The Bones of Ruin

by Sarah Raughley

  Iris’s head nearly split apart from the kick Bellerose dealt it.

  “Madame, enough,” Adam yelled. “Enough!”

  It was the first time Iris had heard him so angry. It seemed to make Bellerose delighted. The gentle knock against the door more so.

  “Come,” said Bellerose pleasantly.

  A man with skin as dark as Iris’s walked through the door, his head shaved, his robes split at the sides to reveal a pair of gray slacks, and a piece of bread in his hands. His priest collar was just the same, as were the scars all over his sharp-angled face. Jacques.

  “Like I said, the Committee should be here in several hours. It’s a miracle I was able to gather them at all considering their schedules. You know that Bosch, always off selling his nightmarish weapons to the highest bidder.” Madame gave Jacques a sidelong look. “This one will keep an eye on you both for now. My own champion and a spare I picked up from Cordiero’s decimated team are out trying to obtain the remaining two cards as we speak.”

  “The terms of our agreement are the same, then?” Jacques asked.

  Iris had never heard this man whisper anything more than a prayer. His voice was deep and rough, but calm and quiet like gentle waters.

  “You guard them for just a few hours, and I give you a card. Very simple.” Bellerose patted him on the back. “As for the other two cards, well, that will be up to you. My offer for you to join my team is still on the table. Consider this agreement a taste of our mutual alignment. Oh,” she added, “and I imagine you’re not the chatting type.” She looked back at Adam. “Feel free to make these two sleep in whatever manner you deem fit.”

  Madame Bellerose left Iris and Adam alone with one of the Belgium boars.

  * * *

  Iris awoke again, throat sore, to the sound of familiar chanting.

  “I offer you the body and blood, soul and divinity, of your dearly beloved Son…”

  Jacques. He sat against the wall next to the door, Bellerose’s collection of bear traps on the table to his left. With his right arm balanced on his knee, he ate a stale-looking piece of sesame bread, spitting out the seeds every so often. His gaze was pointed at the wooden floor.

  Looking at him brought back flashes of memories from the first round—visions of Jacques burning incense while his partner bathed in the blood of another champion. Her body trembled. She was terrified. Still, she had to try something.

  “Don’t trust Bellerose,” she pleaded with him. “She won’t give you that card no matter what you do for her, I’m sure of it.”

  “So should I trust you?”

  His words had come so quickly, it caught Iris off guard. Jacques still did not look at her.

  Trust. How did she build trust? She considered it long and hard. Then she thought of Granny. Of Rin. And now this man, Jacques. It was worth a try. Yoruba was the language she was more familiar with. She tried to speak it. It was difficult, but more familiar to her than Fon with her having read Iwe Irohin and listened to Granny speak for years.

  “You can trust me,” she said, sitting up, carefully forming each syllable in the language. “You can trust me more than her, I promise. Give me a chance.”

  Jacques suddenly began speaking a language she’d never heard before.

  “You’re from the Congo,” Adam said. Iris could see how worn he was.

  “I speak many languages.” Jacques bit into his bread, chewing carefully before spitting out another seed. He was still gazing at the floor when he spoke to Iris. “But not yours. Don’t expect camaraderie from me, girl.”

  “Iris,” Adam said, his breathing labored as he struggled to keep his head up. “Are you all right? How badly are you hurt?” And he had the audacity to sound worried for her.

  “Quiet.” Iris remembered the hollowness in Carl Anderson’s eyes as he spoke of Adam.

  “Aren’t you curious why I’m here?”

  “Wasn’t it to kill Carl Anderson?” Iris glared at him. “Oh, wait, you tried and failed to do that already. Not with Bradford though. That was a bull’s-eye.”

  For a time, the only sound in the room was Jacques chewing his bread.

  “What did he tell you?” Adam asked.

  Iris smirked. “Enough. That you’re a cold-blooded murderer.”

  “Was Bellerose with you?”

  “What?” Iris balked. “No, I was alone!”

  Bafflingly, Adam seemed relieved at her answer. “Good. That’s good.”

