The Treasure Keeper d-4

by Shana Abe

  "Did you kill the prince?" she asked quietly, and took a step closer. Rhys was still unmoving, watching the woman without blinking. "Is that how you got the manacle back?"

  "Kill him?" The color began to fade from her face. "How little you know, girl. Kill him, indeed—when all this has been for him. Ever him. No, Prince Alexandru of the Zaharen is quite well at the moment. I'm going to take this fascinating bit of iron from him three days from now in the luxury of his castle. He won't even know it's gone for a week. Time weaver," she spat. "I told you." She cocked her head toward Rhys. "Lord Rhys. I regret to inform you your presence is no longer required. I want you—"

  "No," said Zoe, with another step.

  "—to Turn to smoke. Do not Turn back."

  "No,"screamed Zoe as Rhys went to vapor, a cloud of gray lifting and thinning against the stratums of radiant stone above.

  There were men in all the tunnels. He supposed he'd not heard them before, not smelled them, because of all the stone surrounding them. He'd never been so deep within the earth, never been so encased in steady music besides that of Draumr. But the songs of the limestone and the quartz combined created a weirdly deadened effect, and Rhys only realized that he and Zoe were surrounded by men after he became smoke, and the music lessened.

  Holy God. The head of the sanf inimicus stood below him, and her minions were everywhere. She'd known they were coming. Somehow, she'd known. And Zoe was alone down there amid them all.

  She had gone to her knees, staring up at the last spot she'd seen him, veins of quartz glinting and glinting against the dull dark.

  She'd folded her hands over her stomach and stared, just like in the cellar. Just like with Hayden.

  Rez clucked her tongue. "Yes. Love is terribly painful, is it not?" She could not speak. She could not move.

  "I want you to know," the woman said, "how very tempting it is to let you live and be my messenger. That was my original notion for you. I thought I'd feel a touch of affinity for another female of the shire burdened with a singular Gift. I was going to tell you to tell the English drakon that I'm coming for them. I will come for them. I did not create the sanf inimicus, you see, but I certainly did revive them. Yet it occurs to me now, Zoe Lane, that I may send my message just as effectively by letter. The post these days is fairly reliable. Perhaps I'll include a lock of your hair."

  Zoe gasped a breath; it choked in her throat. "Are you mad?"

  "Yes," answered Rez serenely. "I think I must be." She smiled. "I told you there were consequences to my Gift. For every glory, a price. Isn't that what the council used to teach us? Stand up, my dear. Do stand up. You don't want to die on your knees."

  Zoe climbed to her feet. She faced the old woman. Rhys did not reappear.

  "I'm not so ill informed as to think this will work on you," Rez said, lifting the manacle. "I did a little research after you thieved back my creature in the basement. That's yet another fine Gift of yours, young Zoe, immunity to Draumr. So I'm going to have to destroy you the human way. With a bullet. Or an arrow. Whichever gets you first." She tipped her head to the black rounded entrance nearby; the twists of her coronet shifted between gold and gray by the candlelight. "Do you know why I chose this place for my home? Because of the music. You think it's soft at first, but it's deceptive, and distracting. It's nearly solid, you see. Nothing beyond it reaches you easily, not scent or sound. Go ahead and Turn invisible, if you wish. My men will hit you anyway."

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Zoe vanished. She went unseen, sprinting at the same time, bending and turning and racing toward the pale blue figure that was her enemy, who had murdered Zoe's two drakon and her heart. She felt her lips curl back in a silent snarl, heard the sudden commotion of feet scraping stone, hammers cocking and the creak of strings from bows, but before she could even finish her dash to the bed a deep gray column of smoke fountained from the ceiling to the floor, became a man standing behind the old woman with one arm around her chest and razor-sharp talons jabbed up high against her throat.

  "Hold,"he bellowed in French, a single word that crashed through the cavern, gained pitch and echo, and deafened. He stood tall and straight, and his eyes glowed poisonous bright green; a thread of scarlet snaked fast down Rez's neck. "Hold or I kill her now!"

