Текст книги "Rook"

Автор книги: Sharon Cameron

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Текущая страница: 22 (всего у книги 27 страниц)

LeBlanc listened to the execution bells, more himself now, with wounds bound, new robes, and the white streak in his hair arranged just as straight as it should be. He smiled slowly. “When Claude brings in the prisoners from the Hasard flat, make certain he puts them in the first few holes, in case Allemande should look down the tunnels.”

Renaud glanced through the door of the office at Allemande, who was on the hard, plain couch of LeBlanc’s private rooms, feet dangling, investigating a box of sweets.

LeBlanc pulled the cork on a bottle of wine. “I will only be a moment, Premier,” he called, walking to the far end of his office. Allemande’s soldiers were waiting just outside, in the corridor. No need for them to hear anything untoward. Renaud followed, limping.

“And while I have him here,” LeBlanc continued softly, bringing two glasses from a cabinet, “go to his office and his private rooms and be sure there is not a letter informing him of the loss of the prisoners. She may have been lying, of course, but we must be certain.”

If Renaud was alarmed by an order to search the most guarded premises in the Sunken City without getting run through with a sword, he did not show it.

“After the execution,” LeBlanc whispered, “I will tell the premier that the time for the other sacrifices to Fate has changed. It was improper to use his wheel in any case, and it is evident that the Goddess wanted them on another day, since they are not here. We will begin with a quiet sweep of the Upper City, to find our missing prisoners, then the Lower. They cannot get out of the gates, so there is no hurry. No reason to bother the premier. No need for him to know at all.”

And if Renaud harbored any secret doubts concerning LeBlanc’s ability to somehow keep an empty prison, a citywide search, and hundreds of lost executions away from the ears of the premier, he did not show that opinion, either. LeBlanc returned to Allemande with the bottle and the wineglasses.

“Well, Albert,” said Allemande, “have you seen the reports? From the Seine Gate, and the Rue de Triomphe? We are bleeding rebels. And, interestingly, the mob seems to have targeted certain residences in the Upper City, addresses that we have recently spoken of. This smacks of … deliberation on the part of our government, and with no proper forms filled out at all. And what about the sky? It is raining fire out there, and the people say it is the sign of the saints, of the Red Rook. I have a feeling your dawn demonstration of two out of three is going to be crucial to the future of the city, Albert.”

LeBlanc swallowed hard as he poured the premier’s wine. Allemande meant that it was going to be crucial to the future of his Ministre of Security.

“The people are in need of a dose of terror. They must feel that they have no choice, can effect no change, or we will have more change than we currently know how to handle. And René Hasard, your cousin …” Allemande tsked. “To so publicly engage himself to the Red Rook—who is nothing but a little girl, I find—a little girl fomenting insurrection and threatening the stability of our city … Oh, no. I do not think we can have that. We must take all their heads. Put them on sticks, I think.”

LeBlanc smiled, nervous. “You will be pleased to know I have already given the order, Premier.”

“Have you? And whose name did you use on the denouncements?”

“I thought it appropriate in this case to use my own name, Premier.”

“Hmmm.” The little man frowned, and the expression made LeBlanc cold. Allemande had no Goddess but power, and playing his games was like facing down a poisonous snake. A snake with a penchant for paperwork. He would gut his best friend if it struck his fancy—LeBlanc had seen him do so to the former premier. It was one of the nicer things he’d seen him do.

Allemande pushed up his glasses. “I am also concerned about this document that Miss Bellamy seems to have been carrying. It is the denouncement of Ministre Bonnard.” He held it out. “Please, Albert, look at it.”

LeBlanc took the paper, setting it on the table nearer the light, where the premier would not see his hand shaking. He only just kept his expression calm.

“Does this seem quite accurate to you?” Allemande asked. “I thought perhaps it was not.” Then he said, “I am not confident your affairs are in order, Albert. Let me see the forms.”

LeBlanc bowed slightly. “I will see if Renaud has completed them.”

“I mean all the forms, Albert. All your files.”

