Engraved: Book Five of The St. Croix Chronicles (21 page)

Even if it took me to the circus rings itself.

I let the ladies dress me, glad that Ashmore had thought to cover the whole of my body in the darkening slave. Too white-knuckled to tend to my own hair and ornamentation, it was Drusilla who took pity on me and prepared those as well.

In the end, I stood clad in a burgundy corset piped by gold braid, shoulders looped low and studded by the chiming coins. Similar coins decorated my décolletage, and swath of royal blue was all that covered bloomers of a similar shade. The stockings I wore were patterned in twisted shapes I had never seen, and a bustle of burnished gold velvet hung over my backside and jangled with every step.

I looked something between a Naval guard and a burlesque girl—much to my dismay. Drusilla had placed feathers in my hair, but left most down.

A glance into the mirror showed that while I maintained my own carriage, even the darkening salve could not hide the pallor of my skin. A faint green tinge now colored the whole.

Penelope left to prepare her tank, as she was to be a caught mermaid kept in isolation, and Drusilla watched me as I wrapped the blade-studded bandoleer around my chest. It rasped against my bare shoulder.

Her painted mouth quirked. “You a circus girl?”

My hands juddered. “Once,” I whispered.

She nodded. “Got out and came back, eh?”

I had little enough to state but the obvious, so I focused instead on the buckle that eluded me.

She watched for a moment, then brushed my hands away and fastened it with a deft tug. “Look here,” she said. “Just do what you’re told. That’s all you ever need do, you hear me?”

“I hear,” I said, a wan confirmation.

“Good. Stick to it.” She tugged a coin loose from a tangle and gave me a once-over. “There’s boots to match by the door, don’t forget them.”

I wouldn’t. Keeping my soles out of view had only been a trial when I’d struggled with the stockings.

“And if Marceaux comes sniffing around,” she added, “you just remember to be obedient.”

I flinched. “Does he?”

“Why wouldn’t he?” she asked, with such obvious acceptance that my fearful heart ached. “Better us than the younger ones, anyhow. He leaves them alone, long as they pay up.”

“Pay?” I forced my attention to narrow, to settle upon the subject at hand and not what waited outside the door. “Oh, I see,” I added, as though it had just occurred to me. “He sends them out to pick pockets from a busy crowd, doesn’t he?”

Drusilla chuckled, though there was nothing funny about the lines carved beside her mouth. “It’s an old game.”

“Aye,” I agreed. As old as I was. Older, still, I’d wager.

This hardly surprised me, and did not matter to the whole. Hawke was my goal, and he would remain my focus. Once he could shed the Menagerie’s shackles, I’d think about Marceaux.

I took a deep breath. It helped some, as oxygen to a frightened body does. I took another until I no longer felt like retching. I put on the boots indicated, wincing when they proved a touch small, and buttoned the nearly knee-high leather. They were brown, well-worn, and soft in the sole as meant for them what need to feel the texture of the rope or ground they walked on. “Thank you for your help, Drusilla.”

She brushed that off, opening the door for us. “You make it through a fortnight, I’ll ask your name.”

“It’s all right,” I said, gripping my bandoleer with both hands tight. “Bossie’s fine enough for me.”

The man waiting at the end of the corridor held out a blunt hand as we approached. “Boff!” he bellowed.

The man I assumed answered to such an unfortunate moniker peeled from a knot of thick-set, mean-looking footpads and approached with barely concealed impatience. “Let’s go then,” he growled, his thick lower lip wobbling with it.

The hair on my neck prickled.

A sharper glance at the blokes who no doubt acted as security and guarantee against uprising netted me the feeling that they were altogether too unified a grouping. More than men working for a single boss, I recognized between them the often silent signs of brotherhood.

Ferrymen within the walls, as well as without, eh?

If so, that meant more of the sort of men the Bakers had cornered in that alley. Whatever the Veil did to
them
, more than enough at least appeared normal. How far did that mask go?

How many were tainted by Hawke’s azure threads?

My fingers ached around the sash I desperately wanted to use.

Eight blades against the Menagerie guards did not strike me as good odds.

Drusilla walked ahead, beckoning me to follow as the bloke named Boff forged out into the growing dark. A second man met us at the door, and Drusilla said, “I’ll see you after the show.”

