Thief With No Shadow (45 page)

The panic was gone. In its place was arousal, simmering inside him. He could breathe. Silvia’s scent was subtle, not peppery and choking. There were no fine-grained scales beneath his hands, almost too hot to touch. No breath singeing his hair. When he eased his fingers inside her the warmth didn’t raise blisters on his skin.

Bastian’s eyes closed in pleasure as he slid inside her body. The sound that Silvia uttered was purely woman, nothing like the noises the salamander had made, sharp hisses in which flames had licked and crackled.

Pleasure curled over his skin, delicious, exquisite. Heat pulsed inside him. He pressed kisses across her cheek and buried his face in sleek, black hair.

Bastian faltered. He opened his eyes. He saw tousled blonde hair, not black. Curly, not straight.

“Is something wrong?” Silvia’s voice was breathless.

“No. Nothing.”

Bastian closed his eyes again and concentrated. Silvia’s body was lush and soft. She was beautiful. She was everything he’d ever wanted. So why did he imagine that her curves were less ripe, her limbs slender, her hair as black as a raven’s wing?

It was Silvia’s bed, Silvia’s body, yet he was making love to Melke. Her skin was damp and soft beneath his. His face pressed into silky black hair. The gasps that he heard were hers. Her fingernails dug into his arms. He was inside her heat, blind and hungry, panting, his arousal spiraling to a peak. Delight shivered over his skin. He was almost there, almost poised on the sharp knife-edge of release—

She arched against him, clung to him, cried out his name. “Bastian...”

It was the wrong voice.

Bastian opened his eyes. He saw Silvia’s face, pretty and flushed, her eyes closed tightly in pleasure.

I’m in bed with the wrong woman.

He pulled away from her abruptly, separating their bodies. Arousal died inside him as instantly and absolutely as a candle being snuffed. Pleasure was gone. Delight and heat were gone.

“Bastian! What—”

He swung his legs over the edge of the bed and sat there, trembling, dragging air into his lungs. He bowed his head and pressed the heels of his hands hard against closed eyelids. No. Not this.
Please not this.

“Bastian?” The mattress dipped as Silvia moved behind him. “What’s wrong?”

Everything.

The sweat of passion was cooling on his skin. A rag rug lay soft and lumpy beneath his feet. The woman he wanted to bed was Melke.

No.

Silvia touched his back, a gentle caress, smoothing her hand from shoulder down to waist. “What’s wrong, Bastian?”

He shook his head.

“Are you ill?”

“No.” His voice was rough.

“Did I do something? Did I hurt you?”

“No.” He lowered his hands and opened his eyes and stared at the rug, unable to look at her. “No, not that.”

There was silence for a moment, while Silvia’s hand rested lightly on his shoulder blade. He felt the warmth of her body behind him, close, not touching.

“What, then?”

Bastian shook his head.

“Is there someone else?”

The rug had three shades of pink. The colors of a woman: the paleness of skin, the blush of cheeks, the darkness of lips that had been kissed.

“Bastian? Is there someone else?”

He closed his eyes again.

“Bastian?”

“I don’t know,” he whispered.

Silvia stopped touching him. His skin was suddenly cold where her hand had been.

“I don’t know,” he said again, squeezing his eyelids tightly shut. “I think maybe... Yes.” Dismay clenched in his chest as he uttered the words. Dismay and disbelief. How could this have happened?

The mattress moved slightly. Silvia’s warmth was gone.

“Who is she?” Her voice was quiet.

Who was Melke? A wraith. A woman. Bastian opened his eyes. “She’s from the east.”

“Is she pretty?”

He stared down at the rug. Pale pink, flushing pink, dark pink. “She’s beautiful.”

He heard Silvia pull the sheet around her, hiding her own beauty, the fullness of breasts and belly and hips, the lush shape of her. So different from Melke.

“Do you love her?” Her voice was even quieter.

