“I mean that you are too late. The Ferrymen have gone to dismantle Baker territory. The war has begun.”
That explained the unusual quiet of the grounds. All too well. There was a day left on Communion’s promised four, but the Veil had moved first.
Was I too late for everything?
He did something with his arm I could not follow. The whip uncoiled from my wrist, as though a serpent coaxed to obey, and the whole slipped over his shoulder in preparation for another assault.
I was prepared, this time.
He lunged, hand flicked, and as the leather slipped through the air, slick as any blade, I sprang into a series of back handsprings that put me far closer to the storage facility than safety demanded.
I staggered back as the whip arced over my head, and my spine collided with the corner of the building.
I slipped around it before Osoba could press his advantage.
It bothered me that I could find no argument with Osoba’s logic. If I could take him at face value, he had done me a service by assuring me of the Veil’s complete lack of regard where I was concerned.
Even so, I would not sit by and do nothing.
Osoba might calmly accept his servitude, his punishments, but I was not the same.
I clambered over an unsteady mound of crates. Osoba rounded the facility. “You cannot run from me,” he told me.
“Oh?” I didn’t have the breath for any other rejoinder. I launched from the edge of the crates with an added, “Allez, hop!” and swung to the very top of the stacked crate tower. Glass clattered and clinked as the whole swayed.
My insides sloshed and swayed in tandem. The ground looked very far away.
Osoba watched this with a curl to his lip. “Fool,” he began, and whatever else he said was lost as the tower came tumbling down.
I jumped, caught the edge of the roof and swung myself up. This pulled at my shoulder badly enough that I felt my face blanch; the whole roof tilted sharply to the side as I rolled onto the rooftop.
High ground.
Not exactly the advantage I hoped when I lacked all weapons to fight with and bitter shards of pain popped and sparkled.
Osoba watched the crates collapse, features caught in that interminable mask of amusement he always seemed to default to where I was concerned. He was like a cat toying with a particularly awkward mouse.
Admittedly, I felt awkward enough to suit the metaphor.
“Look,” I said, barely refraining from gasping with it, “shall we agree to simply disagree on the subject of my well-being?”
“I am afraid not,” he replied below me.
“Do you intend to starve me out?” I asked, peering over the ledge. It wasn’t so high that I couldn’t jump, though if I misjudged the landing even by a fraction, I might injure myself deeply.
He had coiled the whip, pulling the loop of it over his shoulder. The mess of the crates beneath me did not leave for easy climbing. He couldn’t reach the ledge. He’d have to jump to catch the edge, and then I’d have the opportunity to boot him in the face.
Hardly elegant, but serviceable.
What I’d do after, I didn’t know.
Osoba turned his back to me. “Stay put,” he told me.
“As if I would,” I replied.
I knew he was smiling without having to see it. He took several measured paces back over the lawn, but did not continue—drat the man. Instead, he faced the facility once more.
Sure enough, he was smiling. Widely enough that I shuddered at the predatory certainty of it.
When he launched into a sprint, my eyes widened. He leapt at the structure itself; I sucked in an awed breath. Glass shattered, courtesy of the boot he kicked into the window frame, and utilizing that as a launching point, he leapt fully onto the flat roof with me.
My mouth fell open.
Because he was, in the end, the lion prince, he sketched a sardonic bow. “Do not underestimate me,” he said.
A palpable satisfaction to which I replied a sharp, “Bugger.”
He laughed.
The sound had not yet faded when he uncoiled the whip and let it fly.
This time, the skin at my palm and the back of my hand split as I caught the damn thing, wrapped it hard in place, and jerked. He was prepared for just such a thing, and leapt forward to force slack in the leather.
My heart in my mouth, I met his challenge with a foot to his knee, gave him all my weight and launched over his head with the whip firmly in hand. It jerked tight into his throat, but he bent backwards, forcing the loop over his head, and the slack between us snapped taut again.
We’d swapped sides of the roof.
