Текст книги "Rook"
Автор книги: Sharon Cameron
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Текущая страница: 18 (всего у книги 27 страниц)
Air whistled around Sophia’s ears. She wondered if she would be able to keep her grip when the rope came to a stop, or if she was about to take a cold, wet bath in a cistern. She hung on, saw the bottom coming, got her knees bent, and the rope stopped with a jerk that nearly wrenched her arms from their sockets. But she was able to swing her feet to the edge of a cistern and hop down, and as René had said, landing her boots on the stone floor of the building’s cellar.
She looked around, wary, ready to reach for her sword, but no one was there. She took a moment to lean against the wall, the great turnstile of the four-man lift creaking somewhere behind it, probably taking people up to her engagement party. She had to think.
René knew her plans, and now through his mother, he would know she was gone. And yet the rope had not been cut, and there were no gendarmes waiting for her now. Which only confirmed what Spear had said, that they needed to catch her in the act, probably to satisfy Allemande’s twisted sense of justice. She remembered the look on René’s face just that middlesun, when he’d talked about losing the flat. What would she have done, what had she planned on doing, to preserve her family and home? Was it any different? Oh yes, she thought. What he had done was very different.
She walked quickly across the cellar and found the grate in the floor, just as he’d described, lifting it away to show a circular drain. The hole bore straight down into the ground, rungs of metal making a ladder down into a dark that was blacker than where she stood. One touch without her glove and she knew the surface was concrete, like some of the laddered tunnels in Bellamy House. Cool air wafted upward, smelling of earth.
She descended two rungs, dragging the grate back over the opening, and started her way down, thinking. The farther she went, the faster she went, rung after rung, quicker and quicker, despite the fact that it made no difference whether her eyes were opened or closed, or that she was in a deep hole that she couldn’t see the bottom of. She was smiling again, the reckless sort. Because she had just changed the plan.
René picked up speed down the hallway, holding a cold wet cloth to his bleeding lip, his face like bleached stone. Benoit followed after him.
“Is Uncle Émile watching LeBlanc?”
“Yes,” said Benoit. “He has told him that his lady friend is attending Mademoiselle Bellamy with a womanly complaint.”
“Does Uncle Émile think he’s telling LeBlanc lies or the truth?”
“Possibly the truth.”
“And she’s away down the shaft?”
“Madame says so.”
“And she still has the ring?”
“The one she has just hit you with? I would guess so. I only know that Hammond has spoken with her, and there is broken furniture as a result. I arrived in time to hear that he wished her to make a new plan, and she would not. She was not herself when she left.”
René let out a string of curses that would have made Uncle Émile blush. “Where is Hammond?”
“I have had Andre and Peter detain him. They have him in her room.”
René opened the last door in the corridor. He walked past Uncle Peter, who had a split on his cheek that was going to bruise, and Uncle Andre, who was gingerly pushing upward on a loose tooth, going straight to Spear. Spear had his hands behind his back, arms and legs tied to a chair. Benoit shut the door and turned the lock while René leaned down over the big man’s face.
“Tell me what you have done, you great, lumbering bag of filth, or I will cut off your ears.”
Spear looked up, and then he smiled.
It was a long time before Sophia found the bottom of the laddered hole, the ground coming as a surprise beneath her boot. She looked up into the darkness and smiled. Too bold. That’s what Tom would have said. She didn’t care. She had to feel with her hands until she found the next tunnel. The opening was small, not a real opening at all, probably an erosion of concrete. She wiggled until she was through, careful with her sword and the firelighter, and then moved quickly, first stooping, and then crawling in complete blackness, until she came to a paler shade of night from a drain above her.
She counted three more of these, and on the fourth, instead of following the tunnel as they’d planned, she carefully pushed up the grate of the drain, panting from her efforts. She saw a back alley behind a squalid structure of ill-formed bricks, one of the buildings that formed the loose open square of the prison yard. It was also the building that squatted over the entrance to the Tombs.
She pulled herself up to the surface, hugging the dark, replacing the grate with the soft scrape of iron on stone. Then she slipped around the corner and crouched down, where the shade of the scaffold hid her from the rising moonlight and the gendarmes patrolling the yard. The scaffold had been decorated, she saw; there were shadows hanging from it, twisting around the timbers and fluttering in the breezes like tattered souls. She wondered if those decorations were for her. She waited for the guards to pass, then circled the building, slowly lifting her head to peek through a lit window.
