The Treasure Keeper

Chapter Two

Paris

September 1782

He'd been following her for three long blocks down the Seine. She did not walk quickly, which was one of the things he noticed first about her. Her pace was slow, often uneven; a demoiselle who perhaps had partaken of too much champagne with her dessert.

And shewas a demoiselle—or at the very least, a demimondaine. The sheen of her gown—satin without question, glimmering taupe by the smoky light of the street lanterns. The coat of fine sky-blue velvet she wore over it, edged with silk tassels that swayed in time with her oddly graceful gait. Even her hat, wide-brimmed and elaborately feathered, ropes of paste pearls draped around the band, the bow tied smartly beneath her chin. If she was a prostitute, she was an extremely successful one. Everything about her spoke of Means.

No question, there were other pigeons to be found tonight. With its theatres and operas and vendors, the musicians playing ballads on the bridges, Tuileries was always the most likely place in town to bump into a careless soul who didn't keep a firm hand on his purse, especially after the shows let out. But there was something about this girl, some compelling, mysterious pull from her . once she'd caught his eye, he found he couldn't look away.

She had a reticule over her left wrist, blue like the coat, with nice thin satin cords. Good enough.

She kept her own head down, watching the gutters and paving stones of Quai des Tuileries instead of her surroundings, pushing modestly through the crowds. Every so often her face would lift; it was only then he'd gain a swift glimpse of her nose, of her chin and lips. Dewy youth, lush beauty. He very much looked forward to seeing the rest of her.

But for now, Basile maintained his distance. He would not be so imprudent as to risk a glance directly into her eyes. It would not do to let her know he was studying her, and besides, there were still too many people about.

Her wig shone beneath the lanterns as well, the powder like none he'd seen before. He was not a man of great fashion, but he knew enough about wigs to recognize that hers was expensive. Definitely human hair, not horse, very fair and almost eerily natural. It wasn't even gray, but instead a glossy, glinting white. Two long, perfect coils spiraled down her back, bouncing like the tassels with every step, most fetching against the blue. It drew a man's eyes upward, to the nape of her neck. To the way the coat hugged the pretty slope of her shoulders.

Ah, the rich. What pleasures were denied them?

And yet as far as he could tell, his demoiselle walked the Quai alone, without a maid, without a footman. Without even a cabriolet to follow at a discreet distance. If she was meeting a lover, she was clearly reluctant about it. Perhaps the man was a toad.

The thought made Basile smile.

Over the clatter of horses and mules and carriages along the boulevard rose the soothing smack of the river pushing at her banks, the occasional echo in galld of the boatmen drifting below. The autumn night smelled of damp leaves and burning coal and steaming fresh manure. The clouds pressed low in the sky, shrouding the jagged points and peaks of the city in wet, misty soot.

The demoiselle slowed yet again. This time when she raised her head, it was to take in the sudden line of trees before her. They had reached the far end of the gardens of the Palais des Tuileries, enclosed by a wall taller than two grown men, the tips of chestnuts and black oaks waving their branches over it like hungry fingers in the night.

She muttered something he couldn't quite hear. It wasn't the first time she'd whispered words to herself, another peculiarity that had snagged his attention away from the pockets of the other nobles who packed the boulevards. It seemed to him that this time she asked herself a question. He watched as she gave a short nod—an answer to herself, no doubt—then strolled on.

The nearest gate to the gardens was yet another half block away; Basile knew it well. It was composed of thick rusty iron bars and a much more formidable new padlock, and sure enough, it was to there that the demoiselle wandered, weaving past a pair of interested army officers without even a sidelong look. The gate was in shadow. She walked close, one gloved hand closing upon a bar, and stood without moving.

Basile drew back to give her space, leaning a shoulder against the nearest lantern pole, glancing around them, considering the moment. It was growing late, and the hordes along the Quai were finally beginning to thin. A trio of merchants clacking their walking sticks strode past, arguing about cards and a woman named Ariane. From the other direction two sedan-chair men huffed along more slowly, cheeks and jowls flushed, the tall black lacquered wood of the box gripped between them beginning to bead with the moisture of the night.

