Dance of Thieves

by Mary E. Pearson

KAZI

  The fire blazed and the smell of fat dripping from the meimol into the flames was intoxicating, a sweet perfume finer than any found in the jehendra. I breathed it in, heady with its scent, and my stomach churned in anticipation.

  The hot throb of the blisters was gone. More wish stalks were wrapped on my feet. Jase had used his own shredded shirt to make a bandage, then carried me up to the ruins. I told him I could walk, but he had insisted I needed to give the wish stalks a chance to do their magic. We found a snug, dark cubby among the tumbled and leaning walls of the ruins, and between the roasting meimol and the dark cave with a roof I could almost touch, I was sure the gods had finally taken mercy on that poor, miserable wretch, Kazi, or they had just tired of tormenting her.

  The storm had passed quickly—gone as fast as it had come. As soon as we reached the foot of the ruins, Jase had spotted several mounds and managed to spear a meimol on his second try.

  Once the meimol had sizzled to perfection, we sat and ate, savoring the juicy dark meat, sucking on each bone, licking our fingers noisily with delight, and talking about some of our other favorite foods. He mentioned many that I had never heard of before, braised rabbit with fool’s sauce, huckleberry meringue puffs, and bergoo stew. I was surprised to learn that they had four cooks at Tor’s Watch, but his aunt did most of the cooking. I told him about Berdi’s fish stew that was a staple at Sanctum Hall. “I could eat it for every meal,” I said. “And then there are sage cakes.” I sighed longingly.

  “Never heard of those.”

  “Then you’ve missed out. They’re a heavenly vagabond specialty that can bring me to my knees.”

  “And oranges.” His mouth pulled in a smirk, the fire casting a warm glow on his cheek. “You like oranges.”

  I smiled and conceded. “Yes, probably my favorite of all. I never had one as a child. It wasn’t until I—” I caught myself before I revealed too much.

  His brows rose. “Until you what?”

  “Until I traveled to Dalbreck that I tasted one. Oranges aren’t available in Venda.”

  His eyes drilled into me, knowing I was lying, and I hated that about him, that he was able to read beyond my face and words. He was quiet, and I suspected he mulled over what I said—or didn’t say. He finally asked how my feet were doing.

  “Not stinging anymore. I think they’ll be fine by morning.”

  It was another one of those awkward moments. Our eyes meeting, lingering, looking away. After all we had been through, it seemed there should be no awkwardness left between us, but this was different. Every pause was full, like an overfilled sack of grain, the seams strained, ready to spill, filled with something we dared not explore.

  “Tell me another story,” I said.

  He nodded. “First, let me get some more wood for the fire.” He eyed the chain between us. Where one of us went, so did the other. “You up to it?”

  “I told you, the pain is gone, and I have these fine shoes you made me.” He stood and reached out, helping me to my feet. My soles were tender, but the discomfort wasn’t unbearable, especially with the cushion of the bandages. We walked to the cave mouth and out onto the long wide ledge that rimmed it. Coming up the hill to the ruin, I had only seen the bank and brush in front of me. Now, looking out in the other direction from the ledge, I saw a dizzying sky of stars meeting an infinite empty plain lit only by a three-quarter moon.

  “Look. Up there,” Jase said, pointing into the sky. “That’s Aris’s Heart. And right next to it is—”

  I turned, my head swimming, and I reached for the ruin wall. Jase grabbed and steadied me.

  “I just got up too fast,” I said.

  He gazed down at me, I knew, not buying it. He had known about my strange uneasiness ever since that first night when he had asked me for a riddle in the forest.

  “What did they do to you, Kazi?” His voice was low, earnest. Even in the dim light, I was able to see the worry in his eyes.

  I pretended I didn’t know what he was talking about. “Who did what?”

  “Who made you afraid of an open world? An open sky? Was it Venda? Your parents?”

  “No one did anything,” I answered quietly.

  “Then hold on to me,” he said. “Let me show you the stars.”

