Osoba’s laugh bit. “You’re the reason, Miss Black.”
“Ikenna!”
He ignored Hawke’s lash. “It is because of you that he is punished. How long will you demand he suffer?”
My throat closed, and I could not look at the man framed in iron. It was upon Osoba that I leveled the full force of my anger. “How is this my doing?” I hissed, barely cognizant of the need to keep my voice down. A tickle at my chin forced me to swipe the back of my hand across the small wound, and I was embarrassingly aware of Hawke’s gaze as it pinned to that gesture.
Metal creaked, and the lionesses, content to ignore us prior, growled in sudden disharmony. I jumped, but Osoba was far more used to the sound than I.
He caught me by the face in one long hand, fingers pinched at my cheeks, and forced me to look at the man caged. “As long as you come here,” he growled in my ear, “as long as you maintain this sham of independence, he will suffer.” The whole of my body jerked, as though he’d slapped me across the mouth already bleeding. “Either by your hand or his own,” he added, viciously grinding salt into the wound his truth carved within me. “Is that what you want?”
No. Of course it wasn’t, but I couldn’t accept the blame for this. Not for this.
Didn’t Osoba call himself Hawke’s friend?
Couldn’t the two of them throw off the shackles together?
I grabbed at his wrist, but his fingers gouged into my cheeks and I could say nothing.
Hawke pulled at the bars he clung to, and the whole cage groaned. The shape of his cheekbones had always been sharp, his features made of hard planes and sculpted edges, but now they seemed even sharper still. Harsher.
Something a little less human than human, even for a serpent, and the crimson stain at his mouth did his humanity no favors.
His fingers wrapped around iron until they were bloodless; it must have hurt, but he did not let go. “Get out,” he ordered. He always had, demanding my exit for as long as I’d ever known him. He forced the words from gritted teeth, gaze crackling with fierce intensity. “For the last time, get out or I will end you myself!”
It was only for the softening of Osoba’s grasp that I wrenched free. I backed away from the cage. Was this really my fault?
Hawke pushed himself from the bars, giving us his back to brace both hands against the farthest wall. The set of his shoulders could have bent steel, though he lowered his head until nothing at all of his features could be seen beneath his tangled fall of hair.
The abandonment I felt was nothing to the sudden realization I came to.
Was he still protecting me?
From what? Himself?
I shook my head. “Why?” I demanded. “Why do all this?”
“Because,” Osoba said, fists clenched at his sides, “it is long past time to end this farce.”
I should have known it would not end so easily. I should have been prepared, but I barely had the opportunity to wipe the sweat from my brow before the fine hairs on my nape lifted—and a furious roar from the would-be king of lions announced a new presence.
Something within me snapped. I could not say for sure what it was, or even what it released within my skin, but I had no words ready—no easy rejoinders.
All I could do was turn and level a flat stare upon the two men who stepped into the room.
They wore loose black breeches and white tunics with long sleeves wherein their hands came to rest. They were of similar height and build, thin but not unhealthily so, with topknots made of their straight black hair. Fashions above the drift may come and go, but the Veil maintained its traditions for its Chinese warriors.
Osoba’s hand splayed between my shoulder blades. “Will you end this, Miss Black, or will I?”
A low, dangerous growl trickled from Hawke’s cage. “Ikenna,” he said again, the name a strained order.
The lion-prince winced. I would have missed it were I not looking, but in an instant of fractured weakness, I saw the regret he struggled to hide from me.
It did not salve the wounds he had already caused in this, our bitter relationship, but it allowed me a glimpse into the human soul he nevertheless possessed. Perhaps he really did see Hawke as a friend.
Perhaps he truly thought this was best.
Whatever the case, I could not allow him the victory. “I would,” I replied quietly, “never allow you the opportunity.”
“Ikenna!” Hawke roared, and I heard the accompanying clatter of beads as the lion-tamer whirled to tend to the savage demand.
I couldn’t watch. I spun about and strode from the room. The servants followed.
Osoba’s voice rose against Hawke’s, but the shape of the words flung at one another distorted beneath the fury shaping them, and I could not tell what it was they argued.
The servants paid them no mind. I knew without having to ask that I would not be escorted outside the gates. Too much debt and loss lay between the Veil and I. With taciturn courtesy, they guided me out of the underground facility and to the Veil’s manor without comment.
The shelter was something of a surprise. I had known the Menagerie employed large areas carved out from the ground—Maddie Ruth’s working area had been one such—but I never thought they kept animals there. The large room became nothing more than a bit of a rise in the ground beside the structure we stepped from, near enough to the quiet circus tent to force a flinch before I caught myself.
I was given no time to properly investigate the clever façade, but I wondered how many other such storage facilities dotted the grounds.
Sunlight did not stream upon the open lawn spread out before me, but hovered like its own sort of fog in a dreary glow. The skies above the drift were too cloudy for warmth, and the drizzle that pattered upon the raised girders became little more than smoky mist below. The fans here always worked, maintaining the clear air even when the gates were closed, but it could do nothing for the lack of daylight.
