The Dream Thief (22 page)

“Snapdragon—”

“It’s a chance, I know. But I’d
rather see it out than drive on tonight in the dark. Wouldn’t you?”

The boy lived in a hut. There
could be no other word for it; the roof was straw and the walls were planked
wood; the floor was composed of reed mats and swept dirt. There were not
actually any farm animals roaming inside, but if the pigs had been gone for
less than a month, Zane would have been amazed.

The door was not slammed in their
faces here. The door was swung wide, and the people inside pulled them in with plucking,
nervous fingers. The hut contained a man and a wife and three more children
besides the boy, who darted around them to clutch at his father’s loose shirt.

Lia and the adults exchanged
courteous words, the couple bowing and nodding and Amalia smiling in return,
her hands a graceful accompaniment to whatever she was saying.

The
place smelled of garlic and onions. There was a fire sputtering beside an old
inglenook at the end of the chamber; it cast the sole illumination, bright
enough to pick out a kitchen hutch, a carved table and chairs, and the
wrought-iron cross hanging from a support beam of the wall. “Look,” murmured
Lia in English, in the same gracious voice she’d been using for the peasants.
“It’s the mother. Do you see it?”

He didn’t. The woman looked
commonplace to him, scratchy blond hair pulled back beneath a kerchief, blue
eyes, deep lines around her mouth. She was neither plump nor thin, not tanned
nor pale, her gown a wildly colorful mix of embroidered flowers and leaves over
felt, a brassy pattern that had appeared on half the frocks of the women they’d
encountered in these climes. She was ordinary. He was about to open his mouth
to say so when the peasant turned her head, glancing up at her husband—and then
he did see. With the light shifting, with her chin lifted…her profile held a
shadow of Lia’s own strange and marvelous beauty.

Drákon.

“Yes,” he said, hiding his
astonishment.

“It’s not much. But she’s the
one.”

“Amalia,” he said, as the couple
gestured them forward. He curved his fingers around her arm to prevent her from
moving, keeping his face a pleasant mask. “Has it occurred to you that these
may be the people who played with fire in our hotel? That we’ve strolled right
into their trap?”

“I’m not a ninny.” Her own smile
remained fixed. “It’s not them.”

“Because…?”

“Because there’s no power here.”
When he wouldn’t release her arm, she deliberately pried his grip from her,
following the wife as she urged them toward the table. Zane kept a half pace
behind. “The blood is too diluted. It’s like…an echo of a song, rather than the
song itself.”

They sat. The wife brought out
bowls and spoons; the husband and two of the children left the hut to see to
the gypsy. The boy Jakab and a younger sister remained. They huddled together
like sleepy kittens on the inglenook, watching Lia with wondering eyes.

The
drákon
wife served
them goulash, piping hot. She sat unsmiling across the table from them both,
her hands folded, observing every bite they took.

Lia offered what sounded like a
compliment. The woman lifted her brows on a sentence and nodded, then ducked
her chin. She said something else almost under her breath; Lia’s spoon paused
above her bowl.

“What is it?” Zane said, alert.

“Nothing. I’ve—I’ve just realized
I’ve been mistranslating a word.”

“Not
here
is your poison
instead of
here is your stew,
I hope?”

Her lips lifted in a brief,
lovely smile. “No.” She took another bite, chewed and swallowed. “I thought
they had been saying
noblewoman.
To me.”

“And?”

“It’s
not
noblewoman.
It’s
noble one.
”

He
fished a piece of potato from the bottom of his bowl. “What the devil is that
supposed to mean?”

“I’m
not sure.” Her lashes were lowered; she kept her gaze on her food. “But I
imagine it means that these people—that all the people we have encountered in
these villages so far—know what I am.”

Wonderful.

“This just keeps getting better
and better,” he said.

“Yes.” She blew delicately at the
goulash in her spoon. “And have you noticed there are no other rooms here, and
no beds?”

They spent the night together on
a pallet on the dirt floor, Zane with his arms firmly around her beneath their
blankets, his senses humming, exhausting the hours by hovering between the
brink of sleep and hard-awake. Despite Lia’s assertion that these were not the
people hunting her, he was taking no chances.

The peasant family slumbered
around them. Even the Roma had bedded down by the front door.

No one snored. Perhaps no one
slept.

He kept her body close for
warmth. He inhaled the pleasing scent of roses, her golden head at his
shoulder, and let thoughts of sunshine and summer drift through his drowsing
mind.

