The Dream Thief (6 page)

“I see.” He returned her smile.
“Don’t misunderstand. We’ve had some pleasant dealings in the past, highly
profitable, by and large aboveboard. But I am surprised. In all these years,
you’ve never asked me to steal anything for you.”

The marquess spoke at last. “You
will be paid sixty thousand pounds sterling.”

Zane felt the air leave his
chest. He felt his hands go cold. Out of instinct, out of survival, he held
absolutely still until his senses lined up again.

Sixty thousand—

It was a fortune—more than that.
It was damned near bloody unimaginable, and he had a very colorful imagination
indeed. If it had been anyone else in the world saying such a thing to him,
anyone,
he would have jeered and walked away, because there were few things more
perilous than dealing with madmen.

“Done,” the thief said, and
pushed to his feet to shake Rue’s hand.

“Did he suspect anything?” Kit
Langford asked his wife, watching from their bedroom window as the carriage
containing their human guest rolled away down Chasen’s drive.

Rue was standing behind him; he
heard the shrug in her voice. “He’s Zane. He always suspects something.”

“But he’ll go.”

“Yes.” She walked up and brushed
her fingers to his, a soft, fleet intimacy that warmed him, just as her touch
always did. He turned to her, taking up both her hands. She was beautiful. Cool
and dark, the night to the stars, she was always so beautiful. A smile hovered
at the corners of her mouth.

“I
dislike this scheme. Intensely,” he added when her smile only deepened.

“I
failed to hear you devise a better one.”

“Actually,
I did.”

“We cannot both go,” argued his
wife, reasonable. “We cannot both vanish without word for months on end, no
matter how urgent the cause. The entire tribe would be in an uproar. The
council would have our heads.”

“That is why—”

“And if it were to be only one of
us, you know it should be me. I’m the one with the most experience at stealing
away.”

“If you think for a moment I
would let you travel alone—”

“No,” said Rue. “I didn’t think
that.”

It was a delicate subject, one he
didn’t feel like exploring at the moment. But her eyes had grown stormy; to
distract her, he bent down and pressed his lips to her temple.

“Imagine how lonely I’d be
without you,” he murmured. “Tottering around, a doddering old man weeping into
his shirtsleeves…”

It earned him a laugh, low and
musical. “You’re far too vain for that. You’d use a handkerchief.”

He folded her into his arms. They
were silent a long while, her head against his chest, rocking slowly together
as the clouds outside lapped vanilla cream against the horizon. Finally Rue
sighed.

“It can’t be either of us. It
can’t be
any
of us. We can’t risk it. The lure of the song is fearsome
enough at this distance. Even the elders agreed it could be irresistible up
close. Whoever has that diamond now might understand its power. Might realize
what we are and use it against us. That’s why it must be Zane. He won’t be
susceptible to the song, and he won’t think twice about handing it over to us
once he has it. Especially since he doesn’t know what it can do.”

“Unless
someone sees fit to tell him. What then, little mouse?”

She
stilled a moment, then tipped back her head to see him.

“He’s still our best hope.”

“Aye,” agreed Kit reluctantly. “I
know it.”

Their gazes locked. The heat
began to build, that deep, burning craving for her, for her body and her voice
and her heart.

Rue’s lashes lowered, very
demure. He felt her fingers tighten over his arms.

“Will you come to bed, my lord
Langford?”

It was barely past teatime.
Neither of them cared.

Paris was wet, a cold, gray city
with even grayer people, the scent of decaying vegetables and clay and cattle
everywhere. The sky remained leaden all the way from Avon to Strasbourg, but it
didn’t truly start to snow until he reached Stuttgart, when the raw winds tore
through the clouds to embed a layer of ice crystals upon his rented coach, and
the road, and his coat and the gloves on his hands: every inch of the world
glistening with a sly, glassy enchantment beneath the weakened sun.

The horses struggled with the
frozen muck. Zane had been riding atop the diligence until then, squeezed into
the driver’s perch alongside the German coachman until the cold seared his
eyeballs and bit his skin to frost. He had never cared for the cramped
interiors of carriages, no matter how stylishly done up. He needed the open
sky, and open views.

But the horses suffered. So they
traveled a great deal more slowly than he would have liked otherwise, stopping
at inns, at taverns, even farmhouses, whenever the weather grew too dismal. He
became used to the round-eyed looks of the country ostlers, their noses red
with the wind, as the sleek new coach rolled into whichever godforsaken village
arched next into view along the roads. He became used to the smell of hay mixed
with sludge, and the shiny wet gloss of melted snow tracing lines along the
black spokes of the wheels.

