The Smoke Thief d-1

by Shana Abe

  She vanished into the twilight, a slight figure soon devoured by shadows and the restless flicker of the torches the stable boys were embedding in precise intervals along the drive. Kit looked back at Marlbroke's mansion, at the warm golden windows and colored drapery, the ornate plastered ceiling of the ballroom visible behind glass like distant icing on a wedding cake.

  He gathered himself. He let his mind float, let his senses rise . . . past the stables, past the cool evening air . . . past limestone and mortar and bricks, to the people behind the walls, to footsteps and babbled conversation, to spices and fruit punch and the dry singe of champagne just popping open . . . to blood rushing, to hearts beating, and something else, something not quite right—

  “Sir? Get you a coach, sir?”

  Kit turned his gaze to the scruffy stable boy now standing before him, shifting nervously from foot to foot.

  “A coach?” offered the boy again, remembering to remove his cap.

  Kit glanced down at the cocked hat in his hands, at his gloves and stick, none of them conveniently forgotten back in Marlbroke's front hall. Beyond the stable boy someone else approached. The footman of before, closing in with a heavy stride.

  “Your pardon, milord,” the man said, sending the boy off with a scowling jerk of his head.

  “No,” said Kit, as if answering a question. “No, I'm fine. Good evening.” And he strolled out the main gates like a man who knew what awaited him in the dark.

  Which he did.

  She was huddled with her arms crossed over her knees on the front stairs of a dark, empty doorway two blocks down. She must have surrendered her coat with the rest of the workers; he felt her first, as he always did, but just after that he saw her, her plain shirt and wig a dull paleness in the unlit night. As soon as he approached, she stood.

  “Did you see him?” Rue demanded, her voice hushed.

  “No.”

  “He's there! I know he is!”

  A coach and four rushed by in a thunder of creaks and jingles and snorting horses. Kit resumed walking, looking straight ahead. She kept pace, three steps behind.

  “If you won't go back with me—”

  “Kindly do not jump to conclusions,” he said abruptly. “I said I didn't see him. But I did feel something. I just don't know what it was.”

  “I do.”

  The night felt heavy about him, the air damp. The pain in his calf was a haze of red biting insects, climbing inexorably up his leg.

  “We must go back,” Rue said, and stopped walking. Kit swung about.

  “We cannot Turn to smoke in there. We certainly cannot appear unclothed, or as dragons. There's only one way back into that place.”

  Her head tilted, her expression dubious. She was so winsome, so outrageously stubborn, that he wanted to drag her to him and kiss her there on the open street, no matter who might pass by.

  “What are you suggesting?” she asked.

  “Come with me to Far Perch. And then you'll see.”

  They could not be announced. The key to skulking, the marquess had noted in his sardonic, understated manner, was to skulk. Having the butler announce them at the ball would ruin any chance of an ambush, and he wasn't going to all this trouble to have some fellow in a turban shout out his title to a roomful of people, one of whom might or might not be the runner.

  “We'll simply enter the back way,” he said, throwing a glance down the alley that led to Marlbroke's stables. “We'll say we became lost.”

  “Lost? In that patch of garden back there? They'll never believe that.”

  Christoff turned to her, his eyes gleaming. “Of course they won't. But I'm sure a shilling or two will help the footmen look the other way to salvage a lady's good name. After all, we wouldn't be the first couple to slip out of a ballroom for a bit of privacy.” His hand closed over hers, lifting. “Keep your mask up, love. No one will know it's you.”

  She thought at least that much was true. Rue had tried many guises as a thief, but none so dramatic, so incredibly flamboyant, as this. She was festooned in emerald satin and delicate French netting, laced up in a corset that squeezed the air from her lungs and left her tottering in high, narrow heels that made each step a hazard. Tiny beads of faceted jet scalloped her skirts in layers all the way to the hem, giving the illusion of small, perfect scales. Whalebone and wire under cloth-of-gold made narrow, folded wings fixed to her back; they crested above her shoulders and ended in dagger points near her hips. She wore no wig or gloves; instead she was covered—from the piled locks on her head to the very tips of her fingers—in a pale, metallic gold powder, fine as faerie dust.

