The Dream Thief (13 page)

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—some
one
else. It was electric and thin and very, very familiar.