The Dream Thief (10 page)

A hand took her elbow.

“Oh, no, snapdragon, no turning
back now.”

It was Zane, escorting her down
the final few stairs. With the horses bucking, she was half pushed inside the
carriage, catching herself with both hands as the floor lurched, falling into
the seat as the door slammed hard behind her. The abrupt lack of sun dazzled
her eyes.

Her mantle had twisted beneath
her, a slippery knot of silk and wool caught against the cushions. She twisted
to free it as she heard Zane stride to the front of the carriage. The coachman
was there too, swearing loudly in what sounded like Latin, but somehow it was
easier to hear Zane, his pace swift and nearly inaudible under the great
huffing squeals of the grays.

Her mantle came free. Lia settled
back as the darkness began to melt into shape and textures and dull mustard
squabs. Past the confines of the coach, past the wooden walls and the wind and
the racket of the street, Zane began, very softly, to speak.

Because she was alone, because he
wouldn’t know, she closed her eyes and fully opened her senses. She allowed,
for this brief moment, the relentless drone of her surroundings to sink into
her skin:

The rough suck of air into
massive lungs. The muffled, grinding
chink
of horseshoes pushed into
gravel.

The creak of the leather
harnesses; the straining joints of the walls and floor.

Sweet, my love, be still….

The smell of the river. Of stale
tobacco from the window curtains, the curl of pine resin in her nose, of
walnut, and iron nails—and then, more faintly, of soap and spice. Of
him.

Heartbeats, like thunder. Birds
breathing. Water lapping. The breeze slipping through his hair.

The whisper stroke of human
fingers down an equine nose, through a mane…

…good hearts, bravest souls…

…and she then lost the shape of
his words entirely and followed only his tone, that low, soothing grace of his
voice that somehow made everything better, that somehow took away the fear and
anger and left in their place peaceful stillness. And nothing, not the water or
the tobacco or the gathering thunder, mattered over that.

Amalia pulled back. She opened
her eyes and pressed the heel of her palm to her forehead to fight the sudden
ache.

She’d once overheard her mother
say that Zane could charm the fish from the streams and a tiger out of a tree.
Lia believed it. She believed he could charm a dragon, if he wished. It was one
of her deepest fears.

The
horses were quiet now. They smelled her, they sensed her, but the change felt
like a balm in the air. The need to bolt was gone. The carriage door opened a
crack. Animal tamer, master thief: he wrapped a hand around the edge of the
wood and held it in place, his sleeve and shoulder outlined with sun. The
interior of the coach lit like a flame.

“Do me a favor,” Zane said.
“Don’t come out.”

And before she could answer, the
door closed to darkness again.

It did not occur to him until
that afternoon to ask her which way to go.

He’d held his peace up on the
driver’s perch again, keeping an eye on the horses and the road. Without
discussion, the Romanian coachman had crossed the Danube and pulled them out of
Pest. It was what they had agreed upon days earlier, to head deeper into the
vineyards and woods, to head for the mountains. It was what Rue had suggested
in her sparse rice-paper note, after all.

But he had within his grasp a
living, breathing compass to what he sought. At least that was what she’ d
claimed.

For a very long while, Zane only
stared at the rump of the horse hitched in front of him.

He did not want to ask her.

The entire business of Lady
Amalia Langford made him uneasy. Despite what she’d said, he wouldn’t be
surprised if he awoke one night soon to a knife—or worse—at his throat from one
of her exuberant family members. Clearly she’d been planning her escape for
some while. It seemed unlikely not a single member of the
drákon
had
noticed her behavior.

He studied the rough countryside
just beginning to unfurl from the clutches of the city. Everything was cold and
raw and damp, burnt colors that blended up into clouds and hazy sky. She did
not belong here, just in the way a precious gem did not belong with dirt or
stones. It put them both at risk. He’d seen it already in the coachman’s face,
in that of the hotel workers, even in her swains at the ball:

She was different. Her body, her
face. The way she moved, as if the very ground did not exist beneath her feet.
Different.

Intoxicating.

Dangerous.

God. It’d be a bloody miracle if
the peasants didn’t end up tossing torches at them as they passed.

The carriage jolted through a
rut, and Zane thinned his lips. He was overreacting. Another bad sign. He was
used to operating alone, in the dark, letting his spiders spin webs for him
while he remained hidden in corners, directing, reaping. He’d let greed tempt
him out into the open, greed and curiosity, and now it truly appeared he would
suffer the consequences.

But he had come all this way.
Damned if he was going to run home now with his tail between his legs just
because some brown-eyed sylph had latched on to him and would not let go.

He did not want to think about
this. He didn’t want to think about her at all, with her primrose skirts and
her trunks stacked over his and her hair glinting summer gold by the cool
autumnal sun.