LeBlanc hurried into his office. Renaud had not, of course, prepared any forms for the Hasards, or been ordered to prepare any, and he was not here now. Why was Renaud never here when he was needed? LeBlanc smoothed his white streak, trying to slow his ragged breath. He would make one out himself, for show, and give Allemande the rest of the files while he forged more. He readied his pen and ink, pulled open the left-hand drawer of his desk, and stopped. The nest of velvet where his signet ring resided was empty.

He opened the drawer farther, felt all the way to the back of it. And then his smile came out, curling to the corners of his mouth. He had no prisoners in the Sunken City. Not anymore. His search would have to extend to the coast. How had any of them thought they would get away with this and live? Because they were not going to live. But his smile left him when he glanced at the door to his private rooms, where Allemande’s shadow crossed the open doorway. And yet … Perhaps Fate had willed this night for a reason.

He hurried to the other end of the room, the bound cuts on his arms burning, and opened the plastic ritual box in the corner. There was no time for the fire and the bottles, or any of the solemn ceremony that should accompany such a question. But the Goddess would require more of him than the toss of a coin.

He selected a thick piece of paper, cut round, one side white, the other black, the swaths of color curling into each other, and laid it carefully on the center of the chalk circle he’d drawn before. Then he picked up a knife. He closed his eyes and plunged the tip of the knife into the soft pad of his forefinger. Blood welled. He opened his eyes and flicked his bleeding finger across the paper.

He leaned over and quickly counted the spatters, no matter how tiny, mouth moving, his finger dripping blood onto the floor. When he was done LeBlanc straightened, closing his pale eyes once more, this time to enjoy a moment of ecstasy. Twenty-seven drops in the black, only eleven in the white. The answer was clear, and it was death. Fate had given her permission.

“Thank you, Goddess,” he whispered, going back to his desk to snatch up a clear glass vial from his drawer. The time for this was now, before the dawn. He concealed the vial in his hand and strode purposefully to the door of his private rooms.

“Premier,” he said respectfully. “Renaud is finishing and needs just a few more moments while I gather the files. May I offer you more wine? Yes?”

“I die at dawn,” Sophia whispered, as if trying out the idea. “Is it wrong that I don’t feel terribly upset about that right now? That it almost seems easier?”

“Yes, that is most definitely wrong,” Tom replied, his voice like rubbing sandpaper. “And if I thought you meant it, I’d scold you. Severely. But if it does have to be, Sophie … then I’m glad … that I got to see you again.”

Sophia laid her head back down on his shoulder. She had always been so afraid of losing Bellamy House, her father, the Red Rook, of living with no reason to live at all. But for just a little while, she’d caught a glimpse of something different. It was the loss of the dream rather than the reality that was leaving her empty and aching.

“Did you really get all of them out of the prison, sister?”

“Yes. They should be away by now, Cartier and the twins with them. But there won’t be any ships when they get to the coast.”

“Some of them will get away, though.” Tom settled his head against the stone pedestal. “I think that makes it worth it.”

“Do you?”

“Yes. I do.”

“Yes,” said Renaud. The words came from his mouth like water dripping from a rusting pipe. “Agreed.” The big blond man he’d met in the street near the Saint-Denis Gate nodded, and they completed their transaction.

It was obvious this man knew he was LeBlanc’s secretary, but Renaud didn’t care who the man was or what he knew. LeBlanc had finally descended all the way to madness, and Renaud had decided to be his secretary no more. He was on the run. And he had just made a glorious trade. The keys to LeBlanc’s office plus certain passwords for a horse and a forged pass out of the gate. He had intended to bluff his way past the guards on LeBlanc’s authority and travel on foot through The Désolation, at least until he could hire transportation. But this was much better, much less traceable.

Renaud mounted the horse, throwing his small bag of possessions across the saddle. He smiled, an expression almost as rusty as his voice, and galloped for the gate, horse hooves loud against the paving stones.

Claude’s boots clattered against the stairs of the flat, knocking one by one as he was dragged down from the gallery, across the scene of battle, and into one of the interior, windowless rooms off the lower-floor corridor, where he was deposited with the rest of the gendarmes, none of which had their uniforms anymore. René was sweating, flushed, and still filthy, but the fight had made him feel the slightest bit better. There were some small wounds among them, though not many. LeBlanc’s gendarmes were no match for the seasoned criminals of a Hasard family engagement party.

