Dreaming Death

by J. Kathleen Cheney

  “Kai thinks . . .” She wasn’t sure if she should broach the topic, but she did anyway. “Kai doesn’t think that Dahar is his father. Is that true?”

  Cerradine sighed heavily. “I don’t know.”

  The way he said that suggested that he didn’t know but had a strong opinion on the matter anyway. Poor Kai. “Wouldn’t it be better if he knew for certain?”

  “There are times when people want to bury the past,” the colonel said. “When it’s painful, and can’t be changed, why spend time fretting over it?”

  “Like knowing the truth about my mother’s family? Or my father’s family?” She didn’t know what to make of the fact that she had relatives in Pedrossa—relatives who might have a power like hers. Who might consider her worth stealing.

  “I see your point,” the colonel said. “Yet it’s never mattered to Dahar.”

  It did to Kai, though.

  Shironne sensed Mikael’s approach then, as he came through the back doors of the palace. She suddenly divined why the colonel had brought her out to the steps.

  “I’m going to go up and check on your mother. Make certain she hasn’t strangled Dahar,” the colonel added with a chuckle. “I’ll leave you in Mikael’s hands for now. We should be ready to leave in, say, a quarter hour or so?” The colonel walked back into the palace, abandoning her there on the steps.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  Mikael stood only a few feet away, broadcasting relief at the sight of her. He took in her borrowed finery, thinking loudly that the Anvarrid-style dress dragged on the ground, made for someone taller with a straighter figure. Her hair had been carefully plaited and bound up, he noted, with ribbons that actually matched her clothes for a change.

  “You look much better,” he said politely. “I hope you’re rested. You kept falling asleep last night.” He took her gloved hand and drew her down to the second landing. He sat with her on the steps, much as they had that first day she’d come here. “I guess I’m supposed to be saying good-bye,” he told her. “I probably won’t see you again for a while.”

  Because of the rules. Because they forbid him to associate with a child.

  “I’m not one of your people,” she attempted. She could almost feel his apologetic smile.

  “That doesn’t excuse me from obeying the rules,” he said. “It’s been overlooked so far because Cerradine needed us working together. Otherwise we would have been prevented from meeting.” Hurried thoughts rushed through his mind, of things he shouldn’t consider. “I put you in a great deal of danger, but I couldn’t have found Elisabet in time without you. I wanted to thank you for your help.”

  Through her light touch, she could sense the ache in his knee and his sore jaw. He seemed to have a sore throat now, too. All she had was a tender cheek and a cut on her ankle. “I wanted to.”

  “That might have been because I badly wanted you to help,” he said. “I have the ability to overrun people’s wills, particularly sensitives. I took advantage of that, and I’m sorry.”

  He surprised her with his remorse, as if he’d forced her to help him. “I know who I am when I’m alone,” she said. “I never answered your question, but I gave it a lot of thought while I sat in my room the day before yesterday.”

  “And?” He truly wanted to know her answer.

  “I’m just me. People have ideas of what they want me to be like, and it’s easy for me to be what they want when I’m near them, but at heart, I’m still myself. It’s easy for me to be around you because we’re both a lot alike to begin with. I get into a great deal of trouble without your prompting. You didn’t force me to be different from what I already am.”

  He didn’t speak for a long time, thinking that any changes he’d forced on her had already happened. They had to have met before, his mind rambled, and the damage had been done then, changing her life irrevocably. “I hope that’s true,” he finally said, not believing his words.

  Shironne sighed. “I wish I could be around the next time you have a dream. Perhaps I can locate a mirror in it.”

  “What?” She’d surprised him with the change of topic.

  “To find out what I look like.”

  “You saw yourself in my dream?”

  “Yes. Well, part of me. I wore the tunic I wore the first day you saw me, and I could see my hands—which was strange. I’ve not seen them in so long. Actually, I saw what you think my hands look like. You didn’t know about the scar on my palm, so when I looked down, it wasn’t there.”

  “What scar?” he asked, a strange tension in him now.

  “I have an old scar on my palm.”

  “May I look at it?”