A stout man sat with his back to her before a rickety desk, the fire low and smoldering in the hearth, his head tipped forward and still. Either sleeping or dead, Sophia thought. Silently she pushed open the window—why did no one ever think of the windows?—grateful that the holy man had had the foresight to grease it before rescuing the Bonnards. She dropped to the floor without noise, shut the window again, drew the curtain and her sword, and moved toward the man’s back. He woke with a start, a red-tipped feather before his eyes and a blade at his throat.
“Hello, Gerard,” she said, low in his ear.
Renaud slid to the rear of the crowd, where LeBlanc was standing, and whispered in his ear. A dark-skinned woman in a simple high-waisted gown was providing the singing entertainment for the Hasard engagement party, the cityscape twinkling behind her. LeBlanc did not like the woman; she was blocking his view of the moon. He straightened as Renaud finished his whispering.
“Then we can assume the Red Rook has flown, Renaud, and that she has taken my little bird with her.” He laughed softly, though loud enough that a few heads turned, frowning at the interruption. LeBlanc glanced about him once, flipped open the top of his pendant, then shut it after a quick glance. More than halfway to middlemoon.
“It is earlier than I thought. I think I will spend a little more time in my flat, Renaud, at least until the execution bells. I am curiously happy. That slap was very convincing, wasn’t it? And it is Sophia Bellamy’s last night to fly. I will listen to the performance, and enjoy the thought of the Red Rook’s struggles as she tries to find her brother.” He sighed with satisfaction. “All is as Fate has ordained. There is no hurry.”
Enzo sat on the other side of the room, not listening to the singer perform, instead watching the one-sided conversation between LeBlanc and his secretary. He frowned, leaning forward just a little, waiting for an opportunity to leave his chair. He had the sudden feeling that he might be in a hurry.
Gerard could not move from his chair.
“I have no time for negotiations, Gerard. Do we have a deal?”
He couldn’t nod. The sword at his throat did not allow it. “How do I know I can trust you?” he whispered.
Sophia was using the gruff voice of the holy man. “Should you trust the one who puts the people in the prison, Gerard, or the one who breaks them out? I will cut your throat, but LeBlanc will cut you up, piece by tiny piece. How is your finger healing?”
Gerard glanced down at the bandage on his hand. “I will lose my job!”
“You will lose your head. And, frankly, you’re due a career change, Gerard.” The Red Rook waited, and when Gerard didn’t respond she gave him a tiny prick with the sword edge.
“Yes, yes! I will do it!”
She eased the sword away from Gerard’s throat. “Your wife will thank you. Now remember the rules. Clear the prison of gendarmes but for the two I have named, and then you are to unlock the doors. Understood?”
He waited in his chair, shoulders shaking as he breathed, the sword in her hand tickling the place between his shoulder blades. “Are you a man,” he whispered, “or a spirit?”
The Red Rook smiled. “I am neither, Gerard.”
“He knows you are coming.”
She gripped the sword hilt harder, feeling a last tiny something shrivel up inside her. Where had that treacherous little bit of hope been hiding, and why had it existed? LeBlanc would have known she was coming for quite some time now. “I know he does, Gerard. But I am going to outsmart him, and you and your wife will have a new life in Spain. Now stand up. And leave your sword on the desk. Do it!”
He did.
“Call your man and give the orders. Stay behind the desk, keep him in front. Your man will not see me. Do you understand?”
“Claude? Claude!”
A jingling noise indicated a guard coming toward LeBlanc’s door. The gendarme who had cut off Gerard’s fingertip strode into the room, stroking his tiny mustache.
“We have new orders,” Gerard said. “Bring the tunnel leaders to me. One at a time, if you please.”
Sophia glanced out the window from where she was crouched behind Gerard’s desk, the sword tip now at the back of his knee. A round, rising middlemoon was just cresting the edge of the cliffs.
Light that was almost to middlemoon poured through Sophia’s bedroom window before Spear stopped talking. René stood still, inhaling five full breaths before he turned and went to the clothes cupboard, yanking open the doors and ransacking Sophia’s dresses until he found the white underskirt.
Andre frowned, still worrying his tooth. “What is this man talking about, René? What is happening? And if you put that on, I’m telling Émile.”
René didn’t answer. He rifled through the cloth, going still when his fingers slipped through the fresh white rent made by Sophia’s knife, where the firelighter had been.
