Transmuted

by Karina Cooper

  His eyes flew wide. “What? My lady, you cannot hope to—”

  The tube I carried whistled through the air in an arc, connecting with the top of his head quite soundly. The echoing thunk of stone meeting skull was quickly supplanted by a harsh yelp and a quickly bitten out, “Mercy, my lady!”

  I tucked the tube against my shoulder, as though it were the club I’d just designated it. “Now that we’ve cleared the formalities,” I said, again with a sweetness that belied my intent. “Shall we broach this again? Your patron, if you please.”

  Ashmore’s fist tightened to a knot under the young man’s chin.

  I felt a bit sorry for the fellow, this much was true, yet I considered our actions something of a service. This boy had clearly joined the ranks of Society collector out of boredom; the life of a fourth son was no doubt fraught with such ennui. Unless he married well—and married up, for that matter—Mr. Bennett Hale Willoughby was destined for a life of service or trade.

  As my tutor held him over the rather less than terminal drop beyond the balustrade, as the young man came to understand that the earl he had so offended would not help him, I watched resignation replace fear in his eyes.

  “All right,” he snapped, falling back to righteous indignation when pleas for mercy went ignored. It was, for him, better than the vulnerability of defeat. “All right, I’ll tell you what I know. Please don’t drop me.”

  “Good.” Ashmore righted him once more, and even did him the courtesy of straightening his rumpled coat.

  “Did you receive this from your patron?” I asked, holding up the tube. “This dart device.”

  “Yes,” admitted Bennett, belatedly tugging his apparel into place. His gloves were less white than before, but any gentlemen would have a spare. He would return to the ball with none the wiser.

  And I would ensure to find and stop his patron before anything befell Mr. Bennett.

  Piers braced a hand upon the balustrade and peered out into the garden, as though he were no more a part of the situation as the shadows he studied.

  “Then your patron,” I suggested. “Quickly, please. You no doubt wish to return to the festivities.”

  Bennett smoothed down his hair. “All right. But you mustn’t say that I’d given you anything,” he added, quite firmly.

  I was not so vindictive as to deny him this. Were he any more skilled, and matters might be different. “I have already beaten you once,” I told him, earning a flush for my honesty. “I’ve no intentions of putting the boot in when you’re down.”

  “Thank you,” he said stiffly, and then countered with an awkward, “I think.”

  I’d allow him to dwell on it without any reassurance from me. “Then—”

  Piers raised a hand, white as marble in the faded light. “There’s someone here,” he said quickly, low and sharp.

  I rounded our captive to study the same shadows Piers watched so intently. “Are you certain?”

  “No,” he said quietly. “And ’tis that very reason I am uneasy.”

  Bennett took the opportunity to rub at his face, as though weary. Ashmore ensured that he remained within reach of the boy, but said to us both, “We should return inside.”

  I’d be deuced if I lost ground now. I rounded on Bennett, pointing at him with the blow tube. “Who gave you this? Who gave you the notice?”

  He groaned into his hands, and then straightened. His chin lifted, as though he meant to bear whatever burden came. “I knew this all seemed rather distasteful, yet here I am, regardless.” A sigh. “Very well, my lady. Please accept my deepest apologies—”

  “Yes, yes,” I said hurriedly. “Go on with it.”

  Though disapproval touched his features, echoed by a faint snort from Piers behind me, Mr. Bennett inclined his head. “Our patron left no name, however he—”

  Pff. The sound seemed like little more than a brush of wind, a touch of breeze through the garden below. I would have paid it no mind at all save that at the same time, Ashmore’s gaze focused over the young man’s shoulder. He barked, “Down,” as he wrenched Bennett off the balustrade with a hard arm at the shoulder.

  I moved without gauging the whole of the scene, for there was no time. A needle-sharp glint winked in the darkness, and I threw the whole of my weight upon Piers, who was not prepared for me.

  We fell to the terrace stone, mirrored by the heavy thud of Bennett and Ashmore nearby, with protest tangling in Piers’s throat. It came out more a curse and grunt than aught else.

