Daughter of Smoke and Bone - Laini Taylor [80]
Akiva, seeing her distress, wanted to know what was being said; she quickly translated. His look darkened. He stood and moved to the door, glancing out. “Will they come for you here?” he asked. Karou saw the protectiveness in his stance, shoulders hunched and tense, and she realized that in his world, such a threat might be much more dire.
“It’s okay,” she assured him. “It’s not like that. They would just ask questions. Really.” He didn’t move away from the door. “We didn’t break any laws.” She turned to Zuzana and switched to Czech. “It’s not like there’s a law against flying.”
“Yes there is. The law of gravity. The point is that you are looked for.” She shot a glance at the waitress, who was skulking nearby and most certainly eavesdropping. “Isn’t that right?”
The waitress blushed. “I haven’t called anyone,” she was quick to say. “You’re okay to stay here. Do… do you want more tea?”
Zuzana waved her off and told Karou, “You can’t stay here forever, obviously.”
“No.”
“So what’s the plan?”
Plan. Plan. She had a plan, and it was near its fruition. All she had to do now was go. Leave her life here, leave school, her flat, Zuzana, Akiva… No. Akiva was not part of her life. Karou looked at him, watchful in the doorway, ready to protect her, and she tried to imagine walking away from the… placeness… of him, the rightness, the patch of sunlight, the pull. All she had to do was get up and leave. Right?
A moment passed in silence, and Karou’s body did not so much as twitch in response to the idea of leaving.
“The plan,” she said, exerting a massive effort of will and facing up to it. “The plan is to go away.”
Akiva had been looking out the door, and only when he pivoted to face her did she realize she’d spoken in Chimaera, addressing this to him.
“Away? Where?”
“Eretz,” she said, standing up. “I told you. I’m going to find my family.”
Dismay spread over his face as understanding dawned. “You really have a way to get there.”
“I really do.”
“How?”
“There are more portals than just yours.”
“There were. All knowledge of them was lost with the magi. It took me years to find this one—”
“You’re not the only one who knows things, I guess. Though I would rather you showed me the way.”
“Than who?” He was thinking, trying to figure it out, and Karou saw by the flicker of disgust when he did. “The Fallen. That thing. You’re going to that thing.”
“Not if you take me instead.”
“I truly can’t. Karou. The portal is under guard—”
“Well then. Maybe I’ll see you on the other side sometime. Who knows?”
A rustle from his unseen wings sent sparks shivering across the floor. “You can’t go there. There’s no kind of life there, trust me.”
Karou turned away from him and picked up her coat, slipping it on and fanning out her hair, which had a damp mermaid quality to it and lay in coils over her shoulders. She told Zuzana that she was leaving town, and she was fending off her friend’s inevitable queries when Akiva took her elbow.
Gently. “You can’t go with that creature.” His expression was guarded, hard to read. “Not alone. If he knows another portal, I can come with you and make sure you’re safe.”
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