A face peered back at him from beyond the window; kohled eyes, pasty flat skin; the lace curtain was quickly dropped.

When Basile looked again to the demoiselle, she was gone. The gate swung open, very gently, upon its hinges.

He straightened in surprise, then quickly looked around once more. But she hadn't continued down the Quai, and she hadn't retreated back toward him.

The gate still hung agape, a clear invitation.

So Basile accepted it. When he was near enough he discovered that the lock had been broken somehow, the bolt completely bent free of the base. The entire contraption had been dropped to the dirt just inside the gate. Very strange. The girl must have noticed the same thing and let her curiosity—or those voices in her mind—lead her into the gardens.

He'd been here before, of course. He knew all the best dark places of the city. The gardens of the old palace were officially forbidden to the common people who swarmed the streets surrounding them, but thrice a year the gates were opened for parades, and even the lowest of the city filth was allowed a visit inside.

Basile's mouth twisted into a smile. Vive le Roi.

The place was enormous, acres and acres of fountains and statues and hedges and trees. He'd lose her if he didn't hurry, so he stepped inside, melting at once into the gloom.

There were no torches lit along the neat rows of chestnuts and gravel before him, but he could nearly make them out anyway, the heavy black strings of trunks, the paler paths of crushed rock raked between them. He couldn't see the abandoned palace from here, not even a hint of the roof. There were no torches for it, either.

He stopped to listen. Trees creaking, almost no wind. The city past the walls strident enough, but quiet inside here, an unnatural hush. There would be insects at least, he thought, but heard none.

However—he did hear footsteps. Up ahead, to the right. Light, uneven.

He followed her as silently as he could, and that was very silently indeed.

One of the reflecting pools shone like a flat pewter disc through the nearest break in the trees. Basile found his gaze flicking to it again and again as he stole carefully forward, his eyes repeatedly drawn to that sole slick of light. He avoided a drift of withered leaves by a bench only at the last second, and just as he was inwardly cursing himself, dancing sideways to save himself from that one fateful loud step, a hand closed hard around his throat.

In front of him. And there was no one there.

He brought up both his hands to clutch at it. He felt the air squeezed from his larynx, trapped like a bubble tight inside his chest.

He was lifted high, entirely off the ground. His feet kicked out and met resistance: cloth, a great deal of it, like the skirts and petticoats of a gown. Basile rolled his eyes downward. It was a gown, taupe satin. It stood in the path without a body, without support of any kind. He could see clean down inside it. And beyond that, just beyond—a hat and coat against the base of a chestnut, tossed nearly out of view. A single dropped glove, still on the path.

Spots began to color his vision, bright light at last. He tried to cry out but only managed a wheeze; the grip on his throat did not loosen, but his boots hit the gravel again.

Beyond the spots—orange, blue, yellow—there was now a face gazing up at him. A beautiful face, more beautiful than he'd ever seen. A face from a nightmare, perfect and wintry calm, surrounded by locks of silky, silvery white.

"Good evening," said the demoiselle in a stroking voice. "Were you looking for me, sir?"

Basile wheezed some more, and the young woman nodded, serious.

"Perhaps I've been looking for you as well."

She had an accent. The slightest, slightest accent, not local at all—

He gave up clawing at her hand and took a swing at her instead, but she only leaned back, avoiding his fist. Yet her hold did loosen, just a bit, and he was able to suck in a fiery raw breath. The spots began to pop and fade.

The woman's eyes were absolutely black. The pupils and irises both, and then more, all of her eye, both of them, all black and shining and liquid like the pool, but infinitely, ominously more deep ...

Basile wet himself. He couldn't stop it. He felt the warmth trickle down his leg to his boot.

Voices. There were voices all around them, words he didn't understand, foreign words, English perhaps, and then words he knew: exchanges from earlier tonight, Nadette with the baby in her arms, shrilling don't come home without livres, Emile hailing him from across rue St.-Honore,come on, some wine, a little billiards, good fun, we'll find that girl at Cafe Caveau, she likes me you know—

"No," said the demoiselle abruptly, and dropped him to the ground. "You're not the one I want,

after all."

