"Shit." She dropped the needle and held up a finger, scowling at the fresh bead of blood welling at the tip. "Verdammt! Merde." She cupped her hand to her lips and sucked at the blood; after a second, her gaze angled briefly to mine. "I beg your pardon. I did not mean to swear."
"Yes, you did." I placed my book upon my lap. "Why do you sew?"
"Because it is better than rum or opium."
I definitely had no response to that. After a moment she stood, tossing the hoop and cloth to the settee behind her. She crossed to the window and stared out at the street below, still sucking on her finger.
Carrer del Bisbewas popular among the aristacrates and traffic was fairly steady at this hour, all those fine nobles traveling here and there, eager for their evening festivities. Carriages careened past our little palace with horses ever squealing in dismay. Other animals didn't like the scent of us, even from behind stone walls.
"You're sad without him," I said.
She inclined her head very slightly, still staring out.
"You deserve better," I blurted. "You deservea husband who will stay with you. Who won't stray."
Her voice came composed from over her shoulder. "I think I have exactly the husband I deserve. He's no stray." She examined her wounded finger, slowly closing her hand into a fist. "He's giving up a great deal for me, more than you could guess. The least I can do is be patient."
I was so sick of secrets. I was so tired of all the deceptions. My temper broke.
"I wouldn't have to guess, if you would only tell me. I'm not a child, you know. Not any longer."
"No," she agreed, still composed. "You're not." Amalia turned around at last. "Come up to the roof with me."
"The roof? Why?"
Her eyes were very bright. "Because I want you to. That's all."
We occupied the upper stories of the palace. Like most of the other structures around us, the roof of it was composed of baked terra-cotta tiles, layered one atop another in an elaborate, dizzying pattern. They were very old and some of them were missing, and standing on them was a slippery proposition at best. But Lia climbed out of the window of our garret without hesitation, as if she'd done it a hundred times before.
Of course, she probably had.
I followed more gingerly. The slope beyond the sash was very pitched.
A set of bells in a nearby cathedral began to peal, followed at once by a host of others across the tip-top of the city. It was eleven o'clock, and the sky was a hazy deep dark, and the splinter moon was veiled behind a wall of sea mist rolling in from the water. I smelled saltalways saltand fish and burning oil from the streetlamps. Wet wood from the docked ships, their massive bales of flax and cotton. Unwashed cattle. Sand.
Eleven at night back home would have found most of the shire tucked into their beds, but sleepy, sparkly Barcelona was just awakening. A soiree was taking place somewhere down the street; a quartet of strings lent a formal, musical counterpoint to the last dying echo of the bells.
"It's not very like Darkfrith, is it?" Lia murmured, standing easily in the middle of the slope, a slender figure in a dim blue chemise a la reine, her hair and skirts swaying with the wind.
"No."
"I like that. I appreciate that about it."
I picked my way over to her. I also wore a chemise dressno awkward hoops or fat polonaise; she made certain we kept up with the Parisian fashions, even all the way out hereand had on slippers instead of heels, but it was still a long, daunting distance down to the street below. I could feel the grinding of the tiles with my every step.
"Here filla. Take my hand."
Filla meant daughter. When she'd first started calling me that after we'd moved here, it felt strange, a concept as foreign as the word itself. Over the years I'd become accustomed to it, though. I'd never told her so, but secretly it pleased me. I was pleased to be a Catalan daughter.
I found her hand without looking up, unwilling to tear my gaze from my feet. Her fingers clasped mine, warm, certain. She held me steady until I was near enough that my own skirts slapped against hers.
"Look," said my second mother, very soft. "Look up, Honor."
I had thought the night veiled. But I saw now that the sea mist was just an illusion of the horizon, something to cloud the eyes of all the Others on the streets below. Above us was a well of pure, sharp black, with stars that burned silver like just-minted pieces of eight flung to the heavens.
I made a sound, something wordless. Lia's hand remained firm around mine.
"Have you ever wondered what it's like to Turn?" I felt her glance to me. "Smoke, and then dragon?"
