Rook (17 page)

He leaned his head against the rough stone, listening to Jennifer describe trees frozen like ice sculptures in the snow. He tore the piece of paper with the red feather into tiny pieces and ate them bit by bit.

Sophia ate a piece of bread at the table, tearing off chunks while looking out the kitchen windows, where the salt wind had been prevented from mounting a direct attack on the clarity of the glass. It was the quiet time after dawn, when the birds were awake and most other animals too sensible to be so. But she thought she’d seen movement on the hillside, a branch bobbing where there was no breeze.

The daylight grew, the remnants of mist lifted, and the woods remained tranquil. Spear’s horse whinnied in the stable. She wiped the crumbs from the table, moved softly down the passage, through the sitting room, and knocked once on Spear’s bedroom door before she poked her head in. She’d heard him moving about for some time.

“Spear, can I ask you something?”

Spear looked up, startled. He was on the edge of his bed, pulling on his boots. “Yes, but just let me …”

She slipped in and closed the door behind her, feeling rather daring, while Spear checked the order of his hair. She’d never seen Spear’s bedroom. It was neat. Spartan, even. And she had a suspicion there would be no stray balls of fluff roaming beneath the bed, either.

“Do you remember last year, when the three of us were in the undermarket at Kent, and we went to the blacksmith’s?”

Spear finished his bootlace. “The one who had clocks under the floorboards of his mother-in-law’s potting shed?”

“That’s the one. Do you remember seeing this?” She pulled a paper from the back pocket of her breeches as she came across the room. On it was a drawing of a clock, an odd sort of arm apparatus attached to the top.

“Yes. I do remember,” he said, taking the paper. “He called it a ‘firelighter,’ right? Because the flint on the top would strike a flame at a certain time, depending on how you set the clock?”

“Exactly so. I want to buy it.”

“That was a lot of money, Sophie. Hard to imagine somebody paying so much not to light their own fire.”

“I know. That’s why I hope he still has it, and that he will bargain. Do you think you could talk him down on the price?”

Spear studied the picture. “I could make this, I think. If I had the clock.”

“Could you really?” Sophia sat next to him, looking at the drawing. Spear was good at that sort of thing, but it had never occurred to her that he was
that
good. “Are you sure? How long would it take? Can you do it in ten days?”

“I think so. It’s just flint and steel, and the parts for the top. And it would be much cheaper to buy the clock alone. What do you want it for?”

“Oh.” Sophia smiled. “I was just thinking it would be safer not to have someone standing right there, lighting the Bellamy fire. This could be set to light a greased fuse ahead of time. No one near it at all.”

“I thought you were using the explosions for a distraction, like before?”

She nodded, her brown eyes open and earnest. His narrowed.

“Well, that’s a lot of trouble for a distraction. What are you not telling me, Sophia Bellamy?”

What she wasn’t telling him was that she was going to put that firelighter in barrels of Bellamy fire and blow a great ruddy hole in LeBlanc’s prison. And that she was going to usher out hundreds of sick and dying prisoners first. And that it was very likely she wouldn’t be coming back out again.

“Really, Spear,” Sophia said. “When did you get so suspicious? What would I not be telling you?”

She looked down at the floor, so he wouldn’t see her face, and noticed a piece of paper, much folded, peeking out from the space beneath the bed. An anomaly in such an orderly room. She leaned over and picked it up.

“Here,” she said. Spear took it from her, tucking the paper into his shirt pocket without meeting her eyes. “So will you make the firelighter for me?” she asked. “If you can?”

“Yes,” Spear replied, “I can do that.”

A completely unreasonable part of her wished he had slapped that drawing right back into her hand and for once in his life denied her a request. “Thank you. And … maybe we should keep this between ourselves, if you don’t mind.”

That brought a tiny smile to his face. He nodded, and she stood up to go, wincing a bit.

“Sophie,” Spear said, “what are you doing for money right now? Are you able to pay Nancy and Cartier?” Without waiting for an answer, Spear opened a drawer in the table beside his bed and took out a small cloth bag. It clinked. He held it out to her.

Sophia shook her head. “I can’t …”

“Yes, you can.”

“But where did you …”

“I came into a little money. You can pay me back when we get all this sorted.”

She smiled ruefully as she took it. “That really is good of you, Spear. I …”

“Or,” he went on, “we could just consider the money ours. No need to pay it back. We could say it’s for a common cause, couldn’t we? For you and me.”

Sophia stood still, the bag heavy in her hand.

“I know you said you don’t fancy marrying anyone right now. And I know that’s because the timing is bad. But it’s always been us, hasn’t it? And when this is over, no matter what happens, I’ll make sure that doesn’t have to change. I can promise that.”

Silence settled over the room, and Sophia still had not moved. Her eyes were stinging, and she was willing herself not to blink, not to spill any tears. How did you tell someone that you loved them, truly loved them, but not in the way they wanted you to? How could she tell him that one way or the other, whether she came back or not, the future he’d planned was never going to happen? You didn’t, and she couldn’t. Not now.