Benoit opened the door to a soft knock and Enzo slid inside, taking in the scene with a swift glance before he crossed the room to his nephew. “René,” he whispered, “why does LeBlanc think your fiancée is the Red Rook? I thought it was her brother.”
René clutched the cloth in his hand. “He has said so?”
“Yes, to that little viper of a secretary.”
René looked down at the golden carpet, his hand through the cut in the white cloth. Then he turned his face to Spear. Spear was still tied to the chair, defiant, ears intact but with blood flowing from the corner of his mouth.
“You understand that you have killed her,” René said.
No one spoke. Andre and Peter shifted their feet, curious and impatient, while Benoit, who had been inexplicably searching Sophia’s suitcase, suddenly held up a ring with a single pale stone. René threw down the white cloth, walked across the room, and kicked the legs out from under Spear’s chair.
“Oh, really, René,” said Madame Hasard from the doorway. She shut the bedroom door behind her. “Stop being so dramatic. Pick that man up again and we will discuss what is to be done.”
“Yes,” René replied, glaring down at Spear lying sideways on the floor, jaw clenched so tight he could hardly speak. “Yes, pick him up, Uncle Andre. And someone hand him a sword.”
“René! I …”
“Shut up, Maman!” He threw off his jacket while Spear was cut loose from the chair, yanking off his cravat and tossing it to the floor.
“Great Death, René,” said Peter at the sight of his neck. “Who tried to strangle you?”
“That,” René said, eyes on Spear, “would be his fault, I think.”
Spear just smiled as he got to his feet, wiping the blood from his mouth onto his sleeve, swinging some feeling back into his hands. “Not me.” He took the sword Andre handed him, sizing it up. “But I wish it had been.”
“Men,” muttered Madame Hasard, though none of the men present paid any attention to her. “You cannot have a proper duel in a bedchamber. It is ridiculous.”
“I will be happy,” Spear continued, “to slice you to pieces, Hasard. But I want you to know I won’t wait. I’m in a bit of a hurry.”
René’s grin lurked as he lifted his sword. “I also have an appointment, Monsieur.”
“But it is certainly worth a few moments of my time,” Spear continued, “to carve up any man who lifts a hand against Sophia Bellamy.”
“How much we have in common.”
Spear brought up his blade and they watched each other, blue gaze on blue gaze, one of ice and one that was fire. René struck first and Spear blocked with a clang of metal.
Gerard walked the subterranean passage, keys clinking, the heavy locks clanging as they were turned. Light from the ever-rising moon poured down the drains from a prison yard that was empty of everyone, even his guards. He was not whistling this time, or searching for the right door. He was unlocking them all. Silence spread from hole to hole as the people inside tried to understand what was happening. There would never be a promotion, Gerard thought, but it certainly was a fine night for an execution. His.
One brave prisoner finally pushed open her door.
Sophia found the door to prison hole number 522 deep within the Tombs and thrust it open, scattering the rats inside, panting from her run and from the stench. The prison was a maze, the numbers nonsensical, and it always took some time to stop smelling the tunnels; she’d never yet been able to stop smelling a cell.
But there were no prisoners in here. This hole was being used as a storage room, for distributing the little food that LeBlanc chose to dole out. Sacks of potatoes, a few evidently rotting, sat beside the door, a water cask and buckets in the corner, and an unusual number of barrels of the hard, almost bread-like pain plat. Most of them, Sophia knew, did not contain pain plat. They were full of her father’s Bellamy fire.
She set the lantern far away from the barrels and drew the cord with the hanging firelighter over her neck. She was surprised to find the casks still here, but since René was the one who was supposed to set the firelighter—the task he had so carefully made sure was his—she supposed LeBlanc thought there was no danger. Or maybe he wanted to study the powder’s uses for Allemande. Another very good reason for blowing it all up.
The noise of prisoners being released was coming to her ears, and the cries of those who did not yet know if they would join them. Time to go. She scanned the dim, dank room. Would René find the firelighter gone, and try to come in time to turn it off? She was certain he would. And she had no intention of making it easy for him to find.
Sophia turned the pointing finger to middlemoon, or just a little before, the time she hoped it was now. She’d told René to set it for dawn, so she turned the wheel to the full, silver circle of highmoon. They should be away by then, the prison yard still empty before the execution that was not going to happen, and that would give René the least amount of time to find the firelighter and turn it off again.
She pulled out the knob. When the moon reached its height, the Tombs would explode into chunks of rock and wicked dust, and LeBlanc would be explaining the loss of a prison to Allemande.