Regardless of the smoke or clarity afforded the grounds, there was plenty of ambient color to navigate my way across the greater lawn separating the Veil’s manor from the rest. The halls inside were as lushly appointed as ever, but empty. It was not long before I came to a portico I well-remembered, no matter how often the residue of my affection for opium colored my memories.
Upon the polished surface, a distinct image had been carved with an exotic eye and remarkable precision. An elongated tiger and a sinuous dragon, face to face as though part of a whole, entwined in a dance—or as I rather believed now, locked in eternal combat.
I resolved to ask Ashmore what he knew of the allegory.
Beyond this door waited a room paneled in carved wood and lacquered display, red and gold panes placed at intervals to reflect in brilliant color the fire that always made the room too warm.
I had met the Veil—or at least conversed with a hidden spokesman—many a time here. I had been thrown out of it more than once, and often by Hawke himself.
Tù zi wĕi ba cháng bu liăo.
The tail of a rabbit cannot be long. These words, flung at Hawke’s back a season past, served as a reminder that one who engaged in inadvisable things would receive his comeuppance.
A truth that had cost us both, and apparently continued to cost him still.
Hawke had placed himself between me and his Chinese masters, metaphorically exposing that long tail of his. It was a knowledge that weighed heavily upon my sense of responsibility, and thanks to Osoba’s manipulations, it stung.
Betrayal came easily to that man, but then I suspected his was not a soul to be burdened by such matters.
I swallowed hard, forcing my quaking heart back down lest it come spilling from my mouth and leave me feeling only fear.
I was not prepared to confront the Veil directly.
The servants left me little choice.
Squaring my shoulders, I spread my hand over the face of the snarling tiger and pushed the door wide.
Months might have passed since the
last I’d set foot in this room, but the heat that spilled from the open portico seared through my gown, warmed the air by too many degrees. All at once, it was as if I had only been gone for a day.
Save my apparel, which I would never have worn by choice to this particular environ, I was once more jarred back into the skin of Miss Black; wayward collector and bearer of a debt the Veil would not allow me to slip.
I gritted my teeth, earning a flash of pain from my lip, and stepped inside.
The manservants followed but halted on either side of the interior, as always. They did not watch me but remained studying the floor at my feet. Deference which hid an alarming talent for alacrity, should the need arise. I had been handled more than once by these men, or men like them. Upon closer inspection, I felt sure that I did not recognize either.
For many years, the Chinese servants had always simply existed. I had afforded them no more attention than I might a particularly exotic bit of furniture.
I would no longer make that mistake.
The fire warming the room glowed like a jewel behind a silk screen of similar gold and shades of red, though this was shot through with a blue so intense that it glimmered like lightning. Another near it was of similar design—something I could only call stately in appearance, as I was not as familiar with Oriental art as I felt I should be. Heaven knew I’d spent an untenable allotment of time in the Veil’s company.
The door closed behind me, sealing me inside the ornate furnace. I could already feel the bloom of sweat across my back and shoulders. It would not take much to stain the sheer material over my décolletage.
Gowned or not, I felt nude. Never had I come here in my true guise, and certainly never so unprepared as this. A tea gown might be comfortable, almost obscenely so, but I missed the confidence of my collecting corset—that bit of rigid boning that provided London’s only female collector something more than just armor.
Unmasked, I was only a woman.
At least Osoba had not searched me for weapons. The weight of the blade at my thigh was a small reassurance I nevertheless clung to. Though I would never get to it before the Chinese servants reached me, if I were fortunate and minded myself, I might not have to.
I took a silent breath and began my trek across the gleaming hardwood floors.
“That is far enough.”
I halted, my temples straining with the effort it took to keep my teeth sealed together. The voice floating from behind the second of the silk screens was all too familiar, lacking in any hallmarks of masculine or feminine. Sometimes I thought one, and sometimes the other.
I had settled upon sir by way of courtesy.
“Good afternoon, sir,” I said, inclining my head towards the silk screen that hid the speaker from my view. The fragrance upon the air was something I did not recognize, lacking in the floral quality and thick spiciness of opium smoke.
A small relief, undercut by a yawning need.
I would be dishonest if I said that I did not hope in some small way to breathe in the incense the Veil burned, made with enough opium to soothe the mind and senses.
I suspected that it made all those who visited somewhat more pliable.
My fingers curled into tight fists at my side.
“Let us dispense with courtesies, Lady Compton.” There was no teasing lilt this time, no slow mockery as the Veil had often displayed. Without a face to gauge the nature, I could not be sure, yet I thought I sensed anger beneath the clipped words.
The name thrown between us was as a white glove tossed to the floor.
I did not rise to the challenge. “I have received kinder invites,” I said, repeating words I had spoken what seemed a lifetime ago.
“You were not invited this time,” said the Veil. “Our whip took matters into his own hands.”
“Then why am I here now?”
“Because we accept his gift.” A sincere enough reason, as far as the Veil cared to explain. I had always found the organization to be arrogant in the extreme; or at least this particular spokesman.
So much for Osoba’s so-called help. I wondered if he’d arranged this betrayal before or after he’d brought me.
