Nameless: A Tale of Beauty and Madness (TALES OF BEAUTY AND MADNESS)

by Lili St. Crow

  Nothing bad could happen to her here.

  Papa Vultusino, close to the culmination of the Kiss, lay on the massive four-poster bed. His barrel chest rose and fell steadily, and his breathing wasn’t a wheeze today. The candle flickered as she approached, and he opened his eyes.

  Propped on the snowy pillows, he didn’t look very ill until you got close. Then the red spark in his pupils, strengthening daily, became apparent. So did the papery thinness of his skin, and the deep-scored wrinkles as well as the fine dry lines.

  The Kiss took its own time, and it was burning away his mortality. When it finished he’d be one of the immortal Unbreathing, an Elder instead of a daywalker, and his only son would take his place as the living Vultusino of the Seven.

  If Nico could just stay out of trouble long enough.

  The chair pulled up to the bedside had a thick pink cushion and a straight back. The fireplace was empty, so he wasn’t cold today. That was a good sign. A large leatherbound book with yellowing pages lay open on the red silk comforter, and Papa’s wide capable hands—bony and spotted now, but still hard and solid—lay discarded on either side of it.

  Those hands held all the gentleness in the world. She remembered Papa bandaging a scrape on her knee as Marya fluttered in the background. Little girl sometimes need Papa to bind up the wound, Marya. Let me.

  Cami lowered herself down, gently. Her left hand was awkward with the bandage, but she scooped it gently under one of Papa’s, closed her other one over it. His skin was cooler than hers, and dry, calluses rasping.

  The rasp reminded her of the wooden man, but she didn’t want to think about that. So she just patted Papa’s hand, watching his face as it shifted and the red spark dimmed a little.

  He came back, bit by bit. Wet his lips with a paper-leaf tongue, and she glanced at the cut-crystal water pitcher on the nightstand next to the candle, rainbows shimmering in its angles. His hand squeezed a fraction—no, he wasn’t thirsty. His left eyebrow lifted a tiny bit, and he squeezed again. Very, very gently, with the strength of the Family that could injure or crush running in his bones, especially as he lay so close to the Kiss.

  He could feel the bandaging.

  Cami patted his hand once more, very gingerly. “It’s a-all r-right,” she whispered. Her stupid tongue wasn’t too bad in here. Papa had never told her to hurry up. He had always waited, with no trace of impatience. “J-just a scratch.” She decided to plunge right in. “N-nico b-b-bandaged it. D-don’t be m-m-mad—”

  Papa’s eyebrows drew together, a faint thundercloud. Cami stopped. Listened to the dry hiss of the candle burning, to his breathing, to the absolute stillness.

  She decided to risk a little more. “He w-w-wants you t-to be p-proud of him, Papa.”

  Papa sighed. If he only knew, that sigh said, and Cami nodded in agreement.

  Should I tell him about the wooden man? Maybe not. It’ll upset him, and he’ll be even madder at Nico.

  So instead she told him about Potentials class and the shattering beakers, how Ruby’s of course had broken with a terrific crack and Cami’s own had crumbled into fine crystalline dust—proof that she had Potential, and further proof that it hadn’t settled yet. You could never tell where someone’s ability to charm would end up. Air, water, earth, sometimes fire, metal, wood, crystals and light, Affinities showed up generally about the end of puberty. Always assuming, of course, that you didn’t Twist.

  Ellen’s beaker had turned into a solid jewel of water and glass, scintillating, and Sister Frederick’s Sainthood had nodded with warm approval, her apple-cheeks glistening.

  Papa listened, breathing steadily, and she plunged onward, into the stupid paper she had to do. His expression lightened as she spoke, slow and halting, the stutter receding as she relaxed and he began to look a little less gray. His hand warmed too, and when she talked about the Reeve a different gleam entered his gaze. After a little while his hand loosened, and Cami picked up the bone comb on the nightstand. She set his salt and pepper mane right again with careful, gentle strokes, leaning over the bed and smiling every time she glanced at him.

  It was just like crouching under his desk, in the long-ago. She would hide there, playing with his mirror-polished wingtips or just half asleep and listening as he made phone calls and attended to paperwork, Stevens murmuring advice or giving information in a monotone. Marya had turned the house upside down a few times looking for Cami until she started checking under Papa’s desk first; Nico had sometimes tried hiding there with her but was always summarily dragged out into the hall and sent back to his practices with Trigger.

