The Lady Rogue

by Jenn Bennett

  Several hundred years back.

  Perched on a mountainside terrace was a ringed Saxon citadel—one that looked as if it had sprung from the pages of a medieval fairy tale. And it was no abandoned ruin. There was a living, breathing village inside the old walls.

  “Bram Stoker had it all wrong with the Transylvanian doom and gloom,” Huck said, a little awe in voice. “This is enchanting, yeah?”

  It really was, especially with the snow falling. “Keep an eye out for Father,” I said.

  “You keep an eye out. As your official protector, I’m looking for dangerous cultists and stolen wolf dogs.”

  “Fair enough,” I said, rearranging my satchel and camera case across my torso as we both looked around.

  We crossed a narrow bridge and passed through a stone fortifying wall dotted with turreted towers. Inside the citadel, crowds of people strolled hilly, cobbled lanes past medieval row houses painted in bright pastels: salmon, buttercup . . . sky blue. Geraniums decorated window boxes on gingerbread-roofed merchant houses.

  It was dreamlike. Timeless.

  Maybe too dreamlike and timeless: for one dizzying moment, passing by us in the crowds, I gaped at a group of serious-looking men dressed in medieval Saxon furs and chain mail. It felt as if I was losing my mind.

  “What is happening?” I murmured, seeing other people dressed like illustrations from The Canterbury Tales.

  “Middle Ages Festival,” Huck said, head turning in all directions. “I just heard an English tour guide explaining that it draws twice as many tourists this time of year.”

  And almost as many Vlads. I couldn’t stop staring at a group of scowling, raven-haired men with the Impaler’s infamous thick mustache and jeweled crown—all of them smoking cigarettes and drinking frothy ale from metal mugs.

  In addition to the Vlads, there were women dressed in furs, holding up carved wolf heads on sticks—wolf heads with serpent bodies, the symbol of the Dacians, which made me briefly think of Valentin’s campfire stories.

  Costumes. Wares. Food. White lights and banners strung between the medieval buildings. It was a feast for the eyes and ears. Unfortunately, we weren’t here to celebrate.

  We had a baroness to find: Lady Maria Kardos, Lovena’s sister.

  And hopefully my father.

  “Lovena said their family home was up a hill in the center of town,” I reminded Huck.

  “More than one hill,” he said, twisting to reach inside his rucksack. He pulled out one of the travel brochures that he’d picked up at the train station, and we tried get our bearings from a small map of the citadel. Fragile snowflakes dotted the folded paper, leaving wet spots as they melted.

  “Looks like there’s a public square up ahead,” I said, pointing it out. “Maybe we can ask around there. Lovena said anyone could tell us where to find the baroness’s house.”

  “Aye, aye, Captain,” Huck said. “You lead the way.”

  As twilight turned into night, we headed into the town square, and I looked for a good place to stop and ask directions. There were several wine cellars and street cafés, but they were overflowing with knights and warriors and dark-haired maidens, huzzah! All of them costumed and mildly crocked.

  “What’s that?” I said, pointing to a mustard-yellow three-story home in the middle of the square. Snow was collecting on its slanting black roof and window baskets. A line of people extended from its front door, over which a wrought-iron dragon sign jutted.

  “Why, I do believe that’s dear old Papa Vlad’s former home,” Huck said. “Where a wee Vlad the Impaler was born.”

  A chill ran through me, and it wasn’t because my nose was beginning to freeze. I pulled the lapel of my coat together at my neck and stood on tiptoes to get a better look at the painted canvas banner that hung from two of the building’s windows. “ ‘Drăculești Family Living Museum. Grand Opening,’ ” I translated for Huck. “They’ve turned his childhood home into a tourist trap.”

  “He must be rolling over in his grave,” Huck said and added, “Wherever that is, because it damn sure wasn’t under a massive pile of very heavy rocks in a cave outside Tokat.”

  “You know what they say. One man’s pile of rocks is another man’s treasure.”

  Huck laughed. “I’ve taught you well. Wait—where are you going?”