  The Dragon Queen. And Christoff, in matching satin and powder, the beads seeding his waistcoat of silver and green: the Dragon King. Dark to his light, night to his day. Small wonder the old marquess had forbidden his wife to appear in public like this. The marchioness had commissioned the costumes for some long-ago bal masqué and then packed them away unworn—even the powder—until this night. Until Christoff had remembered them.

  Her half mask was feathers, iridescent green and black and blue that tufted out at the ends. The handle was shaped ebony.

  The marquess raised his own mask, identical to hers, and gave her a final bright look.

  “I confess, as much as I enjoyed you in breeches, you hold up that gown rather well.”

  She studied him through the eyeholes. “You trulyhave stopped trying to be charming.”

  “You're the most ravishing creature in the world, sweet Rue, even when hidden behind feathers and beads. How was that?”

  “Adequate, if insincere.”

  “Then you mistake me.” He took up her free hand and pressed her fingertips to his lips, gold to gold, sending a flash of sudden, sensual warmth stealing up her arm. His voice dropped to a huskier note. “I am utterly sincere.”

  His eyes stayed level on hers, steady, serious, even as he kept her hand. She stared at him, trying not to feel her heart, trying not to feel his lips, so warm beneath her touch, softer than clouds.

  Kit lowered his gaze; he kissed her fingers and smiled. “Poor Lady Cynthia. She'll be devastated to find she's not the belle of the ball.”

  Before she could respond, he draped her arm over his and drew her with him down the alleyway. Rue was forced to focus on the cobblestones to save her ankles; if one of her heels caught, she'd have to either Turn or risk her neck in the fall.

  Ravishing. She gazed blindly down at the stones. He thought she was ravishing.

  They came to the back of the laundry house, around the corner of the hay-scented stables to the place where they had stood together not two hours past. Torchlight lavished amber over the drive and hedges, blurred the baroque cornices of the mansion into weird shifting detail. Laughter sprinkled the air, two hundred voices chattering in one rousing mass—and beneath it all lilted the cheerful refrain of a minuet. Rue strained to distinguish the viola from the blend of strings and horns and pipes but could not.

  She kept her mask up and her lashes down, feigning discretion when they ran into the first servant at the edge of the vegetable garden—a scullery maid searching for a pail—and the second, a footman who only murmured at them and bowed out of their path. As they reached the formal gardens they began to pass other couples, wine-happy guests done up in garish silks and spangles that didn't disguise them well enough in the dark.

  There was a mist spreading over the sky. Behind it a half-moon had begun to rise, lonely and distant, rainbowed with haze.

  Outside the open patio that led to the ballroom Kit paused, looking up into the night, his jaw set. The people beyond the doors were a mosaic of color and motion.

  “The musicians' dais is to the right,” Rue said. “Against the eastern wall.”

  “I know.” She heard him take a longer breath than before; he sent her a sideways look. “Stay close, little mouse.”

  “I will.”

  They entered the spill of Others. She was instantly assaulted with scents and light
and sounds, but years of self-imposed discipline helped her to ease into it. She could narrow her concentration to specific particulars: the pinch of the shoes on her feet. The wooden percussion of the floor. The sheen of candlelight off the punchbowl. The smell of tobacco. The smell of sugar. The soft-slurred words of a lady, dressed all in rose. The music.

  The viola.

  They prowled the edge of the chamber, moving slowly because they had to move slowly, masks up, not speaking. Someone pressed a glass of champagne into her hand. It chilled her fingers to numbness.

  And in this heightened state, she felt a change begin to slide through Christoff. Ineffable at first, just a strange, electric eddy that seemed to pull and gather all the air around them, a dry swirling of the heat and light and cold down to him. His body tightened. His stride grew longer, more even. Even his face altered; his features seemed to harden, the faint lines that marked him smoothing into polished stone. Beneath the golden powder he was radiant and remote, nothing mortal at all.

