Page 43 of The Salt-Black Tree
Everyone had a fuckin’ opinion.
She’d either lost or laid aside the big woolen peacoat. Nat Drozdova had peeled down to a waffle-weave thermal, long sleeves clinging to her arms and jeans to her legs, her boots bearing traces of desert dust. The buckwheat-honey hair was a wild mop now, curls stubbornly resisting taming by either water or braid, and its highlights gleamed golden. Her wide dark eyes held all the warmth of good fruitful earth in damp spring, butalso the gleam of an ancient stone blade polished to a razorglass edge.
Jasmine, warm plow-furrows, chill rain, and cut grass tinged the exhaust-laden breeze, overpowering the breath of cars and subtle steady stink of mortality.Those who eatwould still come for her, yes—she wasn’t sealed into a divinity’s true force just yet.
But they would have to mass heavily to bring her down, and no few of them would be unmade in the attempt to take this prey. Thezaikawaskotenokanow, and though kitten claws were small, they were also needle-sharp.
The Drozdova halted, the chariot’s headlights limning her with ice. “I didn’t do it on purpose.” Anxious explanation hurried the words; behind it, though, a hint of cold snowmelt over sharp stones warned against mistaking manners for weakness. “One minute I was in the bathroom, the next I was in Los Angeles.”
“Da,Bonney’s house be like that.” He took another perfumed drag, measuring her from boot-toe to tangled hair. Walking into Baba’s office, the morsel made a predator salivate. Now Maschka’s daughter provoked an entirely different—but not unrelated—reaction. “How’s Marisol?”
“She’s nice.” Nat’s hands hung, empty and graceful, but her long graceful fingers, tipped with tender rosiness, were tense. She watched him carefully; adult felines remembered insults given during kittenhood, and they did not often forgive. “Georgia says hello.”
So, hisdevotchkahad visited another grandmother. A busy little girl, indeed. Dima laughed, smoke slipping through his nostrils in two curling jets. “Not likely.” The desert painter had her own idea of courtesy, and it wasn’t passing along gossip.
“Well, she said at least you’re honest about what you are.” The information was accompanied by a single nervous side step, but other than that, Nat held her ground.
“Thatsound more like her.” Dmitri stayed very still. Everyhunter knows when a sudden move, even a twitch, will make a shy creature flee. “So. Here we are.”
“Here we are.” A pained attempt at a smile pressed a sweet little dimple into her right cheek. “The next step is New Orleans. There’s a woman there who hates lies; Baby will find her for me.”
“I know her,devotchka.” Of all the powers to send her to, Georgia was choosing… that one. But Dima Konets knew better than to question a woman who had made up her mind. “Baby?”
Her chariot growled, very softly. Dmitri grinned, taking a last drag and tossing the butt into the deserted road. Either the Drozdova was holding traffic back or this stretch was naturally a wasteland at sunset; either way, it was… pleasant.
“I have the arcana,” Nat continued. “The only thing left is the Heart. I haven’t forgotten.”
Neither had he. “Gonna take it to Baba, then? Or to your hungry mamma?” He took care not to make the words mocking; even a thief could ask an honest question once in a while. The third, the biggest query of all, left his mouth in a singsong. “What on earth will my good littledevotchkado?”
“I thought I’d offer you a ride.” One slim shoulder lifted, dropped; her hands spread a little. “You drove me across half the continent. It seems only fair.”
She was, after all, so very young. Two mortal decades were nothing. He’d probably slept—or whatever sanity-saving simulacrum of mortal rest passed for slumber among divinities—longer than she’d been alive. “You think anything about this gonna be fair?”
“It would be nice if it could be, don’t you think?” Thezaikawho entered Baba’s office a few days ago would have asked it anxiously, braced for sudden displeasure. This woman simply regarded him across a few tense feet of Texas gravel, earnest and quiet.
“I think you gonna end up hurt.” Another truth. Why not?He had the rest of his endless existence to lie, in whatever direction he chose.
A few bits of honesty wouldn’t matter in the face of that avalanche.
“Not that it matters.” Painful openness, a shadow of agony in her dark gaze. “Both you and my mother want to kill me.”
So she had accepted at least one unpalatable truth. How long had the knowledge been sitting behind those big, solemn eyes? He could have pointed outI promised to repay the one who stole it,but for some reason, the simple observation lodged in his throat. So Dmitri Konets shifted his gaze over hisdevotchka’s shoulder, staring at the sinking sun, already half-swallowed by a planetary rim.
He’d never thought about how much he hated this chunk of rock whirling through space. There was no such thing ashome,only larger and larger prisons.
Would she ever realize as much? Somewhere else in the universe was another planet with springtime, and maybe even mortals to create strange divinities of their own. It was mathematically possible, philosophically probable, but an utterly useless, not to mention unprofitable, line of thought.
“So you can either ride with me, or follow.” The young Drozdova retreated another single, restless step, taking the tinge of warm perfume with her. “Your choice.”
“What if I want to drive you?” He hurried to add a codicil, for once. “Like gentleman.”
Nat folded her arms, her chin lifting. “Gentlemen takenofor an answer.”
“They all idiots.”
“Maybe.” Clearly done, she retreated another step, not bothering to look down to place her foot. Only the barest sliver of the sun remained, but bright-dyed scarves still burned above its crown, a drowning man’s last desperate wave. “I’ll see you there, then.”
“You think I just leave my car here?” Dima’s baretooth grin was full of final bloody sundeath, but she still looked steadily at him. “And smoke in yours? Lots of smoking.”