  * * *

  We stood on the ledge, and he told me stories. He began with the lowest star on the horizon, Thieves’ Gold he called it, because it had a distinct goldish cast. I held on to his arm, only concentrating on the single star and not everything that surrounded it, concentrating on Jase’s voice and the story he wove around the glimmering gold nugget and the thieves who had tucked it into the sky, forgetting where they had buried their treasure.

  He moved on to another cluster of stars, Eagle’s Nest, with its three bright eggs, and then another cluster, and another, until soon the whole sky was not a sky at all but a dark parchment of glittering stories, each one connected to the next. And as he spoke, some stars streaked across the sky, alive, leaving burning tails behind them, and for those he had stories too. “They’re the Lost Horses of Hetisha, abandoned when she fell from her chariot to the earth. They race across the heavens now, always circling, always searching for her. It’s said that if she’s ever found, their stars will join with her chariot once again and be the brightest in the night sky.”

  I stared where a streaking star had just disappeared, and an ache grew inside me. Maybe the throbbing was for a glittering sky I had never truly seen before, or maybe it was the story he told me about the Lost Horses. Maybe it was the thought of them circling the heavens for millennia that ached beneath my ribs. They will never find her, I thought. She is gone.

  “And I think…” He turned toward me. “That’s about it.” Our faces were unexpectedly close, the moonlight cutting across his cheekbone, and suddenly I wasn’t thinking about stars or runaway horses.

  I had forgotten that I was still gripping his arm and I loosened my hold, returning my hand to my side.

  “I guess I should gather a few branches for the fire,” he said.

  “I’ll help you.” I stepped forward, both of us taking quick clumsy steps, and we bumped into each other, then tripped, the ruin wall keeping both of us from stumbling to the ground. Now his face was even closer, my back pressed to the wall, his arm braced against it. There were no more diversions, no more chances to look away. It was as though we had both given in to a moment that had been circling, waiting, trying to pounce on us all along. And now it had.

  He swallowed, his face only inches from mine. Long silent seconds passed, and it felt like all the world and stars and sky were closing in on us, pressing us nearer to each other.

  “Do you suppose,” he finally whispered, “that this could be part of making … the best of it?”

  My breath fluttered faintly in my chest. There were a hundred things I should have said, but instead I answered, “I think it could be.”

  His head tilted to the side, his face lowering, and his lips barely brushed mine, tender, slowly, leaving time for me to turn away, but I didn’t. I didn’t want to. His hand slid behind my back, drawing my hips to his. Rivers of heat throbbed inside me, and then his mouth pressed to mine, his tongue parting my lips, warm, sweet, gentle. His breath grew heavy and his arms closed around, drawing me closer, the heat of his touch like a fiery brand against the small of my back. My hands glided over his shoulder blades, his skin searing my fingers, his muscles tense, hard. My head spun, but in a way that I wanted to sink into, to drown in the warmth of it. I was falling into a vast dark sky and I didn’t care. I wanted to disappear into it. I wanted more. Our tongues explored, soft, warm, and then he pulled away, his eyes searching mine, wondering, asking. Should he stop?

  No, I thought. No. Don’t stop.

  His gaze held, waiting, as if he needed to hear me say it aloud.

  My breaths shuddered, still hot in my chest. I knew I had made a big mistake, but it was a glorious one, and I wanted to make it over and over again. But there w
as something in his eyes, something genuine and earnest and true that made me pause. This was more than just making the best of it, this was something taking root, a seed being planted. But it was a seed that couldn’t be planted.

  You are Rahtan, Kazi. You have a promise to keep, and you will betray him eventually. Don’t do this.

  A fist tightened in my gut. It wasn’t right. This was a line I couldn’t cross. My hands slid around to his chest to push him away, but then I hesitated, my palms burning against his skin, and slowly they slid upward, rising, my fingers raking through his hair, lacing behind his head, and I pulled his mouth back to mine.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  KAZI

  I had always heard the ghosts.

  Death was no stranger in Venda. He had walked the streets boldly, rubbing his bony elbows against passersby whose cheeks were as gaunt as his own, his wide grin spotting you from afar, whispering, You, you are next. And I would whisper back, Not yet, not today. Everyone in Venda was always just a season away from death, including me, depending on which way death turned, and his frozen grin had long ceased to frighten me.

