Shana Abe - Queen of Dragons

The gown was a size too small. She'd had to hold her breath to get the corset tight enough.

His gaze roamed her face, lowered with deliberation back down to her bosom. "I retract what I said before. We should steal more often."

She tugged at the bodice. "From larger people."

"Or ones of slightly better fashion." He smiled, gently cynical. "I'm far from an erudite judge of ladies' couture, but there's typically a scarf or a tucker draped across the neckline, is there not, Your Grace? Was it missing?"

"It itched," she said shortly.

From the shadows he was dragon and man, his voice dropping soft. "Lucky me."

A hot agitation stung her skin, embarrassment, the stink of the room becoming astringent. She angled her face away from his and lifted a hand to the nape of her neck, feeling it burn.

"We shouldn't dally here."

"I'm perfectly amenable to dally with you wherever you wish. Ah, Princess, such a killing look. If only you could see how fetching it—never mind. We lack only Sir Rufus—excellent, there you are. Don't we all look nicely legitimate. Shall we have a stroll?"

And they did.

The place was crowded. They decided to make their way to the pump room first; it held the most people. Kimber walked at her side, the man he called Rufus following behind. Try as she might, Mari couldn't sense Honor or those strange, hollow notes, but she knew what she'd heard. Something here was amiss.

The earl cupped her elbow with the lightest of grips. He looked quite at his ease in these lavish surroundings, ambling just as idly as all the rest of the polished, aristocratic throng. At times he nodded to the Others who greeted him by name, smiling, enigmatic. A few clearly desired to stop and talk—their eyes would light upon Mari and then her decolletage; she now regretted sharply leaving behind the scarf—but with his gilded charm Kimber simply pushed by them, hauling her slowly yet inexorably with him down the hallways, not granting anyone time actually to address her directly. No one was so brazen as to demand her name, at least not to the earl's face. They wondered aloud aplenty as they were left behind, though.

She should have realized how completely he would slip into this world. She should have realized how effortlessly he would become one of them.

She felt conspicuous in her borrowed gown. She noticed how the women they passed glanced at her tumbled hair, her clean cheeks. How the men were glancing lower than that. No doubt on its owner the gray silk was perfectly respectable. On Maricara it became something else, soft gleaming material that bit into her skin, that forced her into small, mincing steps and sent a barb into her ribs with every breath. She could not bend in any direction. She could not lift her arms above her breasts. She felt her hair threaten to topple all the way down her back every time her hips swayed.

"By God, if you keep doing that, I'm going to have to secure us a room," Kim muttered, staring straight ahead. They crossed into, and out of, an oval of flickering light.

"Doing what?"

"Holding your breath like that. It makes your chest swell magnificently. Kindly cease." "I can't cease. I can barely inhale."

"Then next time," he said sweetly, "steal a bigger gown or use the damn tucker."

They were at the entrance to the pump room. Instead of an actual pump, there was a fountain in the middle of the chamber shaped as a scalloped bowl, a bronze pipe sprouting from its center, burbling water. A string of adolescent maids in mobcaps and aprons stood in a circle around its base, ready to offer glasses of murky liquid to the men and women around the chamber who lifted hands for it.

The tables were adorned with lace and fresh flowers, nearly all occupied by laughing, chattering people. Waiters clipped back and forth with tea sets and wine and plates of warm food, their mouths pinched, their buttons and polished shoes reflecting the gleam of the brass chandeliers above. The floor was hardwood but every walkway was beautifully carpeted; a great many portions were spotted with water. The pungency of damp wool overlaid that of the iron and sulfur, noxious.

"There is a table over there," said Kimber's man, still behind them.

Mari shook her head. "I am not drinking that water."

"No," agreed Kimber. "Let's avoid poisoning ourselves if we can. But if we wish to remain inconspicuous, we can't remain standing here. At least seated we can get our bearings."

The maitre d'hotel was already coming toward them, bowing low, bidding them forward. Kimber drew her along with him again.

The table was close to the putrid fountain. One of the serving girls rushed over with three glasses as soon as they were seated. Kimber and his man nodded their thanks as she bobbed a curtsy. Maricara only pushed her glass away.

"We're inconspicuous," reminded the earl, with a pleasant smile. He pushed the glass back toward her. "You don't have to drink it. But try not to look as if you want to throw it at me. I know at least ten couples in this room, and they'd all give a guinea to have a savory bit of gossip to take with them back to London."

"I'd wager they've already got it," offered the other drakon, staring down at the glass he cupped between his palms.

"True. Most young ladies dining out with me for the evening don't look quite so murderous."

"We're wasting time here," Mari said. "We should be searching for the child."

"We are." Kimber draped an arm over the back of his chair, revealing a waistcoat of startling bright blue. "You're seated now near the center of the entire spa. If she's here in any direction, this will be the best spot to tell. Do you feel her?"

