In Dreaming Bound

by J. Kathleen Cheney

  He wrote down their names anyway. They would all be in severe trouble come morning.

  Shironne held in her worry. Given the level of trouble they were already in, the others had apparently resigned themselves to it. She’d just been stupid enough to involve herself.

  They trudged up an endless number of stairwells, up and up until they reached a door. Eli opened it out, leading them out into the cold.

  Shironne sniffed the night air, the smell of snow on the wind. She hugged her arms around herself, wishing she had an overcoat. “Where are we?”

  “Palace gardens,” Eli said. “Which way?”

  “Is there a big round tree?” The memories she’d stolen from Maria’s mind were full of visual landmarks, none of which Shironne could see, but she had always started in the gardens. “We have to go toward it.”

  Tabita grabbed Shironne’s hand, pulling her along, mind filled with worry. “Thank Father Winter, there are no stars.”

  A lot of Family were perturbed by the sky, so it must be overcast. Shironne followed along the gravel path, going far faster than she liked in uncertain footing.

  “Do you think that’s the tree?” Eli asked.

  Shironne had the feeling he was pointing toward some tree she couldn’t see. “What does it look like?”

  “Sorry,” he answered. “Round. No leaves.”

  “That must be the one. Now we have to go toward the sentry line. The last sentry always let her through.”

  They actually found the guilty sentry on duty—Paal of the seventeens, an old friend of Maria’s—who supplied further directions when he realized he’d been caught allowing a brown off the grounds. After following a string of broken instructions and landmarks, they stood outside a walled garden.

  “There’s a big iron gate in the fence,” Tabita told her. “How did she get through it?”

  Shironne sniffed, catching only the smell of the coming snow, no flowers or greens. She shivered, wishing desperately for a coat. Tabita and the boys didn’t have one either—wearing overcoats would have made it obvious they planned to leave the Fortress—so she tried not to feel the cold despite the stinging of her nostrils.

  * * *

  Mikael woke from a fitful sleep, shivering. He got up, retrieved his overcoat from the hook by the door and put it on. Then he climbed back into bed, pulling up his blankets and quilt.

  He lay there for a time, still shivering. He worried that he might have come down with a fever, but when he touched his hand to his forehead, it was cool.

  I am anxious and very cold and I wish had an overcoat.

  Mikael sat up in his bed, quite suddenly understanding what ailed him. That was Shironne, not him.

  What are you doing? he thought as clearly as he could.

  He felt some response, trepidation leaking back along his senses. He closed his eyes, trying to find her in his mind, frustrated by the odd wall between them. She was down in the city, he decided, somewhere a brown definitely should not be at night.

  Oh Hel’s tits! He got up, dressed quickly and slid his pistol into his sash. Worry and anger flowed through him in turns. He dragged on his overcoat, then dug in the bottom of his chest and brought out his old one, saved from his days in Lee. It smelled of mothballs and cedar.

  Then he bolted down the stairs, intent on getting her back safely within the walls before someone harmed her.

  Chapter 32

  * * *

  SHIRONNE FELT HER CHEEKS heating, no matter that it was so cold around her. They were all going to be annoyed with her. “Um . . . Mr. Lee’s coming.”

  “What?” Tabita had been studying the gate, determining how to open the latch.

  “Mikael’s coming to take me back to the Fortress. He’s angry.” She kept her voice low, trying to keep the relief out of it.

  “And how do you know that?” Eli’s previously contained anxiety suddenly focused on her.

  Shironne stepped back, coming up against the stone wall. She wrapped her arms more tightly about herself but didn’t answer.

  “Because she always knows where he is,” Gabriel answered calmly, sparing her the required denials. “She can find him anywhere in the city.”

  Eli’s mind ticked away like angry clockwork. “Can he find you as well?”

  “There are some things the elders have forbidden me to talk about,” Shironne told him softly. Eli was worried about being caught, as if their names in that sentry log wouldn’t condemn them already.