“Where will they bring her out?” Émile asked, tossing his breeches to the floor of the corridor, replacing them with the uniform René threw at him. The entire hallway was jammed with uncles and men and dropped articles of clothing. “Which door?”

“There is only one entrance,” Benoit replied, pulling on a jacket of city blue.

“The brick building in front of the scaffold,” René continued for him. “It sits over the entrance to the prison, and there is just the one door. But there is a lift through the cliff that must go up to LeBlanc’s building above. There is nowhere else for it to go.”

“So she must come out that door?” Émile asked.

“Yes,” Benoit replied. “We can take her from there.”

“And the brother,” said René. “We must get them both.”

“And why will the Tombs explode at dawn?” Francois asked, pulling off his shirt. It must have been a very good question, because Uncle Francois never spoke otherwise.

“Just trust me that they will,” René replied. “I will try to get inside and turn off the firelighter, but …” He turned his head at a call from his mother. Madame was standing unaffected by the bedlam around her, a uniform in her hand. She beckoned him over.

“I suppose you must go get her?” she asked, leaving behind her usual brash tone.

“Yes, Maman.”

“Then, here.” She pushed the jacket and breeches into his hand. “I chose one that will fit.”

“Thank you, Maman.”

“And go wash or they will smell you coming.”

“Yes, Maman.” She patted his cheek once, and then turned to walk away. “I will see you at the coast,” he added.

She smiled with both sides of her mouth, and it was a grim, hard thing. “See that you do, René.”

Spear stood behind a smoldering barricade, where he’d ditched the landover, wondering if any of them would ever again see the coast. Why hadn’t he killed Hasard before he’d gotten talked into setting that firelighter? And those bells, who were they for? He was afraid he knew the answer to that. The same one who had always been scheduled to die at dawn. And now he was the one who would have to rescue them. He would have to unset that firelighter and bring them out.

This area was quieter than the neighborhoods near the cliffs, but it was still dangerous. Spear put out the lantern and jerked off his jacket, exchanging it for the blue and white of an Upper City officer, the one he carried in his suitcase. He glanced up once at the setting moon and cursed Albert LeBlanc.

Allemande cursed Albert LeBlanc as he foamed and choked on the contractions of his own throat, his glasses fallen to the floor. LeBlanc breathed in satisfaction, then opened his pendant and checked the progress of the moon, wondering what could have happened to Renaud.

He strolled into his office, shutting the unpleasant writhing and gagging away behind the door, snapped his pendant shut, and rang the bell for the lift. He’d sent Allemande’s soldiers to wait at the bottom. But they weren’t Allemande’s anymore, were they? Because LeBlanc was premier now. The destiny Fate had ordained had been achieved. As he’d known it would be.

There was no question who the Sunken City belonged to. And it was time to make sure that everyone, especially the Red Rook, knew it.

“They’ll come for us soon,” Sophia whispered.

“I know,” Tom replied.

“What do you wish you were doing right now?”

“Running. Or talking to Jennifer Bonnard.”

“Do you really?”

“Yes. And what about you? What do you wish?”

“That I could wake up on the day of my Banns and realize that none of this had ever happened.”

“Do you really wish that?”

Sophia thought for a moment. “No. I don’t. I suppose what I really wish is that the real parts had never happened, and the parts that never really happened were the ones that were real.”

Far away in the darkness of the cavern, they heard the creaking of a metal door. Tom took her hand. At least they would do this together.

René marched with his uncles and their friends as a troop, but they had to stop blocks away from their goal. The streets were thronged. It was the coldest, darkest part of the night as the moon sank, the north lights nearly gone, no fire in the sky. But the execution of the Red Rook was keeping the entire Lower City out of its bed.

They pushed their way through, insistent but careful not to start a fight, and when they finally reached the prison yard René felt his jaw clench tight. The Razor, its ugliness undisguised by the flowers and ribbons, towered above a mass of torchlit humanity. But the mood was not what he’d expected. More grim, and less mocking. The blue of gendarmes was everywhere, at least ten forming a pack in front of the prison door, some of them shoving and beating back the crowd.

