Thief With No Shadow (13 page)

“It’s not stolen,” Liana said mildly.

“Of course it is!” He wanted to slam upstairs and throw the coins in the wraith’s face, to—

“Bastian.” There was a note in his sister’s voice that surprised him, firm and adult. “We need the money.”

“No, we do not!” Charity, that’s what it was. Charity. From a stinking, thieving piece of scum.

The man in the bed stirred. His breath was sharp, gasping. Liana bent swiftly over him. One hand cupped his cheek, the other held his limp fingers. “Take the money,” she said, her voice low. “Unless you want him to die.”

Bastian clenched the coins in his hand. They burned into his palm. Stolen money. He wanted to throw them away.

“Very well,” he said stiffly. “I’ll be back at dusk.”

H
E LEFT THE
roan and Gaudon with the stableman and walked around to the inn entrance to redeem his signet ring. The wooden sign with
Ronsard
carved into it swung above his head in the breeze, creaking slightly.

Bastian pushed open the door. The room was dark after the bright sunlight and he paused to let his eyes adjust. This close to noon, customers crowded the taproom. The air was thick with the smells of sweat and chewing tobacco and beef stew. A fire burned in the wide grate. Years of wood smoke had blackened the low ceiling. Male voices rose loudly, and beneath them was the sound of cutlery scraping against plates. A shout of laughter rose to his left as he crossed the room.

Ronsard’s son, Julien, leaned against the long wooden counter, a hint of swagger in his posture, while a serving girl poured a tankard of ale for a stout farmer.

Bastian felt in his pocket. The wraith’s silver burned there, filthy. “For the horse and cart,” he said, pushing several thick copper coins towards the youth.

Julien straightened and smiled his father’s smile, wide and insincere. “I’ll get your ring.”

Bastian nodded.

“Ale?” The serving girl had a plain, friendly face. When she smiled she became almost pretty. In contrast to Julien, the smile reached her eyes.

Bastian nodded again, shortly, and watched as she poured. “Thank you.” The ale was warm and hoppy on his tongue. He swallowed deeply.

“Your ring,” Julien said behind him.

Bastian turned.

The signet ring lay on the youth’s palm. Even though light was dull in the room, the silver gleamed coolly.

Bastian put down his tankard and reached for the ring. The black surliness that had edged his morning eased as he slid it onto his finger. The ring’s smoothness was comfortable and familiar. It weighed more than silver. It weighed of family, of his father and grandfather of generations of sal Veres.

The signet ring warmed swiftly on his finger until he no longer felt its coolness. He found that he was standing less tensely than he’d been half a minute ago, as if his body recognized the ring and relaxed. Bastian picked up the tankard again and decided that he’d eat lunch here. He leaned an elbow on the counter. The thick slab of wood was dark with age and worn smooth by the hands of countless customers.

“Women,” Julien said, straightening one of his cuffs. The shirt was finer than anything Bastian owned, the linen thick and dyed a deep, expensive green.

Bastian grunted and turned slightly away. The youth’s assumption that he wanted to listen to him, the way he laid his forearm along the counter as if he owned it and not his father, irritated him.
Cocksure.

“Stupid bints don’t understand the word
No.
You ever noticed that? Nothing up here.” Julien tapped his forehead. “Dumb.”

The ale soured in Bastian’s mouth. He put the tankard down.

“Girls from down by the docks are the worst.” Julien’s tone was self-important, almost boastful. “Take my advice and stay away from them.”

Bastian straightened away from the counter.
You think I’d take your advice?
He didn’t waste his breath uttering the words. Instead, he felt in his pocket for a coin. His hand itched with the urge to take Julien by the scruff of his neck and drag him outside. He hadn’t been able to hit the wraith, but Julien would be easy.
Too easy
, he told himself. The youth was soft beneath the fine clothes and had the uncalloused hands of someone who did no real work. It would be like beating a child. Or a woman.

