Thief With No Shadow (11 page)

“No,” said Liana. “They are psaaron tears.”

For a moment Melke couldn’t breathe, couldn’t speak. She was on her feet, but had no memory of standing. “No,” she said. “No.”

Liana’s face was mostly shadowed. Her eyes glittered as she looked up at Melke. “Yes.”

“I didn’t know.” The words were useless, worthless sounds. She might as well bleat like a sheep for all the value they were. “I didn’t know”.

Liana’s mouth tightened. She looked away, to Hantje.

Psaaron tears. Rare beyond anything. Priceless. Melke sat, blindly. “How did you come to have them?”

The girl’s laugh was bitter. “We stole them.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

M
ELKE OPENED HER
mouth, but no words came out.

Liana glanced at her and laughed again, a sound as sharp-edged as broken glass.

Melke found her voice. “You and Bastian
stole
the psaaron tears?” She shook her head.

“No, not us. The sal Veres. Our family.”

“Oh.”

Liana held Hantje’s hand. “You know what psaaron tears are?”

Melke nodded. “When a psaaron dies, it sheds a tear.” How many stones had been on the necklace. Fifty? Sixty? “Each tear is...they say it holds memory or...or
soul
.” The necklace had sung to her. Voices had crept over her skin, inside her. Voices of the dead. Tiny hairs rose sharply on her skin. She shivered.

Liana nodded. “A part that never dies.” She raised one hand and touched a fingertip to her throat, a gesture that seemed unconscious. “Imagine...your family never dies. You have them with you always.”

Melke blinked back tears.
Imagine.
She cleared her throat. “The necklace...it was a family?”

“Many generations of a family, yes.”

“And somebody stole it.” It took her breath away. She couldn’t believe that anyone could be so stupid.

“My grandfather’s uncle. Alain sal Vere.”

Melke shook her head. “How?” It was impossible, surely, to steal from a psaaron.

“The necklace likes sunlight, did you know?”

Melke shook her head again. There were no psaarons in the oceans of her home. They preferred warmer, southern waters. She knew of them through myth only, and that, very little.

“That’s what the psaaron had been doing. Sunning the necklace. On our shore. And Alain—” Liana closed her eyes. Her face contorted.

Melke looked at the floor, at Endal dozing, his black coat swallowing the candlelight. The expression on Liana’s face was too personal.

A draft whispered through the curtains. Candlelight flickered.

“Do you know why he stole it?” Melke asked quietly, watching Endal sleep.

“Greed. Arrogance. The sal Veres were a proud family.” Liana’s voice held a bitter note.

Melke looked at the worn nap of the carpet.
And now they are humble.
“What happened?”

“The psaaron wanted it back, of course.” There was a sound. Not laughter, something harsher.

Melke looked up. “Could it not have been returned?”

“He hid it. Alain hid it. In the limestone caves.” Liana gestured with her hand, east.

“But surely—”

“He was young and wild. He refused to tell where he’d hidden it. And before the family could make him, he died.”

“The curse,” Melke guessed.

Liana shook her head. “No. He rode an unbroken stallion and broke his neck.” Her mouth tightened. “Arrogant.”

“Oh.”

“It was less than he deserved. Much less.” The girl’s expression, the tone of her voice, were almost frightening.

The candles flared slightly in the draft and for a moment it seemed as if the shadows on Liana’s face sank into her skin. Her shining innocence, her youth and gentleness, her loveliness, were overlain by a mottled stain of hatred. It disfigured her.

And then the curtains moved again, and the candlelight flickered again, and the shadows on Liana’s face were merely shadows, nothing more.

“His brothers drowned,” she said. “All three of them.
That
was the curse.”

Drowning. It was unsurprising. Psaarons were denizens of water: ocean and lake, river and rain. But all three brothers? Melke shook her head. She didn’t understand. “If the necklace was found, why would the psaaron curse—”

“It was found by my father. Too late to save them. Too late to save my mother.” Liana tilted her head so that hair hid her face. Melke heard grief in her voice, as clearly as she’d heard the hatred.

“I’m sorry,” she said softly. “But I don’t understand.”

The girl looked up. Tears shimmered in her eyes. “I’m not explaining it well.”

Melke shook her head. “No. Not at all. It’s a difficult story to tell.”

“Yes. Difficult.” Liana laughed without humor; a grim sound. She looked down at Hantje and her expression softened. She reached out to touch his face. Her other hand held his in a firm clasp. “It was like this. Alain stole the necklace and he hid it and...he died.” Her eyes met Melke’s. “Do you understand?”

She nodded. “Yes.”

Liana stroked Hantje’s cheek with a fingertip. “The psaaron wanted the necklace back. It cursed the sal Veres.”

“Water?”

Liana nodded. “The curse has grown with time. It no longer rains here. You’ve seen the ground?”

“I thought it a drought.”

“An unnatural drought.” Liana’s lips twisted into a bleak smile. “The rivers ceased to flow. The sea...we can’t set foot on the beach, daren’t fish. Boats sink and swimmers drown.”

“The three brothers?”

“Yes. Water is deadly to us. To our family.”

“Your mother,” Melke said softly. “I’m sorry.”

Liana shook her head. “No. That was the other part of the curse.”

Something in the girl’s voice, a flatness, told Melke that worse was to come. She sat rigidly in her chair. Did she want to hear this?