  Like a marionette on strings, Zoe did as all the others: She stopped in place, staring at the wrinkled woman and the taloned man, the light gliding over them, shifting and changing.

  "Zoe," said the dragon-eyed man, and she finished the distance between them at a jog, still invisible, touched her hand to his arm.

  Rez's gaze shifted. She seemed to see Zoe standing before them; she smiled once again, beatific. "Adieu."

  She blurred. There was no better word for it; she was solid one second and a blur the next, and the next second after that, Rhys's claws closed upon empty air.

  Rez was gone. Not invisible, not smoke. Just gone.

  "Well," said Rhys, stepping back. "That didn't go right."

  Someone shot at them. Zoe ducked and Rhys Turned back to smoke, and the bullet whizzed by and pinged against the stone wall. As if that single retort had tightened all the other fingers, pistols fired from all corners; gunpowder sparked; arrows whistled past, up and down, puncturing the bed, the golden screen, the harpsichord. Zoe's thigh.

  She cried out and collapsed to the carpet, rolling, clutching the shaft of wood. It was perceptible even if she was not, three rows of bright yellow feathers, and nearly at once a hail of new fire came toward her.

  She rolled. She screamed and broke the feathered part of it from her leg, tossed it away—but a bullet found her hand, and another ricocheted off the floor, spraying chips along her body.

  Without noise, without wavering, a shadow formed above her. It was huge; it blocked out all the light and the arrows, it crouched over her and fashioned sounds not from its own throat, but from the thrash of its tail belting the Others, from its claws—metallic claws, razored claws—scraping sparks along the limestone, digging trenches, swiping at men. Shrieks and blood, more gunfire, bullets that bounced off him and struck stone. She lay on her back and stared up at his belly, the scales that glistened there, thick and glassy and emerald, shielding them both from the worst of the assault.

  The dragon reared, still thrashing, and began to move, taking out everything in his path. She heard wood splintering, harpsichord strings twanging in a jarring medley. Zoe maneuvered to her hands and knees and crawled with him, she didn't know where, but it was clear they couldn't go much farther like this. He was too large to fit into any of the tunnels.

  She scrambled out from beneath him. He'd drawn them both near one of the black open entrances, and she scratched at the floor with her fingers, dragging herself upright. She hopped on one leg and kept her shot hand close to her chest, pressed against his neck so he'd know she was there—hot, his scales burning hot, and humans yelling behind him—slipped around the pair of men frantically reloading their guns and hurried down the passage.

  She felt him Turn to smoke behind her, but he didn't follow. Zoe stopped, grimacing, reeling against a wall, and from inside the cavern came fresh shouts and then a rumbling. Stones falling. Heavy stones, their impact shaking the earth. A rush of limestone dust devoured the two men with guns, began to boil toward her.

  She lurched away again. When she glanced back she saw at last a trail of blood behind her in the final, clouding light; as it left her body it became visible, slick and dark against the paler stone.

  She clutched her good hand to her thigh and forced herself to move faster. The dust became plumes overtaking her, choking, and then one of them Turned into Rhys. He scooped her up into his arms and ran.

  It was ungainly and very swift. Zoe dropped her head to his chest and closed her eyes and let the deadened stone air wash all along her, wash all along until she hooked her arms around it and drifted away.

  * * *

  He took her back to the palace. It was the only place in the city he knew be
sides the cellar and the maison. He got her in by the last squeak of dawn, laid her down upon her bed, and was glad she'd passed out, because getting the barb of the arrow out of her leg was a vicious enough affair, especially for a creature with claws. Only one of them should be weeping over it, and he reckoned since she never woke, it might as well be him.

  But he was glad she didn't see.

  Her blood swamped his senses. She was whiter than the linens, whiter than lilies or the snow he'd trampled through. He'd purloined a bottle of cognac from one of the apartments below stairs, saturated her wounds with the alcohol, ripped up the sheet she'd used to hide her mirror of souls, and bound her leg and her hand. At least the bullet—he assumed it was a bullet—had gone straight through the flesh of her palm.

