The Dream Thief (27 page)

“What are you?” asked the girl,
in perfectly accented French.

Lia narrowed her eyes. “
Drákon.
Like you.”

“Where is your dragon?” The child
lifted a hand. “You didn’t take it, even when I challenged you.”

“You set the fire in the hotel.
You’ve been following us for days. Why are you trying to kill us?”

“Kill you?” A pair of fine,
winged brows rose in what seemed like real astonishment. “Had I been trying to
kill you, I would not have failed. You sleep very deeply, you know. Much more
deeply than the man.”

“Is that so?” Lia took a step
toward her now, taller, stronger, anger warming her blood. The child eyed her
warily and backed away.

“It was a test, at the hotel. I
wanted to see if you were truly one of us. I’ve felt you for weeks now— you’re
new. You’re different. You look like us and you smell like us. But you did not
change to escape the fire, so—I thought I was wrong. Yet here you are.” Her
mouth pursed. “It’s very strange.”

Lia gripped the girl’s arm. “You
burned down the
hotel
—you put lives at risk—for a
test
?”

“They’re
only Others,” replied the child, her ashen eyes unblinking. “What do you care?”

The wind howled between them,
harsher than the sun. Slowly, Lia relaxed her fingers. She dropped the girl’s
arm; her feet shifted and a little ball of snow loosened from the surface. It
rolled and rolled down the slope of the mountain, leaving a long, straight
trail behind.

“How old are you?” Lia demanded.

“Eleven years. How old are you?”

“Where are the rest of your
people?”

Once more the girl lifted her
hand, a gesture that encompassed the snow and the sky and the sheer drop to the
chasm below. Her expression remained stoic.

Lia released a breath, bringing
her arms to her chest. Despite the child’s apparent immunity, it was cold up
here, it was frigid, and she was going to have to do something about it soon;
her bare back and feet had already burned numb. “I’ve come for a diamond named
Draumr.
Do you know where it is?”

Now the girl blinked, clearly
surprised.
“Draumr?”

“Do you know it?”

“Of course. It’s in the mines.”

“What?”

“Deep
in the mines, the copper ones.”

Lia considered that a moment,
gauging the light behind the girl’s gaze, weighing the probability of truth and
lies and what the child had to gain by misleading her. But what she said made
sense. It explained why the song had shifted as Lia had traveled closer,
sinking like the sun from the sky to the earth.

“Can you take me there?”

“No,” said the girl, and grinned.

“Listen to me—what is your name?”

“Mari.”

“Listen, Mari. It is very
important I find that diamond. I’ll pay you, if that’s what you’d like. I’ll
pay whatever you say.”

“You’re
English,” said the girl, tilting her head. “Yes?”

Lia
nodded.

“I heard you speaking English
before. I know a few words. Are you a princess? Are there many like you?”

“Mari.” Lia had to clench her
teeth to control their chatter. “Will you take me to the mine that holds
Draumr
?”

“Even
if I took you there, you would not find the diamond.”

“Why is
that?”

“Because no one ever finds it,”
answered the girl, candid. “And if you look hard enough, it will only drown
you.”

“You
hear it too?”

“Everyone hears it. The mountains
hear it. The moon and the falcons hear it. Even my husband hears it. But it is
beyond us all.”

“Your
husband
—”

“If you
go searching for it, English, you won’t come back.”

“Mari—are
you telling me you’re already
wed
?”

The
girl gave her an odd, frozen look. “I must go.”

“Wait.” Lia grabbed her arm again
before she could Turn. “That man with me, the one you’re
not
trying to
kill. I need to find shelter for him. Can you show me the nearest village?”

Mari shook her head. Her hair
whisked out once more, dark against the deep blue sky. “There are no villages
up here, not this high, not any longer. The only shelter is over there.” And
she lifted her hand a third time, pointing. Lia followed her finger. At first
she saw nothing but more mountains, shimmering ice, and wispy lilac clouds—but
then the wind softened. Something sparkled at the edge of a bleak, crystalline
peak. Something glittered, with walls and turrets the color of winter. It
looked like a castle.

Lia felt her heart sink.

“You
shouldn’t take him there,” Mari said.

Lia
shielded her eyes with her hand and limped a full circle along the cliff, but
the girl was right: there were no villages, no trace of mankind around her but
a single lonesome road leading up to that peak.

“I have to.”

“As you wish,” responded the
dragon-girl, and without another word dissolved into smoke, floating away.

He was waiting for her in the
fresh-packed snow outside the mine. From the sky she could follow the oval of
his footprints, winding up against the thicket of spruce, winding back. Smoke
from last night’s fire still leaked in a trickle over the lip of the entrance.

He recognized her, midair. He’d
been gazing upward, obviously searching. As she shifted down toward him he drew
himself straight, his hands in his pockets, his face inscrutable. Lia funneled
into a woman, once again standing naked and barefoot in the snow.

