Rook(84)

Sophia straightened from her examination of the plastic house, looking over the other items in the cabinet while the girl with the flowers passed behind them with another arrangement. When she had gone Sophia whispered, “Will you have trouble getting back to set the firelighter, if there is fighting in the streets?”

“I will get there, and you shall be tucked into your bed, exhausted by our very public spat, Tom and Jennifer and a throng of prisoners on their way to the coast. LeBlanc will never know that you have left.”

“That will depend on the signet ring. I will have to seal the forged passes to get them all out of the gates, and in time for Spear to deliver them.”

“It will be done by the party. How do you want me to set the firelighter?”

“For dawn, don’t you think? Unless the crowd hasn’t gone. The prison should be empty by highmoon, or a little after. The guards will be on the hunt for me. If there is no one to execute I hope the mob will be on their way.”

“I will go to the prison just after nethermoon, to be certain before I set it. Then I will come back to the flat, we take our things, and by dawn we will be out of the city.”


She looked around when he didn’t speak again and saw his gaze set on one of the little human figures. There was an expression there she recognized. She saw it in the mirror when she thought of Bellamy House.

“René, I am sorry,” she whispered.

“I had looked forward to showing you the flat,” he said. “I had thought of you living here someday. With me.”

She turned back to the cabinet, so no one across the room could see her face. Why would he choose her, and all the complications that came with her? It had not escaped her thoughts that there must have been many gaggles of women, fluttering their fans in the Sunken City, women who did not come with a price tag. And she still hadn’t stopped being surprised that she had chosen him back. She wished they were in the linen closet again.

“I have been wondering,” she said aloud, “what your mother’s signature might be worth when LeBlanc loses the Red Rook, a Bonnard, the Tombs, and all its prisoners in one night.”

“It will not matter if you are caught. You cannot be reckless. Promise me you will not be reckless.”

“I won’t have to be reckless,” she said. The middlesun bells rang, a sweet noise echoing out over the city. Her smile was grim. “But I am going to break him, René. LeBlanc has no idea what is coming to him.”



LeBlanc listened to the middlesun bells, pacing the black floor of his rooms, unquiet in his mind. He had decided to accept his cousin’s invitation, curious to know what sort of game the Hasards played. It should have given him satisfaction. At dusk he would attend a party in a flat he had just acquired, a party given for an enemy he was about to destroy, celebrating an engagement for which he had personally removed the finances. And at the next dawn, he would end the Festival of Fate by putting the Red Rook to death along with her brother and the Bonnard, and by giving two out of three to the Goddess. The myth of the saints destroyed, and so many destinies to choose. Fate could not fail to put the city in his hands after such a gift. It would be as had already been decided, as he’d known it would be, ever since his mother crooned the words into his ear after his father had left them to shift for themselves on Blackpot Street. Since the white had grown slowly through his hair. He could not understand his lack of contentment.

He opened a drawer and picked up his pendant, a thick, round metal disk enameled half black, half white with the sign of the Goddess, suspended from a silken black cord. But one push of a tiny button on the side and the pendant flipped open to show a small clock, the symbols of day and night inlaid with onyx, pearl, and crystals of glittering yellow; the finger in the center pointed to middlesun. The secret clock made a satisfyingly soft tick, tick in his hand, like a heart. What was the Goddess trying to tell him? What was Fate prompting him to do?

Suddenly LeBlanc hurried to his wooden table, sweeping it free of books and papers, took chalk from a box of reformed plastic, and drew circles of white and then black, white and black, smaller and smaller, until the tabletop was covered with them. Then he removed a single eight-sided casting piece, molded in rare, solid white by plasticians, painted with the sun and moon symbols of his clock, one on each side. He rolled the piece gently between his palms, then dropped it onto the circles.

He smiled, his doubt draining away like blood from a severed neck. The Red Rook was to die at dawn. Fate had decreed it to be so. But neither Tom Bellamy nor Jennifer Bonnard was the Red Rook. How could he have been so blind? Allemande would not be pleased, of course, but the premier’s time was nearly over. Fate had decreed this as well. The Goddess ruled the city, not Allemande, and surely there was no need to inform unbelievers of these matters?

He gazed at the symbol on the casting piece. Highmoon. Tomas Bellamy would go to the Razor at highmoon, Jennifer Bonnard after him. The Red Rook would come, thinking to rescue her brother, but Tomas Bellamy would already be dead. Or she would search for him until he was. And then, at last, Albert LeBlanc, soon to be the premier of the Sunken City, would have her. The Rook would be his. Fate had spoken, he would obey, and the world had been nudged into place.



Sophia stood on the small gallery, looking down at her engagement party, if not with disgust this time, certainly with apprehension. The flat was sparkling with soft light and the dusk skyline of the Sunken City, the violins playing, the room below her more full of people than they had dared hope, though it was nothing like the boisterous celebration of her Banns. The newspapers must have done the trick, or people were too afraid to stay in their own homes. The gendarmes surrounding the building might actually be a draw, once the Seine Gate opened.