Dreamquake: Book Two of the Dreamhunter Duet (42 page)

Rose told Laura she wasn’t yet ready to go. She’d wash herself a bit and splash on some witch hazel.

“I’ll just go down and say good night to Sandy,” Laura said. “And be back to help button you up.”

Laura hurried out to the second staircase and down one floor—where there was access to the main staircase and she could find her way back to the ballroom. Sandy was waiting for her in the entranceway. She grinned at him, grabbed his hand, and dragged him back to the stairs. “Surely I’m not allowed up there?” he said, but he went with her.

She scampered ahead of him, sometimes going backward and holding him with both hands. They got to the second floor, and she took him along a hall and onto the secondary staircase. She led him down to the low-ceilinged hallway that all the debutantes had entered by earlier. Laura whispered, “Rose told me it might be quiet here, but it’s even better, there’s nobody at all!”

The gas lamps on the stairs had been lit, but the ones near the street doors were out. Neither Sandy nor Laura wondered about this unguarded entrance; they only embraced it as an opportunity to be alone. They stopped to kiss, Laura with her back to the wall. They broke apart when they heard running footsteps on the stairs, but then, when no one appeared, they melted together again.

“I wish I’d known more of the dances,” Sandy said.

“But Captain Goodnough’s
Useful Guide to Ballroom Dances
says that good taste forbids a lady to dance too frequently with one partner.”

Sandy stroked Laura’s curls. “You like dancing. I didn’t know that.”

For minutes more they leaned together, sharing breath and not speaking, then Sandy said, “I’m late already.”

“And I’ve left Rose all unbuttoned.”

Sandy pushed her gently away. “Good night,” he said.

Laura left him, skipped into the light, and, turning every few steps, went back to the stairs, then vanished up them.

Sandy straightened his tie and checked that his shirt was
tucked in—Laura had the habit of pulling its tails out of his trousers.

He heard faint music, the orchestra striking up again.

Light appeared on the dark street beyond the door, lamps carried low and making a grid of shadows on the cobblestones. Then there were men in the doorway, who held their lamps so that their faces were concealed and only their shapes could be seen, their suits and bowler hats.

“Alexander Mason,” said one of the men.

Sandy began to back away.

“You are to come with us.” They advanced into the hallway. Their kerosene lamps reflected off the lustrous oiled-silk wallpaper and revealed their faces and shrewd, stony expressions.

Sandy turned to flee and heard the men break into a run behind him. They caught him at the foot of the stairs. He struggled and yelled. The bar of an arm closed on his throat and silenced him. He grappled with it but couldn’t get his fingers under it. Someone hissed “Be still!” in his ear.

But Sandy continued to fight; he kicked and threw his weight forward. He was wrenched upright by the arm pressing on his windpipe.

“Subdue him!” a man ordered in a fierce whisper.

“No!”
said another—the only man among them with any sense or foresight.

Sandy couldn’t breathe. He was blacking out. He clawed at the arm. His fingers fizzed, then went numb. Everything went white—like sheet lightning without a thunderclap to follow it.

The man who’d remained at the door to watch the street wasn’t the one who had foreseen what would happen. He saw
what
did
happen but, for several long moments, didn’t understand what he was seeing. The dreamhunter was putting up a fight. Five men were clustered around him, grunting. The man in charge was issuing orders. Finally the dreamhunter slumped—

—and all the men around him dropped to the floor, like marionettes whose strings had been severed. The man at the door felt a stunning blow, violent lassitude that seemed to come from the core of his own body, a warm explosion of sleep. It struck him onto his knees. Nearer the floor, the air seemed full of the smell of flowers and freshly fallen dew.

The man shook his head to clear it. When he looked up, he saw that two of the dropped lamps had shattered and spilled kerosene, and that the floor was on fire. A liquid fire crept toward either side of the corridor. It didn’t look dangerous. It looked like the flames over a pool of brandy-cradling crêpes suzette. Nothing bad could happen. Not in a world that smelled like a beautiful garden.

The man shook his head again and staggered up. He could see a heap of inert bodies beyond the pool of fire. The flame reached the walls, licked at the oiled-silk wallpaper, then streaked upward and spread, flowing onto the ceiling.

The man hurried toward the fire, his arms over his face. The corridor had become a squared tube of flame. The flames were bright, but black at their bases, consuming their smoke before it fumed from them.

The man jumped over the fire. He fumbled at the fallen bodies, got hold of one by an arm and a thigh, hoisted it onto his shoulders, and stood up. He turned back to the exit and ran through the fire. The kerosene coated the soles of his shoes, so that he left fiery footprints behind him.

10

HEN LAURA ARRIVED BACK IN THE POWDER ROOM, SHE FOUND ROSE SITTING STRAIGHT WHILE ONE OF THE AT
tendants closed her back into her pearly carapace of dress with the help of a button hook. Rose was relieved to see her cousin. She opened her dance card and found the name of her next partner. She showed it to Laura. “Could you find him and give him my apologies? I’ll be down shortly.”

