Rook

Rook by Sharon Cameron

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Authors: Sharon Cameron
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out … without hurting anything.” Unlike René, who was killing her.
    “And your brother keeps his finds? He does not give them over for study? Or sell them?”
    Sophia took a moment to grip the bed frame. “Tom thinks it’s a … crime to … melt such things. He’ll donate … give them to the Commonwealth, all at once …”
    “And they will either put them in a box or lose them.”
    “That’s why he … wants to study them first. He writes down what he … learns.”
    “And what of all those powders on the far wall? In the kegs. What are they for?”
    She held the cold iron harder. Those kegs contained Bellamy fire, her father’s discovery once upon a time, most recently used to panic the mob in the Sunken City. It was Tom who had learned to give them sparks and colors, to make the explosions small in order to frighten, not kill. But Sophia was beyond thinking of a lie to tell about Bellamy fire. For the moment, she was beyond speaking.
    “There!” René said, running a sleeve across his brow. “Twenty-two. That is not so bad. I am a marvel, am I not? My uncle Émile says I am the fastest in the city.”
    Sophia didn’t answer. She was sure her face must be white.
    He dabbed at the newly bleeding wound with the bandage she’d been wearing, and then leapt up, wiping his hands on the front of his shirt. Her eyes followed as he retrieved Mr. Lostchild’s bottle, then widened as he got right on the bed and straddled her, one knee to her back and one to her stomach, pinning her legs down with his weight. Sophia realized what he was about, allowed herself a sigh, and got a tighter hold on the bed frame.
    “Apologies, my love,” he said, right before he tipped the bottle over the wound. Her body jerked of its own accord, but he had her held tight beneath him. She squeezed her eyes shut. He poured once more, liquid running down her stomach and back, not unlike the tears she could feel leaking down each side of her face.
    She stayed still, panting as the weight of him left her and she heard the bottle being set back on the table. When she opened her eyes again he had taken off his shirt, ripping methodically, tearing away another strip from the bottom. His back was a little tanned, muscled, like the men of the Lower City. Not what she would expect from the Upper. And equally unexpected was the sharp glance of fire-blue curiosity she intercepted when his eyes darted toward hers. But the expression was gone almost before she’d known it was there, and he came back to the bed, standing over her with no shirt and a smile that came straight from the Bellamy ballroom.
    “May I?”
    She watched as he knelt down, lifting her body just enough to slide the strip of cloth beneath her, almost formal as he wrapped the wound again, and again, tight. While he was tying, Sophia reached cautiously, respecting the pain in her side, and grabbed the bottle from the table beside the cot. She emptied the rest of its contents into the glass, turned her face to brush the wet streaks from her cheeks, took a small sip, and then silently held out the glass to René. He laughed once before he took it, and by the time she’d gotten herself painfully upright, the last of Mr. Lostchild’s whiskey was gone.
    René sat next to her on the bed. “And how is your head, my love?”
    It was awful. He reached over and ran a finger very delicately over the bump at her hairline, and when he put his arm back down again, it was behind her on the mattress. Sophia only just kept one of her eyebrows from rising.
    “You never told me of the kegs,” he said, voice much closer. “What does the powder do?”
    Tom had said those kegs could blow Bellamy House right out of the ground, and now Sophia was thinking it was a good thing René hadn’t gotten a candle too near. But either way, there was no one, she feared, who would be coming out of the sanctuary unscathed. She remembered to be coy and peeked up at René from the corner of her eye. “I’m sure

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