Thief of Light

by Denise Rossetti

  Carefully, Prue laid her spoon aside, the happiness leaking out of her. It was over. “We should go back,” she said.

  The lazy smile disappeared. “You sure?” She couldn’t read his expression.

  “Yes.”

  The skiff was nearly at The Garden before she managed to assemble a suitably dignified speech in her head.

  “Erik.” She put a hand on his sleeve. Although she’d cleared her throat, she still sounded hoarse and raspy, as if she were coming down with the winter ague. “I think you know what I’m going to say.”

  “No.” The tone was uncompromising.

  Bracing herself, Prue turned to confront him, while he loomed over her in the small craft. With as much poise as she could muster, she said, “Please, believe me. This is the best thing—for both of us. It isn’t going to work.”

  A tingling silence. “You won’t bloody let it.” Temper deepened his voice, clipped his words.

  How did Rose do this? “There’s no place in my life for a man like you. I’m not your type.” The laugh strangled in her throat. “I know I’m not.”

  “Like hell.” His voice dropped to the intimate velvet purr she loved. “Come on, pretty Prue. All I want is your company. What about lunch tomorrow? I’ll bring the tray, I promise.”

  Prue gave a shaky laugh. “When you talk like that, you could charm the birds from the trees.”

  Erik’s mouth went tight and hard. Turning his head, he met the fascinated gaze of the skiffwoman. “As fast as you can, Bettsa.”

  The woman muttered something under her breath that sounded like, “Daft buggers.”

  Without another word, Erik withdrew his arm from around her shoulders. Prue shivered, huddling into the silk shawl. Cold seeped into her bones, her heart.

  At the water stairs of The Garden, Bettsa steadied the skiff while Erik handed Prue out. “Wait here,” he said to the skiffwoman, his tone curt. “I shan’t be long.”

  “There’s no need,” said Prue. “I’m perfectly capable of walking to my own front door.”

  “I’m sure you are.” Erik took her arm in a steely grip and guided her up the path. “But I’m not so easily dismissed.”

  Prue stopped just inside the buttery pool of light spreading from the wide-open doors of the Main Pavilion. “Here, take this.” As she went to slip the shawl from her shoulders, the movement pulled at the fine hair on the nape of her neck. “Ow!” Her eyes watered.

  “Stand still.” A pause while Erik’s fingers lifted a braid aside. “Your hair’s tangled in the hook-and-eye things on your collar.” A big hand on the back of her skull urged her closer to his tall, blurred figure. “Bend your head forward.”

  Perforce, she did. Until her nose was buried in the open vee where his shirt was unlaced, his long fingers tugging gently at her hair. Her face heated, sheer mortification combining with the sharp physical pain. Desperately, she tried not to inhale, but it was impossible.

  Merciful Sister! No man had ever affected her so profoundly. She’d had lovers over the years, all decent men, a couple of them almost as handsome as Chavis. She was a healthy, adult female, in charge of her own life. She’d walked away from every one of those relationships when she felt the time was right. Besides, she’d had her priorities straight—her daughter and her work.

  But this? It was like a summer storm, all sultry heat and flashy lightning, whirling in her head until she couldn’t think straight. She hadn’t felt so off balance since she’d been eighteen, head over heels in love with Chavis. Sister save her, only a few moments more. Frantically, she cast about for some kind of distraction.

  “Tell me you can’t juggle.” The instant the words were out of her mouth, Prue stiffened, utterly appalled.

  “I can’t juggle,” said Erik equably enough, his hands still moving in her hair, separating one lock from another. “Why?”

  “Chavis used—” She broke off.

  He froze. “Chavis? That was his name?”

  Prue bit her lip. “Have you finished?”

  “Nearly. This one’s completely knotted.” The ice had thawed. “When you do something, you really are thorough, aren’t you, sweetheart?” Now his voice had a beguiling lilt that invited her to share the humor of the situation. How in the gods’ names did he do that?

  “Here, better hold on.” Picking up her clenched fist, he laid it high on his chest, over his heart. Thud, thud. Thud, thud.

  Prue clung to the rhythm, acutely aware of the inviting expanse of golden, hair-dusted skin. The slightest tilt forward and she’d be tasting him whether she wished to or not. She set her jaw.

