The Smoke Thief

by Shana Abe

  “Yes, ma'am.”

  There was very clearly no rock. Rue saw the maid search for it, a quick flicker of her eyes along the bed and beechen floor before she looked back at Rue.

  “You will fetch a glazier,” Rue said, drawing herself taller. “But first, I need a few other things.” She paused. “Is Zane about?”

  “No, ma'am. He hasn't been here since yesterday noon.”

  “All right, then get Cook. I'm going to need a hamper of food anyway.”

  ______

  She could not risk taking a hackney all the way to the warehouse.

  By the time they reached the wharves it was well past midday. The streets here slept deep in shadow, closed in by high, stark buildings, only a few of the tallest peaks and rooftops still glowing with light. Men moved about with their hats pressed low and their hands in their pockets. The odor of decaying fish coated everything like an oil, from the hitching posts to the brick and stucco walls.

  She allowed the driver to help her from the coach, her wicker hamper over one arm. The veil draped from her hat obscured her face but also her vision; she nearly missed the last step.

  “Careful, miss.” He watched her find her footing on the road. “Are y'sure this be the place, miss?”

  “Yes.” She began to count out coins from her reticule into her gloved palm.

  “It don't seem no proper sort o' place for a lady,” the man continued, gently obstinate. “Ye sure this be it?”

  “I am.”

  “Shall I wait for ye, miss?”

  Rue pressed the coins into the driver's hand. “No. Definitely not.”

  He scratched at his wig, eyeing her, the fashionable cocked hat and white veil, the fine navy poplin of her gown. He did not even glance at his payment.

  “I don't mind none,” said the fellow. “Might be better, miss, me waitin' here on this corner.”

  Under the pretense of adjusting the hamper, Rue took a sideways step toward the pair of horses hitched to the coach. The closer one, the gray, lifted his head and shook it, giving an unhappy snort.

  “That won't be necessary.” She tried another step. “Thank you.”

  The gray clattered his front feet. The sorrel beside him gave a bounce and a little kick, straining against the harness.

  “Here, now,” called the man, and hurried to them. With his back to her she surged forward one last step, enough to force the gray into a scream of warning and the sorrel into another unruly kick.

  “Ho! Ho now, Joseph! There, boy!”

  Rue swung back, moving briskly down the main road. Behind her, the bay gave another scream. She slipped down a side street.

  Around a second corner she took a moment to listen, focusing on the distant murmurs of the coachman, soothing and low, and the agitated whickering of his steeds, their shoes scraping stone. There were other people passing in the blocks between them, men with slower paces, voices that discussed flax and the prevailing winds and the price of coal from London to Hull.

  The coachman calmed his steeds. She heard the reins flick; she heard them rattle away.

  Rue retraced her steps. She hadn't been to this area often enough to hazard getting lost in alleyways; she'd have to walk the only way she knew.

  The veil was a thin precaution. She doubted she'd see anyone she knew, or at least anyone she knew as Rue Hilliard. But if perchance a mad, nude nobleman had been discovered locked in a warehouse, better not to have her face visible to the public. She had no desire to be remembered here.

  The gauze pressed filmy white against her cheeks. The hamper bumped her hip. She passed merchants and prostitutes, trying to breathe through her mouth to hold back the reek. A wheel of gannets circled above her, their cries snatched by the wind; when she looked up at them they spun away into a line to dive out of sight.

  A new man neared. He moved differently from the others, a subtle slide to his step, a trait she instantly recognized. A pickpocket. Rue veered to her left, angling out of his path. But by chance the street was wide open, without even a drunken oarsman on a pony; at the last moment he moved to intercept her, as if to cross the road. She tightened her arm over the basket and kept her other hand on her purse. When he tapped into her she pushed back with her shoulder, hard, and felt him go sprawling to the paving stones.

  “Oy! Look out there, miss!”

  Bloody novice. Zane would have done much better. She should know; she'd taught him herself.