Basile had crumpled to a heap at her feet, but only for a second. As soon as he was able, he scrambled away from her, gasping and staring, his fingers gouging deep into the gravel. The woman gazed down at him without expression.

No, not a woman,he thought frantically, over and over,not a woman, not a woman, a demon, a monster—

"Still," she continued, sounding thoughtful, "it's not good for your soul to steal, is it? That is what you were planning. I think, Basile Cote, it's time for you to find a more laudable profession."

She walked away from him, moving nimbly now to the coat and hat she'd discarded before, gathering them into her arms, finding the lost glove too. She threw him a final glance from over her shoulder.

"Perhaps I'll be watching to see what you're up to, Basile. You never know."

And the monster walked off through the king's trees.

* * *

The Palais des Tuileries was known throughout certain quarters of Paris as the Grand Squander. It had been a royal residence once upon a time, but that was nearly a century past, and today it was merely an elaborate, empty reminder that the aristocracy could waste anything they wished, even a palace. The king and queen and their courtiers resided just outside the city in sparkling Versailles; Tuileries, with its vast drafty chambers and dim, dark-paneled hallways, was considered old-fashioned and unnecessarily dreary.

It was very nearly vacant. There were a few retainers still living on the lower level, along with a handful of retired court officials who no doubt felt the sting of their banishment very sharply. Royal soldiers still patrolled the grounds, but it was monotonous, tedious work, and more time was spent furtively hunched over dice than actually walking about. After all, who would want to break in? The most lively occupants of both the gardens and the palace were the rats.

Curiously enough, however, the rats were hard to find lately. They had fled, in droves, in the pit of the night not quite one week before, along with all the ravens that had been roosting in the trees and the wild geese and ducks nesting in the grasses. And the mice from the stables. And the colony of rabbits that had dug generations of warrens beneath the western amphitheatre and its verdant slopes.

There were no animals of any kind left in Tuileries, in fact, except for two. One were the humans.

The other was creeping softly up the servants' staircase in the far southern segment of the left wing of the palace. The stairs were dusty, remarkably so, but there were no windows to illuminate the flight, and thus no easy way for anyone else to see her footprints. Still, she carried her shoes in one hand, hitching up her skirts and coat with the other, careful with the hems.

The silver-haired demoiselle emerged cautiously from the doorway that opened to the uppermost floor, easing around it soundlessly, although she knew the corridor before her was deserted. The entire wing, in fact, from top to bottom, was deserted; it was the main reason she had chosen this place.

The lack of human distraction.

Her eyes closed a moment; she tested the area, inhaling deeply, drawing the air over her tongue, using every sense she could, just to be certain .

No. No people. Only dust, and her.

With the skies so overcast there was no moonlight to reflect off the walls and mottled green tiles of the long hall ahead of her, but that was fine. Zoe knew her way by now. Her feet in their stockings padded without noise along the marble. There had been a runner here once, but it had been removed, along with all the paintings and pedestals and even the chandeliers. No one, however, had bothered to strip the coved ceiling of its frescoes of hunters and horses and golden-crowned kings. There was even a panel of a dragon—dead on its back, with a knight standing over it and a sword angled through its neck.

Zoe didn't bother to glance up at it as she passed. She kept her gaze on the center tiles that stretched before her in a straight pale arrow, smoother and cleaner than everything else.

They led her to the fifth doorway on her right, the painted black-and-gray door, closed as she had left it. As all of them here were.

The hinges did not squeak. She had ensured that after her first night.

The apartment she'd chosen was cold, almost colder than the open night beyond its windows. She kept the heavy velvet curtains pulled shut across them, not just to keep in whatever heat she herself managed to generate—obviously she couldn't light a fire, even if the chimney would draw—but also to conceal the set of candles and the oil lamp tucked away in the bedchamber, her sole means of light.

The curtains had faded from maroon to reddish pink and reeked of old smoke, and there were moth holes cratering the trim, but they functioned well enough. On her second night here she'd left a candle burning and then slipped outside, and she hadn't been able to detect even a tiny glow from the gardens below.

