The Time Weaver

Chapter Four

I had a secret.

Considering who and what I was, declaring that I had a secret was nothing more extraordinary than saying, / breathe. I am.

My life was a basket woven of secrets, it seemed. I was a secret from the shire of my birth. I was a secret from the fine people of Barcelona, where I now lived. I was a secret from my real parents, Gervase and Josephine, and a secret from my false parents, Zane and Lia.

I was nearing the age of eighteen, and every day I ate and drank secrets like candy, like wine. If I tried to repress them, if I tried to mash them down under the relentless light of the Spanish sun, they squeezed up again through the cracks of night. They haunted my dreams.

The greatest one, of course, was him.

The prince.

Alexandru.

I knew that was his name, because I'd heard the drakon surrounding him call him that. Not many did—I supposed it was because he was royal and they were not—and it took me over a year of Weaving to him before I was able to sift through the strange foreign words enough to recognize the syllables of his given name. Sometimes he was Alexandru, and sometimes just Sandu, which I definitely liked better.

Prince Alexandru of the Zaharen was an Alpha with gray chill eyes and a fine mouth that never smiled. He was pale and lean in the most charismatically feral way of our kind, with straight long hair so deeply black it shone blue, and cheekbones sculpted sharp like his mountains. His voice was nearly always unnervingly gentle; when he spoke, it felt like electric shocks along my skin. Prince Alexandru sat on a throne in a sumptuous Great Room of green damask and hammered gold and watched the shadows and the light like a shark waiting restlessly for a little fish to swim by.

And all the little fish gave him a very wide berth indeed. Even the servants who brought his chalices of wine and finger bowls of lemon water avoided his gaze when they could.

Prince Alexandru was a leader locked in a silent, frigid war, although it took me a very long time to realize that, and even longer to realize with whom.

Sandu, though ... Sandu was a man who slept. Alone. In a solitary tower chamber, with nothing to comfort him but a few blankets and stars and the songs of all the diamonds and colored gemstones pressed into the walls.

In sleep, his body relaxed, his face relaxed. In sleep, I could imagine him smiling. His hands atop the covers of satin and fur, long, strong fingers stroked with firelight. His hair unbound, smooth as ink across the pillows.

I'd watched him brush it out once early one winter morning, the strands crackling, his gaze distant, an emerald ring flashing on his thumb. I'd Woven to a far corner holding my breath but when my back touched the cold wall I think I must have released it, just a tiny bit; I hadn't meant to. He'd paused, head cocked, frowning at his reflection in the small mirror before him. Before he finished twisting around, I was gone again.

Stolen moments. That was how I knew Sandu.

I wasn't certain if it was Sandu or Alexandru who commanded his animal side, the huge gleaming black dragon who'd once plucked me from a river. He'd been both merciful and cruel, so perhaps both.

And I wasn't certain which aspect of him intimidated me more. I'd grown up with an Alpha heading my tribe, and I had a healthy respect for their power. I'd learned very quickly in life that the strongest ruled the weakest, and if you weren't prepared to be ruled, then you'd better fight or run. Alpha males not only fought, they won. If they had to kill to win, so be it; those were our ways. The shire of Darkfrith had an entire field devoted to the charred bones of those who had chosen to contest the rules of the tribe.

One glance into this prince's pale gray eyes and I could easily envision his own field of bones.

And yet ... there was that sleeping man. The curve of his lips. The twin straight strokes of ebony brows, so peaceful. Sable eyelashes, thick and spiked. He never slept with a nightshirt on, not that I could tell, not even during sleet or snow. His shoulders were broad and muscled, ivory skin, a V of short curling hair winnowing down his chest. When the fire was bright enough, if he rolled over, if he shifted or moved his hand or parted his lips on a sigh .

Oh, those nights. I found it so hard to Weave away.

Back then I had no choice, though. I couldn't control my Gift. I'd be sitting at the kitchen sideboard peeling apples, or walking through a park, or reading at my desk. And then I'd simply be somewhere else. Some time else.

Nude.

That part was always awkward, to say the least. Usually the first jolt of realization that I'd completed a Weave would be someone screeching at the sight of sudden, unclad me appearing from nowhere.

