The Smoke Thief

by Shana Abe

  “You may call it whatever you like, Mistress Hawthorne. You are Alpha, as am I. By the laws of our people, we're as well as married.”

  “Those are not my laws. And that is not my name.”

  “Clarissa.”

  “I told you. She is dead.”

  “Then tell me again,” he invited, milder than before. “Who are you now, if not that little girl from the shire?”

  “No one at all.”

  “Everyone has a name.” He walked closer, shape and color through the mask of her lashes, not quite near enough to touch. “Even the lost.”

  “I assure you, I was not lost.”

  “Lost to me, I should say. If you don't want me to call you by your given name, you'd better offer me another.”

  She drew in her breath, held it a moment, debating. “Rue.”

  “Rue.” He repeated it deliberately, letting it roll along his tongue. “Madam Rue Hilliard, from what I understand.” He reached out now, stroked his fingers down her cheek to tip her face to his. His eyes glittered green, ice against a winter sunrise. “Wed, or widowed?”

  In all the room, he was the only thing of beauty. He was hard and powerful and unfathomable, his features barely lined even after all the days of travel. His palm shaped warmth against her cheek and his dominion was there too, restrained into a mere caress. But Rue wasn't fooled. Behind his winter look there was jeopardy. There was a primal creature, only waiting to pounce.

  “Neither,” she said finally. “I made it up.”

  “Good.” His hand trailed downward, following her throat. “Because I'm not a patient man, nor a sharing one. Divorces can take so awkwardly long.” Lower still, to her chest. He slipped a finger between her breasts. “And this place . . . is mine.”

  She slapped him. She had never hit anyone before, never once, but it was rash and instinctive, and strong enough to rock him back a step.

  “You are not my mate.” Rue pressed against the bed, trapped, enraged. “You're not even my lover.”

  Christoff cradled his jaw with one hand, his fingers dark against his own skin. Then his lashes swept low, and he smiled—a faint, chilling smile, full of either irony or menace, or both.

  “No,” he said in that utterly calm way. “Not tonight. But tomorrow. . . .”

  “Get out.”

  “As you will.” He went to the door, called a name. She heard the key turn in its socket. As the lock released, Kit inclined his head.

  “No doubt you're weary. I'll leave you to your thoughts—Rue.” At the edge of the doorway he paused, glancing back at her from over his shoulder. “You could Turn in here, of course. But trust me, it's not a comfortable fit. And you'd never get even as far as the hall.”

  The door closed; she was alone. No need to check the seal of the jamb. It would be solid through.

  She stood in quivering stillness a moment, breathing through her nose, then spun around and struck the table with a single blow. The top cracked but did not split, so she kicked at a leg, feeling the pain of connection, feeling the wood shatter. The table swayed and toppled to its side on the floor.

  Beyond the iron door, there might have been laughter.

  ______

  He gave her one night.

  Strictly speaking, it wasn't even an entire night, since by the time the carriage had approached the scrolled gates of Chasen it was just after one in the morning. But an hour lack didn't seem very significant to Kit, not when he lay awake himself in the dark, tossing in his bed. He might have slept; he wasn't certain. If he dreamed, it was of her anyway.

  One night to settle, to let her reconsider her circumstances. One night for the council and guard to disperse back to their own beds, for the tangle of exhilaration and triumph over her capture, the worry for the diamond, to smooth themselves out in the stillness of those hours that crept toward dawn.

  He'd assigned two guards to her door, his most trusted men. He left orders that no one was to see her but him, that any inquiries regarding her were to be directed solely to him. Clarissa—Rue—had walked through his halls and left already ripples of wonder in her wake: it seemed half the tribe had caught the news from his messenger, had gathered on the front lawn to await that first glimpse of the girl who'd fooled them all—at least for a while.

  And in just those few minutes it took to escort her inside, Kit had witnessed the insurrection spark to life. It lit from face to face, a hunger that touched every man she glided by, that feasted on long brown hair and creamy pale skin and the mere notion of all that she had done and could yet do.

