Dreaming Death

by J. Kathleen Cheney

  Having reached them, Kai glanced between Mikael and the girl, his expression displeased. Elisabet stayed back several feet as Mikael attempted to smooth Kai’s ruffled feathers. “Have you met Miss Anjir yet, Kai?”

  The look Kai gave him could have frozen the river. “We weren’t introduced, but yes.”

  “I’m not sure why you’re angry with me,” she said.

  Kai’s nostrils flared white around the edges. “I’m not angry with you. There are things I should have been told long ago.”

  Mikael grimaced. Like Dahar, Kai hated to be left out of anything. Mikael could only wonder how long Kai had known he had cousins. He was not going to ask that.

  “Which isn’t my fault,” she said in an irritated voice.

  Mikael glanced at her, surprised at her tone, and then realized she’d reflected Kai’s anger. The Lucas Family trained their children not to do so, but it was, in Mikael’s opinion, simply human nature.

  The girl paused with her glove halfway pulled on and then stuck her hand in a pocket and wrapped her fingers around something within, as if for reassurance. “I’m sorry.”

  Kai said nothing. Mikael thought calm at the girl, like wishing the waters of a lake to be still.

  She hid a yawn behind the other gloved hand. “If you do that much more, Mr. Lee, I’m going to fall asleep.”

  Mikael stopped, appalled. She was extremely susceptible to him. He would have to remember to guard his thoughts around this girl. She said nothing, but an apologetic smile touched her lips.

  “Why exactly did the colonel bring you here?” Kai asked her. “We have work to do.”

  Kai had evidently made up his mind to dislike Miss Anjir, even if she was his cousin.

  “The colonel has not chosen to enlighten me as to his intention,” she replied, lifting her chin and turning her face away from Kai as she answered. “I suggest you ask him.”

  Don’t antagonize Kai. Mikael formed the words in his mind, saying it in his head clearly and slowly. He hoped the girl would pick up something of it.

  Her head turned in his direction. “I—would—not—if—he—didn’t—me,” she said with exaggerated slowness.

  Kai folded his arms across his chest, looking annoyed.

  Try to think nice thoughts. Smile, Mikael thought at her. He’d somehow gotten off on the wrong foot with Kai, and four years had not improved their working relationship. He hoped she might do better.

  She sighed and turned a forced smile toward Kai. “I don’t know what I could do that you can’t, but the colonel has an idea he wants me to try. That’s all I know, sir.”

  The door opened inward, and Cerradine stepped into the hallway. He took in the group standing there, his eyebrows raised. “Mikael, I’m glad you’re here. Saves me sending runners after you.” He reached out, took the girl’s hand, and placed it on his sleeve. “Why don’t we all go inside?”

  Kai scowled at Mikael, who figured he shouldn’t comment.

  The girl followed the colonel back into the office. He settled her in Mikael’s favorite chair, so Mikael took the other leather one, leaving the wooden chairs for Kai. Kai always chose those anyway. Elisabet assumed her regular post at the door.

  “First things first,” Dahar said as he perched on the edge of his desk, addressing Mikael and Kai. “I suppose you both met Miss Anjir out in the hallway. Miss Anjir’s mother is my half sister. That makes Madam Anjir your aunt and Miss Anjir your cousin, Kai, although that’s never been made public because Madam Anjir doesn’t want it to be.”

  Kai glowered. “May I tell my sisters? Or my aunt?”

  “Your sisters don’t have any need to know, Kai,” Dahar said. “It appears that Deborah, however, has known for some time.”

  The girl folded her gloved hands in her lap, looking regretful. She had very expressive features, Mikael noted, something Lucas girls learned to quell very young. “You mean the doctor who comes to watch me sometimes?” she asked softly.

  “Infirmarian,” Kai corrected.

  Dahar rolled his eyes.

  “They’re called infirmarians in the Lucas Family,” Mikael explained for her.

  Her head turned in his direction. “Why?”