Panic twisted in his belly, confusion, dismay. “I don’t know.”

Silvia sighed. Her fingertips touched the nape of his neck, stroking lightly. “Is she aware that you—”

His eyes winced shut. “No! No, she hates me.”

Silvia laughed. The sound wasn’t happy. “No woman could hate you, Bastian.”

It was a compliment, and yet the words stung. Did Silvia look no more deeply than the shape of his face and the strength of his body? “No.” He pulled away from her touch and stood. “Not my appearance.
Me
.” He turned and looked down at her, jabbing a finger at his chest. “She hates
me
.”

Silvia sat on the rumpled bed, a sheet clutched around her, one hand outstretched. She closed her fingers and lowered her hand. “I doubt it, Bastian.”

He shook his head and turned away from her, reaching for his clothes. He’d been rough with Melke that first day at the salamanders’ den, too rough. He’d pulled her to her feet with his fist in her hair. He’d spat at her and called her
filthy scum
and
vermin.
He’d pushed her so that she fell to the ground.

Melke was afraid of him, and that was worse than being hated. She feared him.

He pulled his clothes on quickly, silently, aware of Silvia watching. She said nothing. When he was fully dressed he turned to look at her.

“This is goodbye, isn’t it?” Silvia’s eyes were steady on his face.

He wanted to deny it. He wanted everything to be how it had always been, unchanged. No wraiths, no confusion or dismay, just sunny hours in Silvia’s bed. But everything
had
changed. He hadn’t seen it coming, hadn’t wanted it, but it had happened. Whatever it was. He should be in the bed with Silvia, relaxed and sated, laughing. Instead he stood, tense and uncertain and afraid of the future.

In his heart he knew the answer to her question. He nodded.

Silvia climbed off the bed, holding the sheet around her. Something tightened in Bastian’s chest. Eight years of unashamed nakedness, and now she hid her body beneath a sheet. What had he done?

Silvia knotted the sheet above her breasts and came across the floor on bare feet. “Tell her.” She put her arms around him, a quiet and asexual embrace. “I think you’ll be surprised.”

Bastian shook his head. Sharpness twisted beneath his breastbone. He raised his arms awkwardly to hold her. “Silvia...” The first time he’d stood in this room, shy and nervous, he’d been a virgin. She had been patient with him, had taught him how to give pleasure and how to receive it. In doing so she’d given him a gift beyond value.

Silvia stepped back.

Bastian let his arms fall. He tried to express his gratitude. “Thank you. For everything.”

“It was my pleasure.” She laughed, and he saw joy and sorrow on her face. “It was very much my pleasure.” She raised her hand to lightly touch his cheek. “She’s very lucky.”

He shook his head.

“Goodbye, Bastian.”

He turned away from her and opened the door.

“Bastian.”

He paused, his fingers gripping the door handle.

Silvia’s lips brushed his cheek. For a fleeting second he smelled her scent, subtle and female, and felt the warmth of her body. Her whisper was faint, almost inaudible: “You were always my favorite.”

There were no words he could utter. Nothing.

“I wish you joy.”

Bastian nodded, unable to speak his thanks or farewell. He closed the door and walked down the stairs without seeing the steps.

B
ASTIAN SCARCELY NOTICED
Endal waiting for him on the broad doorstep. He walked down the street, unaware of cobblestones and painted doors and the shade cast by high slate roofs. He could have been anywhere in the realm, surrounded by houses of brick or wood or mud. The details were unimportant. What was important was that in one sunlit moment upstairs in Silvia’s bedroom, everything had changed. His life had tipped upside down. Nothing was the same.

This wasn’t a problem he could solve with his muscles, with sweat and hard work. He had to
think.
He had to make a decision. A huge one. As huge as striking a bargain with a wraith or a salamander. A decision that would change his life.

He didn’t know what to do.

“Sal Vere.”