Although the majority of the palace had been divested of its finery, this suite was still furnished, perhaps because it was not so elegant as some of the rest—or perhaps because the massive antique gilt bed squatting in the bedchamber and cracked walnut mirror across from it were too cumbersome to move. Even she had a hard time shifting the mirror to where she wanted it, and that was saying something.

The bed, however, dominated the room. It was heavily carved into a profusion of scrolls and garlands and swirling vines; the canopy supported a silk tapestry cover and drapes—also with moth holes—featuring woven roses still so purple and fat and lavishly petaled they seemed ready to drip from the folds. The gilt was curling away from the wood around most of the edging; she crossed to one of the posts and pressed a thumbnail beneath a loosened flake, lifting it free.

The gold warmed her nail like a tiny, tiny sliver of a summer day, sending heat down into the bones of her hand. Zoe let out a sigh and the flake floated away, zigzagging down to the bare maple floor.

There had been no bedding left, but that was easily remedied. Chests of linens and coverlets were scattered throughout the occupied apartments at the far other end of the palace; she reckoned no one would miss a sheet here, a blanket there. The plain covers looked oddly out of place against the succulent colors of the rest of the suite, but they were comfortable, and that was all that mattered to her. She sank to the edge of the mattress and studied the mirror from the corner of her eye.

It had been removed from its hooks to lie propped against the crimson-papered wall, an angled tilt that caught the ceiling in its reflection, the nearest window with its curtains, three-quarters of the bed, and her. The crack had splintered the enormous square of glass into two nearly equal halves: on one side, shadow Zoe and the shadow chamber, a pale figure of a woman against a ruddy gloom, the faint foxing of spots near her shoulder trailing down in a curve to the frame.

In the other half, the room—bed and curtains and woman and all—had vanished.

The other half showed her the deep blue darkness. The cloak, and the ghosts within it, their edges smoking and writhing. Waiting. None of them crossed over to the normal side of the mirror; it was as if that shining, uneven crack was a mighty river they could not breach. The blue darkness dissolved upon its edge.

This Gift, whatever it was, was growing stronger. She didn't know why she saw ghosts in glass now, the cloak manifest. She didn't know why it was becoming easier and easier to draw the blue void of it near to her, to hear the whisperings from inside it. To use it to capture the thoughts of the living.

Perhaps it was Paris, or her, or both. Perhaps she was doomed never to dwell in true silence again.

Her eyes cut away. She didn't want to see it now, any of it. She didn't want to feel the lost souls caught in that blue. She'd been out all day, and now all she wanted was to sleep. If she'd had an extra blanket, even another sheet, she would have tossed it over the glass, but she needed what she had.

Tomorrow, then. Tomorrow she'd borrow another blanket.

Zoe stood and walked to the closet where she'd hidden her valise, and began to undress.

From the mirror lifted the voices, pleading, soft and indistinct. She bowed her head to watch her hands, frowning, focused on loosening her bodice. Without turning around, she murmured, "Not now. I'll try again tomorrow."

But she knew they wouldn't really quiet. They seldom did.

Once properly in her nightgown she bent down, scooped out a handful of jewelry from the valise, and went back to the bed.

She sat again upon its edge and began, piece by piece, to adorn herself for the night.

The choker of diamonds and topaz, strands of stones three bands wide.

The earrings of gold and coral. A bracelet of emeralds, and one purely of diamonds. Three bangles of gold.

A ring for every finger, gold, gold, gold. Even a pair of anklets, opals that sparked green and blue and pink from their milky depths.

When it was done, she blew out the candle. She inched down between the chilly sheets and closed her eyes again, this time letting the metal slowly warm her entire being, her mind drifting with the songs of the stones, drowning Paris, drowning her, until at last she could sleep.

But the ghosts in the glass never ceased watching. They glided back and forth and back, drawn by the living radiance of the dragon who was their only voice in the Other world, their only eyes and hands and means of vengeance.

She slept with her back to them all night, as if she knew.