  She listened close but the man didn't follow, only picked himself up and slapped at his breeches, cursing a shade too loudly for such a public space. A constable stood idle at the steps of the gin house nearby with a laughing girl and a drink in hand. He turned his head, eyeing the pickpocket up and down.

  Rue walked on.

  From three blocks away she began to hear it: the air shifting, a muffled thump, and silence, and air again. She passed by Christoff's warehouse because there was a pair of sailors throwing dice at the corner. Only when they sauntered off, bickering, did she return to the entrance.

  The massive doors were sealed with a padlock and chain.

  She looked around again and closed both hands over the cheap lock. It had to be merely symbolic; nothing so thin would keep out the drákon. She squeezed and the lock crumpled into pieces. She let them fall against her skirts, then slipped loose the chain. The doors slid back on smoothly oiled rollers.

  Rue lifted her veil. Shafts of dusty daylight from the hole above picked out motes in the air, etched fire along the tips of fallen feathers and debris scattered amid the shingles. There were no sounds coming from the smaller chamber now. She approached the iron door and set the hamper at her feet.

  She put her ear to the metal. She heard breathing. That was all.

  The bar took most of her strength, far more serious than the flimsy padlock had been. With a grunt of effort, she freed it from the brackets, then opened the door.

  At first she couldn't see. There was absolutely no light in the cell but for what spilled past the threshold, but she felt him there, his heat, his pumping heart. She bent to find the lantern she'd brought, striking a match to flame, lifting it high before her.

  Almond eyes fixed upon her from the darkness, pale eyes, fell green. An elegant head rested upon the floor, a body looped in serpentine coils, scales dipped in colors from the deepest dark oceans, shifting with each labored breath. His talons were curved into dagger points against the granite. His wings were folded into blood-red lines.

  He did not lift his head. He did not move at all, only watched her with those burning eyes and that flat, deadly stillness. He showed no signs of recognizing her. He vibrated hostility, ready to strike.

  Rue hefted the basket, collected the lantern and her skirts, and stepped into the chamber, pulling the iron door closed behind her.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  There were rats in his head. Kit felt them, their little claws pick-picking through his brain. It hurt him and it enraged him. He scratched at his ears, he shook his head until the world spun, but they would not fall out and go away.

  It seemed to him they had been there a very long while, perhaps hiding, perhaps waiting for this time. They poked at him with whiskers and glowing eyes. They ate his thoughts. He wanted to destroy them with a passion that charred his heart, that held his muscles seized in rage. And he could not stop them.

  Her breath in his ear. Her body against his.

  He was cold, he was in hell, and it was frozen, it was black frost and icicles that stabbed into his joints. No matter how he moved he could not get warm again. If he tried to fly he found himself flung back to the ground. If he tried to find shelter he encountered only walls and floor and a low, moaning wind that sang a song to him about untroubled death.

  Her words, whispered. Her hands, stroking his face.

  The rats had vanished. They had evaporated in the heat, a sultry equatorial sun—he had never been to the equator, but surely this was how it felt, this sweltering, gagging warmth, this descending ball of fire
that cooked him whole, that crisped his skin and boiled his juices like a chicken ready to eat. He lay there gasping, unable to consume the air because it hurt too much, it scalded his lungs and scattered like grapeshot through his body. He could not move. He could not take another breath.

  She gave him water. She gathered blankets and sopped up his skin.

  He was on his back. He was pressed to a floor that felt cool and wonderful, that drew the fire from his skin down to the core of the earth. There was a woman leaning over him, beyond beautiful, with eyes that pierced his soul. She was near and she was far. When he could not feel her any longer he reached for her through the darkness—and found a delicate dragon instead.

  She held him down. She pinned his wings so he could not fly, and he turned his head and snapped at her.

  Bitch. She was doing this. She would keep him—him!—here in these fetters, with the rats and the sun and the sweat that kept coming and coming at him, no matter how many times he thought he'd left them behind. It was her doing. She would pay. He was Alpha for a reason, by God.

