Shana Abé: The Dream Thief

Another man stood watching at the mouth of a tunnel, a tiny black figure edged in light. She howled toward him, Turning to smoke only at the last instant, raging out past him toward fresh air and sky.

She’d struck his head with her tail. He’d thought it was her tail, but it could have been a wing, or a leg-it was enough to disorient him, to leave him floating too long without breath or measure. In his daze he thought he saw the diamond drifting past him from where she’d dropped it, rounded blue light, a crystal star trapped with him in these dark waters. He reached for it and missed, his fingers sweeping across nothing. The light faded.

Zane grimaced and swam after it. He would have to breathe soon, it was hurting too much, but if he looked away from the diamond now he’d likely not find it again. It was too dim here, the waters too deep. It might take weeks to search the lake.

He did not have weeks. Judging by what happened to Lia, he had barely minutes.

He began to curse in his mind, every filthy word in every language he knew, mild oaths, dirty ones, the crudest street slang he hadn’t let himself use in years, all distractions to the fact that his body was dying, that his lungs were collapsing, and soon he’d have to give it up or give up his life, because he couldn’t find it, it was gone, and he was done, he was exhaling-

There. There it was, a glint of blue. With a last surge of strength Zane stretched for it-and got it.

His legs worked. Pressing his lips closed was the most heroic thing he’d ever done in his life, because every part of him was clawing for release, for breath, for air -

The water broke around him. He sucked in a mouthful of lake with the air and coughed it back out, still wheezing, still grateful, and fumbled his way over to the ledge he’d found for Lia. He forced his body to the rock, rolling, dragging his legs from the water, his ears ringing and the light from his lantern beginning to die.

But…there was a diamond in his hand. It was heavy and even colder than the atmosphere. When he could, he lifted his arm and squinted at it, a smooth, uncut stone, breathtaking even without facets, sending a buzzing nearly up his arm.

He had the strangely random thought that since Draumr was here, the dead princess would be too. In his exhaustion he sent up a prayer for her, just a few words, as the water streamed from his clothing along the rubbled stone, leaking around him in puddles and dripping back into the lake.

Thank you.

“Thank you,” echoed a voice above him, but in French. “You’ve done what I could not. I appreciate it. I admire your courage, my friend. Almost I regret to kill you.” The prince stepped into view, smiling, a pistol leveled in his hand. “Almost.”

“Stop,” Zane croaked, and again felt that buzzing in his fist. The prince paused, then shook his head.

“It’s no good.” He began to creep down the sharp slope of the entrance, raining pebbles upon the mound that held the lantern below. “One of the discrepancies in my blood, I think, but Draumr won’t work on me. Yet I have no doubt it will do very well for your wife and mine. I’m quite eager to meet my new English family.”

The Shadow of Mayfair had a bounty of three hundred fifty pounds upon his head, and that was only because he’d been diligently bribing the deputy mayor not to make it more. He’d been imprisoned twice and walked out both times with a fresh cadre of men at his back. He owned watchmen and magistrates and three quarters of the shares of a very respectable textile factory to cover his tracks.

He was not entirely credulous.

There were weapons hidden about him, small deadly things concealed on his body, in his clothes, none of which he could reach in time. But in all his plans, in all his calculations, Zane had been certain the conditions of the tunnels were too humid for gunpowder to ignite properly.

He’d been wrong.

He hurled the diamond at the lantern just as Imre fired. For a fleeting second the cavern flashed white with the spark of the pistol, then dissolved into pitch.

She flapped through the air, circling, aimless. She was the wind and the sun; in her turns and loops she discovered her own beauty: her body was amethyst and cobalt, the deepest heart of the sky. Her wings were pearl. Her tail was barbed with gold, and so were her claws.

She snarled at the wind. She devoured it. She twisted up into the heavens and celebrated herself, her sovereignty, and the world below shrank small and unimportant.

She soared above mountains capped with snow, and walled villages hugging sunken valleys. She ringed the clouds and studied the sun and considered rising to it, to eat it too, but there was something stopping her…there was something singing to her far, far below…

Lia turned an eye to the earth. Smaller beings trembled. They hid in their burrows and hoped she would not discover them, that she would not bother to look. And it was their good fortune that the song rising up to her was more compelling than the hunt. It called her name, her human name, and although she had left her human self behind, there was an ember in her heart that lit in response, that wanted to answer it.

Amalia. Come down.

No, she thought.

Come down.

And even though she didn’t want to-even though she was free and untamed up here, commanding the sky-she tucked her wings close to her body and began a spiraling descent, marking a white stone castle as her center, tightening her circles until the walls and towers winked at her in ripples of quartzite, until the man and the girl standing in the inner courtyard followed her with upraised faces, waiting.

From somewhere else on the castle grounds, dogs began to groan and then to wail.

She landed in a skid, her talons raking through the gravel, knocking over a fountain at the end of it with a contemptuous flick of her tail. The alabaster basin hit the ground and cracked apart.

“Change back,” commanded the man, unmoving.

She inhaled. She closed her eyes and reined in her magnificence. She Turned into woman, standing cold and alone.

Faces watched from behind the castle windows. No one stirred.

The man glanced at the girl, who walked forward and draped a mantle over Lia’s shoulders, closing it at her chest. The girl’s eyes were bright and very clear.

“Beautiful ladies,” said Prince Imre, observing them with his hands in his coat pockets. “My ladies. We’ll go inside now.”

The mournful baying of the dogs followed them all the way in.

The worst aspect of a shoulder wound, Zane considered, was not the blood soaking his shirt and sleeve to clammy coldness, or even the pain that stabbed hot pokers through his veins. It was that, even with a tourniquet, it made his arm useless, and climbing extremely damned difficult.

Still, at least Imre hadn’t hit him in the leg. Climbing up mine shafts with a leg wound would have been impossible.

So Zane climbed. It took him hours to escape the mountain. Hours to find another way out of the tunnels besides the way Imre-and, he hoped, Imre’s henchmen-took.

After being shot he had, quite sensibly, rolled back into the lake. At least it had seemed sensible at the time; Imre still had his gun and surely the means to reload it. But the nearest bright light was a tunnel away, and unless the prince could see in the dark-Zane sincerely hoped he couldn’t-reloading would be tricky.