Rook(97)

“And you think I will!” Spear yelled, looking at the ring of uncles. “When you’re the ones keeping me here, not letting me get her out of the city as we’d planned!”

“You do not have the first idea what Sophia had planned,” said René. “She was not going to the Tombs only for Jennifer and Tom. She is emptying the prison. All of it.”

“What?” This had come from Andre.

René held up his hand. “LeBlanc was to put two out of three to the Razor at dawn. So she will empty every hole. Then, she is going to set the firelighter you made and use it to ignite the Bellamy fire she has been having delivered and stored in the prison. The Tombs are going to explode.”

Madame sat back, her eyebrow incredulous, and there was some shuffling of feet among the uncles.

“She can do it,” René said, looking at them hard.

“Yes,” said Benoit. “She can.” That made them go quiet.

“Oh, she can do it,” Spear agreed. “Whether she was planning to or not …”

“She was. And she is.”

“René,” said Madame, her painted mouth turning upward in the same half grin as her son’s. “Tell me, did I engage you to the Red Rook?”

René ignored her. “Listen carefully, Hammond. This was going to be a dangerous business. She was going to stay in the Tombs and play cat and mouse with LeBlanc until the mob dispersed and she could set the firelighter. It would have been a miracle if she was not caught. But I convinced her to let me go, to let me set the firelighter once the chase was on in the Upper City, while she was asleep in her bed and with no one aware that she had left the flat at all. But you have just told her I sent the Bonnards to their deaths. That I am the ‘con man’ she once accused me of being. That I have lied and taken advantage of her in every way. And now she has taken the firelighter with her, Hammond. She wants the Tombs destroyed and she wants to take down LeBlanc.”

The room was silent.

“When Tom Bellamy told you to acquire that document, you thought it was going to have my signature, did you not? Or one of my family’s? I took the original out of your pocket. But when it did not, you had a forgery made. You thought you were doing what Tom would want, protecting her from me. You think you still are. But now she has taken the firelighter and gone on her own. She is hurt, and reckless. I do not think she will be coming out of the prison with the others. And now the execution bells have rung, Hammond.”

Spear shook his head, running his hands through hair that was usually so perfectly in place. “I don’t believe you. Only that sounds so much like Sophie that I almost do.”

“But that is not all. Enzo has seen LeBlanc tell his secretary that Sophia is the Red Rook. He knows she is coming …”

“Because you told him!” Spear yelled.

“I told LeBlanc nothing!” René’s voice dropped low. “Are you certain that you did not? Because she rejected you?”

Madame Hasard’s warning went unheard because Spear’s chair had pushed back, René already on his feet. Then there was a knock at the door. Benoit answered and Enzo appeared.

“What is happening?” Enzo said, running an eye over René’s wet shirt and the fight that was about to erupt. “You are all doing something strange every time I enter. Whatever it is, put it aside. LeBlanc is drugged, but not drugged enough. He does not seem to prefer our wine.”

“Then give him one he does prefer,” said Madame Hasard reasonably.

“And émile needs you, Andre,” Enzo went on. “He wants you to steal LeBlanc’s pendant, I have no idea why, and he wants to tell you all that Tom Bellamy does not die at dawn. He dies at highmoon.”



Claude dropped his gaze from the middlemoon, stroking his tiny mustache. The Seine Gate had opened and he was making his way up the cliff road and out of the Lower City with a seething, raucous mass of humanity, his gendarme’s jacket stuffed into his bag. It did not do to wander about in uniform on your own. Especially in this crowd. But he could not get the sound of the execution bells out of his head. He stopped, letting the people roll by him.

LeBlanc always allowed the gendarmes to come to the executions, even if they were on duty, as long as a replacement could be found. But today he had been sent away. And he’d seen other guards going as well, running off to the wine and women of La Toussaint. Or the Festival of Fate, whatever they were calling it now. Then he thought of Gerard, standing behind his desk with his bandaged finger, sweating face, and that nervous tic.

Claude turned and pushed his way back down the clogged cliff road, alongside some others who had changed direction at the call of the bells. A row of landovers with the Allemande seal were coming fast through the gate, down into the Lower City. He followed them, found a clear path, and broke into a run to the Tombs.





The twins carried an insensible Jennifer quickly past Gerard’s closed office, past the lift and to the prison yard door.

“Are the landovers arriving?” Sophia asked.

“Not yet, but they will be here soon because …”

“… the Seine Gate has just been opened.”

“Do you know how many?”

“No.”

“The boy knows.”

They meant Cartier. She had no idea who was speaking anymore. The twins seemed to share most thoughts, and divide up the duty of conveying them. She peeked out the doors into an empty prison yard that, thanks to the execution bells, would not be empty for much longer. She wondered if those bells were for Tom, or Jennifer, or for her. “How many prisoners do we have?”