Nameless: A Tale of Beauty and Madness (16 page)

She nodded.
Nico’s going to be angry.

But only if he finds out.
And besides, she had to know. If she wasn’t Family, this wasn’t his business, was it?

Tor nodded, once, sharply. You could tell he was used to planning things, once he made up his mind. “Here’s what we’ll do, then.”

Q
UIET, DARK, AND MUFFLED BY THE SNOW, THE HOUSE
on Haven Hill crouched.

She carried her shoes down the stairs, holding her breath whenever one thought of squeaking under her weight. Slowly, softly, a mouse in a dark hole, she kept glancing in every direction, nervously halting whenever a breath of sound brushed her ears.

Nico was out, with some of the Cinghiale boys. Clubbing, or who knew? Family business, and Trig was gone too. They’d left that afternoon, and the house was just like when Papa was gone—absent its breathing, beating heart. The Vultusino was missing, and even the walls knew it.

If Papa had been alive, she never would have dared to do this.

The front door grimaced at her, so she turned aside and crept across the foyer. Trig gone with Nico, Stevens already in bed; Marya was in the kitchen humming, and would be for a long while. The servants were bedded down; precious few of them wanted to trudge home through a New Haven winter. It was best just to stay on the Hill. And security wouldn’t do another circuit until dawn—or unless the protections on the walls woke.

The side door was locked, but it recognized Cami and opened with no fuss. The charms were uneasy, but she was allowed.

At least, this once. If she got caught, things might change.

Did Ruby feel like this when she snuck out? Did Ellie feel the risk breathing on her back, tingling in her fingers, her heart beating so hard she thought she might faint? Or was it just Cami the coward who cringed at every sound?

The cold ran down her body like oil. The leggings were good, the skirt was okay, and her coat was warm—but she was looking at being half-frozen already. She pulled the door shut, heard it click, and heard the charmbolt slide back into place.

Well, I’m outside
.

Down the steps, around the corner, the snow wasn’t too bad. Expeller charms kept it mostly whisked away, and the wind drifted it against the north side of the house. She crept to the corner and peered out at the driveway.

“Don’t just stand there.” Tor’s breath touched her ear. She jumped, almost letting out a shriek, and saw the white gleam of his teeth as he grinned. “Sorry.”

She balled up her fist and socked him a good one on the shoulder, as if he was Nico. He stopped short, still grinning. Her clenched fist tingled.

That was probably not a good idea.

“Really, I’m sorry.” He even sounded contrite. “Got carried away.”

With what, dammit?
Her heart finally settled, pounding high and hard in her wrists and throat. At least with her pulse going like this she wasn’t cold. “F-fine. Where are w-we g-g-going?”

He was an ink-drawing, from the smudge of his hair to the paleness of his hands. “Someplace I’m sure we won’t be overheard.”

“O-o-over—”

“There’s ears everywhere, princess. Let’s go.”

It wasn’t easy to get off the grounds without using the gate, but Tor climbed a tree near the periphery, put his hand down and braced her as she scrambled up. The protections scented Cami and vibrated a little, but subsided, and she finally let out the breath she’d been holding.

He dropped down on the other side, caught and steadied her as she tried not to fall into a snowdrift. His hands were warm against her waist, even through her coat, and a different heat went through her, along with a curious comfort.

Why did he feel so familiar?

He let go of her, slowly, and they trudged along the wall until they reached a small enclosure, saved from the worst of the snowfall by a huge cedar tree. Under its low-hanging branches, in the fragrant chilly dark, stood a motorcycle.

It was sleek and shining, slung low to the ground, and its front wheel was covered with a shield shaped like a silver horse’s head. Its wheels were alive with silver grabcharms, hissing slightly as they touched the cold air.

“You like?” Tor’s grin was proprietary and uneasy all at once. “He was a junked-out hulk. I dragged him halfway across town, remade him from the inside out.”

“Wow.” Cami touched the horse’s head, her gloved finger scratching behind an ear. As if it was real. Charmlight ran in the silvery metal, and she snatched her hand back. Tor, right behind her, was so close his breath was a cloud over her shoulder.

“He likes you.”

“H-how c-can you t-t-tell?”

A shrug she felt in her own shoulders. “I rebuilt him, I can tell. You know how to ride?”

She had to shake her head. Motorcycles weren’t safe. Nico would have a
fit
if he knew—but she pushed the thought away. He was out, doing God knew what. It was Cami’s Personal Choice to be here, and if he didn’t like it, well, he could just . . .

Bravery only went so far. It would be much, much better if he just didn’t find out about this. It was
private
, she decided.

Tor’s fingers, awkward, touched her elbow. “It’s easy. I did the charming myself, all through him, he’s pretty safe. You’ll have to lean with me, and you’ll have to be close. Still want to? You can get back into the house if you—”

“N-no.” She stepped back, blundering into him, and the contact sent a shock through her, even through layers of clothing. “I’m n-not going b-b-back.”
I’ve come too far. I have to know.