It was not a question, but I understood it to be one after all. I could promise no such thing, and though she knew nothing of my plans, she understood that I could not commit.

Only the truly naïve would try.

They stepped out together, apparently on compatible terms as she tucked one hand into the tall bloke’s arm. Boff did not wait for me to muster my courage. “Get on,” he growled.

I had no more choices.

I’d managed all right until I stepped foot into the open air. The hours had passed while I was indoors, forcing me to squint as the alchemical glow of the Chinese paper lanterns replaced the vivacity of lamplight.

Looming from the dark, flames lit the red canvas that was my personal hell until it resembled little more than a palpitating heart across the manicured lawn.

And to think that once I’d considered an above-the-drift soiree the worst event I’d ever attend.

I grit my teeth until the pain drew tears to my eyes and followed the large man across the lawn.

It was difficult enough to come up with a plan when one did not know the lay of the land. I was learning the latter, but I was very much afraid that I’d have no opportunity to plan anything in advance of the moment I acted. What was I
doing
here? What could I possibly hope to prove?

If only I’d been quick enough to take a dram of that flagon.

If only I didn’t feel the need.

I made it all the way across the lawn, hands so tight that my arms throbbed to the elbow. My guard said nothing, I said nothing, and neither did he look back to ascertain my well-being.

Yet when he abruptly turned away from the tent, I made a small sound of bemusement as my feet heisted in turn. He grunted, as though he expected it, and stopped to jerk a broad, flat thumb into the dark, beyond the reach of the lamplight. “Crew gets in anovver way,” he deigned to explain, but left it at that.

My thoughts struggled through the vise fear had closed around my senses, and I raised both hands to slap at my cheeks. The small pain was a bracing edge.

Of course.
The animals Osoba kept in that underground room. It was similar in style to the below-earth room where Maddie Ruth and her crew had maintained various instruments and saw to the repair of others.

I’d wondered if there were others like it, and now I knew.

I followed my impatient handler away from the circus tent—a breath I desperately needed—and into a small, squat structure that was all but hidden in the dark. Comprised of two stark rooms, it surprised me not at all when he tugged aside a curtain to reveal a wide hall with a downward slope.

A man leaning against the wall looked up in surprise, then in weary acknowledgement as he nodded his head to us. He was dark-haired and whiskered, with strong shoulders despite a somewhat advanced age. Overalls stained with the detritus of his station marked him as a workman.

A familiar one.

I couldn’t place it, not with all else filled to bursting in my head, but I nodded back and thought I saw in the set of his mouth a twist of concern.

Did I know him?

Did he recognize me?

Impossible. How could he? My own staff wouldn’t recognize me in this particular disguise.

The echo of the coins dotting my attire jingled as I navigated my way down the tunnel in the handler’s wake. He ducked to avoid bumping his head, and I briefly pondered taking him out here and now—save that he was large enough to give me trouble, and I had no idea when another would pass by.

Too much was left to chance.

Or was I too afraid to act?

The realization came like cold water in my veins. I shuddered, clutched my bandoleer and stared hard at the man’s back as he led me through a twisted hall.

Once upon a time, I’d have seized the opportunity. Was it recklessness that would have seen me make the attempt or fearlessness?

Whatever it was, opium had helped.

“Bollocks,” I whispered.

The echo of it danced along the corridor behind me, earning me no attention from the large cove leading the way. Yet as it faded, a jingling playing counter to my noisy stride began to pepper the air.

A happy sound. An exciting sound. Were I a child—raised as a child should be—I might hear that musical lilt and feel the anticipation of an act, laugh at the business of clowns made to warm the audience. Were I not mired in the terror of knowledge, I might enjoy the organ and the pipes as they played a merry tune.

Bright as the hall we strode through was, it paled in comparison to the vast, underground chamber it led to. My handler stepped inside, barking orders to get out of his way. The music crashed into the hall as though simply waiting for his bulk to stand aside, and it washed over me like a thousand burning knives, driving memories I could not readily claim into my head.

The sweat of anticipation. The cramp of muscles tight with nerves, and the malodorous pong of bodies crammed in tight spaces awaiting the thrill of the audience’s cheer.

