I gathered my coat in my hands, wringing it without realizing I did so. “Do you know what it is I’ll be doing?”
“Nothing that requires practice with a team,” she replied bluntly. “You’ll be fresh meat for all them eyes, you will, but you’re a dab hand with the knife.”
“Thank God,” added the man behind her, but in a manner that said I wasn’t meant to hear.
I frowned. “Is that a compliment?”
“Depends on who’s askin’,” she replied, and shooed me along. “Go on. There’s a lashing if you’re late.”
I wondered at the freedom they allowed me as I made my way down the designated hall. More, I wondered at the likelihood of a rear exit. I could make my escape now, find Hawke and free him from this hell before anyone would be the wiser.
Then call in Ishmael and his Bakers once and for all.
A war.
I could not help the anxiety such a thing created in me. I trusted in Ishmael’s abilities, understood that his Bakers were rugged men not afraid of a rumble, but the Veil and its people were no easy prey.
If I saved Hawke, could I really tilt the odds in the Bakers’ favor?
I hoped so.
This awful fear bubbling in my belly would not simmer for long. I could feel it in my knees, in a subtle tremor struggling through my will. Outside the Menagerie, I could plan as bold as any, but now that I had made it this far, the reality was much heavier than I expected.
Anger was not as sustainable as the passive chill of fear.
Thoughts of easy escape were dashed when I turned the corner to find a guard lounging against the wall. He was sturdy stock, soft where a trusting sort might think him slow, but I recognized the type. Bullish and thick, he’d be a hard hand and a ready fist.
He watched me pass with glittering eyes all but buried beneath a thick patch of unified eyebrow. I had no choice but to halt at the second door at the right and let myself inside.
There were, as expected, two girls within. They looked up from the mirror they shared, sized me up, and then exchanged a glance similar to the one I’d watched my evaluators divide.
“Get her loosened up,” said one, and the other, a pretty black-haired girl with enhanced bloom, left the vanity to rummage about. “Well, don’t just stand there, bossie, get in.”
I blinked. I’d come ready with a false name, but “bossie” struck me as overly humorous. “My name is—”
“It don’t matter,” cut in the black-haired girl, returning with a flagon of something I could not see the color of. She shook it gently. “Have some of this before we set in.”
I took it by rote when she shoved it at me, and as I removed the cork, a familiar fragrance filled my nose. A little bit acrid, a little bit sharp. Cinnamon, too, unless I missed my guess.
Laudanum.
Everything inside me tightened. The ache in my throat turned to a dryness as brittle as bone and gritty as dust, and I swallowed with great effort. All that I was cried out for a sip—a mere drop of the stuff, what harm could come from it?
Just a bit. And then perhaps more for later.
Who would have thought that the hardest battle I’d wage would come not from the circus tent I was meant for but the manner in which I would be prepared?
My hand shook as I replaced the stopper. “No, thank you.”
“Oh, look at her,” snorted the girl whose lips were painted with bloody red. She had hair the color of henna applied to a natural blonde—vivid red with a hint of orange where it had taken too deeply. Her eyes skated over me, nose wrinkling. “Fussy darkie, ain’t you?”
“Drusilla,” chastened the one I assumed was Penelope. She turned kind eyes on me. “Drink up, love. You’ll be thankful for it when the show starts.”
That was enough to turn all of my innards into waxy dread. My senses strained for the want of it, but I shook my head even as I drew the flagon closer. “No, I really... It’s...” I wanted it. A sip. Just a bit, just to take the edge off. Surely Ashmore would understand.
Surely nobody would blame me.
To fight one’s fears, a bit of help was often necessary.
A sharp knock behind me earned the attention of the girls who studied me with such curiosity, and the door opened without invite. The woman who’d watched me entered the small room, took a sharp glance about, and said, “Georgie in here?”
I managed to shake my head, earning a wince from Penelope. “He’s off working the stands,” she said, tucking aside her fall of curls.
“Good.” The woman thrust at me the brace of knives I’d been forced to use. “You don’t got your own, right?”
I shook my head again, a weak gesture. She barely noted it—or maybe it was that she didn’t choose to. “Get her ready,” she instructed the others.
She departed as she’d come, leaving me holding the flagon of laudanum in one hand and the bandoleer of balanced blades in the other. Eight. More than enough for a decent showing.
Drusilla bent closer to the mirror, adjusting the fall of her hair, and remarked, “Knife-thrower?”
“Seems to be,” I said.
Penelope reached out and took the flagon from my shaking hand. “None of this, then,” she said, still gentle for all it turned rueful. “Best to keep your aim sharp for the best result.”
“As if that’s what they want,” Drusilla snorted. The small compact filled with powder clattered to the vanity’s table, and the buxom woman leaned back to admire her figure draped in a high-necked silken robe. She was comely, I’d give her that. “They tell you what you’re doing?”