“Get everyone into position, and I will try another way in,” René whispered. “We will get nowhere if this mob turns against the gendarmes.”

Spear entered LeBlanc’s office building with a crisp walk and approached the guard at the desk. He brandished a piece of paper. “Long may Allemande rise above the city,” he said.

“Your code?”

“One three four.”

The guard nodded, tilting his head toward the stairs. Spear started to climb, and as soon as the guard was out of sight he took them two at a time, smiling at the luck of meeting Renaud in the street.

Renaud approached the Saint-Denis Gate. He saw an Allemande courier climbing back onto a horse as he handed his papers to the guard. The guard was unkempt, and a little drunk, but he looked at the pass carefully, as if he was having trouble reading it.

“Step down, Monsieur,” the guard said.

They could search all they wanted, Renaud thought. His mind was on sea foam, and birds, and the clean, free air of the coast. Two more gendarmes approached, but instead of searching him, one took his arms, quickly twisting them back, and the other put a knife to his throat. Renaud’s smile went away.

“Be advised,” read the guard from another document, his speech slurring, “that no official … permissions have been given to pass … any gates … out of the City of Light. Any such pass … passes … shall be considered a forgery, and the … the bearer … subject to immediate … execution.” The guard swayed just a little on his feet. “Sorry, friend,” he said to Renaud. “You ran a little … late.”

Renaud had only a moment to wonder why luck had abandoned him before the knife bit into his throat.

The ropes cut into Sophia’s hands as she and Tom were escorted through the dusty maze and onto the lift. Two young gendarmes, who had been wide-eyed in the bizarre cavern, were half carrying, half dragging Tom. She wondered how long they would live after this. They all crammed into the lift, LeBlanc rang the bell, and then he spent the entire ride examining her face from just a few inches away, as if he could ferret out the source of her abnormalities. She just glared at him.

They stepped out of the lift, this time into the small, lantern-lit lobby of LeBlanc’s office building, where the night guard sat at a desk. She caught a glimpse of a large blue-jacketed officer just disappearing up the stairs before she and Tom were taken stumbling out the door and to the back of a haularound. The bed of the haularound had a railing built like a fence around it, two posts at either end. Men were lighting short torches attached along the edges, the orange flames showing an entire troop of escorting gendarmes, swords and crossbows at the ready. A large sign on the back of the haularound read, LE CORBEAU ROUGE.

LeBlanc smiled, took one of Sophia’s red-tipped feathers, and stuck it securely into her tangled hair, patting her cheek when he was done. Then she was pulled up and into the haularound, her bound hands tied tight to the post. She looked back over her shoulder, where Tom was being tied to the other post, closest to the driver. She hadn’t yet seen him in such strong light. He looked terrible. Gaunt, dirty, bloody, and exhausted. But he smiled at her, even though his lips were cracked, and it made her stand straighter.

“The mob may do as they like,” LeBlanc was instructing their escort, “but they may not remove the prisoners or …”

“Give my brother water,” Sophia said. “Or he might not be able to stand.”

LeBlanc went on. “… or we will remove them to the Tombs. Allow no one to impede your progress through the streets. Only the driver knows the route …”

“And what will Allemande say if he can’t walk to the scaffold?” Sophia shouted.

LeBlanc turned his pale eyes on her, and then he smiled. Something about that smile made Sophia wish she’d never drawn his gaze. “There is no Allemande,” LeBlanc said. He turned back to the gendarmes. “Shoot anyone who attempts to deny the will of Fate.”

The haularound started forward with a jerk.

The lift jerked, and Spear paced inside it, waiting through the long, slow journey down the building and into the cliff. He’d used Renaud’s keys to unlock LeBlanc’s office, finding nothing but the dead, contorted body of Premier Allemande lying on a sofa, then used the same keys to open LeBlanc’s private lift. He was so angry. Angry to be back here. Angry that he’d thought they were safe when they weren’t. Angry that he had blood on his hands. Why had everything in his life gone wrong since he’d heard the name Hasard?

