Life. Or Death. LeBlanc pressed his hands together, waiting for Fate to declare the Red Rook’s destiny as the Ancient bottles bobbed in the boiling water, warping and collapsing in on themselves. It took some time, as if the Goddess was suffering a fit of indecision. But then, suddenly, a bottle broke.

LeBlanc straightened. “The water is white. The answer of the Goddess is life.”

Renaud’s face showed a slight eye-widening of surprise from his place behind Allemande’s chair.

“I am of the same opinion, Renaud. I …”

Allemande got up, voice smooth and even softer when annoyed. “So you wait to send Tom Bellamy to the Razor until the last day of La Toussaint. That was the answer of your Goddess? Isn’t that the date you have already set, Albert?”

LeBlanc ignored Allemande’s pique and bowed over the pot. “The will of Fate is absolute.”

“I think you will find that my will is also absolute. The Red Rook dies at the appointed time, no matter how many more rituals you perform. Is that understood?”

Allemande turned to go after LeBlanc had directed another bow his way, spectacles flashing with the tiny flames of half-burned candles. But then he paused and turned back, using a voice so muted it forced the attention of the room.

“I am glad to have seen this little demonstration. I believe the idea of being fated to die will capture the imagination of the people nicely. Set up something especially dramatic when you reduce the population of the Tombs, Albert, and I don’t think you’ll have trouble filling the chapels with your believers. What think you of a lottery wheel?”

“A wheel,” said LeBlanc quietly, “is not an object of Fate.”

Allemande dismissed this with a hand. “Present your ideas to me, then. Tomorrow, if you please. I hope your paperwork is in order?” LeBlanc nodded, lowering his eyes. Allemande looked him over for a few moments more, then opened the door and left with his escort, weapons jangling as they filed out of LeBlanc’s office.

LeBlanc waited until he heard the bell of the lift taking Allemande back down the center of the white stone building. Then his smile curled, long and slow.

“And now we let her come to us, Renaud. Every move that Sophia Bellamy makes is one step up the scaffold.”

Sophia came down the steps of the farmhouse, turned at the landing, and immediately turned again and went silently back up. Mr. Halflife was coming through Spear’s front door, and René was letting him in. Sophia froze on the stairs, out of sight around the corner of the landing, but trapped by the creakiness of Spear’s floors.

“Good day to you, too, Monsieur Hasard!” Mr. Halflife’s posh Manchester accent was strange in the house, especially in comparison with the ballroom Parisian René was affecting while inviting him in. “This is such a pleasant surprise, such a pleasant thing. I had thought you and Miss Bellamy were holidaying in the Midlands … discussing. I am happy to find I was wrong. Might I speak with Miss Bellamy? I have business with her that I want to conclude posthaste.”

“I wish that I could help you, Monsieur. But Miss Bellamy still travels. I came before her, to stay with my good friend Monsieur Hammond. He is nearly a brother to me now, of course.”

Sophia stood silently, hearing the pause this last sentence gave Mr. Halflife. She stuck one eye very carefully around the corner of the landing, where she could see the back of Mr. Halflife’s slicked head sitting on the couch. He was wearing a gray jacket, very tasteful, the cut of which was not at all Ancient, René nearly facing her in the other chair. He was sweaty, wood chips sticking all over his shirt, and yet somehow managing to pull off ballroom René very well. She saw the blue eyes make a quick, general sweep of the room that included the stairs.

“Then, I am to suppose …” Mr. Halflife collected himself. “I take it you are still contracted to marry Miss Bellamy, despite her brother’s misfortunes, and your cousin’s …”

“But of course! We are so very in love.”

“And what does Mr. Hammond think …”

Sophia watched René make an elegant gesture with his hand. He slid so easily from one role into another that it gave her pause. Then she felt her stomach tighten. Her silver shoes for the second engagement party, with the heels so high she’d had to practice walking in them, were still on the floor at the end of the couch, just out of Mr. Halflife’s sight. She focused her gaze, willing René to see what needed to be done, and then she heard St. Just’s claws come clicking down the stairs.

She reached out to catch his collar and thought better of it. He wanted out, and would have protested. Vigorously. Mr. Halflife began to turn at the noise and Sophia ducked back around the corner. She heard René get up from his chair as St. Just went yelping and barking into the sitting room.

“Ah, St. Just!” René cried. Sophia could hear her fox resisting having his ears scratched. He really was desperate to get out. “He is such a good pet, is he not, Mr. Halflife? But you must excuse his wild behavior. He is not a happy fox. He has the trouble with the … how do you say, the vermin.”

Sophia closed her eyes.

“Monsieur Hasard, I would be so grateful if you could tell me when I might have the pleasure of speaking with Miss …”

“Oh, pardon, Monsieur! Please … No, no, allow me …”

Sophia peeked around the corner to see St. Just leaping about the room like mad, her silver shoes gone, and René pulling pretend fleas off Mr. Halflife’s gray coat. She pulled her head back, biting her lip against an urge to laugh.

“We will have this attended to in a week or so, I am certain,” René was saying. “But they are stubborn creatures to be so small. Very vexing. A thousand pardons …”

The front door was opening. “When does Miss Bellamy return from her …”

The voices and barking faded as everyone moved outside. Sophia waited, then hurried upstairs and into René’s room, which had a view of the front. She put a finger to the wavering crack between the two curtains and watched Mr. Halflife practically on the run, brushing at his sleeves. A sleek landover stood waiting a long way down the lane. It seemed Mr. Halflife had hoped to catch someone unawares. He nearly had.

She heard boots on the stairs, and René came in, Benoit just behind him. René paused in the doorway. He’d been avoiding her when he could, and she had just made that impossible. Good. Sophia peered once more through the curtains. “He’s at a trot,” she said, speaking Parisian for Benoit. “I’d say that was very well done. And where are my shoes?”

“Under the couch,” René replied, tossing clothes from the bed onto a chair, brows drawn down. He looked tired, as if someone had pulled the cork and let out all his effervescence. She glanced around. His room had so many foreign things in it. Large boots, an eyescope on the table beside the bed. A little bowl of soap for shaving a face. So was this the real room, she wondered, instead of the staged one he’d left for her in Bellamy House? Or only another carefully constructed set? She watched Benoit taking away the clothing René had put in the room’s only chair.

“And here,” René said, emptying his pockets onto the cleared bed. She came to look. Her necklace, a list of food items in her handwriting, a few letters, a brush with brown spiral hairs sticking out of it, and a pencil. She stared at the pencil.

“Because you bite them, Mademoiselle,” said Benoit, answering the unasked.

“I did not know if Halflife would know that,” René added.

She picked up the pencil, which did indeed have bite marks. She hadn’t known she did such a thing. “Do you think he knew I was here?”