The Dream Thief Read Free Page A

as if reciting a list for the village market. It was not pretend.
But in that humming, welcome dark, Lia felt nothing wrong at all.
    A few months past, in the gray
morning hours of her fourteenth birthday, the dream had revealed for the first
time who the man was.
    Zane. Zane the Other, Zane the
criminal. Zane, former apprentice of the Smoke Thief herself, now the tribe’s
hired hands and eyes and ears in the real world, the world beyond Darkfrith.
    And tonight, even though she had
run as fast as she could in her hoops and heels, she had missed his carriage.
By the time she’d made it past the forest break and onto the front lawn, she
couldn’t even see the smudgy glow of its rear lanterns. There was only the
faint squeak of metal and wood and the clip-clop of hooves fading off
into the hills.
    That—and the song. Thin and eerie
and sweet, it beckoned from the farthest thread of the eastern horizon. It
always beckoned.
    Deliberately, she turned her back
to it. It haunted her days and nights; it haunted her soul; and the fact that
no one heard it but her was something Amalia never liked to consider.
    She found herself gazing at the
warm, handsome windows of Chasen Manor, set back against the forest and lawn
like a perfect painting of country peace. At the figures moving inside, supper
being laid, beds turned down, evening fires stoked, everything as ordinary as
could be.
    Something new flashed in the sky
above her head, twisting, bright as a scythe with the rising moon; it dropped
swiftly into the woods.
    With her arms hugged to her
chest, Lia watched it fall.
    She’d be called in soon. She
needed a plan.

    The London air hung heavy with
soot and a wet, cool fog, clinging to his face like an unpleasant skin,
dampening his breath. But he was used to it; in fact, he usually welcomed it,
because foggy nights meant fewer shadows. In his business, light and shadow
were as important as picklocks and poison and knives.
    The only thing Zane truly
disliked about the fog was what it did to gunpowder. He’d never found a brand
that didn’t lump into muck in humid weather.
    From the hours outdoors, his hair
had worked loose from its queue, unfashionably long, distinctive. It would be
dark against his skin and the dull white of his cravat. He should have worn a
wig. A wig, a cheaper hat, a plainer greatcoat: it would have been more
anonymous. But what was done was done; he wasn’t a man to linger long in
regret. The people he’d cornered these past few days were paid too damned well
to remember his face, anyway.
    At
least tonight was over. Tomorrow he’d start again, but right now he was hungry,
he was tired, and he was very much looking forward to a meal and his bed—and
what awaited him in that bed. The candle lantern just past his house burned
sulfur-yellow, a very dim sun choked with mist. None of the small, neatly spaced
houses he passed were even visible through the gloom. He found his way because
he’d always known it, because he’d lived here since he was a child and had
mapped the streets and pavements and gutters in his mind so well he knew every
alley, every door, every possible route of escape.
    He made himself part of the
night. He made his footsteps silent, his breathing imperceptible. He listened
to the dark so intently it sounded like his own heartbeat, familiar and calm.
    This was his realm, for better or
worse. This was the place he claimed and defended, a tiny, ragged patch of
safety in the midst of chaos.
    And so in the back of his mind,
past his awareness of the fog and the candle lantern and the muffled thumps and
groans of the city, Zane was counting off his steps.
    Twenty-two, twenty-three… there would be an oil lamp
flickering in the front window of Madame Dumont’s two-story, for the wastrel
son who whored away half the night.
    Thirty-seven, thirty-eight… step over the exposed root of
the elm that had finally cracked the pavement into halves.
    Forty-five. The black cat watching from the
roof of