  Somewhere in a far-off, crazy part of her brain, she wondered if his nipples were sensitive. Some men loved being touched there. Or licked. Broad or small, pink or brown? If she uncramped her fingers, slid her palm down a few inches . . .

  She’d lost her mind.

  “Nearly done,” he said, his lips so close to the shell of her ear she felt the warm whisper of his breath.

  A muttered curse, another cautious tug, the lingering brush of his fingertips against the pulse fluttering in her throat. “There.”

  “Thank you.” Gathering her courage, Prue pushed the hair off her face and raised her eyes.

  Cradling her cheeks, Erik stroked his thumbs over her eyebrows. Despite herself, Prue leaned into the touch, her lashes fluttering down.

  “You’re not really going to give the shawl back, are you?” he asked softly.

  Prue met his gaze without flinching. “No,” she said. “I changed my mind. I’ll keep it as a souvenir.”

  “Let me show you something.” Erik drew the shawl from her shoulders, took her hands and draped the folded length over her wrists.

  She stared. “What on earth are you doing?”

  “A ring shawl this length can also be . . .” Slowly, carefully, he wrapped the fine fabric a couple of times around her joined wrists, leaving the ends to dangle. He raised his eyes to hers, his face illuminated by the light from the windows, a world-weary angel with a devilish sparkle in his eye. “. . . a way to show you trust me.”

  Impossible.

  It was so loose, she’d be able to shake it off in an instant.

  If she wanted to.

  Erik reached out and picked up one end of the tie, leaving plenty of slack. “You see?” he said simply.

  Prue flushed from toes to scalp in a scalding tide of heat. His eyes blazed into hers. For a single glorious instant, she was beautiful, desperately desired, needed in a way that was entirely new.

  Safe.

  It was so ridiculous she almost laughed in his face. Except that she could barely speak. “I don’t understand. W-what do you want?”

  She watched him weigh the words before he spoke. A lock of golden hair fell over his brow as he bent his head and she’d almost lifted a hand to brush it back before she remembered. Tied. Surreptitiously, she pressed her thighs together, trying to quell the liquid burn of desire.

  “Isn’t it obvious?” That beautiful smile. “You.”

  The sensuous spell broke with an almost perceptible snap. When Prue gave the shawl a brisk tug, he released her. Her hands shaking, she unwound it, folded it up. “I can’t afford games. I can’t afford pleasure. I can’t afford you.”

  At the door, she turned back. He hadn’t moved. “But thank you for your gift. It’s truly lovely.” She forced her trembling lips into a smile. “Good-bye.”

  She reached the top of the stairs before the first tear fell.

  12

  The grand palazzos baked quietly in the afternoon heat, their white, pierced towers and curving roofs glittering with gold leaf and fretted bronze. Small blue waves cavorted and kissed in the canal. A single skiff poled unhurriedly around the bend. A perfect summer’s day. It would have been idyllic, thought Erik grimly, if not for the appalling stench that drew him reluctantly, but irresistibly forward.

  He didn’t have a clue what he was doing, but he couldn’t leave it alone. Last night, he’d watched Pru
e’s small, straight-backed figure all the way into the Main Pavilion, jagged, sharp-edged thoughts whirling about inside his aching skull like storm-tossed debris.

  He’d been enjoying the hunt for its own sake, so arrogant, so certain of his prey, that he’d fumbled it. The only one he couldn’t charm, couldn’t control, as the Dark Lady had foretold. When he’d blundered back into the fancy skiff, he’d nearly tipped Bettsa into the canal. Once the craft stopped wallowing, he’d asked her to take him to the Melting Pot. A midnight supper of hard liquor sounded fucking fine. He’d flexed his fists. With a brawl if one was in the offing.

  Halfway there, the appalling marsh-stench returned, doubling him over, but leaving Bettsa unaffected. Perfect. Now he had a matching set of miseries, inside and out—and he had not a shadow of a doubt they were connected. Such an exquisitely awful coincidence could only be the work of the gods. Gritting his teeth, he’d ordered the skiffwoman to take him back to the boarding house instead.

