by Shana Abe
She should have realized how completely he would slip into this world. She should have realized how effortlessly he would become one of them.
She felt conspicuous in her borrowed gown. She noticed how the women they passed glanced at her tumbled hair, her clean cheeks. How the men were glancing lower than that. No doubt on its owner the gray silk was perfectly respectable. On Maricara it became something else, soft gleaming material that bit into her skin, that forced her into small, mincing steps and sent a barb into her ribs with every breath. She could not bend in any direction. She could not lift her arms above her breasts. She felt her hair threaten to topple all the way down her back every time her hips swayed.
"By God, if you keep doing that, I'm going to have to secure us a room," Kim muttered, staring straight ahead. They crossed into, and out of, an oval of flickering light.
"Doing what?"
"Holding your breath like that. It makes your chest swell magnificently. Kindly cease." "I can't cease. I can barely inhale."
"Then next time," he said sweetly, "steal a bigger gown or use the damn tucker."
They were at the entrance to the pump room. Instead of an actual pump, there was a fountain in the middle of the chamber shaped as a scalloped bowl, a bronze pipe sprouting from its center, burbling water. A string of adolescent maids in mobcaps and aprons stood in a circle around its base, ready to offer glasses of murky liquid to the men and women around the chamber who lifted hands for it.
The tables were adorned with lace and fresh flowers, nearly all occupied by laughing, chattering people. Waiters clipped back and forth with tea sets and wine and plates of warm food, their mouths pinched, their buttons and polished shoes reflecting the gleam of the brass chandeliers above. The floor was hardwood but every walkway was beautifully carpeted; a great many portions were spotted with water. The pungency of damp wool overlaid that of the iron and sulfur, noxious.
"There is a table over there," said Kimber's man, still behind them.
Mari shook her head. "I am not drinking that water."
"No," agreed Kimber. "Let's avoid poisoning ourselves if we can. But if we wish to remain inconspicuous, we can't remain standing here. At least seated we can get our bearings."
The maitre d'hotel was already coming toward them, bowing low, bidding them forward. Kimber drew her along with him again.
The table was close to the putrid fountain. One of the serving girls rushed over with three glasses as soon as they were seated. Kimber and his man nodded their thanks as she bobbed a curtsy. Maricara only pushed her glass away.
"We're inconspicuous," reminded the earl, with a pleasant smile. He pushed the glass back toward her. "You don't have to drink it. But try not to look as if you want to throw it at me. I know at least ten couples in this room, and they'd all give a guinea to have a savory bit of gossip to take with them back to London."
"I'd wager they've already got it," offered the other drakon, staring down at the glass he cupped between his palms.
"True. Most young ladies dining out with me for the evening don't look quite so murderous."
"We're wasting time here," Mari said. "We should be searching for the child."
"We are." Kimber draped an arm over the back of his chair, revealing a waistcoat of startling bright blue. "You're seated now near the center of the entire spa. If she's here in any direction, this will be the best spot to tell. Do you feel her?"
"I cannot feel anything but an impending headache. This place reeks and the noise—"
"My love," interrupted the earl, soft. "Beautiful dragon. Please try."
She closed her mouth with a snap. Her gaze flicked to the other man—still staring down at his glass, his cheeks and jowls growing flushed over the flowing ruffles of his borrowed jabot—and then back to Kimber. He waited, not moving, not even smiling now, only watching her with a calm and steady expectation.
Mari leaned back. She turned her eyes slowly around the bustling room, taking in all the faces, all the colors, lush textures and cascading voices, and then tried to let them sift into frequencies, letting them fall away one by one, until she heard only what she needed to hear, until she caught the echo of those notes, and they seemed suddenly very near—
"There he is! There, right there, by the fountain!"
The exclamation was extremely loud, louder even than the general commotion of the chamber; in her heightened state it jolted through her like a knife. The man who had made it was standing by the entrance, portly and quivering with emotion, dressed plainly in black breeches and a shirt that didn't quite fit, one arm lifted dramatically to point straight at Kimber.
No—at the other man. At Rufus.
"That blackguard stole my clothing!" The man glanced wildly at the two human males beside him, both well dressed, both clearly management. "What manner of establishment is this? I demand satisfaction! You there, sir! Ho, you! Where the bloody hell do you think you're going?"
The portly man began to trot toward them, followed by the other two. But Sir Rufus was already away from the table, moving with surprising speed toward the wall of folding glass doors that led to the outer courtyard.
"Blast." Kimber pushed back his chair, reaching for her.
"No," she said quickly, and rose to hasten the other way, still speaking, knowing he could hear. Other people were beginning to stand up; the angry man had veered toward Kimber, his voice rising to a bellow. "There will be empty rooms at the top of the hotel, farthest from the stairs."
"How do—"
"Because there always are." She took up her skirts with both hands, dodging tables, the servants trying to speak to her, not running yet, just walking faster. "If nothing else, there's the garret. Don't get caught. Go."
She was nearly to the folding doors; the footmen were distracted, and there were a great many people gaping and pointing at her, behind her, and through all the ruckus and rising voices she heard it again—the eldritch sound. The soft, dreamy reflection of notes—only now it was practically at her side.
