Rook(77)

They left Benoit and a bellboy to deal with the landover, the luggage, and the gendarmes, and stepped into the lift. It was mirrored and carpeted, the edges painted gold. René chatted on and on, bragging ridiculously about the four-man lift, meaning there were all of four men pushing the turnstile around and around, powering the chains that would haul them to the top, rather than only two or three. Sophia listened to the familiar rattle and squeak of the vast pulley system as they started up, a sound that said “city” to her ears. The Commonwealth didn’t allow lifts. Too machinelike.

Since all René’s babble was for the benefit of the bellman, Sophia jumped in, recounting how she and her brother had once seen a liftman when she was a little girl, a big man with very big arms, and how she’d been frightened at first but then found how jolly he was. It was true that she and Tom had once snuck into the cellars of Aunt Francesca’s building to take the liftmen bread, and those men had not been jolly. But she struck a pose of confused sadness at the mention of her brother, and knew that this juicy bit of information—that the Red Rook and his sister had once lived in the Sunken City—would seep into every flat like the city smogs. A bellman was the best source of gossip there was. René gave her a grin from behind the man’s back.

“All the way to the top, René?” she said idiotically as the lift doors opened onto the twelfth and last floor.

“Of course, my love! Now, please, watch your hem …”

The landing outside the lift was square, walls painted in pale green and blue stripes, the number 1250 in iron above only one set of double doors. René’s flat must have the entire top floor. The bellman handed René a tiny covered lamp, to light the candles, and then yanked a silken pull. A bell rang far below, and the chains and pulleys clanked as he started down again, his expression rather eager, Sophia thought. When his head had disappeared down the shaft René put a key to the lock and pushed open the double doors.

Sophia walked into the flat first, Spear behind her, René locking the door again after them. The room was dim, only the smallest light coming from the lantern René held, but she could feel that it was huge and, to her surprise, semicircular, the entire wall in front of them a curving sweep of windows, showing a panoramic view of the Sunken City. Sophia moved silently across the polished floor, a floor spotted with reflected points of light from the buildings on the other side of the windowpanes. It was like walking the Bellamy ballroom, only with a few sparse pieces of furniture added here and there.

She stopped before the wall of windows, Spear doing the same just a few feet away, hands in his pockets. They were right on the edge of the cliffs, looking far down into the fogs of the Lower City, lights twinkling in the smoky darkness. She put a hand on the glass. Tom was down there somewhere, buried deep below that vast hole. And by highmoon tomorrow she would have him. Sophia lifted her eyes to the lights encircling the rim of the chasm, then turned her head to the lamps and flying bridges of the Upper City, spreading below and around them as far as the eye could see, a maze of streets in the air. Who were those others out there, leaving the symbol of the Red Rook across the city, weighing their lives on the scales for the same thing she was? This had been her own private war for a long time. She spun around at the smell of smoke.

René stood at a long table near the doors, now in a swath of light from a newly lit lamp, thumbing through a stack of letters. There was a glass bowl of fading flames near him, what she assumed were the gendarmes’ orders now becoming ash. A small gallery hung above the doors and over René’s head, a curved stairwell leading up to the second level of the flat. Beneath that was a familiar stack of boxes, the items they’d sent on from Spear’s farm.

“Is anyone here?” she asked René.

He looked up and smiled, the white hair and gold jacket looking far less exotic in this setting than at Bellamy House. But he looked different as well. At his ease, more relaxed. “The staff do not live in anymore …” His voice was again a surprise, after the ride in the lift. “… and I wrote for them not to come until middlesun. They will have a long day tomorrow.”

Sophia threw her hat onto a backless couch and kicked off her slippers. They went flying in two different directions, making Spear glance around from where he was gazing dourly at the view. She sighed in relief, done with being hemmed in by a boat and a landover all day. She turned her back to both of them, hiked up her navy skirt, and quickly pulled the tie of the heavy white underskirt. She stepped out of it, careful not to let the sewn-in firelighter hit the floor.

“Really, Sophia,” Spear said. “Can’t you wait?”

“You haven’t been wearing that weight since nethermoon, and I am perfectly decent, thank you.” But she couldn’t help smiling as she carefully folded the fluffy white material around the precious firelighter. That was three censures in one day from Spear. Somebody should write a song about it.

“Monsieur Hammond,” said René. “Do you prefer that we speak in Commonwealth?”

“Parisian is fine. The luggage is coming up?”

“Benoit is on his …”

“Then I’d like to see the flat,” Spear said. “All of it. Is there a way down other than the lift?”

Sophia saw a frown brush across René’s forehead, but he only nodded and picked up the light. “Come, and I will show you.”