  “To Vlad’s house, of course. We’d be idiots to pass it by. That is the first place my father would visit here.”

  “Doubt we can afford the admission,” Huck pointed out.

  Right. That was a problem. We were virtually broke.

  It wouldn’t hurt to look a little closer, though, would it?

  We snaked through the crowded square and slowed as we approached a line of people waiting to buy tickets from a small portable booth that had been set up outside the door. I lingered near the front of the line in hopes of asking the pink-cheeked ticket seller if possibly she’d seen my father. But at that moment the door was held open for several seconds to allow for a couple of tourists to step into what appeared to be a staged re-creation of a medieval home (roaring fireplace, wooden chairs). And in the middle of the room, I spotted an enormous figure. Big as a bear, dark hair. His back faced me, and he was leaning over a glass display case filled with small medieval weapons and tools.

  My pulse sped like a downhill bicycle, picking up speed.

  Without thought, I shouldered my way around the people waiting in line and burst through the entrance before the door could shut again, ignoring protests and heated Romanian cursing about my lack of manners.

  Inside the house, it smelled of fireplace smoke and that peculiar scent that really old homes always have—generations of dust, must, and mold. For a moment my ears started ringing and my balance felt . . . off. A wave of dizziness struck me. Maybe my body was just briefly shocked, coming in from the cold to stifling heat. I shook it away and continued toward the display case.

  “Father!” I called out.

  He didn’t budge. I caught up to him and touched his arm. He swung around, curious, and just like that, my billowing hope was burst.

  A stranger stared back at me. Just a middle-aged Romanian man with a red nose and a gold cross around his neck.

  “Pardon,” I mumbled to the man, feeling the sting of my mistake. What was I thinking? That Father would just be casually browsing a museum without a care in the world while Huck and I were penniless and alone in a foreign country?

  “Theo,” Huck said, breathless. “What in God’s name are you doing?”

  “I thought . . .”

  Ugh. I felt like a complete idiot. And another wave of dizziness hit me—not insignificant this time. I gripped Huck’s arm for support.

  “Whoa there!” he said. “What’s wrong?”

  Maybe my ears weren’t ringing. Maybe it was a noise in the house. A high-pitched whine, and underneath it, strange cadenced noises. Like a dozen distant drums beating out overlapping rhythms. “Do you hear that?”

  “Hear what?” Huck whispered, looking frantic.

  “That music.”

  Maybe it was that group of costumed musicians out in the square, playing lutes. Maybe a group of drummers had joined them.

  While I tried to pinpoint the source of the noise, something caught my eye. Something in the display case where the man who wasn’t my father had been looking. Between a pair of medieval metal scissors and a glass stopper from a perfume bottle sat an odd little ring on a bed of red velvet. Ugly and crooked, it had been carved from what the nearby placard identified as ivory. Strange symbols were carved into the band—a band that looked a little different from the ring in my father’s photographs.

  “ ‘Battle ring belonging to Vlad Țepeș,’ ” I translated aloud.

  “Is that . . . ?” Huck started. Then his face appeared next to mine as he shifted closer to peer through the fingerprint-smeared glass.

  The strange noise was so much louder now. It was making me nauseated.

  “That can’t be,” Huck
said. “That’s not Lovena’s ring, is it?”

  “It’s my family’s ring,” a stern male voice said over my shoulder in Romanian. “And I don’t know who you are, but this exhibit is for paid ticket holders only. I’m afraid you must exit.”

  I stood up, fighting a wave of nausea, and turned around to find two large guards in black uniforms flanking a dark-haired, slender young man, perhaps a little older than Huck, standing in a stiffly pressed, expensive suit. Agitation flared in his deep-set eyes; he was not happy with our being here.

  “My apologies. I thought I saw someone I knew. I’ll leave,” I told both him and the guards in Romanian, one hand up in surrender. I prayed I was being polite enough to placate him. I just wanted to leave, to get out of this musty house and away from this noise, pounding, drumming . . .

  Thump-thump. Thump-thump-thump.