And for once, she was a necessary part of an expedition.
She
wanted to know,
she
had sought him out, and
she
had snuck out of the house on her own. This whole thing wouldn’t be happening without her, and that was a frightening—but kind of pleasant—change.

“Okay.” He pushed past her, swung a leg over the cycle’s padded seat, and leaned it, popping the kickstand free. Another quick motion, and the purr of an engine rasped under the snowy quiet. “Climb up, princess.”

I wish you wouldn’t call me that.
It was probably useless to ask any questions, so she didn’t. She clambered carefully up, sliding her arms around his waist. At least she knew that much.

“Closer,” he said over his shoulder. “You’ve got to hold on tight.”

His jacket smelled of leather, but without the bay rum and Nico’s fiery pepper-temper it wasn’t a quite-safe aroma. The cold lay over them both, an almost physical weight. The purr of the engine ratcheted, and the cycle jerked forward. The snow was churned about, broken and dangerous; he half-walked the purring thing toward the road. The grabcharms flung themselves out in sticky lightning-snake tentacles, digging into the frozen surface and tossing up tiny bits of it.

The wind rose, tugging at her braided hair, wringing tears out of her eyes. She wondered how he could see to steer, and laid her head on his shoulder. He tensed, but then relaxed as the motorcycle reached the bottom of a shallow hill, whinnied, and hopped up onto the road as neat as you please.

Cami caught the trick of it—you did have to lean close. Pretty indecently close.

Ruby would love this
. The thought made her grin, and she hugged Tor fiercely as the icy, dangerous road slid away underneath them. He gunned it, leaning forward as the grabcharms spat, and the chrome horse leapt to obey.

H
ER CHEEKS STILL STUNG FROM THE COLD OUTSIDE,
and she tried to look like she walked into a smoke-dimmed, charm-and-neon lit, bass-thumping inferno every day of the week. The club was on the edge of Simmerside, and Tor was known here—at least, the jack bouncer nodded him and Cami past. Thick with muscle, mirrored shades over eyes that glowed through the polarized lenses, the shaven-headed jack presided over a line of other jacks and Twists, inadequately dressed against the cold, none of them daring to step much out of line under his glare.

Inside, it was a crush of throbbing music, and the smoke drifting around was from burning tobacco and other substances. A few
actual fausts
were on the dancefloor, jerking as if possessed.

Well, technically, she supposed they
were
possessed. She had never been this close to real live fausts before, and was surprised to see they looked just like regular people, except for the constant smoke wreathing them. And the way their hair stood up, writhing madly. Even the lone female faust’s waist-length mop tried to rise on an invisible draft.

There were their eyes, too, glowing dull punky unnatural colors as the dæmon crouching inside its human host looked
out
.

There were Twists here too, most of them congregating along one wall of the club where iron bars ran from floor to ceiling, part of the Age of Iron chic the whole place had. Odd shapes lurked in the shadows as limbs corkscrewed by Potential moved restlessly; shoving and snapping, their eyes glitter-crackling with stray sharp unhealthy charms, the Twists were given careful space even by the fausts. The iron would scorch them, but every once in a while a Twist brushed against it deliberately, and the sick-sweet roasting smell that arose added a sharper note to the funk as the Twist exhaled luxuriously.

What would it be like, Cami wondered, to love pain that much?

The bar was a mess of tubing; the bartender wore goggles pushed up on his sweat-greased forehead; polished sprockets and gearwheels glittered from the circulating waitress’s skirts. The tables were covered with dingy linen, and the jacks on the dancefloor sported feathers, fur, lizard skin, a whole cavalcade of Potential-spurred anomalies that would keep them hidden or creeping in the shadows during daylight.

None of them elbowed Tor, though, and she followed in his wake to the bar. He leaned over and shouted something; the tender gave him a brief dark glance, looked over his shoulder at Cami. The bartender was a charmer, the edge of his Potential flaring with a faint green wreathing glow as it reacted with the charged atmosphere. His dark hair and wide dark eyes made him into an inquisitive river otter, and he yelled something over the noise at Tor, who shrugged. “
She’s with me
,” the garden boy yelled back, and picked up something shiny from the counter. Two glasses of something fuming with steam were handed over. Tor nodded, didn’t bother paying as he turned away and forced a fresh route through the crowd.

There was another Twist bouncer at the staircase, but this one just stood aside, holding the end of a frayed red velvet rope. The music—if you could call it that—was a migraine attack, but Cami thought she heard Shelley Wynter singing again. Or maybe it was Bronwinn and the Titons, floaty female vocals over a pounding beat and wailing charmesizers.

