Nameless

“I’m not one of them,” he persisted.

She nodded. Her braid bumped against the back of her coat. She was beginning to warm up a little. Maybe she should have had the other drink. A buzz would probably help right about now. “I b- believe you.”

Maybe it was the dimness, but he suddenly looked years older. “Well, don’t. Biel’y lie. That’s the first lesson about them—don’t ever trust one who says they’re not, especially a man. Once the Queen gets hold of them, they’ll do anything, say anything, to get her what she wants.”

Her hands cramped. The shimmersilk bit, its thin threads able to slice flesh if enough pressure was applied. She had to force her fingers to relax. “The Queen.” It was a bare, numb-lipped whisper.

An answering whisper, from the well of darkness her nightmares hid inside. You are nobody. You are nothing.

“The White Queen.” Tor was pale. Sweat stuck his messy black hair to his forehead. “The boys serve her, they grow into her huntsmen. The women serve her too, if they come in from outside. But the girls . . . she takes them.” He wet his lips, a quick darting motion of his tongue. “It’s old magic, older than the Reeve or the Age of Iron. Didn’t anyone ever tell you this ghost story?”

“N-no.” Not until now. “They t-talk around the edges. B-but not out l-loud.”

“Sometimes she takes in orphans. There are some kids born into the cult, born underground where they live, like Twists. If they’re not Twisted, if they’re not jacks, if they’re plain human or charmer, they’re kept.” He shuddered. “The born-below boy babies are special huntsmen. Her Okhotniki.” The word was funny, swallowed into the back of his throat, almost French but not quite. “The girls . . . when they’re six . . . it’s not pretty.”

How old are you, bambina? Where is your momma, your poppa?

Tor’s black eyes glazed. He stared at the empty fireplace like he could see the story he was telling played out in its shadowed depths. “Sometimes, only sometimes, the White Queen consents to her most favored Okhotnik. Sometimes after that there’s a baby, and sometimes, only sometimes, a special baby girl born. A princess. When she’s six, the Queen takes her. Then the Queen’s renewed, not just for a little while like with the other girls, but for a hundred years or more.”

“R-r-renewed?” Her hand stole toward the key.

“Oh, yeah.” He blinked furiously, like there was something in his eyes. “It’s not easy, being the Queen. She gets . . . hungry.” He shuddered again. “That’s why there’s huntsmen. They, and the Okhotniki, bring her things. To . . . eat.”

Oh, God. The cold was all through her now. The music below mounted another frenetic notch, a vibration running through the floor and the chair, rising up her spine.

This one’s heart is fiery.

You were dead. She ate the heart.

The apple, cut in half, its seeds forming a star. A flat medallion, sparking, a red stone in the middle—the only one with a jewel, because she was the Queen.

The others had medallions too, but they were plain. Plain silver, not-quite-round.

“You h-had one,” she whispered. “A n-n-n-necklace.” A huntsman. Bringing her things to eat.

“Since I was in the orphanage. I was an orphan,” he said. He was shaking now, his hands clamped on the chair’s arms. “I was—”

But whatever he would have said next was drowned in a crashing from below. The music rose on feedback- laced squeal, and the screaming started.

Cami grabbed for the key. Her fingers scraped the table, draped in shimmersilk, and Tor’s eyes rolled up into his head. Under the sudden chaos from below, the sound of the chair’s arms cracking as he heaved at them, struggling against something invisible, was only guessed-at, not heard.

She let out a high-pitched cry, lost under a wave of cracking that shuddered through the frame of the nightclub, and bolted for the door, the shimmersilk waving like seaweed as she ran.

Down the stairs in a rush, her wet boots smacking, Cami hit the bottom and went over the frayed red velvet rope with a leap that would have made the gym teacher, Sister Frances Grace-Abiding, very proud. Landed, skipping aside as a faust crashed to the floor right in front of her, for a moment she couldn’t understand why everyone was screaming . . .

 . . . then one of the steel-toothed dogs leapt, foam splashing from its muzzle and its fawn-colored hindquarters heaving. It crunched into the fallen faust, chewing as the d?mon inside the flesh let out a shattering wail. Bone splintered, and the faust curled up, throwing the dog aside with a snapped charm that sparked red in the gloomy interior. The charmlights had mostly failed; the bleeding neon glow was barely enough to see by, and the crowd pressed for the doors as the dogs bristled, leaping at will.

A lean half-familiar figure in a tan trench coat stood in the middle of the dance floor’s writhing mass, dogs flowing around him in a stream—brindle, black, splashed with white, big and small, all of them with the same mad gleam in their white-ringed eyes, crunching and howling as their steel-laced teeth champed. Cami skidded to a stop, nailed to the floor as the hounds set up a belling, braying cry that punched through the feedback squeal and swallowed it whole.

The door. But it was choked with fleeing Twists and jacks, a melee breaking out as they panicked and elbowed for room. The fight was going to spread; she’d seen enough of Nico going crazy to know that.

If things go sparky, babygirl, look for the back door.

It was something he always said when he took her into Lou’s on a particularly nasty-tempered day, or to the dives and bars he could prowl with relative immunity as one of the Seven’s boys. She heard it now as if he was right next to her, his lips skinned back in the most dangerously amused of his smiles, the good-natured one that said he didn’t much care who he hurt next.

There. It was to the right of the bar, a fading exit sign that guttered and went out just as the feedback died and the only sound was the dogs’ crunching and yapping, howling and snarling. She bolted for it, her boots squishing, and the shimmersilk in her hands turned treacherous again, its fringes somehow lengthening, waving wildly and jabbing at her eyes, scraping at her wrists, tearing at the cashmere coat.

She hit the door hard, and it opened—thank Mithrus Christ—spilling her out into a cold close darkness. The latch clicked as she shoved it shut, and she gulped in a reeking mouthful of frozen outside. It was sweeter than the fug of breath and smoke and terror inside.

The howling behind her ratcheted up a notch, and she didn’t have to be told they had seen her.

It was the man. The wooden man Nico had thrown out of Lou’s.

She ate the heeeeeeeeart!

But Cami’s heart was pumping in her chest, knocking like it wanted to break out through her ribs and escape the crunching of dogs piling into the jammed-shut door behind her. Her breathing came in quick hard white puffs, and she found herself in a trash-choked, narrow alley, the door behind her shuddering as more dogs hit it, and the sound of sirens lifting in the distance as someone noticed there was a riot starting on the edge of Simmerside, too close to the core for comfort.

This kind of spreading chaos so close to the blight could even trigger a minotaur.

Shimmersilk bit at her hands, its fringe turned to claws as it struggled, a live thing in her grasp. It was trying to eat her face, for God’s sake. She struggled free with a despairing little cry, every inch of skin crawling with revulsion, and flung it to the cobbled floor of the alley.

It rebounded, alive with charm and spitting peacock-colored sparks, nipping at her knees. The edge of Cami’s Potential flashed, a colorless ripple; she skipped aside, banging into a metal dustbin. Fine snow sifted across the alley, icicles festooning the walls wherever heat leaked out of the buildings arching overhead, and her breath came harsh and tearing in her throat.

“NO!” she screamed, and tore away from the shimmersilk. It bit through her leggings, opening bloody stripes and scratches all the way up to her knees, but she managed to kick it loose just as the metal door groaned, buckling.

The dogs might not be able to open it, but the wooden huntsman could—and if enough of the beasts crashed