  It seemed a reasonable request, so she tugged off her right glove. She felt his leather-gloved hands taking hers, curiosity in his mind.

  He turned her hand over, exposing her palm. “Do you know what that scar looks like?” he asked.

  Shironne blushed. The scar cut across her palm, straight and shallow, just like an Anvarrid wedding mark. “Yes, I know.”

  He asked himself how she’d gotten it, thinking loudly that it was a common place to have a scar, his mind simultaneously whispering the opposite.

  Embarrassment rushed through her. It had been such a childish incident. She hated admitting it. “It happened when I was eleven. It’s embarrassing, so please don’t laugh.”

  “I would never do that,” he said, his undertone revealing amusement anyway.

  She snatched her hand away. “Oh, very well. My mother took us to the summer fair. She wanted to find out what Dahar looked like. She’d never seen him or even a likeness of him, so she took Perrin and me and we went to the melee because she’d heard he was one of the judges.”

  He knew of the incident. She could tell that from his mind. “You know what happened, don’t you?”

  “You fell over the railing into the arena. Were you terrified?”

  Then she knew.

  She’d landed atop a fallen fighter. He’d tried to catch her, but there had still been a small knife in his hand. It had actually taken her a moment to notice that her hand was cut, but he’d wrapped her hair ribbon around it and lifted her back up to her mother.

  That had been Mikael Lee.

  “No, I wasn’t,” she finally answered him. “It was an adventure. I was scared when the other fighters came in our direction, but you didn’t let them get near me. I could sense that you wanted to keep me safe.”

  He laughed softly. “Do you remember anything else?”

  Shironne remembered the incident as vividly as if it had been yesterday. “Oh yes. It was the first time I had ever seen anyone Family up close. You had blood on your face and a helmet on, but I remember your eyes. You had beautiful eyes. I fell in love with you a little bit,” she admitted. “I was eleven.”

  Shironne tried to fit that memory of startlingly blue eyes together with what she knew of Mikael Lee now, wishing she’d seen his face better that long-ago day. She pressed her lips together, fighting back a sharp pang of regret. She would never know now what he looked like.

  “They teased me mercilessly for a long time after that,” he said. “They made jokes about little girls falling for me.”

  “I’m so sorry,” she said, although it wasn’t quite true. She was sorry they’d teased him.

  Mikael laughed again. “No harm done. I wondered about you from time to time—if you were all right. I didn’t know it had left you with a scar.”

  “It’s not important.”

  “Let me see your hand again.” He carefully took the tips of her fingers and touched them to his left palm. He’d removed his glove.

  His thoughts winged around her, telling her that he looked at his scarred hand sometimes and wondered about the girl from that day. He didn’t actually remember it, but he’d ended up cutting her somehow, not intentional at all, but quite perma
nent. His blood and hers, across the knife in a strange parody of an Anvarrid wedding ceremony, but without the grand temple, only the sand of the fairground arena.

  He turned his hand, twining his fingers with hers. His thoughts tumbled into her consciousness, mentioning things he should not: that they were bound; that the tie wouldn’t be broken by anything save death, but he could go far away and not trouble her overmuch; that perhaps she might not mind his presence; that she was too young to have all her choices taken away from her. His hand pulled away then, ending her closer link with him.

  Shironne heard boots clicking in a familiar stride, the colonel coming down the steps again. Mikael rose and helped her to her feet. She replaced her glove, annoyed that everyone considered her too much a child to know her own mind.

  No, he didn’t. That wasn’t what he thought. Instead, Mikael feared that, as Kai had warned her, he would overwhelm her mind, stripping her of everything that made her who she was, making her just a reflection of him. He feared that he would destroy her, and that was why he’d said he could go away.

  But that assumed she was weaker than he, that he was too powerful for her to handle. “I don’t need to be protected from you,” she whispered.

  He knew exactly what she meant. She could tell that.

  “Take care,” Mikael said softly, his words sincere. He placed her hand on the colonel’s sleeve. His footsteps went away, up the stairs to the palace, and she knew he didn’t look back.

