The Smoke Thief

by Shana Abe

He offered her his most innocuous smile.

  A mountain of combs and uniforms would not alter him: Zane was a street urchin, clever, untamed. She had found him one winter night two years ago in an alleyway, bleeding to death from a knife wound to his ribs. She had passed by him, silent as the air, but he had lifted his head anyway, and then his hand to her.

  He had seen her. He had found her eyes. And because he had done that—because, somehow, he could—she went back to him.

  Skinny, smelly trouble. That was her first thought. She didn't need trouble in her life. She didn't need another risk to plague her, she had too damned many as it was. Rue had been doing very well for some while, and no little part of that was because she knew how to keep to herself.

  Yet in that reeking alley she had hesitated, and then crouched down before the child. She had examined his pasty face, the dim pale eyes that pleaded with hers and the lips that tried to speak.

  He had seen her.

  She touched her fingers to his cheek and decided, on impulse, to take him home to die.

  She was not someone accustomed to acting on her impulses. The few times she had, great changes had swallowed her life. Zane, as it turned out, was no exception.

  He had been too stubborn to die. He had flopped back on her new Hepplewhite settee, smearing a great deal of blood across its dainty lemon stripes—and lived.

  The settee had been regretfully dispatched, but Zane, her dogged waif, had dug in. He was weak and malnourished and a misfit. He had no manners, no grace, and a great deal of rude wit. He screeched like a banshee whenever she ordered him to bathe.

  And yet . . . Rue remembered how it felt to be small, to be alone.

  She had granted him a bed in the attic, assigned him chores—which he hardly ever performed—and so sealed their unlikely, uneasy alliance.

  He knew what she was. He never said it, never asked. But he knew.

  Boy and woman studied each other now in the thin yellow light. Even with the sweet smile he looked like nothing so much as an underfed elf. She wondered how he managed it; she knew for a fact he routinely ate enough to fatten three grown men.

  Zane gestured to the table.

  “Did you see what I brun—brought?”

  She shook her head, turning back to the papers. “I've read these.”

  “Not that one. Nipped it from The Spotted Dog. Last week's news, but I thought you'd like the bottom-right bit.”

  “At least your reading is coming along.”

  “An' I washed my face last Sunday,” he said virtuously.

  She picked up the paper, turned it over and found his story.

  Rare Langford Diamond to Be Displayed at the Stewart

  For an instant her heart stopped.

  Langford. Diamond. Here.

  There had to be a mistake. The tribe would never—

  “What d'ye think, my lady?” asked Zane, at her elbow. “A diamond an' all. Is it good?”

  She looked up and caught her own reflection in the mirror across the room, marble pale, dark-eyed. Her wig was a silver cascade to her shoulders; candlelight threw a halo against her face.

  “Have the maid wash your livery when she returns,” Rue said, and took the paper with her as she left the room.

  CHAPTER THREE

  In the hills and vales of Darkfrith there lived a saying: Kiss the sky, kiss the ground, and all the world shall come unbound.

  All the children of the tribe knew it, learned it in verse and in song; they grew up with its lesson, courted, wed, and then passed it down again to their own children.

  But someone, it seemed, had taken the verse a bit too well to heart.

  A runner.

  “Smoke Thief,” said Rufus, slapping the newspaper down in front of Christoff with a flourish. “He's back again, our lad.”

  The dining hall of Chasen Manor was nearly empty, the main meal long since finished. The fire was low in the hearth but still snapping. Servants moved through the chamber in hushed efficiency, clearing plates and flatware with the barest of tinkling clatter. They had yet to approach the ring of dishes around the head of the table; between the cold fried parsnips and the remains of a stuffed pheasant were a scattering of papers, periodicals, and Kit's own scribbled notes, written in impatient black strokes.

  He leaned back in his chair, pushing a hand through his loose hair, remembering too late the ink on his fingers. He had no tolerance for wigs or powder or queues. Out here, in the country, no one minded anyway—at least, not to his face. But he'd meant to get a haircut. He always seemed to forget.

