The Deepest Night

Chapter 23

“What an appalling trip,” complained a voice near my head. “Bone-rattling ride, rotten service. Next time I believe I’ll take the train.”

I wanted to smile, but it seemed too much effort, so instead I only opened my eyes and gazed up at the ocean of clouds.

They churned far away from us now, their own separate realm once more.

“Eleanore, are you alive?”

I cleared my throat. “Just. You?”

“Aside from the fact that there’s a welt the size of a cricket ball on my forehead, and some rather impressive puncture wounds along my leg—”

“What?” I sat up, reenergized. “Where? Show me!”

I’d tried to bite down carefully, but I’d had to catch him, after all, and we’d been plummeting and I’d been mostly focused upon how much I didn’t want to die.

“It’s fine,” Armand said. He was propped up on his elbows and smiling, that small ghastly smile, his face still painted red and white. “Hardly hurts at all. I say, do you think you might, er, put on some clothes before stripping me of mine?”

“No,” I snapped, vexed. “Just be a ruddy gentleman and look away.”

“I am the ruddiest damned gentleman you’ll ever meet,” he retorted, all wounded dignity. “You have no idea. You’re naked nearly all the time and I never—”

I laughed. “Righto. Never. Will you be still? I need to examine your leg.”

He gave up, falling back to the grass. “You’re the nurse.”

I pushed up the tattered remnant of his cuff. The punctures weren’t insignificant; my dragon teeth were very sharp. But neither were they as deep as I’d feared they’d be. Some were more like scratches. If I had a chance to clean them and wrap them, they likely wouldn’t require stitches.

I thought. I hoped. I’d gladly take on another round of soldiers before I’d shove a needle and thread through Armand’s flesh.

I was categorically not, not, anyone’s nurse.

“We need cover,” I announced, looking around. Trees everywhere, as far as the eye could see. No people. No horses. Only trunk after trunk ringed with manure and scraggly, uncropped grass. A misty, silvery haze wafting through, making a phantom wall of the distance.

Furrows from my claws scored long lines through the dirt that led straight to us, ending at our feet.

“Thought I saw a lake when we were coming down.” Armand was staring directly up at the sky. “Perhaps a house beside it.”

“Really?”

“It was quick. I might be wrong. The orchard ended and the area seemed more like a forest. I think it was in that direction.” He pointed to the left.

“I’ll investigate. Hold on.”

I Turned to smoke.

Except I didn’t. Nothing happened.

I released a breath, frowned. Tried again.

Nothing.

Armand’s gaze cut to mine, then swiftly away.

“Are you going?”

“I’m trying! It’s not … it’s not working for some reason. I’m so …”

Exhausted. Hungry. Scared.

I scowled up at the sky, my fists on my hips. I had to do this. We were in danger out here in the open, in daylight. So I had to.

Come on. Smoke. Smoke …

“Eleanore.”

Smoke!

“Lora.”

“What?” I snarled.

“We need to eat,” he said. “Both of us. Hand me the knapsack, will you?”

I pressed a hand to my forehead, then flung it away. The knapsack had torn off him before we’d landed, but it hadn’t gone far, stuck in some lower branches of a tree nearby. I stomped off and jumped for it until I could grab it, then jerked at the straps.

It broke free. Twigs and leaves bombarded me. A few more apples plunked to the ground.

“No need to kill the tree,” Armand called.

“Shut it,” I replied, but under my breath.

He was right. I needed food and clothing and rest, but as I walked back to him I realized he probably needed all those things even more. Well, not clothing. But he looked as if he might go down under a good stiff breeze.

I set the sack before him. My shirt was still on top, so I tugged it free. The buttons felt fat and unyielding; my fingers groped at them clumsily. By the time I’d managed the trousers and boots, Armand was sitting up, an array of tins before him. The knife in his hand stole the weak daylight, condensing it into a stab of silver along its blade.

He speared a tin and sawed it open, then lifted it to his nose.

“Minced peaches. There should be some hardtack, too.”

I searched for the hardtack while he lifted each tin and examined the labels.

“What are you looking for?”

