. “And Monsieur.” Then Benoit called one of the guards on watch, beckoning him over to the scene, and as she was climbing into the landover Sophia could hear frantic conversation, the word “plague,” and the sound of their luggage being strapped on. René jumped in just as Benoit clucked at the horses, readjusting the gold brocade of his sleeves.

“So,” he said cheerfully, looking around. Beyond the rattle of the wheels and the clatter of the gates closing after them, it was silent in the landover. Spear had already resumed his stare out the window, but Sophia’s gaze was leveled on René. He blanched.

“You did say to prevent the search …”

“All that time at the farm,” Sophia said, “and you never thought to teach me that?”

He grinned with half his mouth. “How could I have neglected you so? Come and sit next to me.” He’d almost put the words “my love,” on the end of that sentence; she’d heard the hesitation. He lifted his arm to give her more room and she took her place. They were still speaking Parisian, Sophia noticed. It just seemed the thing to do once the gates of the Sunken City were closed behind them.

“Here, Hammond, look at this.” René handed Spear a piece of paper with his free hand. “Monsieur with one eye must have been in charge, and this just happened to be in his jacket pocket, and I, of course, just happened to find it. We are taking a message about sickness to his commandant, by the way. I do not think it will arrive, do you?”

Sophia turned to look at him. “And what happens when he wakes up and finds his orders gone? Don’t you think he’ll remember a knee to his chin and the incredibly annoying young man whose papers he’d just read?”

“You insult me, Mademoiselle! Why would I hand a gendarme papers with my true name on them?”

She rolled her eyes at him, unsuccessfully holding in a smile, and then saw that Spear was staring hard at the words before him.

“The Seine Gate will be opened at middlemoon tomorrow,” he read. “For La Toussaint, or the Festival of Fate, as they’re trying to call it. But they will not be opening the outer gates. Not even for the cemeteries. Not without a pass.”

Now the line of landovers, and even all the people at the dock made sense. Word had leaked out, as it always did. The Seine Gate would open from the Lower City, but none of the outer gates would. Allemande was not only turning the mob loose on the Upper City, he was cutting off the escape routes.