Panting with the effort it had taken, I couldn’t help a faint smile. “Don’t underestimate me, either.”
He shook his head. “Witless,” he said again, and jerked on the whip I held. It startled me enough that I had to take a few steps forward, which put me in range of his long legs.
He kicked like a mule. It hit square in the chest, stole the last of my breath and forced me back again until the leather snapped tight between us.
I reeled at the edge of the roof, caught my balance before I could swing too wide, and darted to the side. He spun with me, but I was quicker this time. I dove for his feet, he sidestepped easily.
The coil I held looped at his ankles.
I jerked hard enough that he cursed, staggered but did not fall, and I rolled out from his reach.
When he dropped the whip entirely, I had only enough time to brace.
If Hawke was a tiger, then Osoba was the lion he was to reign over. He was ropy muscle and savage strength, grasping hands that caught at the base of my hair where I’d tucked the frayed plait into my collar. Every fine hair wrenched taut, painfully sharp.
I yelped.
He snorted at the verbal recognition; it turned into a wheeze as my elbow found his solar plexus. The fingers tore from my hair, leaving my scalp stinging with it, and the fight atop that rooftop became a flurry of fists, legs, elbows, knees.
I had been trained to fight by the street.
He shared a similar background, it seemed, for he fought just as dirty, just as viciously, as I.
A fist to my mouth split my lip; blood flowed from his nose, courtesy of a return tap, and an abrasion on his elbow turned red after a fall caught on the harsh rooftop.
The facility shuddered and shook with every leap, every collision.
I was wearying faster than he was. I’d misjudged my own strength.
The moment I went sailing over his shoulder, I knew it was over. The impact with the roof jarred all the way through my injured shoulder joint, and this time, I screamed as it popped.
Pain sheared through me, forced by the collision of flesh to rough wood and shingle, and the added agony of the ridges of the discarded whip I’d landed on.
I gasped for breath, tears streaming from my stinging eyes, and couldn’t summon more than a wheeze.
Osoba became little more than a dark blur in my bleary sight. He crouched at my side, winded and bloody, but the victor. My hands grasped weakly at the roof beneath me, but found only one edge and the whip my own weight made useless.
“You know,” he said quietly, and I couldn’t see through the spots painted over my sight to know if he smiled. “If things had been different, I think we might have been friends.”
I managed a rasped, “Bastard.”
He chuckled. “I can see what it is that Cage loves.” I started, the whole of my body jerking—but whether it was shock or denial or the start of questions flooded out by raw energy and determination, I didn’t know. Harsh fingers closed around my throat. “With this,” he said evenly, “our torment ends.”
No. He squeezed, and my throat closed beneath his grip. Spots turned to visual tremors, to a tunnel so long and vast that Osoba’s face looked suddenly very far away.
I twisted, I thrashed. I grasped for his wrists, his clothing; nothing helped.
Inordinate press
ure filled my head.
I had known this pressure before; this suffocating heaviness as it thrust cotton fingers through my ears. My eardrums throbbed, my tongue protruded as I struggled to gather breath.
The fingers at my throat tightened.
“Give up,” said Osoba’s voice, but from within. I felt it more than heard it, felt it thrum through my chest, my straining senses. My back bowed, twisted, and a knee planted in my belly.
Give up.
An easy decision to make. With my death, Hawke would no longer feel as though he had to protect me. Fanny, Booth and his wife—they could live happily. Free.
But what of Ishmael? Zylphia? The Ferrymen already moved against them.
Who would protect my friends?
No. No! I could not abandon my course, not now.
Shaking with the effort, my head swollen, I summoned all of my strength with the last of my consciousness. Where it came from, where the idea formed, I don’t know. As though guided by some deeply rooted memory, I sketched an M into the space between my face and Osoba.
“M...” I had barely any breath left to manage it. Eyes wide, protruding, I forced the word out on a rattle, “Magnitudo.”
Following the same instinct that guided me, I curled my left hand into a tight fist and drove it through the letter I’d carved in thin air.