  He'd stuffed pillows beneath her leg, laid her hand upon her chest, then taken a moment to bend over to catch his breath, breathing in the scent of very fine liqueur and blood and her, his forehead pressed into the bed by her ear.

  He thought woozily that he might never touch cognac again.

  She was alive. She was breathing, she had a pulse. She was alive.

  One of the arrows had nicked him beneath a scale on his shoulder; compared to everything else he'd been through, it was no worse than getting pinked in a duel. But he cleaned that too, to be safe, and all the little scrapes and cuts along her feet and the left side of her body.

  Rhys spent the remainder of the dawn and all the next day sitting upright beside her, the near-empty bottle cradled between his thighs, fighting sleep. When he wasn't looking at her he was looking at the mirror. The crack slanting through it. It seemed normal to him again, just two pieces of broken glass over a mercury backing, foxing along one side. No sign of the beings he knew dwelled inside.

  "Where were you bastards," he muttered, as the afternoon light began to push against the velvet drapery. "Where were you last ruddy night, eh?"

  No one answered. Zee was asleep; the mirror was empty. He was talking to himself.

  The day passed. By twilight he knew she was in trouble, because the lily-white cast of her skin had deepened into ruby at her cheeks and forehead and chest, and her breathing was labored.

  He could go hunt a physician. He could go out into the streets and find one, lure him back here, bribe him into silence .

  There was not enough money for silence at the sight of Rhys. He understood that. He thought perhaps his claws were even shorter still than yesterday, but there was no mistaking them for anything else. They were still claws.

  He'd have to find a doctor, bring him here, have the man treat her, then kill him. It would be the only way.

  Even then, there was no guarantee that human medicine would work for her. Their drakon bodies were just enough different to make matters unpredictable. Darkfrith itself had no surgeons or physicians. They were strong as a species, resilient. When bones broke, mothers and fathers set them. When fevers struck, blindfolds were used to prevent the ill from Turning unawares. Sometimes the clan used tribal stones with healing songs. That was about it. Live or die; it would happen quickly either way.

  A poultice meant to drain the heat from a human fever might be the very thing that pushed Zoe over the edge of her resistance, and Rhys had no stones to heal her.

  His mind circled the question wearily, the same problem and solution, over and over. Find a physician. Bring him here. Get the medicine. Kill him.

  Rhys lay beside her on the bed, atop the covers. He turned his hand over and drew his knuckles down her soft burning skin from her chest to her stomach, back up to rest over her heart.

  "Would you forgive me that?" he whispered. "Would you forgive me?"

  Talking to himself again. He already knew the answer.

  The bronze-plated portions of the roof of the Palais de Tuileries had long ago corroded into green. She'd noticed it the way she'd noticed all the details of her sanctuary, the rows and rows of windows, the giant squared dome dividing its middle, the stately columns wrapped around its facade, chimneys wider than houses sprouting up from its ends.

  But it wasn't any of those things Zoe first saw when she opened her eyes. She saw the green roof, wide and pretty against a bright blue sky, a rim of snow sugaring its raised edges. Sky blue, sea-green, white. The bronze didn't sing but it hummed, a calm and soothing drone that wrapped her in warmth.

  She was warm, she realized. She felt air cool on her skin, and warmth where she was held. A voice was speaking in her ear.

  A broken voice, a ruined voice, going from husky to nearly normal, cracking in places, just as an adolescent boy's might do.

  "... in my tea, just to annoy me. And that's when I first realized I loved you."

  "I didn't." Zoe sighed and cleared her throat as the arms holding her abruptly tightened. "I did not put mud in your tea ."

  "You did." Rhys was clutching her so hard it began to hurt; he was seated, and she was cradled on his lap, and he was resting his cheek upon her head. She felt a deep, faint tremor in his bones, quaking through them both. "Liar. We were twelve, and you did."

  ". didn't put it in your tea just to annoy you," she finished. Her mouth was so dry; it sucked her words into a whisper. "I put it there to teach you a lesson. You wouldn't stop teasing me. I had to knock you down a peg."

  He rubbed his face into her hair. "Poor Zee. There's never a chance of that. Ask any of the elders. I'm deuced hard to train."

