Текст книги "Rook"
Автор книги: Sharon Cameron
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Текущая страница: 17 (всего у книги 27 страниц)
“Will he garrote me in my sleep?”
“Not unless Benoit tells him to. But he is a lip-reader, and if he can see you, he will know everything you are saying. And if he doesn’t stop listening to our conversation now, I will be the one to garrote him in his sleep.”
The level of René’s voice had not changed, but when Sophia looked over at Enzo, he made a quick strangling motion before he winked.
“But I am also noticing we are a smuggler short,” René said. “We seem to be missing Maman.”
And Spear, Sophia thought. They were also missing LeBlanc.
Sophia danced her requisite two with René, who then left to go do his requisite flirting. It had been hard not to look at him this time, rather than the reverse. She received five more token feathers, slipped surreptitiously into her hands as she moved through the dance, all of which went down the front of her dress. Then, finally, through the milling crowd of somber grays and city blues, she spotted LeBlanc coming through the front door of the flat. He was impossible to miss with long billowing robes like a holy man, the white streak in his hair, and a huge pendant with the sign of the Goddess dangling from his neck. And he was positively strutting, confidence surrounding him like a stench as he greeted the proper gentleman, the ally of Allemande from the receiving line. The noise in the flat died down just a little as the crowd noted who had arrived. LeBlanc had a young woman on his arm, a girl much too young for him, curls hanging limp on either side of her face. She appeared to be petrified.
“Hello, Sophia Bellamy,” said a voice near her ear. “Welcome to the family.”
She found herself looking up into a face that was René’s, but not. This face was much more weathered, red hair that was not quite as rich, a pair of keen blue eyes regarding her beneath fine brows. It was René’s face, she thought, but in thirty years’ time. “Uncle Émile,” she said. “Am I right?”
“My nephew has been talking of me?”
Émile was handsome, though not conventionally so. But he was most definitely dangerous, like his nephew. Though perhaps he’d be more likely to nick the mother rather than her daughter. She smiled. “He has talked of you, Monsieur, but only with the greatest respect.”
Émile tsked quietly. “How sad that you should be a liar, and that I should come to know it so quickly. Now if you had said he praised my looks, then …”
He shrugged once and grinned. Actually, Sophia thought suddenly, Uncle Émile might not have any need for stealing any woman’s anything of any sort; he might only have to ask.
“René seems to be besotted with you, Mademoiselle, but it is Benoit who has taken us by surprise. He has defended you to the skies. How did you bring him to your table, may I ask?”
“I did not know I particularly had, Monsieur.” She looked at Émile curiously. Just who was Benoit? The respect he commanded in the Hasard family seemed unlimited. “Though I am glad to hear it. And why, exactly, did I need defending?”
“My sister, René’s mother, she had certain questions.”
Sophia flicked open her fan. “Well, she signed the contract, didn’t she?”
Émile’s mouth quirked. “Only too true. But let me say for all the family how sorry we are for the arrest of your brother. He will die a hero, Mademoiselle. May I kiss your hand?”
Sophia smiled and lifted her hand. Uncle Émile’s mouth remained a trifle too long, but at the same time she felt something slip beneath her fingers and into her palm. Not soft like a feather but hard and metallic. She slid her hand away and switched her fan to it, so she would not be seen clutching what she now realized was a ring.
“What has René told you?” she asked, still smiling as she leaned forward to listen.
“Only that you were in need, and through you, him. But time, Miss Bellamy, will be precious to us.”
“Did you get it off his finger?” she asked, darting a glance at LeBlanc and his wilted companion across the room.
“No. I did not wish to be dead. But it was not on his finger, nor was it in his pockets, which René has now picked twice. Would you have guessed robes have pockets, Mademoiselle?”
“What I don’t wish to guess is how you got it,” she said, looking at him through her lashes.
His mouth quirked again. “My brother Andre says the top left drawer of his desk. It should be returned there as soon as possible. Andre is here, and waiting to do so.”
Sophia gazed at the man beside her. They must think much of their nephew if they took this kind of risk on René’s word alone. “I need to go to my room,” she said.
“You are next to my sister, I assume?”
“Yes.”
“I am sorry for you. I will be there as soon as I can. Hurry, Miss Bellamy.”
