The Smoke Thief

by Shana Abe

  Oh, danger. Already it was happening, the thing she most feared: his smile, his attentions, even the smooth motion of his body next to hers, sending her senses into a spin. It would be far too easy to fall into his thrall, to believe there might be sincerity beneath his practiced facade, that he might actually care what she thought or felt or . . .

  But he didn't. He was Alpha, that was all it was. The Marquess of Langford was a creature of instinct as surely as she; he was driven by that and nothing more. She would not make the mistake of dreaming it could ever be anything more.

  A fortnight, she thought firmly. A fortnight, and it's done.

  He led her to a door, not one of the elaborate paneled ones of the parlors or bedchambers but a servants' door, small and inconspicuous, with a corkscrew of stairs rising steeply above.

  “Where are we going?” she asked, not entering.

  “You'll see.”

  “I'd prefer to know first.”

  “Don't you trust me?”

  “No.”

  “Well, it's not the Dead Room,” he said, unruffled. “Isn't that enough for the moment?”

  And it was. After climbing and climbing they emerged to a gently sloping rooftop: the southern edge of the family wing, with the glass Adam dome arching above the tiles, and eight soot-stained chimney tops marking a massive square around it, two of them breathing woodsmoke.

  Perhaps the storm had lightened, or the dome shielded them from the worst of the winds, but the rain was softened to a drizzle, almost caressing. The clouds rolled above them in deep shifting hues of midnight and purple and coal.

  Rue took a cautious step out onto the tiles, pushing a lock of hair from her eyes. “I thought we were leaving for London.”

  “Indeed.”

  She looked at him and he at her, his brows slightly raised, his mouth holding a faint, expectant curve.

  “No,” she said, and gave a startled laugh.

  “Why not?”

  “You're mad!” She glanced behind them to the guards, still crowded on the stairs, and then back at him.

  “It's a nine-day ride by carriage,” Christoff said. “Assuming that this time you'd prefer to travel at a more human pace. Nine days of travel leaves only five of your fortnight in London.”

  “The fortnight doesn't begin until we're there!” she said, outraged.

  “Sorry.” His smile deepened. “The council's decreed otherwise.”

  “That is not—”

  “Nine days in the carriage, or, if we leave now . . .” He squinted up at the sky. “I expect we'll be there in about . . . six hours. Give or take. I've never done it before, of course, but I'm sure we'll discover the way.”

  Like her, he still wore his wedding clothes, but without the cloak or even his coat he was becoming rapidly sprinkled with raindrops. No powder, no wig or gloves; the marquess grinned at her, unrepentant, as the linen of his shirt turned translucent, sculpting his body in fine pale lines.

  Rue clutched her skirts, inching over to the nearest chimney, and then to the watery curve of the dome. But there were no hidden listeners, only the unending trickle of rain against the wet bricks. “Is this a trick? Some new device of the council?”

  “No, mouse. It is my own device. The council doesn't know.”

  “It's daylight!”

  “It won't be by the time we get there.”

  “Lovely! We simply arrive in London, two everyday dragons—”

  “Or,” he said mildly, “two perfectly unclad people.” He spread his hands, his hair loosened gold, his eyes clever green, his smile growing wider. “Come now. Do you mean for me to believe that you don't have some sort of provisional shelter in the city? A professional such as yourself, a master thief, without emergency recourse?”

  “If I did, I wouldn't show it to you!”

  “Very well. We'll go to Far Perch. I know a hidden way in. You can wear something of the housekeeper's.”

  She shook her head, speechless—but against her will she had a sudden vision of what it would be like, flying with him in the cold, blue brilliance of sunlight, no longer enemies. Soaring, side by side.

  He came to her lightly, easily, as if the tiles were not both pitched and slick with water. Cordially, like a lover's greeting, Kit tipped his head to hers and put his lips to her ear.

  “Who was it who said to me, ‘Break their rules'?”

  Before she could respond, he brushed a kiss across her cheek, so fleet and cool she hardly felt it, then backed away, tugging at his cravat.

