The Treasure Keeper d-4

by Shana Abe

  "What is it? What's wrong?" He nearly reached for her again and only just caught himself in time, his hands clenching into fists. "Zee, what happened?"

  But she had whirled about to see the rider on the horse. And the rider on the horse had twisted in his saddle to see her.

  It was a boy. A young man, rather. He was ivory-skinned and black-haired and had eyes of absolute crystalline gray, nearly without color.

  The boy was drakon.

  And she had plucked the image of Hayden from his memory, she was sure of it.

  She lifted her skirts and stepped straight out into the street, forgetting Rhys, forgetting the horse, which rolled its eyes at her and reared, backing away across the cobblestones in a great clatter of iron-shod hooves. The young drakon struggled with the reins; his hat tumbled to the ground and was trampled and still the cob wouldn't calm. Zoe stopped walking. She stood still in the street as faces began to appear in shop windows, and the horse let out a squealing protest when the boy tried to wheel it about.

  He gave up, apparently. With the grace of an acrobat, he flipped his right leg over the saddle and dismounted, still holding the reins, moving swiftly to stand in front of the beast, both hands lifted to its face, his voice a soft cadence of sound.

  She watched him, waiting. Shadow Rhys had appeared at her side, also watching. The Others at the windows, and on the sidewalks, moving like ants up and down the street.

  "He's one of us," Rhys said. She felt his tension, the quiver of agitation ripping through him.

  "I know."

  The horse was settling, and the young man was running a hand down its neck. He dared a glance over his shoulder at Zoe again, and Rhys began, very quickly, to speak. "Do you remember hearing back in the shire about the sanf inimicus, about how they would sometimes use drakon of diluted blood to help in their hunt, dragons they'd either kidnapped or coerced? This can't be a coincidence. I don't know who the hell this is, but you've got to get out of here. Now."

  "His blood is not diluted," she muttered. She felt the animal in this boy as strongly as any of the strongest of the shire. As strong as Rhys himself, back in life: waves of power, tightly leashed.

  "Fine! It's not! But he could still be one of them!"

  A carriage rattled around a curb, hurling right toward her. She began a clipped walk toward the gray-eyed drakon, who had shifted with his mount to the side of the road. "I saw Hayden through him. I saw a memory of Hayden in his mind."

  "Zoe—don't be stupid, I know you're not this stupid—"

  "I'm not stupid at all," she said out loud, and went up to the boy.

  The cob jerked its head but the drakon didn't loosen the reins, and it stopped after that. She stood with her arms folded to her chest to better contain her scent, and regarded the dragon-boy.

  He was, of course, quite handsome, rawboned and thin in that way that the youngsters of the tribe sometimes were before finishing their final spurt of growth. He was dressed simply but well, in black buckskin and garnet velvet, a bandanna of crisp bleached linen tied about his neck. His hair had been pulled back with a leather tie, but perhaps the ride had loosened it; strands of ebony brightened and faded beneath the shifting autumn clouds.

  She saw him reach for his hat, realize it was back in the street, and then grant her a formal bow anyway, one leg outstretched.

  "Who are you?" she demanded in French.

  "Sandu, Noble One, your servant," he replied, courteous, rising from his bow. "You must be English. Are you from the shire?"

  Zoe took a step toward him, nearly as tall, certainly more deadly, at least in these slow-ticking seconds. She felt the fury of a tempest whirling through her; she felt she could destroy him with a single focused thought. From the corner of her eye, the shadow loomed larger and larger, a rising darkness just at her hand.

  "I'm going to ask you a question, Sandu. Consider your answer to me with extreme care. What have you done with the yellow-haired drakon who came to Paris last May? The one with the whiskers and the cravat." Her voice began to shake. "What have you done with Hayden James?"

  The boy raised pointed brows. "Done with him? Why, nothing,mademoiselle. I left him back at the maison, not an hour past. He said he had a letter to write."

  And just then the sun came out, a beam of luminous light that splashed all across them, and lit his hair to midnight blue and the pale crystal of his eyes to summer gold.

