Rook (25 page)

She must have stiffened, because René said near her ear, “What is wrong?” His voice was even more rough with sleep. She sat up, startling Spear from his reverie.

They were driving through the cemeteries that lay outside the gates of the Sunken City, but she was not seeing what she’d expected. Mémé Annette had told her all about the one day a year the gates opened, how she could leave the Lower City and go to the cemeteries for the last day of La Toussaint, decorating the gravestones with feathers and ribbons and autumn flowers; she saved all year for those flowers. Mémé had even whispered to her once, while tying a La Toussaint ribbon of satiny yellow into the long, wild braids she’d worn as a child, that some people would slip away from the cemeteries and never come back again. The gates would close on them forever. Sophia had made her promise never to do that, and Mémé had said she wouldn’t.

But the last day of La Toussaint had not come, and yet the cemeteries had been decorated. Hundreds upon hundreds of blooms of white and black—were they dyed, or had someone actually grown a black flower?—and swaths of dark and light cloth. Masks with dual faces, one side ecstatic white, the other an anguished black, had been set up on poles among the tombstones, as far as the eye could see, ribbons trailing from beneath them and dangling in the wind, looking horribly like the staked heads the mob sometimes paraded through the Lower City.

“The answers of Fate,” René said. “Yes and no, life and death.” He sat back on the cushion of the landover. “Have either of you noticed that my cousin is a lunatic?”

This actually pulled a faint smile from Spear, which was saying something. But Sophia sat forward, watching the violated cemeteries pass in a rolling black and white sea, grave after grave, mask after empty-eyed mask. There was something ghastly about it, a wrongness beyond the obvious that she couldn’t immediately put her finger on. And then she knew. It was because this stark world LeBlanc was trying to create was a lie; there was a spectrum of color between black and white, and many, many layers of choice between yes and no.

The nethersun was dipping low when Benoit rapped twice on the roof from the driver’s seat, letting them know they were approaching the Saint-Denis Gate. Sophia pinned on her hat, René straightening his cravat and sleeves as the landover rolled to a stop. They should only have to show their papers through the window, but he was preparing to make as much of a commotion as possible. Spear didn’t move, even for his papers. René looked out the window and frowned.

“Benoit is talking with the guards,” he said. “The baggage will be searched, I think.”

Sophia sighed. They had anticipated the possibility. Spear ran a hand over his face, and finally started reaching for his things.

“And here they come,” said René.

A gendarme with an eye patch and the blue and white uniform of the Upper City knocked once on the window and then opened the door. “You will please step …”

But René had already leapt out before the man finished speaking, formally extending his hand. “Please! Step carefully, my love!”

She took his hand. She had a knife in her bodice, just in case, but it was the firelighter that required some particular maneuvering as she made her way down the folding steps. Familiar buildings of carved stone rose seven, eight, and even nine floors high behind the walls of the Sunken City, lamps and candles beginning to twinkle in the windows. But as she raised her eyes to the rooflines, she saw that some of them had new construction on top, metal-lattice towers narrowing like pencils as they pointed to the sky, most only half-finished.

Spear crawled out of the landover—he had as much trouble getting his shoulders through the door as she did her skirt—and Sophia handed her papers to the guard with the eye patch while Spear asked him about the towers on the roofs.

“Lights” was the guard’s terse answer.

Sophia looked up again. The City of Light. She wondered if Allemande thought the lights above would blind everyone to the ugliness going on below.

The gendarme handed back her papers and examined Spear’s. They were their usual false ones, just in case LeBlanc had a mind to make the entry to the Sunken City difficult, but the forgeries were excellent. She was counting on fooling the guards without fooling any reporters that might be present. Not as tricky a business as one might think, given the general intelligence of reporters versus gendarmes, and the Hasard habit of putting money in the right pockets. The guard handed Spear his papers, stepped up into the landover, and began patting down the cushions while another searched the contents of their luggage. René stood over this one, complaining about what the damp air would do to both his fiancée’s health and the starch in his shirts with equal vexation.

Sophia laid a hand on Spear’s arm. Not only were they being very thoroughly searched, their landover was the only one waiting to enter the Sunken City, while a huge line of vehicles stood on the other side of the gates, queuing up for permission to leave. And the guards were sober, alert, two on inspection, three keeping watch on the perimeters. Not the outer perimeter, she saw, but the inner, guarding against a threat from within.

“Spear?” Sophia whispered.

That was all she needed to say. He nodded and strolled over a few feet to speak with one of the gendarmes on watch. René’s argument with the other guard was taking on a more insistent note, some sort of objection to the handling of his fiancée’s underthings. And if there wasn’t a reporter here to recognize him and write that down, Sophia thought, the
Monde Observateur
had missed a golden opportunity for the gossip page.

The gendarme with the eye patch stepped out of the landover, and suddenly René called, “My love! I have found it! I have found your handkerchief!”

He came springing over to where she stood and, before she knew what was happening, had thrown his arms around her in celebration, one hand full of lacy white cloth. The gendarme’s unpatched eye looked them over once, then the man made a sudden decision to go help with the luggage inspection. As soon as the guard was out of earshot, René said, “That hurt. Your skirt is very bumpy.” He tightened his grip. “They say they will search you.”

“Prevent them,” she said in his ear.

René released her a little to swipe hair powder off her nose with the handkerchief. “What news, Hammond?” he asked beneath his breath, eyes still on Sophia. Spear was back beside them, jaw tight.

“The gendarme wouldn’t say why everyone is trying to leave the city, or why we’re being stopped,” he replied.

“Ah.” René held her gaze. “I will be back,” he said, right before yelling, “Wait! You there, Monsieur! Do not touch those!” He strode quickly over to the rummaging guards.

