Transmuted

by Karina Cooper

  Hawke was neither trussed up nor caged, but seated at a table piled with things. Bits and bobs, some shining under the lights affixed to the walls and some coated with grime. I saw jewelry mixed with scraps of iron, pouches bulging and the balled-up remains of fine silk items— underclothes, I realized.

  This was not the scene I’d expected.

  As we all stepped into the chamber, its walls lined with blocks of stone and lit by a large number of lamps, Hawke’s eyes sought me as though hungry for proof of my well-being.

  Yet when he found me behind the bear of the leader, his expression darkened.

  Even that, perhaps, was too small a descriptor for it. It blackened, a ferocity carved within the sculpted lines of an already savage countenance.

  “Damn,” Ashmore muttered. “Your face—”

  I could not respond direct; not if I cared to keep the whole of my attention on Hawke, who had become—in my estimation and Uriah’s, no doubt—the clearest of dangers.

  Uriah stepped aside as Hawke unfolded from the rather well-appointed chair. As if he’d known the focus of Hawke’s fury—or at least its catalyst.

  It was me Hawke reached for; my chin he caught in hard fingers and tipped to the light.

  Possessiveness was a thing I had always marked in him, and this burned bright as the sun as he scrutinized my face. His mouth twisted into something short a baring of teeth. “Who dared?”

  Left exposed to the lamplight, I could only blink up at him in bemusement. “What is wrong with you?”

  This did not bear the burden of honesty. There was much wrong with him, wrong with us both, and neither of us had the time to get into it then.

  Ashmore pulled out a seat, settling into it with a great deal more nonchalance than I was accustomed to seeing from him. “No one of any mention,” he replied to Hawke’s initial demand. “We’ll get ours on the way back.”

  I was rather tired of feeling like an extra in Ashmore’s little spectacle.

  I tapped Hawke on the wrist. “If you’re done.”

  The long, pitch-dark fan of his lashes lowered, following the trace of his stare as it touched my cheek. Then my lips. The dull ache in my head, muted now that I’d grown used to it, throbbed in my cheek as Hawke pressed the wide pad of his thumb against my face.

  I sucked in a breath, would have jerked but for the grip he maintained on my chin.

  That hurt.

  My gaze dropped to the offending hand.

  Blood stood out upon his darker skin, almost black but for the catch of the light around us.

  I must have netted a bit of a scrape when the warden had delivered his parting blow.

  When Hawke’s stare lifted to Uriah, the man made no excuses. “Your price?” he asked. A shudder trembled just beneath Hawke’s skin. “His life.”

  “Not for a tap to the face,” Uriah scoffed. “Be serious.”

  Were they…?

  I stared at Hawke, whose nostrils had flared again in a telltale sign of senses engaged. He paid me no mind at all, but the ache his fingertips caused in my chin was beginning to outweigh the pain of my split cheek.

  “Blood price,” Hawke shot back.

  “How much?”

  They were. They were haggling over me. I pushed Hawke’s hand away, swatted at it again when he made as though to recapture my face for his display. “This is ridiculous,” I snapped. “Leave off.”

  Ashmore leaned back in his chair, one arm folded over his chest, the other hand muffling what I suspected was a smile.

  I’d find no help there.

  “There’s no blood price here,” I said with sharp dismissal. “I’m a collector. I get into scuffles. Anyone who don’t like it, leave.”

  I turned my back on Hawke, but only to pull for myself a chair. I sat without courtesy.

  Though I was well aware of implacable Hawke and the barrel-chested Uriah eye to eye over my head, I did not give either the courtesy of any further attention. Nor of deciding my price for me.

  If I were that bent over a few scratches, I’d be a terrible collector.

  And Hawke would simply have to settle with that himself.

  Ashmore tapped the table. “You heard her,” he began, only to click his teeth together when I snapped my fingers at him twice—close enough that the air from the sharp gesture dusted his nose.

  “None of that, either,” I cut in. I didn’t need one man to stand for me between two more.

