I didn’t mind. I found a foul-mouth most interesting. I gave him all my pilfered coin.
For the first time, he slanted me a wide-eyed look of gratitude. “You sure?”
“Quite,” I told him, and waved him off. The horse nickered as the lash flicked overhead, and pleased with his spoils, the driver took off before I changed my mind.
Not that I would.
I’d tried speaking to the Veil before, albeit mostly under duress. Offhand, I did not willingly choose to banter with the aggravating spokesman.
This would be the first. And, most decidedly, the last.
The gates were closed by day, which did not surprise me. Only for goods moving in and out did they open. They were not manned, either, which spoke a great deal about the Menagerie’s sense of autonomy. Surely, no one would be so foolish as to break in.
I approached the ornate iron gates, remembering a time when I’d bound a man to them in lieu of delivery. I’d run out of time, and needed to get home before my staff woke and discovered my absence.
I couldn’t help a dry little huff, almost a laugh, as I curled my bare, chilled fingers around a single bar. The twisted iron was colder than my skin.
That quarry had been the catalyst for Hawke’s first lie. He’d claimed that I’d failed to turn the cove in. He refused to pay me.
He’d hoped to drive me away when matters beyond my sight had begun to stir dangerous currents. He’d known, and he’d kept it from me. That had been a terrible betrayal.
Oh, I’d always thought him capable of a lie, but I was naïve. I’d assumed that we wouldn’t lie to each other, for there was nothing to gain for it. The Menagerie posted bounties, I collected them that interested me, delivered them to Hawke, who paid.
To think that I’d gone so long without knowing what it was he did to keep me from the Veil’s notice.
All for naught.
The gray day, easing to the afternoon after a long jaunt from Little Chelsea, curled around me like a thin shroud, gossamer fine and less acrid than it might be deeper in.
It was a simple matter to scale the gate. Wrought-iron gates were ornate affairs, especially when guarding pleasure gardens and estates. The very nature of their shape made them easy to clamber over. I didn’t break a sweat as my booted feet, clad in the same boots I’d worn in the circus the night before, found purchase upon whorls and wrought leaves.
Mrs. Booth, bless her dirt-despising heart, had scrubbed the leather boots and left them to dry before the kitchen stove. They were stiff, but serviceable, and I thought them better suited for my needs.
I didn’t even need to muster an allez, hop! to do it.
The gravel beneath me crunched as I landed softly. Adjusting my skewed cap, I rubbed at my shoulder as it throbbed a bit, but that, too, didn’t hurt nearly so badly as I’d worried.
A dislocated shoulder joint sometimes led to fractures. Although fortunate enough to escape this fate, I’d known them what weren’t—and many were the result of loggerheads gone awry, not all aerial antics. I didn’t know if it was Hawke’s skill or luck that saved me from such a fate this time, but I’d not look down my nose at it.
The grounds were quiet—much less activity than I expected, even by day. Though the night was reserved for them what worked it, there were always matters to tend to when the sun was high. Maintenance, primarily, cleaning, manicuring the lawn lest it get too muddy or too overgrown.
I’d seen Hawke more than once taking part in such necessary responsibilities. He’d never been one to let others do all the work.
My heart thudded against my breast, nerves turning the steady beat into an irregular patter. My palms were damp from the gate, or perhaps clammy with sweat.
I wasn’t sure exactly how to achieve the Veil’s attentions—at least in a manner that wouldn’t immediately see me executed—but I thought a good start would be to enter the Veil’s manor at the back of the vast grounds.
After all, that was where the servants always dragged me.
By day, the pleasure gardens were dreary, less a dream and more barren without the fairy light distilled by the Chinese lanterns strung overhead. They weren’t ugly, not when the paper strung along the paths was so prettily painted, but in the lackluster light of day, they required a certain spark.
I wondered if I’d ever see them lit again.
A shudder wrenched at my spine. I closed my hands into fists, as though stiffening my arms might keep my body upright, and forged across the lawn.
