Days of Blood & Starlight(64)

She nodded, steadied herself. “Thank you for telling me.”

“There’s more—”

But then, shocking in its volume: a sound from outside. A shriek, a wail. Karou’s heartbeat was midskip when it hit her what it was that had been nagging at her. It was absence. Zuzana’s and Mik’s. Where were her friends?

And who had just screamed?




Out in the court, Zuzana covered her ears and gritted her teeth.

Mik was more diplomatic. He nodded to the chimaera named Virko, who had just drawn an earsplitting skreeek from his violin. “That’s right,” he said. “That’s, um, how it makes sound.”

Virko was holding the instrument more or less correctly. Though it was dwarfed by the jut of his jaw, his big hands managed the bow all right. One thing Zuzana had noticed was that many of the chimaera had human hands—or human-ish—even though the rest of their body might be solidly beast. Judging from the array of swords and axes and daggers and bows and other implements of killing and dismemberment that they carried around, she gathered that manual dexterity was an imperative.

The better to kill you with, my dears.

For all that, though, weapons and claws and such, they weren’t that scary. Oh, well, they were scary as hell to look at, but their manners weren’t menacing. Maybe it was because Zuzana and Mik had crossed paths first with Bast, the one from Karou’s floor, who had understood their pantomime of eating and brought them with her to the food, introducing them around with words Zuzana and Mik could not understand.

“Do you want these humans grilled or minced in a pie?” Mik had translated under his breath, but Zuzana could see that he was in awe more than he was scared. The chimaera had seemed more curious than anything else, really. Maybe a bit suspicious, and there were some who turned her blood cold for no better reason than the unblinkingness of their stares; she stayed away from those, but overall it had been fine. Dinner was bland but no worse than what they’d eaten at a tourist trap in Marrakesh on their way here, and they’d learned a few words of Chimaera: dinner, delicious, tiny, the last—she hoped only the last—in regard to herself. She was quite the object of fascination, and submitted to pats on the head with unusual good grace.

Now, in the court, it was Mik’s violin that was the object of fascination. Virko produced a few more hellish shrieks and a sawing sound before another chimaera shoved him and growled something that must have meant give it back, because Virko handed it over and gestured to Mik to play, which he proceeded to do. Zuzana had learned to recognize his signature pieces, and this was the Mendelssohn that always raised the hairs on the back of her neck and made her feel happy and sad, salty and sweet at the same time. It was big and intricate, kind of… cute in some places, but epic in others, and wrenching, and Zuzana, standing back and watching, saw the change it worked on the creatures arrayed around her.

First: the startle, the surprise that the same instrument that had produced Virko’s skreeek could do this. There was some exchange of glances, some murmurs, but that fell away quickly and there was only wonder and stillness, music and stars. Some soldiers hunkered down on haunches or settled on walls, but most stayed standing. From doorways and windows others peered and slowly emerged, including the unsoldierly stooped figures of the two kitchen women.

Even the Other White Meat looked transfigured, standing stock-still in all his weirdly repellant beauty, a look of deep and terrible longing on his face. Zuzana wondered if she could have been wrong about him, but dismissed the thought.

Anyone who would wear all white like that clearly had issues. Just looking at him made her wish she had a paintball gun, but hell, you couldn’t pack for every eventuality.




Karou shook her head in wonder. Zuzana swaying lightly in the court while Mik played his violin for such an audience; back in Prague she could never have imagined this scene.

“How did they come to be here?” Ziri asked. He had risen, too, and stood behind her looking over her shoulder.

“They found me,” Karou said, and the simplicity of it filled her with warmth. They had looked for her, and found her; she wasn’t alone, after all. And the music… It rose and swelled, seeming to fill the world. She hadn’t heard music in weeks, and felt like some gasping part of her was gulping it and coming back to life. She climbed onto the window ledge, ready to step off and drift down to join her friends in the court, but Ziri stopped her.

“Wait, please.”

She looked back.

“I don’t know when I’ll have another chance to talk to you. Karou, I… I don’t know what to do.”

“What do you mean?”

“The souls.” He was agitated. He turned and paced away from her, stooped to reach for something, and came back up with a thurible. “My team,” he said.

“You saved them?” Karou stepped back into the room. “Oh, Ziri. That’s wonderful. I thought—”

“I’ll have to report to Thiago, and I don’t know whether to tell him.” He weighed the vessel on his palm.

Karou was confused. “Whether to tell him that you saved your team? Why wouldn’t you?”

“Because we disobeyed his order.”

Karou didn’t know what to say to that. Disobeyed the Wolf? That just didn’t happen. After a pause, she asked, “Why?”