Of course I had. Every girl of the shire wondered ... at least, every girl I'd ever known. Of all the Gifts that blessed us, it was the Turn that most defined who we were. Nearly all of the menfolk still had that Gift, but for usfor the females born to the tribeit remained nothing more than an impassioned wish, one that ultimately faded as we grew older. Fifteen or sixteen was the usual age for the Gifts to emerge. Perhaps as old as eighteen. Male or female, by the time you were twenty, if the Turn had not come, it never would.
Once upon a time, the village schoolmaster used to tell us, every drakon, no matter their sex, was Gifted. Everyone knew the joys of scales and vapor; everyone flew. But Darkfrith was so safe and green, and we settled there so comfortably. Time began to change us. Perhaps it grew easier not to Turn, to grow more lazy in our human skins. Or perhaps we were just cursed. No one really knew why, but in the past two hundred years or so only four females of Darkfrith had managed the Turn.
One of them was standing beside me now, waiting for my response.
Just like everyone else, I'd wanted that Gift. I'd wanted it very, very badly.
"I've heard it hurts," I said, trying to sound indifferent.
"Yes. I'd heard that, as well."
I curled my toes in my slippers. "Does it?"
"Perhaps at first. I'm not really the best person to ask that. When it first happened to me, the circumstances were slightly ... extraordinary. But there's no pain now. Now, when it happens, it's like ... I melt. In the most fantastic way, I melt and become nearly nothing. A nothing so light, so thin, I'm swept up and up. The stars serenade me. The moon smiles. With a single breath I become material again, but I'm aloft. I have wings. I soar. It's simply the most ..."
She faded off, staring skyward. Silver light painted her profile.
"Why are you telling me this?" I asked, pained.
Her eyes closed; her lips smiled. "Because I want you to understand it. I want you to feel it too. Even without the Gift of the Turn, you are a dragon, Honor. It is your blood. Perhaps you'll never Turn to dragon, but the animal lives in your heart anyway. It is everything ferocious and strong inside you. It's what lets you hear the same music I hear, from the stones and metals. It's what hones our sense of smell, of taste and color. It's what makes us a tribe, even separated as we are. It's what makes us so beautiful."
"I'm not beautiful." I pulled my hand free. "Nor ferocious. Nor strong."
"Oh, my dear." She leaned in, pressed a quick kiss to my cheek. "One day you're going to look into a mirror and see someone you won't even recognize. I do hope I'm there for that. Just to catch the expression on your face."
"You're about to Turn," I said. "Right here. Aren't you?"
Her smile returned.
"But it's bright out," I protested, instantly nervous. "All those stars. And there are Others. Right there, just down there! Packs of them. What if they look up?"
"They will see a pretty young woman alone on a rooftop, watching the heavens. This is Spain. I'm sure they'll think you're terribly romantic."
"But I'm not! And you can't!"
"Watch," she said. "Remember. Everything I do is connected to you, and you to me. I'll be the dragon in the sky, and you'll be the dragon on the roof. Either way, we're both ..."
She did it, she went to smoke, still smiling at me, dissolving into wisps. Her gown fell in a slow, sideways driftand then the wind took it, flipping it about, a gentle blue ripple floating down to the street.
I watched the smoke. I watched it rise and rise until I couldn't see it any longer. I rubbed my eyes and when I searched again, I saw the dragon high above me, whipping her way from star to star.
Chapter Five
The Castle of Zaharen Yce, Carpathian Alps Early Autumn, 1788
The prince sat back in his chair, frowning, stroking the stiff paper folds of the letter in his hand. The single page was stained and somewhat weathered, but no more so than might be expected of a missive sent halfway across the Continent. Stamps gummed with glue, crimson wax seal, a wide smudge near the bottom redolent of coffee and dirt. With a tilt of his fingers he was able to glimpse the watermark imprinted in the center, faint by the slanted sunlight that cut through his library window, but still one he recognized very well.
A scrolled D. The suggestion of a winged beast entwined around the curve. It was the crest of Darkfrith. Of England. Yet the letter had been posted from Spain.
The ink from her quill was deeply blue, nearly purple. He'd already memorized the few English words penned there so carefully.
Dear Prince Sandu of the Zaharen,
No doubt this letter will come as something of a surprise to you. We have not yet formally met, although I've seen you a few times before.