He bowed and walked away through the dancers, hailing a friend or some relative as Sophia turned in the opposite direction, clutching her fan and moving as quickly as possible. But progress through a crowd of René’s business associates of collectors and criminals, all of whom wished to speak to her, was an impossible task, and time was slipping before she was able to plead the loo and escape into the corridor.
When the door was shut she ran the curving hall, grabbed a candle from the wall on her way—startling a young woman carrying a tray of cheese—found the back stairs, and then she was shutting the door of her room behind her and turning the lock. She slid a chair in front of the connecting door to Madame Hasard’s, tossed an unlit taper from its holder, and put in her lit candle instead. Then she went to her suitcase, tripped a switch, and pulled out the false lining of the top.
Crammed against the interior of the suitcase were official documents, what Spear had brought back from the forger. She rummaged among them, finding the stack of gate passes and the stick of black wax she had brought for such an occasion. She spread out the documents, carefully melting wax onto the bottom corner of the paper without dripping the tallow of the candle. As soon as she had a tar-like blob she rolled LeBlanc’s signet ring across the soft surface, impressing his seal.
She did it again, and again, and eight more times before there was a soft knock at her door. “Coming!” she said, hoping her voice would carry through the door and no further than Émile. The knocking came again. She rolled the signet ring on the last pass, wondering briefly what the Parisian gossips would think if Uncle Émile were seen sneaking in or out of her bedroom. She suspected he had a reputation that would do hers no good. She flung open the door.
“Spear!” she said, surprised and a bit relieved. “Good, you’ll save me a trip and I’m in a hurry.” She pulled him into the room, shut the door, and locked it again, running to gather up the papers that now bore LeBlanc’s seal. “They got LeBlanc’s ring, the scoundrels. This is for you.” She thrust a gate pass at him, the signet ring on her forefinger, and began to hastily replace the false top in her suitcase.
“I need to talk to you, Sophie.”
“So talk,” she commanded. She was cleaning away any remnants of black wax now, trying to find a place to stash the telltale bits. “And where have you been all nethersun? We didn’t do our last go-over. I know we’ve already done it a thousand times, but …”
“Sophia Bellamy.” He grabbed her arm. “Stop and listen to me!”
She stopped and narrowed her eyes. Spear had yanked her arm, actually yanked it, and the bits of wax were now all over the carpet. She straightened. His perfectly chiseled face was drawn in, as if there were a string pulling too tight from the inside.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“You think you love him.”
Her stomach wrenched once. “Spear, this is not the time to …”
“Answer me. You’re going to marry him anyway, aren’t you? Without the fee.”
She looked up at Spear’s taut face, at the broad shoulders heaving as if he’d sprinted to her door. She owed him honesty at least. “Yes. If he will have me.”
Spear just stared at her, hands in pockets. Then he said, “Sophie, you’re being played.”
She blinked at him, uncomprehending.
“By the Hasards. All of them. You’re being played.”
“Oh, Spear. Listen …”
“No. You are going to listen. For once in your life you’re going to close your mouth and you will listen to what I have to say. Do you really think that Hasard was just pretending to work with LeBlanc, that he had his own interests, and that they just so happened to coincide with coming to Bellamy House to marry you? That Madame just happened to arrange some fool marriage that would bankrupt her family? There is no marriage fee, Sophia.”
“Spear, we both know that. He told me himself …”
“Of course he did. But I mean there never was one. Ever. The Hasard fortune has been dwindling for a long time. Madame arranged a marriage to you for no other reason than to get her son and LeBlanc into Bellamy House. Somebody’s been talking, Sophie. LeBlanc already knew where we’d been landing.”
Sophia was shaking her head. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“How do you think they’re planning on building their fortune back? How have they kept their business through the revolution? Do you really believe they just stole that ring you’re wearing? Or did LeBlanc walk in here tonight and hand it to them? You’re being played. You …”
“Just stop. Stop it!” she yelled. “You’re jealous, Spear, and I’m sorry for it. But I don’t have time for this and I don’t believe a word you’re saying.”
The drawn look on Spear’s face tightened. “I know you don’t believe me,” he said. “I knew you wouldn’t. Because you want to believe what he tells you. You want to believe in him; you have almost from the beginning. I’m no match for his lies, Sophie. It’s taken me time to realize it. I thought you’d come to your senses, but I know I’m no match for him. I’ve had to wait for proof, and now I have it.”
He reached beneath his black jacket and pulled out a crisp piece of paper with the seal of the Sunken City showing through. He offered it to her, and Sophia came and took the paper reluctantly, reading the first few lines before she looked up again, confused.
