Transmuted

by Karina Cooper

  I surveyed the path carefully.

  A dark blot marred the mucky stone, all but ground into obscurity by the passage of feet. I plucked it with care, smoothing out the material.

  An edge glowed white in scalloped hem, easily perceived through the lens of my clipped on protectives.

  “Part of Zylphia’s nightclothes,” I said, holding it up to Communion to see. He hunched in these tunnels, wide shoulders rounded and head low.

  He hunkered down into a crouch and took the scrap from me. A quick study, and then he pocketed it, nodding in silence.

  Either she’d tossed herself into a scuffle, earning a bit of torn clothing, or she was leaving clues.

  I surveyed the path before us, maze-like passageways splitting off. The fabric had been closer to the left, and so left we turned.

  The lack of wardens, them placed there by order or badgers looking for tolls in and out, worried me.

  When we came upon another scrap of fabric, it was cleaner; a beacon in the dark.

  Though we hurried, navigating the Underground—especially in unfamiliar territory—was not a quick thing. We walked with care, and occasionally Hawke came back to warn of sunken passages or dead ends.

  By the time we stepped into drier corridors, I was quite unsure where we were.

  At least, until we spilled out of a long passage and found ourselves in a crossroads of a sort, with a multitude of tunnels all leading out in a fan. The trickles of unclean fluids following some made for eerie echoes in the hollow dark.

  Hawke waited at the center of the fan. He balanced easily upon the balls of his feet, crouched upon the damp stone. “There is too much here for me to trace it.”

  Luther lifted the lantern high. It cast golden hue over the wet cobbles, caught in Hawke’s eerie stare once more. That his shoulders twitched, as though he forced back the need to recoil, worried me a touch.

  I approached on what passed for soundless tread when all that one trod through was wet or mucky. “Are you all right?” I murmured, halting before him.

  His teeth gleamed faintly in twisted reveal. “A word, Miss Black.”

  Ever so formal for a filthy hole as this was. I frowned. “What is it?”

  When his hand lashed out, caught my wrist in iron grip, I jumped, but did not scream. I trusted Hawke more than that.

  Though I recalled all too easily the harm those hands could inflict.

  He tugged me closer, down into a crouch, and held me there to lower his face to mine. “I am approaching the end of my endurance.” A simple statement. A hard one.

  I did not understand. “Are you wounded?”

  “In spirit,” he said flatly, surprising me again.

  I would never have expected Hawke to admit to weakness as this.

  But then, I had not often expected him to trust me so.

  Was this because he swore to be mine?

  The fingers at my wrist tightened painfully. “Pay close attention,” he said, his deep voice lowered into that implacable regard he so often delivered me. “Ma Lài is not the source of this sickness within me, but he knows well the flow of qì. In my state—”

  I leaned forward, bracing my free hand on his thigh for support. The muscle was flexed to hold him steady, rock hard under my palm.

  That it earned me a suddenly indrawn breath was a matter best turned aside for the moment.

  “Are you,” I said fiercely, low for all I cut off his words entirely, “telling me that you will fall prey to him?”

  Because the Bakers remained far enough back to afford what little measure of privacy could be granted in such dark confines, I could not wholly see the details of Hawke’s expression. I knew that his features were set, that his eyes were difficult to see behind the implacable wall he forged within them.

  That the muscle in his cheek leapt in fractured patience.

  Hawke’s face turned a fraction away. “I have,” he said with great care, and notable strain, “restrained myself for you. I have chained the thing within me and pretended that I did not crave the taste of pain upon your lips.”

  A shudder pulled low in my body—pain and pleasure, an art Hawke knew all too well.

  “I have sat at your table,” he said fiercely, “and behaved as though I did not wish to see your family tattered and bleeding, but this curse will only get stronger when the blood flows tonight.”