  The night had been virtually sleepless, interminable, the smell befouling his nostrils, Prue’s words echoing over and over, a death chant at the funeral of pleasure. I can’t afford you. I can’t afford you. He clenched his fists. The Dark Lady might think She’d proved a point, but he wasn’t done with Prue yet—hell, no.

  A maid at the boarding house had been happy enough to find him a large square of linen and saturate it with the sweet perfume of Lady’s lace, imported from Sybaris. Now he held it clamped to his nose as he negotiated the web of bridges that connected the Leaves of Caracole. Across the Roisterers’ Bridge to the Melting Pot, then the Bridge of Empty Pockets off the other side. After that, he lost count, but the sea breeze was his guide, and as it shifted, he’d wait, drop the handkerchief and sniff. Then he’d cough and walk on.

  The Processional Bridge, broad and sedate, brought him out on the Leaf of Nobility proper, and he paused, half-expecting some officious servant to run him off. Nothing. Nothing but the tall palazzos and their elegant gardens shimmering in the sun.

  The odor in the air grew stronger, dragging him down a narrow, twisting alley that led between the buildings, skirting the back walls of courtyards and trellises. A servant’s track. At the far end, an unremarkable wooden gate gave onto the small water stair.

  He could swear he could see it, hovering over the water, a gray, green, purple miasma of death. Erik’s legs gave out from under him. He collapsed on the stairs, fighting to keep what little remained in his stomach.

  Smell, the most primitive sense. It sped directly to his hindbrain, bypassing his rational faculties, triggering . . .

  Ah, gods! He pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes, but the memories sprang forward like clawed beasts, terrifyingly swift—mercilessly insistent.

  He’d hauled Inga out of a brackish eddy where the water swirled in a slow, muddy meander, her tall, slender body surprisingly heavy. “No! No!” His protest had been a scream to the cloudy sky of Concordia. When he’d gripped the girl by the shoulders and shaken her, her head lolled as if her neck was broken, clotted hanks of her hair falling against his forearms with a cold, unpleasant splat.

  But he ignored it all, throwing her down on the bank, spreading his big-knuckled boy’s hands across her diaphragm, pressing, pressing . . . A torrent of brown water spewed out of her pale lips, but she didn’t move or open her eyes.

  The fetid odor of the swamp, of slow, soft rot and dissolution, sinking to the bottom in a silty cloud of mud, putrid, stinking . . .

  Sitting on the top stair, Erik dropped his head between his knees, breathing hard. Deliberately, he superimposed Prue’s lively features over Inga’s pallid face. But that served only to make it worse. Instead of obliterating Inga, Prue seemed to sink into the other woman until rosy lips faded to gray, bright eyes dulled and they were one. Dead, dead, dead.

  Ah, fuck, not Prue . . .

  Godsdammit, he wished he could have seen her this morning, touched her hand, steadied himself. Shuddering, he gazed into the sparkling blue water. Because he was going to have to go down there, and he wasn’t sure he had the courage to do it. But they were all linked somehow—this death-stench, the task the gods had given him, Inga and Prue.

  The moment he’d reached The Garden that morning, he left the singing class flat and pelted up the stairs to her office. But her door was locked. “Prue!” he’d yelled, giving it a healthy thump.

  A short silence, the creak of her chair. “If that is you, Master Thorensen,” came her voice, perfectly composed, “go away and leave me work. I’ll send the completed books to you by messenger.” The rustle of paper as if she’d slapped something down hard on the desk.

  He’d made a rude gesture at the unresponsive door, but then he’d put his hands on his hips and stared at it, imagining her working on those damned accounts. His lips quirked with grim amusement. Once he’d had the idea, it had taken him most of a night to create the crazy effect, and to make separate copies of what was serious and essential, but he’d chuckled as he’d worked. He’d never had to cook the books before.

  Mistress Prue and the dark goddess would find it took more than a curt dismissal to get rid of Erik Thorensen.

  Now, he pulled off his boots and shrugged slowly out of his jacket. On second thoughts, he removed his shirt as well, ripping out the laces to tie his hair back and tucking his talisman and its chain into the pocket. He couldn’t risk losing that. The source of the corruption was under the water stair, beneath the Leaf. Praise be to the Horned Lord, the water was clear and calm. He was big enough and strong enough for this, surely? Fencing with his friend Gray kept him fit and made him a competent enough swordsman for the stage. He could hold his own in a barroom brawl or a knife fight.