I was too used to the colors of the alchemical Trumps I’d learned. Eon tended to flare blue, Apis and Bacatus-Typhon had altered between blue and silver.
I had never seen red.
It sparkled in my sight, popped like shattered glass, and reflected in golden eyes flared suddenly wide.
Osoba screamed—a sound punched from his chest as the whole of his weight flew backwards. I had not touched him, my fist had not made any connection, but it was as though a great hand had plucked him from the rooftop and sent him screaming to the ground below.
Wood splintered. The shattering of glass sheared through his ragged voice, and a wicked gout of red and orange spewed over the roof’s edge.
It wasn’t warm. Nor was it cold. I couldn’t distinguish what exactly the inferno was, but it seared my skin, forced me to roll over and bury my face in my arms as the air turned to acid and ice and flame.
Osoba’s screams rent through the chaos, strained to ragged panic; they broke, died and surged anew, transmuted into decibels forced higher and higher.
Heat quickly replaced whatever it was blasted from below, and the smell of burning flesh and wood filled my nose.
Aching, shuddering, I grabbed the edge of the roof I clung to and dragged myself to the rim.
What I saw on the ground below would haunt me forever.
The crates, those not consumed by flame edged with venomous green and red the color of bruised kidneys, lay splintered. Glass shards glittered, a thousand golden slivers winking in the alchemical fire, and in the midst of it all, Osoba writhed.
I had never watched a man be consumed by flame before.
He jerked and shuddered, limbs flailing, writhing and the manner in which his spine bowed must surely have snapped it.
Yet he kept moving. Screaming.
Horror filled me. Magnitudo. What in the Trump of strength and impossible obstacles had caused such chaos?
How had I possibly called upon it when it was meant to be so far out of my reach?
Osoba’s scream reached a frayed crescendo, and his throat forced it past mortal bounds; longer, harder, farther than any human throat could achieve. Wild gold eyes rolled back, boiled over. The voice forced from him fractured to a wild, panicked howl.
Finally, somehow—God only knew what strength it took—his flailing took him past the fire. As soon as he found cold ground, his limbs dug in, hands and feet, and shrieking, Osoba tore deeper into the Menagerie. Like a comet tipped by bloody flame, he vanished out of my sight.
His voice lingered long after.
I did not have the energies left to feel anything but brutal fatigue.
Magnitudo. Far beyond my grasp, and yet I’d managed it.
Or it had managed me.
Shivering, shock turning my senses to leaden numbness, all I could think about was getting to Blackwall.
The Ferrymen already move against the Bakers.
The facility beneath me shuddered. Gouts of flame licked up the walls, and I crawled to the farthest edge.
I didn’t think it through when I rolled over the farthest side. My body fell like a broken doll, and the ground stole what was left of my consciousness.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
“Wake up.”
I surfaced only slowly, as though through water.
“Hey.”
And then I realized I was in water, and I jerked entirely awake, flailing and sputtering. My left hand caught at something soft and fleshy, and a woman’s voice yelped, “Watch it!”
My eyes fluttered, two identical women circling around and around before congealing into one.
Delilah bent over me, both hands holding mine at my chest. “Oh, thank goodness,” she said. She was smudged with soot, wet because she was in the same body of water I was.
A fountain?
The spray overhead was icy cold, and as if my body only waited for that realization, I started to shiver uncontrollably.
Delilah shifted beneath my head; it was her lap I’d used as a pillow. “What happened?” I croaked.
She exchanged a look with someone I couldn’t see.
Delilah was a sweet, the same I’d come to visit before, and whatever breaking she’d gone through, it didn’t show on her face. That was only good manners. One didn’t mar the goods. With soft black hair now damply clinging to her neck and cheeks and the striking features of an English thoroughbred, she didn’t look like the sort of girl who’d pick up a sword to defend others.
She’d done just that when last I’d seen her, and made to suffer for it.