  Smoke Thief. Even the taffeta gown whispered temptation, marking the sway of her hips in rustling jeweled colors.

  Christoff knew that hunger full well. He knew its harsh ache.

  One night, just to be fair. But after tonight she was going to sleep here, with him.

  ______

  Years of existing in the shadows had trained Rue to always listen, because even the most subtle of sounds could mark the difference between success and failure, between nicking a purse of copper coins or one of gold, between captivity—and deliverance.

  So Rue listened. She listened closely all night long, but she never heard a single whisper filter through the walls of her prison. She never heard even the common bumps and shuffles of the men she knew kept watch beyond that metal door.

  Yet it was revealed to her, over the course of the night, that her cell was not so entirely removed from the world as it first appeared.

  She had stripped from the gaudy gown and lay back on the bed with the blanket wrapped snugly around her, no nightgown, no chemise. The air kept a dull, constant chill. The mattress had a lump.

  After days in the dark she craved the light, and so let the lantern burn down to its dregs. The smell of whale oil seemed to cling to the sheets and walls even after the flame died.

  Sleep would not come. She closed her eyes and thought of her feather bed back in London, of her home, of her people. She worried about what they'd done upon finding the front door ajar, and the strange clothing in her room. She worried that Cook and Sidonie would involve the police, and that Zane wasn't old enough yet to stop them.

  She discovered the first message by accident. She had rolled to her side, trying to avoid the bulge of the lump, and her left hand lifted and brushed the wall. But the stone surface was uneven. Faintly, lightly, it had been incised.

  Rue opened her eyes and traced the lines, forming the letters in her mind as her fingers outlined them: WINGS CLIPPD. And just below it: HARTBROKE, M.A., 1689

  She sat up. She felt the words again in the pitch of the chamber, the initials and date, then placed both hands on the wall, letting the stone leach away her precious warmth. It didn't take long to find another carving, this one near the head of the bed, half hidden by a post. It was not words but a figure, a thin, wavering line with two rough spread wings sprouting from the middle. A dragon, flying. Directly behind it was another, and then another, and another, each one smaller than the last. Perhaps a family. Perhaps the man who scratched this out in the last few days of his life had once had a family.

  She rested back on the pillows, thinking. What had they used to score the stone? The marquess had certainly left her without a weapon, without anything sharp. She rubbed her hands absently on the blanket covering her legs, warming them again, then got up, padded warily to the broken table. With her hands outstretched she groped until she found the top, the shattered leg. It had separated into pieces; the remaining fragment of wood at the joint hung loose, exposing long, heavy nails.

  She cut herself tugging the longest one free. She sucked the blood from her finger and kept working the nail with her other hand until it came out.

  Rue went back to the bed, found a clear block on the wall, and began to carve.

  She was waiting for him when he returned, wrapped only in a blanket, seated primly upon the bed with her ankles crossed and her fingers laced in her lap. The light from the doorway opened over her in a cool, bright rectangle
; she stared straight into it, unblinking, and he wondered how long she'd been sitting in the dark.

  She'd pulled her hair back into a plait, emphasizing the angles of her face, the full solemn mouth, the black-lashed clarity of her eyes. Taffeta made a discarded heap at her feet.

  Kit entered the cell carrying her breakfast tray, and had to step hastily aside to avoid the ruins of the table that used to be in the corner.

  “I require new clothing,” Rue Hawthorne said to him.

  He looked around for another place to put the tray, realized there was none, and set it on the bed beside her.

  “Certainly,” he said.

  “And a bath.”

  “Of course.”

  He bent down, picked up what used to be the foot of the table, and slanted her a look. She returned it; very slowly her brows raised, as if daring him to comment.

  “I felt quite the same way.” He let the wood fall from his hand. “It was ugly.”

  Her gaze lowered. With her chin tucked down and her lips set in that soft, demure bow, she was the very picture of timidity—a most charming act.