  But swimming? He hadn’t swum much since he’d left the place of his birth, New Norsca, on Concordia. On the other hand, he sang opera for a living. He could hold his breath longer than anyone he knew.

  Barefoot in his trews, Erik padded across to the nearest garden and leaned over the wall. Gazing about, he noted the lush vertical lines of daffydillies and the graceful fronds of a widow’s hair tree, bending at the exact angle to brush the dimpled surface of a small, irregularly shaped pond. A dense bank of delicate plants starred with small pink flowers tumbled over the edge and drifted across the water in a sprawl of lace.

  Very pretty.

  He shoved the bundle of his clothes and boots under the twisted roots of the widow’s hair tree, behind the bright trumpets of the daffydillies. A middle-aged woman leaned out of a second-floor window and shook a cloth; Erik froze and her gaze passed right over him.

  Without giving himself further time to think, he turned, walked rapidly down the water stairs and kept going, straight into the canal and the death mist in the air.

  Warm and silky, the water caressed Erik’s body, plastering his trews against his skin. But as he stroked around behind the stairs, it grew darker and the swamp stink intensified to an almost unbearable level. When he stopped to tread water, a stealthy chill grabbed him by the ankles. Enough light penetrated to create a flickering world of broken reflections. Directly before him was a dark, ragged arch, three times taller than he.

  Wonderingly, Erik swam closer, reaching out with curious fingertips. The surface was as tough as the bark of an ancient tree, striated and knobbed, pitted in some places with crevices so deep Florien could have squeezed right into them. And all of it was wet and shiny.

  When he examined his palm, it dripped with an eerie green light. Phosphorescence.

  With an exclamation of disgust, Erik wiped his hand on his trews.

  This was stupid. Going in there, following that dark, noisome tunnel to the gods knew where . . . it was crazy. Lord’s balls, this was the living flesh of the titanplant!

  So what if he was the only one who smelled the rot? He’d go to the queen, to the proper authorities, and force them to believe him. They’d do it properly, bring torches.

  Something soft and wispy brushed past his knee and Erik damn near swal
lowed his tongue. He thrashed in the water, peering down. When it didn’t come again, he drew up his legs to extract the small knife he wore in a sheath against his calf.

  Four feet away, a head broke the surface. A tubelike snout whiffled. “Hoot?”

  The little animal disappeared in a neat swirl.

  “Hoot?”

  Erik spun around. Gods, there was another one behind him! Or perhaps it was the same one. He gripped the hilt of the knife.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he caught sight of a sleek blue body barreling through the water at extraordinary speed. Breaking the surface, it soared straight over his head, brushing the underside of the stairs, before it dived neatly back into the water. In its wake trailed a formless melody of hoots expressed in a sweetly minor key.

  Now there were six of them surrounding him, no, eight. Possibly ten. Their heads bobbing, singing their strange, double-throated song. Occasionally, one would break formation to gambol across the water, as if with an excess of energy.

  They looked just like the creatures on Prue’s shawl, the one he’d used to—

  Erik lowered the knife. “Seelies,” he gasped. “You’re seelies.”

  He could scarcely credit it, but it looked like the biggest one nodded. Its dark, bulging eyes stared into his for a heart-stopping moment. “Hoot!”

  There was no time to fight, even to take a real breath. A wall of blue fur surged forward, jammed itself tightly around Erik’s body and propelled him forward toward that hideous opening—at first slowly, then faster and faster, until the dark closed in all about him and the stench.

  Erik struck out, his massive shoulders bunching, but he had the sensation that for every seelie he struck, another replaced it, then another and another, until he was submerged in blue fur, flying through the black water, the tunnel growing closer and closer until it brushed his hair and his thrashing feet.

  His lungs squeezed with agony, just as they had when he’d nearly died of the lungspasm as a child. Can’t breathe, can’t breathe. His whole body became a litany of babbled prayers and demands. Lady, Great Lady, don’t kill me again. Not yet, not ’til I’ve finished whatever the hell this is. His vision filled with spots, the blood thundering in his ears.