Shana Abé - The Dream Thief

One is left only to ponder over the agreeable comforts of tobacco and a tankard of the fine local brew where such infamous creatures might have deigned to touch back to earth…

Darkfrith, Northern England

1768

In the dream, she was always blind.

That’s what would come first, the utter darkness, settling over her like a soft, soft blanket. But it wasn’t a hopeless or desperate kind of blindness. In fact, it always seemed absolutely normal. Because the dream was never about what she could see, but all about what she could hear.

“Lia.”

“Yes,” she would answer.

It was a man speaking to her in the dream. A man’s voice, one she knew as well as she knew the flow of water over the rocks of her favorite streambed, dark and familiar and smooth.

“Lia,” he would say, an imperative.

“I’m here.”

“Come to me.”

And she would, because in the dream there was nothing she wanted more than to obey that voice. It was her only ambition.

“Tell me about today,” the man invited, still so smooth.

“The peaches are ripening. The wheat is hip-high. The Dartmoor ruby has a buyer in Brussels. He wants the emeralds as well.”

“Good.”

And, oh, how it pleased her, that one single word. How it shimmered through her like warm, sunlit honey, filling her with sweetness.

“Where is the marquess?” the man asked.

“Kimber is in the drawing room, awaiting you.”

That part was wrong. Even in the dream Lia knew it was wrong, because Kimber wasn’t the Marquess of Langford yet. Their father was. Kimber was just a boy. But the man never noticed.

“And tonight, my heart?” the man asked, his voice stroking.

“Tonight is the Havington dinner party. The viscountess will wear sapphires and silk.”

She did not know anyone named Havington. She did not know how she knew about the sapphires, or the silk. But she knew that it was all true.

“Which sapphires?”

“A necklace of one hundred thirty-two stones, set in gold, the center stone round, twenty-nine carats, with a spray of opals all around. A bracelet of thirty-five stones: twenty sapphires, fifteen opals. An anklet of eleven sapphires, twenty-one opals-”

“Very good. That’s enough.”

In the dream, she expanded with that sweetness once more.

“What time will the viscountess be removing her jewelry, Lia?”

“Twelve thirty-seven. Eleven minutes after the last guest leaves. The necklace is heavy,” she added. “And you’re going to have to kill the second footman. He sees you on the way out.”

The man said nothing. His presence broke the darkness around her like a prism of pure, humming joy. Like a song. Like a reverie.

“Lia.”

“Yes?”

“Twelve-thirty isn’t late. Wait for me in bed.”

“Yes, Zane,” she would always answer. And then she’d wake.

She wasn’t ready.

Kim could see that she wasn’t ready, even though they had waited the requisite fifteen days and sixteen nights for that one perfect June dusk without sun or moon or even stars. The sky above them was smoke and purple-blue, framed by the black cathedral of oaks and willows that made a rough enclosure around their circle of five.

Her face was still visible, pale, elfin-sharp, very clear to him even through the fading light. Lia didn’t share the famous beauty of their sisters, Audrey’s regal walk or Joan’s silver-bell laugh. Fourteen years old, both earnest and shy, the essence of Lady Amalia Langford was all contradictions: elbows and a bumpy grace, wheat-gold hair and almond dark eyes, and a face that appeared close to ordinary until she smiled. Even then, she wasn’t beautiful. She was, he considered, trying to be fair…arresting.

In fact, despite her powerful bloodlines, Lia didn’t look like anyone else in the tribe. She was all corners and angles, always too tall, too thin, even as a little girl.

He’d been back from Eton only a few days. Kim would have thought that by now his youngest sister would have grown into her heritage, but to him she still seemed like a changeling stuffed into someone else’s shawl and lacy pink gown.

She felt his stare. From her seat on the forest floor her head turned. She met his look-her braids fraying loose from their pins, her cheek smooth with the last glow of twilight, no cap-then glanced quickly away. The corners of her lips pulled back into a faint, unhappy line.

That was how Kim knew she wasn’t going to finish the ritual. She returned to watching the pair of wrens in the scrolled metal cage near her feet. They fluttered from bar to bar, breathing in small, impassioned notes. It was the only noise that broke the forest silence. There were no crickets sawing. There were no mice or badgers or moles rummaging through the fallen leaves.

This was Darkfrith, after all.

One of the wrens slammed too hard against the wires. Kim caught the flicker of emotion that crossed Lia’s face, so fleet he doubted any of the others noticed.

But he was the eldest. He’d had the most experience reading hearts. That flicker had been pain, and sympathy. She’d always longed for a pet.

Hell. She’d be useless tonight after all.

Something dark scored the sky above their heads, something serpentine. None of them bothered to look up. The highest fingers of the oaks shivered in its wake.

“Daughter of the tribe,” Kim intoned, going on with it anyway. By God, the carriage ride alone back home had taken over a week; he wasn’t going to let her off easily. “What dare you offer us?”

But his sister was distracted again. This time her head cocked, her chin lifted, as if she could hear something the others could not.

“Lia,” muttered Rhys, the third oldest, from across the circle. “Pay attention. This is your part.”

“I, daughter of the tribe,” said Lia, her chin lowering obediently, “bring unto you…bring unto…”

The wrens flipped back and forth and back in their prison.

“…this dire offering,” hissed Joan, prompting.

“This dire offering.”

“What is the offering?” Kim asked in his gravest voice, because it was ritual, and because he’d been practicing that voice for some while.

Lia lifted her hand to the cage. The birds pressed back against the far side.

“Heart and feathers,” she said, but turned her head again-and then broke the circle by climbing to her feet.

“ Li -a,” said Audrey, exasperated.

“Doesn’t anyone hear that?”

“No,” answered Rhys. “And neither do you. Sit down, so we can finish this. It took me a bloody fortnight to catch those wrens.”

“Wait,” she said. “Listen. It’s a carriage.”

“It’s not-” Kim began, but then he stopped, because, actually, he heard it too. Not just a carriage, a post chaise, rattling down the graveled drive from the distant manor house. He sent his sister a new, keener glance. “You heard that from here? It’s at least a mile away.”

Audrey had come to her feet as well, brushing out her skirts. “Who’s expected?”

“No one.” Rhys shrugged. “Just Zane, and he’s leaving.”

All three sisters swiveled to face him, and in that instant they looked remarkably alike.

“What?” he said, scowling.

“Zane?” echoed Joan. “Zane’s here?”

“Not any longer. Apparently.”