The fear of a life weighed on a single knife’s edge.

The first I’d ever seen a corpse, it splattered to the ringside floor.

The knowledge came with a certainty that belied the smoke it surged from.

My knees locked. My chest squeezed until there was no air left. The gaily colored lights dimmed to black, music to a tinny clamor, and all consciousness abandoned me.

Merciful silence reigned.

Chapter Nineteen

When my senses finally returned to me, they came on a slow haze. Limp as I was, I became barely cognizant of a softness beneath me reminiscent of feathers, and a cool bit of cloth upon my brow.

Breathing in was not so easy as it could have been, but much easier after the stays I wore had been loosened. The air thrummed with the roar of a crowd muted by the thickness of the ground between where I lay and the rings that must be overhead—but the music had swelled to an anticipatory crescendo.

Yet my heart did not thud against the cage of stays and straining ribs. My blood slowed sluggish and sweet, and as I took a deep breath, the smoky, floral spice of Chinese tar melted over open flame filled my senses.

I sat up, eyes snapped wide, and clapped a hand over my nose.

Too late.

Small hands caught at my shoulders. Brilliant colors shimmered together, until my senses awakened enough to place the gamine features of the young Flip at my side.

He was dressed in startling crimson and yellow, a jumper fitted like a second skin, and his face was painted with black diamonds and a wide smile, but it was undoubtedly him—healthy and whole, with a lively glitter in his near-black eyes and a furrow formed between fine brows. Strands of his hair clung to his brow, and without thinking of it, I raised a hand that did not tremble to stroke them away.

A tear slipped over my lashes without my acquiescence.

Flip’s brow furrowed deeply, sincere as only a child might be willing to show, and he patted my cheek dry with his callused palm. “There, there, marm,” he coaxed, cheerful for an imp. “All’s well.”

The cloth on my brow began to sag, and I caught it before it dripped its cool water over my costume. Traces of black and blue stained the edges, and I remembered that I was to be a different woman—golden-hued and black-haired.

I lifted a startled gaze to him, but he tucked a finger into his cheek and grinned. “Sommat ‘ere, we got word to watch out.”

“Word?” I blinked, dashing one arm over my eyes and coming away smeared with a bit of kohl. I shuddered. “I need out of this room, Flip. I can’t—The smoke...”

Despite it being too late, the memory of what it had been to shed the opium I’d cloven to was not so kindly buried as those that came before. I remembered the awful sensation of withdrawal, the pain and the fury and the despair, and I feared that now more than I feared anything else.

A sign in itself that the smoke had done its job.

I had no doubt that Marceaux gave it freely to his people. He always had.

Flip caught my flailing hand and steadied me as I rose. “It’s always set t’ burn,” he told me, bracing oddly powerful legs against my tottering weight. “Ringmaster’s orders.”

As I thought. “The stuff’s no good for a growing body, Flip.” A desperate chide, meant as much for me as him.

The kinchin cove shrugged. Before he could say more, the door to the small chamber burst wide, and my small bed—made of a combination of costumes and feathery accouterments—fluttered in the draft. “Shivver’s up,” came the voice of a no-nonsense woman, and I squinted in the brilliant light.

My nerves were certainly calm.

Frustration would come later—no doubt with Ashmore’s care—but for now, I had no other choice but to follow the tide it pulled me in. I gave Flip my back. “Lace me again,” I instructed. Primarily for the speaker who waited.

Flip bent obedient fingers to the task, and I turned my head to whisper, “What’s happening out there?”

He spoke without moving his lips; a neat trick. “Blood’s loose in the ring. Ringmaster’s in a fine snit.”

“Why?”

“Lord only knows it.” A sharp tug and a fine knot cost me a bit of breath, and as I adjusted my breathing, he added, “Veil’s got plans fer punishment, but—”

“That’s enough,” ordered the woman, and her silhouette became a sturdy matron in apron and woolen pants bagged into high boots. She beckoned with a chafed hand, harsh lines carved into her worn face. “Get on, lass.”