  She tried to recall what he’d looked like that day on the fairground, but only his eyes formed in her mind. She would walk in his dreams again someday, though, and perhaps then she would see the face of the Angel of Death.

  Read on for an excerpt from J. Kathleen Cheney’s

  THE GOLDEN CITY

  Available in print and e-book from Roc

  Thursday, 25 September 1902

  Lady Isabel Amaral plucked another pair of drawers from the chiffonier and tossed them in her companion’s direction. Oriana caught the silk garment and folded it neatly while her mistress disappeared into the dressing room.

  Oriana laid the drawers in a pile with the others, surveyed the collection spread across the bed, and shook her head. Even after two years living among humans she was still bemused by the number of layers a proper Portuguese lady must wear. Chemises and underskirts, drawers and stockings and corsets: they all lay neatly prepared to pack away, none of them meant to be seen. It was a far cry from the comfortable—and less voluminous—garb Oriana had grown up wearing out on the islands that belonged to her people. She rarely noticed her heavy clothes any longer, but seeing all the lace-bedecked items displayed on the bed before her, Oriana found the quantity of fabric in which Isabel swathed herself daily rather daunting.

  What was missing? Even with all that lay in front of her, Oriana was sure Isabel had left something out. She puffed out her cheeks, mentally cataloging the garments on the bed.

  She wished Isabel hadn’t waited so late to inform her of the plan to elope. If she’d known in advance, she would have packed Isabel’s best clothes neatly. She could even have sent a couple of trunks ahead via train to the hotel in Paris. Being rushed at the last moment was her own fault, though. She’d made her disapproval of the match known early on, and Isabel probably wanted to avoid an argument. But it was also Isabel’s style to wait until the last moment. That made everything more of an adventure.

  Unfortunately, adventures didn’t always turn out well . . . particularly if one didn’t have the proper undergarments.

  Aha! Oriana suddenly placed the oversight. “You haven’t any corset covers.”

  Isabel peered around the edge of the dressing room door and waved one hand vaguely. “Pick some for me. I only need a couple. Marianus will buy me new ones after we’re married.”

  Isabel disappeared back into her dressing room, leaving Oriana shaking her head. She had to wonder if Marianus Efisio knew he would be spending the next few weeks shopping. While Isabel’s family possessed aristocratic bloodlines tracing all the way back to the Battle of Aljubarrota, they had very little money. Everything supplied by the various milliners and dressmakers who’d rigged Isabel out in style had been bought on credit. Isabel’s mother was counting on her beauteous daughter’s marriage to a wealthy husband. Luckily, Mr. Efisio did meet that requirement.

  Unluckily, he was already promised to another woman: Isabel’s cousin Pia.

  It was an arrangement made when he was just a boy and Pia an infant. Even so, it wasn’t fair to simply ignore the arrangement. At any rate, Oriana didn’t think so.

  Isabel had waved away Oriana’s concerns, claiming that Mr. Efisio wasn’t suited to Pia’s placid disposition. The elopement would cause a scandal, and Isabel’s rarely present father would be livid. Nevertheless, Isabel’s popularity in polite society would help her survive the disgrace. In time, Mr. Efisio would be forgiven for breaking his betrothal, particularly if Pia were to marry well. He had money, which always seemed to temper society’s disapproval.

  Isabel was like a tidal wave, though. She always did as she wished, and the gods would merely laugh at anyone who stood in her way.

  Clucking her tongue, Oriana sorted through the contents of the rickety chiffonier’s top drawer and selected the two best corset covers. She’d just laid them neatly on the bed when Isabel emerged from the dressing room, her arms overflowing with skirts and shirtwaists. She dropped them atop the garments Oriana had already folded, and a narrow line appeared between her perfectly arched black brows. “Am I missing anything else?”

  “A nightdress,” Oriana answered. She eyed the wreckage of her neatly folded stacks. Isabel probably hadn’t even looked before dumping the clothes she’d carried. Oh, well. There was nothing to do but start over. Oriana nodded briskly and lifted the top skirt off the pile.

