Rook (21 page)

“No. It’s much older than that. It’s as old as Bellamy House, we think. My grandfather found them in the walls.”

“They are from Before?” He touched the glass over the paper with a finger, as if he could coax it into speaking. Sophia felt her smile break free at his expression.

“Can you read them?” she asked. “It’s a story.”

He held the glass closer to the light. “St. Just! Is that why …”

She nodded.

“And Marguerite! It was my mother’s mother’s name.”

“The one who was such a liar?”

“No, the other one.” He grinned. “Who was also a liar.”

“There are only bits of the story, but …” Sophia searched through the pieces until she found the one she wanted, scooting around the box to show him. He leaned in to see, caution lost. “This is what I wanted to show you. It says, ‘The dull boom of the gun was heard from out at sea.’ ”

René took the glass in his hands, reading it himself, soft Parisian beneath his breath. “It is real, then,” he said, more to himself than her.

“And look, they call it ‘firing’ the gun.”

“Like Bellamy fire?”

She smiled. “Maybe. I don’t know.”

He gazed at the words. “Does it makes you wonder … what else …”

“What else your
grand-mère
said that might be true? Like hidden pictures on mirror disks and flying through the air and machines on the moon?”

“Yes,” he said, “just so.” Sophia watched him running reverent fingers over the glass, his hair such an extraordinary color in the candlelight. If he was an actor, he was the best in history.

“This is my favorite.” She pointed at the words. “It says, ‘The walls of Paris,’ and right here, she calls someone ‘Monsieur …’ ” She felt René’s eyes dart up at that. “It’s even spelled the same. And here, she—whoever she is—talks of being condemned to death, and that someone has hidden her children—and herself, I think—beneath some … things in a cart and helped her escape. And the driver is in disguise. He uses tricks to smuggle them out, you see, and he leaves something behind him …” She hunted through the tiny, dim words and pointed.

“What is a ‘pimpernel’?” René asked.

“I’m not sure. Tom thought it might be a flower, or a drawing of one. But I think he uses it like a signature, so no one else will be accused of his crimes, which is rescuing the people from a prison before they can die. No one knows his real name, only the sign of the ‘scarlet pimpernel.’ That’s about all Tom and I could make out, and it took us ages. It’s very hard to read.”

René’s body had gone very still, the little pulse beyond his collar the only movement. The intensity of his gaze on the glass was something she could feel. “And so now,” he said, voice low, “you go to the Sunken City, which was Paris, and you bring the people out of the Tombs before they die. And you leave a rook feather painted red behind you.”

She nodded. He leaned forward, and then all the energy of his gaze was on her.

“Why?” he said. “Tell me why you do it.”

Sophia looked down. Their small fire was already smoldering in the hearth, making the room even darker.

“Come,” he said, almost a whisper. “Tell me.”

Without looking up she said, “Every summer we went to the city to stay with Aunt Francesca, my mother’s aunt. She was Upper City, near the Montmartre Gate, about halfway up,” she explained, referring to the level of the apartment flat, “one of the first women to teach history at the Scholars Hall. And she was busy, and Father absorbed, and Orla never came to the city, because she is afraid of boats. Tom always teases her about that, about her luck being born on an island …” She smiled just a little. “And so Tom, Spear, and I, we ran about like wild things, I guess. We climbed into the Lower City every day it wasn’t raining.” She ran a hand through her tangle of hair. “I loved it there. The rules were different, not so polite, and it was like a whole secret life, something that no one knew about but the three of us. I went with Mémé Annette to Blackpot Market, and Tom and Spear taught Mémé’s son Justin to read, even though he was grown. They felt very important about that. And no one cared that we were Upper City. Maybe because we were young, or Commonwealth, or maybe they’d just gotten used to us. But that last summer before Allemande …” She paused. “That last summer everything changed. Our first day back we scaled the cliff wall. I’d brought grapes from the greenhouses for Mémé …”

She gathered her thoughts, and again the power of his focus was something she could feel on her face.

“Do you remember when the old premier broke the Anti-Technology Pact and lifted the embargo on simple machines, and a mill owner tried to install a waterwheel? How he told the grindstoners he’d sacked that they would be better off without their jobs, because the wheel would lower the price of their bread?”

“You were not in the Lower City during the Grindstoners’ Riot?” he asked.

“The place had gone mad, like looking out a window at a view you see every day, only on this day the glass has warped, or been colored red. It was the place I knew, and then it was not. Tom was nearly killed, would’ve been if Spear hadn’t fought so well. And gendarmes were everywhere, and they were just … hacking at everyone, rioters or no … We had to jump the bodies in the streets. I cut Tom’s and Spear’s hair with a knife behind the weaver’s shop, just so we could get back to the cliffs.”

“What happened to the woman Annette? Mémé?”

Sophia looked up. “She died. The night of the Grindstoners’. How did you know to ask?”

“I heard it. In the way you said her name.”

She nodded. “And within a year there was revolution, the premier was dead, and Allemande was in power. People I’d called friends in the Lower City hated me because I was Upper. And the people I knew from Upper were going to the Tombs, to the Razor, students from the Scholars Hall, our neighbors, Aunt Francesca. They set fire to the chapel with the rook paintings on the walls, on Rue de Triomphe, where Father used to stop and leave coins. Everything was changed.”

It was the sadness that had made her so angry, she supposed. Started her pressure cooker of rage.

“And so that whole first winter of Allemande, while Tom was nursing his leg, I dreamed up outrageous plans to break people out of the Tombs. It kept Tom’s mind from the pain. But Tom said they weren’t bad plans. In fact, he thought one might work, and then I remembered the pieces of the Ancient story, and I wondered exactly what I was doing that was so worthwhile, anyway.”

“And so you did it.”