With Lia's encouragement, I began to cloister myself in the suite of apartments we rented in one of the old palaces of the Gothic Quarter. We agreed it was far easier for me to duck behind a table or a curtain there than to hide in public. The few servants we employed were silent and stone-faced and paid exceedingly well to avert their eyes from anything unusual; I was not the only drakon in the residence with unexpected Gifts. My Weaves typically placed me about a year or two in the future, as far as I could fathom, but almost always in the same place I'd just left.

So, for the sake of modesty, my bedchamber became the safest location. Within weeks, I had memorized every plastered inch of it.

At first I hated Weaving. I hated the nauseating, pulling lurch of it in my stomach. I hated being clothed one moment and not the next. I hated that all I had was a half second's warning it would come, like that feeling that rises through you just before you vomit, and you know there's nothing you can do to prevent it. You're enslaved to the whims of your own body.

That was Weaving.

And then, when I started to go to him instead of to my bedroom, it became even worse.

I was young and afraid. Of course I was afraid. I didn't know who this dark youngdrakon could be, or why I kept ending up in his proximity. The Weaves were a compass and he became my North. I just kept going back. I discovered later that in our Natural Time, Prince Sandu was only a little over a year older than I. But in the Weaves I usually leapt ahead, and he was much older.

After the sixth Weave to him, I told Lia everything; I had no reason not to. I trusted her. I even loved her. Then she told Zane.

And I think that —that moment, that conversation for which I wasn't even present—was the beginning of our end.

I remember five days passed, uneventful. The evening of the fifth day the three of us were seated on the stairs of the Catedra/ in the Barri Gotic, enjoying the soft spring twilight. There were street vendors hawking food and glass-windowed shops selling baubles. It was crowded: young couples with stern duenas in ebony lace hissing and trailing behind them, families with children bickering over sweets, everyone ambling the narrow, cobblestone streets to take in the balmy air, the rising moon. We three were pretending—Lia loved to pretend—that we were also an actual family, appreciating the descent of the lemony blue night.

Zane only did it for her. I knew that.

A pair of gray-whiskered men were on the stairs below us, strumming havaneres on their mandolins for the passersby, singing sea-songs in wavering, graveled voices. A few tunes in, Lia rose to toss a handful of coins into the hat placed beside them.

Zane merely watched her go. I should have known then something was off. Whenever he was in town—which wasn't often—he stuck to her side like a burr.

He was peeling apart a dinner pastry with his fingers, one he'd purchased from a cart a few streets away. I'd been following the process surreptitiously; I'd already eaten mine. Flaky bits of roll littered the stairs beneath, the scent of sauteed chicken and onions from the stuffing making my stomach grumble.

He no longer wore the signet with Draumr . I'd been wondering where it was, but hadn't worked up the nerve to ask.

He spoke softly, without looking up at me. "Are you still Weaving to Zaharen Yce?"

I sucked in a breath with my surprise. I hadn't mentioned the name of the castle to Lia. I'd only just learned it myself that morning, during another involuntary Weave.

"If you tell her about it again," he said mildly, after a pause, "I'll have Nemesio flog you. I mean it."

Nemesio was our manservant. I doubted that was all he was, as he was large and scowling and only barely willing to do any sort of work around our home. His arms were roped with muscle and scars. He kept a knife in the waistband of his breeches—it was steel. I always heard it crooning when he was near.

"Frankly, Honor, I don't care if you Weave to the castle or Fleet Street or the sodding Macaroni Club," Zane was saying to the pastry, still in that quiet way. "But my wife does, very much. So leave her out of it. You're giving her nightmares."

"Yes," I choked. "Fine."

"Fine," he agreed, and handed me a piece of roll.

Zane was one of the strongest strands in my new life of woven secrets.

Her dreams had always been blind. It was one of the restrictions of her Gift, Lia supposed, that she could hear what was to come but not see it. During the dreams it never bothered her. It was only later, after waking, that she would worry and guess and try to imagine colors and shapes and vistas to match all

that she'd heard.

Lately she'd not wanted to imagine any of it. Lately she'd wanted only to erase it from her mind; she prayed to erase it, but like an evil wish turned inside out, it shone extra clear to her.

Perhaps it was because she missed home so much, the trees and lakes and people of the shire. Perhaps it was because her childhood had been so idyllic—gemstones and meadows and splendid animals in flight—a perfect painting fixed in her memory, and what she was dreaming now was so terribly opposite.

