Rook (5 page)

“Do you play, my love?”

Sophia glanced up at René standing beside her father’s chess set as if he were posing for a portrait titled
Parisian Rake
. She went back to stroking St. Just’s head, the fox settling deeper into the gauzy pink of her gown. It was full dark outside, the storm that the wind had promised now lashing for its third day at the windowpanes. Bellamy slumped in his chair—he never stayed awake for long after dinner—while Spear and Tom sat on either side of the fire, Spear reading a legal newspaper, Tom thumbing through his illegal
Wesson’s Guide
. Tom’s interest in
Wesson’s
was less about clothing and more about what the subjects of the copied drawings might be doing, and where they might have been doing it. Proving the theory that Wesson had copied Ancient paintings in abandoned London before it was lost was Tom’s constant pastime.

Sophia wanted a pastime, or at least one that could be done in a sitting room, where sword fighting was frowned upon. Three days of torrential rain had left her cooped up and testy. René Hasard had been haunting her steps, paying her unearned compliments, stating his opinions on music, magazines, Parisian actresses, and, most memorably, an endless dissertation on his particular preferences in nursery carpets. Tom had nodded sagely while listening to this, asking her fiancé such detailed, serious questions that Sophia thought holding in the laughter might actually kill her. And if she did manage to be without René’s presence for the odd moment or two, up he would pop unexpectedly, full of a restless, boundless energy and incessant talk that, good looks or no, stretched her patience to the limit.

St. Just lifted his head from her lap, sniffing at her foul mood. René’s suggestion of a game was not appealing, but then again, Sophia wasn’t certain he could have suggested anything that was. Her father snorted, startling belatedly from his doze.

“What?” Bellamy said. “What? Play my Sophia, Mr. Hasard? Oh no, I don’t advise it. I’ve been playing her since she was ten years old, and the child has trounced me every time.”

Tom smiled from his armchair, adjusting the cushion beneath his leg. “You’ll make Hasard afraid of our Sophie, Father.”

“And you think that a bad thing, Tom?” Sophia said sweetly. “Do go on, Father. What were you saying?”

René laughed, a little too loud, a sound that grated across every raw end of her nerves. He said, “And now I must insist on the game or be thought a coward.” He turned back to Sophia. “Or you shall.”

She set her mouth, put St. Just on the carpet, and marched over to the chessboard. Spear’s newspaper lowered, and she could feel his eyes following as she sat herself down at the game table. René was in the green coat tonight. She found a silver button, the second one down, and fixed her gaze there.

“White first, my love,” René said.

“I prefer black.”

He turned the board while St. Just settled his bushy tail over her feet. They played in silence, she taking her time and with her attention on the board, he with quick, haphazard moves and his face turned toward the rest of the room. Sophia moved her sheriff and stifled a yawn. She was six moves from taking his king.

“My cousin says that he walked in the lane with you the other day,” René said loudly.

“You’ve been to see Monsieur LeBlanc?” She glanced once at Spear. He and Cartier were supposed to have been watching, making sure René didn’t leave the house. Spear almost imperceptibly shrugged a shoulder.

“Oh, yes,” René said, “I went to see him early, before breakfast.”

“In the rain?”

“It was a refreshing journey. But my cousin made me quite jealous.” René ignored her sheriff and unwisely moved a pawn. “Perhaps you might like to walk with me next time, when the weather improves?” When she remained silent, René said, “Do none of the young women from your Banns ever come to walk with you? I would not mind seeing Mademoiselle Lauren again. I thought she was very … pleasant.”

Oh, Sophia thought. So that’s what sort of husband he would be. She supposed it shouldn’t matter to her. She tried to imagine strolling down the A5 with Lauren Rathbone and failed.

“Bellamy has invited my cousin to dine with us tomorrow,” René went on. “That was thoughtful of him, yes?”

Sophia looked over at the armchair, where her oblivious father was again snoozing. She lowered her voice. “I am surprised that Monsieur LeBlanc stays in the Commonwealth. What can he possibly have to do here?”

“I believe that tonight he was intending to ride the coast.”

“Really? An impractical plan. Why would he want to do that in this weather?”

