Daughter of Smoke and Bone

33 PREPOSTEROUS

“My tiny scary friend is coming here,” Karou told Akiva, drumming her fingers on the table.

“The one from the bridge.”

Karou recalled that he had been following her yesterday, and would have seen Zuzana perform. She nodded. “She knows about your world, a little. And she knows you tried to kill me, so…”

“Should I be afraid?” Akiva asked, and for a second Karou thought he was serious. He always looked so serious, but it was another hint of dry humor, like atop the cathedral when he had surprised her with his joke about pushing off bad dates.

“Terribly afraid,” she replied. “All cower before her. You’ll see.”

Her mug was empty, but she kept her palms on it, less now for fear of flashing magic at Akiva than to keep her hands from making any more unsanctioned sallies across the table to touch his. She should have been repelled by his hands with their death count, and she was, but not only. Side by side with the horror was… the pull.

She knew he felt it, too, that his hands were fighting their own battle not to reach for hers. He kept looking at her, and she kept blushing, and their conversation stuttered along until the door opened and Zuzana stomped in.

She came straight to the table and stood facing Akiva. She was fierce, ready to scold, but when she saw him, really saw him, she faltered. Her expression warred with itself — ferocity with awe — and awe won out. She cast a sidelong glance at Karou and said, in helpless amazement, “Oh, hell. Must. Mate. Immediately.”

It was so unexpected, and Karou was already so on edge, that laughter burst from her. She sank back in her chair and let it pour out: soft, glittering laughter that worked another change in Akiva’s countenance as he watched her with a hopeful, piercing scrutiny that made her tingle, she felt so… seen.

“No, really,” said Zuzana. “Right now. It’s, like, a biological imperative, right, to get the best genetic material? And this”—she made spokesmodel hands at Akiva—“is the best genetic material I have ever seen.” She pulled up a chair beside Karou, so the two of them were like a gallery observing the seraph. “Fiala would so eat her words. You should bring him in to model on Monday.”

“Right,” said Karou. “I’m sure he wouldn’t mind stripping for a bunch of humans—”

“Disrobing,” said Zuzana, prim. “For art.”

“Are you going to introduce us?” Akiva asked. The chimaera tongue, which they had been using all along, now sounded out of place, like a rough echo from another world.

Karou nodded, fanning away laughter. “I’m sorry,” she said, and made a cursory introduction. “Of course, I’ll have to translate if you want to say anything to each other.”

“Ask him if he’s in love with you,” said Zuzana at once.

Karou almost choked. She turned her whole body in her chair to face Zuzana, who held up a hand before she could protest. “I know, I know. You’re not going to ask him that. And you don’t even need to. He so is. Look at him! I’m afraid he’s going to set you on fire with his crazy orange eyes.”

It did feel like that, Karou had to admit. But love? That was preposterous. She said so.

“You want to know what’s preposterous?” said Zuzana, still studying Akiva, who looked bemused by her appraisal. “That widow’s peak is preposterous. God. It really makes you feel the sad dearth of widow’s peaks in daily life. We could, like, use him as breeding stock to seed widow’s peaks into the populace.”

“My god. What’s with all the mating and seed talk?”

“I’m just saying,” Zuzana said reasonably. “I’m crazy about Mik, okay, but that doesn’t mean I can’t do my part for the proliferation of widow’s peaks. As a favor to the gene pool. You would, too, right? Or maybe…” She shot Karou a sidelong glance. “You already have?”

“What?” Karou was aghast. “No! What do you think I am?”

She was certain Akiva couldn’t understand, but there was an amused quirk to his mouth. He asked what Zuzana had said, and Karou felt her face flame crimson.

“Nothing,” she told him in Chimaera. In Czech she added, sternly, “She. Did not say. Anything.”

“Yes, I did,” piped Zuzana, and like a child who has gotten a reaction for naughty antics, she merrily repeated, “Mating! Seed!”

“Zuze, stop, please,” begged Karou, helpless and so very glad the two had no common language.

“Fine,” said her friend. “I can be polite. Observe.” She addressed Akiva directly. “Welcome to our world,” she said with exaggerated gestures. “I hope that you are enjoying your visit.”

Chewing on a smile, Karou translated.

Akiva nodded. “Thank you.” To Karou, “Would you tell her, please, that her performance was beautiful?”

Karou did. “I know,” agreed Zuzana. It was her standard acceptance of a compliment, but Karou could tell she was pleased. “It was Karou’s idea.”

Karou didn’t convey that. She said instead, “She’s an amazing artist.”

“So are you,” Akiva replied, and it was Karou’s turn to be pleased.

She told him they went to a school for the arts, and he said they had nothing like that in his world; only apprenticeships. She told him that Zuzana was kind of like an apprentice, that she came from a family of artisans, and she wondered if he was from a family of soldiers. “In a manner of speaking,” he replied. His siblings were soldiers, and so had his father been in his day. He said the word father with an edge, and Karou sensed animosity and didn’t press, and talk shifted back to art. The conversation, filtered through Karou — and Zuzana, even on her best behavior, required a high degree of filtering — was surprisingly easy. Too easy, she thought.

Why was it so easy for her to laugh with this seraph, and keep forgetting the image of the fiery portal, and Kishmish’s little raw body as his heartbeat went wild and then failed? She had to keep reminding herself, chastening herself, and even so, when she looked at Akiva, it all wanted to slip away — all her caution and self-control.

