"The Dream Thief" - читать интересную книгу автора (Abé Shana)
CHAPTER TWO
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September 1773
Five Years Later
Before his eleventh year on this miserable planet, the street urchin known simply as Zane would have scoffed at anything that even hinted of the supernatural. He was a being of bones and flesh; so was everyone else. It was what made them so vulnerable. It was what had left him flat on the cobbles in a welling pool of his own blood one cold, cold winter evening, a knife wound to his ribs and the world pulsing blue and gray and snow, his back warm, his face numb.
By all rights, he should be dead. He’d known plenty who’d died from less, and good riddance.
But then, that night, Rue had found him. And the urchin had lived after all.
He’d never had a family, not that he remembered. For a precious few years, he’d had only her.
She sat comfortably on the settee, the sunlight from the tall windows behind her picking out the silver in her chestnut hair, her hands slim and steady as she poured tea into the paper-thin china cups that they used, for some reason, here in the deep countryside. She looked relaxed and perfectly at home in the magnificence of the room, at one with the delicate furnishings and velvet draperies, the crystal chandelier silently sparkling just over their heads. She did not look at all like what he knew her to be.
“Sit down,” the marchioness said, without glancing up from her pouring. “You’re making me jittery. You pace like a cat.”
“As if you would know.”
“
But he didn’t. He went to the windows instead, gazing out at the view that rolled and spun autumn forest and hills as far as he could see. Empty forest. Empty hills.
Darkfrith had no wild animals. It was perhaps the detail that bothered him most about this lush and cloudy shire. There were no hidden burrows in the woods, no small lives struggling for survival, celebrating the dusk or the dawn with mating or tussles. There were insects, and a scattering of birds. Once he had spotted a lone gray mouse skittering nervously along the edge of the stables. But in all the years he had been visiting the Marchioness of Langford and her husband, Zane had seen naught beyond those few pitiful creatures.
Little wonder. Even the smallest of beings surely sensed what dwelled in this place.
So Darkfrith was shining and barren. It was occupied purely by a people who moved without brushing the air, who watched him from shadows with gleaming eyes, who smiled with sharp teeth and bowed in false acquiescence. He felt the creeping chill of their looks every moment, every second he stayed in this place.
If it weren’t for Rue-and what she offered-he would never come.
“Lemon?” she asked, into the silence.
“No.”
There was a flock of sheep speckling a nearby hill, an effective decoy for anyone truly curious about the affairs of the farms or fields. A pair of young boys were loping toward them, slowly but steadily; the sheep bunched, then scattered like minnows into the trees.
“Sugar?”
“No.”
“Acquire anything of interest lately?”
He smiled to the glass. “Nothing to interest you, my lady. A few baubles here and there.”
“From anyone I might know?”
“You might,” he said, and left it at that.
“I heard a rumor the other day,” the marchioness continued, serene. “It seems the Earl of Bannon is preparing to sell his collection of Trojan gold. Do you know the one I mean? Coins, diadems, I believe even a sword said to belong to Hector, as it were. The entire set should fetch a tidy sum.”
“Have you an interest in Trojan coins, my lady?”
“I have no interest in anything beyond my family and my simple, humble life here, as you know,” she answered smoothly. “I understand that the earl, however, plans to use the monies to purchase a mare. A very fine one. I believe he intends to breed her.”
Zane cocked his head.
“He beats his horses,” she said, casual. “I’ve seen it. Beats them raw. His maidservants too,” she added as an afterthought.
He turned. “Is that why you summoned me here?”
“No. It’s merely a bit of information I thought you might wish to have.” She took a sip of tea. “I would certainly never mean to imply that someone should go and relieve the son of a bitch of his gold before he has the chance to profit from it.”
She smiled at him over the rim of her cup.
“Ah, Lady Langford. Sometimes I do miss your wisdom.”
“I am gratified to hear it.”