She could smell the sun-heated grasses, the bouquet of late summer.

She could hear the crickets tucked away in the woods, their rhythmic sawing. A few beetles. The wind shifting invisible clouds far, far above. Leaves clattering on the trees.

Skirts rustling. The faint squeak of a window being opened and the crickets getting louder; the scent of lilies swept over her with the breeze.

The voices. The man and the woman, and the girl.

I've missed you, said the girl, and Lia knew at once who this was, of course. Honor. Lovely, delicate Honor, the prickly-sweet child of her heart.

Yes, said the man.

There was a pause. The sound of liquid being poured into a china cup; the hot wafting fragrance of black tea.

Did you miss me?asked the girl, hesitant.

Yes, said the man again. Of course we did.

Of course, echoed the third person in the dream, the woman.

I've so much to tell you. There's so much to say.

But no one said anything for quite a while. There were only the leaves sighing outside, the tiny random clinking of flatware against bone china. That scent of tea and lilies.

I wanted to say first that I'm sorry, continued the girl, determined. Sorry that I left without word. Sorry that I worried you.

Silence.

And that—that I've met someone. A man. A drakon,I mean.

Oh? said the woman, muted.

A prince, actually. I...he's...he's really quite wonderful In fact—the girl took a deep breath—I love him. So much.

Another cup, my dear?asked the man.

What? No. No, thank you. Did you hear me, Papa? I've found my mate. It's Alexandru of the Zaharen. Another pause. We're engaged.

Ah, said the man.

I live in his castle . we have a little .

Yes, whispered Honor's mother. …

you'll be so...pleased...she's...

Close your eyes, said the man.

...what's...Mother...

Just sleep, said the man.

A muffled thump; perhaps a cup falling to a rug. Silk rustling again, a great deal of it, and then the woman's voice came to life, low and fervent.

Tell us the truth, Honor. Tell me. Are you involved somehow with the sanf inimicus?

... mmm ...

Honor! Tell me!

But the girl said nothing.

Lia heard breathing, ragged and soft. She heard the sound of silk again, the footsteps of the man crossing the rug. A door opened. Someone new entered the room; she could not hear who, she could not smell who. The person made no sound whatsoever. But the energy changed somehow—instantly, violently. A shiver crossed her in the dream.

I'm sorry, murmured the new person, a male. And then:It will be swift. But it's best if you go now.

And Lia only understood what her eldest brother meant when the door closed firmly again, and the woman beyond it began to weep.

"Beloved."

Amalia came awake feeling utterly composed, as if she'd never closed her eyes, never laid back amid the cool sheets of her bed, caught in the cradle of her husband's arms. Never slept.

"Another one?" he asked, his voice a breath in her ear.

She didn't answer. She didn't need to. He knew her so well, knew all about her—just as she knew him. They'd been wed a dozen years, a lifetime. He was accustomed to her nightmares.

"Which one was it this time?"

"The tea."

"Ah."

His hand found the top of her head, began a slow stroking down her hair to her shoulder. She turned her face toward his and his lips touched her brow.

Aside from the constant low ripple of human conversation, Barcelona was quiet for a city at night, surprisingly so; the most obvious sound beyond that of a few horses and mules trudging along the streets was the pulse of the sea striking the shipyard bays, a few miles distant. When Zane spoke again, it was a bare brushing of words against her skin. She heard every one.

"Your brother was there?"

"Yes."

"And he still ."

"Kills her. Yes."

She swallowed, and swiped at her eyes with one hand even though they were dry; she was done crying over this particular dream.

"It's never changed, after all these years," said Zane, still softly stroking. "She goes back. Says she's engaged. Drinks the tea."

It wasn't a question, but she answered it anyway. "Yes."

"Snapdragon." His fingers paused. "I know how you feel about her ... but if it's meant to be ..."

"It doesn't have to be," Lia hissed, angry suddenly, sitting up. "It doesn't. I've changed the future before. I refuse to believe she has anything to do with the sanf . How could it even be possible?"

He let his hand fall to the covers, silent. His eyes met hers, a pale wolfish gleam, visible even through the gloom.

"You know her. She's meek to the point of agony, and so easily intimidated. It took a year for her to gather the nerve to hold your gaze for more than a few seconds at a time, remember? She twitches at every little noise."

Zane kept his silence.