"I cannot feel anything but an impending headache. This place reeks and the noise—"

"My love," interrupted the earl, soft. "Beautiful dragon. Please try."

She closed her mouth with a snap. Her gaze flicked to the other man—still staring down at his glass, his cheeks and jowls growing flushed over the flowing ruffles of his borrowed jabot—and then back to Kimber. He waited, not moving, not even smiling now, only watching her with a calm and steady expectation.

Mari leaned back. She turned her eyes slowly around the bustling room, taking in all the faces, all the colors, lush textures and cascading voices, and then tried to let them sift into frequencies, letting them fall away one by one, until she heard only what she needed to hear, until she caught the echo of those notes, and they seemed suddenly very near—

"There he is! There, right there, by the fountain!"

The exclamation was extremely loud, louder even than the general commotion of the chamber; in her heightened state it jolted through her like a knife. The man who had made it was standing by the entrance, portly and quivering with emotion, dressed plainly in black breeches and a shirt that didn't quite fit, one arm lifted dramatically to point straight at Kimber.

No—at the other man. At Rufus.

"That blackguard stole my clothing!" The man glanced wildly at the two human males beside him, both well dressed, both clearly management. "What manner of establishment is this? I demand satisfaction! You there, sir! Ho, you! Where the bloody hell do you think you're going?"

The portly man began to trot toward them, followed by the other two. But Sir Rufus was already away from the table, moving with surprising speed toward the wall of folding glass doors that led to the outer courtyard.

"Blast." Kimber pushed back his chair, reaching for her.

"No," she said quickly, and rose to hasten the other way, still speaking, knowing he could hear. Other people were beginning to stand up; the angry man had veered toward Kimber, his voice rising to a bellow. "There will be empty rooms at the top of the hotel, farthest from the stairs."

"How do—"

"Because there always are." She took up her skirts with both hands, dodging tables, the servants trying to speak to her, not running yet, just walking faster. "If nothing else, there's the garret. Don't get caught. Go. "

She was nearly to the folding doors; the footmen were distracted, and there were a great many people gaping and pointing at her, behind her, and through all the ruckus and rising voices she heard it again—the eldritch sound. The soft, dreamy reflection of notes—only now it was practically at her side.

Maricara, startled, turned her head, and met the gaze of the woman falling into step beside her. Blond hair, brown eyes, dragon grace and poise and a face Mari instantly recognized—

The other woman grasped her hand and took the lead, guiding them both to the doors, to the dark outside.

It's time I explained Draumr to you, Child of Mud. Some of you will have heard of it already, of course. Some of you are well studied in our ways, and to you the word Draumr might as well be salvation. Or so you would think.

The dreaming diamond, the lost blue gemstone. For centuries it haunted our kind, born as we were amid magma and comets, where we were at the mystical brink of mountain and sky: a perfect, fatal counterpoint to all our strengths. Draumr was a monstrosity rejected by the cosmos, disgorged to earth. Exquisite cold, wicked with song, it crystallized into a drop of unblemished evil. It was never meant to be.

Because it was the only stone ever that had the power to enslave us.

Yes, well might you prick up your ears at this news. It had that power. For centuries it was kept locked in Zaharen Yce, hidden from everyone, even ourselves. It sang a song so enticing there could be no denying it; you drowned in that stone. You lived with its opium saturating your blood, and it was like floating through a waking dream, breathing thick honey, adrift in blissful clouds. Under its spell you had no troubles, no will, no resistance. Defying it was unthinkable. So human or drakon, whoever held the diamond could command us utterly.

We did our best to annihilate it. Even so, twice it nearly destroyed us.

Well.could you do it? Could you bring yourself to crush the most powerful object of pleasure known to your kind? The gem that had but to hum a single, perfect note in your ear to send you reeling into gentle oblivion?

You have your drugs. You have gin and laudanum and all your fine fermented wines. You crave their relief; perhaps some of you, a small fraction, might understand why we never demolished the stone.

We kept Draumr in a vault, in a dungeon, in our castle named after ice and tears, atop its barren peak. We kept it very well until it was stolen from us by a human.

But we got it back.

Some of it.

He waited for her in a room that had not seen the light of day for at least a season, he would reckon, although there was still a faint lingering of honey citrus rising from the polished wainscoting. All the windows were shuttered, and there were sheets across the furniture. The bed was unmade. Kimber didn't bother to make it. He only snatched one of the sheets and shook out the dust, then wrapped it around himself like a toga, falling back into the chair it had covered.

He'd had to Turn to avoid being pinned by the hotel's overzealous managers. He'd been doing all right until then, summoning all his charm and an entire fiddle-faddle of lies, gradually managing to extricate himself from the most brightly lit sections of the pump room. But the man missing his clothing had also lost Rufus Booke. He wasn't about to lose his other quarry. He'd cornered Kim and right away tried to wrap a meaty hand about his arm. Kim had remedied that with one quick, hard grip of his fingers, still smiling.