After a moment, he remarked, nodding toward Zuzana, “She’s not actually very scary. You had me worried.”

“Well, you disarm her. You have that effect.”

“I do? It didn’t seem to work on you, yesterday.”

“I had more reason to fight it,” she said. “I have to keep reminding myself we’re enemies.”

It was as if a shadow fell over them. Akiva’s expression turned remote again, and he put his hands under the table, removing his tattoos from her sight.

“What did you just say to him?” Zuzana asked.

“I reminded him that we’re enemies.”

“Tch. Whatever you are, Karou, you are not enemies.”

“But we are,” she said, and they were, no matter how powerfully her body was trying to convince her otherwise.

“Then what are you doing, watching sunrises and drinking tea with him?”

“You’re right. What am I doing? I don’t know what I’m doing.” She thought of what she should be doing: getting herself to Morocco to find Razgut; flying through that slash in the sky to… Eretz. A chill snaked through her. She’d been so focused on getting gavriels that she’d avoided thinking too much about what it would be like to actually go, and now with Akiva’s depiction of his world fresh in her mind — war-torn, bleak — dread crept over her; suddenly, she didn’t want to go anywhere.

What was she supposed to do when she got there, anyway? Fly up to the bars of that forbidding fortress and politely ask if Brimstone was at home?

“Speaking of enemies,” Zuzana said, “Jackass was on TV this morning.”

“Good for him,” said Karou, still in her own thoughts.

“No. Not good. Bad. Bad Jackass.”

“Oh no. What did he do?”

“Well, while you’ve been watching sunrises with your enemy, the news has been all over you, and a certain actor has been most helpful, preening for the camera and telling the world all about you. Like, um, bullet scars? He’s made you out to be some kind of gangster’s moll—”

“Moll? Please. If anything, I’m the gangster—”

“Anyway,” Zuzana cut her off. “I’m sorry to say that whatever anonymity you might have had, blue-haired girl, your flying stunt put an end to it. The police are probably at your flat—”

“What?”

“Yeah. They’re calling your fight a ‘disturbance’ and saying they just want to talk to the, er, people involved, if anyone knows their whereabouts.”

Akiva, seeing her distress, wanted to know what was being said; she quickly translated. His look darkened. He stood and moved to the door, glancing out. “Will they come for you here?” he asked. Karou saw the protectiveness in his stance, shoulders hunched and tense, and she realized that in his world, such a threat might be much more dire.

“It’s okay,” she assured him. “It’s not like that. They would just ask questions. Really.” He didn’t move away from the door. “We didn’t break any laws.” She turned to Zuzana and switched to Czech. “It’s not like there’s a law against flying.”

“Yes there is. The law of gravity. The point is that you are looked for.” She shot a glance at the waitress, who was skulking nearby and most certainly eavesdropping. “Isn’t that right?”

The waitress blushed. “I haven’t called anyone,” she was quick to say. “You’re okay to stay here. Do… do you want more tea?”

Zuzana waved her off and told Karou, “You can’t stay here forever, obviously.”

“No.”

“So what’s the plan?”

Plan. Plan. She had a plan, and it was near its fruition. All she had to do now was go. Leave her life here, leave school, her flat, Zuzana, Akiva… No. Akiva was not part of her life. Karou looked at him, watchful in the doorway, ready to protect her, and she tried to imagine walking away from the… placeness… of him, the rightness, the patch of sunlight, the pull. All she had to do was get up and leave. Right?

A moment passed in silence, and Karou’s body did not so much as twitch in response to the idea of leaving.

“The plan,” she said, exerting a massive effort of will and facing up to it. “The plan is to go away.”

Akiva had been looking out the door, and only when he pivoted to face her did she realize she’d spoken in Chimaera, addressing this to him.

“Away? Where?”

“Eretz,” she said, standing up. “I told you. I’m going to find my family.”

Dismay spread over his face as understanding dawned. “You really have a way to get there.”

“I really do.”

“How?”

“There are more portals than just yours.”

“There were. All knowledge of them was lost with the magi. It took me years to find this one—”

“You’re not the only one who knows things, I guess. Though I would rather you showed me the way.”

“Than who?” He was thinking, trying to figure it out, and Karou saw by the flicker of disgust when he did. “The Fallen. That thing. You’re going to that thing.”

“Not if you take me instead.”

“I truly can’t. Karou. The portal is under guard—”

“Well then. Maybe I’ll see you on the other side sometime. Who knows?”

A rustle from his unseen wings sent sparks shivering across the floor. “You can’t go there. There’s no kind of life there, trust me.”

Karou turned away from him and picked up her coat, slipping it on and fanning out her hair, which had a damp mermaid quality to it and lay in coils over her shoulders. She told Zuzana that she was leaving town, and she was fending off her friend’s inevitable queries when Akiva took her elbow.

Gently. “You can’t go with that creature.” His expression was guarded, hard to read. “Not alone. If he knows another portal, I can come with you and make sure you’re safe.”

Karou’s first impulse was to refuse. Be that cat. Be that cat. But who was she fooling? That wasn’t the cat she wanted to be. She didn’t want to go alone — or alone with Razgut, which was worse. Her heart hammering, she said, “Okay,” and once the decision was made, a tremendous burden of dread lifted.

She wouldn’t have to part with Akiva.

Yet, anyway.