"Well," she continued, a little desperate, "you've certainly never heard any mention of her when you're—gone, have you? Her name or—even just something about an English girl?"

"No," he answered, cool. "Not so far."

Lia stared at him for a moment, then drew up her knees and dropped her head into her palms. He was the last person in the world she should question about the sanf inimicus , the human enemies determined to destroy her kind.

He'd only become one of them because of her. Because she'd begged.

All her life, Lia'd had this unquiet Gift. Dreaming the future, hearing the future, dreading the future. No one else in the tribe suffered it. No one else in the tribe had railed against what was to come as much as she. She was not just smoke, not just dragon, but a sort of tribal Cassandra as well, barred from home with no one but the man beside her now to comfort her.

As a child she'd dreamed of a different threat to her kin, and as an adult she'd done what she had to do to defeat it. For a long while, for years after she first was married, Lia rested comfortably in the knowledge that she had done what she could to save her kind. Yes, she'd given up her family, but she'd gained true love, and in her mind, it was a fair trade. She did not dream in Zane's embrace. She just slept. And it was . heavenly.

That, of course, began to change.

They'd been living in the beach house in the Antilles when the dreams began to filter back. Strange dreams, always sightless, a confusion of voices and times and places. She could make no sense of them; they were as jumbled and nonsensical as those she'd had as a very young girl. Sometimes all she heard were screams. She would wake up cold and sweating, and it would take hours to get warm again. Even submerging herself in the beryl-blue waters of the Caribbean didn't help.

Single, repeated threads eventually came clear: Honor Carlisle.

The sanf Inimicus .

A prince of the Zaharen.

A war between the tribes.

They were all entangled somehow, destinies woven together, and even though she'd applied the most potent weapon she had to the knot—her husband, her clever and criminal husband—she still had not managed to unravel all the strands.

Lia spoke against her knees. "Don't you like her, even a bit?" "I don't like or dislike her."

Her head raised, golden hair slipping soft along her arms.

"She's fine," Zane sighed. "She's a girl. She's drakon . She reminds me a very little of you, but only when she's angry."

She looked at him more fully.

"Because her eyes go to fire and her cheeks color," he said innocently. "That's all. That's when she looks like what she really is."

"A beast," she muttered.

"Magic," he countered, flat. "And apparently a dangerous magic, at that. If the Alpha of your tribe thinks it a fine idea to drug her and execute her—I'm sorry. I can't afford to like her. If she does you harm, I can't falter. I can't let like impede me."

He knew a score of ways to kill, she understood that. He had come to her from the shadows of London, and shadows still were his trade. He slipped into locked rooms in perfect silence; he observed kings and commoners without a word, a shrewd slight smile, fingers quick and marvelous both over her body and around a knife. He was a magician, a trick of the light, vapor in the way that none of her kind would ever comprehend: human slyness and cunning and unapologetic devotion. Should he grasp for certain that their adopted daughter would do his wife harm, Lia knew he'd end Honor's life without hesitation.

With all her heart, she tried to counter that anyway.

"So, then ... you won't love her."

He sighed once more and sat up, rumpling the crisp Italian sheets, shoving a pillow behind his back. "Listen. Besides chocolate, I love two things in this world. Me, and you. That's quite enough."

Despite herself, she let out a rueful huff, not quite a laugh.

His arm shifted. His index finger began to trace a swirl along her thigh.

She glanced at him from under her lashes. "Which of us do you love more?"

"Well," he said seriously, watching his finger, "I am the prettier of we two."

"True," she agreed, just as serious.

She lay back, found the stubbled line of his jaw with her hand, an invitation that he answered by following her down. His braid became a rope, heavy and warm against her chest. Her fingers opened. She brought his mouth to hers.

She didn't want his words any longer. He wouldn't promise her anything, nor would he lie. So Lia would make no false promises, either.

But at least they had this bed, and this night. That was enough for now.

Lady Lia liked needlework. I wasn't certain why; to be honest, she wasn't very good at it. Certainly she wasn't as good as my old mother, whose embroidery had decorated Plum House with exceptional taste: cushions and samplers and even quilts, every seam perfection, every stitch utterly precise.

