“Wait,” Sophia said. “Stop! That’s Cartier!”

Tom leaned forward to look out the window and René banged hard on the roof, signaling for the driver to stop. The landover slowed, pulling to the side of the road, and Sophia opened the door to wave Cartier in. He trotted down the pavement.

“Thought I’d been left behind,” he said, crawling in beside Tom.

“You nearly were,” René replied. “Did my uncles forget you? Or was it Maman?”

“Your uncles, I think, Monsieur.” Cartier seemed unfazed. “Not much blame to them, though. It was a mess down at the prison.”

“And they all left for the coast? Uncle Émile, and Benoit?”

“Oui, sir,” said Cartier, mixing his Parisian and his Commonwealth.

“Was Spear with them?” Sophia asked, settling back beneath René’s arm.

Cartier looked at her, confused and a little stricken. “But … I thought …” He didn’t go on. Sophia sat up again.

“What’s wrong?” she said. “Cartier, what’s happened?”

“It was the prison,” Cartier said. “Well, it exploded, didn’t it? And Mr. Hammond? Wasn’t he the one that exploded it?” Cartier had switched fully into Commonwealth now, and was speaking quickly. “I was with Monsieur’s uncles, all of us dressed as gendarmes, and we were ready to nab the two of you as soon as you came out the prison doors, but you came from the other way, and there was no way to get to you, not with all the people, and … Miss Bellamy went up the scaffold and I didn’t want to look …”

Tom nodded. “Go on.”

“So I looked down, and I was standing on a drain, and way down below me, there was Mr. Hammond, in one of the tunnels, and he was dressed like a gendarme, too.”

Sophia sat back, thinking of the uniform Spear had used so often when they came to the city, but René’s red brows came down. “How could you see him?”

“He had a lantern, and … he’s just not so hard to recognize, is he? But the thing is, I was looking at him when the Razor came down. I know he thought you were dead, Miss. I did, too. Until I saw you climbing on top. And when I looked back into the tunnel again, Mr. Hammond was gone. That’s why I went looking for him … after …”

Sophia sat forward, her face in her hands. She felt an ache take residence in the center of her chest, a piercing pain that was going to be difficult to bear. Had Spear gone back into the Tombs to unset the firelighter, or to set it again? She would never know. But either way, it had been for her. Right or wrong, everything he’d done had always been for her. Perhaps the guilt was going to be just as hard to live with as the pain. She looked up from her hands and met Tom’s eyes, wondering if her face looked as wounded as his. “How many died at the prison today?” she asked Cartier.

“There were a fair few hurt, Miss, but I only helped bury Mr. Hammond.”

She made sure the boy was looking at her before she said, “Thank you, Cartier. For everything.” She stared out the window as the city passed, silent but for the tears streaming down her face.

They drove straight through the Saint-Denis Gate, no guards, not even a pause through the cemeteries, where most of the flowers and the black and white masks of the Goddess had been pulled down. Cartier went to sleep almost instantly, leaning his peach-fuzzed cheek against the velvet-lined wall. Sophia laid her head in René’s lap, soothed by the rocking motion and the wheels and René’s hand in her hair. She closed her eyes. But she could not sleep. She ached too much. After a long time of stillness, she heard Tom say, very quietly, “When did you see him last?”

“Last night at the cliffs,” René replied, “climbing out of the Lower City. He cut my rope when I was about halfway up. But it was my rope, placed there for a reason. I knew where to fall.”

She could hear Tom rubbing the unfamiliar hair on his chin. “I take it he had the Bonnard denouncement forged.”

“Yes. I saw the original. He was carrying it with him after your arrest. You requested it, am I right? Because you thought the Hasards would choose to remove the Ministre of Trade from his post? To keep their fortune?”

“I wasn’t going to let my sister marry just anyone, you know.”

“You were right to look. We are not all we seem, that is true.” After a moment René said, “Someone hired the hotelier of the Holiday to attack me. He knew where we were hiding, knew what room I slept in. I had thought it was Hammond. But he said no, in the prison, and now I am inclined to believe him.”

Sophia stayed very still beneath the safety of René’s hand.

Tom said, “I told him to look. To go to LeBlanc and offer himself up, if he needed to. See if we couldn’t flush someone out of the shadows. Did he find out …”

“I do not think he ever stopped believing it was me.”

“I don’t want you to think …,” Tom sighed. “Spear wasn’t a bad man.” She could hear the grief in her brother’s voice. It started her tears again, leaking onto René’s lap.

René said, “I think, perhaps, that he loved her too well.”

The landover wheels rattled over ruts. She could almost hear Tom thinking, choosing his words. “I wouldn’t have sanctioned it, you know. We never had the conversation because I knew Sophie didn’t … and Spear was family to us.” Tom took another moment. “But he would never have been happy with my sister. It was like … like he thought there were two Sophies: the one she is now, and the one she would be just as soon as she decided to settle down with him. And it was the Sophie to come that he loved too well, not the one she was. That she is. But Sophia isn’t going to change. You know this?”

René laughed without humor. “Oh, I know this.” He stroked her hair just a little. “I should tell you that the Hasard fortune is lost. I do not know what will happen in the city, but I would guess it will take some time, years perhaps, to put our finances back in order. There will be no fee. Not in time.”

“And she says she will have you, anyway.”

“Yes. She does.”

Tom adjusted his bad leg. “A lot has changed since I crossed the Channel Sea.”

“That is so.”

“The Commonwealth won’t recognize it.”

“We could go to Spain,” René suggested.

“They won’t recognize it, either, not with her citizenship.”

“Ah, but it is so much easier to lie about such things in Spain.”

“What would you do there?”

“No bloody idea.” He paused. “It is my new phrase.”

“Our father might have something to say about it.”

“As will Sophia, and as will my maman. We can all gamble on that.”

“Sophie lied to me about our father, when we were in the prison. I would guess this means he’s not well.”

“He is grieving. And he blames his daughter for his grief.”

“I see,” Tom sighed. “And now he’ll go to prison, grieved or not, and we are going to lose the house. Unless we find another Parisian suitor for my sister in the next … what is it now? Five days? I’m afraid I’ve lost track.”

“Three, I think.”

“Right you are. But I suppose everyone involved will object to that plan now.” Sophia almost smiled.

“And what about you, Monsieur? Do you … how did you say, do you ‘sanction’ this?”

Sophia tried to relax her body, to not alert René to just how very awake she was. She waited for Tom’s answer, René rhythmically stroking her head.

Finally her brother said, “Why don’t you call me Tom?”

Sophia rocked with the movement of the landover, eyes still closed, sure she was failing at hiding a little bit of her smile. She was torn between grief for the man who wasn’t there, and love for the two who were. But what were they to do now? René didn’t want to go to Spain. There was nothing for him there. And what about Tom? She wouldn’t be leaving him behind with no house, no inheritance, and the responsibility of their father. Neither Tom nor René would be sacrificing for her. Not if she had anything to do with it.