  With every step his very essence shifted, the hunter in him rising, consuming, so that by the time they were in sight of the musicians he nearly crackled with black, burning energy, his arm gone to steel beneath hers, everything about him taut and primed. She held her fingers as lightly over his sleeve as she could manage; almost it frightened her, this transformation, the glamorous man stripped away to reveal the dark and silent beast that lived within. Alpha.

  It frightened her, and it exhilarated her. He hadn't been like this at the menagerie. He hadn't been like this with Mim. She knew she had to search for the runner but Kit drew her gaze like a terrible flame, dark magic. She did not want to look away.

  “There,” he said under his breath. She followed his gaze to the musicians seated on the dais, sporting fiddles and fifes and timbrels.

  The man with the viola turned his head, still playing, his face hidden behind a mask of blank velvet. His eyes found theirs. Her stomach clenched.

  She had not fully considered this. She had not thought of what might actually come of this moment. Christoff was coiled destruction, he was swift ruin set to fly—

  Three men, he had said. He had killed three men. And soon it might be four.

  “Remain here,” he said to her, his lips barely moving, and without thinking she clutched at his arm.

  “Wait—”

  “Langford!” A man bumbled into them, smiling, ringed in alcohol fumes. “There y'are, old boy! Cynthia mentioned you might come!”

  It was Marlbroke, that pompous old toad, dressed in a long false beard and a robe of red embroidered silk, and a box-shaped hat upon his wig topped with an orange tassel. His eyes were bloodshot past his mask. “Excellent to see you, excellent! Cyn's nearby too. She's an angel; did you note her?”

  Rue released Kit's arm. She inched one step back.

  “Great God, what a getup! Let me guess—you're one of them Greek fellows. Apollo, that's it. Apollo, am I right?”

  “Not quite,” she heard Kit respond, and took another step back.

  The minuet concluded. Rue looked up past the bowing dancers to the dais. The viola was placed upon an empty chair. The runner was nowhere to be seen.

  “There she is! Cyn! Cynthia, my girl! Come over here, see who I've found! Oh, don't give your father that look, pet! Come over, you'll be pleased!”

  Even if Rue had not known the fair Lady Cyn was near, she would have felt her approach. As the girl walked up they bumped arms; Rue became almost light-headed with the lure of the pearls Cynthia was wearing, heavy drops in her hair, around her neck, swaying from her ears. They hummed as erte did but smokier, more mellow. How easy it would be in the confusion of the ballroom to slip a finger behind the choker, to loose the clasp. To catch that set of matched perfection in her fist and walk away.

  Rue sidled back a third step. By either accident or design Cynthia had cut between her and Kit; she had been the lady in rose, of course, a petite, pert-nosed angel, fluffed and shirred with lace. She sported wings as well, gentle falling curves of downy pink feathers.

  Christoff was accepting her hand, bowing over it. Rue turned quickly, ducking between a very tall peacock and a handmaiden in an Elizabethan headdress. She kept moving without looking back.

  Lady Cynthia had that smile again. Her eyes were sparkling past the wisp of lace that formed her mask; her teeth were small and even. Kit could hardly bear to touch her.

  “My lord,” she purred, and some other nonsense, strings of syllables he paid no attention to. His blood was pumping very loudly in his ears. The pain spreading up his leg had become alien and unimportant; the dizziness impeded him only when he turned his head too fast. His senses stretched so sharp and fine that every moment, every breath, boiled through him like tar, slow and thick and endless. But it was always like this before the hunt. It was always like this.

  His eyes were drawn to the pearls draped around the girl's white wig, a soft rich beckoning that sent a new sort of ache up his palms. Their color, their perfection: they spoke to him of Rue. The dragon in him burned to hold them.

  Rue. He looked away from the girl. Instantly, without turning around, he knew that his mate was no longer beside him, that the runner had vanished as well. His heart surged. He cast his awareness outward like a net, searching for Rue even as his eyes scanned the chamber.

  Someone was still speaking. The girl's voice burbled upward, ending on a shriller note, and then a shriller one still.

  “Lord Langford! My lord—please—”

  Kit realized that he had not released the girl's hand, that his thumb was pressing her fingers stiff into his palm, that she was trying to pull away. He opened his fingers. She drew back from him with a high, sudden arc of her wrist, her eyes much wider than before. Her smile was gone.