“The caviar,” he said. “But it’s not here. It must have gone to the girls.”

“Thank heavens,” I said feelingly, then paused. “You brought caviar on our rescue mission?”

“It was in a tin.” He sounded defensive. “A perfectly logical choice.”

“Too bad. It’s peaches for you instead.”

I handed him one of the flat hardtack crackers. He dipped it in the open tin, then took a huge bite.

“Delicious. Much better than caviar.”

It was. So was the next tin of beef stew, and the next of poached salmon, and the next of lobster. We washed it all down with one of the flasks of water, sharing sips. I wanted to open another tin but was growing more and more uncomfortable sitting there so exposed, plus I knew we’d need to save something for later.

I took up the empty tins and chucked them as far from us as I could. Then I gathered up handfuls of apples and stuffed them into the knapsack.

The day was darkening. Wind began a long, slow whistle through the trees, a strange and melancholy sound.

“I’m going to try to Turn again,” I told Armand. “Stay here.”

“Not a problem.”

I wiped my hands down my thighs. I lifted my face to the clouds and the wind took my hair in a wild dancing swirl and I thought, Smoke!

I remained stubbornly, unmistakably, a girl.

“I can smell the lake,” Armand said. “On the wind. It can’t be that far. We can walk it.”

I sighed. “Can you? On that leg?”

He rose to his feet. “Let’s find out.”

It wasn’t a house, after all. It was a hunting lodge by the lake, a rustic and gloomy and conveniently unoccupied one. It took us nearly three hours to get there, Armand’s arm slung about my shoulders, both of us lurching along through the mist. I’d rewrapped his head with a bandage and done what I could for the bite marks, but truly what we needed was a place to bed down.

The lodge was certainly that. It was two stories of stacked logs and glass, a fringe of moss clinging to the northern slope of its roof. We watched it for a while before venturing too close, but there were no lights glowing inside, no movement. No scent of people or meals cooking or anything but wood and water. I supposed it wasn’t hunting season yet.

We stole forward, ducking from pine to pine, just in case. I dashed up to the nearest window and pressed my palms against its frame, but it didn’t budge.

I’d scarcely discovered a good-sized rock to break the glass when Armand murmured my name.

I looked over. He was standing at the front door, which had swung wide open.

“Sometimes the simplest solution is the actual solution,” he said.

I dropped my rock to the dirt and followed him in.

It was far more elegant inside than I would have expected. The walls were still obviously rough-hewn logs, but the ceiling had been plastered, and the furniture was ornately carved and padded and polished. Green foggy light from the windows revealed a collection of crystal goblets glinting in a hutch. A medieval-looking shield hung above the hearth had been painted with heraldry, two peacocks and a knight’s grim, gray visor. A rusted sword hung above that, fixed with hooks into the stone.

Glass eyes gleamed from every wall. There were mounted animal heads wherever I looked. Deer, boars, rams. Bears and birds.

A single cobweb, delicate as elfin lace, stretched between the antlers of a buck.

“Enchanting décor,” I whispered, because beneath my sarcasm, I couldn’t shake the chill of those dead, watching eyes.

“Makes you think, doesn’t it?” Armand had limped over to a bookcase, studying the titles.

“That the person who owns this place is rather too fond of murdering innocent animals and chopping off their heads?”

“That without these human masks we wear, it might easily be our heads on those plaques.”

I shivered, enveloped in a sliver of that cool, greenish light.

“Let’s find a bedroom,” I urged. “Someplace soft.”

“Lora.” He ran a finger down the side of the case. “All of these books are in German. I think we’ve crossed the border.”

German books in a German lodge, in a hushed German wood. It felt awfully real to me then, even more real than bullets or cannons. Odd, I know. But standing there in that room, in the home of someone who no doubt would happily see me dead or, at the very least, subjugated, it made me realize how very far from my own home I was now. How far we both were.

And now, without my Turn, how vulnerable.

A mouse poked its head out from a gap in the timbers, saw us, squeaked, and jerked back.

Armand swayed. I caught him by the shoulders once more; he leaned heavily against me. I spoke into his shirt.

