Tarnished

Tarnished

The St. Croix Chronicles

Karina Cooper

Dedication

For Robert, Kristina, Nathan, Jody and Dan. Thank you for working so hard, thank you for sharing your time and stories and talents with us. And most of all, thank you for being you. . . . For inspiring untold hearts and souls, and along the way, befriending this nobody author with a gleam of an idea in her eye.

Contents

Chapter One

I
was nine years old when I picked my first pocket. A fog shrouds much of my childhood, but I do remember this: that cold spring night, I lifted threepence, a small pocket watch, one embroidered handkerchief, and the torn stub of the gentleman’s circus ticket.

The watch was nothing more than engraved brass and tooled numbers, but I was allowed to keep it. A reminder, not just of what I could do but who I belonged to. Eleven years later, miles from Monsieur Marceaux’s Traveling Curiosity Show, I still carry it with me.

Perhaps that says something about me.

My name is Cherry St. Croix. I am a collector, one of the many who are employed to acquire, kill or investigate for bounties. My rules are simple: I don’t collect children, and I don’t murder for coin. Truth be told, I’ve never killed for any reason.

In the fog-black streets below me, the cobblestones gleamed wetly, painted yellow by one lens of my goggles. The fog crept in silence, dark as pitch and thick as pudding through the damp alley, and it burned with every inhale. Living above the drift as I did, I never developed the tolerance—or, rather more specifically, the lung scarring—to breathe the coal-ridden air.

To combat the choking stench, I’d developed a set of protective goggles and a detachable respirator, which now covered much of my face. The yellow glass comprising one leather-wrapped lens cut a swath through the air clear as any light. Clearer, since on nights like these, the fog bent light like a blinding sheet. I enjoyed unfettered vision.

My quarry was not so lucky.

Allez, hop!
I dropped like a stone from my uneasy perch above the narrow alleyway. With only the faintest clatter of broken grit, I landed behind Mr. Bartholomew Cummings, ready on the balls of my feet, knees bent, balanced with a gloved hand to the damp cobbles in case I needed to move quickly.

He wouldn’t turn. I knew that my boots were soundless, but even had I misjudged the uneven street and stumbled, Cummings was far too deep in his cups to care. He was singing. Or he thought he was singing, but it sounded more like the eager shriek of an alley cat in heat to me. As his ribald shanty bounced from brick to brick around us, I rose to my full height—unimpressive even when at my most confident—and slipped into place behind him.

His wavering, unfortunate falsetto didn’t so much as hitch. Through the yellow glass, I could see that he had no cloth over his mouth, nor any means by which to see in the blasted dark that was as much devil-fog as night. He was probably used to the air, as most of the lower London denizens eventually became. The old barber likely knew the feel of each cobble beneath his thin boots.

It was a shame he didn’t know the feel of trouble the same way.

I’d never met Bartholomew Cummings, but I knew of him in passing. He was a barber, a bit of a peacock when it came right down to it, and a congenial drunk. But the man was also up to his carefully waxed mustache in debt.

The Midnight Menagerie did not forget them what owed money. Many of the bounties I pulled from the collector’s wall came from the Menagerie. They paid well and often, unfortunately for Mr. Cummings.

I winced as his lofty praise of an unnamed foreign woman’s bosom hit an ear-shattering note. Quickly, I withdrew a smooth, wrapped cudgel from my belt. It was the work of moments to wind up and let fly.

The wood connected with the back of my quarry’s capped head. He dropped like a stone, foreign woman’s bosom only half remembered. A thick, gummy silence slammed into place; a dramatic breath, a humming watchfulness.

It wouldn’t last, I knew. More drunkards would stagger by, eager for a bed. Anybody’s bed, for that matter, and the East End prostitutes knew it. Even as I knelt to check that my quarry still breathed, I could sense the eyes around us.

I sighed, shivering. The early autumnal chill leveled over London was only made worse by the damnable fog. Three parts smoke and one part bone-chilling damp from the rotting Thames, it had a way of sinking skeletal fingers into your skin and curling in. I longed for a fire and a hot cup of tea.