  He smiled at her, and it was breathtaking.

  * * *

  The maison was modest by Sandu's standards. He hailed from a castle, after all, the finest castle upon earth, and there would never be a human structure to compare to it.

  But the Parisian house they had rented was located in a safely residential section of the city, which he knew was important. Artisans and merchants and the better sort of tradesmen had bought their homes here, solid and skinny tall brick homes with shared stables and narrow long yards, one after another after another, street after street. The same families walking about. The same screeching children playing in the lanes. The same public fountains with women gathered about them, filling pails, gossip. The same wine shops and taverns and fruit markets. Nothing in this part of St. Antoine stood out in any way, which was good.

  He had memorized the way there and back to their own place, of course. He knew a score of different routes for it, and varied them day by day, just in case.

  Today he took one of the longer routes, although he could not say exactly why. Perhaps it had to do with the drakon woman walking silently beside him.

  She was spectacular. Zoe, she'd said her name was, her accent giving the syllables that frank English twist he was gradually becoming used to. Zo-eey Lane. And because Sandu recognized that name, because there could really be no question that she was at least what she said she was, he was taking her home.

  The long way. Down the back streets. The mare clip-clopped at his other side; he would not ride while a lady was forced to walk. Although the mare had proved her patience with him until today, it was clear she would not abide this particular lady to ride.

  So they walked. And it was slow. And yes, Zoe Lane was dazzling to look upon. It was no terrible inconvenience to be forced to spend more time surreptitiously studying her. Sandu would guess he was a good ten years younger than she, but that didn't mean he couldn't let loose his imagination to some slight degree. She had, after all, all that amazing silvery-white hair, more or less half-coiled and half-loose down her back, just as the Frenchwomen styled it. It was the kind of hair he imagined he could slip his fingers through, and it would feel like—like ermine. He was certain of it. And she had those lips—lips so full and rosy soft, like she'd just been kissed, like she was made to be kissed. She probably tasted like something wonderful too. Apples, or sweet cider, or lilacs.

  She glanced aside and caught him staring. Sandu faced forward again quickly, pulling the mare along, feeling his cheeks begin to color.

  From somewhere behind him, he could have sworn he heard a huff, like someone releasing a breath too close to his neck.

  And that brought him abruptly back to the real reason he was guiding them so slowly back to the maison: he could not quite rid himself of the feeling that they were being followed.

  He'd checked and checked, and never saw the same face twice behind them for more than a few streets in a row. If they were being followed, it was by someone better at tracking than he, and that really wasn't possible.

  Still. He wished the skin between his shoulder blades would cease to crawl.

  Finally they reached the painted brick house. He took her around the back way so he could stable the horse—Zoe Lane lingered at a distance, which he thought was a good idea—then led her step by serpentine step to the stairs of the rear entrance, not bothering to point out the hidden wires they'd strung around the perimeter of the garden, the bells that would ring when tripped, the diamonds buried in the sod that would cry out with the pressure of a foot. The red jasper they'd wedged into the wood of the
doorjambs and windowsills that would rumble and hum should anyone pass through.

  She was a dragon. She would smell the wires and the bells. She would hear the soft murmurs of the diamonds, the resonance of the jasper anyway.

  Sandu found his key, unlocked the back door, and like the gentleman he was, allowed her to enter first.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The house was wreathed in the aftermath of his cologne.

  She noticed it right off, that essence of sandalwood Hayden preferred, understated but always a trifle sharp for her taste—right now the most amazing perfume in the world.

  She stood in a small back room, with cocked hats on pegs and wooden clogs lined up neatly beside the door. Aredingote a la levite hung in heavy folds from a coat stand in the corner—she knew it, every bit of it. She'd seen that coat countless times, the enameled steel buttons and wide, fashionable lapels, the slate-blue oilskin she herself had picked out because it looked so good with his hair. It was the riding coat she herself had made for him, for this journey, hours and hours of stitching by lamplight, all for the reward of his smile and a kiss.