  The rumble behind my chair was not Hawke, as I’d feared, but the beginnings of a slow avalanche of laughter. I allowed it without comment, surveying the various treasures, pinched from all manner of sources. I had, I admit, hoped for tea, but beggars weren’t like to be choosers.

  The leader’s laughter did not abate.

  In a fit of irritated pique, I turned in my chair to glower at him. Uriah had worked up a full head of uproarious steam.

  With uncharacteristic tractability, Hawke returned to his chair.

  I did not miss the silent glance Ashmore favored him.

  I’d just managed something of a feat, but what?

  In all my experience with the Underground, I’d never heard of a King of Thieves, an Emperor of Earnings, or any other such claptrap. More like, we’d stumbled upon a passel of them what had enough strength and wealth to pass for the law in this district.

  The mystery of the badges was solved, at least.

  Ashmore’s relationship with them was yet to be uncovered, but they had not murdered us outright.

  As Uriah circled the table and claimed another chair, his laughter dwindled to fits and starts. “Well played,” he assured me. “Well played, indeed. Ashmore, you bastard.”

  A pouch sailed across the table.

  Ashmore caught it in one hand. It clinked.

  A bit more of the mystery unveiled itself. I directed my ire at Uriah first. “Wagering on my capability?”

  “Something like that.”

  Ashmore secreted the pouch about his person, then flicked his wrist in a gesture far more cavalier than suited him. “If you’d let any one of us set a price on you,” he explained, smiling in a lopsided manner that lacked all apology, “you’d be worth exactly that.”

  My ire flicked to Hawke. “Oh, really.”

  That possession I’d noted in him, that gleam of hunger that never wholly flickered out, simmered just under the façade of his indifference.

  Was it me he did not trust with my value, or himself?

  “And now that I’ve declared myself virtually priceless?” I asked.

  “Good try, Miss Black,” Uriah replied with great seriousness. It was as if the laughter of moments before had never happened. “Your skills lift your price, and collectors what aren’t independent aren’t worth much.”

  “We’re guided by our bounties,” I noted. “A price of sorts.”

  “And by the kinship that keeps you lot honest.” He drew out the final word with a mild sense of sardonicism. “But don’t trick yourself, girl. Morals or other, you isn’t priceless.”

  Hawke flattened a hand atop the table. Nothing more, and yet, he may as well have pounded it for all the focus such a mild gesture brought. “That,” he said simply, “is where you are wrong.”

  Warmth pooled in my belly. Swelled to my chest.

  I dared not look at him.

  Uriah had no such qualms, but whatever he saw in Hawke’s face, it caused him to study mine with raised eyebrows. “Ah. My sympathies.”

  I ignored them for what they were worth—a bit of sarcastic amusement at my expense.

  “Come,” he said without waiting for response. That he said it as one might to a dog rankled, even after I realized it wasn’t to me.

  The woman I’d all but forgotten in the subsequent foolishness of place and price now peeled away from the edges of the room.

  I did not jump, but I did cease all attentions on aught but her.

  That I had overlooked her presence was a thing I did not like. Such a lack of follow through might have w
ell cost me my aching head.

  She came to stand in a frame of light, black caught in gold, and did not bow her head nor bend in any way. She simply waited, as though she had all the time in the world and understood that we did not.

  This was all very theatrical.

  I had precious little patience for it.

  I turned in my chair to pin her with a stare of unforgiving demand. “Reveal yourself, then.”

  To my surprise, for I had little enough sway over most of the Chinese servants I’d ever met, she obeyed. A gloved hand reached under the edge of the wrappings ’round her face, and she pulled the whole off.

  A long tail of black hair spilled from the interior, straight and glossy. Her cheekbones were high, her mouth full and settled into a patient line. Though she was plain by any standards, she had precious little eyebrows to speak of, and this gave her tilted eyes more prominence.

  That I did, after all, recognize her proved the final of the surprises I cared to endure.

  I found my feet with alacrity. “You!”

