The Dream Thief (3 page)

Without
a word, Lia stuck her hand into the cage and retrieved the other wren.

Another rush of invisible wind
sliced over them, clattering the leaves. She flung the second bird up after it,
where it flapped and fluttered and skimmed off in a drunken line, vanishing
into the night.

Lia shot a look at Kimber, chin
tilted. “I suppose I’ll only ever be half as good as you, after all,” his
little sister said, and with her skirts in her hands she pelted down the path
that led back to Chasen Manor.

Changeling,
Kim thought, watching her go.
Definitely.

Once, years ago, Lia had asked
her mother if she heard the song.

“The supper chime?” Rue Langford
had asked, tucking her daughter into bed.

“No, Mama. The other song. The
quiet one.”

“The quiet one. The music box
from your father?”

“No. The
other
song.”

And
Mama had gazed down at her with her lovely brown eyes, her head tilted, a smile
on her lips. She and Papa were hosting a
fête
that evening for the
members of the council and their wives. Her skirts were ivory and cream; she
smelled of flowers and soap and the silvery dust of hair powder. She wore
pearls that thrummed with a low, gentle melody, simple, like a hymn. Lia
reached out and ran her fingers over the bracelet.

“I’m
afraid I don’t know what song you mean, beloved.”

“That
one…” Audrey was already out of the nursery, but Joan was in the bed against
the other wall, sulking because she wasn’t yet old enough to attend the
fête.

“She
says she hears a song all the time,” said Joan in a very bored, grown-up voice.

Mama’s
look sharpened. “What sort of song?”

“A
quiet one. You know…like the wind in a meadow. Like the ocean.”

Rue’s
expression relaxed. “Oh. Yes, I hear that sometimes too.”

“You
do?”

“I do.
Nature plays a wonderful symphony for us.”

“No,
not
nature.
It’s a
song.
”

Rue placed the back of her
fingers upon her daughter’s forehead. Her skin felt very cool. “Can you hum
it?”

“No.”

“Does
it bother you? Does it hurt your head?”

“No…”

“It’s not even real,” said Joan
loudly in her bored voice. “If it was real, we’d all hear it. We can hear
everything.
”

“It is real to your sister,”
answered Mama, firm, and looked back at Lia. “You must tell me if it ever starts
to fret you. Come to me, and I’ll fix it.”

Lia sat up in her bed, wide-eyed,
interested. Rue was powerful, the most powerful female of the tribe, but Lia
had no idea her mother’s Gifts were that strong.

“How, Mama?”

“Why, I’ll love it away, just
like this,” said Rue, laughing as she caught Lia by the shoulders and pressed
rose-petal kisses all over her cheeks.

That was how Amalia knew that her
mother didn’t believe her either.

When the dreams began to surface
a few years after that, Lia didn’t bother to tell anyone. The song, for all its
persistence, held a certain sadness and distance that made it seem almost
innocent. But there was nothing of innocence in the blind dreams. In them she
was another person…older. Enigmatic. She woke from them flushed and panting,
guilty and excited and miserable at once. She wouldn’t share those feelings
with anyone, not even her mother.

At first they were fragments,
just voices and sentences that seemed strung together without reason. She could
hear herself speaking in them, but what she said made no sense. She could hear
the man’s voice, but it was as though he was far away from her, talking through
a rainstorm. She caught only snatches of words. Yet the dreams had grown
clearer. And clearer. And with them, a rising sense of danger, a warning that
pushed down on her chest and prickled the hair on her arms.

Nothing truly terrible ever
happened in the blind dreams. At the same time, she knew that somehow they
meant everything terrible. She spoke of stealing and killing and the loss of
her parents as if reciting a list for the village market. It was not pretend.
But in that humming, welcome dark, Lia felt nothing wrong at all.

A few months past, in the gray
morning hours of her fourteenth birthday, the dream had revealed for the first
time who the man was.

Zane. Zane the Other, Zane the
criminal. Zane, former apprentice of the Smoke Thief herself, now the tribe’s
hired hands and eyes and ears in the real world, the world beyond Darkfrith.

And tonight, even though she had
run as fast as she could in her hoops and heels, she had missed his carriage.
By the time she’d made it past the forest break and onto the front lawn, she
couldn’t even see the smudgy glow of its rear lanterns. There was only the
faint squeak of metal and wood and the
clip-clop
of hooves fading off
into the hills.

That—and the song. Thin and eerie
and sweet, it beckoned from the farthest thread of the eastern horizon. It
always beckoned.

Deliberately, she turned her back
to it. It haunted her days and nights; it haunted her soul; and the fact that
no one heard it but her was something Amalia never liked to consider.

She found herself gazing at the
warm, handsome windows of Chasen Manor, set back against the forest and lawn
like a perfect painting of country peace. At the figures moving inside, supper
being laid, beds turned down, evening fires stoked, everything as ordinary as
could be.

Something new flashed in the sky
above her head, twisting, bright as a scythe with the rising moon; it dropped
swiftly into the woods.