  “What’s good?” Iris struggled against her ropes as she looked up at the young man swinging from the ceiling. “Did you or did you not have Carl Anderson killed? Twice?”

  “I sent Rin a message to help you,” Adam said, which didn’t answer anything. “But if you’re still here, something must have gone wrong.” He was speaking more to himself than to anyone else, but soon his eyes were on Jacques sitting on the floor. “You didn’t kill Anderson, did you, Jacques?”

  “No.” Jacques spit out another seed. “But I shot the one who did.”

  “What do you mean?” Adam demanded.

  “After I arrived here, I heard an intruder sneak inside upstairs. Bellerose had asked me to guard against intruders. So I found him and shot him. He escaped quickly afterward.”

  “So you know who killed Anderson.” Iris pressed him further. The way Adam’s eyes slid to her did not go unnoticed. The same person who killed Carl Anderson had spared her, only knocking her out. Why? What game was Adam playing? If something had gone wrong, that meant that very same person was supposed to… what, take her?

  Iris’s head throbbed as she considered it. It couldn’t have been Rin who’d knocked her out. She went with Bately. If she’d wanted to kill Carl Anderson, she would have accompanied them to Bellerose’s home. As Bellerose’s champion, she wouldn’t have raised any suspicion.

  “It’s none of my concern,” answered Jacques.

  “So what is your concern?” Adam stilled himself, controlling his emotions likely in the midst of incredible pain. Blood dripped from his shallow wounds. “Why do you fight?”

  “To feed my family.” Iris was surprised Jacques would answer so simply. But perhaps it was a simple matter for him.

  “Family.” Adam smiled sadly to himself. “Once upon a time, family meant everything to me. And then my siblings were murdered and my mother hanged herself. I visit their grave sites every year. Place their favorite flowers by their stones. But not my father.”

  Iris remembered Carl Anderson’s words as she listened.

  “My father, who had all the resources in the world, used those resources to abandon his family and chase cheap thrills. But you, also a father, chose to engage in monstrous work all for the sake of your family.” Adam smirked. “Like night and day. You couldn’t be more different. I respect you.”

  “It would take a murderer to respect another murderer,” Iris muttered.

  “Is there anyone here who hasn’t murdered?” Jacques asked, and Iris’s shoulders stiffened when she realized she couldn’t answer. She couldn’t remember her old days in the Dahomey Kingdom. Maybe that was a good thing. Who knew what she’d done in the name of the king.

  But Iris noticed something. It was when Jacques was defending himself that he showed more emotion—subtle, but fiery nonetheless. His family. That was what this conversation needed to center on if they were to escape. Adam must have realized it too.

  “You’re right,” Adam said. “A man like yourself. Only someone ready to risk everything for a cause that meant everything to him would take part in a tournament such as this. You, who took up the work of an assassin to feed your children.”

  Jacques’s hand dangled in the air with his bread. “Who told you I was an assassin?” he asked, unperturbed.

  “Van der Ven likes to brag about his champions.”

  “Jacques,” Iris interrupted, a sense of urgency gripping her as the clock ticked away. The Committee would be here soon. There was no telling what they’d do to her to get Carl’s information. Or what
they’d do if they knew the depth of her connection to John Temple. “You’re doing all this for your family. I understand that. But there’s something much greater at stake. Something that might put even them in danger!”

  “The apocalypse?” Jacques answered coolly, and for the first time, he looked at her.

  “Did Van der Ven tell you?” Adam asked.

  “Yes. But I want proof. Proof that God means to end this world sooner than I expected.”

  “And I can give that to you,” said Adam. “If you let the two of us go, I will. Bellerose will give you nothing, I can guarantee that.”

  Jacques didn’t look surprised. But he considered it.

  “Please,” Iris pushed. “Please let me go. I have to…” Iris thought of Carl Anderson’s dying words and shivered. “I have to get to the Crystal Palace. I have to go!”