  Her hands. Her face. Her lips against his.

  And in the end, he couldn't do it. She was spirit and presence, as rare and brilliant as snowflakes in sunlight, and he could not bring himself to harm her. She lay entwined with him, white and gold and long, long lashes, and matched her breathing to his, their faces pressed together, as he slipped down the mountain and tumbled into oblivion.

  ______

  She lingered outside the warehouse, thankful for the veil and hat, which managed to conceal her most obvious flaws: fatigue, snarled hair, the run of bruises along her cheekbone from the time Christoff had managed to flail free and strike her. A buttermilk sky—what day was it? Wednesday? Thursday?—was rapidly thickening into storm, a muggy darkness she could taste on her tongue with the rising breeze.

  She watched the people passing by until she found precisely the sort of messenger she required—a river rat, no more than fourteen, unbathed, hungry, with gangly legs and sharp greedy eyes.

  “Take this,” she told him, and handed the child a bright half-crown. “You will find a boy named Zane at this address. Tell him his mistress bids him to come and to give you another two crowns for directing him here.” She caught his arm before he could dart off. “Do not fail me. You will not appreciate the consequences.”

  “Aye, ma'am.”

  She went back into the warehouse to wait for Zane.

  Two hours later her messenger returned. She heard his hesitant knock at the front and hastened to meet him, pulling a shawl over her shoulders, hauling him along with her to the side of the building where the wind cut very cool around them both, scented with rain.

  “He weren't there, ma'am,” the rat said, scrubbing a hand along his face. “I left yer message wit' a girl. Can I have me two crowns anyways?”

  She did not know how much longer she could keep him here. It was not a healthy place, certainly not a comfortable one, despite the blankets and food she'd brought. When she went back to Christoff he was smoke—she shut the door quickly but he did not move from the ceiling, a lovely cloud hanging in plumes and thin billowing curls, never resolving, always indefinite. She sat down upon the floor beside the slender light of her lantern and just watched him, wondering if this might be his death throes.

  Thunder began a slow roll outside. It swelled and cracked around them, subsiding in skin-chilling echoes.

  She felt her lips tremble. She felt her eyes begin to sting. She remembered the quick grinning boy she used to idolize; she remembered the man who kissed her hands and her mouth and made her body flush hot with just a hidden glance, who could cut moonlit mist into a heart but couldn't wrap bread. Rue held her breath until it burned.

  “Don't go,” she said to the smoke. She stood and reached a hand up to him, not tall enough to touch, never enough to reach him, moisture leaking down her cheeks. “Don't go, I'm going to save you. I am.”

  But even she didn't believe it. Not any longer. He did not Turn again. As the thunderstorm broke beyond the walls she sank back to the floor, pressing the shawl to her mouth. She bent her head and willed herself not to be weak. Crying never helped.

  Nothing helped. She'd tried compounds and cool compresses, she'd bathed him and held him and felt him thrash with the fever. She'd run out of the orange-scented salve and had wanted Zane to get her more—she couldn't leave Kit for so long, she couldn't bear to think of what might happen—but now she didn't have even that. She had never heard of a certain treatment for fever in the drákon. Perhaps there was none. Certainly nothing had cured Antonia in all those years, not herbs or tonics. The only thing that ever seemed to help were the brief, sunny days when she had ventured outside, when she could enjoy the sky and the earth.

  Something hooked in her memory. Rue lifted her head, frowning.

  The sky. The earth. The stony paths.

  Stone.

  Herte.

  She didn't know why she stood up. She didn't know why her mind fixed on an idea so far-fetched and tissue-thin she would have laughed to hear it aloud.

  But why not? Nothing else had worked.

  The smoke above her boiled and lingered, never changing back to man or beast. If he died like this she didn't even know if he would leave behind bones.

  Rue dropped her shawl to the floor. She left the chamber, sealed it, and Turned at three running steps.