Yet she apparently hadn’t learned her lesson, for here she was, helping me again. “Less guard today. We saw the smoke from the window, Talitha and I. Came running and found you before the footmen did.”
I was shaking uncontrollably, so much so that I could barely force my limbs to obey. I tried to sit, sank near half into the water, and had no choice but to let Delilah grasp me under the arms and haul me upright.
My knees locked on instinct, saving me an inglorious drowning.
Talitha—a pretty blonde thing who’d often playacted as sisters with another sweet—hugged dry clothing to her chest. Her eyes were a delicate blue, like a porcelain doll painted in English hues, but there were dark circles beneath. She looked hollower, gaunt.
Frightened.
“Osoba?” I managed around my bruised throat.
Delilah shook her head. “Didn’t see him.”
I took the towel she handed me, dried as best I could, but gave up when my hands trembled too badly. Delilah took over. She stripped me, uncaring of the fact we remained outside the sweets abode, and I was too far gone to care.
Fortunately, none came. The billow of smoke, oddly hued in my bleary vision, explained why. Them left behind to mind the gardens were likely busy.
“Dress, and then be gone,” Delilah ordered. When I blinked at her, she grinned. “You’re here for Hawke, right?”
Did everybody know my business?
I didn’t have the warmth to flush. A jerky nod was all I managed. The whole of my body hurt, and as I tugged the shirt over my bare arms, I hissed when the fabric dragged across a burn. It was mild, flesh made red and raw but not overly deep.
A similar overly prickly throbbing dotted my side, as though embers had burst over me.
Collectors gained scars easily. I hadn’t realized how lucky I’d been to heal as quick as I’d done, thanks to my father’s serum and my ghostly mother’s influence, until I no longer healed so fast.
Delilah had acted with swift thinking, dumping me into cold water before the burns had gotten worse.
“Good.” When I proved able to dress myself,
she slung an arm around Talitha’s shoulders—a casual sort of comfort. “We hope you give them all hell.”
“Why?” It hurt terribly to speak through the bruising I was sure would soon appear around my neck, but I would persevere. The clothing the sweets gave me were a man’s. I appreciated the courtesy. “Won’t you get in trouble?”
“’Tis better to ask when we aren’t in trouble,” Talitha whispered, and my heart hurt for that.
Delilah gave her a squeeze. “Time for a change.” A shout filtered through the air, and she glanced over her shoulder. No sign of anyone, but that might not hold true for long. When she looked back at me, her smile was a crooked thing. “Things is different, you know?”
“I know,” I rasped. My boots were soaked, but serviceable.
“Can I ask you a thing?” When I nodded, Delilah leaned her head against Talitha’s, gaze trained on me. “Are you going to save us?”
I really must learn when to bite my tongue. Without so much as a blink, without pausing to consider my own safety, I said, “I intend to tear down the Veil.”
“Good,” Delilah said again. “There’s too much wrong here. Too much rot. We’re with you.”
I’d seen her fight. She was a deft hand. Talitha had always been the softer, but with Jane missing, I wondered if she’d earned some steel of her own.
“How many?” I asked.
“There’s fourteen of us ready to fight back,” Delilah said. She shuddered, but I thought it more from cold than fear. Talitha hugged her close for warmth, dampening her own night dress and wrapper. They’d like as not been asleep before the fuss. “Ten of us were there for Zylphia’s call.”
Fourteen sweets. I wanted to tell them to stay safe, to stay out of it all, but that would win no wars.
“Play merry hob with the Veil’s men, then,” I said, even as I hated myself for allowing them into the fold of violence. “Burn what you can. Stay out of sight, and lead them on a wild chase.”
Delilah’s smile grew. “Aye, aye.”
I couldn’t summon the will to smile back. “Be careful,” I said. “Promise me. No face to face fighting if you can help it, and watch out for Marceaux. He’s as trustworthy as a starved weasel.”
Engraved: Book Five of The St. Croix Chronicles Page 29