  So when I saw the ghosts in Bone Channel, their bony fingers reaching out, pawing my feet, their rattled voices warning, Turn back, do not pass this way, I ignored them.

  Do not pass this way.

  But we did.

  And now we couldn’t turn back. We had fallen through a hole and come out on the other side in a different world, a temporary world that was upside-down, where everything sounded, felt, and tasted different, and every fleeting flavor of it was dangerously sweet.

  Jase leaned close, lifting my chin, his lips meeting mine—the best of it, that’s what we told ourselves, over and over again as one day rolled into the next; we were only making the best of it. It was a story, a riddle, a wish stalk that we wove into every kiss, a sweet powdered sugar that would melt and disappear on the end of our tongues, but for now it was real enough. What was the harm? We were surviving.

  But as the miles we walked added up, our steps whispered a different message, each one bringing us closer to the world we had left. Heaviness would crouch in my gut, a hidden animal that wasn’t fooled, no matter the stories we told ourselves. He might be one kind of person out here, but back there, he was the enemy, the lawless head of a lawless family—a family that possibly harbored a murderous war criminal who was a threat to the entire continent, and if they did, he and his family would pay. Here, I might be a girl who had helped him escape from hunters, helped heal his wounds, the girl who loved listening to his stories, but there, in the real world, I was entrusted with a job by the Queen of Venda. I was as loyal to her as he was to his family, and I would betray him when the time came. I would bring his family and dynasty to their knees. His world was about to end.

  The best of it.

  We were only making the best of it.

  For now.

  It was our story. It didn’t have to have a happy beginning or a happy ending, but the middle was a feast at a banquet, a rich soapy bath, a night’s rest at an inn and a full stomach, a warm chest nestled up against my back, the soft heat of lips at my nape, stories whispered in my ear.

  We stopped midmorning to drink at a spring, then rested in the shade of an alder. Foliage was growing thicker now, the plains behind us, the foothills steeper, the mountains topped with forests looming just behind them. I lay on my back and he hovered next to me, propped on one elbow. His finger traced a line along my jaw. He didn’t ask anymore what had been done to me. Now it seemed he only wanted to erase it, wash it from my memory, and for now, I let him.

  “Kazi,” he whispered against my cheek. And then his lips slid down my neck, and I forgot once again about the world we were heading into and thought only about this one.

  * * *

  Another night closed in, a midnight blanket of clouds covering the stars, making our words safer. The darkness mercifully swallowed what might be seen in our eyes.

  What is this, Kazi?

  I knew what he meant. This. What was this between us? Just what game were we playing?

  I had wondered too. Because now our kisses were filled with pauses, our gazes filled with more questions instead of fewer.

  I don’t know, Jase.

  What do you feel?

  Your lips, your hands, your heartbeat.

  No, Kazi, in here, what do you feel in here?

  His finger stroked a line down the center of my chest.

  I felt an ache pressing within. A need I couldn’t name.

  I don’t know.

  I didn’t want to know.

  Let me taste your mouth, I whispered. Don’t make me think.

  * * *

  I screamed with joy when we came upon a deep pool to bathe in. We rushed toward it, stumbling, squealing, jumping into the cool crystal water. When I surfaced, he splashed me and an all-out war began, the pool erupting with a maelstrom of blinding water and laughter, until he finally grabbed my wrists so I couldn’t move. Calm returned, but not to his eyes. They churned with a different kind of storm. I looked at his face, water dripping from his hair and chin, his lashes clumped together with wetness.

  “I like you, Jase Ballenger,” I said softly. “I think if you weren’t a thief, we might be friends.”

  “And if you didn’t whisk out knives and threaten to cut pretty necks, I think we might be friends too.”

  I wrinkled my nose. “Oh, how obsessed you are with your pretty neck.”

  His hands tightened on my wrists. He pulled me close, his teeth nipping at my neck and between kisses, he whispered, “It is not my neck I am obsessed with, Kazi of Brightmist.”