“Sluts,” Julien said expansively. “All of those dockside girls. They’re sluts.”

Bastian clenched his teeth together. The silver coins were small and heavy in his pocket, dirty. The copper coins were larger. He felt for the thinnest of them and slapped it down on the counter. The serving girl saw the movement and exchanged a last laughing word with a customer. She came towards Bastian and reached for the coin.

Julien ignored her. “Spread their legs for you, then say they’re pregnant and expect you to marry them.” His tone was aggrieved.

The serving girl paused with her fingers on the coin. She glanced at Julien. The good humor was gone from her face.

“As if I’d marry a dockside girl.” Julien’s upper lip curled in disgust. “I’m not a fool.”

Bastian curled his hands into fists on the counter, then flexed them open. A brawl would be satisfying, but he didn’t want to come to Silvia with split knuckles and blood on his clothes. “You give a very good impression of one,” he said, his voice flat with contempt. “Only a fool would speak as you do.”

The serving girl raised her eyes and smiled at him. Her face transformed from plain to pretty. Bastian nodded at her and pushed away from the counter. He didn’t want to eat at Ronsard’s after all.

B
ASTIAN’S ILL TEMPER
slowly evaporated as he strode through the town. It was impossible to be angry, with the signet ring on his finger again and Silvia two streets away and the bustle of the Thierry market around him. So many scents: hay and freshly slaughtered meat, leather and herbs and peppercorns, cow dung, fish, and sweet toffee apples. The large square was a medley of color and texture. He saw skeins of coarse black wool, the pale yellow and violet of spring flowers, the dull brown of workaday cotton and the vivid red of silk ribbons.

The metal bender had come from Isigny, as he did several times a year. He was doing good business. Housewives queued with dented pots and farmers carried broken scythes and crooked plough blades. Children had gathered to watch the man shape metal between his fingers as easily as if it was butter.

Sounds swamped him: loud bargaining and bleating sheep and the giggling whispers of young girls, the apology of the housewife who brushed so busily past him, the exhortations of the pie-seller who thrust a steaming pasty beneath his nose.

Bastian inhaled deeply, tasting the market on his tongue. This place was alive, as Vere wasn’t.

He was aware of the dogs, aware of images and impressions and a faint babble of sound nudging inside his head. Nothing was clear, not like with Endal. But Endal’s voice had always been strong, even as a pup.

Usually he blocked the confusing blurs of sound and image from the other dogs, the yammers of excitement, but he missed Endal. Bastian’s anger smoldered back to life. Endal should be at his heels, should be with him and not guarding that verminous wraith. His face twisted into a scowl. A young lad, a farmer’s son by his garb, shied away from him.

But anger was impossible to maintain when Silvia’s bakery was around the next corner. His hands unclenched. Three more steps, and then down the cobbled alley that led to the back. The buildings were made of gray stone, rough to touch, with steep slate roofs. Silvia’s back door was open, the stone step scoured white. The open door and the shutters at the windows were painted blue, the color of the sky on a hot summer’s day.

Bastian leaned against the doorframe and inhaled the scents of sugar and baking bread and stewing fruit. One of Silvia’s shopgirls kneaded dough, the sleeves of her blouse rolled up and her hair tied back in a scarf. Voices came from the front of the shop, a woman’s laughter.

The girl glanced up. Her face was freckled and alert. “Mistress Silvia,” she called, not pausing in her kneading.

Bastian watched the girl’s strong hands pull and twist the dough. Sweet dough, white and soft, to be filled with cinnamon and fruit and sprinkled with sugar crystals when it came out of the oven.

“Bastian.”

Silvia stood in the arch that led through to the shop. Her apron was smudged with flour, her long hair hidden beneath a lavender blue scarf.

Bastian straightened away from the doorframe. She was beautiful, and he was hungry for her. Hungry for the warmth and softness of a woman, for uncomplicated physical pleasure, for the ecstasy-pain of release.

