Rook(82)

“Come with me,” he said, like he had a little while before, only now he was smiling. He took the candle they had miraculously not knocked over, leading her past the scattered pile of once-folded towels and sheets that they had, to the other side of the room where an iron ladder was attached to the wall. She followed him up through the ceiling and he took her hand again, helping her pick her way through a dim, dusty space that ended in a soot-stained window, one of the round decorative ones she’d seen intersecting the roof spire from the ground. She’d been right to think it was enormous. The window was taller than René.

The window creaked on heavy hinges as he pulled it open, and there was the leaded roof of the building, a gentle, curving slope ending in a gutter and a very long fall. And beyond that was the Sunken City, thousands of twinkling candles and lamps both low and high, mirroring the thousands of stars shining through the north lights, a hazy green and purple dome across the sky.

They sat on the attic side of the windowsill, an ice wind blowing from so high, but Sophia wasn’t cold. René had her surrounded with his arms, and it was his lips instead of the breeze making her shiver.

“René,” she said, “we can’t tell Spear. Not until we get them out.”

“I know it,” he said from against her neck. “My love.”

She leaned her head back. What a different meaning those words had now. “René?” she said again.

“Yes, my love?”

“I don’t want to talk about anything else.”

She felt him smile again when he kissed her. And the highmoon bells rang out across the city.



When the dawn bells rang, Sophia rolled over on her pillow, looking across the expanse of gold carpet at the empty room. There were heavy footsteps walking down the hall. She hadn’t been in her bed until past nethermoon, stepping carefully over the thread strung outside her door. But someone else had been present while she slept. The thread she’d strung across the connecting door to Madame Hasard’s room was broken, floating gently in the draft.



“The thread across the front door has not been broken,” said Benoit softly and without preamble as he slipped into René’s room. René lay fully dressed on a still-made bed, one arm behind his head, candle burning low.

“And yet Hammond has returned,” he said. “I could not mistake those footsteps. The back stairs, then? Was the drop bar not in place?”

“It was in place. I would say that Monsieur thought to have paper, string, cord, and a metal hook in his pockets.”

“Ah. I thought that was your trick?” René pinched the candle flame away as Benoit opened a curtain to the dawn.

“I keep telling you not to underestimate Monsieur Hammond.”

“Did he go to him?”

“I do not know.” Benoit scratched his thinning hair. “The bellman said he came from the other direction, but that might not matter.”

“Or the bellman has been paid. What about Uncle Andre?”

“He missed him in the dark.”

René swore. “How can you miss Hammond, even with the streetlights out?”

“I say to you over and over that he is more clever than you think.”

“And yet I do not think he will hurt her. Me, yes. Her, I think not,” René mused. “Sophia might be able to find out. Or it may be interesting to see what he tells her about being out of the flat all night.”

Benoit looked at him closely. “You are very cheerful this morning, René.”

“Can a man not be cheerful?” He was grinning from both sides of his mouth.

Benoit shook his head, but he was smiling as well as he pulled the rest of the curtains.

“So we watch him,” René said. “As ever. Do you not agree, Benoit? There is only the day and the night left, and then she is beyond his reach.”





Sophia found Spear and Madame Hasard on the dining end of the large main room, bathed in smoggy sunshine, having what seemed to be a very friendly breakfast. The staff had arrived, and the place was already busy, smells coming from the kitchen, a girl in a white apron arranging flowers on the table beside the door. René was stewing, she saw, or pretending to. He was unshaven, in the same clothes as last night, arms behind his head and feet hanging off the settee. It was difficult to hold in her smile. She left him to it for the moment and sat down to a table of Parisian coffee and rolls.

“This is a delightful young man,” Madame pronounced, patting Spear’s arm.

Sophia looked up and smiled at them both. “Mr. Hammond is like family to my brother and me.”

“He has told me of this business with your brother.”

“Yes.” Sophia buttered a roll, trying to keep her tone neutral. “We don’t like to speak of it. Do you plan to attend the party tonight, Madame?”

“René says that Monsieur LeBlanc has been invited.”

“That’s so.”

“And so you ask me to celebrate my son’s engagement beside the man who has not only had me imprisoned and taken my flat—the flat in which we are celebrating—but also stolen the very francs that would make such an engagement possible?”

“I thought perhaps you wouldn’t approve.”