When the lift finally reached bottom, he used the smallest key on the empty rivet hole to open the false back, just the way Renaud had described, unlocked the second false door, snagged the lantern from the lift, and hurried down the dust-thick stone steps into the cavern of bones. He took one moment to stare, and then he yelled, “Sophie! Tom!”

He would unset that firelighter again if he could. But he would get Sophie and Tom first this time. And if the rest of the world exploded, then it exploded.

René looked up at the sagging brick structure that covered the entrance to the Tombs. He didn’t really care if it exploded. He cared for nothing but getting Sophia out. The window he’d climbed through before had been boarded, guards now in front of it. And he could not get in the main door, either, no matter what story he told. No one without black robes and a white streak in his hair was coming in, not without a fight.

But it wasn’t him those gendarmes needed to be worrying about, René thought. There was something moving through the mob, a subtle shift in current after the night’s violence, an increasing hostility to the uniforms of the city. Perhaps his uncles had chosen the wrong disguises. Benoit had assured him again and again that when Sophia and Tom came out through that door, there would be enough gendarmes that weren’t really gendarmes gathered and ready to take them. If Allemande’s control was developing fault lines, would the mob help, or hinder them?

He looked up to the edge of the cliffs, where LeBlanc’s office building perched, and where he knew there was a lift. The moon was gone, the sky just beginning to pale in the northeast. He wondered if he had time to climb.

Spear wondered if he should try to climb the stacks of bones and see the layout of the paths from above. Probably his light wasn’t bright enough even if he could. He kicked the pyramid of skulls in front of him, putting his foot through one. He was lost, and furious, and beginning to be afraid that Sophia and Tom were not even in this godforsaken grave. He studied the hole he had made in the skull, fourth one from the corner, near the floor, and took off at a run down the next narrow path.

Sophia wondered if she would have time to climb the fencing, slip her bonds over the top of the post, and perhaps set fire to the haularound before they could catch her. But her hands would still be tied, and there would still be Tom. So she looked straight ahead, ignoring the shouts and stares, and the people standing along the streets and in the doorways of their shanties. News in the Lower City traveled much faster than a haularound, and she could see the crowds gathering farther down the road.

There had been fighting here. Smoldering wood and rubble, and doorways with something black nailed on, announcing a death. And the sign of the red feather. And now that she was listening, some of the shouts were not the mockery she had expected. “Red Rook” came at her from all sides, but they were shouts of encouragement, and there were men and women who stood in respectful silence as the haularound passed. And then she heard her name.

“Sophie!” She turned her head, scanning the crowd until she saw a young, bearded man with his hair cropped short. “Sophie!”

“Justin!” Tom called.

Sophia felt a smile break over her face. She leaned as close to the edge of her rolling wooden prison as the ropes would allow. It was Mémé Annette’s son. “Justin! How is Maggie?”

“Five children!” he said as the haularound passed, his face falling as they all three remembered they were not actually having a reunion.

“Tell her we love her!” Sophia called. “And the children!”

He nodded, and Sophia watched a small crowd form around him, asking questions and listening to his response. “Justin!” she yelled suddenly. “Can you get Tom water? Do you have a flask with you? Please!”

She watched Justin patting his shirt and pants, as if he might discover water, others around him doing the same. She wondered how many would remember Sophie and Tom from Blackpot Street, the children who spent their summers selling an old woman’s oatcakes and romping around in the mud and grime of a Lower City market, Tom’s hair tucked up in a cap.

She heard a thump behind her and turned her head to see a leather flask at Tom’s feet. He slid down the post and got his hands on it, the gendarmes around them seeming inclined to do nothing. She sighed in relief. So there was still goodness somewhere in the Lower City. It made her stand straighter as they drove the twisting streets, all the way to the turn into the prison yard.

There was a mob there the size of which she’d never seen. An ocean of bodies and faces packed into the square, the Razor rising up like an illuminated island of black and white flowers in its midst. She looked up at the sky. Surely they were early; there was only the barest lightening of the dark on the northeastern horizon. She met Tom’s eyes, and he shook his head. If there was anyone in that crowd who wanted to rescue them, she didn’t know how they could possibly do it. The numbers were unbelievable, overwhelming. She felt the loss of hope solidify, rock hard inside her. And then, as the people caught sight of them, one by one, the mob went silent.