Maricara, startled, turned her head, and met the gaze of the woman falling into step beside her. Blond hair, brown eyes, dragon grace and poise and a face Mari instantly recognized—
The other woman grasped her hand and took the lead, guiding them both to the doors, to the dark outside.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
It's time I explained Draumr to you, Child of Mud. Some of you will have heard of it already, of course. Some of you are well studied in our ways, and to you the word Draumr might as well be salvation. Or so you would think.
The dreaming diamond, the lost blue gemstone. For centuries it haunted our kind, born as we were amid magma and comets, where we were at the mystical brink of mountain and sky: a perfect, fatal counterpoint to all our strengths. Draumr was a monstrosity rejected by the cosmos, disgorged to earth. Exquisite cold, wicked with song, it crystallized into a drop of unblemished evil. It was never meant to be.
Because it was the only stone ever that had the power to enslave us.
Yes, well might you prick up your ears at this news. It had that power. For centuries it was kept locked in Zaharen Yce, hidden from everyone, even ourselves. It sang a song so enticing there could be no denying it; you drowned in that stone. You lived with its opium saturating your blood, and it was like floating through a waking dream, breathing thick honey, adrift in blissful clouds. Under its spell you had no troubles, no will, no resistance. Defying it was unthinkable. So human or drakon, whoever held the diamond could command us utterly.
We did our best to annihilate it. Even so, twice it nearly destroyed us.
Well.could you do it? Could you bring yourself to crush the most powerful object of pleasure known to your kind? The gem that had but to hum a single, perfect note in your ear to send you reeling into gentle oblivion?
You have your drugs. You have gin and laudanum and all your fine fermented wines. You crave their relief; perhaps some of you, a small fraction, might understand why we never demolished the ston
e.
We kept Draumr in a vault, in a dungeon, in our castle named after ice and tears, atop its barren peak. We kept it very well until it was stolen from us by a human.
But we got it back.
Some of it.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
He waited for her in a room that had not seen the light of day for at least a season, he would reckon, although there was still a faint lingering of honey citrus rising from the polished wainscoting. All the windows were shuttered, and there were sheets across the furniture. The bed was unmade. Kimber didn't bother to make it. He only snatched one of the sheets and shook out the dust, then wrapped it around himself like a toga, falling back into the chair it had covered.
He'd had to Turn to avoid being pinned by the hotel's overzealous managers. He'd been doing all right until then, summoning all his charm and an entire fiddle-faddle of lies, gradually managing to extricate himself from the most brightly lit sections of the pump room. But the man missing his clothing had also lost Rufus Booke. He wasn't about to lose his other quarry. He'd cornered Kim and right away tried to wrap a meaty hand about his arm. Kim had remedied that with one quick, hard grip of his fingers, still smiling.
The man had paled and Kim let go; after all, it really wasn't his fault, and Booke had made off with what the fellow swore was his new Italian coat.
Kim hoped wherever Booke had managed to leave it, the coat would be recovered unsullied. And quickly.
One of the more uncommon Gifts of the drakon was that of Persuasion, the ability to temporarily command Others, to get them to do whatever they were asked to do. To believe whatever they were asked to believe. It was a notoriously tricky Gift, and although Kim had inherited a trace of it, convincing an entire babbling chamber full of people of his innocence was proving a shade beyond his talents.
So he had offered to take their business out into the hallway—the less illuminated hallway—and in the ensuing argument and bustle had found just the right second—only that, a bare second—when all four of them had paused by the shadow of another marble god, and none of the Others were looking straight at him. He had said, very calmly, "You will not notice me," had stepped back against the statue and Turned, abandoning his own purloined garments to the floor.
He had not dawdled to listen to their eventual exclamations. If he'd had money, his own belongings, Kimber would have bought his way out of it all; there were fine advantages to being rich. But he could hardly afford to have another fuming, ill-dressed man stumble across them as they negotiated. He'd managed thus far not to mention his name or title. There were plenty of people present, however, who would have been delighted to mention them for him.
It was the devil's choice: Turn to escape, or get snared as the earl.
So he'd Turned, in public, potentially in view of half the ton. It was one of their most hallowed rules, one that might as well have been tattooed across his body, Thou Shalt Not Turn before Humans, and he'd done it just to save his own arse because he couldn't think of a better or more expedient way to escape the situation. When the council found out, there was going to be hell to pay.
It was all a right mess.
On top of all that, he'd lost sight of Maricara. He didn't know where she went, or how she went, only that by the time he'd evaporated into smoke, she was no longer in the same space.
Nor was she anywhere he floated. It wasn't easy to be inconspicuous as smoke inside a closed building. She'd been absolutely right about that. With the slanting rain outside, all the windows were shut tight. It had taken bloody forever to find a door that even had a decent crack around its jamb.
At least most of the Others roaming the spa were downing liquor instead of the water. Tipsy humans tended to excuse most anything.
Kimber scrubbed his hands over his face. She'd been right about the empty rooms, too. There were three of them; he'd invaded the farthest one. He let his arms drop, hanging over the arms of the chair, and gusted a sigh.