  The girl who had once faced down the spokesmen for the Veil, who had led me to Hawke’s prison and then rescued me from the Veil’s own attempts at vengeance, now bent in greeting.

  “Good evening.” Her heavily accented English was delivered with care. Her gaze, steady and calm, fell upon Hawke. “If you would be so kind, wūshì.”

  An interesting choice. She marked him as the sorcerer of the Veil’s employ, a man of power. He had, whilst in the Veil’s good graces, been what they called a whip—them with authority to see to the rest.

  The hierarchy had always been somewhat muddled to me. However, I understood that Hawke had been something of an outlier; even as a whip, he had authority over the other whips, and answered only to the Veil.

  The Chinese servants had treated him with courtesy, though I thought that Hawke was still forced to obey them.

  That this girl, who was not wholly servant, turned her attentions upon him did not feel right within me.

  I might have called it simple jealousy, but I preferred to consider her a matter of concern; worth watching, for her secrets numbered among the many, and I did not trust her.

  While there were many words to describe the raw power of the man that had once been ringmaster of the Menagerie, kind was not easily one. That she chose to call him this smacked of the veiled irony that the Karakash Veil’s anonymous spokesman enjoyed.

  The stillness that gripped Hawke now was not the same as that marble immobility he had displayed before. This was the highly anticipatory stasis of a predator just before pouncing; the trembling I’d noted thrust below his much-vaunted control all but painted the air in palpable waves of disharmony.

  His lips peeled back from his teeth. The Chinese word he growled was unfamiliar to me, and it very much was a growl in every sense.

  Cautiously, the girl I’d thought a servant spread her empty hands wide. Unarmed, though I had little doubt she could pull her blade within a heartbeat.

  Would it be quick enough to avoid Hawke’s fury?

  That, I didn’t know.

  I stepped in front of Hawke, my back to him—unarmed and utterly at the mercy of whatever he might do next. That I lifted a hand to the side as though to catch him should he move struck me only after I’d noted it.

  Well, what was good for the goose was certainly fit for the gander. If he didn’t like it, he could shove off.

  I was through playing the meek observer.

  “You’d best start explaining matters,” I informed her. “Immediately.”

  Chapter Twelve

  “My name is Ma Zhànzhàn.” She stood between Ashmore and Uriah, neglecting a seat at the table. The effort was not one of deference, I suspected. It seemed a deliberate choice, born of a desire to watch me as she obeyed my directive.

  Her gaze, always clear and without hesitation, lacked all modesty of a servant. That I’d named her as such came from her own machinations.

  The first I’d met her, she’d been dressed like a simple Chinese slave in the Veil’s employ, and assisted in the Veil’s demand for retribution. It must h ave been a method by which she could get close to me.

  Since then, I had come to question her loyalties—and her true face.

  Had I known then her false face, would I have taken action?

  I had been quite soused on the Chinese tar the Veil peddled in those days.

  Her brow remained smooth, hands hidden in the belllike sleeves of her tunic. “I am the first sister of Ma Lài, born—” She hesitated.

  Here, her faint, almost invisible eyebrows furrowed.

  When she spoke a word—it sounded as ee-loo-ong to my ear—Ashmore offered, “Twins. She is the elder of twins of differing sex.”

  “Twins,” she repeated, and nodded with a firmness that suggested she would work to commit this to memory. Then, she spoke a stream of her quick, tonally high language.

  Ashmore returned a question or two, for he knew the tongue I had once thought of as merely gibberish.

  Then again, so did Hawke. Unlike Ashmore, I had never heard him pitch his voice in the higher range in order to converse.

  I glanced sidelong at Hawke as Ashmore exchanged what seemed to be a series of questions and answers.

  The mask he pulled firmly into place was one I had long been familiar with. That I now knew that implacable regard to bottle a savage ferocity behind it lent a great deal of concern to my scrutiny.

  I noted with interest that the Chinese girl did not look upon Hawke directly. Refuting a challenge, perhaps? Or was it something more complex?

  Ashmore slipped in the dialogue, lapsing into a startled, “What?”

