A twitch beneath his eye said I’d scored a mark. “It is not my story to tell.”
“The devil it isn’t,” I shot back.
Ashmore rose. “This is hardly the time—”
“Then when?”
All sound, all motion stopped at my shrill demand. Uriah, who had watched this with no small amusement, now studied me with an eyebrow arched high.
I was trembling. The last reserve of patience had worn through, and all I felt was the bitter draught of anger, of disappointment.
Of betrayal.
How much I owed the Veil; I could not begin to count the ways.
I jammed a finger at the Chinese girl. “She is at least a portion of that beastly organization,” I said, barely managing not to yell. Only just. “Because of her, I was forced to endure so much…” The words jammed in my throat.
It wasn’t about me.This wasn’t my scar to bear.
What I had done, I had done in full cognizance, even were I to regret the consequence.
What the Veil had done to my friends, to Hawke, did not evoke forgiveness.
My mouth opened and closed, and I knew that mottled color had flooded my face, but I could do naught but shudder in rage and sorrow and impotence.
The scrape of Ashmore’s chair filled the pregnant silence, but it was not his hands that curved around my shoulders. Nor was it my tutor’s kindness that forced me to turn, that pressed my face against a chest powerful and wide, sculpted by the very arenas laid out by the Veil I despised.
It was not Ashmore I leaned on.
Had I enough presence of mind to think about it, I wouldn’t have leaned on Hawke.
That suggested a weakness I was not prepared to show.
Yet there I stood, shaking with all the matters I couldn’t untangle long enough to form into words, clutching at Hawke’s shirt as he cradled my head in one large hand.
He remained silent. What was there to say?
Nothing he could possibly frame would ever undo the scars upon his back, left there by the Veil that had him whipped for the temerity of utilizing his flesh and his sorcery to save my life. Nothing could undo the beast within him, unshackled by the Veil’s own alchemically fueled cruelty and collared by physical humiliation.
Nothing would ease Zylphia’s anger, or return to the Bakers their lives.
The Veil had done much to earn my hatred.
But I could not assault Ma Zhànzhàn for it.
Was I weak? A coward?
A low whistle broke the stillness of the moment. “Sounds like there’s a lot more history here than what I suspected,” Uriah said, his loud voice echoing from wall to wall. “China girl, you’re in bad loaf.”
“I daresay you knew exactly how much trouble she’d bring when you accepted her commission,” Ashmore said dryly.
Uriah’s laughter thrummed. “You’ve the wrong idea,” he chuckled. “I didn’t buy her. I’m just keeping an eye on her ’til her brother comes back.”
I lifted my head. Though Hawke’s grip did not gentle, he allowed me the mobility.
I dared not meet his searching stare. Could not tip my face up to look at the man who’d seen in me a tempest, and did not see fit to mock me for it.
What was I supposed to feel about that? I was conflicted. Shame that I’d cracked so obviously brawled with a strange melancholy that he had not lapsed into the more familiar mockery that usually framed our conflicts.
I was not ready to face either. Nor was I willing to admit, even to myself, what it meant that his kindness had provided something of a balm for my tumult.
I turned to stare at Uriah. Hawke’s hands settled at my shoulders. “Comes back when?”
She saw fit to answer that herself. “Soon. My brother is many good and intelligent things, but he—” She hesitated, lapsed again in her native speak.
Ashmore frowned. “He is wasteful.”
“This.” She nodded. “The loss of the cháislowed his advance.”
“Doglike animals,” Hawke translated without my having to ask. His voice dripped menace. “The beastmen.”
Without pausing to think of what it must look like, one of my hands lifted to Hawke’s on my shoulder. His fingers tightened under my palm, but he did not move it.“What have you to say to that?” I demanded of Zhànzhàn.
“I humbly request forgiveness,” she said softly, lowering her eyes to the floor. A low, throttled growl locked in Hawke’s chest.
“It won’t be so easily granted,” I said, boldly speaking for us all. “You will help us, Ma Zhànzhàn. Whatever your brother plans, you will help us put an end to it.”
“I hope to do so,” she replied, once more lifting her gaze. “Since the passing of our illustrious father, much has changed. Too much. I would help.”
“But to do that,” Uriah cut in with booming cheer, “you’ll need to pay me for her.”
“I thought she didn’t belong to you,” I countered.
Ashmore scrubbed at his face, clearly weary. “But he did say he’d look after her until her brother returned. What will you give himto break his word?”
“Buy my word,” Uriah corrected. “Buy. Give me some credit, won’t you?”
“For how much?” dryly returned my tutor.
I expected our host to laugh.
He slapped the table, causing the things upon it to rattle, and said, “For one service, and a little credit, you gain the China girl’s freedom.” He held out a hand. “Thank you for offering.”
I made to take a step forward.
Hawke gripped my shoulders, holding me still.
Ashmore’s hand dropped from his face, and the look he shot Uriah was one of such loathing that I blinked in rapid succession.
I’d never seen such an expression on Ashmore’s face before.
“You magnificent bastard,” my tutor said.
It was no compliment.