He accepted the drink she offered, taking his seat in a chair. Rue Langford leaned back against her silk-striped cushions, both old and young, ever lovely in her dark and glittering way.
“And how
“Excellent. Rhys and Kim are off examining wheat fields and rye. Audrey’s with her sister-you missed the wedding, that was very bad of you. Joan was looking forward to having you there.”
“Was she?”
“I believe she rather hoped you’d ride up on your stallion and sweep her from the altar.”
“I haven’t got a stallion,” he pointed out.
“More’s the pity,” Rue sighed. “It definitely would have livened up the affair.”
They shared another smile, this one far more wry. Even if he had been so inclined-which he definitely was not-the mere thought of a romantic entanglement between a daughter of the leader of the
The tea in his hand was hot, aromatic. He gazed down into the steam. “And Amalia?”
“Amalia,” echoed Rue, in a slightly less easy voice. “Yes. She’s in Scotland.”
He raised his eyes, astonished.
“I know,” said the marchioness. “It took a great deal of effort to convince the council to allow her to go. But she wanted it very badly. She’s at the Wallence School for Young Ladies, in Edinburgh. It’s most respectable. We go up and visit thrice a season.”
He set the tea aside. “After what the council did to
“Yes,” she interrupted, hard. “After that, you may be certain I took good care that my daughter would be well protected from them.” Her nails clicked against the china cup, restless. “But she is Giftless, so she matters to them less. I suppose the odds were at least one of my children would be. My own Gifts came late, but Lia hasn’t displayed even the most rudimentary signs of the
Her skirts rustled. She shifted on the settee, and he realized she was not quite so comfortable as she first appeared.
“We thought it best if she got to have a taste of the world before being fixed in her place back here. This is her final quarter, in any case.”
“I’m sure it pleases her very well,” he said, after a moment.
“Yes,” agreed Rue, composed again. “French and Latin and court manners. I’m sure it does.”
He did not hear the double doors behind him open-the footmen here were as silent as the rest of them-but the air grew cooler, and the chandelier sent out a fresh rainbow of sparks.
The marquess entered, golden-haired, unsmiling, walking to his wife and bowing over her hand; he slanted Zane a shorter look.
“Langford,” Zane greeted him, without bothering to rise.
Christoff Langford inclined his head. If Zane had a surname, no doubt the other man would be pleased to snarl it, but as it was, they only ever exchanged nods.
“Have you told him?” he asked his wife.
“Not yet. I was waiting for you.”
The marquess dropped down beside Rue, draping an arm around her shoulders, examining Zane with a banked, green-eyed hostility.
“Pilfered anything recently?” his lordship inquired, freezingly polite.
“Yes. Abducted anyone?”
“We’d like you to take a journey,” said Rue, as if neither of them had spoken. “A rather long one.”
“To where?”
“To the east.”
“East of what?” he asked.
Rue rose from the settee, crossing behind it to the expanse of windows. She wore a gown of blossom pink seeded with pearls, a French train that hissed, very faintly, against the maple floor. With the bright, wide panes of glass stretched beyond her, she seemed very small and slight.
“Somewhere out there,” she said, lifting a hand to the glass, “east of England, east of France. Somewhere as far east as you can imagine is a stone. A diamond, we think. A very powerful one.” Rue turned her face to his; the backlight devoured her expression. “We need you to go and get it.”
“One diamond,” Zane clarified.
“Yes.”
“How big is it?”
“We don’t know.”
“Where is it?”
“We don’t know.”
“To whom does it belong?”
Rue smiled, apologetic. “We don’t know.”
“Well,” said Zane, “won’t this be jolly fun.”
She stepped forward from the shadows, pink and white again. “About two years ago the first of us began to hear it. Just a few of us. It sounded like something from a daydream back then, soft and lovely. Nearly not there. When you tried to listen too closely, it would vanish entirely.”
“Back then?” He lifted a brow.
