by Shana Abe
So he dressed, his buckskin breeches, his cleanest shirt, the Parisian dun surcoat that wore best against the grime of the road ready upon the bed. His boots had been polished; he shook them out upside down, one at a time. No hidden needles, no spiders, no poisonous scent rising from the freshly oiled gleam. He found a tie for his hair and crossed to the door that separated him from Lia, testing the handle.
Locked.
He smiled at that. She was game, if nothing else.
He bent down, took a look at the keyhole, and went back for his tools. The lock was old, just like the rest of the place, so clumsily antiquated he wondered why they bothered with it at all. He closed his eyes and let the pads of his fingers guide him, trusting the delicate edge of his pick, the hook, the turn, the tumblers releasing-
There was a time when the muted click of that release would bring with it a small, physical rush of satisfaction through his veins. It meant success: escape or invasion, wealth or information, or all of them at once. Before he’d reached his teens, before he knew about the particular pleasures of money or power or women, that rush of sensation had been the finest feeling in the world. He’d apprenticed to one of the best cracksmen in the business, had procured him cash and whores and whatever else the bastard demanded, up until the very night that Dirty Clem, stinking drunk, had stuck a boning knife into Zane’s ribs-all because Clem had taught him this:
To turn a lock.
To open doors.
To slip in where he was not invited, and never would be.
Zane placed his palm upon the paneled wood, giving it a little push. At least the hinges were greased; the dusk of her room swept over his feet without a whisper. He stood there a moment, allowing his eyes to adjust.
The maid had been here too. The fire in Lady Amalia’s grate glowed a cheerful orange, shaping color along the rug and the posts of her bed, nearly lost before it even reached the duvet. Lia was a beguiling lump beneath the covers, asleep in precisely the same position as in her bed in Óbuda: arms out, her face tipped to him. The blankets had dragged down until only a single sheet covered her chest.
She wore no nightgown. She wore nothing at all, as far as he could tell. She was fair as an angel in gloom, her hair a guinea-dark flame that spread in waves along the pillows. Her brow was peaceful, her lashes long and brown. Her fingers curled up into her palms to clasp the air; the rise and fall of her chest threatened the sanctity of that sheet with every breath.
In a flower of pretty sparks, an ember in the fire popped open.
Wife, he thought, unbidden.
He sucked in his breath. He turned his head and without thinking took a step back, away from her, away from the sight of her bare skin and her hair and her tranquil, uncanny face.
But he wasn’t as noiseless as he should have been. His back bumped the door and Amalia stirred, coming awake.
She stretched. The sheet slipped at last, dragging down to her waist, and he could not look away, he could not, as she raised her arms above her head and yawned and turned, pulling her fingers through her hair until all at once it went to smoke-every tendril, to actual fumes-there on the pillows, silky gray plumes that lifted and curved about her face.
“Jesus Christ,” Zane said, and hit the door again with his back.
Her eyes opened. She sat up and the smoke swept back into hair, a heavy blond tumble that bounced past her shoulders.
He was staring. He was frozen. She yanked the sheet up high to her chest.
“Get out,” Amalia said.
“What was that?”
“Out!”
He reached behind him for the knob to her door. Without taking his gaze from hers, he closed it to solid wood behind him, sealing them together in the room.
“Goodness me,” he said, managing-just barely-to keep the venom from his tone. “It seems last night you offered me a grain of truth, didn’t you? You truly can lie to me without qualm.”
She let go of a breath, pent up as if she’d been holding it. Her eyes were very wide.
He moved forward into the room. “How long have you been able to Turn?”
“You are mistaken,” she said, deathly still. “I cannot Turn.”
“Now, granted, it’s rather dark in here. And I’m not at my best without my breakfast coffee, but there’s nothing amiss with my eyes. I know what I saw.”
“I don’t know what you saw. But I swear to you, I can’t-”
“Amalia,” he interrupted, very pleasant. “Lie to me again, and I promise you that you will not enjoy the consequences.”