  A Vultusino man must fight, Papa would say. Go learn how.

  Well, Nico had. Now Cami wondered if he would ever learn how to stop.

  When she’d set his mane to rights and talked about Ruby and Ellie some more, and explained the current crop of High Charm Calculus problems, she took his hand again. Lifted it gently, and pressed it against her cheek. “I’m s-sorry I w-was late,” she whispered.

  Papa was still for a long moment. His other hand lifted, slowly, and he patted her hair, very gently. Once, twice. She smiled, and his thin lips twitched in his still, pale face. The red sparks strengthened, and he gently took his hands away.

  She rose, slowly, lit a fresh candle from the old one. Left both burning, and gave his hand one last squeeze before padding quietly to the door.

  The hall was bright and oddly loud after the hush of the Room. She blinked, pulling the door shut, and found not just Trigger but Stevens too, standing poker-straight and staring unblinking at the mirror at the end of the hall, and Nico, who had changed into a light woolen suit, cloud-gray, and a maroon tie. His hair was slicked back, and his shoulders slouched just a little. He looked miserable, his chin set defiantly and the bloodring gleaming on his left middle finger.

  The Heir’s ring, worn for formal occasions.

  Uh-oh. She brushed her hair back, tugged at her skirt, and basically stalled for a second or two. “H-h-he’s—”

  “Expecting us,” Stevens said. The flat tone took on a richness, and the gaunt man’s dark face slackened a little.

  Which meant Papa was inside him, looking out.

  “Marya’s got your dinner, sweetheart.” Trig had folded his arms, and was staring at Nico. “Run along.”

  There was nothing else she could do. But she dragged her feet, lingering a little so she could brush by Nico, hoping he could tell she’d done all she could. Before she was halfway down the hall the door had opened and closed behind Vultusino’s wayward son and his consigliere, and Cami flinched at the little snick of the lock echoing all the way to the stairs.

  Outside the windows, dusk had finished falling into night, and a chill soaking rain pressed against the panes. The red-tiled kitchen was a relief, warm and full of the smell of tomatoes and fresh bread. “There she is!” Marya cried, spidery six-fingered hands on her ample hips and her hair floating fine around her head. Her ears came to high points through the dandelion-burst, and if that didn’t give it away you could tell she was fey by her eyes, black from lid to lid. “Naughty little girl out until dusk. Worrying us all to death, yes!”

  For the first time that day, Cami’s shoulders relaxed completely. She stood still as the housekeeper enfolded her in a hug redolent of heat, clean cotton, and the peculiar muskiness that was just plain and simply Marya. Fey always smelled of the earth, at least the low ones did. High fey didn’t come out of the Waste, or if they did, it was only to make mischief or steal babies and leave changelings.

  Passing from Waste to city was a fey trick, and one they never shared the secret of.

  The feywoman clicked her tongue, brushing at Cami’s hair, examined the bandage critically. “And what is this? Trouble? Ah, Nico.” A long theatrical sigh. She could give Ruby lessons in the sigh department.

  “W-w-wasn’t his f-fault,” she began, but Marya waved her hands.

  “He knows better. Wild, that boy, just like a Twist.” Her eyes—no iris, no
pupil, just sheer glossy darkness—briefly swirled with opalescence, oil on black water. Her blue silken dress fluttered, a sure sign of agitation. “And he probably took you to horrible place, and you—what is that, little thistledown? What did he do?”

  “He was p-p-p-prot-tecting me.” But she was saved from explaining further by Marya’s sudden flurry, her skirts swishing and her nut-brown face wrinkling against itself like she tasted something awful.

  “If he not take you to horrible place, you not need protecting. Here, sit, sit, dinner. Growing girl needs good food.” She snapped a single word, and a pot on the stove ceased bubbling over and subsided. Fey lived and breathed Potential, and they didn’t Twist. They were just … different, and even with the low ones you had to be careful around their prickly notions of politeness—and their fickle, fluid notions of “truth.”

  Marya was certainly the most stable fey Cami had ever met. Most of them had attention spans no longer than a hummingbird’s, and they flitter-fluttered around selling charms, or working at odds and ends for as long as the wind blew from a certain quarter.