  “Because they work in the infirmary,” Kai said.

  “Then why aren’t doctors called hospitalians?”

  Mikael pressed his lips together to hold in a laugh.

  “Will the three of you be quiet?” Dahar interjected.

  Now you’ve gotten us in trouble, Mikael thought at her.

  Her lips turned up at the corners, and Dahar scowled at them both.

  Mikael knew better than to think Dahar sensed what he thought, but apparently Dahar had picked up something. Mikael resolved to behave himself. The girl took the end of her braid and flipped it in his direction, which he took to signify her doubt that he could accomplish such a feat.

  “Stop that,” Dahar said, his scowl unabated. “Jon has a strange idea, entailing a blending of your talents. Dreamers have worked with touch-sensitives in the past.”

  Mikael sat up straighter. The House of Vandriyen did have a history of working with touch-sensitives to understand their dreams, running all the way back to their first encounters with the Six Families. It had never occurred to him to think such an option might work for him, primarily because he hadn’t thought any touch-sensitives existed.

  The girl seemed fascinated. “You mean there have been people with dreams like his before?”

  “Well, it runs in Mr. Lee’s bloodlines, but he’s an aberration. Dreamers usually don’t broadcast their dreams, and they almost never dream about what he does,” Dahar explained.

  “Our idea,” Cerradine said, “is for Mikael to recall his last dream. Miss Anjir might be able to pull out more detail, something that will help us stop the killers.”

  Kai folded his arms over his chest, his expression sour. Mikael glanced over at the girl and then back to the colonel. “I never pick up specifics, Colonel. I get emotions and sensations and a few memories, but not much else.”

  “Our belief is that you’re serving as a bridge to the victim at the time and place of the murder. What happened must be in your dream somewhere. Otherwise you wouldn’t be able to recall things when you see their bodies.”

  Our belief had to mean his and Deborah’s. “But I can’t voluntarily access whatever’s there, Colonel. I’ve never been able to. Do you think she can?”

  Miss Anjir didn’t seem to have heard this plan before either.

  “Possibly. We need to know what these men look like, how many there are, how they’re choosing their victims. You’re our only witness, Mikael, and she’s interrogated witnesses before.”

  Mikael knew Cerradine had used her for that, but he’d always assumed she was much older. It left a bad taste in his mouth to think of a girl this young exposed to such things.

  “It’s my choice,” she said. “And I am not a child.”

  How many times a day does she say that? By Larossan standards, she was old enough to make such decisions for herself. “She’s already dreamed this dream,” Mikael said to the colonel. “Why would it help to go through it again?”

  Cerradine ran a hand through his white hair. “She dreams only what you broadcast. She doesn’t see what you dream. If she was touching you, she might get at something more definite.”

  Mikael swallowed. It was one thing for her to touch his hand. It was something else entirely to invite her to go wandering through his thoughts.

  “I’m very good at keeping secrets,” she reminded him.

  He wondered vaguely how many people she touched in the course of a day. Larossans weren’t overly prone to touching, but she surely touched her own family and the colonel’s people. She had to hold in what she knew about each of them, or no one would ever come near her. “Very well, what do I do?”


  “If you tried to remember your last dream, she could try to see that,” Cerradine suggested.

  “Whenever I do try to recall a dream,” he admitted, “I just fall asleep.”

  “She might be able to follow you, Mikael.”

  “I see in my dreams.” The girl stood and, without direction, came to wait in front of him. “Well, most of them.”

  How does she know where I am?

  “It’s like knowing where a crow is when it’s cawing,” she said with a touch of exasperation in her voice. “And I figured you would have reacted if I was about to trip over anything.”

  She was using his mind like a spare set of eyes. What a handy trick.

  “You’re loud. If I was trying to find her,” Miss Anjir said with a tilt of her head toward where Elisabet stood by the door, “I would probably fall flat on my face because she’s so quiet.”