  “Bollocks.” His head jerked as though the word smacked him direct, his gaze pinned mine—though I could not see what filled them with the light caught within. I took a leaf from his own book, ignoring the ache his fingers forced in the bones of my wrist to seize his chin in my fingers and hold it tight.

  A shudder caught in a throttled breath, all but unnoticeable but for the fact my fingertips bit into his jaw.

  Leaning forward, my knee coming to rest upon his leg, I halted a fraction from his face and summoned all the feelings I had not yet given words to. The heartache I’d nursed, the loneliness of my life. Grief and fury and promised retribution.

  Love, as peculiar as I’d ever known it.

  “You listen to me, Micajah Hawke,” I said, and watched the thick ream of his black lashes flare as my breath wafted across his lips. “There will be no weakness, no loss of who you are. Curse or no, blood of a long-dead people or otherwise, you are mine.”

  His breath tore from him, just short of a snarl, but I sealed it with a kiss as harsh as he’d ever delivered me.

  I knew his language, that what drove his blood.

  I knew what it was he craved.

  My breath came quicker as I let him go. “If the beast you restrain wants to argue the point,” I said, striving for smooth though I felt altogether too rattled, “it can try to best me after all this is over.”

  Hawke’s fingers eased from my wrist.

  I stood. “Now get ahold of yourself,” I ordered, clipped to the quick. “We’ve a Veil to tear down, and a cure to acquire. I’ll have none of this prissing about.”

  I swear, I heard one of the Bakers muffle a snort.

  Hawke’s head did not lift. Instead, a bronzed hand lifted to his eyes, as though he could not bear to look at me. It did not seem as though anger colored the gesture.

  “You will,” he said, low and deep, “be the death of me.”

  “If so,” I said, giving him my back, “then I will follow quickly after.”

  Let him make of that what he would.

  I strode back to Communion, picking my way over the trickling currents of the rancid water. “We’ve a decision to make.”

  Luther nodded, the light caught in his features and giving him a demonic appearance. The scar twisting his lip into a permanent smirk looked all the more ghastly for it. “Near as we can tell,” he said, “we’re somewhere south and east.”

  “South and east,” I repeated thoughtfully. “Wapping’s that way.”

  Hawke pulled a harsh hand through his tangled hair, shoving it back as though it irritated him. “These four tunnels head east,” he said, pointing at the farthest right.

  “You sure?” Communion rumbled.

  Hawke nodded once. “They smell like it.”

  Good enough for me. “All right, we’ll split here,” I said, already dreading the need.

  The Bakers exchanged glances.

  I gave them no time to argue. “Communion is with me. Luther, take one of yours. The other can go—”

  “I’ll go alone,” Hawke said flatly.

  Sheer, naked relief flooded the Baker boys whose names I didn’t know.

  I met Ishmael’s gaze, read a mutual shrug within, and said instead, “All right, that covers only three.”

  “I’ll take one alone,” rumbled Ishmael.

  I could all but hear Hawke’s teeth grinding behind me.

  “I’ll take the other, then,” I said, ignoring him. “I can move quick and fast in the dark, and I’m armed enough for just about anything.”

  “Except Osoba,” Hawke said tightly behind me.

  I reached in
to my pocket for the vials I’d placed there. They were wrapped in cloth to mind the glass, but the cloth was of a loose weave, and would not keep the serum within from affecting its intended target.

  I carried three. “One of these will be enough to slow him,” I said, handing one to Luther, one to Communion, and keeping the third for myself. “It will not stop him as the others, for he is something different.” No thanks to me. “However, it will allow you to run or, perhaps, slow him down.”

  “What about him?” asked a younger Baker, gesturing to Hawke. His chestnut skin was smeared with the grime of the Underground, giving him an odd half-mask.

  That he asked at all said he wasn’t as familiar with the ringmaster as Ishmael and I.

  “He can handle Osoba alone,” Communion answered for us all.

  A grunt, acknowledgement with the thinnest of patience, was all Hawke allowed.