Bastian barely heard his name.
Think
, he told himself. But coherent thought was impossible. Logic was lost in a mess of confusion and dismay, edged with panic. And underneath that was a flicker of something that twisted between fear and hope.

He didn’t know what to do.

“Sal Vere!”

The fury in the man’s voice jerked Bastian’s head up. He blinked, and saw the street with clarity. Gray cobblestones and gray stone houses, a housewife sweeping her doorstep, and Ronsard standing in his path.

He saw that rage consumed the innkeeper. It swelled his face, feverish. “My son is going to gaol because of you!”

“He killed a girl,” Bastian said flatly, and pushed past the man.

“A dockside slut! She was
nothing!
”

Sudden anger flared inside him. He halted. “Her name was Helene,” he said, turning back to face Ronsard. “She was fifteen years old.” Beside him Endal stood with hackles raised.

The housewife paused in her sweeping.

“It was none of your business!”

He looked at Ronsard and saw instead the careworn face and gray-streaked hair of the girl’s mother, the blind grief in her eyes. “It was,” he said.

Ronsard’s mouth twisted. “High and mighty sal Vere.” He spat. The spittle landed on the cobblestones at Bastian’s feet. “Thinking you’re better than us. Curse you! And curse that filthy dog of yours!”

Bastian clenched his hands, and then released them. He turned his back on Ronsard and began to walk again.

The housewife stood on her doorstep, the broom in her hand, watching. He nodded curtly to her.
Come, Endal.

Why is he angry?
Endal asked, behind him.

Because you told me he was lying.

Oh.
Endal sounded puzzled.
But
— He yelped, a high sound. His presence in Bastian’s head was abruptly gone.

Bastian swung around.

Endal lay on the cobblestones, a black shape, unmoving. Ronsard stood over the dog, breathing heavily, an iron doorstop in his hands. “Take that, sal Vere!” he said, and spat again.

A thin rivulet of blood slid from beneath Endal’s muzzle.

The sound that came from Bastian’s throat was inarticulate and animal. He saw fear on Ronsard’s face, heard the clang of iron on stone as the innkeeper flung down the doorstop and began to run.

There was no doubt that Bastian would catch the man. The rage that boiled inside him made it impossible not to. Nothing else mattered, no one else existed, but Ronsard. His world narrowed to one thing, one inevitable thing, and satisfaction filled his mouth like blood when it happened. His right hand closed on the collar of the innkeeper’s shirt. He swung him around, exulting in the man’s choked cry and the terror on his face.

It was a blur after that. Fury rode him. The busy marketplace held only two people, himself and Ronsard. The shouts of townsfolk were as faint as the chirping of sparrows. Wood splintered and cloth tore and produce tumbled around him. It meant nothing. He gripped Ronsard by the throat, beating his head against the cobblestones.

A choking arm around his neck pulled him back from the blindness of rage. “Let him go, Bastian.” The voice was familiar. Michaud.

“No,” Bastian snarled, digging his fingers deeper into the innkeeper’s flesh.

The watch captain shifted his grip. Bastian’s vision grayed. “Let him go.”

“No,” he croaked. “He killed Endal. And I am going to
kill
—”

“Endal’s alive,” Michaud growled in his ear. “Look, you fool.”

Bastian blinked, shifting his gaze from Ronsard’s bloodied face. He saw crushed baskets and unraveling skeins of wool lying on the cobblestones. And Endal, standing lopsided and dazed.

He felt the dog’s pain, the sharp ache in his head, his bewilderment, his anxiety. He released Ronsard abruptly.

Endal.
He shrugged Michaud’s weight off him and stood. People moved hastily out of his way.
Are you all right?
He went down on one knee.

Endal whined. His head hung low. Blood dripped from his jaw, splashing to the ground.

Bastian touched the dog gently, soothing him with unspoken words.
You’ll be all right, Endal. Liana will make you better.

Endal sagged against him. The dog’s dizziness pressed into Bastian’s mind. He blinked to clear his vision.