Nico really liked Shelley Wynter, had every tape she’d put out, even the limited-release demos from when she was a torch singer in New Bransford, a couple province-states south.

When Cami was thirteen, she’d wished for her hair to whiten just like Wynter’s. She’d nerved herself up to ask Marya about bleach and dye, but had never quite scraped together the last drop of courage necessary to actually
do
it. Ruby had said there would be no problem, but Cami didn’t want to trust her hair to Ruby’s enthusiasm at that point. Not after the Great Clippers Incident earlier that summer. Of course Rube had just looked gorgeous and ethereal, but still.

Behind the rope was an archway, and stairs going up. She climbed after Tor, blinking. Her eyes kept filling up—from the cold, and the smoke, and all the noise.

I’m out, at night, with a strange boy. Near the core, too.
Her heart pounded so fast she thought she might have some sort of attack.

Was this what freedom felt like?

There was a close dim hall upstairs; Tor took a sharp right and set off down it. He shouldered open a door to his left, jerked his head at her, and she stepped inside.

It was, of all things, a sitting room. There was a fireplace, but it was cold and empty. Two overstuffed chairs that looked pre-Reeve crouched dispirited in front of it, and a small table sat between them. Peeling yellow-brocade wallpaper hung in strips from the walls, and the whole thing made Cami’s throat close up. If the Red Room was a comforting weight, this sad little room was a strangling crush of poverty and disrepair.

If Papa hadn’t found her, who might have? Or if Chauncey hadn’t bothered with the brakes, what would have happened? Or what if Nico decided, sooner or later, that she wasn’t Family enough, if she made him
too
angry? He was the Vultusino now, and if he decided she didn’t belong in the house on Haven Hill . . .

It didn’t bear thinking about. But sooner or later, Cami supposed, she
would
have to think about it.

“Sit down,” Tor said, sweeping the door shut. “I’m pretty sure we won’t be overheard here.”

I doubt anyone could hear through all that downstairs.
The music and crowdroar from below was a giant beast’s dozing pulse, as if they were above a rumbling titon pit. “I d-d-d-don’t—” she began, but he just pushed past her, set the drinks down on the table, and stamped back to the door. There was a click, and she realized he had locked it.

Her throat, in addition to closing up to the size of a piece of spaghetti, was now slick and dry as summer-dusted glass.

“Got to be careful. You start talking about
Biel’y
, people get nervous.” He brushed past her, dropped down in the chair to the left. Reached for one steam-fuming drink, and poured it down in a long swallow. “Gah.
Nasty
.”

Cami’s boots were still wet with melting snow. His tracks and hers showed up dark on the threadbare, flower-patterned carpet.

“Before I forget.” He dug in his jacket pocket. “Something for you. Since the pin broke. You seemed awful worried about it.”

She lowered herself down in the other chair. “I f-felt b-bad. S-s-since you—”

“I’m not broken up about it. But I figured I’d get you something else, pretty girl. Here.”

It was a velvet bag, deep black, the nap worn in a few places. She opened it gingerly, and the shimmersilk spilled out. Opalescent, charm-woven by Waste-witches, the rumor ran—it was pretty rare. The threads were fine, but strong as iron, and the lacework of it could be doubled, turned over itself to make a belt, opened for a shawl. She’d never actually
held
shimmersilk before.

It made even fey-woven lace look coarse and ugly. Her small wondering sigh was lost under the thumping from below. “W-wow,” she breathed. “H-how d-d-did you—” She was just about to ask
how did you afford it
, stopped herself. “Th-thank y-you.”

For a bare moment, he grinned without anger, shyly ducking his head. “I saw it in a pawnshop, thought it belonged to you. Took a couple paychecks, but it’s worth it.” He eyed the second drink. “You want that? It’s called a minotaur. Rat-tooth gin, strawberry juice, and cornswell charm. Just the thing for nerves.”

“N-no. Th-thank you, Tor.” His name managed to wring its way free of her lips, whole and undamaged.

“You’re welcome. I . . .
Mithrus
. I like you.” Did he look uncomfortable? Maybe just a little. He grabbed the second drink, bolted it too. Steam drenched his face for a moment; he wiped it away with his free hand and set the second glass down. The gleam in his hand was the door-key, he set it on the table, pushed it with a fingertip until it was on her side. “Okay, so.
Biel’y
.”

The shimmersilk slid through her hands. It had tassels, made of smoky floss. Nobody at school had one.

Ruby would just
die
.

“I only know a l-little,” she hedged.
Wait. Did he just say he liked me?

“Look, I was an orphan. I didn’t know. Sometimes it happens, one of them gets lost and grows up outside the cult.”

It’s a cult?
There were a lot of them around, leftovers from the Age of Iron, coalescing around charmers gone bad, or Twists with charisma. You couldn’t swing a hexed cat in some provinces without hitting a cult or two. Papa said that even some branches of the Family, like the Stregare, used to be worshipped sometimes, back before the Reeve.