Her mouth closed. He watched her fingers whiten around the sheet and took another step forward, nearly at the bed.
“Yes?” he said gently.
Lia felt her face begin to heat. He held motionless, waiting, looking down at her with a wintry, gleaming gaze.
She wasn’t lying. She could not Turn. She was a woman with strange talents; she was a dreamer who heard music and horrors, and all of it was as beyond her control as the moon was to the tide. She woke up each day never knowing what new trick her body would perform, or when or where. It was like having a beast locked in her chest where her heart used to be, a beast that could wink awake at any moment and shred her hard-won facade to ribbons.
She hadn’t known of it until that afternoon in Edinburgh two years ago. Out for tea with a group of younger students-in her second year Lia had been allowed to chaperone, a sweet morsel of liberty-strolling down Lawnmarket, she’d glimpsed a young man in an apron, a farrier, approaching from the other direction. His gaze had cut to hers through the black-shouldered people; he smiled as they passed. Lia had smiled back, warmed to her toes by just that swift, appreciative glance.
Her hat had settled low upon her head. She’d felt light and peculiar and happy, unusually buoyant, until one of the girls behind her caught up and tugged at her sleeve, Lady Amalia, you’ve lost the pins to your hair.
She’d reached a hand to her hat. And where before there had been a coiffure of perfectly respectable white-powdered ringlets beneath the brim, there were now long, golden curls falling free to her hips.
In broad daylight.
From just a man’s shy smile.
That had been the first time. For a full six months after that, she would not meet the eyes of a comely man, young or old, servant or nobleman. She did not dare. When the drákon Turned to smoke, nothing remained on their bodies, not powder, not jewels or clothing. Nothing.
It wasn’t supposed to be possible, to Turn in pieces, to vanish by parts. Her people were dragon or human or vapor: no one lingered in between. No one but she.
She’d wanted the Gifts. She had gotten this half-life, this dragon heart-and the song and the dreams.
Zane closed the final few feet between them, easing right up to the edge of the bed. There was threat in the stealth of it, in the very grace and silence of his stance. She’d never before seen him move like that; in all the years she’d known him, she’d never before felt him radiate true menace-but now the hair on the back of her neck began to prickle.
He is a criminal, she realized. He is.
“I cannot Turn completely,” she said. “I don’t have that kind of control. I don’t have any control, really. The entire process is…beyond me. I wasn’t lying about that. Whatever you saw just now, I didn’t do it. Not deliberately.”
She couldn’t tell if he believed her; she couldn’t tell what he thought at all. His face had that cool, stony expression he wore so frequently around her. Then he frowned a little and took up a lock of her hair, studying it.
“It was this,” he said, giving the lock a tug.
She nodded, unsurprised.
“Why are you here, Amalia?”
“To-to take you to the diamond.”
“Why?” he asked again, combing his fingers slowly through the gold. “Serviceable as I am, a woman like you, a fiend of your particular skills, would surely do better on her own.”
She opened her mouth, and closed it. She felt,
very sharply, the blood rising again in her cheeks.
The thief smiled down at her, openly taunting.
“That was unkind.”
“Some would say so is duping an innocent man.”
“You are as far from innocent a man as I know! And fiend or no, I came here to ensure you gain something valuable at the end-”
But he’d clapped a hand to her mouth, smothering the rest, his head turned to the door that led to the hall outside. She heard it then too: footsteps, running very lightly down the carpeted corridor. There were no other sounds, no wood creaking, no panting or rustling clothes-and then not even those steps.
A sudden odd chill crept across her skin.
Lia wrapped the sheet around her and followed as he padded to the door. He threw her a single glance of warning, reaching for the latch. She smelled the alcohol just as his fingers grazed the handle.
“Wait-”
The air beyond the door ignited with a whoosh, a flash of burning light that slammed against the wood and sent a bar of orange brilliance searing along their feet. In nearly the same instant, Zane had whirled and flung her with him across the rug, his arms tight around her, the sheet caught and torn away. They bounced into the bed and rebounded. She landed on her knees, winded, and he hauled her back up by one arm.
