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

by Lili St. Crow

  “Going wandering, hmm? Wayfaring blood in our naughty girl. Terrible worry, little mayfly.” Marya sighed.

  “W-w-wayfaring b-blood?” Does she know where I came from? Cami had never asked.

  There had never been a need.

  “Oh yes, it’s all over you. She smells like a wanderer, our little thing.” Marya glanced up. “Eat, eat!”

  The tray on the small table at Cami’s elbow held a small mountain of buttered toast, hot chocolate steaming in a charmed bone-china cup, and strawberries like bloodclots in a thin crystal dish. The white bedroom held its breath, purple-gray dusk gathering at the window, touched with orange citylight as the snow began again.

  “Wandering. With dogs, too.” Marya sniffed. She’d insisted on Cami taking a bath, even though the hot water stung so bad she could have cried, if there had been any tears left. Now, warm and dry, clean and bandaged, crunching on toast and sipping hot chocolate, the afternoon seemed like a bad dream. Her Babbage glinted on the stripped-pine desk, waiting for her to switch it on and enter chat. Ruby was just going to tear her ears off.

  Cami settled back into the chair. The bleeding had stopped now. She had a rash on her shoulder, where the schoolbag’s strap had been rubbing and rubbing, even through her coat and blazer and blouse. God. The watered-silk footstool with a plain white towel draped over it was just right for her battered feet, and every muscle in her body was twitching a little. The twitches ran through her like the shivers did, and there was a coldness down in her marrow where the bath and the house’s warmth didn’t reach. “D-d-d-dogs,” she echoed, softly, hoping Marya would say more.

  “Hounds. They were hunting you, naughty thing.” Marya nodded. “Hear them all the time. Worse in winter, always. I told el signor, he heard them too.”

  An unpleasant jolt. “P-p-papa?” He never said anything about dogs.

  “Oh, yes. Yesyes.” Marya capped the antiseptic and finished wrapping Cami’s left foot. Flicked her fingers again and feycharms crackled blue-white, to stave off infection and speed healing. “Nasty dogs. Hate them. Won’t have them here. Cats. Cats are proper, yes? Not dogs.”

  “The P-p-pike,” Cami breathed. Tell me about Tor. Have you noticed anything on him? If Marya was disposed to be chatty, she could probably—

  “Told him too. No dogs. He reeks of them. He’s a hunter, that one, lean and angry.” Marya shrugged. She gathered up her materials, whisking the towel gently from under Cami’s feet. “Sit, eat. Little wayfaring naughtiness.”

  “W-wayf-f-faring?” Tell me something else, anything!

  “Said too much.” Marya clapped a hand over her mouth. She stared at Cami, the oddness on her suddenly pronounced. Sometimes she looked more human, but right now she was all fey, the tips of her ears poking up through wild white-streaked hair, her cheeks bloodless-pale. She shook her head, long jet earrings swinging, and rocked to her feet.

  Good luck getting her to give anything more now. But Cami was going to try, opening her mouth and taking in a deep breath.

  There was a single splintering bash on the door before it flew open. “Cami!”

  It was, of course, Nico. Fangs out, eyes blazing, he hadn’t even changed out of the Hannibal uniform. His white button-down was torn though, his tie askew, and his hair stood up anyhow. Little crystals of snow had caught in it—he had probably run from the car to the front door.

  “I’m ok-k-k—” I’m okay. Calm down.

  “Leave,” he snapped at Marya, who bowed her head and hurried past in a wash of floating spidersilk. “Mithrus Christ, Cami. What the hell?”

  Deep breath. “I w-w-w-walked—”

  “Walked home. Yeah. Do you have any idea what could have happened to you? This is New Haven, Cami! And you’re Vultusino!”

  I wasn’t born Family. She looked down at her pajama pants—Marya had insisted on the pink silk pj’s. A flannel robe too, the belt securely knotted. As if she would freeze to death sitting in here.

  Nico took another two steps into the room. His anger filled everything up, made it hard to breathe. “I’m talking to you! Mithrus Christ, Cami—”

  “No!” Her own yell took her by surprise. “You’re n-not talking!” Shocked silence rang between them. She wet her lips, quickly, with a nervous flicker of her tongue. “You’re s-s-s-screaming,” she finished. The last syllable broke, and a tear trickled down her cheek.