  “What was it this time?”

  “A tiara. Necklace. Right from under the nose of Monfield.”

  Kit inspected the nib of his quill. “Really. Did the duke get a look at him?”

  “Well, he must've, hadn't he? Says he fought the fellow. Dueled with him.”

  From across the room by the fire came a sigh; Kit barely suppressed his own.

  “I find myself constantly surprised at the mendacity of the press.” He turned the paper around with one finger so he could read it. “Dueled with him. Indeed. He'd not be around to boast about it if he had.”

  “Dunno why you'd be surprised still,” commented George, ensconced in his favorite chair over by the hearth. “You've dealt with enough of their nonsense yourself since inheriting the title.”

  “True. Perhaps I've been hoping for their reform.”

  “Not likely.” Rufus took his own seat. He lifted his boots to the table's edge, caught the look Kit slanted him, and dropped them to the floor again. “You're one of their favorite sports. Marquess of Langford Attends a Ball. Marquess of Langford Escorts Lady So-and-So. Marquess of Langford Scratches His Arse.”

  “I hadn't seen that last one,” said Kit mildly.

  “They do enjoy you,” remarked George, his palms spread over his belly.

  “All they enjoy is fresh blood.”

  “And you're it, my lord.”

  “I was.” Kit tapped the headline. “But it appears I've been upstaged.”

  Smoke Thief. For the past three years Christoff and the council had been following his exploits, ever since the Evening Standard had dubbed the fellow with that most telling appellation. Logic dictated he'd been operating much longer than that, but despite Kit's social connections and a good deal of silver greasing palms, no one anywhere seemed to know much about him. He was fodder for the press, an outrage to the wealthy, and a hero to the common class. He took only jewels, and only the best of those. None was ever seen again.

  He was the most serious threat to the tribe this century.

  For countless years they had lived in near perfect silence, echoes of an older time, of ancient spells and hybrid magic. No one knew the tribe's true origins; those memories were lost ages past. Some said Russia, or Romania, the impenetrable black forests of Europe's farthest hills. Some of the folk claimed farther still, that they had leapt to life from the middle earth, had been heaved out into the sky with the lava and white-hot diamonds, and taken their first breaths amid the clouds.

  They were hunters, peerless, apart. They were smoke and fire and claw: drákon.

  But there had come Others in the old place, mortal men, and then persecution. The tribe had fled their homeland, taking with them the last of the diamonds, their source and inspiration. But in every place they touched, the tribe—the fabled hunters—became the hunted. They were attacked in their homes, in their sleep. They were burned and bludgeoned and tortured; legends speared to earth, one by one.

  Kit could well imagine that, the mortals who feared them most rising up, slaughtering the innocents. It had kept him wide awake too many nights as a child.

  They had learned to exist in disguise. To fight the Turn and walk among the Others, to live as they did. Secrecy was the key to survival and the drákon excelled at it, so much so that the ones who could complete the Turn—could transform from man to beast and back again—grew fewer and fewer over time.

  Finally, after years of wa
ndering, they had ended up here, in the green hills of northern England, where the mists still stroked the earth and where smoke and clouds could mingle as one. For fifteen generations, Darkfrith had allowed the tribe to quietly thrive.

  Kit glanced again at the article before him, the bold printed lines. A man formed of smoke, who passed through walls and windows as if they were not there, who frightened maids and eluded constables and made off with the ton's choicest gemstones—he shook his head. There could be little doubt it was one of their kind. If the thief had wanted to advertise his presence to them he could have hardly chosen a better way.

  Perhaps he was growing careless. Or perhaps . . . it was a taunt.

  Every now and then one was born who could not stand the life. Who could not bear the rules of the shire, the secrets, the glory. If pushed far enough that person would run, and the tribe would have to mobilize to bring him back.

  It had been that thought, more than any other, that tethered young Christoff to this place. The humiliation of being caught. The futility of trying to flee his fate.