“The denouncement of Ministre Bonnard?” she asked.
“Yes. Signed by a citizen of the Sunken City, swearing the Bonnards committed treason against Allemande. The reason the entire family was arrested and nearly executed, right down to their toddling children.”
She read, her eyes glossing over the words until they reached the signature at the bottom. And when they did Sophia stepped back, and then back again until she bumped into the gold-papered wall. She stared at the ink, a hand reaching up to cover her mouth. The name on the bottom was René Hasard, the same looping signature she’d seen on one hundred and thirty-eight engagement-party invitations.
“I was surprised to see your name on my invitation, René. Surprised and pleased, of course. But where is your charming fiancée?” LeBlanc’s grin was a long, thin gash in his face as he tightened his grip on the limp girl beside him; she made the slightest motion of leaning away. “I was so looking forward to seeing her before I go.”
René drained a glass of wine. “But surely you will not go before the entertainment, Monsieur? We have made such special plans, and with you in mind.” LeBlanc glanced toward the windows and their spectacular nighttime views of the Sunken City, where a full, rising moon hung low on the horizon between buildings.
“Yes,” he said, smile becoming contemplative. “Fate has destined a very entertaining night for us.” The girl at his side squeaked slightly as her arm was squeezed. “And the new Festival of Fate is also cause for celebration. Though those who set themselves against the Goddess may not find it so. Do you not agree, René?”
“Oh, yes. When the gates open, that will be very amusing. I noticed the armed men at the street door. You are careful with our assets, Cousin, that they do not receive too much celebration.”
“We worship Fate, René, but we do not tempt her. Your little fiancée should take those words to heart.”
“I am certain she will.”
Sophia slid down the wall, crouching on the floor, staring at the handwriting on the parchment until her eyes watered, aching to blink. The name on the page pierced straight through her chest. She could have countered Spear’s arguments, every single one of them, disputed his interpretation of events. Except for the document in her hand. How could this be? And why? Someone knocked at the door, but she ignored it. She looked up at Spear, questioning.
“They’re smugglers,” he said simply, “and Bonnard was Ministre of Trade. He was going to shut them down.”
The knocking came again. “Mademoiselle?” It was Émile.
Spear whispered quickly, “Tom was looking into Hasard’s background before he ever got to Bellamy House. He made me swear to look out for you, to find the proof, and I promised him I would. But Hasard has been reeling you in like a fish on a hook ever since. He wants the Red Rook, Sophie, and he and LeBlanc, they know it’s not Tom. They’ve known for a while now. They want you, and they want you in the Sunken City, with your hands dirty with prison filth. It’s a … it’s like a religious thing with LeBlanc, but the Hasards just want their fortune. Hasard convinced you to wait until La Toussaint because LeBlanc wants to make a ritual out of you. LeBlanc took Madame to the Tombs for insurance, and the price for getting her out was to bring you to the city. And little by little, Hasard convinced you to tell him everything …”
Some part of her mind registered that Émile was still knocking. “Mademoiselle? Are you there?”
She sat all the way down on the thick carpet, staring at the huge, looping R. She was stunned, blindsided, hit so hard she couldn’t think. No matter what Spear said, no matter how she untangled truth from lies, the reality was that the man she knew as René Hasard and the man who had signed the paper in her hand could not coexist. He wasn’t real. Nothing was real. This moment was unreal. And she’d known he was good at the game, known she was an easy target. She’d seen the danger and even guarded herself against it. And what had she done in the end? Chased him down. Offered herself up. He wasn’t just good, he was a master. She’d known deep down that it didn’t make sense. She had been incredibly stupid. Because she’d wanted to be. She’d wanted to believe. Because she’d wanted him.
“Did you send the hotelier?” she whispered.
Spear didn’t answer. The room sat quiet, the knocking on the door long stopped. She discovered Spear’s hand near her head.
“Here, Sophie. Come up here.”
She took his hand and he pulled her to her feet, put his arm around her, guided her to the edge of the bed, where they sat, her face against his chest. He held her, his other hand stroking her back, up and down. Spear was so big you could drown in him. She wished she could drown.
“Here’s what I think we should do, Sophie,” he said quietly. She could feel the words in the chest beneath her ear. “LeBlanc will know exactly what you mean to do. He’ll be expecting you to leave the party and come back, like you planned with Hasard. So let’s go now, as soon as we can. We’ll do what we’ve done before with the coffins, before anyone is the wiser. Did you ever mention the coffins to any of them?”
