The Dream Thief (14 page)

The beast in her heart stirred,
fell and glimmering.

Lia lifted her head. It wasn’t
possible…but there was another
drákon
nearby.

She glanced casually around the
swarm of people, scanning faces. She saw the dowagers of the night before,
lined and haggard in the rising light, their guards flanking them. She saw the
squires, red-eyed, their cravats undone and their wigs askew. She saw men in
slack jackets and women in head-scarves and a scattering of urchin children—and
there—behind a pair of colliers gawking at the mess—

It was just a flash, a quick
thrill of movement, white skin, dark hair. A set of oddly tintless eyes meeting
hers. She pulled away from Zane, but it was already too late: the colliers were
shoved aside by one of the men with buckets, and there was no one behind them.

Only a wisp of smoke, rising up
to blend into the smudged, violet-tinged sky.

CHAPTER SEVEN

A
gainst what Zane would have
wagered were considerable odds, the water brigade was managing the fire. Smoke
no longer poured from any of the lower-story windows; the unholy curtain of
crackling yellow had vanished from behind the closed panes. People were still
shouting and rushing about, but it seemed at least half of the hotel had been
saved. Half. All that was left of the upper floor, the attics, was a mosaic of
broken rooftiles and black skeleton timbers, flecked with orange embers.

Zane turned to Lia. She appeared
pale and very shaken. Her hair fell snarled over the sleeves of his coat, a
sheen of rose lacquered over the guinea-gold, a gift from the rising sun. She
was gazing away from him, distracted; a line of soot streaked from her
cheekbone to her chin.

“I think,” said Zane, bending
down to her ear, “that perhaps I’m ready to concede that you cannot Turn.”

Her look back to him was
startled, as if she’d forgotten he’d be there. He offered a bow and handed her
her gown, thrust at him by a man in passing. It was wet and trampled but
undeniably what he’d thrown from their burning window. She stared down at the
layers of cambric and coral-pink damask as if she’d never seen any of it
before.

“Lia,” he said, touching her
shoulder, and she started again. He caught his cuff in his fist and rubbed the
soot from her cheek, then tucked her arm through his. “Come along. Come with
me.”

Her lips seemed very red. Her
eyes were dark. She held his arm like a dreamer, walking beside him through the
throng of weeping and smelly people without glancing left or right, her breath
clouding in the chill.

The people were not all that
smelled. Zane reeked of smoke. He did, Amalia did, the sky did, the very atoms
in the air. Sullage and cinders crunched beneath his boots like fresh snowfall;
for an instant he worried for Lia, but as he looked down he remembered she’d
found her shoes in time. She stepped mindlessly through a greasy puddle, the
ruffled hem of her chemise flipping pretty against her calves.

Her legs were long and bare.
Beneath his surcoat, beneath that slip of ivory silk, she was wearing nothing
at all.

He looked up. He wished suddenly,
fervently, for coffee.

Across the square was what
appeared to be a tavern—perhaps it was a teahouse. It had mullioned windows and
a door and a knot of people standing outside it gaping at the smoldering hotel,
some of them holding tankards. He steered Amalia toward it.

It was a tavern, largely
deserted. He settled for ale instead of coffee, ordered another for Lia, and
led her to a table in the corner, well in sight of the door. He made sure she
was seated, went back to the bar for their drinks, and turned around with his
hands full.

She sat alone in the light. It
wasn’t much light, just the wan, murky rays that managed to pierce the panes of
the window nearby. The beam itself fell drained of hues: everything around her
was dusty and brown and dull. But Lia glowed. Her hair madonna-loose, the spare
dress in her lap. She was pink and gold and soldier-straight in her chair, her
expression pensive, faraway. He could still see the faint mark of the soot upon
her cheek where he hadn’t gotten it all off.

Something
within him shifted. He felt queer, almost dizzy; the very world seemed to tilt
to a slow, molasses stop, everything suspended. Dust motes. Voices. His
heartbeat. Only Lia moved. She took a long, deep breath, her chest lifting, her
lips parted, and he thought, sinking,
Oh, God.
He wanted her. Not
somewhat, not in passing. He wanted her deeply, and he wanted her now. Here. He
wanted to touch her hair, and taste her skin, and breathe in the scent of smoke
and roses he knew would rise from the soft sweet corners of her. He wanted to
push his hands under the coat and feel the shape of her waist, and the weight
of her breasts, and every creamy inch of her. He wanted to bite her lips and
pin her arms and be inside her, and the hot, eager lust that scorched through him
all at once was so strong, so overwhelming, that Zane did the only thing he
could do to keep himself standing where he was, dripping ale from the tankards.

He closed his eyes and thought of
her parents, and of what would happen if they knew.

He had seen what the
drákon
did to their own kind when they broke the tribal laws. He’d seen the place
where they buried their forsaken; Rue had shown him one winter night when he’d
been younger and much more reckless: the ominously bumpy field, the blackened
earth.

This is where our outlaws lie,
she’d told him, her face
hollowed by moonlight.
This is where their bones are cast after the burning.

The
drákon
lived by rules
coiled within rules. Their society was ancient, feudal, and he had no illusions
about his own place within that order.