  On the other hand, anything outside Papa Vultusino’s walls did not interest Marya very much, if at all. Her concerns were immediate—the woodwork that needed waxing, the feeding of those in her domain, the scouring of the copper-bottom pots that hung, shining suns, in the russet-tiled kitchen. A brick hearth and a fire for pizzas and other things—can’t cook without smoke, Marya was fond of muttering—gave a comforting crackling; the gas range held bubbling pots, and the dishwasher chuckled. In the warm womb of the kitchen, Cami let Marya fuss over her, and by the time dinner was over she had almost forgotten about the wooden man.

  But not quite.

  FIVE

  THE NIGHTMARE WRAPS ITS FLABBY, TOO-LARGE fingers around my entire body, and will not let me go.

  The beautiful woman smelling of cloves and perfumed smoke, her golden hair a fountain of clean light, leans down. Her red lips are set in a slight smile, just the barest hint of amusement that will not wrinkle her soft white face. Winged eyebrows, high cheekbones, everything about her is so lovely. The heavy velvet of her indigo dress drags in the soft ankle-high dust. Her hands are broad and white and soft as well, oddly large for such a delicate frame, and her eyes are blue as summer sky. They are darkening, those lovely blue eyes, and when they are indigo to match her dress, it will be my time.

  She whispers, as the frantic barking of the dogs grows nearer. You are nobody. You are nothing.

  I know it is true, but still, I struggle. She strokes my dirty face with those big cold soft hands, rings glinting on her fingers, and my head snaps aside. The rest of me is held down, throbbing with nips and crunches of pain from the last beating.

  My teeth sink in. I worry at that hand like a rat with a bone, and she jerks back, shrieking with fury. The shape behind her is a man, and as I thrash against the handcuffs his expression twists. It is familiar, a lean dark face; he is in a leather jerkin and breeches, a collage of brown and green muted by the dimness of my cell.

  Her shriek ends, and her contorted face smoothes itself. She hisses between her teeth, a long catlike sigh, as the silver medallion at her breast, its spot of bleeding crimson in the center, runs with diseased pale light.

  This one’s heart is fiery.

  They leave, the cell door swinging shut, and I am alone. No, not alone. There is a strange lipless voice throbbing all through me, and my head feels funny from the smoke. Empty and too-big, as if I am in a place I cannot remember, not this small concrete cell. The voice always says the same thing.

  You are nobody. You are nothing.

  And I know it is true, but I pull against the handcuffs. I twist them back and forth, and I am making a sound like a bird’s thin cry, because my throat is crushed.

  “Shhh.” Nico’s hand at her mouth. “It’s me.”

  Cami sat bolt-upright, pale sheets and blankets caught to her chest, her sides heaving and sweat dewing her forehead. Nightmare. It was familiar, and she had felt it coming as she lay stiff as a poker, waiting to fall asleep.

  The white bedroom was full of shifting shadow. The curtains were drawn over the huge bay windows, but the glimmer of the parchment walls, the creamy carpet, the pale wood and white-painted furniture made it brighter than night should be—only by a shade or two.

  She let out a garbled sound, the high piping of a bird, and Nico’s hand eased. “Shhh,” he whispered, again. “It’s just a dream, I’m here.”

  You are nobody. You are nothing. “N-n-n-ni—” Even his name wouldn’t come.

  “Cami.” He caught her hands. His skin was warm, solid, real. “Book.”

  The same old charm. “B-b-book.”

  “Candle.” He was kneeling on her bed, and she saw the mess his hair had become. How late was it?

  “C-candle.” Her breathing evened out. Her heart still hammered, but it wouldn’t explode. She could tell, now, that it would calm down. If she just gave it a little time.

  He smelled of cigarette smoke, copper, the tang of whiskey. So he’d been at the decanters again. “Nico,” he whispered.

  “Nico,” she whispered back. Relaxed all at once, a loosened string.

  “There it is.” He relaxed a little too, but stiffened when she moved to hug him. “Easy, babygirl.”

  “What h-h-happened?” But she knew. The cuts on him would be closing, the weals healing themselves slowly. By morning he would be good as new, not even a scar left to mark the punishment.

  Family healed fast. And it used to be that this sort of punishment made an impression on Nico.

  Now, though … nothing much did.