Spear had gone silent, no more yelling. They weren’t there. There was no one there, nothing but death. He found the steps to lead him out of the cavern, ran straight through the lift and out into the prison. There was no one there, either, no guards. No Sophia. No Tom. Dread settled on him, like the bone dust that was covering his face. He turned right and dashed down the stairs and into the stinking tunnels, feet splashing in the quiet. Surely it couldn’t be dawn yet.

René turned at the strange, growing silence of the mob. Surely it couldn’t be dawn yet? And then he saw a haularound, lit with torches, bright at the opposite end of the prison yard. The sight set his fear on fire. The haularound snaked a path through the mob and now he could see Sophia in the back of it, hands tied and head up, her brother too weak to stand at the other end.

He looked around, trying to control his panic. Benoit, Émile, his uncles, Cartier, and their recruits from the party guests were a short distance away, crowded around the prison door, where they’d thought Sophia was going to come out. They were cut off. René launched himself into the sea of people, swimming into the crowd, but there were many hundreds of bodies between him and the scaffold.

LeBlanc looked down on the hundreds of faces, indistinct in shadows and torchlight, and smiled beatifically. He was seated in the viewing box, his streak straight and robes perfect, all wounds discreetly covered. And he was in Allemande’s chair, from where his new power would flow. The other ministres had not seemed quite confident in his story of Allemande’s death by armed rebels, LeBlanc had thought. But they all knew who the gendarmes were taking their orders from. And so the ministres were around him on the scaffold, one or two yawning with the early dawn, seated in their velvet chairs, waiting to witness the death of the Red Rook.

LeBlanc opened his pendant. Its black hand pointed to dawn, and though dawn was looming, it had not precisely arrived. But the haularound had. LeBlanc sighed. This was inconvenient. And Renaud was missing, leaving him no one to blame or complain to. That was aggravating, as was the thought of training a new secretary. They could take so long to break.

And then there was this odd silence. Not the way a Lower City mob ought to behave when presented with the gift of the Red Rook’s head, and her brother’s. He had seem them beg for blood that was worth much less. But now they were merely standing aside, making a path for the haularound to approach the scaffold.

Sophia looked up past the torchlight to the huge, heavy blade already pulled high and hanging in the air, ready to end her life. The executioner and his team stood next to the rope, his only job now to trip the lever and let the blade fall, then pick up the head from the bloodstained basket and show it to the crowd. The Razor crept closer, and she wondered vaguely if she and Tom would go one at a time, or if they would lie down on the block and die together.

She felt curiously detached, as if this moment were happening to another Sophia Bellamy, a girl who had lived a thousand years ago and already knew the end of her story. But at the same time, little things were sharpened into importance, things that held meaning only for her. A knitted blue skullcap just like Mémé Annette’s, someone who had their child sitting on their shoulders, a woman with a red-tipped feather painted on her cheek, reaching out a hand in the dim and eerie silence. And then the haularound stopped.

The gendarmes came and cut her rope from the post, pulling her down and toward the steps of the scaffold. Evidently it was to be one at a time, and she would be first. She heard a whisper of talk trickle through the mob, a current of sound running just beneath the quiet.

“Tom!” Sophia yelled suddenly. “Tomas Bellamy, do not look. When it’s time, do not look! Swear it to me!”

She caught a glimpse of him over her shoulder, standing up straight now despite his injuries. He nodded once. She was satisfied. “Let me go,” she said, yanking her arms free of the gendarmes. “Let me go! I can walk on my own.”

She was getting angry now. That was good. She moved just out of the guards’ reach, and walked up the scaffold steps. That gendarme who cut her bonds did it a little too well, because they were loose around her wrists now. She stopped and planted her feet in front of the viewing box, bright with torches, tilted up her chin, fixed her gaze on LeBlanc, and smiled.

Somewhere far away in the crowd, someone was calling her name.