She wasn’t sure. She didn’t think so.
“LeBlanc knows you’re coming, but he thinks it’s from one direction and not the other. We’ll take the tunnels out, and if something goes wrong, there’s always plan B and the forged passes and the tickets to Spain. We’ll get to the coast, just like we’ve done before.”
No, Sophia was thinking. You don’t understand. You don’t know what I was really going to do at the prison. What I thought René was going to help me do at the prison. Plans are in motion that cannot be undone.
Or were they? If they involved René, then perhaps those plans were never going to happen in the first place. Spear had a finger on her cheek now, sliding it down to beneath her chin.
“We’ll get Orla and Bellamy, take Jennifer to her parents, and then you and me and Tom, we’ll all go away together, maybe up west, or to one of the islands, somewhere they won’t bother to look for us.”
She closed her eyes. She could save Tom and Jennifer, but what about the rest of them? How would skulking off to the coast save two out of every three prisoners? Running wouldn’t break the pattern, and it wouldn’t take down LeBlanc.
“Don’t you think we could do that, Sophie?”
She was a burning thing, streaking fire and making thunder across the sky. The finger beneath her chin pushed upward, and Spear leaned down, touching his mouth to hers.
And she woke up. Sophia leapt away like a startled deer, the paper with René’s signature landing softly on the floor. “What are you doing?”
“Sophia. Sophie …” Spear reached for her hand, but she moved it away. He was being incredibly gentle, as if she were a wounded animal. Maybe she was. “This … thing with Hasard. It’s over now. It never was in the first place. You’re free of it.”
A bolt of white-hot pain shot through her middle, making her flinch. She had never wanted to be free of it. She wrapped her arms around her waist.
“And now that you’re free, we can …” He hesitated, and her eyes snapped wide.
“We can what, Spear?”
“We can … be together.”
Sophia felt her mouth open slightly. “Do you really think …” She breathed, searching for her words. “Do you really think that because I have been betrayed, been a fool, been the biggest arse the Bellamy family has ever seen, that because of all that I’m going to suddenly fall into your arms?”
Spear leaned forward from where he sat on the edge of the bed, fists clenched.
“Spear, I don’t love you.”
It was silent in the bedroom, and then all at once Spear exploded, jumping to his feet and kicking the table where she had been forging the passes to the floor. Sophia shrank back.
“Why?” he yelled. “Why the bloody not?”
Sophia watched him, hand hovering near the sword she had strapped to her leg. She’d beaten Tom in a fight, but she had never beaten Spear. She didn’t want to try now. But when he just stood there, waiting, hands hanging loose at his sides, she went to him and put a hand on his heaving chest.
“What I said just then wasn’t true. I do love you. I’ve loved you ever since I can remember. It’s always been Tom, and Father, and Orla, and you. No one else mattered. Just my family. And that is how I love you, Spear. Like my family. I don’t know why it’s different for you than for me. But you need to understand that it’s not going to change.”
She could feel the tension inside him, though whether fury or pain was dominant she could not say. Everything she felt was firmly under lock and key. She was like the firelighter now, moving toward the inevitable explosion, but until then, ticking on and on automatically.
“You’re going to have to let this go, Spear. And if I don’t do what is needed right now, Tom and Jennifer are walking to the scaffold at dawn. You know I’m right.”
Spear nodded slowly, his cool blue eyes staring at the floor.
“Then what I need is for you to get those passes to the gates. You know what to do after that, and what to do if we don’t come.”
He nodded again. Sophia left the passes on the bed, picked up the paper with René’s signature from the floor, and left Spear standing by the overturned table, shutting the bedroom door quietly behind her.
The corridor was a tunnel of dim, flickering shadows, only a few sconces lit. She stood still and dry-eyed, watching the light quiver. She hurt. In her chest, in her fingers, the backs of her legs, and behind her eyes. Every inch of her insides bruising and sore. But she knew this was nothing, nothing at all, compared to the pain and humiliation that awaited her when the ticking inside her reached its appointed time.
She took a step toward the water room, toward Jennifer and Tom, and then she paused, wavering like the candlelight. She was thinking of horrid masks and pale eyes and cemeteries full of the dead. Of the red-tipped feathers she had slipped into her bodice, and fighting in the streets, and the Razor, and LeBlanc’s hands. His bloody, bloody hands. Fire replaced her pain. The blessed heat of rage. She was still going to break him. Without René. Or Spear. But there was something to be done before she left.