Papa’s gone.
A chill touched her back. The shimmersilk was cool, like supple living metal against her sweating fingers. It was waking up, coming alive in her hands as her Potential filled it with heat. Music thumped away below, the beat changing a fraction, becoming more insistent. “Okay.”
I didn’t think there were cults here in New Haven, though.

“I’m not one of
them
,” he persisted.

She nodded. Her braid bumped against the back of her coat. She was beginning to warm up a little. Maybe she
should
have had the other drink. A buzz would probably help right about now. “I b-believe you.”

Maybe it was the dimness, but he suddenly looked years older. “Well, don’t.
Biel’y
lie. That’s the first lesson about them—don’t ever trust one who says they’re not, especially a man. Once the Queen gets hold of them, they’ll do anything, say anything, to get her what she wants.”

Her hands cramped. The shimmersilk bit, its thin threads able to slice flesh if enough pressure was applied. She had to force her fingers to relax. “The Queen.” It was a bare, numb-lipped whisper.

An answering whisper, from the well of darkness her nightmares hid inside.
You are nobody. You are nothing.

“The White Queen.” Tor was pale. Sweat stuck his messy black hair to his forehead. “The boys serve her, they grow into her huntsmen. The women serve her too, if they come in from outside. But the girls . . . she
takes
them.” He wet his lips, a quick darting motion of his tongue. “It’s old magic, older than the Reeve or the Age of Iron. Didn’t anyone ever tell you this ghost story?”

“N-no.”
Not until now.
“They t-talk around the edges. B-but not out l-loud.”

“Sometimes she takes in orphans. There are some kids born into the cult, born underground where they live, like Twists. If they’re not Twisted, if they’re not jacks, if they’re plain human or charmer, they’re kept.” He shuddered. “The born-below boy babies are
special
huntsmen. Her
Okhotniki
.” The word was funny, swallowed into the back of his throat, almost French but not quite. “The girls . . . when they’re six . . . it’s not pretty.”

How old are you, bambina? Where is your momma, your poppa?

Tor’s black eyes glazed. He stared at the empty fireplace like he could see the story he was telling played out in its shadowed depths. “Sometimes, only sometimes, the White Queen consents to her most favored
Okhotnik
. Sometimes after that there’s a baby, and sometimes, only sometimes, a special baby girl born. A princess. When she’s six, the Queen takes her. Then the Queen’s renewed, not just for a little while like with the other girls, but for a hundred years or more.”

“R-r-renewed?” Her hand stole toward the key.

“Oh, yeah.” He blinked furiously, like there was something in his eyes. “It’s not easy, being the Queen. She gets . . . hungry.” He shuddered again. “That’s why there’s
huntsmen
. They, and the
Okhotniki
, bring her things. To . . . eat.”

Oh, God
. The cold was all through her now. The music below mounted another frenetic notch, a vibration running through the floor and the chair, rising up her spine.

This one’s heart is fiery
.

You were dead. She ate the heart.

The apple, cut in half, its seeds forming a star. A flat medallion, sparking, a red stone in the middle—the only one with a jewel, because she was the Queen.

The others had medallions too, but they were plain. Plain silver, not-quite-round.

“You h-had one,” she whispered. “A n-n-n-necklace.”
A huntsman. Bringing her things to eat.

“Since I was in the orphanage. I was an
orphan
,” he said. He was shaking now, his hands clamped on the chair’s arms. “I was—”

But whatever he would have said next was drowned in a crashing from below. The music rose on feedback-laced squeal, and the screaming started.

Cami grabbed for the key. Her fingers scraped the table, draped in shimmersilk, and Tor’s eyes rolled up into his head. Under the sudden chaos from below, the sound of the chair’s arms cracking as he heaved at them, struggling against something invisible, was only guessed-at, not heard.

She let out a high-pitched cry, lost under a wave of cracking that shuddered through the frame of the nightclub, and bolted for the door, the shimmersilk waving like seaweed as she ran.

Down the stairs in a rush, her wet boots smacking, Cami hit the bottom and went over the frayed red velvet rope with a leap that would have made the gym teacher, Sister Frances Grace-Abiding,
very
proud. Landed, skipping aside as a faust crashed to the floor right in front of her, for a moment she couldn’t understand why everyone was screaming . . .

 . . . then one of the steel-toothed dogs leapt, foam splashing from its muzzle and its fawn-colored hindquarters heaving. It crunched into the fallen faust, chewing as the dæmon inside the flesh let out a shattering wail. Bone splintered, and the faust curled up, throwing the dog aside with a snapped charm that sparked red in the gloomy interior. The charmlights had mostly failed; the bleeding neon glow was barely enough to see by, and the crowd pressed for the doors as the dogs bristled, leaping at will.