Excerpt

The Two Paupers

Chapter One: The Merciful Heist

Analise Field did not steal the statue because it was the most beautiful thing she ever saw. (Though it was.)

She did not steal it because she was angry at its maker, and wanted to exact an awesome—a fearsome—a, frankly, mythopoeic—vengeance upon him for any number of recent slights. (Though she was.)

She did not steal it for the thrill, or the pleasure, or the danger, or even because she wanted to keep it for her own. (Though she did.)

No. Ana stole the statue to save its life.

If she had not, Gideon Alderwood would have destroyed it like he had all the others.

She could not let that happen.

Not when it opened its eyes and looked at her like that.

* * *

Gideon stared at the space where the statue had been. He stared, but the empty plinth remained empty, and the sight of it was like an icy crowbar smashing through his breastbone, prying his ribcage apart, and ripping out the organ it was put there to protect.

On the plinth: a smear of paper clay, like a footprint.

The faucet in the outer hall plinked. That sound had kept him awake for three nights running. It would plink, and he would pace, and as he strode back and forth, back and forth, Gideon would listen as, on the other side of their shared garret wall, Analise Field turned restlessly on that diabolically squeaky mattress of hers. And even though he knew which floorboards to avoid, and how to move soft-footed as a cat, and how heavily Ana slept, he also knew that she would hear him pacing anyway. The walls were that thin.

Sometimes Gideon thought he heard the sound of her eyelids opening in the dark, felt the weight of her glare as it rested on the wall. As she thought of him, and loathed him.

Stopped him mid-stride, thoughts like that.

But the empty plinth? That stopped his heart.

Had the statue walked?

They usually did not move the first day after completion. Not while they were still wet. But they never stayed wet for long. After twenty-four hours, his statues always hardened spontaneously, as if fired from within by some infernal kiln. Gideon might wake to some noise, or turn at some sound, only to find that the plaster surface of his latest statue had become as smooth and cool as an eggshell.

Not long after that—another day or so—and the statue would start quickening.

At first the shifts were subtle. A hand lifted. A chin tilted. Blank pallid eyes opening like holes in space to reveal orbs like the metallic carapaces of fig beetles: black-shining-green. Eyes like exoskeletons. An alien luster that revealed nothing.

It wasn't until they opened their eyes that he destroyed them.

Gideon thought he could just about bear them if they stopped at movement. If they simply stirred, like Ana in her bed next door. Slightly, in their sleep.

He would have spared them the hammer if only they did not look at him.

Plink. Plink. Plink.

No. It was too soon. The newest statue could not have walked yet. It had not been a full day since he had smoothed the last lines. The curve of the ear, the high forehead, the careless loops of hair. Not a day since he had washed the paper clay from his hands.

That left only…

Plink. Plink. Plink.

It was past midnight. But no one stirred next door.

"Analise Field," Gideon Alderwood whispered. "Godsdamnit."

* * *