“Are you hurt?”
He didn’t glance at her unclad body-he barely even waited for her to shake her head no before releasing her and sprinting back into his own room. Smoke was curling in fingers around the edges of the door; Zane had vanished.
Lia ran to the armoire, pulling out her chemise, her stockings and gown and stays and shoes-she tugged the chemise over her head, threw the circle of hoops to the floor and shoved her feet into her pumps as the fingers of smoke brightened into flame.
“What are you doing?” He was back, carrying his coat and sword and valise. “Turn! Get out of here! I’ll meet you outside-go to the park, I’ll meet you there.”
“I can’t!”
The air was a swirling cloud above their heads. She could hear the happy crackle of the fire spreading and the paint from the door beginning to bubble. From somewhere very far away, people started to scream.
Zane had her again by the arm.
“Amalia!”
“I can’t! I can’t Turn!” She wrenched free of him, working feverishly at the hooks to the gown. “Can we get out through your room?”
As if in answer, a wall of smoke billowed from his doorway. The light behind it flickered and bloomed; from somewhere beyond came the sound of glass exploding.
He hauled her into him once more, pressing her face to his chest. For a brief, startling instant she smelled him instead of the acrid smoke, warm linen and man, his palm hard against her cheek. Against the thin silk of her chemise, he felt solid and taut and very real.
“You can Turn,” he was shouting down into her hair. “This isn’t the time for games. Just get out of here.”
“I’m not lying-”
“Lia, goddamnit-”
She jerked away, her eyes beginning to sting. Two of the walls were already writhing with flames; ash from the wallpaper floated up to the ceiling in monstrous black flakes.
“I! Can’t! Turn!”
He didn’t bother to argue with her again, only grabbing her hand to pull her to the window. When the sash stuck, he used the valise to smash the panes. His shirtsleeves snapped in the sudden new draft, and the smoke pulled around them to funnel out into the cold.
The screaming swelled abruptly louder.
He leaned his head out the opening, looking down, then glanced back at her.
“It’s two flights down. Can you climb? There’s a gutter to the left.”
She nodded, still trying to work open her gown. He made an impatient sound, snatching the mass of it from her hands and pitching it-overskirt, petticoats, and all-out the window.
“Follow it,” he said, and pushed her up to the sill. “Mind the glass.”
In her chemise, in the cold, Lia clambered out the window. A crowd of people had amassed on the street below, hotel workers and guests and passersby, everyone shouting and pointing. A line of men slopped buckets of water through their middle, snaking back into the hotel.
The wind was a freezing shock. She saw the gutter, a lead fluted pipe barely attached to the stone wall, and stretched a hand to it. The pipe was slick with dew; she tried twice to catch it, swaying back and forth as her fingers slipped across the metal. Zane held fast to her other hand.
“Hurry,” he urged, very calm, as the ceiling above him rippled into flame.
Dragon heart. With a surge of desperation she dug her nails into the lead. The metal gave like wet clay, and the pipe began to bend.
“Let go!”
He did. She swung free for a heart-stopping moment, dangling, and the people below cried out. Quickly, before the pipe gave, before she lost her nerve, she shimmied down, half sliding, half falling, the chemise twisted up to her knees, the soles of her pumps slipping for purchase against the lead and stone. She landed in the arms of several waiting men, hands grabbing her, lifting her back to her feet. People were yelling at her, incomprehensible, but Lia was staring up at the smoke and the broken window, and the man there leaning out to see her, his hair a brown gilded streamer blown across the frame.
“Lia! Catch!”
He tossed down the valise. She caught it and staggered back, supported once more by the many hands. When she looked up again, Zane was halfway down the pipe. He landed with a nimble leap just as it detached from the building, the length of it tilting to the ground in a slow, smooth arc that crumpled against the cobbled street.
Zane pushed his way to her. He took off his coat and draped it over her shoulders, his arm wrapping around her waist. She set the valise at their feet. They stood there together with the rest of the people, watching the upper floor of the hotel-their rooms, their beds, their belongings-crumble into cinders.