  The fire snapped and popped, flinging sparks against the grate.

  Kit lifted the newspaper and read aloud the duke's description of the thief: “Swarthy, tall, and moste Foul of Face, with coal-black hair and a Scar upon his Cheek.” He looked at the other two men. “Sound like anyone we'd know?”

  Both George and Rufus shook their heads. The tribe ran to fair, with blondes and redheads aplenty, a very few brunettes. Kit couldn't even recall a tribemember with black hair, not in his lifetime.

  Another lie, just as he'd thought.

  “Are the family lists complete yet?” he asked George.

  “Aye, my lord. We've gathered the names of every possible successful runner for the last forty years. Not many men, I'll tell you that. Six at most, and all were thought to be very much dead. Four apparently lost to fire—you remember the blaze that leveled the tavern in '33—one to drowning, and one bloke to, ah, wolves.”

  Kit raised his brows. “Wolves?”

  “That's what his son said. Stirling Jacobs was his name. Liked to hunt at dawn. Liked a challenge. Known to venture out beyond our boundaries. Bones were found, possibly his. That's all.”

  “How old would this man be now?”

  “Let's see . . . nearing eighty, I'd say.”

  Kit gazed at him over the mess of china and papers.

  “Your instructions were to consider everyone.” George shifted in the chair, uneasy. “And I've bloody well considered everyone.”

  “All right.” He pushed back from the table and stood, restless, his mind working the puzzle, turning over the pieces. “And the other man. The drowning. What of him?”

  “How old would he be, do you mean?”

  Kit nodded, staring out one of the windows. Against the night sky he could see the reflection of the fire, the plump smeary shadow that was Sir George, and the more distant one of Rufus.

  “Twenty-three, thereabouts,” said George, after a moment. “He died young.”

  “His body was never recovered?”

  “Not—entirely.” George shifted again. “There was a hand. It wore his ring—”

  “Gads,” interjected Rufus, revolted.

  “—and his coat was found in the reeds down by Aberthon.”

  Something was bothering Kit. Something was missing. It circled the back of his mind, a distant thought, too elusive to catch. Something about the river.

  “A man could live without a hand,” said George significantly, into the snapping silence. “He could still steal too.”

  Yes. He could.

  Kit closed his eyes, pondering the mind of the thief, the careful game he played with the press and the law. What sort of person would he be?

  Intelligent, without doubt. He had to have figured a way to openly infiltrate the ton's finest houses, to walk their rooms. The drákon could not manifest anywhere they could not see.

  Brazen. Anyone who fled Darkfrith truly threw their fortune to the winds. The punishment for running was usually imprisonment. Or death.

  Cunning. Until recently, no one had missed him.

  Defiant. He'd allowed the press to lionize him and still kept stealing.

  And lucky. Because he'd done the one thing Christoff himself had never managed: he had cast off the shackles of his birthright.

  “I'm leaving tomorrow,” he said to the black glass panes.

  “Tomorrow? But that's three days early—”

  “I assure you, Rufus, I know how to count. I want to be there sooner than the papers reported. You and the rest will follow on schedule with the diamond.”

  “The council—” began George.

  “They won't like it, I know. But they will accept it. From me.”

  Another rule. No member of the tribe left the shire without permission from the council. Except, of course, the Alpha.

  He waited, not turning, listening to the fire mutter.

  George scraped back his chair. “Aye, my lord.”

  “Do you truly think it will work?” asked Rufus. “Will showing the diamond at the museum draw out our Smoke Thief?”

  “It will. He'd never come here for it. But he'll consider London his domain. He won't be able to resist.”

  “A great risk,” said George evenly. “Letting it leave the shire. The council had a point in that, my lord.”

  “It must be the true stone. You know that. He'll be able to discern an imitation at once. And there will be many of us, and one of him. The Stewart Museum is large enough to allow any number of us to filter through the crowds.”

  “Aye, my lord.”