  Kai got up and briskly walked to the other side of the room, waiting near Elisabet as if he had secrets to hide. Mikael watched him go, briefly thinking perhaps he too should run.

  The girl pulled off her gloves, carefully tucked them in the pocket hidden on a seam of her pink tunic, and reached out to touch his face. Mikael could feel the heat of her skin before her fingers made contact. He flinched back, unable to quell the instinctive response.

  Miss Anjir’s brows drew together.

  “I’m sorry.” He doubted that Cerradine had any idea how personal this was. His dreams were his own private dance with death. To take someone else there seemed almost voyeuristic. Since the very first one, he’d struggled not to expose others to them.

  She frowned, the line between her brows deepening. “This might be easier if we had some . . . um, space,” she hinted to the two older men. “You’re worrying very noisily.”

  Are they? Mikael forced down his surprise.

  Dahar and Cerradine removed themselves to the far side of the office, leaving her alone with him. She stood only inches away from Mikael, her hands poised on either side of his face. Her eyes, he noticed, were a cool brown, exactly the same color as her hair.

  “That’s what my mother says,” she whispered. “You should concentrate. Trust me.”

  He’d asked her to trust him, so it only seemed fair. He closed his eyes. He felt the warmth of her hands touching his cheeks, his jaw. She must be uncomfortable leaning over him like this for so long. This would be much easier if she just sat in his lap, he decided, thinking that he would much rather have her in his lap than Merival.

  Mikael panicked, grabbing her wrists to pull her hands away from his face. “I don’t think this is a good idea,” he said in a tight voice.

  For a second, she didn’t respond. “I’m not offended,” she whispered back.

  “That was . . . inappropriate. I’m sorry.” He knew he was blushing.

  “People think what they think, Mr. Lee,” she said as if it were of no import. “I can’t see you blushing, so it doesn’t matter. Who is Merival?”

  He was not going to explain that. He felt grateful the colonel and Dahar were on the other side of the office, unable to hear this conversation. He drew a deep breath and marshaled his thoughts, trying to focus on last night’s dream. As if sensing his renewed resolve, she laid her hands against his face.

  He put himself into the memory of his dream. He felt her hands on him. His heart beat faster, trying to answer the fear that surged through his veins.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Mikael Lee smelled of soap, wool, and, oddly enough, lemon.

  He was afraid—always afraid he’d slip away and die, with everything forgotten and no purpose served. The fear beat through his mind like the frantic wings of a bird trapped inside the house. He wanted to live, but it was hard to let go when they died.

  Shironne tried to tear away, shocked at the strength of the pull he exerted on her, unlike any mind she’d ever felt before. Mikael Lee’s thoughts wrapped themselves around her, pulling her down with him into sleep.

  He was the woman. Suddenly his terror became very clear to her. He became the victim, tangled into the woman’s feelings and fear. The colonel had told Shironne that, but she’d never truly understood until now. Together they shared the woman’s confusion and fear. They felt her numbness and utter helplessness.

  Mikael’s memories of the dream flowed around her, blurry and tattered. The faces of the woman’s killers were flesh-colored smears, holes already stretching into the fabric of them, doorways into nothingness. The memory had begun to rot away, like moldering leaves found under a hedge in spring.

  Someone watched it all, familiar but unformed, another of those tattered faces, but apart from them.

  One of the attackers reached out a crumbling hand then, touching the woman’s face, a violation that felt worse than the helplessness. She couldn’t understand why that one touch should be so terrible among all the others, but to Shironne it seemed as if that hand reached into her mind as well as the victim’s.

  Shironne felt the woman’s decision to give herself up to death, to escape the fear and humiliation. Suddenly calm, she knew she wasn’t alone. She was going to die, but Mikael would remember it all for her. He would avenge her.

  I have to escape; we’ll all three die together, even in this tattered memory.

  Shironne screamed at Mikael to wake, but he stayed with the woman, refusing to give up on this chance to understand, to preserve something of her. The third presence in the dream hung on as well, trying to reach them—almost as if he could extend his touch through the victim and, in doing so, reach Mikael himself.

