The Dream Thief (15 page)

But he did not believe they were
to be let loose so easily.

He made good use of the
barkeeper’s moon-eyed infatuation, convincing the man Lia required the use of
the private back room and paying heftily for the privilege.

Zane prowled through the chamber
first, learning it—a cracked window, creaking floors, no fireplace, no other
exits—then ushered her inside.

“Dress, and try to rest awhile,”
he said. “Bolt the door. Don’t open it for anyone but me. Should anyone else
attempt to enter, feel free to shoot them.”

“What?”

“The pistol’s in the valise. Do
load it first.”

“Where will you be?”

“Not far.”

The lower level of the hotel was
still swarming with people, most of them weary, robe-clad guests trampling soot
through pools of spilled water. The scent of carbon and singed cloth was much
stronger here; he held his handkerchief to his nose to hide his face and pushed
his way through the people, slowly ascending the first flight of stairs.

The second flight was blocked
entirely by a threesome of footmen, sans wigs, who stood with their arms resolutely
folded behind a thin, bearded man who was attempting to explain, Zane assumed,
why no one could pass. The argument echoed all the way back to the lobby. The
dowagers of the pearls were becoming especially riled.

Gentry. Never thinking of the
smaller ways to do things.

He skirted the edges of the
unhappy mob and slipped down a nearly empty corridor, searching until he found
the door he knew would be somewhere nearby: small, plain, and locked. The
servants’ stairwell.

He was
not followed. No one saw him go in. No one saw him as he shut the door softly
behind him, relocked it, and moved noiselessly up the cramped stairs.

Even
the best of criminals could leave behind clues. It was a lesson Zane had
learned early on in his years. A man too confident, too greedy, or simply too
lazy was a man who made mistakes.

Mistakes could lead to Newgate,
or a hangman’s noose. Mistakes could lead to a name.

The top level of the hotel was
demolished. It was open air and sunlight, and warm blackened beams that crumbled
beneath his touch. He didn’t trust the charred floor of what used to be the
hallway; the wood was thin and splintered. By balancing his weight he was able
to make his way nearly to where his room used to be, where he saw something
odd. Something long and round, black and yet gleaming.

It was a bottle, the only thing
glaringly out of place.

He crept closer. He hung by his
hands from the empty doorways, swinging like a monkey from beam to beam. He
managed to get just opposite the bottle, but there was a long, toothsome hole
gaping in the floor between them.

Zane stretched. He was tall and
purposefully limber; he leaned out as far as he could and with the tip of his
finger managed to hook the bottle into a roll, catching it just as it was
tumbling to the level below.

He swung back upright. He lifted
the bottle to the light.

There had been a label once, but
it had burned away. He didn’t need to read it, though. Zane recognized the
bottle’s shape, the particular red cinnamon shade of the glass beneath the
soot, the tapered neck and stoppered mouth. It had once held a very fine
Spanish sherry.

His sherry.

Which had been secure in his
trunk, locked in his room.

Zane glanced around him. The
trunk was gone, the door and bed and curtains were gone. The only other
recognizable thing left from his room was the graceful bow of the window, the
sash still set where he had fixed it last night, trying to rid the dust from
the air.

Everything else was charcoal.

Anyone sleeping too soundly this
morning, he considered, would have been too.

Lia,
he thought, and turned to make
his way back to her.

He had, of course, saved the
valise because it had all the money in it. Lia should not have been surprised
by that; she had no reason to feel annoyed or disappointed—but she did feel those
things, all of them, even as the thief’s brows arched and he murmured, “Yes,
you’re most welcome. Shall we discover a place to purchase some new clothing?”

But there were no dressmakers to
be found, not even in the controlled chaos of the city square. By the time he
had returned to the tavern, she’d washed the blood from her hands and knees and
twisted back her hair into a loose, falling knot. But she was forced to walk
the sidewalks of Jászberény with both hands lifting the skirts of her gown;
without her hoops, the yards of extra fabric dragged like a wedding train over
the ground.

They paused together near the
hotel entrance, watching people sleepwalk in and out, as if the fire had
hollowed their will as well as the building.

She knew this is where Zane had
gone. He’d come back to her with soot on his breeches and hands.

Lia tipped her head to see where
their rooms used to be, now simply windows framing sky.

The day was brightening into
cerulean. There was no hint of clouds; even the last, thin smoke from the
embers vanished swiftly into swirls.

And there was no other
drákon
.
Not the faintest shiver above or below, in any shape or form—nothing at all
since that instant in the cold violet dawn. Perhaps she’d imagined it. She was
tired, she was frayed. Perhaps it had been simply her nerves….

Except for the glimpse of those
eyes. She would not have imagined that.

“Did you dream of this?” Zane
asked, surveying the ruins beside her.

“No,” she admitted.

“What was in your trunks?”

“Clothing. Cosmetics. My scarlet
silk,” she realized, suddenly mournful.

“Any weapons?”