I would have settled for my warmest cloak, but I’d left it at home. Such finery wasn’t for this world. Down below the drift, I wasn’t Cherry St. Croix, daughter of a dead madman. I wasn’t the ward of a wealthy guardian or even a well-heeled miss on walkabout.

I wasn’t anyone. Just a collector. Most people didn’t even have a name for me.

I knelt, shaking my head as I sifted through Cummings’s pockets. I could have stolen his jacket. The old brown corduroy was patched through, but the fabric looked sturdy. It was certain to be much warmer than the woolen shirt and high-necked corset I wore now.

Tempted as I was, the contents of his pockets revealed little more than the dog-ended stub of an old cheroot and a half-empty box of matches; not even a shilling to his name. That he’d likely gambled it on a poor hand of cards was only a secondary thought. I should have accosted him coming instead of going.

“Aren’t you fortunate?” I muttered, the respirator muddling my voice to something unrecognizable. Winding my usual braided cord around his wrists, I tied it tightly with complex knots guaranteed to vex even the most patient of souls.

Cummings snored through his gaping mouth. Loudly. Poor bugger.

No matter how cold I was, I had no intention of stealing clothing from a man the Menagerie had claimed. He’d be lucky to escape in the morning with his skin intact, much less the genteel remains of a fraying coat.

My sympathy fled as I thrust my shoulder under his dead weight. A handful of coarse words sprang to my lips.

He was too skinny by half, but a head and then some taller than me. My shoulder strained under his bony weight, feet skittering in the wet road as I struggled to drape him at an angle that wouldn’t send me flying into the gutters.

I liked to think I was stronger than most women my size, but I wasn’t made for heavy lifting.

Still, I’d managed worse, and we weren’t the only pair of “drunks” to be staggering home by light of the flickering gas lamps. My clothing was deliberately designed to let me pass as a man if one wasn’t looking too closely, and most of the inhabitants of Blackwall would think twice before attempting to take on two “men” without greater numbers at hand.

Fair
was not a word used lightly below the drift, if used at all.

Few observers would even consider that I was a woman, and I used this knowledge gleefully. A woman in trousers? Absurd. By the time they saw my specially armored corset wasn’t a waistcoat of any design, it’d be too late.

Although awkward to maneuver my unfortunate friend, we weren’t far from the district where the Menagerie set up shop. Limehouse, so named because of the local lime kilns located by the river, is a very strange kettle of rather interesting fish. The district is known for its rampant immigrant population, practically run from top to bottom by the Chinese who’d taken it over as their own. The Menagerie borders the southern edge of the district, arrayed along the river but miraculously free of the fog that plagued the city.

I’d never understood how. Once, I’d looked for air-moving wheels or devices and found none, and the ringmaster only laughed when I asked.

The rest of London below wasn’t so lucky. Or so clean. The journey from Blackwall and across the Isle of Dogs reeked of rotting fish and musty coal smoke. Cummings was entirely unhelpful, and more than once, I had to pause for breath. Although I sensed more than a trace of interest from the yawning shadows surrounding us on our half-hour journey, no one had tried to halt our meandering procession.

Which was lucky. I didn’t have the energy for a brawl, and lacked entirely the desire to leave my quarry behind. I needed him.

Or rather, I needed his bounty.

One of the unfortunate circumstances of my existence is that although I am considered a wealthy heiress, I am wholly dependent upon a stipend allotted by my guardian every month. Unfortunately, I am a creature of expensive habits and necessity. The tools of science are not cheap. My stipend was nearly gone and I’d another fortnight left before I would be allowed more.

Among other reasons, I collect to supplement a miserly income.

Mr. Cummings would provide enough of a bounty to afford me relative peace for the next fourteen days.

Eventually—finally—we arrived at the tarnished gate that marked my destination. Beyond the fence, the Midnight Menagerie waited.

Years ago, after Vauxhall had lost favor and become instead the preferential haunt of footpads and ruffians, rumors of a new pleasure garden began to circulate. It wasn’t long before the Midnight Menagerie became
de rigueur
for all comers with coin to spend and pleasures to acquire, above or below the drift.