She turned to walk away, but Spear caught her hand, lifting it to his lips and kissing it once. She left, the bag jangling, tears finally spilling as she climbed the farmhouse stairs. She heard another person coming down.

“Bonjour,”
said René.

“Bonjour,”
Sophia whispered. She could feel the blue of his eyes on her back as she hurried around the turn of the landing.

Spear sat on the edge of his bed, thinking about Sophia’s silence. The most important words came hardest to her. She’d always been like that. She needed someone to take care of her. Spear stood and left his room, the folded paper with the seal of the Sunken City back in the pocket against his chest.

“Bonjour,”
said René as they crossed paths in the sitting room. René’s left jaw was a faint purple. Spear nodded, picking up speed as he moved down the passage to the kitchen. He pushed open the back door and walked fast through the farmyard, scattering a few slow-moving ducks, taking long strides through the uncut stubble of the cornfield until the plow land gave way to brushy trees and an overgrown path. He disappeared into the woods of the hillside.

And like a shadow where it shouldn’t be, Benoit also entered the woods, his eyes on Spear Hammond’s back.

It took the better part of two days to make the preparations for Spear’s trip. None of the rest of them could be seen outside the house, not a terribly difficult thing on Spear’s isolated farm, but they couldn’t just pop over to Forge for bread, either. So Sophia wrote lists and instructions, planning for their needs both now and in the Sunken City, and all the while Spear had not been exactly forward, but behaving as if things were … settled between them.

She’d thought she’d been right not to tell him, that the whole tangle of the future could wait until she brought Tom home, as René had suggested. Tom would be on her side, she knew that, no matter what Spear thought her brother had said. And if she didn’t come back, there would be nothing to tell Spear anyway, would there? Now she was thinking that this perfectly logical line of reasoning was really nothing more than an excuse. An excuse for being a bloody coward.

She watched Spear gallop his horse down Graysin Lane, carrying her list, money, and a letter to their forger, the back of her hand still warm from his kiss. It was a relief to have him go, which made her sad. And guilty. She’d never been glad to see Spear’s back before. But wisdom or cowardice either way, for however long Spear took in Kent, she would not have to look into his sincere eyes and think about how she would hurt him.

“So tell me about the water-lift shaft,” Sophia said.

It was nearly middlesun and she stood at the sink, washing the pan she’d been frying eggs in, all the dishes they hadn’t done the night before teetering in a pile to her left. She was feeling rather cheerful about doing dishes. It was uncomplicated work, with no expectations she could not fulfill, results seen instantly in a growing stack of clean plates. St. Just prowled about her feet, devouring scraps, and Orla was behind the toolshed, plucking a duck for their dinner, well away from the laundry blowing in the autumn wind. Benoit had not shown his face. Probably following Spear, if Sophia had to guess.

René sat at the kitchen table, writing out the invitations to their second engagement party, this time in the Sunken City, all one hundred and thirty-eight of them. The invitations were his curse for having the best handwriting in Parisian, and they had to be in the post by the next highsun. He leaned back, stretching ink-stained hands behind his head and into the air, left cheek just showing a faint bruise. Sophia’s scrubbing slowed. René was definitely a filcher of purses today, working his way up to daughters. She went back to her pan before she got caught staring.

“The water-lift shaft,” he replied, still stretching, “is twelve floors down and narrow. You will be able to get your back and feet on the walls, if you wish.”

“It will be dirty,” she said, considering.

“Very. But you will enjoy it, Mademoiselle, especially if the bucket on the other side is full.”

“What do you mean?”

“Because if one bucket is full, and you are certain to take the opposite rope, you will get such a ride to the bottom! Just do not stand on the bucket.”

Sophia smiled, amused. “And why ever not?”

“Because then you will get such a dunking at the end of your ride! And LeBlanc will track your wet footprints right across the Lower City.” He leapt up from his chair. “Here, give me that towel. If I do not do something else, I will explode.”

“You want to dry dishes?”

“I have done it before,” he said, expression serious. “It was Maman’s most particular punishment.”

“You must have done it every day, then.”

“Once again, you wound me. It was only five or six times a week.”

She laughed before she could help it and tossed him a towel, which he caught on his way to the sink. “Have you ever been down it?” she asked, going back to the water lift.

“What do you take me for, Mademoiselle? I have climbed both up and down, though not for some time. There has been no need of escaping my tutors.”

“And the rope?” she asked, handing him a dripping plate.

“It is replaced from time to time. But it should be tested, I think, before you go down.”

For a little while there was just the slosh of water and clink of stacking dishes, until René said, “Tell me what you are thinking of.”

Sophia had been watching the wisping steam rise off the water in the rinsing bucket, and realized she’d been smiling. She ran the dry part of her arm over her forehead, pushing back hair gone mad from the heat, and shook her head. “Nothing.”