  The storm whisked her up into its folds nearly at once, sweeping her about so severely she lost her sense of up and down. Everything was dark and wet and noisy. A tremendous pressure began to rise and rise through the vapor, nearly tearing her apart. She had no body but felt the electricity mount through her, a zinging torture that would not stop. Lightning gathered into a massive fissure below; it ruptured with a roar, spearing off in wild directions. She was released, spinning, and swiftly Turned to dragon to climb above the clouds.

  Only she could not. There was too much wind, and the clouds did not seem to end. She had no idea if she was going the right way or if she was being pulled out to sea. She could not see.

  The electric pressure began to mount once more. Rue dove. The lightning arced above her head, fire bolts that seared her eyes. She dropped, and dropped, battered with rain. Her wings began to quiver with strain. She was not meant for this. She'd never flown like this, in such a gale. If she went to smoke she might not have enough force to push herself against the winds.

  Another burst of light. All the clouds were lit in a flash of mammoth, black-walled fury. She threaded through them, letting gravity take her down, and barely missed splashing into the mouth of the Thames below.

  She dipped above the water. She was thrashed by rain and salty spray—but there were lights ashore. She made her way to them, Turning only at the first clear signs of a quay, coming up against a broken awning above a black-shuttered cottage. She went to her knees and pressed her face into her arms, waiting until the panic ebbed from her heart.

  A trio of men in oilskins staggered past, so close she could see the rain-pocked cheeks and beard of the nearest one. They did not notice her.

  Rue Turned to smoke and made her way inland.

  There were candles alight inside Far Perch. Flickering light shone visible from nearly all the windows, and it took her so aback that she materialized in a treetop across the square, clinging to the high branches like a half-drowned monkey, squinting against the storm.

  A shadow crossed the parlor window. A man. Another man joined him; they stood conferring, dark coats, white wigs. Of course—Kit's guard. The five men they'd agreed upon finally arrived from Darkfrith. Great heavens, how many days had it been since that afternoon in the council's chamber? It seemed a lifetime past. She heaved a sigh of relief, so abruptly grateful she felt almost faint; she didn't have to do this alone. She could tell them about Christoff, and they would help her. They would . . .

  Three more men moved against an upstairs window. And another two at the other end of the mansion. And another one in the dra
wing room.

  Eight. Nine. The front parlor, with Zane's weak jamb, seemed to be the main gathering place. It had two finely arched windows in front and another that shed gold along the side of the house, all of them traced in lead filigree that lent the mansion's facade an air of magnificent, old-fashioned caprice. In minutes she counted at least twelve figures.

  One long-wigged man walked up to the glass and stood staring out at the rain, his hands behind his back, his gaze aimed precisely at where Rue perched. She gripped the slippery branches more tightly, motionless behind the leaves.

  Parrish Grady. She could see that it was him, even with the light behind him. It wasn't just five men they had sent, it was the council, all of them come to London, and who knew how many guardsmen besides.

  They had forsaken the agreement.

  I had meant to hand it to the council for safekeeping.

  Kit's words, that morning of their argument. She shook her head with a groan, small and disbelieving. He had never meant to give Herte to the guards. He'd been awaiting Grady. All the rest. He'd said it out loud, and she'd never given it a second thought.

  The council has not yet arrived. . . .

  He had known. He had colluded with them. And he'd looked her straight in the eye and lied to her with that easy, heart-stopping charm she'd always adored. He'd never meant to let her go, not at all.

  She bowed her head to her wrists, precarious in the tree, gritting her teeth. God save her from deceitful men. Now what was she to do?

  She could not enter Far Perch without Kit. She certainly could not produce the diamond and then tell the tribesmen their leader was trapped in a warehouse, mortally ill. They'd laugh at her idea. No—they'd think she had made it happen somehow, that it was a trick to keep Herte for herself, to end any hope of a marriage. It was what she would think, if she were an arrogant, underhanded, son-of-a-bitch councillor.