  So she did have a few left after all.

  “Fuck it.” Nico rocked back on his heels. “Do you know what it’s like, driving from up-province and worrying over where you are, what’s wrong, if someone’s snatched you? And you’re walking home! You’re bleeding, too!” Of course he could smell it. “Tell me what happened.” Dangerously quiet, now. “You’d better start, Cami. Or I’m gonna … ”

  Apparently no threat was too dire. He ran out of words, for once, and stared at her. Another tear slipped out, ran hot and shameful down her face. Was it just because the room was warm? Or was it relief that he was finally here? Irritation? The empty hole in her chest, aching to know where she came from, where she belonged?

  She couldn’t tell. She searched for something to say. To make him understand. He’d understood plenty before, why not now? What was wrong with him?

  Or was it wrong with her?

  “I d-d-don’t know wh-who I a-a-m.” The words tripped over each other. “I w-was j-j-just f-f-found—” Just found in the snow. Like trash, picked up and carried here.

  “I know who you are.” Quietly, but everything in the room rattled. Or maybe it just seemed like it did, because when Nico got quiet like this, it was just before he went over the edge and nothing would calm him down. Once, when she’d been trapped in the hallway to the bathrooms in Lou’s by a Family bravo who reeked of whiskey-calf, Nico had gotten this quiet. “I know exactly who you are, and if Papa hadn’t found you, I would have.”

  You don’t know that. “Y-you c-c-c-can’t—”

  “Oh yes I can. I’m the Vultusino, Cami, and I am telling you, I would have fucking found you.” His tone dropped still further, and the deep growl behind the words was enough to drain all the air from the room and leave her gasping. “Whoever did that to you, I’ll find them too, now that I’m old enough. And I’ll make them pay.”

  “I—”

  Instead of the stutter stopping her, it was him. She couldn’t get a word in now, for love or hexing.

  He was, quite simply, too determined. “I’m finished at Hannibal. I’m staying home. I’m taking care of things now. Don’t you dare pull another stunt like this, Cami. I swear to God I’ll … ” He ran out of threats again, his fists clenching and unloosing, like he wished there was something caught in them.

  Do what? “You’ll what? H-hurt m-m-me?” Because when you get like this, that’s what I’m afraid of, Nico. The idea was as crystalline and terrifying as the first howl she’d heard, a few blocks away from St. Juno’s, lifting on an icy wind.

  That brought him up short. He actually sagged, deflating. The growl behind his words stopped. “I would never hurt you.” Whispered, as if she’d been the one shouting and raging.

  “You’re g-g-going t-to.” As soon as she said it, she knew it was true—and she wished she hadn’t. “If you d-d-don’t learn to c-c-calm d-d-own.”

  It was a day for guys staring at her like she’d lost her mind. Nico’s gaze burned, locked with hers for long endless seconds.

  Then he turned and stamped out, slamming the door so hard she was surprised the crystal knob didn’t shatter. Cami let out a long, shaking breath and sagged into the chair. She shut her eyes. The darkness was better than the glare of the white bedroom.

  But it made the sound inside her head worse. The roaring. The howl of dogs, the clicking of their nails on cold pavement, the deep huffing of their breath as their reddened tongues lolled. Dogs—and Marya said Tor reeked of them.

  All the noise in the world boiled down to a single question, stark and black as the night pressing against the windows.

&
nbsp; What is happening to me?

  TWENTY

  DAWN ROSE GRAY AND PINK AND GOLD, AND FOUND her stutter-stepping toward the window seat. She could hobble with the bandages on, and it made her think of the Eastron section of World History, the little inset about lotusfeet girls. Charmed cloths around a baby’s tiny feet, and the deformity, a chosen Twist.

  To make them more beautiful. Was that what it took?

  You do, too.

  The snow was blank, featureless, deceptively smooth. Unbroken, it poured over the gardens—or, no. Not unbroken.

  Someone had trudged through the snow. She could tell because of the line of footsteps, their edges chipped free of a layer of ice forming on the drifts. She could also tell because he was still there. A sword of darkness against all the white, his leather jacket inadequate against the cold, his hair a wild blue-tinted blackness. His breath plumed, and he looked up at her window.