She had
duped her people and broken away from Darkfrith, which meant she was crafty.
She had journeyed alone all the way to Hungary, which meant that she was
audacious, if not reckless. She’d willfully ignored the rules of her kind—barbarous
rules, ironclad rules—which meant she might be desperate.

She had found him at the hotel.
She had lured him to the ball.

She had worn a dress that shaped
her in ways he’d never dreamed a woman could be shaped; she’d tilted her head
and smiled at him and sent a goddamned tremor down into the marrow of his
bones.

She
was
dangerous.

And it would be foolish not to
ask her.

He glanced at the
coachman—bearded, wrapped in scarves, as fine a gypsy as Zane had ever seen—
and then turned around in his seat. He opened the panel inset behind him,
showing a metal-laced grille and the black interior of the coach.

“Lia.”

She moved into view, a dim, pale
shape, wrapped in dusk.

“We’re headed east of Pest,
for—Jászberény—”

His mouth twisted around the
foreign word; he heard the Roma’s subtle snort. But Amalia only nodded and sat
back. From the depths of the carriage her voice sounded very sweet.

“That’s good, then. Keep on.”

She did not come forward again.
He allowed the panel to slide shut, turning once more to stare at the horses.

It was his imagination. He could
not
smell the winter rose of her from here.

But the animals in front of him
shivered and tossed their heads.

Reaching Jászberény devoured most
of the day. They breached its outskirts just as the sunlight was beginning to
slant into long, heavy rays, throwing shadows sapphire-rich across the
buildings and roads.

It was an ugly place, with little
of the airy glamour that had marked the cities dotted along the Danube;
instead, there were boardinghouses and crooked streets and taverns belching
smoke from their chimneys to cloud up the dusk. People actually stopped and
stared at the coach as the driver maneuvered their way through the troughs and
potholes that pocked the roads. It wasn’t difficult to find the better part of
the city: a single wide square of pillared shops and businesses, flanked by a
butcher’s quarter and a park with a pond and a few November-dried trees.

Zane chose a hotel in the middle.
He couldn’t read the name on the sign, and he didn’t care. He’d seen enough of
inns to know that this one would have fleas and gilt and a chance at letting
two rooms together. It was enough.

He leapt down and over a mud
puddle, glad to stretch the ache from his unused muscles. A pair of doormen
were already rushing forward, but Zane reached the carriage door first. He
turned the handle and—without even meaning to—held his breath.

Skirts and petticoats rustled
from within. She lifted a gloved hand to him and emerged cautiously, hoops
first, a dainty foot forward, the hood of her mantle pulled low over her face
and her hair. As soon as she was standing, the wind twirled between them; her hood
flipped back and the horses let out a whimpering protest. Zane motioned the
Roma to the back of the hotel. With a crack of the whip, the coach rolled away.
Lady Amalia stood unmoving on the sidewalk, one hand cupped over her mouth and
nose. She threw him a short, distressed look.

“What?” he said, forced to
exhale.

Her brows pinched together. “It
reeks.”

He angled his face away and tried
a deep breath, relieved to smell only town and evening frost. “No more than any
other place.” He shrugged at her expression. “You said this would do.”

Her chin lowered. He saw her gaze
flit to the alley that led to the butchers’ quarter, where a sign depicting a
slaughtered pig swayed helpfully from a post. The alley entrance was narrow and
already layered in gloom, a liquid line of runoff and water reflecting a
silvery sheen down the middle of the flagstones. A pair of cloaked figures
splashed briefly into view, shattering the silver into pools.

Ah. Zane knew what would be
prowling in those shadows. He knew now what Amalia sensed, the death and hunger
and those faceless, impoverished people. It was a stench that lurked in the
blackest crooks of his memory, and always would.

He kept his home in Bloomsbury as
clean as a monastery. He kept a maid, and Joseph to cook, and enjoyed the
luxuries of delivered coal and ice and imported fruit from sun-warmed lands. He
used his wiles to gain himself whatever he wished, be it silk or jewels or
paintings, and he was cold and clear enough in his own heart to make no false
apologies for any of it. Zane earned what he had, as sure as a baker earned
coin for his bread; he had been raised to steal, and if he didn’t do it,
someone else surely would. He kept a careful order in his realm of shadows,
made certain his people followed a strict set of rules, and culled anyone who
either flouted them or challenged him. It was how he had reached his place
today, and how he had kept it.

In his world of violence and
sawdust and gin-soaked taverns, the scent of blood in the air didn’t even raise
his hackles.

But Amalia’s world had been
different. However bold she acted, however mad her schemes…she wasn’t truly
like him. Not in any way. She had been raised as a gentlewoman, in a manor
house, by beasts disguised as men.

He watched her lips turn down as
she gazed at the sign. Beneath the folds of her mantle, he watched her
shoulders square.

“No, my lady,” Zane heard himself
say, and he moved to stand between her and that shining furrow of blood. His
arm lifted to guide her the other way, toward the park. “Look over there
instead.”