“Come inside, it’s freezing,” was
all he said, and took her hand to draw her forward.

She might as well have been a
pinecone, for all he noticed her nudity.

Her gown and cloak were folded
atop the sheepskin, her stockings and shoes placed neatly alongside. The
chemise was a sheath of silk piled on top.

“Dress,” Zane said. “Hurry.”

“Zane—”

“No.” He sent her a smoldering
look, very quick beneath his lashes, before glancing away. “Dress first, Lia.
Please. Or we won’t talk at all.”

So she did.

The road was not difficult to
discover, now that she knew where to search for it. It was, in fact, the same
one they had been traveling with the carriage. There were no forks or branches
leading off it, only the whisper of animal paths crossing through, boars or
wolves or bears long gone, without even pawprints to break the crust of new
snow.

The road was a mire with disuse;
mud oozed beneath their every step. Maneuvering through it was often a
struggle. They’d had no food for a day and a half, and Lia felt it, even if
Zane did not.

Hours passed. The sun hung very
close. The mountain light cut so pure that sometimes it was a relief to close
her eyes and feel her way blind—but a rock or fallen bough would always jolt
her back to sight. Zane, she noticed, never faltered, not through the muck, not
over water. In the sun or by the forest shadow, he only paced her. When she
slowed, he slowed. When she stumbled, he held her arm. He leapt over the
snowmelt streams like a panther, elegant and swift, turning each time at the
other side to lift a hand to her, watching her with his sharp yellow eyes.

Usually she accepted it. His
fingers were the only real warmth in the day.

Silence stretched like a bell
around them; except for short warnings or observations, they did not speak.
She’d already told him everything he needed to know back in the mining tunnel.

She’d described the dragon-girl
she’d seen upon waking, standing over them with the knife. She’d explained how
she hadn’t thought about following her, only done it, how she’d shot up into
the sky like a musket ball. That had won her a smile from him, a genuine one.
She’d had to stop and pretend to adjust the frogs of her cloak so he wouldn’t
see what it did to her.

She’d
told him of their meeting upon the wind-whipped cliff top—some of it, anyway.
Of how the girl had set the fire in Jászberény as a test, and of the winter
castle that would be their only hope of relief.

Zane’s
smile had vanished by then. He’d stared off into the darkness, rubbing a finger
along the stubble on his chin. At last he’d heaved a sigh.

“Bloody hell. I don’t see a way
around it. We’ll have to go.”

They’d kicked the fire dead.
They’d left the mine without a backward glance, Zane with the blanket and
sheepskin tied in a roll over his back—he’d ripped loose the hem of her
petticoat for a strap—and half of the money left secure in a pocket of his
coat. Lia carried the other half. Just in case.

And the one thing they did not
discuss, not in the cave and not in this bright open day, was last night, and
what had happened between them. It might have been another fevered dream of
hers, except for the faint, smarting soreness between her legs that even
Turning had not diminished.

No. He
was no dream. That pleasure, his lips, his body inside hers—it had been far too
bittersweet to be another dream.

After
the tenth or eleventh stream they’d hopped across, Lia stooped to pick up a
switch of pine. She shook off the snow as they walked and stared very hard at
the tuft of needles sprouting from the end.

She blew fire, and it caught. As
usual, Zane didn’t break his stride.

“We could make a fortune off this
back home,” he said casually, not looking at her. “Consider the headlines:
Fire
Girl. Breather of Light.
That sort of thing. People will pay a groat to
gawk at a talking monkey or a counting horse. You’d bring in at least a
shilling. Think about it, why don’t you?”

She stripped off her gloves,
alternating between cupping each palm against the small crackling flames until
the blood returned to her fingers. The scent of burning sap wafted smoky sweet
into the air.

“Roaster of Chestnuts,”
the thief said.
“Heater of
Bedpans. No Matches Required.”

“Would you like to carry it?” she
asked him.

He took the switch. Almost at
once, the fire snuffed out. She found a new stick for him in the woolly
edelweiss fronting the road, and after it was lit he held it out in front of
him like a torch.

“You won’t get warm that way,”
Lia said.

“No.” He still would not look at
her. “I’ve a better notion on how to get warm.”

“Actually, so do I.”

His mouth tightened. “Lia—”

She spoke lightly, quickly, to
cover her embarrassment. “You’ve changed your mind about wanting to marry me.
You’re afraid I’ll burn down your home. Embarrass you in front of all the other
city brutes.”

“I am afraid,” he said gently,
“that you will burn down my heart.” He glanced at her askance. “Am I a brute?”

“That doesn’t even make sense,
you know. Hearts don’t burn down.”

“That’s what you think.”

They reached the brink of another
wash cutting a sluice through the mud. Zane dropped his branch to the clear
water. It sizzled and bobbed, tipping askew with the downward flow. They
watched together as it caught in a lethargic spin against the bank, then freed
itself, floating away.