  Zoe stroked her fingers over the fabric as she walked by, taking in everything around her. Wainscoted walls painted eggshell white, chipped edges. Pale apricot plastered ceiling. The long planks of the hallway ahead of her, showing a corridor unlit, and doors open to cast rectangles of daylight all along the southern side. A runner of royal blue and rust and cream, stretching all the way to the front door.

  She entered the hall. The dragon-boy remained behind her, his steps slowed to match her own. It was narrow enough so that he could not pass her without either crowding her to a wall or darting around her at the next open doorway; perhaps that mattered to him. In any case, he did not pass.

  The ghost of Rhys had no such qualms. He floated beside her, then ahead, bristling with danger.

  ". can't believe you're just blindly walking into this," he was saying, a shadow so dark and thick now he became almost black. Smoke coiled all the way up to the ceiling. "Anything could be lurking here, Zoe. Any manner of men. They could be using him, using what you know of him to mask their presence—"

  "No," she murmured. "It's not a mask."

  The dragon-boy bobbed closer to her heels. "Pardon, mademoiselle?" "Nothing."

  She didn't need to say more. She did not need to explain. Because she'd reached the front parlor, the place where Hayden's scent lingered strongest, and there he was.

  There he was.

  He'd swiveled in his chair to face the door, a quill still gripped between his fingers, his eyes wide, his brows lifted. His wig was powdered and tied. His banyan was forest green. There was a davenport behind him of burr walnut, and a window draped in celery-pale brocade, and a small oil portrait of a man in a turban hung upon the wall.

  She watched Hayden's jaw grow slack. She felt as dazed and sluggish as he seemed to be, as if she'd suddenly fallen down a hidden slope and plunged into a dream: a fairy-tale dream, and here was the prince she'd set out to find so long ago, the prince she'd vanquished dragons for, and mortal enemies, merely conjured from thin air. She stood unmoving at the entrance to the parlor, unable to quite slide her foot over the threshold.

  "Well, hell," said Rhys succinctly, smoking at her side.

  He spared himself their reunion. With Zoe's first rushing step toward her fiance, the music in Rhys had swelled, and he'd deliberately drifted away. He almost returned to the assembly hall, or even his gray familiar street, but instead he figured he'd investigate this innocuous place that housed two of his kind, plus her.

  Just in case.

  Most of it was properly gloomy. Curtains and shutters blocked the sun from nearly the entire upper story, and all but two of the bedchambers were stuffed with furniture draped in musty sheets. The front two chambers, the ones closest to the main stairs, were the ones in use.

  One was relentlessly tidy, with clothes and personal items laid out as precisely as if a valet had stood watch with a checklist. Brushes and combs and a jar of French powder, all aligned. A jeweled snuffbox exactly three fingers in either direction from the corner of the dresser. Even the pillows on the bed were fluffed tight.

  The other chamber was practically in shambles, with books and scarves and shoes littering the floor, a cloth-of-gold waistcoat tossed askew across the top of a chair. Dabs of wax from the candle on the commode spotted the surface so profusely it looked like a miniature snowdrift against the wood.

  It was no great task to surmise which room belonged to whom. Hayden James was so saintly-clean Rhys wondered if the man ever even needed to bathe. Dirt probably bounced right off his gilded damned skin.

  He swiped a hand at the perfectly tucked quilt upon the bed, accomplishing nothing, and drifted on.

  Dressing closets off each chamber, with basins and kits for shaving placed upon stands. Square-toed shoes and stockings, and coats hung from rods. A pair of offices down the hall, apparently unused. A single water closet. Two separate sets of stairs, the one in front and the servants' skinny, crooked flight in back. He trailed along them both, from the garret to the kitchen in the basement, with chopping knives and bread drying stale upon a block, and a small pot of herbs set to grab what sun it could up high in the solitary window. A kettle of something steamy bubbled from a hook in the fireplace. It was viscous and dark; Rhys could not smell it. Not without Zee nearby.

  Two rooms made up. Two drakon dwelling here. If there were sanf inimicus anywhere in this house, they were more indiscernible than he.