Or maybe it would be just a little before.
The entertainment was over, the low hum of conversation resuming. LeBlanc settled down on the settee, Renaud standing, as ever, just a few paces behind. LeBlanc leaned back, taking in the view of his city outside the curving windows. Almost middlemoon. The gates would be opening soon for the Festival of Fate, a few carefully chosen leaders of the mob given the addresses of those that still required removal from the Upper City. Quick work, and for what would have otherwise taken him weeks of paperwork for Allemande. He smiled, studying the windows, mentally measuring them for new hangings.
The guests were also watching the moon. They seemed reluctant to go, even if the couple they had come for had just publicly fought and now disappeared, perfectly content to drink and listen to music while the gendarmes guarded the street entrances downstairs. But there was a bubble of isolation around the settee, an aura of something unsavory that kept even Allemande’s allies at a distance. Except for Émile. Émile made himself at home in the chair opposite, handing LeBlanc a glass of wine that had just been delivered by Benoit.
“Do you play games, Albert?” Émile asked.
LeBlanc’s pale eyes flattened just a bit as he accepted the glass. “I believe that would depend on the game, Émile. What sort do you have in mind?”
“Games of strategy. Chance. You are a student of luck, are you not?”
“Luck is the handmaiden of Fate, Émile. There is no ‘chance.’ ”
“So you do not play games?”
“Strategy is for implementing the will of the Goddess, not discovering it.”
“Tell me,” said Émile, “how do you determine the will of Fate? How does she make her wishes known to you?”
“Why, one only has to ask,” said LeBlanc, as if he were sniffing out a convert. “Just this middlesun, I was uneasy in my mind. A decision weighed on me. And so I did the proper honorifics, asked my question of Fate, cast the die, and received my answer.”
“And what was your answer?” Émile asked, sipping his own wine.
“That my timing was imperfect. That highmoon was the proper time for certain festivities. Isn’t it fascinating, Émile? Fate reached out her finger and tipped the world into its proper position.” LeBlanc’s smile was smug as he drank. He sat back, the pendant dangling against his chest from its silken cord.
“Fascinating,” Émile agreed, glancing at how much LeBlanc had swallowed. His eyes roved through the mass of people that were milling about the flat, unwilling to leave. He could not see Enzo.
The tunnel was in confusion, people everywhere, propping each other up, some carrying one another, all unsure of the way, all wanting out. Sophia pushed her way through the melee, her shouts ineffectual. Then there was a clang of metal up ahead, someone hitting two swords together rhythmically, calling the prisoners to the upper tunnel and the exit. The throng surrounding Sophia turned as one to the sound and gradually began a steady pace, the stronger moving ahead of the weak, an avalanche of humanity sliding sideways and up through the muck and dark of the rough tunnel.
If the gendarmes came back, if even one of them saw something they shouldn’t, these people would have nothing but their numbers to defend themselves. But surely, Sophia thought, nothing could have been worse than what they were facing the moon before. She held up her lantern, steadying the arm of a woman stumbling next to her. The woman looked up once, glassy-eyed, but any curiosity Sophia saw there was quickly eaten by the panic to get out.
A gendarme stood at the highest bend of the tunnel, where there was a crossroads of sorts, and this caused a palpitation of fear through the prisoners. But when it was obvious that this gendarme was also holding a light, waving them on and up, calling that there were landovers arriving to take them out of the Sunken City, they moved on again. He must be one of her twins, Sophia thought; an ally she’d never even seen before tonight. The clanging was still going on somewhere beyond him.
She broke away from the stumbling herd into a side-branching tunnel before the gendarme spotted her. This passage went down again, ending in a locked metal door. Sophia brought out the key Gerard had given her, turned the lock, and started down a long, winding set of stone stairs. LeBlanc’s special cells, for special prisoners. That’s what the twins had written.
Cartier would be out there somewhere, helping the twins direct the prisoners to the temporary safety of the warehouse across the prison yard. The Lower City was emptying for La Toussaint. With no executions soon, he should be able to get the prisoners safely loaded into the landovers Allemande was so thoughtfully providing for their trip to the Upper City and out the gates. As long as Spear got out of the Hasard flat quick enough, delivered the forged passes to the gates, as long as she could get everyone out before René or LeBlanc realized the Tombs were completely empty of gendarmes …
She stopped on the stairs, stomach twisting as she looked at LeBlanc’s signet ring, now filthy but still on her index finger. René knew about the passes, and he’d made sure the ring came into her hands. Or had he made sure she had the ring to fully gain her trust, and not told LeBlanc he was doing so? Such a double cross was not unthinkable. And then she felt another hard wrench in her middle. René was providing the ships. That meant there wouldn’t be any ships.