Her mouth curved slightly. She wanted him too. He saw it in her eyes, in the tiny smile, in the way her hand rested lightly on the wall.

“Come upstairs,” she said. “Elsa, you’re in charge.”

The kneading girl nodded. Her gaze flicked from Silvia to Bastian and he thought he caught something in her eyes. Not contempt or disdain, not condemnation, nothing like that. He crossed the kitchen and glanced back at the girl, puzzled. She was watching them. Watching him.

Silvia’s hand was on his arm, warm. “Come, Bastian,” she said, her voice low.

Color rose in the girl’s cheeks and she looked down at the dough.

He caught a glimpse of the shop—polished counter, a stout townsman handing coins to another of Silvia’s employees in an apron and headscarf—as she pulled him into the corridor and towards the staircase. She was laughing softly.

“What?”

“My girls like you.”

Bastian realized what he’d seen so fleetingly in the shopgirl’s eyes: envy. Blood rose in his face.

Silvia laughed again. She paused on the second step, her eyes level with his. “That handsome face,” she said. “Those eyelashes.” She touched a light fingertip to the corner of his eye.

He followed her up the stairs to her bedroom, hot with embarrassment, hot with desire.

They undressed swiftly, pulling at clothes and discarding them on the floor. Silvia’s mouth was as hungry as his was, kissing deeply. She was so soft and ripe and willing, sprawled on the bed, the lush, pale curves of her body so tempting that he couldn’t take it slowly. “I’m sorry,” he said, his voice harsh with need. “I can’t—” And then he was inside the heat and softness of her. He shuddered and groaned and thrust deeply, and anger and fear were swallowed by passion, raw and urgent, and the pleasure built until he was bursting with it, and then it came, that high, sharp moment of release when nothing else mattered and everything was all right.

“I’m sorry,” he said again, afterwards, with his face pressed into her hair and his arm around her waist. The sheets were creased beneath him and his skin was hot and damp with sweat. A square of sunlight warmed his back.

“For what?”

“Too rough. Too fast.”

“I liked it,” Silvia said.

Bastian turned his head and opened his eyes. “You did?”

“It made me feel young again.” She touched a finger lightly to the bridge of his nose. “You have such long eyelashes.”

Young.
Silvia was pretty, one of the prettiest women he’d seen, but there were lines at her mouth and eyes and gray strands in the curling blonde hair. He’d never asked how much older than him she was. Ten years, he guessed, but would never say so aloud.

“And besides, I know we’re not finished yet.” Her hand was on his shoulder now, sliding down his ribs, at his waist. She curved her fingers around one of his buttocks. “Are we?”

“No.” Desire stirred inside him again.

This time Bastian took care to give as much pleasure as he received. He caressed Silvia’s generous curves, the plumpness of her breasts and belly and hips. He stroked inside her with his fingers, making her tremble and arch her body and close her eyes in pleasure. A slow and laughing hour passed in the rumpled, sunlit bed. And at the end, there was another long moment of exquisite release.

They lay drowsily afterwards. Bastian closed his eyes, enjoying the soft warmth of Silvia’s body alongside him and the scent of sex, of male and female musk, of sweat.

He knew she had other men. She was a widow and pretty and lived alone; of course she had other lovers. The knowledge didn’t bother him. He didn’t care, as long as he could have moments like this, moments of contentment and utter relaxation.

Silvia sighed and sat up. “I must get back to work.”

Bastian opened his eyes. He saw whitewashed walls and a low ceiling with rough beams. Bright sunlight came in through the window.

“Will you stay to lunch?” Silvia brushed her fingers through his hair.

Bastian thought of the long list Liana had given him, and of the wraith’s tainted silver coins. His contentment evaporated. “No. I can’t.” The signet ring was suddenly heavy on his finger, reminding him of responsibility and Vere and the curse.

“Ah, well.” She stroked his cheek lightly, then bent to place a kiss low on his abdomen. “You’ll visit again.”

“Of course.”
Always.