I had no more opportunity to prepare. Stepping out of the costume chamber I’d been left to recuperate in felt as though I walked onto a busy rail station platform. The cacophony increased, a roar merged with orchestral violence, and hands in wool and leather darted between reams of rope, gears fitted to devices I had no name for; apparatuses turning, whirring, clunking. It smelled of oil and grease and sweat, all undercut by the flavor of the smoke still on the back of my tongue.

With remarkable poise, I kept up with the woman pulling me between a net of skeins pulled taut. “Where are you taking me?” I called.

Perhaps she did not hear me over the noise.

Without ceremony or further ado, I was guided past the awe-inspiring collection of mechanical creations, down a corridor much less noisy, and into a side room with another collection of ropes anchored into a circular disc inset into the floor. She pushed me onto it, checked a timepiece fastened to a chain about her throat, and snapped, “Don’t fall over.”

It was all the warning I received.

The ropes twanged around me. A thrum began in the wood beneath my feet, and I bottled a shriek of surprise as the floor shuddered.

The woman checked her timepiece again, gave me a sharp look, and then pulled a lever set into the floor on the far side of the disc I wobbled on.

With a groan of gears and triumphant clash of orchestral refrain, the whole lifted. It spun, thanks to the ropes affixed to it in diagonal foundation, and I had barely enough time to take a steadying breath, wipe the bloom of sweat from my brow, before my head crested an opening cut into the floor of the ring I entered.

As entrances figured, I’d seen similar, but never been part of the same.

An eerie smoke covered the ring, parting to allow me through as though accompanying me in a dance. I winced beneath the glaring light of lamps stoked high.

My first glimpse into the interior of the Midnight Menagerie’s circus was one cut by wild color streaming from show globes in every ornate style one could imagine, fitted in gold and brass and stained glass. The fog within did not choke like the drift I had come to know, but spun like gossamer fingers in a shimmering thread, and the music that soared under the straining red sky filled my senses with a keenness I felt had been sorely lacking.

All since I’d given up the tar.

I did not stumble as the disc fitted into place beneath the fog, but reached for the sky as though claiming the adoration of the crowd that clamored.

The smell of the fog was faintly smoky, but under it, a coppery tang.

Blood in the rings.

It was to nobody’s credit that I stood tall that night; the confidence I wore came to me by way of the smoke I’d resolved never to touch again. And yet, for all that, I would never have succeeded without it.

Some fears
are
too great to take on face to face. Whatever else others may think of it, whatever they may say, I would have faltered without it.

This was what it meant to be haunted by weakness.

Marceaux might have been old, but he had lost none of the skill by which he directed. He stood upon a circular platform much like the one I’d ridden to reach the floor, and he no doubt commanded the attention of all who looked upon him. Wearing garish colors of bright yellow, verdigris and vermillion, his waistcoat strained over his belly. He brandished his cane—
heaven help me
, I remembered that cane—to the ring meant to watch.

Mine
. All that he saw was his, and the pride of ownership within that egotistical demeanor had not been earned. Not here. Never here, the pleasure gardens where Hawke had sweated and bled. Where my friends had fought.

I wouldn’t allow it.

Though he towered over me, his smile turning manic beneath his overly lush mustache, I could not mistake the glitter of malice in his eye. His top hat, striped where formality dictated it be solid black, glittered with sequins, and he sparkled and shone.

The part of my mind colored by the smoke thought it a pretty thing to watch.

My throat closed.

Knives. I knew the knives. A few thrown, a few missed, and I’d do my part. The whole of the affair below seemed a busy one, and I wagered it’d be easier to slip away once my role was completed.

First Hawke.
Then
Marceaux.

The purpose of this jaunt was not revenge. I could not be distracted.

“Get to your post,” came the harsh order, delivered with that selfsame smile. None could hear the ringmaster over the noise of the chanting crowd when he pitched it just so, but I did.

The threat implicit behind the gesturing cane forced a shudder.

Had I ever felt that bite? I couldn’t recall; my flesh jumped and twitched as though it had, but perhaps I’d only seen it, watched it.

A caning left terrible scars when done so brutally as to leave wefts deeper than the lash.

I fixed a smile upon my lips, curtsied low to the crowd, who roared a welcome. Putting a bit of extra sashay into my walk, setting the coins jingling and flashing, I strode to the platform indicated by the ringmaster I loathed.

He had not recognized me after all, but what did I expect?