“Yes. It has…changed. Grown stronger. More compelling. More of us hear it now too, nearly every member of the tribe.” She lifted her hand once more, made a small, almost helpless gesture. “It’s difficult to explain. You know we connect to stones. You know how we are. This one-calls to us. It’s insistent and very clear. We need it.”
“Why not go fetch it yourself? Send one of your vaunted hunters out to the wilds? Surely it would be quicker.”
The marquess and marchioness exchanged a fleet, laden glance.
“It is impossible,” said Rue finally. “The council will not permit it.”
She was lying. She did it well, unflinching and cool and without the barest hint of regret, but he knew her well enough to register the tiny, tiny rise in her voice. And at the same time: the subtle shift in Langford’s bearing; even seated, he became more taut, more hostile, if that was possible.
Interesting.
Zane fully believed that the council of old men that helped govern their so-called tribe would forbid a journey beyond the Channel; the deep distrust the
But she wasn’t going. And she wanted to. It was clear as daylight across her face.
Zane looked past her, out the windows again, blue sky, bright clouds, the woods dying off in a glory of crimson and pumpkin and gold.
“You want me to travel to a place unknown, to find a diamond unknown, and secure it from a person, or persons, unknown, all at the edge of winter.” His gaze drifted back to Rue. “And if this person does not wish to sell me his unquiet stone?”
She regarded him in silence, her lips gently curved.
“I see.” He returned her smile. “Don’t misunderstand. We’ve had some pleasant dealings in the past, highly profitable, by and large aboveboard. But I am surprised. In all these years, you’ve never asked me to steal anything for you.”
The marquess spoke at last. “You will be paid sixty thousand pounds sterling.”
Zane felt the air leave his chest. He felt his hands go cold. Out of instinct, out of survival, he held absolutely still until his senses lined up again.
Sixty thousand-
It was a fortune-more than that. It was damned near bloody unimaginable, and he had a very colorful imagination indeed. If it had been anyone else in the world saying such a thing to him,
“Done,” the thief said, and pushed to his feet to shake Rue’s hand.
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“Did he suspect anything?” Kit Langford asked his wife, watching from their bedroom window as the carriage containing their human guest rolled away down Chasen’s drive.
Rue was standing behind him; he heard the shrug in her voice. “He’s Zane. He always suspects something.”
“But he’ll go.”
“Yes.” She walked up and brushed her fingers to his, a soft, fleet intimacy that warmed him, just as her touch always did. He turned to her, taking up both her hands.
She was beautiful. Cool and dark, the night to the stars, she was always so beautiful. A smile hovered at the corners of her mouth.
“I dislike this scheme. Intensely,” he added when her smile only deepened.
“I failed to hear you devise a better one.”
“Actually, I did.”
“We cannot both go,” argued his wife, reasonable. “We cannot both vanish without word for months on end, no matter how urgent the cause. The entire tribe would be in an uproar. The council would have our heads.”
“That is why-”
“And if it were to be only one of us, you know it should be me. I’m the one with the most experience at stealing away.”
“If you think for a moment I would let you travel alone-”
“No,” said Rue. “I didn’t think that.”
It was a delicate subject, one he didn’t feel like exploring at the moment. But her eyes had grown stormy; to distract her, he bent down and pressed his lips to her temple.
“Imagine how lonely I’d be without you,” he murmured. “Tottering around, a doddering old man weeping into his shirtsleeves…”
It earned him a laugh, low and musical. “You’re far too vain for that. You’d use a handkerchief.”
He folded her into his arms. They were silent a long while, her head against his chest, rocking slowly together as the clouds outside lapped vanilla cream against the horizon. Finally Rue sighed.
“It can’t be either of us. It can’t be
“Unless someone sees fit to tell him. What then, little mouse?”
She stilled a moment, then tipped back her head to see him.
“He’s still our best hope.”
“Aye,” agreed Kit reluctantly. “I know it.”