Uriah’s smile stretched ear to ear, but his hand held steady and wide. “You been gone too long, friend.”
“Obviously.”
The laws of the Underground might be mutable, but the bargain was asked and the terms set. If Ashmore backed out now, we’d leave the Chinese girl behind—where she would, I had no doubt, become a thorn in our collective side.
I tipped my head back, until I could see at least a portion of Hawke’s features. They had shuttered, as was his wont.
But when his eyes slid to me, they burned. Anger, I thought. Perhaps something worse. Something uglier.
“Will you murder her outright?” I asked softly.
The place his fingers held me ached from the force. “Of the two,” he replied, a low murmur I felt thrum in his chest against my back as much as heard, “she was the most tolerable. If she makes herself useful, I will withhold my vengeance.”
“And if she does not?”
“Then no power in this world or the next will save her worthless hide.” It bore every signature of a vow, one carved in bone and blood.
Ice slipped down my spine.
“Then I shall make of her a useful ally,” I whispered.
A muscle in his cheek twitched.
“You have yourself a deal,” Ashmore said, a sigh as much as a promise, and clasped Uriah’s hand. “But if you cross me, Leopold Uriah, you will wish the hounds of hell had come for you years ago.”
The large man gripped Ashmore’s hand, smile wilting not at all, and said, “You are already too late.”
***
The prophetic nature of this was all too soon made readily apparent.
Once our services had been sealed, the games ended. Meriwether’s so-called test—to pit me against Zhànzhàn’s sword, testing Ashmore’s credibility and her skills—and the politics between Ashmore and Uriah fulfilled some function I didn’t know. Near as I could piece together, it all seemed keyed into gaining our assistance in some manner or another. I had been allowed the opportunity to cede for myself a price. This option was not given the Chinese girl, who became one of our party forthwit
h.
We were given no other chance to speak alone, but bundled away in a sort of overly cautious secrecy that mirrored that of the agents of the crown. What conversation we managed as we moved deeper into the Underground came in fits and starts.
On our journey through the maze of tunnels and passages, I learned somewhat more of Ma Zhànzhàn. To wit, that her name indicated that although she was the elder of the twins, her worth was less—a matter of gender I found appalling, yet oddly similar to matters engaging my own society.
Of course, no matter what it seemed, she did bear half the power of the Veil once their father had passed.
This felt at odds with the front of humility and culture she presented, and so I vowed to keep only one matter in mind: she was not guiltless in the many and varied transgressions enacted upon me and mine.
Even so, she would not admit which transgressions were of her doing and which were not.
This frustrated me until Ashmore stepped in to explain that for all they were two different people, they acted as one. To separate out which was whose fault was to remove the face of the Veil.
This appeared to be of further cultural importance.
To be certain, the Veil had seemed one entity—or at least one organization with one voice. When I considered this, I remembered the single time that the spokesman—who had sometimes been the sister and sometimes the brother, or so was explained to me—had lapsed into the use of the singular, rather than the plural.
I would have my tiger returned!
A clear enough demand from the brother, but what of Zhànzhàn? What did she wish for? I had no opportunity to ask.
Our hosts pushed us at a steady pace that sapped my strength. While I had made great progress since my days of withdrawals, I still weakened somewhat more readily when it came to physical exertions. Given the nature of my already flagging body, it did not take long for me to question my own health. By the end of our jaunt, my chest felt tight, my breath rasping. To my envious regard, Zhànzhàn appeared to be not at all worn.
Ashmore remained closer to her than he did me, which served my purposes nicely.
Should she try to escape, he no doubt had a trick or two up his alchemical sleeve to counter it. That left Hawke nearest me, and of that, I was exceedingly aware.
I was always mindful, when it came to his regard.
After three hours spent in the noxious aroma of the Underground, my nose had long since shut off all faculties. The stench no longer bothered me.
This gave me ample opportunity to study the halls we traversed through. This was no kingdom of cavernous rooms and vast corridors. All was cramped and narrow, and those passages that widened were not tall. Sometimes, Hawke and Ashmore were forced to stoop.
Uriah escorted us personally, but his size did not work against him as I’d expected. Like a true rat of the Underground, he’d developed a rather unique method of mobility that caused him to dip and jerk oddly—a sort of scurry that was as close to scarpering as I’d ever seen an adult manage. It did not, however, slow him.
For my part, I had little trouble. The Underground was at least one place where my short stature was not a burden but a blessing.
However, the travels in such cramped quarters did not last. These tunnels were not the only part of the belowground community.
The markets were held in one of the rare caverns; a junction where many passages came to meet and canals carved into the ground allowed the stuff I dared not call water to flow away. It was no less cramped, but this was due to structures and people rather than the closeness of the walls. The markets were as brightly lit as day, but with a great deal more shadow thanks to the constant sputtering of the lamps.
We came upon the market without its usual excess of sound, which served as a warning all on its own.
Typically, the whole echoed like a roar. The sheer amount of residents, hawkers, buyers and other such vermin swarming near promise of food or coin or work provided a restless cacophony.
Instead, there was something less of a roar and more of a whispered murmur. Such a sound tended to carry similar refrain, regardless of what class might be causing it. It was one of curiosity, of uncertainty.