She turned her head to regard
him. He met her look through lashes dark as the soot, then shrugged.

“Well,
I’ve
lost my best
dirk. It will be easier to replace a few frocks than that.”

It wasn’t. The city square held
banks and grocers and even a tobacco shop, but to find a seamstress they had to
pull their coachman away from a dicing game in the stables. If the ostlers had
been part of the turmoil of the morning, they had settled back into prosaic
routine now. There was a group of about ten of them squatting in a circle in
the dirt, quarreling over a pile of sticks, when Zane approached.

Lia lingered by the eaves of the
entrance, as far from the animals as she could manage. She watched as Zane
spoke with his hands to the gypsy, who listened and chewed on a hay straw and
finally nodded.

“Zot,”
said the man, and left to
harness the horses.

The
dressmaker’s shop fronted one of the smaller, crooked streets that made up the
mass of the town, half up a hill that climbed and climbed. Lia followed Zane
inside gingerly; the street was shadowed and the shop ill-lit. All she could
see of it was rolls of cloth stacked against the window and a single branch of
candles burning in the back. It was unlike any place she’d seen. Not only were
there bolts of bright cotton and woolens, there were strands of dried red
peppers hanging from the walls, and scrolled looking glasses, and flower-glazed
crockery dotting nearly every shelf. Broomsticks tied with bows rested in all
four corners, and a single gown lay haphazard upon a counter, its lemon-yellow
skirts embroidered with songbirds and ivy, draping down to the floor.

Beside the dress was a bowl of
loose stones. She moved toward it through the gloom, following the faint, small
music that tingled down her spine. The shop faded, the scent of peppers and
smoke and spice faded; she dipped her fingers into their hard sparkling midst,
stirring up psalms and canticles with just her touch.

Pleasure—instant, zinging. She
closed her eyes. In the shadows of her mind
Draumr
picked up the melody,
turned it sweeter and richer and bolder through her blood, made it a summons
she couldn’t much longer refuse….

Distantly she heard Zane
speaking, a woman responding…and a slighter sound right before her. Breathing.
Lia glanced up. A shopgirl with china-blue eyes was staring at her from behind
the counter, a cushion of pins and thread clutched in both hands.

Lia lifted her fingers from the
bowl and smiled. The child smiled back, then glanced quickly at the
couturière
standing with Zane.

“This is your wife?” the woman
was saying, in heavily accented French. “But of course—how sad, the hotel. Yes,
we have heard. Come, Madame. Please come! Here we will find you something
beautiful.”

And so she was draped with the
woolens, colors she would never normally choose simply because they did not
exist back in pale, pastel-washed England: the fiery reddish-orange of poppies,
wild peacock blues, buttercup, emerald. In her too-big gown, Lia held swatches
and examined weaves and pretended not to hear the soft, steady chanting of the
stones in the bowl.

“No,” said Zane, from where he
lounged by the counter. “We won’t tarry here. We need something already
completed.”

The seamstress protested very
loudly, but Zane was firm: they were leaving today. Whatever the woman had on
hand would have to do.

“Impossible,” announced the
couturière
in her tortured French. “What I have, she is commissioned.”

“Of course.” He sighed. “How very
regrettable.”

The thief bent his head and
examined his left hand. He closed his fingers, opened them, and like magic a
row of gold coins appeared, gleaming against his palm. The girl in the corner
openly gasped.

Lia ended up with the lemon gown
and three others—red, green, blue, as bright and primitive as the sunrise—as
well as heavy stockings and stays and silk ribbons that ran like river water
through her fingers.

“From Paris,” said the woman, and
showed a gap-toothed grin.

Lia left Zane to haggle over the
payment, inching once more toward the bowl of jumbled stones.

“Do you
like them?” The
couturière
was beaming with pleasure; no doubt she’d
made a handsome profit on her country gowns. “A young lady so lovely, of course
you do.” The woman gave her a wink and picked up a pale, glinting shard,
placing it carefully in Lia’s hand. “Diamond! Very rare.” She addressed Zane
from over her shoulder. “For your bride, good sir, I’ll make you a fine price.”

The thief pushed off the counter.
He filled the shop in the way a lazing lion would fill a formal drawing room:
his surcoat and breeches and shirt were drab amid the frolicking colors; he’d
lost the leather tie to his hair, so it draped his shoulders in an uncivilized
mane. He moved with something darker than poise, something that suggested
nighttime, and silence, and feral-eyed vigilance.

His hand lifted. He drew his
center finger slowly down the inside of Lia’s wrist to the center of her palm,
to the stone she held, a shocking soft touch that sent tremors through her arm.

“Does it please you, beloved?” he
asked, smiling, and she knew all he really meant was,
Is it worth it?

She wondered how much gold,
exactly, he had brought with him in his valise; she herself had lost her bank
vouchers with her trunks. But she returned the pale shard to the bowl,
resisting the urge to rub her wrist upon her skirts. Instead, she picked out a
different stone.