  “What does that mean?” Tabita asked coolly, her mind still focused on the gate. “Clarify.”

  “No wonder he wouldn’t tell me,” Eli snapped then, the truth unfolding in his thoughts as he worked out the nature of their relationship. “I . . .”

  “Eli, can you see that?” Tabita asked.

  Eli’s attention abruptly flew away.

  “There under the bench,” Tabita added. “Can you make that out?”

  “Looks like a coat,” he said. “Can you get this open?”

  “It’s locked,” she protested.

  “Gabe, help me over.”

  Shironne listened while Gabriel helped boost Eli over the stone portion of the fence, his boots scrabbling for purchase. After a moment, she heard his feet land in gravel. His boots crunched away, and then returned.

  “It’s her jacket,” he said from the other side of the gate. His anger twisted with fear in his mind now, fear for Maria.

  Tabita pushed Maria’s cold jacket into Shironne’s arms. Shironne held it against her chest as they held a whispered discussion as to how Eli should get back over the fence—apparently, they still didn’t know how to unlock the gate.

  “I . . . I think there’s a hidden door,” Shironne said, pointing. “Off to that side? Sorry, Eli.”

  With an audible groan, Eli strode off, gravel crunching underfoot.

  Shironne caught a faint, familiar scent. She moved the jacket around in her gloved hands, trying to find the spot she smelled. “There’s blood on the jacket.”

  “Are you sure?” Tabita asked.

  “Is it fresh?” Gabriel asked at the same time.

  Shironne pulled off her right glove and stuffed it in a pocket, and then turned the coat about in her hands again. That was a sleeve in her hand, with a splattering of blood across it, a narrow line of droplets. She touched her fingers to them. “Yes. Within the last few hours. It’s hers.”

  Gabriel came and stood close to her, blocking the wind. “Can you find her?” he asked in an urgent whisper. He took the jacket from her hands. “Can you do that, like you do for him?”

  She’d found others before. She could locate her mother or her sisters easily, or Mikael. She’d once led Mikael to a murderer, following the man’s mind across the city. All of those people, though—she had touched their minds, and had a good feel for them. She had only the touch of Maria’s hand as it grazed her cheek.

  “Can you?” Gabriel asked again.

  “She doesn’t know,” Mikael said in a breathless voice.

  Shironne turned and took a halting step toward him, then remembered that she shouldn’t go to him. She would give anything right now . . .

  Instead he came to her and wrapped his arms around her, warm and reassuring in the cold. She laid her head against his overcoat, clutching close the familiar smell of him, that hint of lemon. He rested his chin atop her head, his mind protesting the foolishness of her walking beyond the Fortress walls.

  Don’t you remember, he thought at her, there are people who would pay to have you? I don’t want you out here alone.

  She pulled away slightly. She hadn’t understood why he’d been angry at her for doing this. “I forgot,” she whispered.

  “If I have to chase you all the way to Pedrossa,” he told her, “I’m going to be very tired and annoyed when I get there.”

  “You’ll probably smell bad, too, idiot. Yes, it stinks, but can I have the coat?”

  She turned when he directed her to, and he slid his own coat over her arms,
still warm and a little humid from his jog down into the city. She turned again and he pulled up the hood, laying his bare hands against her cheeks to warm them. He’d handed the smelly coat off to Gabriel, she realized, removing his own to give to her. He stayed there for a moment, his hands against her face, warming her skin.

  He wanted to kiss her, she knew, but that would break his rule. He’d promised Deborah he wouldn’t cross that line. He suspected that once he started kissing her, he wouldn’t be able to stop himself, and that she would give in, unable to separate pleasing him and pleasing herself.

  Shironne listened to his thoughts rattling through his contact with her, sending a pang of yearning through her. He was right—she probably would give in. She would just have to trust him not to overpower her senses.