  When she nodded—I assumed as emphasis to whatever it was Ashmore inquired of—her gaze turned to me. Weighing more than waiting.

  Ashmore’s hand lifted to his jaw, rubbing at it in deep-seated exasperation.

  “What?” I demanded. “What is it?”

  Uriah, whose demeanor did not tell me one way or another what he understood of that rapid exchange, sat back in his chair.

  The girl did not move—and well I recognized her stance. Often, I had seen the Veil’s servants adopt such a position. It would allow for quick mobilization, should the need arise. A simple flex, and the balance of one’s body would shift to the front of the feet.

  That she could fight the same as they had been made abundantly clear. What had she lost in the terms of the wager?

  The hand Hawke rested upon the table clenched.

  Whatever had just been revealed, it bothered my companions.

  “Miss Shan,” I began, but she frowned so suddenly that I paused. “Am I incorrect?”

  “Twice over,” Ashmore murmured. “Pardon us,” he added to the girl. She inclined her head; permission or acknowledgement, I couldn’t be sure.

  I barely held back a sound of irritation.

  “Her given name is Zhànzhàn,” he corrected, “with the first consonant of the French Jacque.”

  This language would be the death of my tongue. “My apologies,” I said stiffly. “Why is her given name after her surname?”

  “Cultural importance,” my tutor replied. “We can talk about this at length another time, but know that for all intents and purposes, you would know her as Miss Zhànzhàn Ma, sister of Mr. Lài Ma.”

  Then why switch them at all? I did not say it aloud, but I labored to commit this to my own memory. “Would I call you Miss Ma, then?” I asked her.

  She blinked once.

  Hawke’s breath hissed out. “There’s no need for courtesy here. Her honor has been bargained away.”

  This earned a ripple of varying surprise from all but the girl in question. And, I noted, Uriah—the obvious recipient of such a bargain.

  “Sold?” I queried, drawing out the word to indicate exactly how frayed my patience had worn. “By your brother?”

  “Do not mistake it for slavery,” Ashmore said when she seemed to struggle with the concept of what I asked. �
�It is the same and different. There is much to learn about the Chinese, and more to learn of Zhànzhàn’s family, but now is not the time.”

  That Ashmore was apparently given leave to speak informally of her did not escape me.

  However, my tutor was right. “Then tell only what needs to be known,” I said, shearing through the useless dross with sharp command. I leaned on the table, hands spread upon it, and faced her with all the comportment this mystery allowed me.

  I was drowning in the tangled skeins of whatever secrets filled this hall. I did not like the feeling.

  Ashmore knew more than I, Hawke was not talking, and Uriah watched us all as though we were the most fascinating of actors.

  And all the while, a priceless diamond vanished into the markets I had been detained from.

  It wasn’t kind, nor was it entirely fair of me, but I pinned all my antagonized irritation upon Ma Zhànzhàn.

  “Now,” I added softly.

  Her full mouth curved up at the sides. A modest smile. This time, when she bent her waist at me, I was seized with the feeling that it was sincere.

  Respect?

  She would not soften me so easily.

  “With my virtuous father and intelligent brother,” she said, choosing her English with care, “the humble garden called the Midnight Menagerie came to be.”

  That seemed clear enough. It also marked her as something older than the girl I stubbornly called her.

  Was she Hawke’s age? More or less?

  Wait.

  My back stiffened, taking me off that lean that would so scandalize Fanny. “You?” Then, in a higher range than I’d meant, “You are the Karakash Veil?”

  Her chin dipped.

  “You and—” I had wondered at this myself, but had not committed to the conclusion. So many thoughts, words, invectives tangled together in my mind. I wanted to shout them all, to ask my questions, to leap across that table and seize her by her black tunic and shake her until I could form the things I wanted desperately to say.

  I wanted to do all these things, and yet, I forced myself to stand still, to take a deep breath and turn my accusations upon Hawke.

  Where they bloody belonged.

  “And you were just going to sit here and pretend you knew nothing, weren’t you?”