CHAPTER TWELVE

L
ittle is known of what actually
happened between the dragon-princess and the peasant who stole her from the
bosom of her kind, all those centuries past. We know he was wily enough to
thieve the diamond as well, to ensure he would have
Draumr
to bind her
by his side. We know he was hungry enough for her to risk his own life to keep
her, and ruthless enough to destroy her family when they attempted to rescue
her from him.

But what did
she
think,
that lovely, lonely girl? Like silent Helen of Troy, we have no records of her
thoughts. We know only her actions; we know what mountains men moved for her.
The mystery of her soul remains unsolved.

We know she wedded the peasant
and bore tainted children by him. We know she remained by his side for many
years, raising her family, ensorcelled by the stone.

She had been the prize of her
people, cherished and pampered, meant for a royal future. He was naught but a
child of the dirt, who did not deserve to even glance into her eyes.

That night she put a blade
through his heart, what raced through her mind? When she took the diamond from
her husband’s body and vanished into the mountains, did she regret her story?
Did she fret for her children, left alone and vulnerable to the mercies of
humankind? Was it difficult to step into the void of that abandoned copper tunnel?
Did she ever hesitate to take her own life?

Perhaps she was merely relieved
to have her nightmare ended. Perhaps she focused only on breaking the spell
that had enslaved her.

I don’t know. I think she was a
fool, to wait so long to kill him. I would have done it the very first night,
the moment he dared touch my skin. I would have snatched the diamond from him
and swallowed it, and then shown him the true, awful beauty of my gilded self.

But I’m
not her.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

S
ometime during the oblivion of
their twelfth night in the mountains, the gypsy deserted them.

She should have sensed his
growing discontent, but he was human, and seldom bothered to look her in the
eye anyway. Right up until the night they’d been forced to camp beneath the
stars, the gypsy had been acting exactly the same: churlish.

Lia had felt a certain sympathy.
The constant wind and the cold whittled away at her too. She longed for green
England and a soft, safe bed. She longed for silence.

It had been growing more and more
difficult to secure accommodations after twilight. The villages this high were
scattered; they had spent their days rolling through forests so thick the sun
never touched the snow below, and passes so narrow she grew nauseated just
glancing out the carriage window at the sheer drop to the rivers and gorges far
below.

And everywhere they went now, she
was drowning in song.

The Carpathian range was iron and
gold and copper; it hid diamonds and silver, salt and coal and quartz, and
mines spidering miles through the solid rock as evidence for all these things.
She had learned that much in her lessons from school, but not once had she
considered the implications: this place was like a drug to her. When she closed
her eyes she heard countless phantom melodies in her head, softer, louder,
changing as their direction changed. To preserve her sanity she practiced
picking out one song at a time, following its tune as it plucked at her,
soared, and then grew dim, only to fade back into the mists of her mind.
Draumr
was an ever-present counterpoint to all the rest, always the strongest, always
the most beautiful.

And with its beauty, the dreams
became more vivid than ever before.

Three days ago, over a luncheon
of dumplings and mutton at an alpine farmhouse, Zane had confronted her
point-blank about it.

“You’ve lost weight,” he said in
English, brusque. “You’re not eating, you’re wan, and I haven’t noticed that
you sleep.”

“You notice if I sleep?” she
asked, looking up.

“I consider it part of my job.
Are you ill?”

She shook her head, glancing at
the farmer’s wife and girl children, kneading dough in a line down at the end
of the table, tallest to smallest, like nesting dolls laid out. Lia doubted
there was any chance they could understand English, but she knew they listened
hard anyway.

Flour from the dough spotted the
wood, spurted up in clouds to sift the still air.

“It’s not consumption?”

“No.”

“Smallpox? The plague?”

“Please.”

“Is it
love?” he drawled, very dry.

“Do
shut up.”

“Then
what ails you, dear wife?”

“Not a
thing.”

“I
cannot envision which will be worse,” he said, flipping back the lace of his
cuff to spear a pickled beet on his plate. “Having to return to your parents
and say, ‘Amalia died of consumption,’ or ‘Amalia died of stupidity, for
refusing to confide in me. Whilst my back was turned, I’m afraid a dragon came
and ate her up.’”

Lia’s gaze flew to the woman
standing just feet away.

“Do not say that word.”

“What
word?” He smiled, malicious.
“Dragon?”