Josephine Carlisle would have said, in her clipped, freezing way, that Lia's efforts revealed a mind that wandered, and I'm sure that was true. Very seldom were there even two stitches in a row of the same length. She would run out of one color of thread and pick out another at random, creating swans that were half white, half green. Windmills on ponds reflecting pink and silver skies. A round moon of yellow and puce; farmhouses casting red shadows, lettering shaded every color of the rainbow.

I watched her stab the needle into the hooped fabric on a night after Zane had left us once again, about a sennight after our conversation on the steps of the great cathedral. Neither he nor Lia would ever discuss where he went when he was gone from us. His absences stretched from weeks to months, with no set pattern that I had yet discerned.

Lia and I were seated together in the drawing room, where the walls were papered in oyster silk and the curtains were snowy damask and the light from the sconces reflected best. She was embroidering. I was pretending to read. It was far more interesting to daydream about Sandu, but Lady Amalia kept distracting me.

She seemed pale. Even for one of us, I mean. Her hair had been pinned up that morning a l'Antoinette but she kept pushing a hand through it, and now it had worked its way mostly loose. She was wan and fetching and lovely. Strands of honeyed blond fell in perfect waves along her perfect face. As she drew the thread long—vivid orange, I noticed, for a pillow cover of a rabbit in a winter meadow—she could have been an etching from a book depicting the ideal notion of English femininity.

"Shit." She dropped the needle and held up a finger, scowling at the fresh bead of blood welling at the tip. "Verdammt! Merde." She cupped her hand to her lips and sucked at the blood; after a second, her gaze angled briefly to mine. "I beg your pardon. I did not mean to swear."

"Yes, you did." I placed my book upon my lap. "Why do you sew?"

"Because it is better than rum or opium."

I definitely had no response to that. After a moment she stood, tossing the hoop and cloth to the settee behind her. She crossed to the window and stared out at the street below, still sucking on her finger.

Carrer del Bisbewas popular among the aristacrates and traffic was fairly steady at this hour, all those fine nobles traveling here and there, eager for their evening festivities. Carriages careened past our little palace with horses ever squealing in dismay. Other animals didn't like the scent of us, even from behind stone walls.

"You're sad without him," I said.

She inclined her head very slightly, still staring out.

"You deserve better," I blurted. "You deserve—a husband who will stay with you. Who won't stray."

Her voice came composed from over her shoulder. "I think I have exactly the husband I deserve. He's no stray." She examined her wounded finger, slowly closing her hand into a fist. "He's giving up a great deal for me, more than you could guess. The least I can do is be patient."

I was so sick of secrets. I was so tired of all the deceptions. My temper broke.

"I wouldn't have to guess, if you would only tell me. I'm not a child, you know. Not any longer."

"No," she agreed, still composed. "You're not." Amalia turned around at last. "Come up to the roof with me."

"The roof? Why?"

Her eyes were very bright. "Because I want you to. That's all."

We occupied the upper stories of the palace. Like most of the other structures around us, the roof of it was composed of baked terra-cotta tiles, layered one atop another in an elaborate, dizzying pattern. They were very old and some of them were missing, and standing on them was a slippery proposition at best. But Lia climbed out of the window of our garret without hesitation, as if she'd done it a hundred times before.

Of course, she probably had.

I followed more gingerly. The slope beyond the sash was very pitched.

A set of bells in a nearby cathedral began to peal, followed at once by a host of others across the tip-top of the city. It was eleven o'clock, and the sky was a hazy deep dark, and the splinter moon was veiled behind a wall of sea mist rolling in from the water. I smelled salt—always salt—and fish and burning oil from the streetlamps. Wet wood from the docked ships, their massive bales of flax and cotton. Unwashed cattle. Sand.

Eleven at night back home would have found most of the shire tucked into their beds, but sleepy, sparkly Barcelona was just awakening. A soiree was taking place somewhere down the street; a quartet of strings lent a formal, musical counterpoint to the last dying echo of the bells.

"It's not very like Darkfrith, is it?" Lia murmured, standing easily in the middle of the slope, a slender figure in a dim blue chemise a la reine, her hair and skirts swaying with the wind.

"No."

"I like that. I appreciate that about it."

I picked my way over to her. I also wore a chemise dress—no awkward hoops or fat polonaise; she made certain we kept up with the Parisian fashions, even all the way out here—and had on slippers instead of heels, but it was still a long, daunting distance down to the street below. I could feel the grinding of the tiles with my every step.