She folded the paper that had changed everything, shoving it far down into her dress with the feathers, adjusted the dark hair on her head, and slapped her cheeks, once each in case they were drained of color. Then she turned and walked fast down the hall, opening the door onto the gallery and her engagement party, a reckless smile on her face. She needed to see LeBlanc.
And as she was entering the gallery, Benoit slipped out of Madame Hasard’s door. He went fast down the hall, away from the gallery, a crease in his forehead. He needed to find René.
Sophia came down the stairs, blinking in the dazzle after the dim. René’s criminal friends were very cordial, and she smiled back at them, as if she were happy and brilliant and not a walking firestorm. She spotted her quarry—a black-as-death billowing robe and a streak of white hair—held up her skirts, and made her way through the crowd; she’d forgotten her fan somewhere.
“Monsieur LeBlanc,” she said.
His eyes were nearly slits when they turned to her. “Mademoiselle Bellamy,” he said softly. He reached for her hand, and she immediately offered him the other one. She’d forgotten she was wearing his signet ring, now hidden in the clutched fabric of her silver-gray skirt. Some part of her realized she was out of control, and that Tom and Jennifer were depending on her not being so. But she also didn’t seem to be able to help it. LeBlanc’s lips were cold evil on her free hand. “Allow me to introduce Amber,” he said, “my … friend for the night.”
Amber curtsied awkwardly, not looking up from beneath the hanging front curls. She was even younger than she had looked from across the room. Sophia saw Émile over to her left, inching just a little closer. Too bad, Émile, she thought. The ring is on my finger, and this dress does not have a pocket.
“What a pleasure it is to finally have you in the City of Light, Mademoiselle,” LeBlanc was saying. “Now that you are here, I think that you will never leave it.”
Sophia kept her face pleasant.
“It must be agreeable to your brother,” he added, “to finally take credit for all his deeds. Do you not think that it must be very relieving, to give credit where credit is due?”
Amber raised her head a bit at this, but Sophia just stared back into LeBlanc’s pale eyes. It was true, then. He did know she was the Red Rook. Of course he did. How could he not? She could hear René’s laugh somewhere near. She smiled.
“What a strange thought, Monsieur. But I can honestly say that as long as the goal is met, I do not mind in the slightest if no one knows what I am up to. Or if they do.”
LeBlanc’s slow smile curled, and she matched it. He would be in a million tiny slivers by the dawn, and so would his prison. She glanced past his shoulder and saw René, his arm around a rather lovely young woman in a blond wig. Lies, lies, and lies, served up with more lies. Promises whispered in her ear, arms around her on the roof and just that middlesun, in this very room. I had thought of you living here someday. With me.
René was swaying on his feet a bit now, as if he were drunk. Just as they’d planned. It was almost time to slap him. Just as they’d planned.
“… might injure your health, Mademoiselle?”
She jerked her eyes back to Amber and LeBlanc, who were both watching her curiously. She hadn’t been listening. Émile inched closer on her left.
“I …” And then she gasped. A strong burst of laughter from the group around René made several heads around the room turn. René was leaning down to the young blond now, whispering something in her ear while she giggled. “Did you see that, Amber?” Sophia said loudly. “Did you see him?”
Émile went still, and both Amber and LeBlanc craned their necks to look behind them. As soon as they had both turned back to her Sophia yelled, “Oh, there! He did it again! Come with me.”
She snatched Amber’s arm with her left hand and marched past, wrenching the girl from LeBlanc’s grip, pulling her at a trot toward René. René saw her coming and got ready.
“My love!” he called, much too loud for politeness, especially with his arm around another woman. Émile was sidling along, still on their left, Benoit now with him and speaking into his ear.
“Friends!” René slurred. “This is my fi … my wife … my fiancée! Sophie, my love, have you met …”
“How could you?” she said. “How?”
It was what they’d planned for her to say. Ask him “how could you,” step one, two, three, and slap. But now she meant it. The talk around them fell away, a rippling tide of silent air. She paused, still clutching Amber, then came forward one, two … and slapped René’s face with everything she had. She caught him full force, LeBlanc’s ring still on her finger, the sound of her palm on his cheek reverberating, snapping his head around, making the signed paper with his signature rustle against her chest.