  A knock came at the door, and she jumped. She instinctively hid her bare hands in the fabric of the skirt. She was usually so careful, but she’d taken off the mitts that normally hid her fingers so she could help Isabel pack. Then she realized she was wrinkling the skirt terribly and forced herself to let it go. She took a calming breath, hoping her voice would sound normal. “Who is it?”

  “Adela, Miss Paredes,” one of the maids responded from the hallway. “I have what my lady asked for.”

  Oriana cast Isabel a questioning look. What was Isabel plotting?

  Isabel hurried to the bedroom door herself. Oriana stayed by the bed and shoved her hands behind her back. Other than Isabel, no one in the Amaral household knew her secret. Oriana wanted to keep it that way.

  Her webbed fingers would give her away, and being caught in the city would mean arrest and expulsion, if not worse. They were her great flaw as a spy. She’d finally made the decision to have the webbing cut away, as her superiors insisted, and had planned to take her half day off this weekend to have it done. But Isabel’s sudden decision to elope had fouled those plans. Oriana hadn’t decided if she was vexed . . . or relieved.

  Isabel opened the door only wide enough for the maid to pass her something and closed it quickly. She turned back to Oriana, a mischievous grin lighting her face, and held up a pair of maid’s aprons and two crumpled white caps. “See what I have?”

  Oriana stood there with her mouth open. Why would Isabel ask for those?

  Isabel rolled her eyes. “A disguise,” she explained. “See? If we wear black, we can put these on over our skirts and we’ll look like housemaids.”

  Well, the only thing more scandalous than engaging in an elopement had to be exposure while doing so. The disguise would make the two of them less noticeable at the train station; most people in Isabel’s circles didn’t notice servants. Surely none would comment on a couple of housemaids dragging luggage about for their mistresses, even this late in the evening.

  “I understand,” Oriana said, trying for an enlightened expression. The black serge skirt
she currently wore would pass for a housemaid’s, but her white cambric shirt and the blue vest wouldn’t. “I’ll need to change my shirt, but it should do.”

  Isabel tossed the aprons atop the chiffonier and grinned. “See? It will all work out.”

  “I’m certain you’ve planned for everything,” Oriana allowed, inclining her head in Isabel’s direction.

  A dimple appeared in Isabel’s alabaster cheek. “When it comes to marriage, one must.”

  Oriana laughed softly. Isabel always had a clever retort on her silver tongue, a talent she envied.

  She regarded the pile of garments atop the bed and tried to think of the best way to tackle the task ahead of her. An open trunk waited on the old cane-backed settee at the foot of the bed, although she would have to fold and tuck judiciously to get all these garments into it. She would likely have to add a portmanteau as well. Mr. Efisio had gone ahead to Paris, but he had ordered his coach to pick them up no more than a block away. She could carry their luggage to the coach in two trips if needed.

  Isabel watched, tapping one slender finger against her cheek. “Now, what have I forgotten?”

  “Nightdress?” Oriana reminded her.

  “Oh, I mustn’t forget that.” Isabel dashed back to the dressing room.

  Oriana folded the blue skirt from the top of the pile and set it in the trunk, located the shirtwaist Isabel wore with it and tucked that in next, and then headed into the dressing room to hunt down the matching jacket. She found Isabel standing before the full-length mirror in the cluttered dressing room, holding up a nightdress. It was her most daring, a white satin that bared much of her bosom like an evening gown.

  Isabel glanced over one shoulder at Oriana, her face glowing with excitement. “Do you think he will approve? It’s not too shocking, is it?”

  Isabel was blessed with an ivory complexion and thick black hair. She had delicate features, delicate hands, delicate feet. Her hazel eyes had been the subject of many a wretched suitor’s poem, and her rosy, bow-shaped lips had earned their own paeans. She was everything that Oriana wasn’t—beautiful by any standard. A good thing too, as Isabel’s sharp tongue and cutting wit might have earned her enemies were she less lovely. But she’d gathered a court of suitors and held them fast while waiting for a man of both adequate means and malleability to come along. Mr. Efisio had never had a chance once Isabel made up her mind to have him.