Rook

Sophia stared at the words, barely resisting the urge to crumple the paper. Instead she put the letters in the same order inside the false bottom and pressed it closed. She replaced the stack that had been on top, shut the lid, and set the box exactly where she’d found it. Then she stood, breath coming hard, candle held high to check the room. Her hand was shaking. Not from fear, or even a bout of temper. This was rage.

René and his cousin had pla

She took a long breath. How ironic to be so angry that there would be no marriage, when marrying René Hasard was what she had so desperately not wanted in the first place. She thought of him playing games in the sitting room—what a time to give in to pique and spout all those things about Mrs. Rathbone!—and the way he’d been looking at Tom’s leg, as if trying to judge its fitness. And LeBlanc thought the Red Rook was a man. Sophia bit her lip. A net, indeed, and it was closing tight around her brother.

She blew out the candle, replaced it in her vest, unwrapped Mr. Lostchild’s glove, and dropped it on the floor below the window. Then she gathered up the rope and stepped out onto the casement. The night sky was still overcast, very dark, a stiff breeze gusting as the remnants of the storm passed. She left the window open, climbing hand below hand down the rope, her mind going much faster than her descent.

With the rain gone, Cartier should be on the run by now. He would have a decent start before the glove was found and they set the foxes on the scent. That was good. But would it be enough to divert suspicion from Tom? It should be easy enough to prove Tom hadn’t gone anywhere near the Holiday. Especially since he hadn’t. She thought of that subtle trap on the chessboard. Did René think he had engaged himself to the sister of the Red Rook, or could he have the first inkling that he was actually engaged to the Rook herself? And what were they going to do about it if he did?

A soft swish startled Sophia from her thoughts, a whisper of metal slicing through the air. The swing of a sword. She kicked at the wall and pushed off, turning half around, gasping as she caught what should have been a hack through her spine as a glancing cut to one side. The rope swung crazily, spi

Sophia came back to herself in the dark, mind as thick and slow as the ground she could feel beneath her. The Holiday. LeBlanc’s room. Someone had tried to kill her when she climbed down the rope, and now the foxes were barking. Her eyes snapped open. She must have been out for only an instant because a candle or lantern was just begi

Sophia scrambled to her feet and her vision blurred. She swayed. There was pain in her head, a horrible pain in her side, and a commotion starting in the i

Sophia slid down from the saddle, the jar of landing making her skull ache and her stomach sick. She was back in the woods of the Bellamy estate, she realized, in the little shelter she and Tom had created for stashing a horse. The horse had known to go there even if she hadn’t. Her head was fuzzy, the trees stretching and bending in odd ways, the light of a yellow sun cresting the horizon behind ragged clouds. There was something about dawn that needed remembering, something Tom had said, but she couldn’t think what.

She threw the reins over a post, and noticed that something was wrong with one of her hands. She opened her palm. Red. And sticky. Her whole left side was wet and stained, and it hurt. She left the mare to its hay, breaking out of the tree line in a slow, lumbering walk.

Bellamy House rose up before her in a mist, a mismatched hodgepodge of stone and concrete built around decorative arches of red and white brick from the Time Before, a building mostly made beautiful by its age. She could see the roof, and the ledge and lattice path that led to her bedroom window, but for some reason the drainpipe seemed daunting. She would climb it later.

She chose an unobtrusive little door instead, sunk into the wall stones around the corner of the house, its weathered wood half-hidden by ivy. Slowly, and with panting breath, she drew out a loose stone from the house wall and retrieved the key beneath it. She unlocked the wooden door, replaced the key and stone as she always did, ducked beneath the ivy, and pushed the door shut behind her.

Stairs twisted downward, spiraling round and round in the dark. She took the steps one by one, unaware of time, until they ended in a room that was a cold blackness, smelling of earth and underground, wind moaning from blocked tu

When she opened them again she knew immediately where she was. Tom’s sanctuary, as he called it, deep beneath Bellamy House, a room that was nothing but Ancient. Light moved over walls tiled with white and artificial red—the red seen only in artifacts from the Time Before—arched doorways blocked with gray stone making dull, ugly scars in the otherwise bright surfaces. The pillars that held up the ceiling were also arched, some with their steel exposed beneath chunks of missing concrete. Tom was very careful with that steel. He oiled it regularly, so it couldn’t, after all this time, decide to rust and let the roof collapse.