He turned his head slowly back, hand to his cheek. She met his eyes, such a hot fire-blue against the white hair, and for one brief moment was confused by the confusion she could see inside them. His lip was bleeding.
Amber made a feeble attempt to move away, but Sophia didn’t allow it. She was supposed to berate René now, to complete the scene they had created, but she couldn’t. She couldn’t do anything. Everything that had been making her tick was stuttering, all her inner workings grinding to a halt. And when they did, she would detonate. She walked away, forcing Amber along beside her, her high heels clacking on the polished floor.
“Comfort me,” she ordered Amber, in barely a whisper. “Don’t make me drag you. Do it. Now.”
Amber whimpered, but she put an arm around Sophia’s shoulders, walking her to the corridor door, the crowd parting for them like wheat in the wind. Sophia opened the door, shut it behind them, and then grabbed Amber’s hand.
“Run,” she commanded.
They ran around the curving hall, past the noisy kitchen full of people Sophia had never seen, and to the door at the very end. Sophia pushed up the drop bar, opened the door, and shoved Amber through it.
“These are the stairs to the ground. You can go all the way down to the street, or take the air bridge on the eighth floor.” Amber stared at her, goggle-eyed. “Unless you want to stay here with LeBlanc?”
The girl shook her limp curls. Then she shook them harder.
“Do you have somewhere you can go? Can you hide, or get out of the city?”
“Yes, Mademoiselle, I …”
“Then go. And here.” Sophia reached between the edge of her bodice and the top of her skirt and drew out one of her sheathed knives, shoving it into the girl’s hands.
“Thank you,” Amber whispered.
“Go!”
When Amber started moving, Sophia shut the door, dropped the bar back into place, and ran again, down the hall and up the back stairs, pausing before the corridor that led to her room. She darted her head around the corner. What she could see of the hall was empty, so she flitted quickly through the shadows, drew out the knife strapped around her ankle, put an ear to the door of her room, and then opened it cautiously. Except for the table on its side, the room sat ordinary and deserted, as if it hadn’t just experienced the catastrophic collapse of her entire life. Spear and the forged gate passes were gone.
She jerked open the cupboard, found her fluffy underskirt hung among the other dresses, and drove her knife into the white cloth with a ripping tear. The firelighter was in a sack of burlap that was now in her hand, and there were men’s voices coming to her door. Benoit, she thought, and probably Émile. She darted silently to Madame Hasard’s connecting door and slipped through it just as hers was opening. When both men were in her room, she dashed out of Madame Hasard’s and down the stairs, around the curve and to the linen closet, where she’d left a covered lamp burning. She shut the door behind her.
Sophia paused. It was excruciating being in this room; it nearly stopped her ticking altogether. She thought of Tom, and Jennifer, and pretended to be somewhere else. Pretended to be someone else. The wig came off and so did the dress, hidden quickly behind the hanging tablecloths, her black breeches and black shirt already underneath, cut low so as not to show beneath the lace of her former neckline. Her vest she fished out from the ironing pile, supplies already sewn in, the feathers from the party going into the bag with the others. The denouncement of the Bonnards she left in her shirt. Then she took her second knife and pushed the tip twice through the burlap that held the firelighter, making two holes, cut a cord from the washed curtains and strung the whole thing sideways across her chest. Her sword went from her leg to her back, for climbing; a soft black cap was pulled over her pinned hair; dark leather gloves onto her hands. And when the door of the linen closet opened again, the Rook peered out into the empty hall. She flitted across to the water room, shut herself inside, and opened the sliding panel to the lift.
She leapt up onto the ledge and looked down. The bucket was dangling one level below on the nearest rope. Hoping that meant the other bucket was near the bottom and full, she reached out, and that was when the door to the water room opened. Madame Hasard stood looking in at her, vivid hair piled high for the party, one red eyebrow raised.
Sophia met her gaze, grabbed the rope with both hands, and jumped. The rope swung out as she got a foot wrapped around, she bounced once off the bricks, and then she was gone, dropping down the shaft, water splashing somewhere below, leaving her stomach where she’d started. She passed the closed lift door for the flat below, and the next open one, showing a man’s turned back, and glanced up. The top of the shaft was still lit and growing smaller, but no one was trying to cut her rope. Surely Madame Hasard carried a knife? But Madame wasn’t going to have time to cut anything.