  “Quentin,” he said, never taking his eyes from her, “kindly inform the council that Mistress Hawthorne and I are leaving posthaste for London.”

  The first two guards in the stairwell emerged from their darkness, one behind the other. “My lord?”

  “We shall see you there.”

  “But, sir, you cannot—”

  “Quentin,” said Christoff in a different voice, chilled and very soft.

  The guard faltered, one hand spread against the open door, then bowed. “As you wish, Lord Langford.”

  “Thank you. My lady?”

  The marquess lifted his palm to her, a man held in wind-tousled grace, waiting; still as the eye of a tempest was still, inexorable force only momentarily at bay. The heels of his shoes rested at the very, very edge of the rooftop. If the wind changed, if he lost his balance—

  Beyond him were only trees and sky, the dark-misted storm sweeping emerald hills up to heaven.

  “You are mad,” Rue said again, but she found herself moving toward him. His fingers closed over hers; he raised her hand to his mouth and held it there, warming her skin with his.

  “I prefer the word dashing.”

  She huffed a breath, almost a laugh.

  “Oh, and one more thing.” Above their locked fingers he granted her a new smile, this one slow and blazingly sensual. “Little brown-haired girl . . . I did notice you.”

  He Turned to smoke. She watched his clothing collapse to the tiles, silk and velvet soaked instantly in puddles. One shoe teetered a moment before tumbling, end over end, from the roof. Rue looked once more at the men behind her, then up to the violet-swirled clouds. She stepped away from Chasen's edge and Turned as well, for the second time in her life following Kit Langford away from the earth.

  She had grown up watching the men of the tribe flying across the starry skies, or streaking home at the brink of day, after the moon and before the sun, when they swept like zephyrs along the heavens, the wind a distant hiss against their wings. Christoff was so often among them; she'd made it a game to pinpoint him amid their numbers, and so Rue knew his patterns, the scythe elegance of his wingspan, the dark gleam of his scales, the way he'd speed high and then diminish into a dive, as hawks did, a hunter who could spear his prey with the delicacy of a single deadly talon.

  He was waiting for her in the clouds. He was dragon already, stirring great plumes of gray with his wings, burnished with the rain that had yet to fall. She Turned too, disliking at once the clammy cold, and without looking to him rose above the worst of it, punching a hole to open air at the top of a billowing black cloud, finding the sky a sheer sapphire and wisps of paler vapor above, like threadbare sheets on an upside-down bed.

  She knew only west; she knew the direction of the sun. With mist still trailing the tips of his wings, Christoff swept into a tight spiral around her, never clipping her even as she stretched her neck and leapt forward to avoid him. He ended up in front, tossing a look back at her, strength and beauty in a long, twisting coil of metallic color. She thought he might have grinned. Then he tilted to the right, a slow coasting that opened his wings to their limits, pulling ahead. She mirrored him, finding the same channel of wind to carry her.

  Rue was less skilled than he in this form, there could be no denying it. She could count the number of times she'd Turned to dragon on a single hand; the crowded city did not make for safe practice. But Kit flew as if an angel had drawn a shining bright line from Darkfrith to the h
orizon, to London, pressed between the clouds, finding new currents when the old ones veered off, floating with no apparent effort often just beside her, his eyes narrowed, his body lean and straight.

  It felt . . . exhilarating. Even with him there, it felt like liberty, like she need never touch the ground again.

  The sun began to set and the entire sky kindled to flame, suspending them in wild pink and cherry and orange, colors so burning and luminous they almost hurt to behold. Every stroke of her wings shifted hues, deepening the heavens, and when the first of the stars sparked overhead—a bouquet of them, all at once—all that was left of the day was a band of intense maroon melting like hot sand into the edge of the world.

  In the dark he glimmered with starlight. When they altered directions the swelling rush of the wind filled her ears, but when they glided, when they rode the wings of the air itself, she heard only him. The whispered resonance of his flight, respiration, heartbeat. Quiet. As if the cosmos had never held anyone but them, as if above and below, in all the black glittering solitude of the universe, there would never be anyone else but them.