“I bet the bedroom is up that stairway over there. Can you do it? Come on, lordling, one step at a time.”

I’d been correct. Upstairs was a series of bedrooms, and I led us to the biggest, because it was the only one with a vantage overlooking the hazy lakefront. Should anyone approach, hopefully we’d see them or hear them before they made it to the door.

If we didn’t … there was still the pistol.

The bed was enormous, easily large enough for four (which made me wonder about both the size and the inclinations of its owner). The mattress had been stripped bare, but all the clean linens and blankets were in a trunk at its foot, so it didn’t take long to make it up.

“You’re quite good at that,” Armand observed, seated in an ugly leather chair by the door. He’d wanted to help, but I’d made him sit. I was glad I had when I saw how he’d tried to hide his wince as he stretched out his leg. He reclined back and watched me work with those unnaturally bright eyes.

As soon as this was done, I was going find some water to scrub away all the dried blood on his face.

“Experience,” I said. “We suffered a scandalous lack of maidservants at the orphanage.”

“I’m beginning to suspect this orphanage of yours wasn’t nearly the utopia you’ve always boasted it was.”

“Oh, right. You know me, forever boasting about what a ripping good time it is to be an orphan.”

“It always is in fairy tales,” he said innocently.

I snorted. “Have you actually read any fairy tales? Orphans fare the worst of anyone. We were lucky they didn’t decide to roast us and eat us for dinner, come to think of it.”

“Ah, dinner,” Mandy said, closing his eyes.

Of course. One more task before I could rest. I hoped Mr. Hunter kept his larder well stocked. One couldn’t live off chopped-up woodlands creatures alone, surely.

“There’s something I forgot to tell you,” Mandy said, eyes still closed.

“What?”

“Well, I didn’t forget, precisely. But I … I wonder if it really happened.”

“What?” I said again, impatient, tucking in a corner of sheet.

“Back there this morning, back in the woods with the villagers, before everything went so wrong … there was this moment. This girl, I mean.”

I glanced up.

“And she … I could swear that as soon as I told everyone that we were dragons—hardly, I don’t know, an instant before it all blew to hell …”

“What?” I demanded, crossing to stand before him.

“I said that we were dragons, and she said, ‘Drákon.’”

I stared at him, speechless. His eyes opened. He looked up at me soberly.

“She was fourteen. Fifteen. Reddish hair. Different from the other villagers, you know? Different. Like us. And I … I couldn’t see all of her, but I don’t think she was wearing any clothing.”

“Are you saying—”

“Then she vanished. Right in front of my eyes, she vanished. Without smoke, without anyone else even noticing.”

I sank into a squat before him, my hands light atop his knees.

“Sounds like a hallucination,” I said carefully.

“I know.”

“But you don’t think it was?”

“I was struck on the head after that, Eleanore.”

“Then perhaps you heard her wrong.”

He eased back again, evading my gaze. “Perhaps.”

“And perhaps she seemed to vanish but was merely caught up in the crowd. They were rushing you then, weren’t they?”

“No.”

“Armand!” I dropped all the way down to the floor. “I’m sorry, but you’re asking me to believe that this girl, this villager in the middle of bloody Belgium nowhere, knew what you were, what we are, that she herself may have been one of us, and then, poof, she’s gone? No smoke or anything?”

“I told you I wasn’t certain that it really happened,” he grumbled.

I regarded him without speaking. It had to be close to dusk, because the room around us was dimming from greeny gray to greeny charcoal, and Armand was dimming with it, a wraith in the big dark chair.

Outside, a water bird began a low, piping warble that bounced off the lake before fading into nothing.

“Suppose it was real,” I said finally, quiet. “I don’t see what we’re supposed to do about it now.”

“No,” he agreed, and closed his eyes again.

I moved through the night shadows. I didn’t want to risk any sort of light, even though I’d found candles and matches stashed inside a cupboard. The lodge had plenty of windows, and the woods were plenty dark. A single flame would be all it’d take to reveal us to anyone, anything, out there.

I’d located the pump for the well and gotten us buckets of fresh water, which was handy, but I’d figured the lake would be a good enough source even if I hadn’t discovered the well.

