The Treasure Keeper

Others could not or would not accept the notion of a dragon as a hero and so dragons were cast strictly as villains instead. Why else would a human hunt a dragon? The drakon of Darkfrith never killed without good cause, never scorched anyone else's crops, never bullied other villages. The careful surface of their lives was as placid and bucolic as a fine oil painting. No one wished for outside attention.

It had taken her years to notice what had been apparent all her life: that despite all that—or perhaps because of it—beyond the most necessary of trading and commerce, Darkfrith remained isolated from the human realm. Even the post proved irregular at best. It was as if at some undefined point in the past, the entire shire had been encased in a vast, transparent bubble that repelled all but the most persistent of visitors.

Getting in was difficult. Leaving, as it had turned out, had been as simple as taking a stroll down a moonlit lane.

It seemed nearly impossible here, beneath the china-blue autumn sky of France, with the sun warm on her shoulders and a cup of steaming cf au lait in her hand, that any of the pampered, chattering aristocrats seated with her on the coffeehouse patio would harbor any thoughts of pitchforks and dragon hearts.

And yet ... someone was. Someone. She knew it.

Zoe kept her nose buried in the book she'd purchased a few days ago, feigning to read. She was prim and proper-looking enough, she thought, to blend in here: Her gown was apple-green velvet, her hat was fashionably straw, and the book was small enough to be discreet.

It was entitled, in French: Young Persons Useful Guide to Social Modesty&Moral Certitude. It was not nearly as interesting as the conversations around her.

The unspoken ones, of course.

She could not actually read thoughts, not like the sentences printed upon the pages before her. She could more sense them. She could choose the direction of the deep blue cloak and fling it there and see what it dragged back to her. Sometimes there were images, sometimes entire discussions. Sometimes there were only emotions, or deep quick memories that made no sense to her. But nearly every time now she flung the cloak, some manner of information came back. She was getting better and better at it.

One week ago she'd been walking by this very cafe near the Palais Royal when she'd first felt it: a slow- boiling malice, something thicker and heavier than the usual petty grievances she was used to brushing up against. It had stopped her in her tracks, literally—much to the annoyance of the water-carrier walking behind her— freezing her in place with a single whispery phrase that had snaked out from the mess of tables and coffee- scented confusion and transformed into a wall right in front of her:

—over two hundred sanf inimicusyes, soon enough to raze the entire— Her feet, her heart, her blood—all instant ice.

The sanf were the peasants with pitchforks made real, an ancient order whose sole purpose was to destroy her kind. The ones who, according to the Zaharen drakon in Transylvania, had found and killed the Darkfrith emissaries.

Hayden. Golden-haired, gentian-eyed Hayden, who smiled at her jokes and ate her cooking without complaint, no matter how abysmal it was.

She'd managed to keep walking, albeit much more slowly, shaking the water from her skirts. She'd kept her head bowed and her eyes to the paving stones and tried and tried to get the cloak to work for her again, to tell her who had conjured those words.

But she'd gotten nothing more. The fashionable galleries and restaurants around the Palais were packed with Others, everyone laughing and talking and eating and belching and getting roundly drunk. Any one of them could have been an enemy.

It didn't even occur to her until she was in bed that night that the sentence she'd caught had been in English.

She'd come back every morning since. She'd altered her hair, her frocks, her hats. She'd sipped coffee and tea and bavaroise all the day until her fingers trembled and her stomach rebelled, and even so she'd not slammed into that wall of thought again, not in any language. But it had been her best lead so far in all her wanderings through the city. It was her first solid link to the fate of her fiance, and she wasn't going to give it up yet.

The cafe au lait was still fresh enough to smell enticing. A curled brown leaf from the apple tree arching above had fallen and landed at the edge of the saucer, precisely balanced. Zoe brushed it aside, watched it flutter down to the granite floor.

Hayden. Tell me where to look.

On a fine afternoon such as this the patio tables were popular; it was common custom for the lords and ladies to share. The pair of mink-bedecked matrons at her own were drinking their coffee lukewarm and sugared and discussing—in French—a play they'd heard about but hadn't yet seen. A dandy with brilliant orange heels and a rapier so long it jutted back beneath the table had claimed the final chair and turned it around so that he could join the circle of his friends nearby, agonizing loudly—also in French—over his losses at a horse race. All five of them were drinking absinthe.

Zoe set down her book. She brought the rim of her cup to her lips and let her gaze drift to the window just to her right. Behind it were slender dull flames from the wall sconces of the coffeehouse, waiters cutting back and forth, patrons seated at the inside tables. The interior was dim and the day was bright; it was far easier to see the reflections of the people outside with her, bright colors from sunlit parasols and coats, everyone white-haired, ruby-mouthed. She found her own eyes there in the glass, the arch of her brows, the ribbon of her hat and the curve of her chin—and then noticed something else, something new.

A shadow man, just over her shoulder.

She looked back, very quickly, at the empty space behind her, and then at the window again. The man continued to face her, his features dark and blurred, his posture radiating intent.

The coffee curdled in her throat.

The matrons still ignored her; the dandies were going on about the chances of a gelding against a mare; the shadow in the window took a step closer, close enough for Zoe to make out the faint, evil halo of smoke curling around him like steam rising from a hot roof.

She watched, her heart pounding, the cup a forgotten weight in her fingers, as his hand lifted, hovered ominously above her shoulder. And then—God help her, an actual chill rippled over her flesh as his dark shadow fingers glided slowly down the reflection of her arm—humid, cold, the shadows seeping down to stain her bones.

A voice spoke in her ear.

'Ma'moiselle.'

Zoe snapped forward in her chair, sloshing the coffee over her hand. The two matrons made little birdlike noises of surprise, but the waiter who had approached only set down his carafe of fresh brew and offered his linen towel instead, apologizing repeatedly, mopping at her skin. The liquid had not been hot enough to burn—but she felt the tingling begin anyway, spreading up from her knuckles to her forearm.

She stood at once. She grabbed her book and shawl and nodded at the waiter, who was still apologizing, and sidestepped out of the patio into the rush of the street.

If she could get to somewhere private, somewhere where no one would see, she'd be all right. She could control it, damn it, she'd been able to control it for months now—

She couldn't help the last wild glance at the window as she rushed past, but this time Zoe saw only herself.

Quite a few of the coffeehouse patrons looked up as the young woman passed, and kept looking if they happened to catch a glimpse of her face. She'd had an entire group of admiring gentlemen quietly betting on who would introduce himself to her first not three tables distant, and the steady, silent attention of a blue-eyed, elderly woman seated inside . but it was a newspaper boy named Yves on the corner who saw the demoiselle duck into the alleyway, almost running, and who thought to follow.

When he peered past the bricks he saw her standing forlorn at the end of the way, piles of refuse and wooden pallets blocking her way out the other side. The lady was breathing heavily with her back to him, holding her hands before her face.