The prisoners would just have to scatter; it was all she could do. At least she would have gotten them to the coast. She could only hope that René would not want to admit he’d helped her forge passes, and that Spear had gotten out of the Hasard flat with his life.
She doubled her pace down the stairs, boots making quick, tapping echoes against the shadowy walls, like her heart, like the ticking of the firelighter she’d left behind, a machine that felt nothing, knew nothing but the job at hand. And then the steps ended in an open space of rough brown rock. The dim light of her lantern showed five stone carved arches, all in random directions, heavy wooden doors with locks fitted into the openings. What this place had been Before Sophia couldn’t imagine; there were faint traces of paint in the deep crevices of the walls. But if these cells had numbers, she could find no trace of them.
“Tom? Tom Bellamy?” she called. It was silent under the Sunken City. She took Gerard’s keys and put one to a lock, trying each until she found a fit and flung the door open. Empty, except for the dirt. She tried keys in the second door, turned the lock when she chose the right one, and there was a crumpled mess of thin arms and legs and hair that might be blond.
“Jennifer,” she whispered. The girl didn’t move.
Sophia came inside with the light, and held it up. Low, rough ceiling, a floor thick with dirt and rubbish, and, oddly, a small hearth. Special cells, the twins had said. She guessed those hearths were not put there for comfort. Jennifer lifted her head, squinting her eyes against the light.
“Jen,” she said again, coming close. “It’s Sophia.” Jennifer raised a dirty hand to cover her face. The cuts and burns on her arms were a mass of festering sores, red and running, streaking up beneath the skin and past her elbows. Sophia pulled Jennifer’s hand away and touched her forehead. Dry, and burning hot. And she was shackled by both wrists. Sophia heaped a thousand silent curses on LeBlanc’s head.
“I’ll be back, do you understand?” she said “The door is open. I’m coming straight back.”
Jennifer didn’t answer. Sophia left her where she lay and put a key to the next cell. It was empty. And so was the next. And so was the next.
Sophia stood in a ring of open cell doors, heart beating faster and faster until it was slamming against the wall of her chest. Tom wasn’t there.
René’s back hit the wall of the bedroom hard, and hit it again, but he twisted away before Spear could get a real blow in. The men of the room were lined up against the window wall, while Madame Hasard sat on the opposite side in a chair, her legs crossed, looking both elegant and disgruntled. Spear was surprisingly fast for someone so big, as René had quickly learned, and he had reach. But at his best, René was faster. The room was quiet but for the clang and scrape of blade on blade, both men intent on inflicting bodily damage as soon as possible.
They were so intent that neither noticed Madame Hasard, not until she threw the contents of the water ewer over her son’s head.
Jennifer’s water bucket was empty, and Sophia had a feeling it had been that way a long time. She tossed it down in the dirt, got on her knees with Jennifer behind her, took hold of the girl’s upper arms, and pulled Jennifer up onto her back. Sophia staggered to her feet. She hadn’t realized Jennifer had actually grown taller than her; she had to bend almost double to bear her weight, stay balanced, and prevent the girl’s bare feet from dragging.
There was no way to carry the light, so they started up the winding stairs in the darkness, Sophia’s jaw clenched. It had taken time to pick the locks of Jennifer’s shackles, and the need to hurry, to find Tom, was like fire in her limbs. But she could go only so fast without sending them both tumbling backward down the stairs.
“Jen,” she panted, trying to rouse her once again. “Where is Tom? Can you tell me where Tom is?” She pushed her legs, one after the other, climbing by feel in the dark. For the first time Jennifer made an incoherent noise. “Where is Tom?” Sophia insisted.
“Gone,” said Jennifer.
The slamming in Sophia’s chest stopped and became a squeeze. “Gone where? Keep talking, Jen. It’s Sophia. I need to know where Tom is.”
“They … took him,” Jennifer heaved. It almost sounded like crying. The banging in Sophia’s chest started up again.
“Where, Jennifer? Where?”
But there were no more sounds from her, though she could still feel the girl’s breath faint against her back. Taken. Where had LeBlanc taken him? She had no time for this. No time at all.