  It was disorienting, this vexatious noise. It took me out of my body and made me feel . . . lost.

  Focus, I told myself sternly, trying to pull myself together. A bone ring was here, after all. This was important.

  Shaking away a wave of dizziness, I pointed to the display case. “Can you tell me one thing?” I asked the young man. “You said this is a family ring.”

  “It is,” he said coolly.

  “We just spoke with Lovena earlier today. . . .” I struggled to remember the surname my father had written in his journal. “Blaga? Lovena Blaga?”

  “She is my aunt,” he confirmed, shoulders stiffening.

  “You’re the baroness’s son?”

  He nodded.

  I quickly translated this information to Huck.

  “Do you speak English?” Huck asked the young man.

  “A little,” he answered.

  “We came to speak to your mother,” Huck said. “Lovena sent us.”

  That seemed to break through his icy demeanor. He considered Huck’s words for several moments and then made a gesture to the guards. They backed away, but not all that far, and they were still watching us. But when they were out of earshot, he said in English, “I am David Kardos. You are . . . ?”

  “Theodora Fox,” I said. “And this is Huck Gallagher.”

  David nodded in acknowledgment and said, “My mother and Aunt Lovena aren’t close.”

  “But this is her ring?” I asked.

  “It was my grandmother’s ring,” David insisted. “Lovena shouldn’t have been hiding it. It deserves to be seen by the people of this town. This is our history.”

  “We need to speak to your mother. Your aunt sent my father here to inquire about this ring. It’s very important.” I quickly described him, looking around to point to the man I’d mistaken for him.

  “Oh, yes. The American treasure hunter. He was here yesterday. He talked to my mother and left.”

  “Why did he leave?” I asked, fighting another wave of nausea. “Is he coming back?”

  “He asked to buy the ring,” David said matter-of-factly. “My mother refused. It is part of the museum’s collection now. He asked to inspect it, which she allowed, and then they argued, because he made insulting claims.”

  “What kinds of claims?” Huck asked.

  “He claimed that the ring was not genuine. That it was a reproduction. Which it is not. It has been in my family for decades.”

  I hated to break it to him, but “decades” was nothing. Vlad lived in this house more than four hundred years ago. If my father thought it was a reproduction, then likely it was. He was stupid about a lot of things, but dating artifacts wasn’t one of them.

  Then again, Lovena was convinced there was sleeping power in this particular ring. She was certain this one was authentic. Had she been wrong? Or was my father mistaken? Who was I supposed to believe?

  Thump-thump. Thump-thump-thump.

  My God! What was that infernal noise? Was I the only one hearing it?

  David gestured loosely with one hand. “Mr. Fox was rude. He needed a bath. And he insulted my family, so my mother told him to leave. And now I am asking you to leave.”

  “Wait!” I said, trying to figure out what to do. I believed my father thought this ring wasn’t real, but he also pooh-poohed the idea that my mother’s death was due to that cursed crown she handled in India, of which I’d tried to convince him a hundred times. If she were still alive, she’d tell me to question—and document—everything. Just in case. So I set my satchel on the floor, opened it, and dug around for my camera bag. “May I snap a photograph?”

  “Absolutely not!” the man said firmly. “No photography. This is a living museum. Did you not read the sign outside?”

  I couldn’t answer. My insides were trying to exit my body. And that noise . . . that damned noise! It was as though I were hearing everyone’s heartbeats inside this room, all at the same time. If I concentrated, I could almost pick them each out. Huck’s especially. How could that be?

  Thump-thump. Thump-thump.

  Was I hearing my own blood inside my temples?

  When magic is plentiful, it is easy to hear.

  I slowly stood up from my satchel and stared at the ring. Impossible. Or was it? I took a step toward it and put my hand on the case.

  Thump-thump-thump-thump-thump.

  Dear God. It was . . . alive.

  Terrified, I jerked my hand away.

  “Theo!” Huck said firmly. Confusion and concern churned behind his narrowed eyes.

  “The noise, it’s—” I started to explain.