  “Cor,” muttered the young man.

  “If you stumble across them,” I said to Luther, “do not engage them. Don’t be seen, and don’t try to rescue anyone yourself.”

  Luther had been part of this world for long enough. Whatever peculiarities I had brought Communion, Luther had come to understand how we operated.

  He slung the large bit of wood he carried, nails pounded into the tip, and doffed a cap he did not wear. “As you like it.”

  One by one, the groups filed into their respective tunnels.

  It worried me that Zylphia had not been able to leave another scrap. Had she been found out? Or had she simply been unable to drop any more?

  At the last, Hawke and I faced each other in the dark.

  I could not see him but for a faint glow about the eyes.

  A shimmer of blue flickered to life at his side, and as my eyes widened, the ghostly sheen about his hand lifted to my cheek. It did not burn.

  “Survive this,” came the command, ragged at the heart.

  “Only if you do,” I returned.

  He understood the challenge. I knew this much instinctively. Hawke always understood me—my needs, my fears. My efforts.

  There were many things left unsaid between us, things that seemed important. I had claimed him, as he had claimed me. I had all but sworn my life to his.

  The softer words of love did not sit comfortably on either of us, and yet something about the moment demanded I try.

  “Cage, I—”

  His thumb pressed upon my lower lip, a bit of censure and—my heart staggered a bit in my chest—in place of a kiss. “I am already clumsy enough.” It seemed less a confession than an admission torn from him despite his efforts.

  And for all they did not profess forever, his words found that aching hole inside my heart and nestled in.

  I nodded, a jerky motion.

  Without another word, he slipped into the dark.

  I did not hear his footsteps as the Underground swallowed us all.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Aside from the guide required to get inside the Underground safely, I was well used to operating alone within. Or rather, I had been in the past.

  As the tunnel closed around me, my footsteps rustling softly in my leather boots, I thought of the emptiness I walked into. Any one of these tunnels could lead to the Veil’s hideout, or all of them.

  The Underground was not the sort of place one mapped on paper.

  My night vision was not so strong as Hawke’s, but I’d spent many years cultivating my senses in the dark. Unlike the Bakers, I needed no firm light to make my way through the tunnels.

  Should I be hounded by Osoba in this dark, I might regret this choice. However, even them what lived here couldn’t see perfect without some element of light to go by.

  A shame I had no Trump to force light to me as Hawke seemed capable.

  With all that happened around us, I forgot often that he claimed power with his blood.

  It seemed I attracted those who did.

  Except my staff. They were all everyday sorts, the kind of men and women that folded one into the family and loved as I had never known it from my own.

  The dark and quiet was no place to be following such thoughts to their logical source. Knowing that Fanny would not be waiting for me when I returned was a rock in my heart that I could not take the time to nurse. Not yet.

  I promised that after, when the Veil was ended and Zylphia returned, I would grieve properly. Mourn properly.

  I would apologize to Booth and Mrs. Booth.

  Until then, I had a job to do.

  And an obstacle to force my way through.

  The first I noted of the ambience was a bit of a prickle along my senses, a subtle shift of current or pressure. I couldn’t be sure what it was, but it halted my step.

  That pause, brief as it was, allowed for a tiny sound to trickle to my ears—a faint click, a whisper of a scrape.

  I dropped to the mucky ground.

  The report of a pistol discharged thundered through the passage, echoed in shattering reply. I flinched from it, but wasted no time to recover. With my ears ringing, I darted into the dark and found my assailant.

  She was caught attempting to re-load.

  I only gathered her sex by way of the noise she made as I dropped her with a kick to the jaw.

  I took her weapon, checked it by feel, and discarded it for the fact it would take too long to reload.

  Leaving her behind, I slipped to the side of the passage and carefully pushed ahead. A second sentry, warned by the discharge of his mate’s pistol, waited with thinly controlled nerves.