  And they glided. In time the clouds began to disperse. No longer heavy with rain, they scattered into furrows, revealing the invisible tides that ebbed and pushed around them. But they flew very high, and the ground was very far; Rue saw only a sprinkling of towns, uneven splotches of light that spread faint, spidery arms into the night. A flock of geese, much slower, pointing the way south. And once the alabaster reflection of the ocean, pressed up in a ragged curve to the shore.

  Kit veered away from it, and she followed.

  Despite the smooth air, or perhaps because of it, Rue found her thoughts drifting, her eyelids growing heavy. She realized drowsily that she should have taken supper, that with her stomach empty and her energy flagging even the hastiest of meals would have been better than none. She didn't know how far they were from London yet. She didn't recognize anything on the blank nothing of the ground. What a strange thing, to have to guess the map of the earth. It seemed astonishing that she could even venture to try, aloft here in the soft, soft silence. . . .

  She came awake with a hard bump to her chin, her teeth snapping closed, her feet making brief contact with something warm and firm beneath her. Kit—there and gone as Rue found herself in a roll; she tucked her wings in and flung them out again to control it, swooping upward until she was steady once more, her heart racing.

  Kit was pacing her, hanging close. The look he gave her now was shadowed with the rising moon, but its warning was clear enough.

  She needed to stop. She needed to eat, and to rest. She didn't care if they landed in a field or a cave or in bloody Covent Garden, she could not go on. Rue began a downward drift, glancing back at him to see if he understood. He plunged after her, darting swiftly below, forcing her to rise or risk entangling with him once more. She hitched to the left, irritated, but he stuck with her, flicking her with his tail when she tried to descend again.

  They could not speak as dragons, not even the common whiffs and growls of the lower beasts. Silence was the price of their splendor; it was said that even the ancient Gifts required sacrifice. Too often she'd heard the village elders weave their excuses, that the drákon didn't need words, that in the glory of the sky their minds and wills flowed as one. It was certainly true that she knew what Christoff was demanding as he pushed at her, but Rue wished, wholeheartedly, that she could tell him precisely what she thought of him in this moment.

  She bared her teeth at him. He pressed heavily to the right, crowding her until she moved just to get out of his way—and then she saw what he did, spilling into view not three leagues ahead: a winking gem of dull yellow light, spreading wider and wider, sending up heat and human scent in fat rippling waves.

  She picked out roads, a jagged skyline, the rising roar of a city in full motion.

  London.

  Home at last.

  CHAPTER NINE

  His hidden way into Far Perch turned out to be through the wooden slats of a fanciful bronze-topped cupola, with barely room enough inside of it for the two of them to stand. The only reason Rue took her shape there was because she knew if she didn't, he'd harass her until she gave in.

  “Brava,” Christoff whispered as she found herself pressed against a scratchy oak wall. What light pushed through the slats fell in pale stripes across them both, painting their bare skin. He shifted his feet and bent to tug at the trapdoor to the stairs, his elbow bumping her thigh. The door creaked open; there was absolutely no illumination below.

  “This is your plan?” Rue hissed, pulling her hair forward over her shoulders, but he didn't even glance at her body.

  “Take my hand,” he said. “I'll guide you.”

  “I can find the way.”

  “Suit yourself.” He began to descend. Rue watched him vanish, a tiger dropping into shadows. She looked back at the slats, exactly level with her eyes. Her body ached, and her lingering vexation with the marquess was not helped by the fact that she was hungry and naked in the dank, cramped peak of his stylish mansion. She was tired, but not so tired that she could not imagine what lay beyond the artfully tidy streets of Grosvenor Square.

  “Rue.” Christoff's head reappeared, his shoulders. He propped his arms along the outline of the hole in the floor and regarded her with a hooded look. “What, my love? Feeling shy?” Beneath the easy tone lurked more than a hint of mockery; he knew exactly what she was considering.

  “Don't you have caretakers here?”