“We got Aunt Francesca. She’s Mrs. Ellington, now, living up west.”

“And you did it again.”

“And again, and again.”

“And you loved it,” he said.

She looked at her hands, dirty with dust and black powder, and felt the little line appear between her eyes.

“Of course you did what was right,” he said, as if she’d argued. “They were innocents. It was justice. But justice was not the only reason you went back.” He tried to make her look at him, his voice lowering further. “Come, Sophia.” She lifted her gaze. “You loved taking them from the Tombs because you loved the challenge. You loved outwitting the ones who would destroy so much. And you love it now. Tell me I am wrong.”

She bit her lip. She couldn’t tell him he was wrong.

René breathed out a small laugh. “You act as if you have just confessed a crime. Why should you not love it? Do you not think I love snatching artifacts from the hands of the melters? Smuggling them to safety under the very nose of the gendarmes?” He looked down at the Ancient paper in his lap, touching the words “bloodthirsty revolution” behind the glass.

“Have you ever thought,” he said after a moment, “that perhaps … all of this could have happened before? That the people of the Time Before, no matter how weak we think them, that they were only making the mistakes of their ancestors, and that we, in turn, are only making the same mistakes as them? Technology or no? That the time changes but people do not, and so we are never really moving forward, only around a bend? That the world only ever turns in circles. Do you think that could be so?”

She met his gaze, fascinated. “I don’t know,” she said. “But even if that’s true, then don’t you think there is always someone who can change it? Who could break the pattern? Or who could try? If they chose to. Don’t you think that has to be true as well?”

“Yes,” he said, “I do think that.” The tiny fire went out, leaving only the candles. “And I would help you.”

“You are helping me,” she said, voice small. “Isn’t that our agreement?”

“You know that is not what I mean. I would help you.”

She did know. She knew exactly what he meant, and it was loud inside her, like the shattering of glass, like the shifting of the poles, swinging the world into a new alignment. He thought she was someone who could break the pattern of history. And he was offering to break it with her.

And just like that, there were no more questions about games or what was real or whether René Hasard was telling the truth. She just knew he meant what he said. She chose to believe, and with her belief came a pull to him, such an irresistible force, that she wondered if this was how it would feel to be an Ancient satellite, forever circling in the sky. Always kept from flying away by that magnetic draw, always kept from drifting too near by the uncertainties of the atmosphere. She clutched her knees, breathing deep, and breathing deep again, afraid to look at him, this time because she didn’t know what would happen when she did.

Then René said, “I owe you an apology again, Miss Bellamy.”

Her head jerked up. René had gone rigid, expression hard, careful as he set the glass panes back into their crate. He’d completely misinterpreted her silence.

“I have thought of what you said,” he continued, voice still very low, “or what you did not say in Hammond’s kitchen, and I want you to know that I think you are right. This arrangement is … insecure at best, and if another marriage fee can be had, of course you will be obligated. Of course you will do what is needed for your family.”

Sophia stared at him, dumbstruck. Was he really talking about the money? She was sick to death of the money. “I don’t …”

“No. Let me say. We agreed to leave these matters until after the Rook’s mission is done, and it is wrong of me to … to put you in such a position. And the situation, it is … ridiculous, is it not? We do not even know each other.”

They didn’t? In some ways, he seemed to know her better than Tom. “But …”

“Do not concern yourself. You are right. There is no reason to discuss it again.”

The glass with the Ancient fragments had all been replaced inside the box now. He reached out, lifted her hand, and kissed it, a frown on his forehead. She could feel the heat in her face, a pricking sting behind her eyes. If she’d been a satellite before, then maybe this was how it would be to fall through the sky in a blazing ball of fire.

“We should go and help the others. That would be best, no?”

No. No, that would not be best at all. He was setting her hand gently back in her lap, but she did not let go. The frown on his forehead deepened, she opened her mouth to speak, and then the back of her neck prickled, tingling with the pressure of a gaze. Sophia’s head whipped around.

“Spear!”

René sprang to his feet as Spear pushed her bedroom door open a little wider and ducked inside. Sophia stood more slowly, that guilty, uncomfortable feeling in her middle warring with all her newly freed truths. How long had he been standing there? René slid his hands into his pockets, looking at Spear with the blue eyes heavy-lidded.

“When did you get back?” she asked. “I’ve been expecting you.”

“I was on my way to the farmhouse now.” His face was like a metal casting. “I just stopped for … Tom had oil in the sanctuary.” He held out a bundle wrapped in sacking. “I’ve brought you our project.” He’d looked at René when he said it, a particular emphasis on the word “our,” before his cool eyes went back to Sophia.

“They’re done downstairs, Sophie. Don’t you think we should go now …” He nodded toward the dark corridor. “Before you run into someone you shouldn’t?”

LeBlanc stepped carefully around the filth of the street, turned the corner, and was almost immediately confronted by the guard of Allemande. They surrounded their premier, swords drawn, standing at one end of an Upper City boulevard that no longer resembled a boulevard. Barricades that were equal parts scrap wood and pieces of fine furniture had been piled across either end of the block, one of them still ablaze, illuminating the bodies and broken glass that lay on the pavement.

The drawn swords parted, and Allemande stepped through. “Premier,” LeBlanc said. “I have only just arrived. Could I ask for a few moments to assess the situation? And I would prefer to have you wait in my office.”

Allemande’s eyes blinked beneath the glasses, a few of the guards showing surprise.

“For your safety, of course, Premier. I would like to be certain the area is secure.”

“Yes,” said Allemande slowly. He looked about, and then chuckled. “I would like to be present for your interview with the commandant of the Upper City, I think. He has much to answer for. As do you.” The premier put his hands behind his back. When LeBlanc had bowed he strode away with his jangling men, looking a bit like the runt of a litter. A very cunning runt.