Her hand hurt. She must have cut it on the glass; there was a gash across her knuckles, sticky with blood. She cupped her fist to her chest and closed her eyes against the smoke, turning her face to Zane’s shoulder. The wind slashed like a blade around her bare ankles.
And then she felt it. That same chill across her skin, not from the cold but from something else-someone else. It was electric and thin and very, very familiar.
The beast in her heart stirred, fell and glimmering.
Lia lifted her head. It wasn’t possible…but there was another drákon nearby.
She glanced casually around the swarm of people, scanning faces. She saw the dowagers of the night before, lined and haggard in the rising light, their guards flanking them. She saw the squires, red-eyed, their cravats undone and their wigs askew. She saw men in slack jackets and women in head-scarves and a scattering of urchin children-and there-behind a pair of colliers gawking at the mess-
It was just a flash, a quick thrill of movement, white skin, dark hair. A set of oddly tintless eyes meeting hers. She pulled away from Zane, but it was already too late: the colliers were shoved aside by one of the men with buckets, and there was no one behind them.
Only a wisp of smoke, rising up to blend into the smudged, violet-tinged sky.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Against what Zane would have wagered were considerable odds, the water brigade was managing the fire. Smoke no longer poured from any of the lower-story windows; the unholy curtain of crackling yellow had vanished from behind the closed panes. People were still shouting and rushing about, but it seemed at least half of the hotel had been saved.
Half. All that was left of the upper floor, the attics, was a mosaic of broken rooftiles and black skeleton timbers, flecked with orange embers.
Zane turned to Lia. She appeared pale and very shaken. Her hair fell snarled over the sleeves of his coat, a sheen of rose lacquered over the guinea-gold, a gift from the rising sun. She was gazing away from him, distracted; a line of soot streaked from her cheekbone to her chin.
>
“I think,” said Zane, bending down to her ear, “that perhaps I’m ready to concede that you cannot Turn.”
Her look back to him was startled, as if she’d forgotten he’d be there. He offered a bow and handed her her gown, thrust at him by a man in passing. It was wet and trampled but undeniably what he’d thrown from their burning window. She stared down at the layers of cambric and coral-pink damask as if she’d never seen any of it before.
“Lia,” he said, touching her shoulder, and she started again. He caught his cuff in his fist and rubbed the soot from her cheek, then tucked her arm through his. “Come along. Come with me.”
Her lips seemed very red. Her eyes were dark. She held his arm like a dreamer, walking beside him through the throng of weeping and smelly people without glancing left or right, her breath clouding in the chill.
The people were not all that smelled. Zane reeked of smoke. He did, Amalia did, the sky did, the very atoms in the air. Sullage and cinders crunched beneath his boots like fresh snowfall; for an instant he worried for Lia, but as he looked down he remembered she’d found her shoes in time. She stepped mindlessly through a greasy puddle, the ruffled hem of her chemise flipping pretty against her calves.
Her legs were long and bare. Beneath his surcoat, beneath that slip of ivory silk, she was wearing nothing at all.
He looked up. He wished suddenly, fervently, for coffee.
Across the square was what appeared to be a tavern-perhaps it was a teahouse. It had mullioned windows and a door and a knot of people standing outside it gaping at the smoldering hotel, some of them holding tankards. He steered Amalia toward it.
It was a tavern, largely deserted. He settled for ale instead of coffee, ordered another for Lia, and led her to a table in the corner, well in sight of the door. He made sure she was seated, went back to the bar for their drinks, and turned around with his hands full.
She sat alone in the light. It wasn’t much light, just the wan, murky rays that managed to pierce the panes of the window nearby. The beam itself fell drained of hues: everything around her was dusty and brown and dull. But Lia glowed. Her hair madonna-loose, the spare dress in her lap. She was pink and gold and soldier-straight in her chair, her expression pensive, faraway. He could still see the faint mark of the soot upon her cheek where he hadn’t gotten it all off.