Their gazes locked. The heat began to build, that deep, burning craving for her, for her body and her voice and her heart.
Rue’s lashes lowered, very demure. He felt her fingers tighten over his arms.
“Will you come to bed, my lord Langford?”
It was barely past teatime. Neither of them cared.
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Paris was wet, a cold, gray city with even grayer people, the scent of decaying vegetables and clay and cattle everywhere. The sky remained leaden all the way from Avon to Strasbourg, but it didn’t truly start to snow until he reached Stuttgart, when the raw winds tore through the clouds to embed a layer of ice crystals upon his rented coach, and the road, and his coat and the gloves on his hands: every inch of the world glistening with a sly, glassy enchantment beneath the weakened sun.
The horses struggled with the frozen muck. Zane had been riding atop the diligence until then, squeezed into the driver’s perch alongside the German coachman until the cold seared his eyeballs and bit his skin to frost. He had never cared for the cramped interiors of carriages, no matter how stylishly done up. He needed the open sky, and open views.
But the horses suffered. So they traveled a great deal more slowly than he would have liked otherwise, stopping at inns, at taverns, even farmhouses, whenever the weather grew too dismal. He became used to the round-eyed looks of the country ostlers, their noses red with the wind, as the sleek new coach rolled into whichever godforsaken village arched next into view along the roads. He became used to the smell of hay mixed with sludge, and the shiny wet gloss of melted snow tracing lines along the black spokes of the wheels.
The entire rig had cost a great deal to rent. Few companies wished to hire out as far as he was going, and fewer still drivers. But hard gold always managed it; the Paris company had found a fellow with cousins in Munich. He would get that far before starting over again.
Strapped to the back of the carriage was a single trunk holding his garments and shoes and a very decent bottle of sherry. Inside the carriage were the more valuable things: his picks, his spare pistol, and bullets and powder horn. Three daggers, a dirk, and a single sheath of rice paper, tucked thin and small into the lining of his valise.
In Rue’s neat, slanted writing, the paper read:
It was precious little to go on. It was precious little to tie up his life and his establishment for an entire season, no matter how competent his associates or how satisfying his reputation. There had been nights he lay awake in the lice-ridden pallets that passed for beds in most hotels when he’d wondered when, precisely, he had lost his reason. There could be no other answer to this journey. Rue’s imploring eyes and careful lies be damned: he had no true idea of where he was going. He had nearly nothing to go on, guesses and dream-work from a clan of creatures who could answer only,
Too often he’d just settle back against the squabs and watch his boots drip. He’d been traveling over a month now, well versed in his guise as an English gentleman on the Grand Tour. He’d patronized so many tea parlors and coffeehouses and card rooms that the mere thought of downing another cup of tepid liquid amid the chatter of foreign tongues made his skin crawl.
He spoke French well, German tolerably. After that, he was no better off than the role he played, a bored English sophisticate with a taste for legends and gemstones.
The land passed by his window in depressing sameness. France, Germany, Austria: all gray and dun and somber skies.
Sixty thousand pounds.
He’d buy a castle in Tuscany. There’d be no bloody ice there.
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Despite fresh horses and his new coachman’s best efforts, they could not cross the Danube to reach the city of Pest before the sun sank into a thick red and purple horizon, ending the final day of October. Zane settled for Óbuda instead, across the river, smaller, and, from what he could tell, slightly more stylish. The Hungarians here sported wigs and buckled heels he had last seen in the heart of Paris. The women were hooded and painted and walked the cobblestone streets in dainty, mincing steps, never far from their escorts. He’d garnered more than a few glances just checking in to the hotel-scruffy, unshaven, his trunk and greatcoat spattered with mud. The King’s View was a veritable palace of plasterwork and imposing marble angels, but after three straight days without a good night’s sleep, Zane reckoned the Marquess of Langford could afford it.
