“Games of strategy. Chance. You are a student of luck, are you not?”

“Luck is the handmaiden of Fate, Émile. There is no ‘chance.’ ”

“So you do not play games?”

“Strategy is for implementing the will of the Goddess, not discovering it.”

“Tell me,” said Émile, “how do you determine the will of Fate? How does she make her wishes known to you?”

“Why, one only has to ask,” said LeBlanc, as if he were sniffing out a convert. “Just this middlesun, I was uneasy in my mind. A decision weighed on me. And so I did the proper honorifics, asked my question of Fate, cast the die, and received my answer.”

“And what was your answer?” Émile asked, sipping his own wine.

“That my timing was imperfect. That highmoon was the proper time for certain festivities. Isn’t it fascinating, Émile? Fate reached out her finger and tipped the world into its proper position.” LeBlanc’s smile was smug as he drank. He sat back, the pendant dangling against his chest from its silken cord.

“Fascinating,” Émile agreed, glancing at how much LeBlanc had swallowed. His eyes roved through the mass of people that were milling about the flat, unwilling to leave. He could not see Enzo.

The tunnel was in confusion, people everywhere, propping each other up, some carrying one another, all unsure of the way, all wanting out. Sophia pushed her way through the melee, her shouts ineffectual. Then there was a clang of metal up ahead, someone hitting two swords together rhythmically, calling the prisoners to the upper tunnel and the exit. The throng surrounding Sophia turned as one to the sound and gradually began a steady pace, the stronger moving ahead of the weak, an avalanche of humanity sliding sideways and up through the muck and dark of the rough tunnel.

If the gendarmes came back, if even one of them saw something they shouldn’t, these people would have nothing but their numbers to defend themselves. But surely, Sophia thought, nothing could have been worse than what they were facing the moon before. She held up her lantern, steadying the arm of a woman stumbling next to her. The woman looked up once, glassy-eyed, but any curiosity Sophia saw there was quickly eaten by the panic to get out.

A gendarme stood at the highest bend of the tunnel, where there was a crossroads of sorts, and this caused a palpitation of fear through the prisoners. But when it was obvious that this gendarme was also holding a light, waving them on and up, calling that there were landovers arriving to take them out of the Sunken City, they moved on again. He must be one of her twins, Sophia thought; an ally she’d never even seen before tonight. The clanging was still going on somewhere beyond him.

She broke away from the stumbling herd into a side-branching tunnel before the gendarme spotted her. This passage went down again, ending in a locked metal door. Sophia brought out the key Gerard had given her, turned the lock, and started down a long, winding set of stone stairs. LeBlanc’s special cells, for special prisoners. That’s what the twins had written.

Cartier would be out there somewhere, helping the twins direct the prisoners to the temporary safety of the warehouse across the prison yard. The Lower City was emptying for La Toussaint. With no executions soon, he should be able to get the prisoners safely loaded into the landovers Allemande was so thoughtfully providing for their trip to the Upper City and out the gates. As long as Spear got out of the Hasard flat quick enough, delivered the forged passes to the gates, as long as she could get everyone out before René or LeBlanc realized the Tombs were completely empty of gendarmes …

She stopped on the stairs, stomach twisting as she looked at LeBlanc’s signet ring, now filthy but still on her index finger. René knew about the passes, and he’d made sure the ring came into her hands. Or had he made sure she had the ring to fully gain her trust, and not told LeBlanc he was doing so? Such a double cross was not unthinkable. And then she felt another hard wrench in her middle. René was providing the ships. That meant there wouldn’t be any ships.

The prisoners would just have to scatter; it was all she could do. At least she would have gotten them to the coast. She could only hope that René would not want to admit he’d helped her forge passes, and that Spear had gotten out of the Hasard flat with his life.

She doubled her pace down the stairs, boots making quick, tapping echoes against the shadowy walls, like her heart, like the ticking of the firelighter she’d left behind, a machine that felt nothing, knew nothing but the job at hand. And then the steps ended in an open space of rough brown rock. The dim light of her lantern showed five stone carved arches, all in random directions, heavy wooden doors with locks fitted into the openings. What this place had been Before Sophia couldn’t imagine; there were faint traces of paint in the deep crevices of the walls. But if these cells had numbers, she could find no trace of them.

“Tom? Tom Bellamy?” she called. It was silent under the Sunken City. She took Gerard’s keys and put one to a lock, trying each until she found a fit and flung the door open. Empty, except for the dirt. She tried keys in the second door, turned the lock when she chose the right one, and there was a crumpled mess of thin arms and legs and hair that might be blond.

“Jennifer,” she whispered. The girl didn’t move.

Sophia came inside with the light, and held it up. Low, rough ceiling, a floor thick with dirt and rubbish, and, oddly, a small hearth. Special cells, the twins had said. She guessed those hearths were not put there for comfort. Jennifer lifted her head, squinting her eyes against the light.

“Jen,” she said again, coming close. “It’s Sophia.” Jennifer raised a dirty hand to cover her face. The cuts and burns on her arms were a mass of festering sores, red and running, streaking up beneath the skin and past her elbows. Sophia pulled Jennifer’s hand away and touched her forehead. Dry, and burning hot. And she was shackled by both wrists. Sophia heaped a thousand silent curses on LeBlanc’s head.

“I’ll be back, do you understand?” she said “The door is open. I’m coming straight back.”

Jennifer didn’t answer. Sophia left her where she lay and put a key to the next cell. It was empty. And so was the next. And so was the next.

Sophia stood in a ring of open cell doors, heart beating faster and faster until it was slamming against the wall of her chest. Tom wasn’t there.

René’s back hit the wall of the bedroom hard, and hit it again, but he twisted away before Spear could get a real blow in. The men of the room were lined up against the window wall, while Madame Hasard sat on the opposite side in a chair, her legs crossed, looking both elegant and disgruntled. Spear was surprisingly fast for someone so big, as René had quickly learned, and he had reach. But at his best, René was faster. The room was quiet but for the clang and scrape of blade on blade, both men intent on inflicting bodily damage as soon as possible.

They were so intent that neither noticed Madame Hasard, not until she threw the contents of the water ewer over her son’s head.

Jennifer’s water bucket was empty, and Sophia had a feeling it had been that way a long time. She tossed it down in the dirt, got on her knees with Jennifer behind her, took hold of the girl’s upper arms, and pulled Jennifer up onto her back. Sophia staggered to her feet. She hadn’t realized Jennifer had actually grown taller than her; she had to bend almost double to bear her weight, stay balanced, and prevent the girl’s bare feet from dragging.