  He bore no firearm, but as he shifted in the faintest light afforded by a very small lantern nestled into a shelf cut into the stone sides, I caught a glimpse of verdigris.

  Uriah. This was his man, one of them.

  What in the name of the Devil’s own daughter did Leopold Uriah have to do with the Veil?

  Aside from promising to mind Lài’s sister, that was.

  Hell and bloody posies.

  I’d been charmed by Uriah’s affable deal-making, after all.

  And I had no time to be slow.

  I rushed the bloke from the dark, coming in low and tight. His eyes found me a titch too late to be much use, and the pipe he brought to bear sailed over my head. It collided with the wall, a resounding clap of metal against brick, and chipped off a bit of stone that flew every which way. A thin twitch of pain was all I noted before my fist caught in his collar.

  He was easy to maneuver, yelling as he was from the shock of the abrupt halt the wall had made of his swing.

  Smashing his face into the same place as he’d hit was pure poetry.

  I left him groaning in my wake, sprinting now that I’d gotten a taste for the fight. Though I was ready, braced for other sentries to challenge my progress, I found none.

  Uriah had left only two in this tunnel?

  I was insulted.

  And then I came upon a dead end, and frustration bit. Had I chosen the wrong tunnel? Were the sentries merely decoys?

  I touched the wall, splayed my hands upon the cold surface. My body thrummed with energy, with reckless abandon, but I was awake to my own peculiarities now. A bit of tar might have soothed this, a bit of a grain to make of this a grand lark, and for all that, I swallowed down the need and forced myself to think.

  This was the Underground. Even blank walls were more than what they seemed.

  Very slowly, I felt my way along the wall. I did not have to search for long. The cool, rusted coarseness of metal bars riveted into the wall provided a path.

  Up, not in.

  I looked up, squinting through the dark. Was it my imagination, or did there appear to be something of a glimmer above? A bit of light coming through a grate or some such?

  Well, well. At the very least, I might be able to tell where I had ended.

  Seizing the rungs in hand, I made short work of the climb. As I’d thought, there was light—overly bright after spending too long in the dark. It pooled through a gutter that should have been sea
led by a metal grate and was not.

  Even better.

  I pulled my way to the top of the ladder, a simple enough endeavor requiring very little skill. As my head cleared the surface, I noted the thrust of wide, flat structures laid out side by side. I could smell nothing, as ruined as my olfactory capability was after the stench below, but the gentle lap of water slapping against docks was not alien to me.

  Warehouses, I thought, and why not? Such large structures often remained empty until work demanded they be stocked. Goods could be held there indefinitely, and then ferried off.

  Few workers remained at night.

  I grabbed the corner of the ledge in hand, prepared to pull myself completely out of the hole, when a step behind me crunched on graveled rock.

  “Well, well, well,” said a lighthearted voice. “A red bird, damp and dirty.” A man’s voice. A jeer. The tone seemed familiar. I couldn’t place it.

  Nor could I turn as quickly as I wanted when my feet had nowhere else to step but a narrow iron bar.

  Bracing my elbows against the ledge, I craned a look over my shoulder.

  Mouth stretched into a wide, welcoming smile, as fit a jester’s grin as any, Meriwether stood poised over me, a club held high.

  I did not need any sort of gift of prophecy to know where this was going. I had neither the ability to leap out of harm’s way, or of falling back into the hole without severely injuring myself in the process.

  I would be less useful with a broken leg than I would with a headache.

  My teeth bared. “So all this stench led to you,” I said, wedging my fingers into a fractured seam. Every muscle in my body braced for what I knew would come. Despite it, I softened my mockery not one bit. “I should have guessed.”

  “Aye,” Meriwether replied lightly. “But you didn’t. Did you?”

  I was given no opportunity to reply. The club he carried whistled in warning, his whole body turned with the swing, and pain slammed through my head. My vision went red, yellow and white.

  The seam I’d forced my fingers into bit, and bones snapped like matchsticks in the dark.