  Even at this distance, his gaze was a dark fire.

  Cami’s breath fogged the glass. She lifted her right hand, pressed it against cold translucence.

  Tor lifted his. Five fingers, spread, just like hers. A star of flesh. The frozen glass burned, and she found herself shaking. A thrill all through her, Potential rippling like heat-haze. Or maybe it was an ordinary electricity, like the natural, predictable stuff lightbulbs burned.

  What is he doing?

  There was no way to ask him, and he turned and trudged back the way he’d come, stepping carefully from footprint to footprint. The fog of his breath turned to ice, falling with tiny flashing tinkles. How cold was it out there?

  The sound inside her head was a deep chanting, voices lifted in a sea-swell of ecstasy. She smelled fresh-cut apples, and salt, and a peculiar heavy incense. It scraped the inside of her skull clean, filling her with cotton. Whatever name they were singing, she couldn’t … quite … hear.

  Cami turned. The sun’s red rim lifted over the horizon, and she could almost feel it, as if she was Family. Directionless blue winter-morning light pushed past her, filling the white room to the brim. The gauze over the mirror fluttered, and she found herself stepping gingerly across plain carpet.

  She tore the scarf down. The mirror, clear and flawless, was a blank screen, not even reflecting her.

  Not a mirror. An eye.

  A gleam in the depths of the thin glass. Trembling, Cami lifted her right hand again.

  There was a snap, felt in the chest more than heard through the ears, and the white room glared at her from the mirror’s surface. She blinked, and found herself standing, fists curled, her hair messed by the restless tossing she’d done instead of sleeping, her face hectic with color and her eyes blazing blue.

  It was there, standing and not-quite-thinking, her brain humming with the sharp edges of a puzzle forming around her, that Cami had a very odd thought.

  I need an apple.

  The kitchen was curiously deserted. Marya was not humming near the hearth, nor was she at the stove. She could be anywhere in the house, dusting or flitting from room to room, engaged on whatever charms a house-fey used at dawn. The important thing was she wasn’t here, and the copper-bottom pans hanging shiny from their rack were still and quiet.

  The fridge was tomato red, its door fluttering with yellowed photographs—a shyly smiling nine-year-old Cami in white eyelet lace, Nico glowering behind her in his small but exquisitely tailored suit, his hair slicked down. Papa with Cami on his lap in a white silk sundress, squinting slightly in the garden sunshine, and Nico tall and straight-faced at his left shoulder. A baby Nico, with a rare smile, lifting up a dirt-clotted bulb of garlic from the herb garden and shaking it. Papa, younger and solemn, straight as a poker and holding the hand of a smiling young mortal woman with Nico’s proud tilt to her head. Papa and three of the other Seven, their mouths all the same straight line.

  The pictures of Cami herself were newer, and they fluttered uneasily, interlopers against the red enamel.

  She found what she needed in the crisper. She pulled out the cutting board, selected Marya’s favorite wood-handled butcher knife. Placed it, gleaming-sharp, next to the scarred block of oiled wood and weighed the apple in her hand. Satiny and red, it was too heavy. She set it down and looked at it, her brain still caught in that peculiar humming, head cocked, ink-black hair a river down her back.

  Tip it over.

  So she did, one trembling finger touching the apple until it toppled. It was not perfectly round, so it rolled with a bump and lay there, as if it knew a secret.

  It does. Are you sure you want to know one, too?

  Her fingers curled around the knifehilt. She blinked.

  Cloven horizontally, the apple fell open. She saw the seeds, each nestled in its own hollow, making a five-pointed star. Deep foulness bubbled up in the recesses of her memory. A screaming, a hissing, gouts of perfumed smoke that filled the cup of the skull with cotton numbness, and the crisp scent of a just-sliced apple all mixed together.

  That’s what she smells like. Smoke and fruit. Because she’s the Queen. Shudders rippled down Cami’s back.

  Not just any queen. The White Queen. The shaking was worse. It held her in its jaws, snapping her back and forth. The knife clattered against the counter, and her left hand smacked the apple halves and sent them flying.