I did not make it as far as I’d hoped.
Three Ferrymen wandered across the grass, conversing rather genially despite the damp. Each were clad in the sort of attire one might expect from the coves running the street, all patched fustian and thick wool shirts rather than a working man’s overalls or dockman’s coat. Leather banded one at the arm, while another had strips of filthy cloth wrapped around knuckles—torn, most like, from a scrap.
They strode as brothers in arms, laughing raucously at some jest or another.
I dared not risk recognition.
I plucked at my cap between two fingers, tugging it low over my brow as I circled widely. A detour would take me farther westerly than I wanted, but I was in no immediate hurry. Aside from the obvious, of course. If I reached the farthest outliers of the grounds, I could pick my way all the way around without standing out like a stranger.
A great deal of my planning had always relied on fortune over exacting details. This had not always worked in my favor, but it did allow me a certain amount of unpredictability.
Unfortunately, this new Menagerie with its unfamiliar routine proved less than amicable to my goals.
As I passed the sweets’ abode—quiet, for sake of the slumbering residents—I began to relax. After another few minutes, when no hue and cry rose behind me, I breathed out a sigh of relief.
I rounded one of the various buildings that dotted the farthest rim of the Menagerie, hands tucked into my pockets to conserve a bit of warmth. For that reason, I wasn’t prepared for the sudden appearance of stacked obstacles in my path.
I jerked roughly to a halt, sidestepped when my balance wobbled, and only clipped a corner of the wooden crates filling the space behind the storage facility. My injured shoulder sent sparks of pain through my senses, clapping black spots over my vision, but I gritted my teeth and clutched it tightly; squeezing the flesh sufficed in lieu of hissed curses.
Damn Hawke all over again for that parting gift.
When my sight stopped wobbling in time with the thud of my heartbeat in the injury, I took a deep breath and let it all out as though I were expelling the pain. It helped.
The grounds I crept through were silent, made all the more eerie for the shadows congealed behind the homes and buildings dotting the vast lawn. In the lee of a storage facility, where the air was colder and the damp clinging, I wondered what the crates stored.
Why here and not inside, where it was less likely to damage the contents?
That was a riddle solved easily enough. I simply had to look inside.
I bent my good shoulder to one of the crates stacked at my height, shoved until the upper half of the tower wobbled and shifted. The contents revealed beneath glinted in the murky light.
Glass.
I plucked a phial from the interior, raising both eyebrows when the contents proved empty. Another still bore traces of cloudy residue.
Perhaps these were stored out here because they were waiting for cleaning, or for disposal.
Was this the cast-off remains of the serum the Veil gave the Ferrymen?
I remembered all too clearly the primal fear raised by the monstrous men who had chased me from the Menagerie, and I did not like the way it chilled my blood.
I plucked three empty phials at random, studied them carefully. There wasn’t enough residue to ooze, but I did note that two seemed darker than the last. Perhaps these were trials gone awry, or failures.
The Veil had been after me for months to fetch the serum
my father had used upon me. Was this part of the Veil’s attempt to make its own?
I tucked the phials back into the crate, mind furiously churning. Would Ashmore unlock the secrets of that flask Hawke had given? I had little doubt he would, for this was his expertise.
Would he do so in time to help Ishmael?
I had faith.
And with that faith, I needed to complete my own mission.
I left the crates where they were, rounded the far corner of the storage facility. I couldn’t say for certain what it was that caused me to jerk backwards, but my body slipped into a fluid backbend before my brain catalogued exactly why.
The harsh crack of a whip snapping through the air over my face jerked me away from thoughts of what-if and solidly into present matters.
Caught unawares as I was, I lacked the follow-through to end again on my feet.
My hands clapped into the dirt, my posterior following suit, and I stared open-mouthed at Ikenna Osoba, and the whip snaking between his long fingers.
I closed my mouth. Then thought better of silence and said cheekily, “Not your finest welcome.” Rather more bold than the situation warranted, perhaps.