  But I never finished, because David was angry at me again. He raised a hand to summon the guards, so I quickly said in Romanian, “I’m sorry! We will leave the museum now. But I beg you, is there any way I can speak with your mother? Even for a moment? My father is missing. It’s urgent that I find him. Bad people are after him. Please.”

  David hesitated, fidgeting with his cuff links. “Perhaps for a moment. But not now. She is giving a speech in a few minutes to officially open the festival, in front of the clock tower. Once it’s over, you can return here and ask for me at the ticket booth. I will try to arrange a meeting, but I cannot promise. She is a busy woman. Please do not barge inside without a ticket this time.”

  “I understand,” I said, switching back to English. “And thank you. We’ll come back.”

  He nodded rigidly and said something to the guards, who hung back but were clearly there to escort us out of the house. As we left, the thumping noise grew fainter and fainter, until I stood out in the snow-wet square, wondering if I’d been imagining it.

  I hadn’t. I knew it as well as I knew my own mind.

  I’d heard the ring.

  “What happened back there?” Huck said when we were outside. “Are you okay?”

  I shook my head, still reeling, and motioned for us to walk. We circled around the side of the mustard-colored house, trying to avoid a steady stream of people strolling past us down a narrow lane. Steel spine, chin high. Do not fall apart. You are fine. Everything is fine.

  “Banshee,” Huck insisted, finally pulling me to one side under an arch that connected the buildings on either side of the lane. “What’s going on? Talk to me.”

  “You’ll think I’m mad,” I said, shaking my head.

  “I will not. Talk to me. Are you sick?”

  I held a hand to my stomach to steady my nerves. The nausea was passing. “Are you certain you didn’t hear anything inside the house?”

  “I heard people talking.” He paused and gripped my shoulders, ducking his head to bring his face to my level, snagging my gaze with his. “What did you hear?”

  I whimpered, and my body loosened under his hands. “I heard heartbeats. People’s heartbeats. Everyone in that room. Huck,” I said. “And that wasn’t all. I thought . . . I know I heard the ring.”

  Emotions warred across his face. “Are you sure?”

  In fractured sentences, I attempted to explain it, the nausea and the thumping. “I know how it sounds, don’t I? I knew you wouldn’t believe me.”

  I tried to
push out of his grip, but he held on to me more firmly.

  “Hey,” he said, his face close to mine, warm breath blowing out in a billow of winter white. “I believe you.”

  “You do?”

  He nodded. “If you say you heard it, then you heard it.”

  His acceptance meant more than I expected. Relief and gratitude poured through me. I wanted to hug him. I wanted to bury my face in his neck and feel his arms around me. For a moment there was something raw and desperate on his face, and I thought he wanted it too. And then a drunken man in a bad Vlad costume bumped into us and broke us apart, apologizing profusely in Romanian before stumbling away.

  I looked at Huck, feeling suddenly shy and exposed.

  He pulled off his cap, smoothed back his curls, and refitted the wool over his head, pulling the brim down tight. “Can you hear it now?”

  I shook my head. “I could still hear it faintly right outside the house when we left, but it faded away.”

  “Okay,” he said. “So, basically, what we’re saying here is that based on what just happened, we think that ring inside there could be the real ring that your father is looking for.”

  I nodded.

  “But Fox thought it was another fake, and he left.”

  “Seems that way.”

  “What do we do about it? I mean, we aren’t here for the ring. We’re here for Fox. But if Rothwild has threatened him into finding the ring . . .” He shook his head and considered it. “I think Fox needs to hear from you about what you heard. He needs to know. In a perfect world, we’d just walk in there and get the ring, find your father, and all of this would be over. But David and his family aren’t going to hand over the ring to us, yeah? So we should probably just concentrate on finding Fox. That hasn’t changed.”

  “Agreed,” I said, warily looking back at the mustard-colored house. “Maybe the baroness can tell us more. Maybe Father gave her a hint as to where he’s going.”

  “That’s obvious, though, isn’t it? If he thinks this ring was a fake, then he’ll go to the next name on his little coded list of suspects.”