“The psaaron comes, once in every generation. It waits a day and a night for the necklace to be returned. And at night, while it waits—”

“No.” Melke shook her head. Something clenched in her chest.
No. It can’t be.

Liana held her gaze. Her eyes were fierce, shining with tears. “What have you heard?”

She didn’t want to speak, didn’t want to utter the words. They gagged in her throat. “Psaarons...” She swallowed. “Psaarons are like salamanders, like gryphons and lamia. They like to...to lie with humans.”

“Yes.” It was a whisper.

Gryphons were the worst. They raped and killed. But they lived in the central wastes and were rarely seen. Salamanders were more numerous, but they didn’t use force, paying for sexual favors with gold and jewels and other treasures. The giant serpents, lamia, were always female, and liked to lie with men when in their human form. It was said that men enjoyed their embrace.

And psaarons... Psaarons lay with humans to punish them, to hurt them.

Or so the myths said.

“The first time, it was Alain’s sister. She hanged herself afterwards. She was as old as I am.”

Melke closed her eyes. She didn’t want to hear it.

“Her brother, my great-grandfather, he wanted to save his children. He threw the sal Vere fortune into the sea, all of it, until there was nothing left. But it made no difference. His son was next. Pascal.”

There was silence while the words settled, the weight of them dreadful.

“Pascal didn’t kill himself, but he never spoke again. He was mute. He and his father drowned, years later.”

Too horrible. Too much.
Melke opened her eyes, stretching them wide. The images inside her head remained, shadowlike, hovering at the edges of her vision.

Liana sat, holding Hantje’s hand in a tight grip.

Melke swallowed. She made herself speak. “And next was your mother?”

The girl nodded, staring down at Hantje.

“I’m sorry.”

A tear slid down Liana’s cheek. She brushed at it roughly with the back of her hand,

They sat in silence and candlelight for long minutes. The only sounds in the room were the stirring of the curtains and Endal’s soft exhalations. Liana’s voice was loud and startling when at last she spoke. “She jumped off the cliff afterwards, into the sea. I was only a baby. Bastian was nine.”

Poor Bastian
, was Melke’s instinctive thought. He’d been old enough to understand what had happened to his mother, to know why she’d killed herself. She closed her eyes again, briefly.

“I don’t really remember my father. After... Bastian says he hardly ever came home. He lived in the caves, searching for the necklace.”

Bastian was a tough man with a mercenary’s face, but he’d been a nine year-old boy once. All Melke could think was,
Poor Bastian.

“Father found it when I was six.” Liana smiled, but it was without happiness. “He gave it to Bastian and...”

The pause was heavy. It grew in the room, sucking Melke’s breath.
And what?

Liana turned her head. She stared at Melke. Her eyes were hazel, bright and sharp. “He wanted to be with my mother, so he jumped too.”

Melke couldn’t breathe, couldn’t inhale, couldn’t—

“Excuse me,” she said, standing and pushing the chair aside. Her steps were fast and clumsy as she ran down the corridor and through the kitchen. She slammed back the bolt on the door and rushed outside. She could breathe here, huge gasping breaths.

What had she done?

Melke sat heavily on the ground and hugged herself, her eyes squeezed shut against tears. Endal sat down beside her. He whined.

She cried in the dark and empty yard while Endal lay beside her, pressed against her hip. She felt his warmth, the softness and thickness of his coat, and smelled the hound-scent of him.

The tears stopped. It was impossible to cry forever. She’d learned that as a child. The air was dry and cool against her skin, the ground hard. Endal was a solid warmth.

It was dark.

Self-loathing gave way to fear.
It’s dark.

Blackness, darkness. It was impossible to move, to breathe. Panic rose in her chest. There was a scream inside her. She was alone in the dark and she would die here. They’d hurt her. They’d make her beg. They’d—

Endal shifted against her. He laid his chin on her knee.

Melke shut her eyes. She inhaled a shuddering breath that smelled of dust and dryness and hound.

This was no cell with a stone floor and rough, dank walls that pressed in on her. There were no guards. She was free.

And she had done a terrible wrong.

She stood, stiffly and clumsily. Her heart hammered in her throat. The breaths she inhaled were shallow, panicky. Darkness smothered her. Her eyes were wide and sightless. Endal leaned against her leg.

It took forever to reach the farmhouse. Minutes. Hours. A thousand endless steps. She walked backwards, facing the darkness. Her fingers groped for the door. She pulled it shut behind her and bolted it, but the kitchen was dark, black. It had walls of stone and
there was no light—

There was light in the sickroom, though, shining through the doorway. The terror that clutched in Melke’s chest eased fractionally. She could breathe, could see.

Liana looked up, her hair shining as brightly as snow in sunlight. Her expression altered, became sharper. “Are you all right? You look—”

“I’m fine,” Melke said, standing in the doorway, panting, the darkness pressing at her back.
Stand tall
, Mam had said.
Hold your head high. Never let them see your fear.
Her heart thudded in her chest. “I’m sorry. I needed to...to get some fresh air.”

Liana’s gaze was searching, her brow faintly furrowed.

Melke walked slowly across the room. With the candlelight and the relief came awareness of her feet again. She managed not to lurch or wince. The pain was huge, a raw and swollen burning.