I will not trouble you long. I wanted only to say I look forward, very much, to seeing you again soon.
Yours humbly,
Mlle. Honor Carlisle
(of the English drakon )
That was what had been written, and it was what anyone else in the world who was not him would read. But it wasn't what the letter actually said. Because whether or not Sandu left the paper on the polished gleam of his desk or let it fall to rest on his thigh, the true message inscribed there burned between those purple-blue letters, brighter than the sinking sun. The true message shone clear, no matter what angle he tried:l love you. I will always love you. I'm going to be with you again. I will discover a way.
He raked a hand through his hair, sighing, then placed the letter back upon his desk. He reached now for the other one, the one he'd hidden in the back secret drawer that no one else knew about, folded small and much more worn.
Alexandru smoothed out the page, bending over the thin, spidery writing that had always been his sister Maricara's distinctive hand. It was the last communication he'd received from her, over four years past.
A.,
Ill news. English restless, eager for you/clan/invasion. Putting them off long as I can. Langford's younger brother recovered after Sanf Inimicus kidnapping. Returned to the shire with strange news of an Englishwoman who is also a young girl: Honor Carlisle. She is drakon and Sanf Inimicus. Know her? He said she knows you .
Idea that you are aligning with the Sanf sending the English into a frenzy, no matter how I placate.
What are you about?
M.
What, indeed?
Although Maricara was no longer one of his tribe, she'd always communicated with him in the language of the mountains. Every missive she'd sent had been stamped from England.
He missed her sometimes still. He missed her sharp-edged clarity. She had decided to wed the Darkfrith Alpha, Kimber Langford, for love or just love of rule, Sandu never knew. She had been leader here for a while, a pseudo-Alpha herself; her loyalties tended to vacillate with the whistling of the wind. Yet she was his blood, his last living family member. It could not be an easy thing, he supposed, to realize your husband planned a war against your brother.
For unfathomable riches, which the Zaharen no longer had.
For miraculous power, which the Zaharen no longer had.
For glorywhich, Sandu had to admit, was the one thing that still thrived up here in the thin, frost-riven air of his home. The glory of the drakon past. The potential glory of enslaving any drakon present.
Four years ago he'd answered his sister's letter with a single, pointed sentence My oath that I do not know her .
But now . by the heavens, he was very much afraid that he did.
The English drakon were allies once, or he thought they had been. It wasn't so very long ago that he'd hunted the sanf inimicus with one of their own in Paris, helped free the very Langford brother Mari mentioned from a certain death by the sanf . He'd been sixteen then, feverish with adolescent passions and the need to prove himself. He'd believed in those weeks abroad he'd forged a bond between the tribes; now he knew better.
The English were never interested in alliances. They desired one thing only, and that was control.
He'd helped rescue the English lordling, departed Paris warm with the knowledge that he'd made friends, saved a life, made a difference.
He'd truly known nothing about this Honor Carlisle. He'd known nothing of what had come after he himself had left France, save his sister's wedding, which he was wise enough not to attend.
Prince Alexandru had instead sent Maricara and her mate a pear tree and a cloisonne box of diamonds he'd pried from the walls of the castle in honor of their union, accompanied by a note of particularly florid wishes for their good health and long lives.
Maricara's equally florid written response expressing their gratitude had arrived a scant three months after.
Her secret missives, however, had reached the castle more sporadically than that. He presumed she'd taken the precaution of writing in Romanian just in case her new English family discovered she was smuggling him news, but Mari was the only one who might have ever guessed the truth about his unique talent. She could have just as easily written,Sunny day, fine place, do wish you were here, in the King's most proper English and the hidden message of her words would have shone the same Beware. Beware. Beware.
Because that was what Maricara's final note to him actually said.
It was a peculiar Gift, this ability to read between lettering. In all the bound books of his kind he'd pulled from the castle libraries and cellars, in all the spoken folklore, he'd never discovered any mention of anyone else with this skill. Perhaps it had seemed too inconsequential to mention, compared to all the other amazing feats the drakon could commit. Perhaps it had surfaced once or twice in generations past, but only among the peasantswho couldn't read anyway.