  God, if only he didn't know what she looked like without the blanket.

  The shadows danced. Behind him, the guard was bringing in a new lantern, and Kit turned to accept it. As the door began to close he caught the sudden expansion of her chest, how she took in a bit deeper than before the last of the fresh air.

  It couldn't be easy, staying in this place. It had been built, after all, for penance.

  “It's going to be a fair day,” Kit said casually, seating himself on the other side of the tray. “The sun is rising, the sky is clearing. There's a breeze, but it's only enough to rouse the thrifts. There's a flock of them in the north field this morning, settled in the rye. Everything's scented of spring.”

  She was absolutely still, looking at the bleached napkin on the tray, the sugar bowl of cornflower porcelain. In the small cast of the lantern her hair shone inky smooth, the plait like a brushstroke down the line of her back.

  “And woodbine,” he added, crossing his legs. “We've a lot of it flowering just now. Do you remember that?”

  She pinned him with her gaze. “When will it happen?”

  “What?”

  “The council. When do they meet?”

  “Noon,” he said. “With the ceremony at four.”

  She paled a little; he wouldn't have thought it possible.

  “The wedding ceremony,” he said. “What did you think?”

  Within the pallor of her cheeks two new spots of red bloomed. He smiled at that, a sharp smile that he knew wouldn't comfort her—but it did erase the last of that feigned meekness.

  “I've brought you something else.” He reached into his vest for the folded newspaper. He proffered it but her fingers never unclenched, so Kit opened it for her, held the front page up to the light.

  “Look. I thought you'd like to see—you're still famous.”

  Monsters in the Sky! screamed the headline in thick black letters. Just under it was an illustration of two snarling fiends, truly hideous, with sticks of people fleeing frantically below.

  “Infamous, rather,” Kit corrected himself, still smiling. “One of the fellows who lingered to close up the mansion brought this back.” He eyed the crude drawing. “I imagine we were quite a sight.”

  “'Tis a miracle no one shot at us,” she said in a low voice.

  “Oh, but see here, someone did. One Master Eugene Sumner, a bos'n on the good ship Rip Tide. Indeed, apparently he's a crack marksman, as according to no less than four of his mates he managed to sink us to the bottom of the river.” Kit looked up from the newsprint, thoughtful. “Perhaps he'll get a medal.”

  “A pity he missed.”

  He lowered the paper.

  “You,” she added pointedly.

  He bent his head and examined the coarse edges of the daily, folding it and refolding it in his hands. Beyond his feet the old table lay at a forlorn angle, its underside revealing a darker, less even stain than the top. It had been in the cell for as long as he could remember, certainly since his father's time. He wondered how many runners had stared down at its surface and counted the hours. He wondered if she had hurt herself breaking it, and knew better than to ask.

  He said, “Tell me where Herte is, and I'll speak on your behalf to the council. I'll demand leniency.”

  “And what would that be?” she inquired, dry. “A wedding tomorrow instead of today?”

  “Better accommodations, for one thing. The quarters of the marchioness.”

  “Freedom?”

  “A measure of freedom, yes.”

  “A measure,” she repeated, now sounding bored. “Like a hound on a leash, I gather. No, thank you.”

  “Rue,” he said roughly, glancing up at her. “Let me help you.”

  “You've helped rather enough.”

  “Is this what you want, then?” He stood, let his hand sweep the room. “This place, this life? If you fight them, they'll do everything they can to keep you here.”

  “Release me,” she said, watching him steadily. “You're the marquess, you have that power. I'll tell you what you want then, I swear.”

  He shook his head. “You know that's not possible.”

  “I know that you're Alpha. Isn't it so? The almighty sovereign leader of the tribe.” She came to her feet as well, clutching the blanket. “Well, prove it. Break their rules. Form your own.”