  He inclined his head in apology and shouldered past without comment. He couldn't speak anyway, not now, with his muscles bunched and his jaw clenched so tight he had to draw the air through his teeth. Cynthia's low, sharp gasp as he walked away hurt his ears like a steam whistle hissing through his brain.

  Where was she? The ballroom was flooded with Others, their scent and noise and painful colors. But there was a center to the storm, there was a place of gold composure, deep-green skirts, lily calm—there, far over there, by the doors—and with her a void—

  She was addressing someone. A man in a mask and a simple gray coat. She had lowered her own mask to her skirts, they were facing each other, and through the sea of people Kit could see her talking. Her hair glinted in the candlelight like chocolate-dark flame. Her lips were ruddy gold.

  The runner reached out and seized her forearm, his fingers digging into her skin. And with just that, the sight of anotherdrákon with his hand upon her, hard white fingers over the pale shimmer that was Rue, the last scrap of clear will that was Christoff scorched to ash.

  The beast in him exploded into life, into fury.No one touched her, no one touched her, no one— He heard the people exclaiming. He pushed through them easily; they fluttered aside like paper dolls, clearing out of his way. He felt his lips drawn back. He felt the black dragon clawing up through his blood, lithe and deadly now, a savage quickening that had him panting and the need to Turn so potent his body felt like rusted iron, too heavy and clumsy to keep up.

  Both Rue and the runner had turned their heads toward him, still linked. He felt Rue's gaze, the exotic wonder of her face, but Kit's focus was on the runner, the otherdrákon with his fingers smeared in gold and his eyes brilliant blue behind the mask.

  Seconds before Kit reached them, the man freed her. He stepped away and gave a quick bow in her direction—she was looking back at him, distracted—and then, goddammit, the runner Turned to smoke, right there in the midst of the ballroom. A few of the women cried out.

  Rue lifted her face to follow the smoke, an ashen haze twining about the ceiling and chandeliers, sifting toward the garden doors. Then she looked back at Kit. The mask dropped from her fingers. She hurried toward him.

 
“No,” she said, reaching for his sleeve, taking hold with a grip he couldn't shake. “No, don't! You can't!”

  The smoke was shifting, lowering. The doors were wide open to the night.

  “No,” said Rue once again, catching his other sleeve. She placed her body in front of his, her voice hushed and intense. “Christoff! You cannot—not here.”

  He exhaled. The dragon rose, peaking against his skin.

  Rue shoved hard against him with both hands, snapping his gaze back to hers.

  “Kit!”

  Her eyes glittered, a flash of bright gold, there and gone. He inhaled again, slower, colder, suspended in a crystalline instant of vacillation, moments from release.

  “By gad,” exclaimed a man just behind them, with a tipsy hiccup. “Awfully foggy in here, ain't it?”

  The smoke was filtering out the doorway, murk that dissolved up to the stars.

  Kit looked down at Rue. At her forearm, the smudge of powder that showed pink skin beneath the gold, the imprint of the other man's hand on her clear as a brand. Behind her the runner's clothing was a heap of velvet upon the ballroom floor. People were laughing around it. Someone picked it up, shaking out the waistcoat, marveling aloud at the trick.

  He lowered his arms. Rue had to let go then, and when she did he took her left hand in his right and pulled her with him the other way, not to the doors that led outside but to the ones that led into the mansion. She trailed behind with short running steps; he didn't slow to appease her.

  They plunged into the deeper halls of the house, past the main staircase to a tall closed door, carved mahogany, that swept open without a sound and revealed a room of sconcelight and books and shelves: the library, quiet as a tomb. Gilt titles gave off a dull, ghostly glow of letters.

  There was a desk empty of papers, and two chairs turned to face the hearth. A black japanned screen of painted flowers and birds shielded the chairs from the draft of the door. Kit towed her over to it. She let him, her brows crinkled, her fingers clasped in his. When he had her behind it he Turned, a flash of smoke to let his clothing subside, and then he was human before her, full nude, yanking her to him and closing his mouth over hers.