The larder was the problem.

Most of its shelves were bare, but for four sealed canisters and a great many mouse droppings. The canisters contained four different things: sugar, noodles, something fetid that might once have been powdered eggs, and strips of dried meat.

That was it.

The meat was a welcome find (I thought maybe it was venison), but I couldn’t imagine what to do with the rest of it. I might soak the noodles in cold water and wait until they softened, then sprinkle them with sugar …

That sounded disgusting, even to me.

We still had some tins left in the knapsack, plus the apples, but we’d decided to save them if we could; neither of us knew what lay ahead.

I devoured a couple of pieces of venison as I rooted around to make certain there wasn’t anything else hidden anywhere else (there wasn’t, only more droppings), then carried the canister upstairs with me to check on Armand.

I walked slowly, my feet feeling the way step by step, the wooden banister smooth and warm beneath my hand. The bedroom was slightly less dark than downstairs had been, probably because of the series of windows meant to take advantage of the view. I was able to pick out the contours of the bed, the silhouette of Armand within it.

“Hullo,” he said, and even though he’d spoken softly, it rang abnormally loud in my ears.

“Hullo.”

“I don’t suppose you’ve brought back some strudel?”

“Even better.” I held up the canister. “Desiccated meat.”

His voice held a smile. “My favorite.”

“It will be.”

I sat upon the edge of the bed and opened the lid. I had to admit, the strips tasted better than they looked. I reached in, took a few, and passed them to him.

Our fingers touched. His felt like fire.

“Mandy!”

“Beloved.”

“Stop it.” I reached for him blindly. “Come here. I need to feel your forehead.”

Obediently he leaned forward. My hands found his neck, his jaw. The firm shape of his nose and then that welt on his forehead, which I’d cleaned and rebandaged, so what I really felt there was padding. I’d given him some aspirin then, too, but it didn’t seem to be working.

I brought my face to his and touched my lips to a bare spot above the bandage.

I felt him go very, very still.

“Eleanore,” he said, and if his voice had been soft before, now it was barely a sound at all.

I pulled back, unnerved.

“It’s how you check for a fever,” I explained, glad he couldn’t tell that I was blushing. “My mo—”

My what? My mother? My mother did that? I shook my head, and the tickle of memory was gone.

“I think my mother taught me that,” I finished. “Or someone. I don’t know.”

He bowed his head, seemed to be examining the venison in his hands that I knew he couldn’t really see.

“Do I? Have a fever, that is?”

“I don’t know,” I said again. “Honest to God, Armand, I don’t know how anything works anymore.”

Likely it was the darkness freeing me, freeing my tongue. Likely it was that I didn’t have to look into his eyes and acknowledge what I’d find in them, the constant hunger, the unwavering focus that made me feel both huge and tiny at once: selfishly pleased to be the recipient of his desire, inwardly terrified because I didn’t know if I’d ever be worthy of it, or even able to return it.

I’d loved Jesse. I had. And it had been easy.

But now, with Armand … everything was topsy-turvy. Jesse was the star I couldn’t hear. Mandy was the dragon at my fingertips, right here, right now, and he wanted me.

I’d never have to wonder what he thought. Where he’d gone. I’d never have to wonder how he truly felt.

Only how I felt.

Which was … confused.

not alone, sang the stars, a refrain that shimmered through the cool, dark air, chasing shadows.

“I think I need to sleep now,” I said.

“I know,” he answered, and moved over in the bed to make room. “Come on, Lora. It’s soft, just like you’d hoped.”

“I should get you some more aspirin first.”

“Later.”

“But—”

“It can wait. Everything can wait until tomorrow, waif. When there’ll be sun.”

I was too knackered to argue. I placed the canister upon the floor and crawled toward him, not even bothering to remove my boots. I let myself slump into the bedding, a pillow downy beneath my cheek. Armand didn’t try to get closer, only lay there beside me, but eventually, after counting out more than two minutes silently in my head, I felt his hand clasp mine.

Fire, still.

Weary as I was, it was a long while before I fell asleep.