  “I’ll try,” he said aloud, with a touch of reluctance in his tone. His warm hands slid away from her skin. His attention turned to the others standing in the alleyway. “You should all go back to the Fortress,” he said sternly.

  “We have to find her, Mr. Lee,” Gabriel said. “Shironne says there’s blood on her jacket.”

  “Shironne and I will find her,” Mikael answered. “Go home. You’re going to be in enough trouble as it is.”

  “Then we’d do best to stick together, Mikael.” Eli’s voice came from behind them in the alleyway. He must have found that hidden door. “Or do you propose to separate us and increase our risk?”

  Mikael sighed. “Eli . . .”

  “The safest thing is for us to stay together,” Eli persisted.

  “That’s why four of you came down here after nightfall? To be safe? What exactly happened with this girl? Who are you looking for?”

  “Don’t you know?” Eli asked. “You should know if she knows.”

  Mikael didn’t answer, caught by the same constraints that bound her. The rules didn’t allow him to explain the lopsided tendency of their binding.

  “We’re wasting time.” Shironne shook her head. “Mr. Lee, we’re talking about Maria, Eli’s foster sister. She’s in our yeargroup and she’s been sneaking out for some time. She didn’t return tonight and we got worried.”

  “For some time?” Mikael repeated. “What does that mean? How long has this been going on? What did your sponsors do about it?”

  “They don’t know,” Eli admitted.

  “You didn’t tell them?” Mikael’s incredulity soared through her senses, making Shironne want to giggle. Then his mind caught something out of her thoughts—he knew, then, that Eli had been putting it off—and his surprise turned to fury. “Damnation, Eli,” he snapped, “you should have taken this to them a long time ago.”

  “We wanted to handle it ourselves,” Gabriel protested.

  “And look where we are,” Mikael snapped. “Your sponsors are there to help you, Eli. They aren’t the enemy.”

  Shironne felt Eli’s temper flaring in response.

  “Well, you never had to worry, did you, being the Master’s grandson?” Eli’s voice sounded derisive, a rarity for him. “Don’t tell me what to do.”

  Mikael stood very still behind her, anger completely fading from her sense of him. He seemed more amazed at Eli’s outburst than offended.

  “Elias, apologize!” Gabriel’s stern voice surprised her, coming loud and clear in the alleyway, where they’d all been speaking in hushed tones. “Now.”

  Silence ensued for a moment. Shironne could sense Eli’s chagrin as he realized his bad behavior.

  “I’m sorry, Mikael,” Eli said then. “I . . .”

  Shironne could feel Eli’s famed control slipping. Mikael’s mind suddenly devised an explanation for Eli’s outburst.

  “Your father will forgive you, Eli,” Mikael said softly. “He’ll understand.”

  “No,” Eli whispered, “he’ll never forgive this.”

  Shironne felt a snowflake touch her cheek, damp and icy with a touch of smoke on it. Another followed.

  “If you don’t learn anything from this,” Mikael added, “that’s what he won’t forgive, Eli.”

  Eli radiated pain for a moment, making Shironne want to cry, but then he carefully imposed order on his stricken thoughts. “We have to find her.”

  Chapter 33

  * * *

  THE ALLEYWAY MIKAEL had followed Shironne to was quiet, a spot of darkness in the city. It was lit only by the dull glow sent back down by the overcast sky. Other than a stone wall with an iron gate, he couldn’t see anything but more stone walls about them. The black silhouettes of the steep rooftops above told him they were in a Larossan part of the city—no domes. And snow had begun falling on them, the wet clumpy sort that hinted at nasty roads in the morning.

  Eli stood a few feet away, face stiff like a mask, breath steaming. Mikael recognized Gabriel, the oversized young man standing even taller than Eli and half-again as broad. He’d set Mikael’s smelly old jacket around the other girl’s shoulders, and still held Maria’s jacket over his arm.

  How were they supposed to find her? Mikael wasn’t even certain he would know Eli’s foster-sister by sight. Can you even find this other girl?