  The voices from the front parlor drew him back upstairs, one masculine, one feminine, and he found himself following the sound of her like a compass needle returning again and again to true north.

  Surely they were done kissing by now. He could easily—all too easily—envision Zoe in a fervent, lingering embrace, but stiff-as-wood James probably didn't even know how to use his tongue.

  Matters were not exactly proceeding as she had envisioned.

  They sat in matching flaxen-striped chairs at opposite ends of the parlor. As the room was fairly small, this was no great inconvenience, but still Zoe wished they were closer. She found herself leaning forward, perched at the edge of the stuffed horsehair seat, just trying to feel nearer to him. Just trying to feel, still, that he was real.

  The dragon-boy stood with an arm resting upon the soapstone mantel behind Hayden. He kept his gaze largely pinned to the rug, only occasionally glancing up at either of them, or else pulling a finger through the knot of his bandanna. A small snapping fire burned behind his legs.

  Rhys was gone. She didn't know when he'd left, only that after she'd lifted her face from Hayden's chest he was no longer anywhere in sight.

  She wished the dragon-boy would leave as well. She wished Hayden would rise from his chair, and take her by the hands, and pull her back into his arms to hold her so hard it would hurt. But after only a brief, astonished embrace—sandalwood, hair powder, silk, and a faint tang of ink— he'd led her here, seated her as delicately as if she were the dream she'd imaginedhe was, careful not to jostle either of them awake.

  For a long while they'd only gazed at each other. He was exactly as she remembered, exactly the same: blue eyes like woodland flowers, lips that curved upward at the corners, lending the impression that he was always about to smile. He sat with his fingers interlaced and his feet crossed at the ankles, shapely calves in plain stockings, the buckles to his garters discreetly visible, small rectangles of reflected fire.

  When he finally managed to utter something beyond her name, it was to ask if she wanted tea. Tea.

  She'd declined. Her stomach was clenched so tight, she might never eat again.

  "Well," he said, still staring at her. "I believe ... I believe we have some boeuf bourguignon from the other night, if you like."

  "Hayden," she said on half a laugh. "Don't you even want to know why I'm here? How I've come?"

  "Yes." He blinked a few times. "I do. Of course. Very much." And there, a
t last—his focus returned, and he smiled at her. "Forgive me. I find myself beyond astonished. I don't know why you're here, or even how. But I'm so very—happy to see you."

  The pain in her stomach dissolved; she smiled back at him. Then she told him.

  Not everything, of course. Until they could be truly alone, she didn't want to delve into the mysteries of her Gifts, so Zoe glossed over a few of the trickier details, speaking in a matter-of-fact voice, her eyes fixed to his or else drawn to the world outside the window beside her, an uncluttered street declining into dusk, with human families taking strolls, and three boys playing leapfrog on a lawn across the way.

  And since she would not speak of the Gifts, she would not speak of Rhys. He was a secret on the tip of her tongue, but somehow trying to explain him—caustic and clever, her persistent shadow guardian—to Hayden, to the strange young drakon with the shuttered look upon his face, was more than she wanted to attempt at the moment. It occurred to her as she spoke that she had no proof of him in any case. No proof that the presence of the missing Lord Rhys was anything beyond her lonely nights and imagination.

  She'd tell Hayden later. She would.

  The shadow reappeared just as she was getting to the part of the sanf inimicus and the dance hall. He floated straight upward through the floor, rising before her from the center of the rug with a clear smirk at her startled break in her narrative.

  Hayden came to his feet in a rustle of satin; the banyan flowed about his knees. "You followed my coachman to a common dance hall? Alone? In a foreign city?"

  "Prig," said Rhys conversationally, turning to face him.

  "Yes." Zoe tried not to look at Rhys.

  "To dance," Hayden said, shaking his head. "To hunt."

  She concentrated on him more clearly, detecting the change in his voice.

  "I did. To find you. Hayden, I thought—oh, I thought the very worst. I thought you were dead. That they had discovered you, and you were dead."