  Adam’s head whipped around to look at her, but before he could speak, Jacques stood. Iris’s heart gave a jolt as he threw his piece of half-eaten bread on the hard ground.

  “My mother taught me to pray,” he said, rubbing his knuckles as he stepped in front of the door. “In hopes that God would have mercy on us and save us from our miseries. When she died, it was my father who taught me something different. Even enslaved, he’d been a warrior.”

  He approached them, his steps calm and measured. “He was forced to protect Britain’s interests in the Caribbean, fighting in the early-century battles against France and in the Napoleonic Wars before settling in London. By then he was only a shell of himself, but he told me something important. Something my mother never would have approved of.”

  He looked between Adam and Iris. “God’s mercy is only bestowed upon those he favors. And it is luck, not prayer, that determines who belongs to that coveted class.”

  He broke open his left index finger so that the bone of his knuckle was exposed. Iris’s scream had barely escaped her throat when gunpowder sparked from his bone and a bullet pierced an instrument hanging from the wall. Iris believed it was called the “pear of anguish.”

  The man who’d taken Cordiero’s wife hostage. The figure who’d disappeared around the corner shortly after. Iris had figured it was him based on Adam’s list. This just confirmed it. But Iris was more concerned with the way Jacques pointed his hand, his weapon, between the two of them.

  “Shall we find out which one of you is among those chosen few?”

  Adam smirked, lowering his head. “A fitting power for one who specialized in targeted, long-distance sniping even before your days as a Fanciful Freak.”

  “I want proof that it is real,” Jacques said. “The end of the world.”

  “And you trust me to tell you rather than your own Patron. Or Bellerose?”

  Jacques’s expression was cold, stern. “Van der Ven cares only about his own power and status. Bellerose is similarly blinded by pride. But you still have someone you care about. I can tell that about you.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  Iris clenched her jaw tight, her lips pursed as Adam’s gaze slid seamlessly to her. She turned quickly. She couldn’t stand to see honesty in his eyes. Not someone like him.

  “And that makes you different from them?” Jacques continued. By now he was so close to Adam, he placed his fist easily underneath Adam’s chin.

  “I promise that when you are ready, if you set us both free, I will tell you everything you need to know about the end of the world. And if at any point you’re not satisfied, or if I go against my word, you and your partner Gram can hunt me and kill me on the spot.”

  He was willing to go that far. For what? To protect her secret? Or was he just trying to save himself? Iris tugged against her binds as the clock ticked away. Finally, Jacques withdrew his hand.

  “All I want is for my family to live,” Jacques said, snapping his finger back into place. “If any harm should come to them, I will murder the Patrons myself.”

  Iris’s heart nearly beat out of her chest as Jacques walked toward her, adrenaline coursing through her as he bent down and—

  Cut her binds with the knife he had in his pants pocket.

  “Go,” he said. Iris didn’t need telling twice. Before he could reach Adam, she was already out the door, running, running, up the stairs, through the hall, around the bend—

  “Out of my way!”

  Madame Bellerose barely had time to react to Iris’s war cry. Iris was on her, her hands around the woman’s neck. They crashed against the ground, both of them gasping in pain, but Iris was too fast. Her hand found the woman’s inside pocket. The tarot card.

  “I’ll be taking this, you bitch.” Then Iris knocked out the two guards standing in her way, barreled past the frightened servants Madame Bellerose had screamed for, and ran out the front door before anyone could stop her.

  “I-Iris?”

  Iris stopped and saw a figure limping out from around the corner of the building. His eyes widened with relief and shock at the sight of her.

  “Max!” Iris ran to him. He looked as if he’d just awoken after a deep sleep. Worn and in pain, he held his bleeding arm, grimacing. “What happened? Why are you here?”

  But when she went to touch his arm, he recoiled from her. He didn’t look at her. His eyes held a certain kind of misery within them that didn’t feel natural at all, not for Max.

  “Did something happen?” she asked, touching his face, seeing the wetness in his eyes.

  The clamoring in the manor grew louder. They couldn’t waste time here. Iris pulled Max out the gates by his unwounded arm, and they ran as far as they could from Bellerose’s residence. Once they got to a main street, Iris pushed him inside a carriage.