  “Wake up!” Shironne yelled at him, determined not to let that other presence have him.

  Her lungs failed, forgetting how to breathe. Her time had run out.

  Shironne reached into her pocket and wrapped her hand around her focus. She forced herself into the crystal, seeking its calm to escape the horror of the dream. Anchored, she tore Mikael away from the dying woman.

  Shironne woke, drawing a deep breath into lungs that felt broken and aged. Disoriented, she discovered she’d sat down. Then, realizing she’d sat down in Mikael’s lap, she tried to jerk free. The top of her head cracked against his jaw. He yelped and pushed her away.

  She tumbled onto the floor, one slipper catching in the other trouser leg and keeping her from rising.

  “I bit my tongue,” Mikael mumbled. “I’m sorry.”

  He helped her stand, placing one hand under her elbow and pulling her up with his other hand. She could sense his embarrassment, too overwhelming to be shaped into words.

  “You deserve worse, stupid,” Shironne snapped, uncaring of the audience. “What did you think you were doing?”

  “I tried to remember everything that happened.” Why are you angry? his thoughts asked.

  “The next time I tell you to wake up, wake up, you idiot. I don’t need to know what it feels like to die. You don’t either, for that matter.” She wanted to shake him, like her father used to do to her when he was angry.

  “I’m sorry,” Mikael said again. His mind coiled and twisted, aghast at the danger in which he’d placed her. It repeated that apology over and over in half-formed words.

  Shironne stepped back. He must have to apologize to every person like herself every time he dreamed—atoning for actions done without effort or intention. He’d not intended to place her in danger. He’d simply done what he did. This was what he’d been created to do, and he had no idea how to protect himself from it.

  He needs to anchor himself in the world of the living. He needed something to prevent him from slipping away in tandem with one of the people about whom he dreamed, and he didn’t have a focus, did he?

  “I don’t think we made much progress,” he said over her head. That last wasn’t for her.

  Shironne removed her hand from his, deciding the colonel and Dahar had come near. “All I s
aw was the copy, and it’s faded,” Shironne told them. “But I’m sure about a couple of things I wasn’t before.”

  “What did you see?” the colonel asked.

  “There was someone there, just watching everything. A man, I think.”

  “Do you mean Mikael?” Dahar asked, a touch of condescension in his tone.

  She shook her head. “No. Mr. Lee became the victim. It was another witness, and I don’t think he was one of the killers either.”

  “Forced to watch?” Cerradine asked from somewhere nearer.

  “I don’t know,” Shironne said. “There was someone else who seemed to be . . . trying to reach Mikael. Like he was trying to reach through the victim to touch him.”

  Shock ran through Mikael, generating a shudder down Shironne’s spine.

  “How can someone touch me in a dream?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” she whispered. “The dream’s too faded.”

  “What do you mean by faded?” Dahar asked.

  “Memories are like leaves,” she said in Dahar’s direction. “They rot away after time. His memory of the dream is only hours old and already it’s beginning to fade, maybe because he was drugged.”

  “So you don’t think this will work?” the colonel asked.

  Shironne tried to get a sense of what Mikael thought, but his mind had gone closed, mulling over some idea. “Mr. Lee just showed me what he showed me last night. I think . . . um, I think I need to see what he sees, not what he shows people.”

  Mikael focused abruptly on her words. He didn’t like it, but he didn’t disagree. He must have reasoned out the same thing.

  “Do you understand what you’re suggesting?” he asked aloud.

  The colonel touched her shoulder. “What exactly are you saying?”

  “I need to see into the original dream, not a memory.”

  The colonel responded after a moment of furious calculation. “That can be arranged. Take him off the palace grounds to keep him away from all the sensitives this time. I might be able to get you there. What is the name of that place where Kai always finds him in the middle of the night?” he asked the room in general.