With her arms hugged to her
chest, Lia watched it fall.

She’d be called in soon. She
needed a plan.

The London air hung heavy with
soot and a wet, cool fog, clinging to his face like an unpleasant skin,
dampening his breath. But he was used to it; in fact, he usually welcomed it,
because foggy nights meant fewer shadows. In his business, light and shadow
were as important as picklocks and poison and knives.

The only thing Zane truly
disliked about the fog was what it did to gunpowder. He’d never found a brand
that didn’t lump into muck in humid weather.

From the hours outdoors, his hair
had worked loose from its queue, unfashionably long, distinctive. It would be
dark against his skin and the dull white of his cravat. He should have worn a
wig. A wig, a cheaper hat, a plainer greatcoat: it would have been more
anonymous. But what was done was done; he wasn’t a man to linger long in
regret. The people he’d cornered these past few days were paid too damned well
to remember his face, anyway.

At
least tonight was over. Tomorrow he’d start again, but right now he was hungry,
he was tired, and he was very much looking forward to a meal and his bed—and
what awaited him in that bed. The candle lantern just past his house burned
sulfur-yellow, a very dim sun choked with mist. None of the small, neatly spaced
houses he passed were even visible through the gloom. He found his way because
he’d always known it, because he’d lived here since he was a child and had
mapped the streets and pavements and gutters in his mind so well he knew every
alley, every door, every possible route of escape.

He made himself part of the
night. He made his footsteps silent, his breathing imperceptible. He listened
to the dark so intently it sounded like his own heartbeat, familiar and calm.

This was his realm, for better or
worse. This was the place he claimed and defended, a tiny, ragged patch of
safety in the midst of chaos.

And so in the back of his mind,
past his awareness of the fog and the candle lantern and the muffled thumps and
groans of the city, Zane was counting off his steps.

Twenty-two, twenty-three…
there would be an oil lamp
flickering in the front window of Madame Dumont’s two-story, for the wastrel
son who whored away half the night.

Thirty-seven, thirty-eight…
step over the exposed root of
the elm that had finally cracked the pavement into halves.

Forty-five.
The black cat watching from the
roof of Lucy Brammel’s.

Forty-seven.
The loosened trellis the cat
used to climb to the roof; Zane had pulled it free of the chimney last January
to see if it would hold his weight—it wouldn’t—and Lucy still hadn’t noticed.

Fifty-one.

He paused, another reflex.
Fifty-one marked his first step onto his property. Too many men relaxed when
they reached their own doors. It was one of the easiest places to make a kill.

But Zane was not like other men.
He wasn’t like anyone else on this clean, comfortable street, and it was one of
the things he appreciated most about Bloomsbury. Despite being a neighborhood
of actors and artisans, the truth was that everyone here was rigorously,
predictably, church-squeaky
good.

Another advantage to a man who
lived in disguise: it made his sort stand out all the more.

He slipped around to the back of
his house, evading all the traps he’d set, finding the short rise of stairs
through the clouded darkness and then the keyhole to the kitchen door.

Joseph was waiting inside. He was
seated at the side table, eating a bowl of something that smelled like very bad
eel.

“Late,” he grunted, by way of a
greeting.

Zane removed his cocked hat,
running a hand through his hair. “Whatever it is you are consuming, I do not
want it served at my table tonight. Or any other night.”

The man’s brows arched; past his
scars and badly mottled skin, he looked pained. “It’s me mum’s recipe.”

“Then
she is welcome to my portion.” He bolted the kitchen door closed once more, had
worked the top buttons of his coat free and was heading for the hall, for bed,
when he was halted by his front man’s voice.

“Got a
visitor.”

“I know.”

“Not Mim.”

Zane slanted a look back at him.
Joseph shrugged. “A girl. Put her in the parlor.”

“A girl,” he repeated slowly.
“Are you certain?”

“Aye,” answered Joseph, with
exaggerated care. “I’m certain.”

Zane turned again and silently
left the kitchen.

His house was dark. He’d grown up
with it this way and kept it as a useful habit. A house ill-lit on the inside
revealed much less of its inhabitants; he nearly always preferred to see and be
unseen. But Joe had apparently felt the girl in question required a great deal
of illumination. When Zane stopped at the arched doorway to the parlor, he saw
that every lamp was burning, plus the pair of candelabras from the dining room.
The contrast was almost like daylight: the reds and blue-greens of the Peshawar
rug searing bright, the carved corners of the paintings rubbed with gilt, the
gleam of the satinwood chairs eye-wateringly sharp.

The child slumped aside in one of
them, head back, eyes closed, lips apart. There was a half-filled cup of
chocolate tilting precariously on her lap, her fingers still curled around the
handle. Her frock was girlish blue sprigged with daisies, her pumps were dirty,
her hair was mussed. Limp ringlets of darkened gold fell softly against her
cheeks. She looked pale and gaunt and remarkably plain, despite the beauty of
that hair. Everything smelled of hot wax and honey.