I shook my head.
Penelope vanished behind a folding screen, and a wash of blue spilled over it. It ran like water, fabric given a remarkable iridescence I’d never seen before. When an item that looked like seashells draped over it, I realized that I was sharing the room with a less-than-genuine mermaid.
“Probably for the best,” Drusilla said, and shed her own cover.
My eyes widened at the vast display of ink carved into her skin. From her clavicle all the way down, she was a walking masterpiece of art. Even her breasts had been etched, complete with a stunningly artistic sun rising over her bosom.
She ignored my blatant stare. “You’ll want something easy to move in, but showy enough to titillate the audience.” She hummed a thoughtful note. “Penelope, have you still got that coined number?”
“Sure,” she said, voice muffled as if caught beneath layers. “Let me finish and we’ll help you get ready, bossie.”
I desperately wanted to ask for that flagon back. I wanted to drink so much that I would fall over and sleep the rest of this away.
I wanted to forget everything that I had come here to do—and for that reason, I found a seat upon a small footstool and hugged my knees. I silently watched Penelope and Drusilla prepare for roles I had no recollection of seeing up close.
Drusilla was obviously a tattooed lady, one whose body had been turned into canvas of art for display. Among the whorls and leafy patterns covering her skin, I saw pictures of airships and blades and a wayward anchor with a name scrolled across it. I could not read it at this distance.
She dressed to reveal, in a black corset cinched so tight that her body seemed poised to topple from the waist. Bloomers in matching black silk edged with ivory lace revealed long legs left bare of all but continued ink.
She pinned her hair up in a chignon that no matron would call inappropriate—as long as it was paired with anything else but what she paired it with. A tattooed lady might earn a pretty penny in sideshows such as this, but she would never have for herself a proper life.
There was a certain freedom in that.
I clutched at my knees until my fingers turned sallow beneath the darkened stain. “Pardon me,” I said when the silence grew too much for me to handle. “What happened to your knife-thrower? Didn’t you have one?”
Drusilla spared for me a look reflected in the mirror. “He...” A pause.
“He tender
ed his resignation,” came Penelope’s voice from behind the screen. A clatter of beads followed.
“You mean he simply left?”
“In a manner of speaking,” Drusilla said, a note of wry cynicism to her tone. “You just do what’s asked of you, bossie, and you’ll be fine. Maybe you’ll last longer than most.”
The words, meant to reassure, drew a pit in my belly. I folded over my knees, burying my face in my arms. “Bloody hell,” I groaned.
“I told you she should have some of that laudanum,” Drusilla called to the other woman.
“And risk her losing her aim?” Penelope replied sharply. “Did you forget what the Veil has in store?”
“No.” Drusilla stood and began to rummage through various items strewn across the small room. “But maybe it’d be a blessing.”
“Drusilla!”
I raised my head in time to see the woman pull a bit of fabric from a pile. She shook it out, a merry jangling accompanying such rough handling, and it became a corset studded with Byzantine coins. “I’m sorry,” I said—a rasp, really. “What show? The Veil? What aren’t you telling me?”
“No time, bossie,” Drusilla said, and tossed the corset to me. “Get dressed. You’ll be doing your part soon enough.”
Bloody bells and damn, I knew it.
These girls knew more than they let on, but they weren’t sharing; and I lacked the will to bully it from them. It was all I could do to keep my insides from twisting up in a retching knot.
With every passing minute, it seemed as though I would have no choice but to enter the circus proper.
Certainly, I’d prepared for this. I’d counted on it, in an intellectual way. Yet as the time drew closer, I worried that my intellectual determination would fail beneath the hysteria bubbling up inside my chest.
I wanted to cry. I wanted to bury myself in a dark hole.
I wanted the damned laudanum and why shouldn’t I?
The obviousness of that answer did not need telling. I knew why.
I had to be stronger than this. Stronger than it.
Sweat dampened my skin, creating an altogether different worry as I imagined the stain at my hair bleeding across my forehead. I dragged my sleeve across it carefully.
I shook so badly, it was a wonder I didn’t topple from my perch.
Penelope stepped from behind the screen. Her skin, ordinarily ruddy white, had gone gently blue with telltale shimmer. Gills patterned her throat where there had been none before.
Tricks of costuming, I knew. Like as not pinches of gum or dusted sap rolled until they could be molded into shape for the gills. I’d wager she could hold her breath for minutes at a time.
Smoke and mirrors. That’s what a circus show was all about.
I forced myself to swallow down my gorge. Something foul was afoot, something nobody wanted to talk about—but everybody knew. I’d find out soon enough.
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 s
he 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.
Engraved: Book Five of The St. Croix Chronicles Page 21