He, like Hawke, was not the sort to bandy words. He got right to the point. “I cannot decide if you’ve the Devil’s own luck,” he said, studying me as though I were some interesting species of insect, “or if you’re genuinely witless.”
With my eyes cautiously fixed to the long, black coil dangling from his hand, I eased to my feet. At my back, the corner of the storage facility. To my left, a dead end leading to a wall I couldn’t scale without help. To my right, the open lawn.
Not an ideal battleground.
“I wonder at that myself,” I admitted. I kept my hands loose at my sides, though my stance shifted subtly. My weight transferred to the balls of my feet; readiness that might not matter.
I’d seen him at work with that whip. He turned a length of leather into a living thing.
“What was the thought this time?” he queried, his tawny eyes sharp. They remained on me—on my eyes, which told me everything I needed to know about his fighting style.
A body’s hands and chest could lie, projecting a false move for a feint. A fighter’s eyes often telegraphed every move.
Unfortunately for him, I was too well trained for that.
“I’ve come to bargain with the Veil,” I said. No reason to lie.
His black eyebrows hiked, one much higher than the other. “You’re joking.”
“Not even a little bit.”
“What could you possibly offer?” he asked, and the amusement in it stung.
I spread my hands in front of me. “Myself,” I said. “I’m rather tired of this farce.” When his eyes widened—genuine shock, near as I could read the whip’s features—I pressed my point. “I’d like to see Hawke freed from his prison, even if he’s never free of the Menagerie.”
“Do you think that he will then fight for your Bakers?”
Shrewd, that lion prince. I hoped that Hawke would alter the current landscape enough to give the Bakers a fighting chance, but it was not my primary motivation. “I don’t know,” I said, smiling a little more helplessly than I think he expected.
The hand holding the whip’s wrapped handle lowered a fraction.
“But I hope to offer my servitude to the Veil in exchange for clemency for Hawke, Zylphia and Communion,” I finished. “No more, no less.”
Osoba watched me as I spoke, mouth tightening to a thin ream. If he was cold in his plain shirtsleeves and dun trousers, he did not give any indication. Even his cuffs were rolled, baring tensile forearms patterned by ropy muscle.
I recalled easily the muscles revealed by his circus costume—a fight with him would not end well.
I owed him more than a bit of blood, but in the scheme of it all, I owed my friends more.
Perhaps it was a return to the staff I counted as family. Perhaps it was a softening of my resolve. I didn’t know. All I could be sure of was that Osoba, like Hawke—like myself—was a prisoner of a force greater than him.
What he owed the Veil, I couldn’t begin to guess.
It did not absolve him of his crimes, but I did not feel quite so at ease with acting the executioner.
“What do you say?” I queried when the silence stretched too long. “Will you take me to the Veil?”
He took a step back, but it wasn’t the sort to suggest he intended to depart. It firmed his stance. “Why do you do this?”
I cocked my head. “What, exactly?”
“Work so hard.” He shifted his grip upon the whip, not so trusting as to put it away entirely. The twisted end coiled atop the earth. “Why do you fixate so much on others?”
I hesitated. “Do you think I do?”
He nodded once, a sharp jerk of his chin. “It’s bothersome.”
I couldn’t help a brief chuckle, and I raised my hand to wipe it from my face. “I am weary,” I said, and though a smile still tugged at my lips, my voice came tinged with sorrow. I did not mean to be quite so honest, but when Osoba frowned in confusion, I allowed it.
How long had it been since I chose honesty over that of deceit and manipulation?
“I have spent much of my life doing as I pleased,” I said, clasping my hands together before me. I shifted a touch, easing strain in my legs, but dared not move too obviously. “That pleasure came at great cost to those entangled in my wake. Hawke, Zylphia, now Communion and his Bakers.”
To say nothing of the others murdered, denied their homes, bloodied and broken. My family, my husband, my friends above the drift—names I would not give him.
There were too many, and I had touched them all in some way.