Of outright horror.
Something had upset the denizens of a world where murder was as likely as a greeting. The market was not the same as the Menagerie’s open stands and vending stalls. This was a thing built into the very walls, broadened by wood jumbled together and shored by whatever means possible. Ladders, stairs and rungs made of the bracing served as methods to climb, should one have need. Bridges held together by spit and willpower crossed overhead, some of wood and others of knotted rope. It was just as dangerous as Cat’s Crossing below the drift, but much more jumbled.
I was not inclined to risk it. Fortunately, there was no need.
A large portion of cluttered shacks and stands had been cordoned off. I saw men and women bearing those glints of verdigris holding off the curious. Some had only to glare, others to wave them away with a friendly word.
Still others bristled with weapons bared—often a hunk of wood with nails driven through.
The poor man’s billy club.
Uriah gestured us down a narrow lane. “Gird yourself,” he warned.
The faintest of fragrances tickled my nose, but with my olfactory receptors long since beaten into submission, I could not pin it.
I did not long have to guess.
The first sign of murder most foul came upon the stoop—a splash of blood dried nearly brown. The shop was not a structure, as such, but the walls that had come to mark its interior had been nailed in place as support for higher stalls and platforms. A door had been cut into the planks, leaving an uneven edge.
Uriah stopped just outside. “Your service begins here.”
I studied the blood by his filthy boot. “What do you want us to do?”
“Find who did this,” he said grimly. “Find them, and if you can’t drag them to me for proper vengeance, then put a bloody end to them yourself.”
As a rule, I had never accepted notices demanding murder. It was not a line I was comfortable crossing. Of all the notices I had ever claimed, only one had ended in murder by my own hands.
It was a stain I carried, and I did not want to broaden it.
Nor did I care to tarnish it with the blood of others.
It was an odd sort of way to honor the man who had been first my friend, and then my rival.
Hawke, on the other hand, had no such compunctions. He sniffed at the air, his eyes sliding beyond us to the crowds. “One night?”
“If you cannot achieve this in one night,” Uriah said, “then there is no foul.” It seemed an odd way to demand service, but that was the Underground. It wasn’t so much honor as the expectation of our word kept that demanded we work as we had committed.
Were we to slack in our commitment, he would know.
Such was the nature of things.
Zhànzhàn approached my side. “This is not the clean work of an assassin.”
“You can tell simply from one splash of blood?” I asked her.
“From this one, yes.” She entered the doorway first.
It felt like a challenge.
I darted inside before either man behind me could protest.
Eventually, I might learn something of patience. Perhaps if I were to throw myself headlong into more scenes of visceral carnage, the instinct for caution would one day develop. As it was, this was only the second such scene I had ever stepped into—literally speaking, no less.
That something soft and viscous squished beneath my boot struck my flailing senses first. That it was attached to the shredded remains of a torso without limbs or head followed swiftly after.
Nausea surged within me.
The Chinese girl stood in the midst of such slaughter that even the lamps could not distinguish what was blood and what was shadow, and she did not quail.
What terrible things had she seen—had she done—that this did
not affect her? Oh, how I hated the Veil and all it stood for.
A firm hand gripped my upper arm. It kept me from swaying, but I wrested free, determined to stand under my own power. The look I turned upon Ashmore was one of desperate restraint. “Do not,” I hissed, barely a sound through clenched teeth.
If I unclenched them, I might lose what little remained in my belly.
My tutor’s features were a pale mask beneath the dirt we all wore. He did not reach for me again, and I understood this a measure of acknowledgement. “This is not the work of humans,” he said tightly.
My heart beat like a drum gone awry, too high in my throat and overly loud. No matter where I looked, there was death. The most awful of deaths, torn limb from limb and left to rot with soft organs hanging out. I’d seen this similar horror once before, only it were Bakers strewn like so much refuse—men I’d known.
I could not count how many poor souls had fallen to the claws of the beasts we hunted.
Too many.
But why had they marked this shop?
Globules of congealing mass squished and squelched as Zhànzhàn stepped through the carnage.
My jaw locked.
My tutor noticed. “You don’t have—” My chin lifted. Ashmore subsided mid-sentence.
“Do as you must.”
I would. I had to. There was no other choice for me but to follow that wretched girl across the blood- and limb-strewn interior. My pride would allow for nothing less. “What type of shop was this?” Ashmore asked, and I heard Uriah answer from outside, but not what.
His rumble seemed strained.
I blamed him not at all.
“Many things,” Zhànzhàn said as I halted at her side. She bent over the counters—or what planks and crates had served as counters. The long, glossy tail of her hair spilled down her shoulder. “Most is gone.”
“What was here?” I asked, turning to study the adjoining collection of what had been holding crates. Now they were splintered beyond repair.
A dusting of yellow marred the fractured edge of one strip of wood. It congealed to a bloody mess on the edge.
I bent with care, trying not to pay any attention to the sound the thick layer of blood beneath my boots made. The feel of it continued to press against the soles of my feet, a steady horror that weighted my forced calm.
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