Laura took note, nodded, and rushed out again. She was enjoying this dashing around. She wasn’t hot, she was very fit, and she liked the way the gilded panels and mirrors and her own vivid reflection flashed past her as she ran. She liked leaping soundlessly down the carpeted stairs.

Laura sprinted down one flight of the lesser stairs, then along the hall that came out onto the main staircase. She loped down the wide steps of its outer curve, raced through Founders Hall and into the ballroom. She slowed down and looked around for the young man, saw him between the rows of a Scottish dance. The expression on his face suggested indigestion to Laura. She worked her way around the dance floor to him and touched his arm. “Rose says sorry. She’s still upstairs. It’s the heat.”

“Oh,” he said.

For a moment they stood awkwardly side by side, then it finally
occurred to him that he could dance with this girl. “If you’re not engaged?”

“No. I’d love to.” Laura beamed and held out her hand.

For the next few minutes, whenever the open weaving figures of the Scottish brought them together, he’d babble about his university studies, the horse his father had in the Founders Day Cup, and so on. Then he remembered to introduce himself. Then he lost his tongue when he realized he was dancing with Tziga Hame’s dreamhunter daughter. Laura flew through the dance smiling at everyone, aglow with happiness.

She had just come off the dance floor and caught her breath when another young man introduced himself and engaged her for the mazurka. During it Laura looked around for Rose, but it seemed her cousin had missed another dance and again left someone standing.

Then the music faltered, a horn sounded a farting note, a violin swooped into discord. The dancers slowed and turned to the orchestra. Someone had hold of the conductor’s arm. The conductor’s baton was pointed at the floor. The musicians were setting aside their instruments, and some—those nearest the conductor, who could hear what was being said to him—were on their feet.

The master of ceremonies released the conductor and turned to the crowd. “Ladies and gentlemen. I must ask you to leave the building immediately. Could you please make your way in an orderly fashion through the Founders Hall, down the stairs, and depart by the main doors. Would you then please assemble on the west side of People’s Plaza. Do not collect your belongings. Do not look for your family members. They will find you—this message is being repeated in every other room. Now go at once, and peacefully.”

The crowd began to move, with more speed and elbows
than had been suggested. The murmur of questions became a rising buzz of alarm, then someone yelled, “There’s a fire!”

Laura and her partner had come together when the music stopped. They went along together, turning slowly in an eddy of pressing bodies. “My mother is in the supper room,” he said. He began to push his way against the current, aiming at the high door of the supper room, visible over all the flower-decked and brilliantined heads.

People were shouting the names of relatives and receiving answering shouts. The hall was ringing with calls and throbbing with a clamor of fright. But everyone stayed on their feet, and the room was clearing. Laura went with the flow. She wanted to locate her uncle and aunt, and was sure the quickest way to do that was to get out of the building and into the plaza. She was simply too short to see over the heads of the crowd.

Laura was in Founders Hall when she smelled smoke. Somewhere in the building someone had opened an external door and let in a breeze, the air pressure changed, then the scent of smoke swept across the crowd. The people started and shuddered and, as one, shied away from the smell.

An elbow collided with Laura’s head. She saw stars. When she managed to get her bearings again, she found she was facing backward. Her feet weren’t touching the ground. She was being carried along by the crowd. It was terrifying, and she began to cry out for help.

She caught a glimpse of a bunch of bodies in black formal wear on a dais at one end of the hall. Men, who had fought their way free from the crowd and were now scanning it, looking for their own people. She saw her uncle among them, taller than most. His head was swiveling back and forth—he had heard her screaming but wasn’t able to find her. She lifted an arm and waved to him, and he launched himself off
the dais and into the thick of the people. He shoved and swam his way toward her. He picked her up and lifted her over his head, then let the crowd carry him onto the sweeping curves of the wide staircase and down into the street.

Chorley put Laura down. He hurried her clear of the main doors. Once free from danger, the crowd seemed to collect itself and begin to cooperate—for the most part. People hovered, waiting to see who came out, while the police tried to get them to move out of the path of the clanging fire trucks and horse-drawn water tenders.

“Rose was still up in the powder room,” Laura said to her uncle.

He said, “Can you see your aunt?”

They kept hold of each other and turned this way and that searching for the little figure in the gray silk dress. Then Chorley snapped upright and cried out. He pointed. Laura followed his finger and saw that her aunt was on the terrace outside the ballroom, with dozens of other people, all clustered at the stone balustrade and calling down to the crowd. None of them seemed terribly worried, and, as far as Laura was able to tell, they were asking for news, not help.

Chorley gripped Laura’s arms and fixed her with his sternest look. “You stay right there,” he said. “Grace should be fine. It’ll be possible to reach all those people with ladders. I’m going back in to get Rose.”