I was not so special as to stand out in a veritable sea of talented bantlings and orphans.

Did I want to be?

No.
Purgatory and posies take it, I had no interest in this life.

When the fog kicked up around my feet, I caught a glimpse of another set edge. I was therefore prepared for the juddering that quickly followed, and made the most of my showing by walking forward onto my hands and holding my legs into the air with a near perfect split.

Cheers accompanied the maneuver, heightened when I pulled my legs once more straight, and bent back as far as the corset would allow.

I had not been dressed for contortion, but the pain the stays carved into my ribs was not so great that I could not complete the backwards walk-over. It was needless, surely, but I’d be dishonest if I claimed not to enjoy the attentions. At least some.

The approval of strangers, all eyes upon one and all but begging for more, could be a heady thing.

Flush with success, I threw my hands to the searing light and forgot for a moment that I was afraid.

That I should have been afraid.

Opium and adrenaline. Why had I ever given it up?

When the ringmaster raised his white-gloved hands, it took some time for the crowd to take note. Lamps around the ring suddenly went dim, leaving him in a colored gloss; leaving me in shadow to pant for breath.

My knees seemed watery, my throat dry. I clutched at my bandoleer and forced my head high.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” roared the monsieur, whose age did not weaken his showmanship. He cavorted on his pedestal, a jester with all the power of a king, and offered his cane in both hands, as though he offered a sword to a lady. Though the whole of the floor seemed to vibrate, I thought I felt a shift beneath the thin soles of my boots. “
Mes amis!
Tonight, you are fortunate to witness a spectacle prepared by our very own hosts
pour vous.
”

A cheer followed, but the monsieur was not ready to give up the attention.

He tucked his cane beneath his arm, a flash of a verdigris lapel as studded gems sparkled and shone, and gestured in my direction. “The gods demand supplication, and tonight, death hovers on a razor’s edge. A little
petite mort
, perchance?” An obscene chuckle. “Blood calls to blood, like to like, and the kiss of the fates may bestow mercy...or hell.” His voice guttered in brilliant presentation, and with both hands now flung wide, he intoned, “Tonight, we give to you the humbling of a beast!”

The show globes lit once more, a wild glitter, and as I lifted my hand to guard my eyes, I suddenly realized that I was no longer alone upon the raised platform.

Fire ringed the stage designated mine, and though each was contained behind glass, the heat washed over me. Sweat poured down my shoulder blades.

A second disc had risen from the fog, a wheel painted in dizzying patterns of red and white and black. It was like any other target used for such knife-work as I was meant to display, but unlike them, it already contained the trick.

A figure, a broad body splayed with arms and legs wide like da Vinci’s
Vitruvian Man
, had been strapped in place, muscles straining against his bonds.

The moment I recognized Micajah Hawke was the moment a hush fell over the audience, a collective indrawn breath, for none could mistake the identity of the collared beast meant to be humbled.

Punishment
, Flip had said. Punishment from the Veil.

So Hawke was the beast to be shamed. In his own circus, no less, supplanted by a bloodthirsty fool.

I froze in that ring as eyes flaring hot and still unnervingly blue pinned me to the floor. The music soared—a wild chorus of danger present and waiting—and I knew without a doubt that he could see through the disguise I wore. He always had. Whether in collector’s guise or a masquerade, whether above or below, he had always known me.

Just as I would never fail to distinguish him from all others.

I dared not call it anything but simple familiarity.

Breeches of taut leather strained over his thighs, the hide stitched deliberately rough, as though he were little more than a barbarian from an uncivilized land. Powerful muscles bunched, flexed as if part of what kept him tied to that target was his own strength.

His hair hung loose, as black as the false color I wore and reminiscent of the blue gleam caught by the show globes painting his flesh in a deeper shade of swarthy gold. The collar at his throat unleashed a surge of overwhelming anger within me;
almost
enough to taint the softness the smoke had allowed.

The expression he gave me was not relief. The flare of his eyes tightened, locked away what little recognition he’d allowed me, until only a sneer remained—a cruel twist given to the rings he had once reigned over as master.

Marceaux could dress as he would, dance and cavort and gesture as he chose, but even compared to a half-naked beast mounted upon a target, he paled.