Daughter of Smoke & Bone

In Loramendi, Chiro’s family, of the desert Sab race, had been chosen to foster her chiefly because, being winged, they could keep up with her. She and Chiro had grown up side by side, as good as sisters in all but blood.

Chiro’s haunches were cat, caracal to be precise, and when she melted to a crouch beside Madrigal, her pose was sphinxlike. “For the ball,” she said, “I would hope that you would aspire to shining cleanliness.”

Madrigal sighed. “The ball.”

“You did not forget,” said Chiro. “Don’t pretend you did.”

She was right, of course. Madrigal had not forgotten. How could she?

“Up.” Chiro kicked her feet again. “Up up up.”

“Stop it,” muttered Madrigal, staying where she was and halfheartedly kicking back.

Chiro said, “Tell me you’ve at least got a dress and a mask.”

“When would I have gotten a dress and a mask? I’ve only been back from Ezeret for—”

“For a week, which is plenty of time. Honestly, Mad, it’s not like this is just another ball.”

Exactly, Madrigal thought. If it were, she wouldn’t be hiding on the roof, trying to block out the thing that loomed over her, that sent her heartbeat skittering like scorpion-mice whenever she thought of it. She would be getting ready, excited for the biggest festival of the year: the Warlord’s birthday.

“Thiago will be looking at you,” Chiro said, as if it could possibly have slipped her mind.

“Leering, you mean.” Leering, peering, licking his teeth, and waiting for a gesture.

“As you deserve to be leered at. Come on, it’s Thiago. Don’t tell me it doesn’t excite you.”

Did it? The general Thiago—“the White Wolf”—was a force of nature, brilliant and deadly, bane of angels and architect of impossible victories. He was also beautiful, and Madrigal’s flesh was ever unquiet around him, though she couldn’t exactly tell if it was arousal or fear. He had let it be known he was ready to marry again, and who it was he favored: her. His attention made her feel warm and skittish, pliant and inconsequential and at the same time rebellious, as if his overwhelming presence was something that needed to be worked against, lest she lose herself in the grand, consuming shadow of him.

It was left to her to encourage his suit or not. It wasn’t romantic, but she couldn’t say that it wasn’t exhilarating.

Thiago was powerful and as perfectly muscled as a statue, of high-human aspect, with legs that changed at the knees not to antelope legs as her own did, but to the huge padded paws of a wolf, covered in silken white fur. His hair was silken white too, though his face was young, and Madrigal had once glimpsed his chest, through a gap in the curtain of his campaign tent, and knew it, also, was furred white.

She’d been striding past as a steward rushed out, and she’d seen the general being suited in his armor. Flanked by attendants, his arms outstretched in the moment before his leather chestplate was fitted into place, his torso was a stu

“Well, maybe a little excited,” she admitted, and Chiro giggled. The girlish sound struck a false note, and Madrigal thought with a pang that her sister was jealous. It made her more sensible of the honor of being Thiago’s choice. He could have anyone he wanted, and he wanted her.

But did she want him? If she did, truly, wouldn’t it be easy? Wouldn’t she be at the baths already, getting perfumed and oiled and daydreaming of his touch? A small shudder went through her. She told herself it was nerves.

“What do you think he would do if… if I rejected him?” she ventured.

Chiro was scandalized. “Reject him? You must be feverish.” She touched Madrigal’s brow. “Have you eaten today? Are you drunk?”

“Oh, stop,” said Madrigal, pushing Chiro’s hand away. “It’s just… I mean, can you picture, you know… being with him?” When Madrigal pictured it, she imagined Thiago heavy and breathing and… biting; it made her want to back into a corner. But then, she didn’t have much to go on by way of experience; maybe she was simply nervous, and altogether wrong about him.

“Why would I imagine it?” asked Chiro. “It’s not like he’d have me.” There was no detectable bitterness in her voice. If anything, it was a touch too bright.

She meant, of course, her aspect—chimaera races did intermarry, though such unions were restricted by aspect—but there was more to it than that. Even if she were high-human, Chiro would not satisfy Thiago’s other criterion. That one was not a matter of caste. It was his own fetish, and it was Madrigal’s luck—good luck or bad, she hadn’t yet decided—to qualify. Unlike Chiro’s, her own hands were not marked by the hamsas, with all that they signified. She had never awakened on a stone table to the lingering scent of revenant smoke. Her palms were blank.

She was still “pure.”

“It’s such hypocrisy,” she said. “His fetish for purity. He isn’t pure himself! He isn’t even—”

Chiro cut her off. “Yes, well, he’s Thiago, isn’t he? He can be whoever he wants. Unlike some of us.” There was a barb in that, directed at Madrigal, which accomplished what all her kicking had not. Madrigal sat up abruptly.

“Some of us,” she replied, “should learn to appreciate what they have. Brimstone said—”

“Oh, Brimstone said, Brimstone said. Has the almighty Brimstone deigned to give you any advice about Thiago?”

“No,” said Madrigal. “He has not.”

She supposed Brimstone must know that Thiago was courting her, if you could call it that, but he hadn’t brought it up, and she was glad. There was a sanctity in Brimstone’s presence, a purity of purpose possessed by no one else. His every breath was devoted to his work, his brilliant, beautiful, and terrible work. The underground cathedral, the shop with its dust-laden air pervaded by the whispering vibrations of thousands of teeth; not least its tantalizing doorway, and the world to which it led. It was, all of it, a fascination to Madrigal.

She spent as much of her free time with Brimstone as she could get away with. It had taken her years of badgering, but she had actually succeeded in getting him to teach her—a first for him—and she felt far more pride in his trust than she did in Thiago’s lust.

Chiro said, “Well, maybe you should ask him, if you really can’t decide what to do.”

“I’m not going to ask him,” said Madrigal, irritated. “I’ll deal with this myself.”

“Deal with it? Poor you with your problems. Not everyone gets such a chance, Madrigal. To be Thiago’s wife? To trade in leathers for silks, and barracks for a palace, to be safe, to be loved, to have status, to bear children and grow old…” Chiro’s voice was shaking, and Madrigal knew what she was going to say next. She wished she wouldn’t; she was already ashamed. Her problem was no problem at all, not to Chiro, who wore the hamsas.

Chiro, who knew what if felt like to die.

Chiro’s hand went with a flutter to her heart, where a seraph arrow had pierced her in the siege of Kalamet last year, and killed her. She said, “Mad, you have a chance to grow old in the skin you were born in. Some of us have only more death to look forward to. Death, death, and death.”

Madrigal looked at her own bare palms and said, “I know.”

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