“I wish I could say he was riding out to have his hair dyed,” René sighed. “That streak is not in fashion.”

Sophia stared at the water streaming down the window glass. Sometimes it was hard to believe the man sitting across from her could possibly be serious. And then she did believe it, and it was depressing.

“But Cousin Albert does not share his reasons with me,” René continued. “I only saw his horse being saddled.”

“He’ll have found somewhere else to stay, I would think. In Forge or Mainstay, if he got that far.” For once she let her gaze rest briefly on René’s face. “If the weather holds, maybe he won’t be able to come to dinner after all. Maybe he’ll have to go straight back to where he came from.”

René laughed, again much too loud. “What a teasing little minx you are!”

This remark carried to the fireplace, earning her a surprised glance from Tom and a long look from Spear. Sophia felt a bit of heat rise to her cheeks. René had made it sound as if she was flirting with him. It threw another log of fuel on her smoldering temper.

“Such a shame Mrs. Rathbone couldn’t come eat with us tonight,” Sophia said to the room in general. “What did she say she had to do again?”

Spear immediately shifted in his chair, ready to accommodate her, but Sophia could see by the line of Tom’s mouth that he disapproved. Still, she couldn’t help it. She was ticked.

“Mrs. Rathbone mentioned something about a few unexpected duties that had come her way,” Spear said. “Five of them, I think.” He grinned, a thing of beauty and symmetry in the firelight. “And she mentioned old Mr. Lostchild. You did hear that he was no longer with us?”

“Yes, and I’m sorry for it,” Sophia replied. Tom had assured her that Mr. Lostchild’s death appeared to be from natural causes; he’d been very old. But the fact that she’d said his name to LeBlanc three days beforehand did not sit well with her. “Such a nice man,” she continued. “Always a cookie to spare when we were children. But I had hoped Mrs. Rathbone might come. She was telling me the oddest story at the Banns, about how the Bonnards had escaped prison on the very night of their execution. Was there anything about it in the newspaper, Tom?”

“I’m not certain.” Tom was frowning now.

Spear leaned his large frame back into the chair, his white shirt crisp and unblemished. “I saw something about it. They say it was the Red Rook. Isn’t that what they call him?” This last had been to Tom, but Tom did not respond.

Sophia said, “Yes, I’ve heard of him. He’s done things like this before, hasn’t he, Spear?”

“I believe so. The Parisians seem to think he’s some kind of ghost.”

“They say he is a saint sent by God,” said René unexpectedly. “Or at least those who do not believe that Allemande is God say it.”

Sophia blinked once before she said, “Mrs. Rathbone said he was the talk of the Sunken City. If he’s not a ghost or a saint, then who do you think he could be, Tom?”

“Whoever he is,” Tom replied, eyes on his book and his words measured, “I think he is getting too bold.”

Spear winked at her conspiratorially, but Sophia looked down at the board, supposedly to move her rook, really to absorb the shame brought on by the remonstrance she’d heard in her brother’s voice. It was one thing to give in to temper in the sitting room after dinner; it was another thing entirely to disappoint Tom. St. Just whined, stretched his back, and exchanged Sophia’s slippers for René’s buckled shoes. What a little traitor.

“Do you believe that?” René asked. Sophia’s eyes darted up, but he was speaking to Tom. “Do you believe
Le Corbeau Rouge
grows too bold? Do you think he will be caught if he tries his tricks again?”

Tom lowered his book, his brown eyes regarding René with interest. “I’m sure I don’t know. But if Allemande would stop murdering his own people, then I suppose he wouldn’t have to.”

“You are against the revolution, then?” René said, moving a chess piece with barely a glance. “You believe the rich have the right to fund technology and build their own machines?”

Sophia met Spear’s eyes, frowning a little. LeBlanc had asked her something very similar in the lane, whether or not she was a technologist. Tom folded his hands across the book in his lap.

“I’m not against the building of machines, Hasard, if that’s what you’re asking. Spain has broken the Anti-Technology Pact, as has China, and the Finnish Confederate. The loss of trade with those countries is crippling the Commonwealth. But I suppose that whatever your city does about technology is not really any of my business.”