  It was too late. The knife’s poison-polished blade flashed, a dart of white cruelness straight into the center of her skull, and Cami let out a soft birdlike sound. She couldn’t scream because she couldn’t breathe, it was too bright, there was smoke in her throat and the chanting was full of nonsense syllables instead of meaning and she couldn’t …

  Her legs gave out. Her head clipped the edge of the tiled counter on the way down, and the brief starburst of pain turned into wet warmth. The knife spun, teetering on the edge, then fell with another chiming sound. It missed her nose by a bare half-inch, but she never knew.

  Her muscles locked, and the sound wouldn’t stop. It was a child’s voice too broken to scream any further, and its chirping made words as she curled into a ball on the russet floor.

  “Mommy no Mommy no Mommy no Mommy noooooooooo … ”

  TWENTY-ONE

  “SHE PASSED OUT.” NICO, BUT … DIFFERENT. LIKE there was something caught in his throat.

  “Are we sure that’s what it was, sir?” Stevens, now. Dry and reedy, his throat needed oiling. Would he be Nico’s consigliere too, a glove for Nico’s consciousness, the well that a new Vultusino would drop secrets into?

  What secrets would he have now that he couldn’t tell her? Plenty. Even Papa had sometimes sent her to Marya, when things were happening a little girl shouldn’t hear. She’d been able to guess around the corners, but to be the Vultusino was to have secrets. Lots of them.

  Bad secrets.

  Are mine bad too? They must be.

  Cami sighed. She was warm, and it was soft around her, and the noise had stopped. All of it, even the roaring and the barking dogs. Her head was only full of ringing silence.

  They were quiet, and she kept her eyes closed. Her breathing came in deep even swells. She was so glad she wasn’t choking that she just kept doing it, drawing the air in, letting it out.

  “If you have something to say, Stevens, spit it out.” Nico still sounded different. She couldn’t figure out just how. The question kept her occupied much as breathing did.

  “Black as night. Blue as sky. Red as blood.” Stevens paused. “White. As snow.”

  “We’d know, if she was—”

  “Would we? Would you?”

  “Be careful.” The difference was sharp and hurtful now, but without the usual edge of flippancy. “Be very careful what you say, ghoul.”

  That’s it. She was so pleased she moved, turning over and pulling the covers up. He sounds like Papa. Won’t he be surprised to know that.

  But she wouldn’t tell him. Not yet. He was still too angry.

  They were silent until she had settled.

  “She is far too young, and there a
re none of the signs. Still, she may have been … marked.” Stevens, ponderously slow and so dry. If Papa was angry, or speaking quickly, Stevens would space his words further apart, stringing them between pauses to force Papa to slow down. She could have told him that wouldn’t work with Nico.

  “Just what the hell are you saying?” Now he was more like himself. Angry—and she wasn’t sure when that anger had become a comfort. If he was sharp and furious, at least she knew what to expect.

  “I am saying caution is called for, if we are not to lose what we have.”

  She could almost see Stevens clamming up, pursing his thin lips. The air was heavy, oddly dead, but it still tasted wonderful. A ghost of bay rum, a familiar comfort, and the softness all around her.

  “Biel’y.” Nico all but spat. “They can have anything else in the goddamn city, but not her.”

  No answer from Stevens. Had he nodded in agreement? Cami buried her face in a pillow. Why don’t you just go away so I can sleep? I need it. I don’t feel good.

  Not good at all. Clear-headed, certainly. Like a broom had swept through her jumbled thoughts, pushing them out and away, smoothing her like Marya would smooth a sheet of phyllo dough.

  I dropped the knife. She’ll be furious.

  No, Cami did not feel good. She felt like she’d just run a race, one too fast and too long for her. Her legs were still going and the rest of her hadn’t caught up.

  Nico finally spoke up, decisive. “My calendar should be clear today. Did you call St. Juno’s?”

  “I did. Sir, the Stregare wish for your—”

  “They can wait.” Impatient, now. “Get out. She’s waking up.”

  I’m already awake, thanks. It was no good. Cami stretched. It wasn’t her bed. It felt all wrong. Too soft, and the covers were too heavy.