He was suffered to live because
of the marchioness. He was alive today, in this dank foreign tavern, because he
was useful, and that was all.

You keep a great secret. You hold
fates in your hands.
She’d touched his arm then, lightly, deliberately.
You know our laws. Do not
forget this place.

And he never had.

The barkeep stumped past him
carrying a platter of bread and butter and a thick steak of cold ham, all of
which he set gently before Amalia. She looked up at the man and smiled.

“Köszönöm.”

“Persze.”

Zane felt his heart squeeze back
to life. He joined her at the table.

The keep had brought knives and
napkins too. He arranged them with ridiculous precision upon the battered wood,
all the while stealing glances at Lia—her tousled hair, the chemise, that
dreamy distraction—until he happened to catch Zane’s eye.

Zane watched him blanch and back
away.

He lowered his gaze, thinking of
the dead and charred bones and the face of Lia’s mother on that long-ago night,
the only warning she’d ever offered him.

Do not forget.

“So,” he said briskly, and lifted
his tankard. “Who would want to kill us?”

Amalia’s head swiveled around as
he took a heavy draft. It was sour and cold and stung all the way down to his
stomach.

“Kill
us?” she echoed.

“You
were there, child.” She blinked at him, at last awaking. “I’d say it was grain
alcohol poured in the hall, perhaps oil. Something like that, fortified or very
pure, that burns hot. Anything diluted like cider or beer would burn too slowly.
Saltpeter is swifter but too unreliable. Still, it wouldn’t have taken much to
bring down that claptrap of a tinderbox. But you tell me, m’lady. What was it?”

“Alcohol,” she said, after a
moment. “Not oil. It smelled distilled, but almost sweet. Definitely alcohol.”

He nodded. The color began to
return to her cheeks; it was a little like witnessing marble flush to life. He
blew a breath through his teeth and looked away.

The tavern was filling quickly,
the men standing outside filtering back in, other guests from the hotel,
rumpled and stunned, drifting toward the last of the empty tables. Conversation
echoed off the walls; he didn’t need to speak the language to understand it.
Everyone was talking about the fire, the sudden and devastating destruction.

Except for Lia, who was frowning
down at her ale.

“Have
you any enemies?” Zane asked.

He’d meant it more to shock her,
to bring her back to this place and moment—he needed her thinking, not lost and
beguiling in her daze—but she looked so instantly guilty his senses prickled.

Damn.
He knew better than to ignore that sensation. He hadn’t gotten where he was by
fighting his instincts.

“What,
from boarding school?” She was shaking her head. “No one who would follow me
here. Of course not.”

“Excellent,”
he said, pretending to focus on his drink. “We may rule out young ladies
desiring vengeance over borrowed hair ribbons or such.”

Her cheeks grew more flushed.
“Oh, most amusing. It’s far more likely someone is attempting to murder
you,
my lord thief. I imagine you have enemies aplenty.”

“True. For some reason I do tend
to rub certain people the wrong way.”

“People from whom you
steal.
”

“My, how proper,” he marveled,
pausing over his tankard. “You’ve gotten your tuition’s worth in grammar
lessons, haven’t you?”

She huffed and looked away from
him, taking up the loaf of crusty brown bread, ripping it in two. She dropped
both halves without bothering to eat either. He watched her, her fingers toying
with the soft innards, her brow puckered. She was scattering crumbs all over
her gown.

He took
his share before she ruined it, reaching for the butter. It had been a long,
long while since he’ d allowed himself butter, but under the circumstances, he
really thought he’d earned it.

He felt
her gaze as he worked. She didn’t speak again until he’d finished the entire
half loaf.

“It
might have had nothing to do with us. It might have been about someone else
entirely. Or—it might have been an accident. Fires happen all the time.”

He didn’t answer. Her fingers destroyed
more of the bread.

“Do you truly think it was meant
for us? To kill us?”

“Yes,” he said.

“But why fire? Why not—shoot us,
or poison us, or run us down on the road?”

“I don’t know.”

“But—”

“Since we have entered this
establishment, no one has shadowed us. No one has us under surveillance, save
the farmers near the hearth, and I imagine that has more to do with your attire
than anything else. The ale came from a common cask; the bread from the back,
so I suppose there is a risk there, but as I’ve had my half and still feel
rather hungry, we may assume it’s not been tampered with. The barkeep appears
to have developed something of a
tendresse
for you, but that’s only to
be expected.” She opened her mouth; he went on more quickly. “Whomever—whoever started
that fire, they’re not here now. We have a brick wall with no windows or doors
at our backs and the entire room in plain view. The roof is tile, the floor is
stone. This place, at least, will not burn easily. So eat your breakfast. No
one eludes their enemy on an empty stomach, and it looks like, Lady Amalia, it
is going to be a very long—”
journey,
he almost said, but finished with
“day.”

Her gaze had flown to the
straw-haired keep behind the bar, his shoulders hunched, wiping the counter
with a rag in endless, determined circles. Zane watched her watching him, then
leaned across the table and lowered his voice.

“Haven’t you noticed? It’s the
good
portion of the ham. No bone.” He speared the meat with his knife. “
Bon
appétit,
fair wife.”