  She had taken a step toward him with her last few words, her shoulders squared and the damned silly blanket trailing behind her over the floor like the gown of an empress. He knew she meant to goad him, perhaps even to intimidate him, but right then, alone with her in the cell, with the lantern playing light and color along her skin, with her eyes narrowed and her lips—aye, her lips—so perfectly, deeply pink and ripe . . . with the braid gently swinging behind her, an invitation to be undone . . .

  He felt the beast within him stir. He felt his body go stiff with it, mere inches from hers, as the tension began to spiral and bind in a hot rush through his groin. He couldn't stop it, he didn't want to stop it. He wanted it to go on and on.

  She was so lovely. Every time he saw her he realized it anew, as though his memory ever failed him; he couldn't get used to the sensation. But she was. Her very presence enflamed him, from the flush in her cheeks to the black fans of her lashes, the way her eyes held his, the way her jaw clenched. Even her bare toes, just visible beneath falling layers of wool.

  She was still tinged of lilies. He wanted to taste that scent, to open his mouth over her flesh, to run his tongue along her neck, to pull her to him and rub his face in her hair until she smelled of him too. He wanted to cover her, to conquer her. To bury himself in her. He wanted it with a ferocity that shocked him, so much so that Kit had to force himself not to move, not to break, every muscle in his body turned into a solid, rigid ache.

  And Clarissa had grasped the change in him, he knew that she had. She stood frozen before him, wide-eyed, a doe poised at the brink of a snare. From the very edge of his perception, he saw her hand form a fist—small and ladylike, no match for anything he could do. The beast, the barbarous dragon, saw the fist and grinned.

  No one would stay him. No one would think of it.

  The bed was just behind her.

  Deliberately, her fingers relaxed. Her lashes fell; when she looked back at him it was with a new expression, a suggestion of something like humor in the tilt of her lips.

  No, not humor, he realized. Derision.

  And then, only then, did he remember what she had said to him last night. How she had spoken so calmly and how it had staggered him: rape or seduction, as if that were all it could be.

  His father had cuffed Kit once after some muttered insolence—from behind, the only time he had ever struck his son—and it had felt just like this, a reeling breathlessness that cut him in two, that left him winded and speechless until his wits returned.

  She turned and crossed t
o the bed, sat down and leaned back on her hands, gazing up at him. The blanket slipped a little, revealing an ankle, the pale curve of her leg; she didn't tuck it up again. Her face never changed.

  “Noon,” he managed with a sneer of his own, and offered her a curt bow. It was only as he was turning to go that he noticed the new shadow etched along the wall behind her, simple letters scored fresh into the stone:

  NO REGRETS.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The Marquess of Langford had been mistaken about the weather. It was raining when Rue faced the council, raining so fiercely it thrummed a song into the pale blue and silver magnificence of the council's private chamber, music that rolled beneath every word spoken, that accented every gesture and every shared glance.

  The windows here were tall, panes and panes of fine leaded glass that diffused rainlight and hazy gray shadows across the room, that shivered, ever so lightly, with echoing thunder. The hearth lay empty, and the warmth of three candelabras hardly served to penetrate the gloom. If Rue shifted her gaze from the men seated before her, she could view in the distance the hills she used to roam, soaked in wet green like fresh paint on a canvas. She could see the soft, black clouds hugging the earth.

  Despite the weather, there would be guards patrolling the grounds, and the sky. They would not risk losing her again.

  She had her own special chair in the chamber, set in clear solitude to face their line of thirteen. The men had a table to shield them, but Rue had only herself, her feet pressed to the Afshar rug and her hands in her lap. She wore a new gown, nothing quite so ridiculous as the taffeta, but heavy white satin with lavender ribbons knotting the sleeves, and petal-pink roses embroidered lavishly over the stomacher and skirts—the gown of a virgin, of a sweet, modest damsel. It had come nestled in a box, along with slippers and an assortment of faerie-lace underthings, swathed in leaves of gold tissue so delicate they fluttered open with the mere passing of her hand. A guard, a stranger, had brought the box to the cell door. The marquess himself had not bothered to come again.