  “I can try,” Shironne said in a whisper.

  He couldn’t see her face, standing behind her as he did, but he felt her doubt. And they all simply waited, expecting Shironne to perform a miracle.

  He wished her to turn around, to face him. She did so, her dark eyes seeming huge in the shadow of the hood. “What can I do to help?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” she whispered. “I have to think.”

  Her unfocussed eyes drifted closed. Her mind slid away from his, her thoughts busy searching, trying to forge a link between her and the missing girl. He waited, trying to keep himself small and non-distracting.

  Her tongue touched her lips. He noticed a curl that lay caressing the hollow of her cheek, looking black in the darkness although he knew it was chocolate brown. He wanted to tug it loose to see how long her hair had grown.

  “Stop it,” she whispered.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, his cheeks warm in the chill.

  “Don’t distract me, idiot.”

  He smiled, thinking he would never live down being called an idiot by a brown.

  “I think she’s hiding,” Shironne said, opening her eyes. “Like I did once, but you called me back. Remember? I wonder if . . .”

  Mikael had no idea how to call someone he’d never met. He only knew her name. Nevertheless he tried, letting his perception of Shironne’s concern color his mental call. He wished for Maria Lucas to answer him, to reach back for him, to come back to her friends.

  Nothing. He let out a huff of vexation. He was bound to Shironne—that was what made it work before, whereas this girl . . .

  Blood, he recalled. Something about blood on the girl’s jacket.

  Shironne anticipated him. “Tabita, can you give me her jacket?”

  Mikael reached out when Gabriel brought it to them. Shironne stripped off one of her gloves as Gabriel showed Mikael where the blood was on the sleeve.

  Will this work? he thought at Shironne.

  She shrugged, not willing to admit her uncertainty aloud. She laid her bare hand on the sleeve anyway. He moved her fingertips to the spot Gabriel had shown him, then took his hand away and tried very hard not to distract her. “I think I have her,” Shironne whispered. “Can you reach her through me?”

  This is why they should let us be together. To figure out how this works.

  He laid his bare fingers against her cheeks, trying to find in her mind that something that made Maria Lucas distinct from all others. A wisp, a thread . . . he almost felt like he knew her. He called to that person, that construct of who Maria Lucas might be. Then he felt a faint response, answering him by the wrong name, but still answering him.

  Shironne’s bare fingers lay against his cheeks. She gasped. “I have her.”

  “Where?” Eli asked.

  “Quiet,” Mikael said. “It’s a weak link. Maria thought I was someon
e else and answered. Which direction?”

  Shironne pulled away from him, pointing down into the city, farther from the Fortress.

  “I’ll watch your feet.” Mikael drew her other hand through his arm. “You concentrate.”

  He walked with her along the alley, taking a care for her footing in the wet snow. She directed them down through a less savory section of town, where drunken midnight revelers spilled into the street. One group hurled invective at the members of the Family strangely abroad after dark. Mikael wrapped his arm around her, hoping the others would just ignore the crowd and keep walking.

  He guided her around a pile of horse manure collected in the street. She walked on, her mind tightly focused on her tenuous link to Maria Lucas, not even noting the smell.

  “This way,” she said, pointing at a wall rising before them on the high street.

  “There’s a wall. We’ll have to go around,” he told her. He hunted for a way around. He finally found one, a stair that functioned as an alley for the street. It opened out into a small court inside, walls rising up on three sides about them as Mikael led Shironne down those slippery steps.

  “Over there.” Shironne pointed to the stable at the end of that close.

  The stable evidently served the inn or tavern behind it, but no hostler emerged to greet them. The place was redolent with the smell of animal dung and moldering hay, nothing like the clean stables that Synen kept.

  “Is that it?” Mikael asked.

  “Yes,” she whispered. “Let me go alone.”

  The request surprised him. “No.”

  Her hand squeezed his arm. “She won’t want you to see.”