“It will be dirty,” she said, considering.

“Very. But you will enjoy it, Mademoiselle, especially if the bucket on the other side is full.”

“What do you mean?”

“Because if one bucket is full, and you are certain to take the opposite rope, you will get such a ride to the bottom! Just do not stand on the bucket.”

Sophia smiled, amused. “And why ever not?”

“Because then you will get such a dunking at the end of your ride! And LeBlanc will track your wet footprints right across the Lower City.” He leapt up from his chair. “Here, give me that towel. If I do not do something else, I will explode.”

“You want to dry dishes?”

“I have done it before,” he said, expression serious. “It was Maman’s most particular punishment.”

“You must have done it every day, then.”

“Once again, you wound me. It was only five or six times a week.”

She laughed before she could help it and tossed him a towel, which he caught on his way to the sink. “Have you ever been down it?” she asked, going back to the water lift.

“What do you take me for, Mademoiselle? I have climbed both up and down, though not for some time. There has been no need of escaping my tutors.”

“And the rope?” she asked, handing him a dripping plate.

“It is replaced from time to time. But it should be tested, I think, before you go down.”

For a little while there was just the slosh of water and clink of stacking dishes, until René said, “Tell me what you are thinking of.”

Sophia had been watching the wisping steam rise off the water in the rinsing bucket, and realized she’d been smiling. She ran the dry part of her arm over her forehead, pushing back hair gone mad from the heat, and shook her head. “Nothing.”

“It is not nothing. Tell me. I am suffering.”

Nothing made René Hasard suffer more than information he could not have. It was a good thing he wasn’t aware of just how much she denied him. She let him fidget for another few moments before she said, “It’s just that I was nearly killed by an old rope once, that’s all.”

“And this makes you smile?”

“Yes.” She bit her lip, smiling even more. She knew she needed to be careful, that she was vulnerable, that keeping René at arm’s length and focused only on the business at hand was the best thing for her. But one glance at the grin in the corner of his mouth and she succumbed.

“Tom stole a rope once. He was going to bring it back, of course, but he wanted to measure exactly how far the Sunken City had sunk, to know how high the cliffs were for our map.”

“You went to the city every summer?”

“Yes. Tom and Spear and I. Father took us. Since I was too small to remember.”

“And you often climbed down into the Lower City?”

“Nearly every day. I had … there were people there, Mémé Annette and her son Justin, Maggie and the baby, they were like family to me. I think I was all of eight years old before I realized that Mémé Annette wasn’t actually my grandmother. I used to help her sell oatcakes on Blackpot Street.”

“Oatcakes,” René repeated. “On Blackpot Street?”

“Oh, yes. I thought it was great fun. Do you know the market there?”

“I do.”

She glanced at him again from the corner of her eye, a little surprised, though perhaps she shouldn’t have been. Smugglers might very well know the Blackpot market. René had stopped drying and was just watching her talk, all his energy focused on her face.

“So the three of us climbed the fence, snuck past the guards at the Seine Gate, where there is a little path down to the waterfall …”

“Yes, I know the place.”

“And Tom dropped his rope over, only it was a cool night, and there was so much fog coming off the river we couldn’t see if the rope had reached the bottom. So Tom decided to climb down and find out. Spear and I were to let out more rope if he tugged once, and pull him back up when he tugged twice. Or Spear was supposed to, anyway, since he was so much bigger …”

“How old were you?”

“Nine, maybe. I think Tom was ten, Spear eleven. But Tom never tugged the rope. And I was so jealous that he’d gotten to do the measuring down the cliff …”

“You went down after him,” René said.

“We had a bet on how far it was, and I was afraid he might cheat. But when I got near the bottom I found out why Tom hadn’t tugged. He was talking to a woman, telling her the most ridiculous story about night fishing.”

“In the Seine?”

“I said it was stupid. But then I realized the rope above my head was fraying, untwisting bit by bit. I tried to climb back up above the weak place, but the rope snapped, and if I hadn’t landed on Tom’s head, I probably would have broken mine. As it was, I left us in a pile on the ground.”

“And what did Tom do?” René asked, grinning.

“He picked me up, dusted me off, and apologized beautifully to the woman. And then, being the helpful sister I was, and because no sane person would believe the story he’d been telling, I told the woman that we were actually in secret training for the circus.”

René laughed, which made her smile. “Who was she?”

“No idea. But she was Lower City, and she must have known we were Upper. Tom’s hair wasn’t cut. She could have called the guards, though I don’t suppose they threw children into the prison in those days. Instead she told us to climb back up and practice more or we’d be the worst circus act the Sunken City had ever seen. Tom gave me such a smack when we got back to the top.”

René laughed again, and Sophia laughed with him. It felt good to laugh. But the feeling died away as she rinsed another plate. What would she do without Tom? He should be here right now, at the kitchen table, correcting the details she’d gotten wrong, telling her when she was being an idiot. And when she wasn’t.

René said, “Sometimes, Mademoiselle, it is a torture to me, trying to decide what is inside your head. And then at other times, I can see just what you are thinking.” His voice lowered. “Should I tell you what you are thinking now?”

She rinsed the same plate again, suddenly aware of proximity, of the arm next to hers, the smell of cedar wood and that little beat of pulse at the base of his neck, just at the level of her eyes, close enough to touch. He’d moved up to daughter-stealing before she’d realized. No. She really didn’t want him to tell her what she was thinking.

“I will say, then, and you will tell me if I am wrong. You fear that this plan will fail, that this will be the first time the Red Rook does not come out of the Sunken City with her quarry, and that this is the one time you cannot live with such a failure. But that is not so difficult to see, is it? Who would not fear that in your place? But I think I will tell you what you truly fear.” He paused, and when he spoke again, his voice was even softer. “You fear what will happen if your plan succeeds.”

She stood still, her fingers dripping. She didn’t dare look up.

“If your plan succeeds, will you come back to a father imprisoned and a home lost and a life that is uncertain? Or no? Will there be a marriage fee, and a husband instead? And if there is, what will you do with them, this husband you did not ask for, a brother who cannot provide, and a father whose mind is not whole?”

Sophia let her wild hair fall about her cheeks where it would hide her face, her body paralyzed. How could he know that? These were things she hardly admitted to herself.

“But even if none of that were so,” he went on, “if there was no husband, your father restored, and home secure, if Allemande fell on his own sword and the Tombs were empty and the Razor torn down tomorrow—if you could have everything you have ever allowed yourself to wish for, you would still lose, would you not? Because you would go back to being Sophia Bellamy before the Red Rook, and I think you fear that just as much as failure. Now tell me I am wrong.”