"Here filla. Take my hand."

Filla meant daughter. When she'd first started calling me that after we'd moved here, it felt strange, a concept as foreign as the word itself. Over the years I'd become accustomed to it, though. I'd never told her so, but secretly it pleased me. I was pleased to be a Catalan daughter.

I found her hand without looking up, unwilling to tear my gaze from my feet. Her fingers clasped mine, warm, certain. She held me steady until I was near enough that my own skirts slapped against hers.

"Look," said my second mother, very soft. "Look up, Honor."

I had thought the night veiled. But I saw now that the sea mist was just an illusion of the horizon, something to cloud the eyes of all the Others on the streets below. Above us was a well of pure, sharp black, with stars that burned silver like just-minted pieces of eight flung to the heavens.

I made a sound, something wordless. Lia's hand remained firm around mine.

"Have you ever wondered what it's like to Turn?" I felt her glance to me. "Smoke, and then dragon?"

Of course I had. Every girl of the shire wondered ... at least, every girl I'd ever known. Of all the Gifts that blessed us, it was the Turn that most defined who we were. Nearly all of the menfolk still had that Gift, but for us—for the females born to the tribe—it remained nothing more than an impassioned wish, one that ultimately faded as we grew older. Fifteen or sixteen was the usual age for the Gifts to emerge. Perhaps as old as eighteen. Male or female, by the time you were twenty, if the Turn had not come, it never would.

Once upon a time, the village schoolmaster used to tell us, every drakon, no matter their sex, was Gifted. Everyone knew the joys of scales and vapor; everyone flew. But Darkfrith was so safe and green, and we settled there so comfortably. Time began to change us. Perhaps it grew easier not to Turn, to grow more lazy in our human skins. Or perhaps we were just cursed. No one really knew why, but in the past two hundred years or so only four females of Darkfrith had managed the Turn.

One of them was standing beside me now, waiting for my response.

Just like everyone else, I'd wanted that Gift. I'd wanted it very, very badly.

"I've heard it hurts," I said, trying to sound indifferent.

"Yes. I'd heard that, as well."

I curled my toes in my slippers. "Does it?"

"Perhaps at first. I'm not really the best person to ask that. When it first happened to me, the circumstances were slightly ... extraordinary. But there's no pain now. Now, when it happens, it's like ... I melt. In the most fantastic way, I melt and become nearly nothing. A nothing so light, so thin, I'm swept up and up. The stars serenade me. The moon smiles. With a single breath I become material again, but I'm aloft. I have wings. I soar. It's simply the most ..."

She faded off, staring skyward. Silver light painted her profile.

"Why are you telling me this?" I asked, pained.

Her eyes closed; her lips smiled. "Because I want you to understand it. I want you to feel it too. Even without the Gift of the Turn, you are a dragon, Honor. It is your blood. Perhaps you'll never Turn to dragon, but the animal lives in your heart anyway. It is everything ferocious and strong inside you. It's what lets you hear the same music I hear, from the stones and metals. It's what hones our sense of smell, of taste and color. It's what makes us a tribe, even separated as we are. It's what makes us so beautiful."

"I'm not beautiful." I pulled my hand free. "Nor ferocious. Nor strong."

"Oh, my dear." She leaned in, pressed a quick kiss to my cheek. "One day you're going to look into a mirror and see someone you won't even recognize. I do hope I'm there for that. Just to catch the expression on your face."

"You're about to Turn," I said. "Right here. Aren't you?"

Her smile returned.

"But it's bright out," I protested, instantly nervous. "All those stars. And there are Others. Right there, just down there! Packs of them. What if they look up?"

"They will see a pretty young woman alone on a rooftop, watching the heavens. This is Spain. I'm sure they'll think you're terribly romantic."

"But I'm not! And you can't!"

"Watch," she said. "Remember. Everything I do is connected to you, and you to me. I'll be the dragon in the sky, and you'll be the dragon on the roof. Either way, we're both ..."

She did it, she went to smoke, still smiling at me, dissolving into wisps. Her gown fell in a slow, sideways drift—and then the wind took it, flipping it about, a gentle blue ripple floating down to the street.

I watched the smoke. I watched it rise and rise until I couldn't see it any longer. I rubbed my eyes and when I searched again, I saw the dragon high above me, whipping her way from star to star.