  "Like a colicky mule."

  "Exactly." He took a breath as if to say something more, but only released it hard. The trembling grew stronger, then, slowly, began to fade.

  She blinked again at the roof, her mind still processing what it meant. They were outside. On the roof of Tuileries. With all of Paris spread before them, the great crowded city dappled white beneath the arching sky.

  She stirred against his grip. His arms loosened slightly, enough for her to sit up—and instantly regret it. Pain shot up her hip, spread like fire ants through her right hand.

  "What are we doing here?"

  "I wanted—I just wanted you to be outside, in the sun. Away from all that gloom and dust. We're beings of the firmament. I thought it might help."

  "Help?"

  He kissed her temple. The scrape of his chin was actually painful. "You've been out for a while, love. Two days."

  "What? Are you serious?"

  "Never more."

  She leaned back in his arms. He was whiskered and red-eyed, his brown hair blown into knots with the wind, rolling into tangles over his shoulders; the golden dragon silk wouldn't tangle, and still rippled free. "You look like hell."

  "Now, see, were I less of a gentleman, I might point out that you've looked better yourself. Lucky for you I'm so well-bred. I'll say merely that you're quite fetching in that old sheet. And the lack of blood to your face lends you a fashionable air of malaise." He tried to smile but it was like a clay mask cracking apart, brittle and bleak. He gave it up, shook his head. "God, Zee. You scared the life out of me. Don't do it again, I beg you. If there's any mercy at all in your heart, you'll never scare me like that again."

  It came back to her then, all of it. The quarries and the arrows and the dancing shadows. The madwoman who claimed to be one of them.

  "We lost, didn't we?" she asked quietly.

  "Lost? I'd say not. We're still here, aren't we?"

  "Rhys."

  "Zoe." He gazed back at her, grave. "We're still alive. A great many of them are not." "How can you be certain?"

  "Unless humans have developed the ability to allow solid stone to pass through them unimpeded "Oh."

  "They're dead," he said. His hand curved around her cheek, urging her to rest back against his chest, claws poking through her hair. She allowed it, enjoying the fresh warmth of him, the comfort of his touch, even with the talons. "I did my best to ensure it."

  "But she escaped. That woman."

  He said nothing. He rocked them both back and forth a little, balanced upon the pitched humming roof. A lock of her hair flipp
ed up over his arms, glinting against his skin.

  "We've got to warn the tribe." Zoe closed the fingers of her bandaged hand, testing the ache. "They don't know about her. We've got to warn them. And Sandu—him as well."

  "Yes."

  "We could post letters," she said, tipping her chin to see his. "Today. Tell them everything." "Yes," he said again.

  She understood what he was not saying: that a letter would be slow. That far swifter than the post, than carriages or boats, was a dragon in flight. Even if it traveled only at night. Even with a wounded woman on its back.

  It would mean her return home. No excuses, no recourse. She'd face censure from the council, Cerise's tears. Marriage and a title and stares, probably stares and sly whispers for the rest of her life. Once they knew all her tricks she'd not elude them again. She'd be watched. She'd be locked to the shire forever.

  With him.

  Far in the distance a flock of birds rose in a dark fluttery cloud, veered a circle and flew off toward the sun.

  "Will you hate it?" he asked softly. "Will you come to hate me?"

  "No. I could never ...Hate is such a dreadful word."

  "What about love, then? Do you think you might ever love me?"

  Horses and coaches and donkeys below, the low of cattle being driven down the Quai, the calls of the street vendors. Notes from a solo being stroked from a violin reaching them in fits and starts along the wind. The gardens of Tuileries, empty and frozen with silence.

  "Yes," Zoe said.

  "When?" He'd stopped rocking.

  "Just now." She paused. "Perhaps before."

  She heard his exhale, felt it, the tremble in his arms returning.

  "Days ago," she said, "or perhaps before even that. When you told me I didn't like to cook." "You don't!"

  "I know that, Lord Rhys of Chasen Manor, of Darkfrith. I was just surprised that you knew it too."