Although the ringmaster of the Menagerie was as English as I, the truth of it was much more complex. The Menagerie was actually run by a mysterious organization known as the Karakash Veil—an enigmatic name for what I was sure amounted simply to a criminal association of Chinese origin.

I wasn’t positive. I’d never met anyone who claimed to be part of the Veil, and rumor suggested no one else ever had, either. No one, perhaps, but Micajah Hawke, the Menagerie’s dark and imposing ringmaster. Him, I’d dealt with. Unfortunately.

The man was a brute, for all his raw polish. And too bloody pleased with himself by half.

I sometimes entertained the thought that he, in fact, was the leader of the Karakash Veil, only masquerading as a servant. But the very name itself, Karakash, had its roots deep in China. It was the name of a river filled from bank to bank with rolling, polished boulders of jade.

Hawke, for all his savvy, didn’t strike me as a man to hide behind a mask. Or a veil.

Arms braced over my shoulder like some awkward dancer, Cummings stirred, moaning something that I’m sure would have been better received by a woman not me. My ears burned, but I set my jaw.

His was not the first advance I’d received in these dark streets, sober or otherwise. Although I’d never taken up with any who’d offered, I doubted it’d be the last time a man tried. In his defense, I assured myself, he was quite gone on—my nose wrinkled as his sour breath wafted through my respirator—gin and the wrapped edge of my cosh. And he had no other recourse but to half lean against my body, which although corseted tightly in place, could not be mistaken for a man’s at such close quarters.

I stiffened as one heavy hand came down on my backside. “I think not,” I gritted through my clenched teeth, shaking strands of black hair away from my face. “Get your hand off—”

The rebuke sizzling on the edge of my tongue died as chimes rippled out through the fog. The jaunty tune seemed almost laughably out of place, and my head snapped up.

It seemed to me as if London—all of London, from the Underground rails to the canals above the drift—lived and breathed by the ruddy Westminster clock. Although the clock face was entirely obscured, towering high over the bank of fog thick as pea soup, the sound reached even the Menagerie.

Was it finally four?

The largest bell, affectionately termed Big Ben by just about all in London anywhere, bonged four slow, baritone notes, and I held my breath.

It hissed out on the fifth bell. “Bloody hell,” I swore. I’d missed the four-o’clock warning. I was late! And given the distance I’d need to cover in a very short amount of time, I’d be later still by the time I made it home.

“Your pardon,” I told the lolling Mr. Cummings, who did not care. I shrugged him off with little grace, and grabbed his lapels to steady him against the gate. Ensuring that his bonds remained in place, I coiled a second length of rope around his waist and through the rusted bars behind him. “I’d walk you farther in,” I told his chapped red cheeks and fluttering parchment eyelids, “but I simply can’t. Be a good sport and remain here.”

He didn’t care what I said. I doubted even that he’d waken completely before the Menagerie groundskeepers found him, but my need to get home on time superseded even my need to get paid.

I had no choice. I’d have to return as soon as I could to collect my bounty. Quickly, I slid a swatch of black cotton from my right boot. It wasn’t nearly as nice as the calling card my chaperone preferred I used above the drift, but it would have to do.

I couldn’t leave Cherry St. Croix’s calling card down here, after all. People would talk.

I grinned as I tucked it into the unconscious man’s front coat pocket, half out to ensure that the ringmaster’s sharp eyes wouldn’t miss it. Micajah Hawke was many things—enigmatic, keen of mind and of razored wit; most decidedly a bastard of the highest order—but he wouldn’t cheat me.

At least, he never had before. That I knew of, anyway. I felt it only prudent to leave a wide margin of error.

As the last echoes of Big Ben’s predawn chastisement rolled away, I sprinted into the fog. Cummings’s snores dogged my steps.

I knew the London streets like I knew my own home, and I deviated from the main thoroughfare as quickly as I dared. I ran through the rat’s maze of alleys and dirty, muck-filled lanes, scolding myself soundly. How could I possibly miss the four-o’clock bell? I
had
to be home before the servants woke for the day.