From his balcony he watched the skyline begin to illuminate, yellow flames that gradually connected into pictures through the dusk, outlining buildings and steeples and streets, the indigo emptiness of parks checkerboarding the glow. Pest glimmered and the river glimmered with it, its banks edged silvery white with the last dusting of snow.
The Danube was a wide, gray line between the two cities, dotted with fishing boats and ferries and great flocks of crows; their high-pitched cackles bounced back at him across the waves.
The balcony curtains swelled and folded, gently tapping his legs. The breeze lifted his hair. He’d already undone his waistcoat and settled in with his sherry to watch the birds when the floorboards outside his room squeaked, and stopped, because someone had paused at his door.
Zane had his pistol primed when the knock came.
He placed his foot against the door, held the pistol down at his side, out of view, and turned the knob. A lanky man with watery blue eyes looked back at him.
“My deepest regrets for disturbing you, sir,” said the hotel clerk in French. “You were left a missive at the front desk just now.”
The man held out his hand. A cream-colored envelope rested on his palm, Zane’s name-his
For a moment he only stared at it. The clerk waited, his narrow face betraying nothing. Zane closed the door, stuck the pistol into the waistband of his breeches at the small of his back, then opened the door again and took the envelope from the man’s hand.
He found a coin in his pocket-God knew which country it was from-and flicked it to the clerk, who smiled and bowed and retreated down the sconce-lit corridor.
When the door was bolted again, he broke the wax seal.
Zane looked up from the invitation, frowning.
Someone knew of him. Someone knew he was here; he’d never heard of a Comte du Abony; he could not imagine how the fellow had heard of him. Unless the
But they would not know his room number. And Rue would never make the mistake of revealing his name.
He glanced once more at the river outside, then quickly drew the curtains. He stood motionless against the silk-papered wall, fading into shadow with the falling night while his thoughts bled into theories and conspiracies and extremely improbable coincidences.
Through the sheer organza he saw a crow land atop the stone rail of the balcony; it peered at him sideways with fiercely black eyes, then shoved into the air again.
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The Comte du Abony lived in an actual palace. Zane had walked to it, because it turned out not to be far from the fashionable King’s View, and the clerk had made it politely clear that even an Englishman could find it if he kept to the main boulevards. To guide him, he had the address and the surprising brilliance of the street lanterns, which dangled from fanciful iron posts twice as tall as a man.
He supposed only a very great fool would openly respond to the cordially worded card in his pocket. And anyone who knew his name would also know that Zane was no fool.
Yet he was going. He was walking. He had his dirk and his rapier and his wits; he had his best court clothing; whoever the hell this comte was, Zane meant at least to get a good look at him. And then, should the man wander off alone-too much wine, a willing woman-perhaps they might exchange a few words…
In any case, he wouldn’t risk spending the night in the hotel, not now, and for that alone Zane felt a particular urge to inflict a bit of pain upon someone.
His walking stick tapped the pavement very lightly. His gold-buttoned tricorne was tipped aslant over his wig, rakish, but it was only so that he could keep his sights clear. He nodded amicably to the passersby who nodded to him, studying their faces, following his senses and the clerk’s directions, and the growing line of coaches crowding the streets.
Sedan chairmen hauling high, teetering boxes passed him at a trot. Horses gleamed fat and glossy beneath the oil lanterns, snorting plumes of frost. The crests on the coaches-on the doors, on the hubs of the wheels-were painted in gaudy reds and greens and yellows, vivid blues. By the time he could hear the orchestra playing, Zane’s saunter was getting him to the comte’s dinner ball more quickly than any of the fine nobles trapped in their carriages.
He had meant to approach the celebration the way he did all unknowns, in a circle, from behind, where he could watch and judge from a prudent distance before stepping into commitment. But half the city seemed to be headed there, and from three blocks away he could see there would be no furtive arrival into this place; it was gated and fenced in tall, serious spikes, and there were liveried guards at every corner.
Very well.