  Behind him, the servants—tribemembers, all—were taking advantage of his standing, quickly clearing the last of the meal, ghosts in the glass who threw him hurried looks and vanished as noiselessly as they had come.

  Kit had grown used to those looks over the years, part fear, part awe. As if he were a creature beyond even them. As if he were—indomitable.

  He thought of all the times he'd wanted to run himself, to escape Darkfrith. He looked out at the stars thrown across the cold sky and envy of the thief speared through him bright as pain—just a flash, and then he smothered it.

  “He will come for the diamond,” he said, very quiet.

  I would.

  He crouched, nude and alone, at the highest edge of the pitched roof of the manor, letting the night wind lift his hair, his skin chilled, his muscles flexed: as fixed to the earth as the stone gargoyles that snarled from Chasen's battlements. The stars were closer here but never close enough; Christoff stood and leapt from the roof.

  For an instant he fell. There was a real terror to it, blood-pumping, heart-screaming energy. But at the last second he Turned, and the rushing ground became a blur and the wind pushed him up, up into the sky.

  He was free.

  Kit soared above the land, the manor shrinking, the details of the ground blending to dark and woods and pinpoints of light. There would be others out on this moonless night—his hunters, his guards—but he sensed them before they did him, and so skidded over them, too swift, too wild for them to follow.

  Not that they would anyway. They knew well enough when to let him be.

  He rode the winds better than anyone, fathomed the secrets of the night, where to go, how to hide. He had been stealing out like this from the very moment he could, that first night of his transformation. At ten years of age he had been the youngest of the tribe ever to survive the ordeals of the Turn. But he had survived it. And with the stars as his echo, Kit could fly.

  Far Perch, that elegant London manse, was deserted.

  He had expected it, of course, but still found the blank windows and ungarnished front steps disconcerting. His mother had kept urns of roses by the doors, ruffled coral buds scented of spice in the summer and in winter pruned down to sticky stalks. How strange; he had forgotten that until this moment. His father, as Kit recalled, had them torn out after her death.

  The urns were em
pty now, lacking even a cobweb to tremble in the breeze. He touched a finger to one of the limestone lips, bronzed skin against pitted white, then dropped his hand. The knocker connected with the door once again.

  No one answered. He had retained his father's elderly caretakers—not drákon, no one from the tribe could be left loose in the city for so long—but it seemed they couldn't hear him. It was a damned big house.

  Or perhaps they were out.

  No one had come for his stallion either; he'd had to stable him himself in the back.

  Kit reached for the key ring in his pocket and unlocked the double doors.

  “Hello?”

  Old Stilson did not appear. Neither did his wife. Kit glanced behind him, to the stylish square of buildings and trees and cobblestones that flanked the mansion, then stepped into the vestibule and closed the doors.

  He hated London. It felt stifling to him, contaminated by clogs of humanity and machinery and the low sullen sky. As the Marquess of Langford, he had adjusted to the smaller miseries of city life, the smells and sharp noises, the constant tumult of the streets. He knew how to walk and talk and smile when he should, yet there were always those mean, invisible moments when Kit feared he might crack apart—desperate just to get away, just to find a clear, clean spot to breathe. But there wasn't such a place. Not here.

  Their kind did not do well in cities. Yet London, brilliant, suffocating London, was a necessary evil. If all went well, he'd be gone again in a sennight.

  He had no idea how his father had managed it all those years. The old marquess had built the mansion in Grosvenor Square—and named it too, in what had to be the only stroke of whimsy in his life—had fulfilled his duties as a lord and even, when bidden, attended the king. To do otherwise, he had told Kit, would be to invite speculation. None of them needed that.

  For years, Kit had avoided the mansion. Whenever London called he had found inns, clubs, places without spirits or silently accusing rooms. But this journey was unique; instead of disguising his presence he was advertising it, and so his father's house became another necessity.

  He stalked through the abandoned halls, opening doors, pulling sheets off furniture, stirring up dust and memories.