Rarely for the better.
My smile wobbled. “You, yourself, have borne the brunt of it, have you not?” After all, with Hawke’s imprisonment, he’d been forced to pick up the ringmaster’s slack. It couldn’t have been easy, to serve a master who demanded one whip one’s friend.
Even Black Lily’s murder came at the behest of the master he served.
To know I’d all but caused it, forcing the Veil’s hand out of my own selfish need for revenge, would never stop hurting. It might not absolve him entirely, it might not allow me to forgive, but I understood.
He did not deign to acknowledge my inference. “So you believe your worth to be that of three collections?”
“I don’t know,” I said, shaking my head. I plucked my cap from my hair, smoothing back frizzed tendrils. They stuck, courtesy of the damp, but wouldn’t for long. “What I do know,” I added after a moment, “is that I can’t keep fleeing the consequences of my actions. I intend to make this right.”
“That is selfish.”
“Why?” I asked.
“You are laying down your burden because you are tired.” Scorn for the effort, dismissal of my feelings, dripped from the declaration that was too close to the truth for my comfort. I frowned. “You wish to be absolved through death or through control, but you no longer wish to fight. Selfish.”
My frown eased. “You may be right. I am tired, I cannot watch my friends fall one by one. Perhaps I am weak.” Osoba’s head tilted, and I gave him a rueful shrug. “’Tis what I can live with. I can no longer sit by and be protected from the penalties my decisions have incurred. Frankly,” I added wryly, “between this and returning above the drift to playact the imprisoned widow, I’d rather be here.”
This earned me a speculative scrutiny. “Why?”
“Because,” I said readily, “my sacrifice there might make one or two vengeful souls feel better, but here, I hope to save lives.”
Osoba’s snort was filled with exasperation, and he turned his back on me. His multitude of fine plaits swept across his back, bound by a leather thong, and clattered softly. “I cannot decide if you are overly optimistic or utterly daft.”
“Likely a bit of both,” I volunteered. “It runs in the blood.”
“I know nothing of y
our blood,” Osoba countered, but turned back before I could take a step closer—or away. “But I’ll grant you this. Your sacrifice is noble enough.” He lifted the whip, pointing the drooping length at me. “Sadly, you overestimate not only yourself, but the Veil.”
“Oh?” It was a rare day when I might be accused of overestimating the Karakash Veil.
“They care nothing for nobility,” he said curtly. “The promises made to you, who is less than a servant, are not worth keeping. No honor is lost in such a deception, and so you would be made to suffer with those you intend to save.”
Bloody bells. I took a step back, my fingers curling into the cap I strangled between my hands. “How do you know?”
The look he gave me was pitying. “I still wonder at your intelligence, Miss Black. For all your years, you have never truly understood the nature of the game you played.”
This might have been true. It likely was. “So coming here is worthless?”
“For you?” His teeth gleamed in a smile that lacked all humor. “Yes. But not for me.”
“Osoba, wai—”
He moved like liquid—from rest to action with a strike of a long arm that seemed to extend from shoulder to the very tip of the whip flicked towards me. I lifted a hand in warding, and fire snaked around my wrist.
I hissed out a breath as pain seared into my flesh. Only the cuff of my coat kept the skin intact, but it hurt. “Why?” I gasped, jerking my arm at an angle that stretched the whip between us.
Osoba’s eyes met mine across the length of the taut leather. To my surprise—to my confusion—sympathy flickered there. Sympathy, and no small amount of grim determination. “You have never comprehended the precepts of slavery,” he said simply. “It would be best if you died here.”
“What will that accomplish?” I demanded. I wrenched at the binding, only to dig my feet in when he tugged back. “What could you possibly hope to gain?”
“An end,” he replied readily enough. “Hawke will no longer suffer for sake of your hide. The Ferryman already move against the Bakers. It’s over.”
I jerked. “Move? What do you mean?”
Engraved: Book Five of The St. Croix Chronicles Page 28