Rook

“Oh, no,” he said, twirling one of the ringlets. “Benoit is doing his best at distraction, but I think Hammond may murder me in my bed tonight. And you should arrange your skirts, my love, your firelighter is showing. I would do it, but …”

She was sorry to see the coast. She knew he was playing his part, doing exactly as they’d pla

The dock at Berck was more of an arrival and departure point than a town, and it was thronged with people trying to make their way out of the Sunken City and off the Parisian coast. Animals, bags, carts, men shouting about their tickets and muddy streets all mixed with landovers coming and going. Somewhere in that crowd there would be another man from the newspapers lurking, and if nothing of their arrival was printed, it would not be René Hasard’s fault.

Again he chided Benoit unmercifully about the baggage, took personal offense to a stranger’s i

Sophia reached up and unpi

“I think that is u

“I am not being impertinent, Hammond.” René’s lower, less Parisian voice was a shock after the one he’d been using on the dock. “I am keeping our heads safe. You would be surprised, I think, to know how many eyescopes are between here and the city.”

Spear looked René full in the face. “Close the curtains, then.”

“In which case we will not be seen at all. As we wish to be, or otherwise. You would rather our plan did not work?”

“Really, Spear,” Sophia said, “it’s nothing. And you know he’s right.”

René was right, but it certainly wasn’t nothing. That aching pull she’d been feeling had been soothed all day; she wanted to be soothed again. Spear crossed his arms, leaned back his head, and closed his eyes, which, Sophia thought, was probably as good an escape as he was likely to get.

She scooted in to René, his arm still around her waist, squirming about until she said, “Corsets are of the devil.”

“Sophia,” said Spear, in the corrective tone of her father, once upon a time.

“Spear,” she said, in the exact same tone. She’d felt guilty before; now she was irritated. “It’s an item of clothing. An item of clothing that happens to be worn under a woman’s clothes and happens to be of the devil. If you had one on, you’d say the same.”

“Turn this way,” René said. She could hear the amusement. And so, probably, could Spear. René guided her around until her back was to him, doing the same until his own was in the corner of the seat. She adjusted the firelighter beneath the dress and the blanket on her lap. She could feel René’s chest behind her, his chin somewhere near her ear.

“Better?” he asked.

She nodded, staring out the window where the farms of The Désolation were passing, a few vineyards yet unharvested, purple grapes hanging under the clouded sky. She was aware of his breathing, in and out against her back, of the arm around her middle, holding her in. René’s cheek settled against her curls. He was probably getting hair powder on her, but she didn’t care. Then his other arm moved very gently beneath the blanket.

She darted a glance at Spear, but he was still head back, eyes closed, swaying with the motion of the wheels. René slid his arm around her from the other direction, his fingers lacing together over her middle, the warmth of him seeping through her dress. She breathed deep. There was no risk in this. This was safety. And nothing even resembling the feeling of being trapped. Did this sort of thing go on all the time when you loved someone? She felt René’s breath slow behind her.

And then she opened her eyes. René was asleep; she could feel the relaxed stillness around her. She was pleasantly pi

She must have stiffened, because René said near her ear, “What is wrong?” His voice was even more rough with sleep. She sat up, startling Spear from his reverie.

They were driving through the cemeteries that lay outside the gates of the Sunken City, but she was not seeing what she’d expected. Mémé A

But the last day of La Toussaint had not come, and yet the cemeteries had been decorated. Hundreds upon hundreds of blooms of white and black—were they dyed, or had someone actually grown a black flower?—and swaths of dark and light cloth. Masks with dual faces, one side ecstatic white, the other an anguished black, had been set up on poles among the tombstones, as far as the eye could see, ribbons trailing from beneath them and dangling in the wind, looking horribly like the staked heads the mob sometimes paraded through the Lower City.

“The answers of Fate,” René said. “Yes and no, life and death.” He sat back on the cushion of the landover. “Have either of you noticed that my cousin is a lunatic?”

This actually pulled a faint smile from Spear, which was saying something. But Sophia sat forward, watching the violated cemeteries pass in a rolling black and white sea, grave after grave, mask after empty-eyed mask. There was something ghastly about it, a wrongness beyond the obvious that she couldn’t immediately put her finger on. And then she knew. It was because this stark world LeBlanc was trying to create was a lie; there was a spectrum of color between black and white, and many, many layers of choice between yes and no.

The nethersun was dipping low when Benoit rapped twice on the roof from the driver’s seat, letting them know they were approaching the Saint-Denis Gate. Sophia pi