“They want to search me,” Sophia whispered.

“Looks like he already searched you himself.”

She held in a frustrated sigh. Spear had no way of understanding why it would be such a disaster to have the firelighter confiscated. She watched René foment an argument with the gendarmes, the tempo of her pulse increasing. She might have to do something about this. And then she turned and found Benoit beside them. “Best to get back in the landover,” he said quietly. “We will be leaving soon.”

Sophia frowned, puzzled as to why Benoit would think this. One guard had already stripped René’s jacket off, running hands along his shirtsleeves, and the gendarme with the patch was returning to the group with a determined step, his one eye on Sophia. She felt her back straightening. She could cause a scene just as well as René; she could cry, or be sick, and she had her knife. She was not about to give up the firelighter.

Sophia felt a hand on her arm, light but restraining. Benoit shook his head once, his attention not on the approaching guard but on René. Sophia followed his gaze. The gendarme had moved down to René’s legs, patting them for hidden weapons, and René, so fast she almost didn’t see it, grabbed the man’s head and brought a knee up beneath his chin. The guard hit the ground, out cold.

“Monsieur? Monsieur?” René said loudly, reaching down to slap the unconscious man’s cheeks. The gendarme with the eye patch spun on his heel, hurrying back to the man on the ground. “Your friend here is ill!” René said, his expression all concern, and as soon as the man bent down to look at the unconscious guard he got the same treatment and joined him on the ground.

“Time to get in, Mademoiselle,” Benoit said in his soft Parisian. “And Monsieur.” Then Benoit called one of the guards on watch, beckoning him over to the scene, and as she was climbing into the landover Sophia could hear frantic conversation, the word “plague,” and the sound of their luggage being strapped on. René jumped in just as Benoit clucked at the horses, readjusting the gold brocade of his sleeves.

“So,” he said cheerfully, looking around. Beyond the rattle of the wheels and the clatter of the gates closing after them, it was silent in the landover. Spear had already resumed his stare out the window, but Sophia’s gaze was leveled on René. He blanched.

“You did say to prevent the search …”

“All that time at the farm,” Sophia said, “and you never thought to teach me that?”

He grinned with half his mouth. “How could I have neglected you so? Come and sit next to me.” He’d almost put the words “my love,” on the end of that sentence; she’d heard the hesitation. He lifted his arm to give her more room and she took her place. They were still speaking Parisian, Sophia noticed. It just seemed the thing to do once the gates of the Sunken City were closed behind them.

“Here, Hammond, look at this.” René handed Spear a piece of paper with his free hand. “Monsieur with one eye must have been in charge, and this just happened to be in his jacket pocket, and I, of course, just happened to find it. We are taking a message about sickness to his commandant, by the way. I do not think it will arrive, do you?”

Sophia turned to look at him. “And what happens when he wakes up and finds his orders gone? Don’t you think he’ll remember a knee to his chin and the incredibly annoying young man whose papers he’d just read?”

“You insult me, Mademoiselle! Why would I hand a gendarme papers with my true name on them?”

She rolled her eyes at him, unsuccessfully holding in a smile, and then saw that Spear was staring hard at the words before him.

“The Seine Gate will be opened at middlemoon tomorrow,” he read. “For La Toussaint, or the Festival of Fate, as they’re trying to call it. But they will not be opening the outer gates. Not even for the cemeteries. Not without a pass.”

Now the line of landovers, and even all the people at the dock made sense. Word had leaked out, as it always did. The Seine Gate would open from the Lower City, but none of the outer gates would. Allemande was not only turning the mob loose on the Upper City, he was cutting off the escape routes.

She exchanged a glance with Spear. His look told her clearly that he thought this was why they should not have waited to come. That they’d left themselves no time to adjust, no time for mistakes. He was worrying about his part of the plan, of course, about getting Tom, Jennifer, and Madame Hasard out of the gates and to the coast; she was worrying about those three, plus hundreds of prisoners more. There was another way beneath the walls, but the tunnels were small and difficult, often wet. It would take much too long. Most would not have the strength for it. So it had to be the gates, even if the Upper City was in chaos. She turned inside René’s arm and found that he had been watching her think.

“You pick pockets, don’t you?”

“On occasion,” he replied.

“Are you good?”

“My uncle Andre says I am.”

“Can you steal a ring off a man’s finger?”

“Ah. But do you want this man to know his ring has been stolen?” he asked. Sophia felt her brows draw together. “Perhaps what you really want is to borrow a ring, Mademoiselle? From my cousin Albert?”

“Yes,” she said, brightening. “That is exactly what I want.”

“Then you can leave that to me, I think.” She turned, settling back into René’s encircling arm.

“What are you thinking, Sophie?” Spear asked.

“That we’ll drive them straight out as planned, and that LeBlanc is going to open the gates for us.”

LeBlanc twisted off his signet ring, dropped it into the drawer, and opened a report from the Berck dock, laying the paper flat on his desk to read. He frowned a little, then opened three separate envelopes sent express from varying points on the landover road. His pale eyes widened, then narrowed. This was unexpected. And suspicious. And intriguing. Could his ridiculous young cousin really be so half-witted as to have fallen in love with the Red Rook? He took out his black bag with the Ancient coin, cupped the coin in his hands, shook, opened his fingers, and looked at the answer of his Goddess. Face. He was more surprised. He had not thought that even René could be this stupid.

LeBlanc picked up the invitation still on his desk, thoughtful, slipped it into the inside pocket of his robes, and left his office, Renaud stepping softly just behind. They took the lift down through the white building, then down through the cliffs, opening the door to the first level of the Tombs. But LeBlanc did not go into the prison. He passed Gerard’s office and opened the door into the prison yard, where the scaffold and the Razor cast deeper shadows across the darkness.