She felt him go still, and so did she. That had not been for show. No one could see their hands through the carriage window. She should take it back, say she was sorry. But she didn’t want to. She didn’t want to face the debris on the streets alone. Then there was the tiniest squeeze from the arm that was around her. She let out her breath, and laid her head on René’s shoulder.
They passed eight more red feathers, painted on shops and the gymnasium, one on the bottom of an air bridge. Then the landover turned onto a wide boulevard with planted trees, rolling to a stop before a building of white and gray carved stone. There wasn’t much that was Ancient in the Upper City, and here there was nothing at all. No vestiges of concrete or steel, just cut stone and marble, baked tile and stained glass. Very modern. And very protected. Six gendarmes had stopped to eye the landover, four swords and two crossbows out and ready. René frowned at them.
“You have a knife?” he asked. It was the only time they’d spoken since seeing the first painted feather. Since she’d held his hand. Sophia nodded. “Easily reached?” She nodded again. “Then follow my lead,” René said.
“Are those gendarmes here for me?” she asked.
“I do not know.”
They could feel Spear clambering off the luggage rack above them. It was time to go. But René didn’t move. Instead he lifted the hand that still held his and kissed it, holding it close against his lips before he let it go.
René pushed down on the door latch, and the blue eyes lifted to hers. “You are ready?”
She nodded, still feeling his mouth on her hand.
“Speak carefully before the bellman,” he added. “He reports to Allemande.” Then he leapt out of the landover and extended his hand with a flourish, not paying the slightest attention to the guards. “We are arrived, my love!”
Sophia allowed him to hand her out, holding up her skirts carefully for sake of the firelighter. Spear landed on the paving stones, and they both looked up. Stars were beginning to wink above the spire on the top of René’s building, the upper floors shrinking in size as if stacked, a relief of flowers and vines decorating the foundation and twining upward. The curving roofline was cut with round windows, small from her vantage point on the ground, though she knew they must be huge. The gendarmes watched, but made no moves. Two green doors opened, and the bellman appeared. Sophia took René’s arm.
“If he reports to Allemande,” she whispered, “then why is he here?”
“Because he also reports to us. Yes, yes, Monsieur Hammond,” René said loudly, as if Spear had asked. “It is, indeed, very tall. But, please, not to worry! My building has a four-man lift! Nothing less than a four-man lift for my lovely fiancée!” He spied the approaching bellman and began shouting. “Bellman! Bring help. At once!”
The gendarmes seemed a bit taken aback by all this, just as they had at the gate, swords dropping down and crossbows lowering. They were guarding only, evidently, not there for her. Sophia let a little tension out of her body, watching Spear’s face become expressionless with anger as René harassed the bellman and Benoit, who was unstrapping the luggage. Sophia reached out and put a hand on his arm.
“He’s doing what he has to, Spear. It’s a persona. You know that. Try not to let it get to you. Please. For me.”
The lines of Spear’s jaw grew even more rigid as he looked down at her. “Has it ever occurred to you, Sophia Bellamy, that I might not be here for you at all?”
She moved her hand, but found herself smiling up at Spear’s handsome face, which was for once showing its fury. “And that,” she said, “is a long overdue first installment on a number of sharp words you owe me, Spear Hammond. But you’re still far behind on your payments, I’m afraid.”
They left Benoit and a bellboy to deal with the landover, the luggage, and the gendarmes, and stepped into the lift. It was mirrored and carpeted, the edges painted gold. René chatted on and on, bragging ridiculously about the four-man lift, meaning there were all of four men pushing the turnstile around and around, powering the chains that would haul them to the top, rather than only two or three. Sophia listened to the familiar rattle and squeak of the vast pulley system as they started up, a sound that said “city” to her ears. The Commonwealth didn’t allow lifts. Too machinelike.
Since all René’s babble was for the benefit of the bellman, Sophia jumped in, recounting how she and her brother had once seen a liftman when she was a little girl, a big man with very big arms, and how she’d been frightened at first but then found how jolly he was. It was true that she and Tom had once snuck into the cellars of Aunt Francesca’s building to take the liftmen bread, and those men had not been jolly. But she struck a pose of confused sadness at the mention of her brother, and knew that this juicy bit of information—that the Red Rook and his sister had once lived in the Sunken City—would seep into every flat like the city smogs. A bellman was the best source of gossip there was. René gave her a grin from behind the man’s back.
“All the way to the top, René?” she said idiotically as the lift doors opened onto the twelfth and last floor.
“Of course, my love! Now, please, watch your hem …”
The landing outside the lift was square, walls painted in pale green and blue stripes, the number 1250 in iron above only one set of double doors. René’s flat must have the entire top floor. The bellman handed René a tiny covered lamp, to light the candles, and then yanked a silken pull. A bell rang far below, and the chains and pulleys clanked as he started down again, his expression rather eager, Sophia thought. When his head had disappeared down the shaft René put a key to the lock and pushed open the double doors.
Sophia walked into the flat first, Spear behind her, René locking the door again after them. The room was dim, only the smallest light coming from the lantern René held, but she could feel that it was huge and, to her surprise, semicircular, the entire wall in front of them a curving sweep of windows, showing a panoramic view of the Sunken City. Sophia moved silently across the polished floor, a floor spotted with reflected points of light from the buildings on the other side of the windowpanes. It was like walking the Bellamy ballroom, only with a few sparse pieces of furniture added here and there.
She stopped before the wall of windows, Spear doing the same just a few feet away, hands in his pockets. They were right on the edge of the cliffs, looking far down into the fogs of the Lower City, lights twinkling in the smoky darkness. She put a hand on the glass. Tom was down there somewhere, buried deep below that vast hole. And by highmoon tomorrow she would have him. Sophia lifted her eyes to the lights encircling the rim of the chasm, then turned her head to the lamps and flying bridges of the Upper City, spreading below and around them as far as the eye could see, a maze of streets in the air. Who were those others out there, leaving the symbol of the Red Rook across the city, weighing their lives on the scales for the same thing she was? This had been her own private war for a long time. She spun around at the smell of smoke.
René stood at a long table near the doors, now in a swath of light from a newly lit lamp, thumbing through a stack of letters. There was a glass bowl of fading flames near him, what she assumed were the gendarmes’ orders now becoming ash. A small gallery hung above the doors and over René’s head, a curved stairwell leading up to the second level of the flat. Beneath that was a familiar stack of boxes, the items they’d sent on from Spear’s farm.