The entire rig had cost a great
deal to rent. Few companies wished to hire out as far as he was going, and
fewer still drivers. But hard gold always managed it; the Paris company had
found a fellow with cousins in Munich. He would get that far before starting
over again.

Strapped to the back of the
carriage was a single trunk holding his garments and shoes and a very decent
bottle of sherry. Inside the carriage were the more valuable things: his picks,
his spare pistol, and bullets and powder horn. Three daggers, a dirk, and a
single sheath of rice paper, tucked thin and small into the lining of his
valise.

In Rue’s neat, slanted writing,
the paper read:

Pest

Oradea

Satu Mare

Carpathian range? No farther.

No more than twelve carats, no
less than one-half; a cast of blue; uncut. Heavy in the hand.

Draughmurh?
Drawmur? Drahmer?

It was
precious little to go on. It was precious little to tie up his life and his
establishment for an entire season, no matter how competent his associates or
how satisfying his reputation. There had been nights he lay awake in the
lice-ridden pallets that passed for beds in most hotels when he’d wondered
when, precisely, he had lost his reason. There could be no other answer to this
journey. Rue’s imploring eyes and careful lies be damned: he had no true idea
of where he was going. He had nearly nothing to go on, guesses and dream-work from
a clan of creatures who could answer only,
It sings
and
It calls
and
You must bring it back to us
when he asked for clearer directions.

Merde.

Too often he’d just settle back
against the squabs and watch his boots drip. He’d been traveling over a month
now, well versed in his guise as an English gentleman on the Grand Tour. He’d
patronized so many tea parlors and coffeehouses and card rooms that the mere
thought of downing another cup of tepid liquid amid the chatter of foreign
tongues made his skin crawl.

He spoke French well, German
tolerably. After that, he was no better off than the role he played, a bored
English sophisticate with a taste for legends and gemstones.

The land passed by his window in
depressing sameness. France, Germany, Austria: all gray and dun and somber
skies.

Sixty thousand pounds.

He’d buy a castle in Tuscany.
There’d be no bloody ice there.

Despite fresh horses and his new
coachman’s best efforts, they could not cross the Danube to reach the city of
Pest before the sun sank into a thick red and purple horizon, ending the final
day of October. Zane settled for Óbuda instead, across the river, smaller, and,
from what he could tell, slightly more stylish. The Hungarians here sported
wigs and buckled heels he had last seen in the heart of Paris. The women were
hooded and painted and walked the cobblestone streets in dainty, mincing steps,
never far from their escorts. He’d garnered more than a few glances just
checking in to the hotel—scruffy, unshaven, his trunk and greatcoat spattered
with mud. The King’s View was a veritable palace of plasterwork and imposing
marble angels, but after three straight days without a good night’s sleep, Zane
reckoned the Marquess of Langford could afford it.

From his balcony he watched the
skyline begin to illuminate, yellow flames that gradually connected into
pictures through the dusk, outlining buildings and steeples and streets, the
indigo emptiness of parks checkerboarding the glow. Pest glimmered and the
river glimmered with it, its banks edged silvery white with the last dusting of
snow.

The Danube was a wide, gray line
between the two cities, dotted with fishing boats and ferries and great flocks
of crows; their high-pitched cackles bounced back at him across the waves.

The balcony curtains swelled and
folded, gently tapping his legs. The breeze lifted his hair. He’d already
undone his waistcoat and settled in with his sherry to watch the birds when the
floorboards outside his room squeaked, and stopped, because someone had paused
at his door.

Zane had his pistol primed when
the knock came.

“Monsieur? Monsieur Lalonde?”

He
placed his foot against the door, held the pistol down at his side, out of
view, and turned the knob. A lanky man with watery blue eyes looked back at
him.
“Oui?”

“My deepest regrets for
disturbing you, sir,” said the hotel clerk in French. “You were left a missive
at the front desk just now.”

The man held out his hand. A
cream-colored envelope rested on his palm, Zane’s name—his
real
name—and
room number inscribed in lavish script upon the vellum.

For a moment he only stared at
it. The clerk waited, his narrow face betraying nothing. Zane closed the door,
stuck the pistol into the waistband of his breeches at the small of his back,
then opened the door again and took the envelope from the man’s hand.