  He shrugged. “They're quartered in the basement. Pleasant enough people, centuries old, deaf as hitching posts. After we're dressed I'll rattle the family silver by their door to wake them.

  “Rue,” he said again, smiling with faint, amused menace when she did not move, “do you truly think there exists a place where I cannot find you?”

  “I can't stay here.”

  “That was the agreement.”

  “No, it wasn't. I said I'd come to London with you, and I did. I promise I'll—meet you here tomorrow.”

  He made a hushed laugh, sending a shiver up her spine. “The word of a lady. And yet, I must decline. Come along, if you please.”

  “I suppose it must be wonderful to always demand what you want, instead of asking for it!”

  His brows lifted. “It pains me to point out that you of all people should know.”

  She dropped to her knees before him, the ends of her hair sweeping the floor in dusty curls. “Be sensible. What do you think the ton will say when word gets out that you're in residence with an unknown woman?”

  “I imagine . . . they'll suppose we're wed.” She caught his tiger smile, feral and gleaming. “Which we are. In our way.”

  “They will suppose nothing of the sort!”

  “Perhaps you're right. I daresay my reputation will survive it.”

  She began to stand. “I'm going home.”

  Swifter than the light, swifter than she, he vaulted back up the stairs into the cupola, his fingers warm on her wrist.

  “I'm very sorry, Rue-flower, but I see we're going to have to establish some new rules between us. Whither thou goest, I follow. If you wish to leave, I will accompany you. Your house, mine—even that secret shelter of yours you're so eager to protect. I'm not so dainty as to shun a plain floor for a bed, if need be. But we are staying together.”

  “If you truly believe you can find me anywhere, my lord, I fail to understand why you'd insist we never part.”

  “I enjoy your company.”

  “Alas, if only it were mutual.”

  He took a step toward her in the dark. “It could be.”

  His chest brushed hers, a fleet, electric shock to her senses. It seemed to take them both aback; she froze as he did, the striped air and wood walls suddenly much too dense, too filled with him. She tried not to inhale, she tried to hold her breath, but couldn't seem to manage it: with every rise and fall of her chest her nipples grazed him, and it was like a fierce, hot drowning
in her lungs, a terrible ache that spread through her body and left her weak-kneed and foolish.

  He was so warm. He was so near. A solitary band of light laid amber over the brown of his lashes and turned his eyes to jade. She watched them drift lower, a leisurely perusal of her face.

  “Don't . . .” Kit whispered, and bent his head, his lips finding hers.

  She'd never known a kiss could be so soft. In her many disguises, in her years here in London—the comte she'd invented, chambermaids, seamstresses, once even a courtesan with Mim—she'd learned of kisses, and enough of courtiers' ways to keep them brief and coolly cerebral. A kiss was only another weapon, as useful and impersonal as a pistol or a blade.

  She'd never kissed, or been kissed, with passion before, with tenderness. She'd never known what it could mean to have a man explore the corners of her mouth, to feel him drag his lips over hers, so slowly, so sweetly, that breathing no longer seemed possible or even necessary. To have his hands reach up to cradle the back of her neck, his thumbs against her cheeks, stroking as his mouth stroked, in heady, exquisite circles. Rough beard, gentle tongue. The taste of him, the musky scent. The wall behind her but the fever of him ahead, as he captured her with only his fingers and lips, their bodies never touching . . . and yet he drew magic from her into him, offering it back again with every languorous caress.

  His hair made a gold-silk curtain between them, a haze of color. She felt light and burning, a leaf brushed by the wind beyond her measure; she remembered distantly something someone—a baron, one night at a ball—said of her: lips like a cherry's pucker, a ripe red bite. And she'd never fully fathomed that until now.

  “Don't what?” Rue managed, her voice a thin thread of itself.

  “Hmmm?” Kit nuzzled her throat. She felt his teeth against her skin.

  “Don't what?” she asked again, as her own hands were coming up to his shoulders, finding the smooth curves of him there, the way his muscles felt like supple stone, yielding and not. He brought his mouth back to hers as she dragged her palms down his arms and up again, something restless waking in her, something eager and unknown.