“But you are a student of the Time Before,” René countered. Sophia looked up sharply from her queen. René’s voice had lost just a bit of its Parisian sophistication. “Do you not believe that machines made the people weak, that the Great Death, as you call it, came about because the Ancients were dependent on technology, and did not know how to survive when they lost it? That making heat and light, traveling, fighting, that these things were impossible for them, because of their dependence?”

Tom tilted his chin. “There is some truth in that, though I could argue that the wealthy of both our cultures are becoming weak and idle without any machines at all. But I believe the Great Death was caused by shifts in our planet just as much as technological dependence. Did you know that in the Time Before, north was what we would now call northwest? That has been proven with archaeological finds. At the university in Manchester they teach that when the magnetic poles of the earth shifted, the protective layer around the earth was damaged, allowing the radiation of the sun to destroy the technology that the Ancients depended on. What I think, though, is that this same solar radiation caused the first wave of the Great Death. Sickness killed the people first, technological dependence second, that’s what I believe.

“But that was more than eight hundred years ago, and the Anti-Technology Pact our two countries signed has far outlived its time. I think it more than possible to use machines without making the mistakes of our ancestors. That we could build a clock or a mill or play a piano without losing our ability to survive without them.”

René leaned forward and spoke, still in the lower, less Parisian voice. “And the fact that your Parliament has taken the license for the printing press, does this affect your opinion?”

“The entire South Commonwealth would be better off if the Bellamys still had the license to print. We were putting books in every chapel and school. Instead Parliament reserves that power for themselves, controlling everything we read and driving one more industry to the undermarkets.”

Sophia knew her brother thought Parliament was actually hoarding technology, using a much larger, more complicated printing press than was allowed by law. They were producing too many newspapers, and too quickly.

“But whatever I think,” Tom continued, “I would never say that I don’t obey the laws of my land. Or yours.”

Sophia moved her rook across the chessboard, setting the next prong of her attack. Tom was helping her disobey those laws every day. He just wouldn’t be so stupid as to say so, of course. Their father snored softly from his chair, and René moved a sheriff, his mind obviously elsewhere.

“And what about you, Hasard?” Tom said, turning the tables. “Do you agree with your city’s revolution? Do you think technology will make the poor poorer, and the rich richer? Do you think the people of the Upper City are being executed for funding the return of technology at the expense of the Lower City, or for merely having the money to do so and owning property your government wants? Or is it because of their religious beliefs, because your cousin wants to replace the chapels with a cult? Or are they being put to the Razor because they do not agree with Allemande’s absolute power, and the way he executed your last premier?”

For a few moments it seemed as if René wouldn’t answer, and then he leaned back in his chair and began to laugh loudly, like the man of her Banns ball. “Oh, no,” he said. “You have me, Monsieur! Here I was, hoping to impress my fiancée with lofty questions, when to say the truth, I never think on these things myself. Benoit is always telling me I should.”

Sophia stared doggedly at the game and moved her vicar.

“But one thing I know to be true,” René went on, recovering from his laugh. “No machine could make a better coat than my tailor. Now there is an opinion I can stand behind.”

Really, the man could not have annoyed her more if he sat up at night and planned it.

Tom was still smiling. “But isn’t a loom a machine, Hasard?”

“Or the Razor?” Sophia added.

René thrust his vicar across the board before he threw up his hands. “Please!” he cried in mock distress. “No more! I am defeated! Benoit was right again. As usual.”

Sophia ran a hand through her ringlets, wondering how she could ever survive a lifetime of nights like this. There might have to be sword fighting in the sitting room after all. Spear rustled his newspaper, but she did not look his way. She moved her queen. Two moves and she would win.

“My love,” René said, voice miraculously lowered. “Do you not think we should choose a date for our wedding? I really should write to my
maman
.”

“I’m surprised you ask me, Monsieur,” she replied. “I thought you would have banged out all those details with my father already.”

He jumped his sheriff. “You could call me René.” His voice was softer, but the amusement in it was loud and clear.

“I will call you ‘monsieur’ until you earn something better. And since you bring it up, I’ll also thank you to drop this silly pretense of ‘my love.’ ”