I clasped my hands behind my back, fingers tense. I studied the screen as I inquired, “Are you hoping to take my head?”
“Are you so eager to die?” Another simple refrain.
I never would have imagined I’d miss the Veil’s prior mockery.
“I cannot fault you for thinking so,” I admitted, earning a certain amount of silence in return. Perhaps I’d surprised him.
I fought the urge to fidget in place.
Since clearing my mind of the bliss, I found it all at once easier and harder to think. On the one hand, many a thought came to me, details which I might not have paid much attention to in the past.
On the other hand—the other tired, bitter, hungry hand—I did not know what to do with silence anymore. It was empty. Waiting to be filled.
There was no symphony of light or color to fill it.
I cleared my throat. “The peddled children are an unexpected addition.”
The Veil sighed. “Please do not burden us with your hypocrisy, Miss Black. For all your so very British mortification, there is no shortage of those who will spend coin for even an hour with young flesh.”
My cheeks burned. The sweat upon them despaired of any to cool. “Have you given up all sense of morality, then?”
“Talk of morality from an avowed lover of the tar?” There, that lilting mockery returned.
Stinging, yes, but familiar.
I swallowed my retort when it only tasted like blame. “We are not speaking of me,” I managed instead, teeth grinding again. “Those are children.”
“They are given a warm bed and good meals,” replied the Veil. “Would you have us return them to the streets to die of deprivation?”
This was only partially a likelihood. Them what didn’t freeze or starve to death, or suffer an agonizing end from disease, would join one of the gangs, turn to thievery, and either rot in the nick or find a bloodier end on the streets. The working children, given to dismal hours slaving for the factories, received no kinder life.
Yet what the Veil touted as charity galled.
My knuckles popped from the strain of my clasp.
Patience. I was in no position to cast stones when I had no foundation upon which to stand.
I lifted my chin. “I have already seen what you do to them what deny your authority. Has Osoba brought me here so you could imprison me too?”
“No, Miss Black.” The screen did not move, but I heard a sound—a faint jingle, as though metal tinkled against metal. “We want you to kneel.”
I raised my eyebrows. “You have spent too long in the smoke you flog.”
“You have not lost your talent for bravado.” The Veil’s voice softened. “You are and always have been a strange creature. A countess, an heiress, a bedraggled child that has bedeviled our Menagerie for too long.”
“I am no child,” I said hotly.
The Veil countered with an even, “You were that and more when first you crossed our boundaries.”
I blinked at that, for I had not realized Hawke had reported my first foray within the Menagerie when I was but fifteen years of age.
I did not know his age then, but I wondered how much of Osoba’s storied boy of seventeen lingered in the ringmaster when we’d met. I wondered, too, if he’d seen something of himself in me at such an age.
I shook my head. Worthless thoughts; Hawke was not the sort to give sympathy. I wouldn’t inflict mine upon him. “What is the point of this, please?”
“The point,” the Veil said in staccato irritation, “is that despite all efforts to the contrary, you have interfered with us too long, and we are tired of humoring you. Better to have remained in your exile.”
“Better for whom?” I demanded. “You?”
“Spare us. You are little more than a gadfly that must be swatted,” sneered the Veil�
��s spokesman, possibly stung by my inference that I might pose a threat. Or even a bother. “Better for you, more like, and better still for our wūshì.”
The word meant “sorcerer” in the Chinese language, that much I understood. I had thought it little more than heathen ignorance, yet I knew now that it was I who had been the ignorant one.
Alchemy might have built its precepts on scientific formulae, but cleverer minds than mine had posited that whether it was called alchemy, science, or sorcery, all were names for a thing that simply demanded unraveling.
Micajah Hawke had been so much more than the Devil guarding this Garden of Eden. He was, in some way, affiliated with that art the Karakash Veil called magic. Although I had not been wholly myself at the time, I knew that he had utilized this talent more than once in my presence.
So why had he not utilized his unique abilities to escape the cage?
Why had he allowed Osoba to take me if he thought to protect me?
What in the name of reason did he hope to accomplish by remaining caged? I didn’t understand.
I had never truly understood him.
I touched my lips with one hand, irritated to find them trembling, but no longer bleeding. My feet remained rooted to the spot, for if I took one step, the servants would flank me. I needed space between us.
And fewer eyes upon my face, for I was certain I could not hide my feelings as well as I might once have. I fixed my gaze upon that screen and asked quietly, “What have you done to Hawke?”
“Done?” A laugh, brittle as the ice sliding down my spine. “Why, we have done nothing. Our wūshì is as he has always been.”
There was a trick there, buried somewhere in that statement, but I had not the tools with which to unravel its tangle.
“Fortune, however, favors you this day.” The Veil’s tone gentled; which is to say that the sting lessened, and once more left little more than smug certainty. “We are feeling generous with our gift, and generous with our wayward wūshì.”
This so-called generosity did not bode well.
I braced myself. “What do you intend?”
“An opportunity, Miss Black,” said the Veil, lapsing into the old habit of a given moniker.
Engraved: Book Five of The St. Croix Chronicles Page 8