Daughter of Smoke and Bone(63)

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.





34





WHAT’S A DAY?



What’s a morning? Karou asked herself. A part of her was already flying into the future, imagining what her reunion with Brimstone would be like, but another part of her was settled firmly in her skin, mindful of the heat of Akiva’s arm against her shoulder. They were walking down Nerudova with Zuzana, against the flow of tourists heading up to the castle, and they had to press close to navigate a horde of Germans in sensible shoes.

She had her hair tucked away in a hat, borrowed from the waitress, so her most obvious feature was disguised. Akiva was still drawing an inordinate amount of attention, but Karou thought it was mostly because of his otherworldly beauty, and not recognition from the news.

“I have to stop by school,” Zuzana said. “Come with me.”

Karou wanted to go there anyway—it was part of her good-bye program—so she agreed. She’d have to wait until nightfall anyway to get back in her flat, if the police were watching it. After dark she could return by way of sky and balcony, instead of street and elevator, and get the things she’d need for her journey.

What’s a day? she asked herself, and there was a buzzing happiness in her that she had to admit had a lot to do with the way Akiva had stood in the teahouse doorway, and the solidity of him beside her now in all its rightness.

There was wrongness, too, faint and flickering, but she attributed that to nerves, and as the morning went by in its buzz of unlooked-for happiness, she kept brushing it aside, unconsciously, as one might fan at a fly.





Karou said her good-byes to the Lyceum—in her head only, not wanting to alarm Zuzana—and, afterward, to Poison Kitchen. She laid a fond hand on the marble flank of Pestilence, and ran her fingers over the slightly ratty velvet of the settee. Akiva took the place in with a puzzled expression, coffins and all, and called it “morbid.” He ate a bowl of goulash, too, but Karou didn’t think he would be asking for the recipe anytime soon.

She saw her two haunts with new eyes, being there with him, and was humbled to think how little she had really internalized the fact of the wars that had shaped them. At school, some joker had scrawled a red graffiti volnost—liberty—where freedom fighters had once written it in Nazi blood, and in Poison she had to explain gas masks to Akiva, and that they came from a different war than the volnost did.

“These are from World War One,” she said, putting one on. “A hundred years ago. The Nazis came later.” She gave him a tart sideward glance. “And just so you know, the invaders are always the bad guys. Always.”

Mik joined them, and it was a little strained at first, because he didn’t know anything of other worlds and other races, and believed Karou was just eccentric. She told him the truth—that they had really been flying, and that Akiva was an angel from another world—but in her accustomed manner, so that he thought she was teasing him. But his eyes kept going to Akiva with the same kind of astonished appraisal as everyone else’s did, and Karou, watching, saw that it made Akiva uncomfortable. It struck her that there was nothing in his manner at all to suggest he knew the power of his beauty.

Later the four of them walked onto the Charles Bridge. Mik and Zuzana were a few steps ahead, entwined as if nothing could ever shoehorn them apart, Karou and Akiva trailing.

“We can leave for Morocco tonight,” Karou said. “I was going to take an airplane, but I don’t think that’s an option for you.”

“No?”

“No. You’d need a passport, a document saying your nationality, which tends to assume you are from this actual world.”

“You can still fly, yes?”

Karou tested her ability, rising a discreet few inches off the ground and coming right back down. “It’s a long way, though.”

“I’ll help you. Even if you couldn’t fly, I could carry you.”

She imagined crossing the Alps and the Mediterranean in Akiva’s arms. It wasn’t the worst thing she could think of, but still. She was no damsel in distress. “I’ll manage,” she said.

Up ahead, Mik dipped Zuzana into a back-bending kiss, and Karou came to a halt, flustered by their display. She turned to the bridge railing and looked out over the river. “It must be weird for you just doing nothing all day.”

Akiva nodded. He was looking out, too, leaning on the railing, one of his elbows against hers. It didn’t escape Karou’s notice that he found subtle ways of touching her. “I keep trying to imagine my own people living like this, and I can’t.”

“How do they live?” she asked.

“War is all. If they’re not fighting it, they’re providing for it, and living in fear, always. There is no one without loss.”

“And the chimaera? What are their lives like?”

He hesitated. “There’s no good life there for anyone. It’s not a safe place.” He laid a hand on her arm. “Karou, your life is here, in this world. If Brimstone cares about you, he can’t want you to go to that broken place. You should stay.” His next words were a whisper. She barely heard them, and afterward wasn’t entirely sure she had. He said, “I could stay here with you.”