  * * *

  A cooling breeze lifted my hair, the scent of pine wafting through it, high grass swaying around our knees. We had left early, the screech of a racaa startling us both awake. It flew low, its shadow nearly touching both sides of the valley. Jase confirmed that their primary diet was antelope, occasionally snatching foals or sheep, but he assured me he had never heard of them taking humans. “At least not more than once or twice. It’s never worried me, though. I hear they favor black-haired beauties—with their sour, tough meat and all.”

  I jabbed him with my elbow. “Where I go, you go, so you better hope it finds a nice juicy antelope today.”

  By midmorning, the breeze was gone, the sun relentless, and the still air seemed to hold a foreboding hum. Maybe it was just our footsteps swishing through the grass or the endless rattle of the chain dragging between us. Maybe it sounded like a timepiece ticking off our steps.

  “Let’s take a break,” I said, and we headed for a stand of birch and lay beneath the shade on a thick bed of summer grass. But even without the rattle of the chain and the swish of our footsteps, I still heard a persistent hum and tick in the stillness of the air. It vibrated through my bones like a quiet warning. “Tell me a story, Jase,” I said. “Something else about your family history.” Anything to block the hum and the tick.

  He told me the story of Miandre. She was the first mother of all Ballengers. She came to Tor’s Watch with Greyson as part of the surviving Remnant when she was thirteen. She was only a child herself but was forced to lead along with Greyson because the others were even younger. Like Greyson, she had watched her last living relative murdered by scavengers, so they had a common goal to create a haven where no scavenger could hurt them again. Stone by stone, the fortress they founded grew over the centuries, but they were the beginning of Tor’s Watch. “We were the first country, or as you Vendans would call it, the first kingdom.” I heard the pride in his voice. Even his eyes danced with light as he spoke.

  The lines of Morrighese, Vendan, and Dalbretch history had blurred and overlapped each other long ago, but it was well recognized by all the kingdoms that Morrighan was the first to be established, not a rocky out-of-the-way fortress no one had heard of until recently. And from Morrighan the other kingdoms were born. Even Venda had been only a wild territory with no official name until the first bor
ders were drawn. Tor’s Watch was small and isolated. It was little surprise that Jase knew nothing of the history of the entire continent. I only learned most of it myself after I went to live at the Sanctum.

  “And all of this is written in the books you told me about?”

  “Yes,” he said confidently. “Every word. It was Commander Ballenger’s last order to his grandson, to write it all down, and Greyson did, along with the surviving Remnant, but it was mostly he and Miandre who recorded what had happened. It wasn’t until almost a decade later that the two of them married, and the Ballenger line began. They had eight children together.”

  Babies. The Ballenger women seemed to be quite fertile.

  I had been careful not to cross that unwanted line that might bind Jase and me together forever—out here there was no protection for that. I wasn’t going to risk creating a child, not when this world we were living in would disappear in only a day or two when we fell back into the other one, and soon I would return to Venda. Jase didn’t push me, as if he didn’t want to cross that line either. We might be deluding ourselves for now, but he was as driven as I was and his connection to home was strong. It showed in his face and his determined pace. Even our rests he kept short, only breaking when we came to a spring, stream, or shade.

  “Did it hurt?” I asked, my hand skimming the feathers tattooed across his shoulder and chest.

  “Like hell. I was fifteen and too stupid to know how much it would hurt. But I was eager to get it a year early. My brothers didn’t get theirs until they were sixteen.”

  “Why did you want it early?”

  He shrugged. “To prove myself, I guess. It seemed important at the time. My younger brother and sister had died unexpectedly from an illness, we’d just gotten word about the new treaties that were already over a year old that no one had bothered to tell us about, and then there had been an attack on one of our farmsteads. They destroyed everything and killed two of our hands and my cousin. Our world seemed to be falling apart. I guess getting the tattoo was my way of trying to prove it wasn’t. It was something permanent that said our family and legacy would survive. My father tried to warn me, but I was stubborn and insisted. I wailed like a baby when I got it—and that was just with the first feather.”