  “I deserve it. Move over.” He lowered himself gingerly, hissing as his bare back met the sheet. “Mithrus, move over.”

  “I am.” Irritable now, she scooted, freeing the topsheet. She’d thrown her pillows somewhere, but he rescued them, and in a little while they were safe together, her head on his bare shoulder, her nightgown caught on his pajama-clad knee. She tried not to hug him too hard, but he tightened his arm and pulled her closer, only tensing a little as it hurt. “Why d-did y-y-you—?” Why did you take me out? It’s like you wanted to get punished on your first night home.

  “Shhh. Listen.”

  She did. The wind was up, trees making an ocean noise, branches creaking, and the house’s corners whistling to themselves. How many nights had they spent like this?

  She used to scream when the nightmares came. Now, not so much—but it was easier when he was there, warm and close and safe. Nobody had ever caught him—Papa had once or twice given her a penetrating look at the breakfast table, asking how she had slept, and Cami had blushed without knowing why.

  I don’t like it, Nico had said the first time he’d appeared in the darkness, whispering fiercely. Tell me what it is. I’ll hurt it. I’ll kill it for you.

  As if she could. The words wouldn’t come. The dreams faded as soon as she jolted into waking. There was only the feel of the soft, large hands, and the directionless voice in the darkness.

  You are nobody. You are nothing.

  She shivered, and Nico rubbed his chin against her head. It scratched a little. In prep school he’d liked the stubbled look until she complained that it was scratchy and made him look dirty. The next day he’d shaved, and grumbled when he nicked himself. As if it didn’t heal immediately.

  “Winter’s coming.” He let out a sigh. “Go to sleep.”

  The heat all through her was different now. She’d noticed it before, her hands shaking a little and her heart in her throat, a pleasant excitement like when he drove too fast. A curious safety, but the nervousness in her itching all over, and she couldn’t figure out why. “How b-bad d-d-does it h-hurt?”

  He made a slight movement, as if tossing away the question. “Not bad.” But his voice broke, and he lay stiff and unbending while the tears trickled down his temples and vanished into their hair—his and hers, mingled together on the white pillow. When they were done he relaxed,
slowly, bit by bit. Cami fell asleep after his breathing evened out, and as usual, he kept the bad dreams away.

  And, as usual, when she woke up in the morning there was only the dent on the pillow next to hers, and a deep tingling on her cheek, as if he had kissed it before ghosting out her door.

  SIX

  THE POOL, A LAZY BLUE EYE, THREW BACK uncharacteristically fierce autumn sunlight with a vengeance. Cami drew her knees up under the umbrella’s shade; Ruby, applying crimson lacquer to her nails, made a clicking sound with her tongue. “It’s just sunshine, it’s not going to kill you.”

  “CANNONBALL!” Thorne yelled, barreling past them, a lean brown streak with a shock of wheat-gold hair and orange trunks. Hunter was right after him, dark-haired and sleek in bright yellow. They hit the water with a shattering double splash, and Ruby made a little eww sound and leaned back.

  “J-just water.” Cami settled back in the chair, adjusting her sunglasses a little. “N-not g-gonna—”

  Ruby pointed with the nail brush. “You just watch yourself, missy.”

  Cami pursed her lips and made a raspberry, and shared laughter rose.

  You didn’t get leftover summer like this in New Haven very often, but when you did it was to be seized with both hands. Which explained why Marya had been chattered into providing notes for the three girls; Thorne and Hunter—Woodsdowne cousins, and warring for Ruby’s attention, like always—were on their own for track-covering. But Marya had long ago become adept at counterfeiting parental scrawls on St. Juno-charmed paper, and Papa turned a blind eye as long as Cami didn’t skip more than once a month.

  I was young once too, Papa had said long ago, patting Cami on the head. Be reasonable, eh, bambina?

  He never let Nico skip, though. The Vultusino-in-waiting couldn’t afford to.

  Ellie emerged from the changing room in a bright blue bikini that hugged her lovingly. The bruises on her arms were fading and yellowgreen, and the one on her thigh wasn’t bad.

  Ruby whistled. “Look at that. Fits you like a chaaaarm!” She giggled as Thorne heaved himself up out of the pool, shaking his head, bright droplets splashing. He went right back in with another gigantic splash, graceful as an otter.