  “I have one of the cards,” she told him, and though he narrowed his eyes with confusion, she didn’t have the time to explain. She was too consumed with other thoughts to consider his strange presence here at all. “Go back to Club Uriel. Get someone to dress your wounds. And tell the others I’m all right.” Her lips trembled slightly as she thought of Jinn.

  “Wait!” Max said through the window as she closed the door. “What about you?”

  She couldn’t go back to the club, not when Carl Anderson’s words repeated themselves endlessly in her thoughts. “I’m going to the Crystal Palace.”

  36

  I have to get my memories back. She had to take back control. Her thoughts raced as she rode a carriage to Penge Peak, which sat next to the affluent suburb Sydenham Hill. It was nine o’clock when she arrived. The second round would be over soon. The teams must be battling each other right at that moment. She hoped Max would relay the message to Jinn, Cherice, and the others. Her team now had a card, but Team Hawkins needed their own so they could both get the advantage for the final round. They needed to decide their plan of action while she decided her own.

  Ye gentlemen of England,

  That live at home at ease,

  Ah! Little do ye think upon

  The dangers of the seas!

  Give ear unto the mariners,

  And they will plainly show

  All the cares and the fears

  When the stormy winds do blow.

  Iris sighed. This cabbie, with his drooping mustache, terrible voice, and strange accent hadn’t stopped singing since he picked her up near Bellerose’s place. “Sir, I’m trying to think.”

  “Thinking! Why, life is too short for thinking, my dear! Enjoy the moment!”

  With a laugh, he continued in a deep, cheerful rumble while the horses clopped along.

  We bring home costly merchandise,

  And jewels of great price,

  To serve our English gallantry

  With many a rare device…

  Iris was happy to leave the carriage as soon as it’d stopped, though she didn’t miss the troubling way the cabbie’s eyes lingered on her.

  With evening having already descended, a respectable crowd of people lingered on the grounds. There’d been a fireworks display earlier for some event, Iris overheard, but it was over now.
Two gas lamps sparked dimly along the wide, circular red-stone pavement surrounding the fountain in the middle of the garden. There were more by the shrubs and statues and along the wide walkway leading through the garden to the palace itself. Prince Albert and Queen Victoria’s Crystal Palace, to be exact: a magnificent dome of slender cast-iron rods upholding walls of clear glass. A cultural mecca that housed exhibits, concerts, and other wonders for visitors to enjoy. It was closed today, but that wouldn’t stop Iris. The envoys said themselves that the Crown was up to something underground. Iris wouldn’t leave until she discovered its dark secrets.

  The palace may have been closed but the general gardens weren’t. There were still sparse visitors here and there even this late into the evening, a few with their children. She was careful not to be seen as she made her way toward the Crystal Palace and slipped inside.

  Being a dancer, Iris was able to stay light on her feet inside the empty exhibition space. No echoes. But she felt so small in this jungle of tall iron rods that, bound together in long meshwork, formed the walls and fortified the glass-plated ceiling. The inside felt unfinished. Still, moonlight streamed in from the netted glass ceiling. The beautiful evergreen trees planted along the side of the building gave off a surreal, magical effect fit for a palace.

  Iris searched the area, trying to find an entryway that might take her to the Basement. After almost an hour, she heard footsteps. She stayed out of sight and followed them. Soon, another pair of boots joined the first pair, and together they led Iris through the labyrinth of iron like Ariadne’s string.

  When the echoes stopped, so did she, slipping behind a red curtain meant for an exhibition slot big enough to hold sculptures and paintings. Hiding within the shadows by the iron wall, Iris peeked through the curtain. Several meters away, three men in suits stood by a cluster of rods. They were too far away for her to see their faces, but their voices carried through the empty space well enough for her to listen.

  “Have the envoys left?” asked one man. “The Colonial Office told me they were asking to see this place before they returned to Africa. The operation hasn’t been compromised, has it?”