Sophia’s legs were shaking, and she was covered in filth and sweat, muscles begging to stop, about to stubbornly do so without her permission. Then she heard the squeak of metallic hinges, the whisper and shuffle of feet. She called down an additional thousand curses on LeBlanc’s head, laid Jennifer gently on the ground near the wall, and pulled out her sword from where she’d thrust it through her belt. She started slowly up the steps, legs still shaky, hugging the wall.
Light blossomed from around the bend, and then two gendarmes came down the stairs, swords out, freezing when their lantern found her. One of them was the gendarme she’d seen earlier. And so was the other.
“Wait,” she said, holding out her sword but also her other hand. She let them watch her slowly draw a black-and-red feather from her vest. The two men relaxed, though they did not put away their swords.
The first one said, “You’re …”
“… a girl!” finished the second.
“And I suppose you’re my twins?” Everyone was stating the obvious. “Help me,” she said, hurrying to Jennifer. She heard swords being sheathed, boots on the stairs behind her. One twin got Jennifer’s legs and the other hooked his elbows under her arms.
Then they paused, three sets of eyes darting up to the ceiling of the passage. A faint clanging of bells was coming down the drains and into the tunnels from the prison yard, through the open metal door above them. Harsh, discordant notes that made their way straight into Sophia’s stomach. Not the middlemoon bells. They were the execution bells. Someone was going to die at the next moon. At highmoon.
She looked to the twins, questioning, but they shook their heads in perfect synchronization. This meant the mob would be arriving soon—surely not all of them had gone to pillage the Upper City—and the execution team. Allemande, LeBlanc, the other ministres. One of them was going to realize the guards were gone. And all the prisoners. She gritted her teeth, held the lantern higher, and they moved on, faster, the clanging of the bells echoing in the Tombs. She had to find Tom.
The execution bells rang through the Upper City, echoing against buildings and stone, overcoming the soft hum of idle chat in the Hasard flat. LeBlanc set his wineglass unsteadily on the table. It was only half full now; Émile wished it had been empty. He saw Enzo coming down the stairs from the gallery.
LeBlanc looked at the pendant he wore, frowned, and suddenly it snapped open to show the clock inside. Renaud, who had been hovering, took a step forward, then thought better of it.
“Middle … moon,” said LeBlanc, seeming surprised at the difficulty of saying the word. “And the bells are ringing, just as they should. And the gate … is opening … and they have their list. The leaders … of the mob know where to go. Renaud gave them addresses. I will have to go. Cannot miss … highmoon …”
“What happens at highmoon, Albert?” Émile asked casually.
“The Razor and Tomas … Bellamy. He dies at the Razor, and she will be coming … for him … too late …”
“I see.” Émile smiled, and laid a coin carefully on the table. “Albert, I have a question I would like to ask the Goddess …”
While LeBlanc struggled to focus on the coin, Émile, very low, so LeBlanc could not hear, whispered, “Enzo, tell René that Tom Bellamy dies at highmoon, and tell Andre that I need him to steal LeBlanc’s pendant.”
The execution bells stopped ringing.
The noise of the bells faded, and Madame Hasard lowered her hand. Spear and René were staring at each other from opposing chairs, René’s hair dark with wet, the powder nearly gone, hands on his head as if the noise of the bells had been physically painful. Madame Hasard crossed her legs on the edge of the bed, a sword in her hand. A semicircle of Hasards and Benoit stood in a ring that blocked escape. Benoit was deep in thought, his forehead wrinkled.
“Now, Monsieurs,” said Madame Hasard. “The rules of armistice are as follows. Neither of you shall speak unless spoken to by me. That is the only rule.”
“Maman, those bells were … Ow!”
Madame Hasard resettled the sword in her lap, having whacked René in the leg with the flat of it. “Now that we have an understanding. Monsieur Hammond, are you working for the weasel-ferret creature known as Albert LeBlanc?”
Spear eyed the sword. “No. But he thinks I am.”
She turned to René, who was rubbing his leg and glaring at Spear. “And you, are you working with the weasel-ferret creature known as Albert LeBlanc?”
“No!” Madame gave René a raised brow. “He thought I was, of course, but he does not think so now.”
Spear made his disbelief clear, René leaned forward, and Madame raised the sword. René threw up his hands. “Listen to me, both of you! And do not hit me with that sword, Maman! I am going to talk and you are going to listen because there is no time.”