If she didn't show up soon, he was going to have to go get her. Under no circumstance was he going to simply wait for her to come to him, not with all that could yet go wrong. She'd said there were no sanf here, he himself felt nothing like that, but still....
He was weary. He couldn't recall the last night's decent sleep he'd had. Days ago. Weeks ago. Before his lovely, troubling, tempting, maddening-beyond-reason princess had shown up, that was for damned certain.
Kimber sat up in the chair. It was dim in here, only slivers of rainlight slanting past the shutters, but his eyes were adjusting. He stared blankly at the wall before him, the cornflower-blue-striped paper, a framed watercolor of coy hares and leverets cavorting in a field of strawberries. He felt the dust of the room in his nose, the threads of the satin in the chair against his forearms.the beech floors, oak joints behind the walls.mice, rapidly scattering to the other end of the hotel.gunpowder and summer flowers, a subtle wafting through the air.
The dragon in him blinked awake. He let it flood his heart, quickening. Let it singe his blood.
She was close. She was here.
Kim cut his eyes to the door. Smoke was curling through the keyhole.
She Turned in midstep, pacing over to a dresser, whipping off the cloth that covered it in an arc of grayish white. She wrapped it around herself just as he had, flipping an end over her shoulder.
"Pleasant," she said, glancing around.
"Adequate," he responded, and gave a narrow smile. "How good to see you, Princess. Any lasting repercussions?"
"No. A gentleman stopped me briefly in a hallway with his hand upon my arm, but he apologized profusely when he realized I wasn't his wife. It seems she has a gown exactly like mine. By the time I made it out to the courtyard, your squire was already gone. And you, my lord?"
"Nothing I couldn't handle."
"They didn't catch you?"
"Not for long."
"I see." Elegant black brows lifted in what might have been astonishment, or just plain amusement. "You're shedding your vaunted rules like last year's scales."
"You do seem to have that effect upon me."
She gave a bow in her sheet, as natural as any man. "Merci beaucoup."
"Oh, you're most welcome. It's remarkable how easily nearly thirty-two years of hard-won wisdom and restraint are tossed."
"Was it easy?" she inquired, interested. And then: "You're thirty-two?"
"Thirty-one, and yes, extremely. I enjoyed immensely putting myself on display for all and sundry like the village poacher neatly pilloried. No doubt everyone was greatly entertained."
She went to the bed, perched upon the bare mattress and leaned forward with her arms on her thighs. Her hair slipped over her shoulders, a velvet-dark shadow covering her chest. "There," she said softly. "You see? Freedom is pleasurable."
"So is survival," he said, curt. "So are a few other activities I can think of. Perhaps we might engage in some of those instead."
Her head tipped, her lips still smiling. "Sir Rufus is currently downstairs, loitering in the garden as smoke. Don't you think you should go fetch him? He won't know where we are."
Kimber stood. He stared at her another long moment. Slowly her brows arched again.
He Turned. He left the way she had come in.
Mari made up the bed. She'd never done it before; as a child there was no bed to make up, only pallets, and as a princess there were always servants. Servants to tidy the rooms, servants to help her dress, servants to do her hair, and bring her food, and polish her jewels, and watch her with hawk-bright eyes when the prince was not at her side.
So she didn't truly make the bed. She only found a bureau stuffed with clean linens and tossed those over the lumpy mattress. There were no coverlets or even blankets stored anywhere else in the room, but there were five sets of sheets, and that seemed sufficient. It was warm still and she wasn't planning actually to sleep. But she could at least be comfortable while she waited for the earl to return.
She crawled to the center of the be
d. She lay flat on her back with her arms out and stared up at a ceiling of smoothed plaster. She did not feel tired. She felt very, very awake.
Rufus Booke was not in the garden. Not as smoke, not as man—not as anything. Nor was he in the sky. Kimber hunted for him a good two hours, going back into the town, even back down to the pools of the spa—closed this late, the water lapping in tongues against the tiled stone, not even a single lamp for light—but Sir Rufus was no longer anywhere nearby.
Kim wasn't worried. Not yet. Booke was a good man but, more important, a cunning one. If he'd gone to ground, there would be a reason for it. Chances were, however, he'd only gone back to Darkfrith.
It was where Kim was going with Maricara, as soon as he could fetch her. If Honor Carlisle had ever been here, she wasn't now. He would have picked up something of her by this point, even if it was just the princess's mystery song.
But there was nothing. And as Lord Chasen, he could no longer afford to remain publicly.
He maneuvered down a thinly smoking chimney near her end of the hotel, emerged at a grate clutching the remains of a smoldering log and burnt tinder. Embers brightened and broke apart as he sighed past, but there was nothing of him to ignite. Kim poured away untouched.
A woman slumbered in the wide, curtained bed. Her maid was on a cot in the adjoining room. Both of them snored.
He glided out from under the door.
The room that held Maricara was still unlit. Even the rainlight had darkened to ash. He stood a moment in stillness by the window, letting what light would come fall across his skin, so that she could see him.
But she was also asleep.
Maricara did not snore. She was on her side amid a swirl of sheets, her hair a sable slash across the cambric, her arms folded and her legs bent. It was how she had slept in the abbey.