At the gatehouse he handed his square of vellum to a footman, who accepted it stoically, bowing him up the raked drive. The massive bronze-studded doors of the palace entrance were already open. As he climbed their steps, a wave of heated air pushed past: paprika and perspiration and the musky confusion of too many perfumes.
Zane entered the atrium-more footmen, blazing candles, a mosaic of high, stained-glass windows glowing azure and saffron above. The music grew brighter, the heat more intense.
He’d been in many of London’s finest homes; he’d seen ballrooms by both candlelight and the useful darkness of the new moon. One dead summer’s night as a boy, he’d even gotten as far as the drawing room in the town residence of the Princess of Wales-only on a dare, and only because deep down he hadn’t really believed that he could.
The princess had lived in a splendor of pink alabaster and baroque furniture. She drank tea from tiny silver-trimmed cups; her linens were powder blue embroidered with real gold; her hallboy snored. Zane had been thirteen, barefoot, a dark intruder who had not touched a thing. He’d never thought to see a more make-believe place than that, and it had only been the royal antechamber.
But this comte, it seemed, had outsplendored the princess. Here were columns of warm ocher marble inlaid with turquoise and panels of citrine. Oil paintings of bearded men and doe-eyed women draped in furs and velvet and crowns of jewels reached as high as the second floor. Enormous vases of fresh flowers-orchids, in October-guided the guests toward another set of doors; Zane slipped behind two lords and a trio of ladies, close as a shadow as they crossed the threshold into the ballroom. When the butler moved to announce them, he glided off, swallowed in an ocean of satins and lace.
For all the grandeur of the chandeliers, it was darker in here than it should have been. Slices of moonlight washed visibly through the far windows, gleaming pale along the shoulders and wigs of the revelers crowded there. The orchestra labored away in a box set high above the crush. They had their own branches of candles to play by, an uneasy glow that cast shades of fiddles and horns and flutes against the dark red ceiling.
In the center of the ballroom, a wide X of couples were performing the quadrille, slow and stately movements that seemed at odds with the hectic prattle of the room. Someone laughed very loudly in his ear; Zane angled away.
He worked his way to a wall so there could be no one behind him. He set himself to searching faces again, because he knew what the
Bobbing into view was a short, plump woman in a wig teased high with feathers and swaying droplets of diamonds. She started, staring straight at him, hard and focused-his fingers grazed the handle of his dirk-and then, abruptly, her face cleared. She broke into a delighted smile.
“My dear! There you are! There you are indeed!”
She spoke not French but English, heavily accented but perfectly intelligible. Zane remained taut where he was as she swept toward him, champagne in one hand and the other reaching for him.
“Come along, come along! This is the way!”
He made an instant decision: she didn’t appear to have a weapon; her breath reeked of alcohol; her delight seemed genuine. He allowed her fingers to close over his and she led him across the floor, over to a corner particularly dense with people…no, he saw, coming closer, not merely people. Men. Dandies and lords, beaux in lawn and ruffles and long-skirted coats, surrounding a solitary woman.
This one was younger, white-skinned, garbed in ruby silk cut very low across her chest. She was laughing at something one of the beaux whispered in her ear, her chin down. Her gloved hands clasped her fan across her lap.
“
The lady in ruby glanced around, pleasure still teasing her lips and lighting her face, her eyes sparkling dark, her hair powdered into heavy curls. Her skin was pearled, her cheeks brushed with pink; she wore no patches for beauty, no jewelry, and very little paint-and he grasped at once how she had managed to draw so many moths to her corner. He had never seen a woman so exotically luminous. His mouth actually went dry.
But…surely he knew her. Aye, he knew that he did-
“It
The lady in the ruby gown lifted her chin and fixed her gaze directly to his.
“Yes,” she said in a velvet tone. “You’re quite right, Marie. It is he.”
And with a jolt of profoundly unpleasant shock, Zane realized he was gaping at Lia Langford.
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