  For a Society event wherein parlor games were not the intent, I was spending too much of my time upon the ground.

  Among the many reasons I felt a female was to be vaunted above the singular male, the art of mobility whilst entrapped in such capacious attire as fashion required of a lady was perhaps primary. Intellect might be measured equally, were the scale objective enough to allow it, and certainly our capacity for emotion—both good and base—might be similar in scope.

  However there was a reason I preferred trousers when hunting below, and that was simply due to the lack of obstruction.

  Even so, I did not allow fashion’s dictates to halt me from my pursuit. Unlike Piers, who reeled a bit from his abrupt re-introduction to the cobbles, I rolled over, pushed myself up, and seized as many of my skirts and crinoline as I could in one arm. I hopped over Bennett and my tutor, who covered the boy, and all but leapt down the stairs.

  The pull of my crape gown nearly tumbled me off-balance. I righted myself with a stumble, my free hand touching the ornately worked path before launching into a sprint in the direction from whence the darts came.

  Such motion, the drag inherent in quick maneuvering, was enough to wrench my widow’s cap from my head. I wasted no time in righting it—I tore the damned thing off and left it floating in my wake as I darted for the closest arch framed in sculpted hedgerows. Locks of my hair tumbled to my shoulders.

  “Come out,” I called, a taunt as much as a demand. “Show yourself, coward!”

  That I was spoiling for a fight, especially against those foolish Society collectors who had already retreated once, was clear. I didn’t much mind it, for it did not occur to me that there might be a fourth assailant. What use was it to send three so-called collectors and keep in the dark a fourth?

  I had just taken a step under the arch when the strained voice of Lord Piers lashed out from the terrace. “Cherry! Come quick!”

  So unnerved was the sound that all thought of pursuit—of tracking, for all I’d no clues to trace—abandoned me. I turned abruptly, cursing the ill fortune to necessitate it, and hurried back the way I’d come.

  Piers leaned over the balustrade, and while relief obviously filled the scope of his features upon seeing me step from the shadowed garden, it did not wholly soften his alarm.

  Upon my return to the terrace, the source of his concern became clear.

  Mr. Bennett Hale Willoughby, some scarce years older than I, lay upon the terrace in twisted convulsions. His skin, already pale when last it had turned to me, had gone waxen, and tinged with yellow. At his shoulder, three darts fletched with black feathers seemed as blots staining the stone.

  My tutor bent over the seizing young man, a knee at one arm to hold him still, and both hands attempting to brace the boy’s head. “Fetch a physician,” he snapped, and Piers hurried to the terrace doors to do just that.

  Perhaps it was something of my own state of mind that colored the terrace around us. What had once been brightly lit, painted in tones of silver and gold, now seemed much more threatening. Shadows loomed from every side, and when my gaze fell upon the lean back of my tutor, those shadows found shelter within me.

  My throat dried. All the energy, manic as it was in pursuit of our enemy, turned abruptly to a cold so deep that it forced shivers down my spine.

  “Ashmore,” I whispered.

  His long fingers were white at the boy’s head. “There’s no time,” he muttered, but each syllable did not bite as clearly as it might
. His head hung, as though too heavy to hold up any more.

  Under his grip, Bennett went still. A white froth spilled from his gaping mouth, dribbled in flecks tinged pink.

  My own breath stopped in my chest. With fingers that felt numb with dread, I reached across the small distance between us and plucked a single black dart from my tutor’s upper arm.

  He did not note the small pain it must have caused, when it pierced his flesh instead of the boy he’d thought to protect.

  “No time,” he said again, tongue thick across the words. He raised his head, eyes sharpened to a razored edge, and hissed, “Poison.”

  Upon that revelation, belated though it was, Ashmore slumped.

  I caught his shoulders in my hands, but he was too heavy for me to hold aloft. He fell atop the corpse of Mr. Bennett, dragging me to my knees beside both.

  A lady might be expected to bear such matters as befell her with stoic grace at the best, or at the worst by swooning into insensibility; to be rescued from her fate, at least in public, by the gentlemen around her. A woman might be the queen of her castle when at home, but when outside it, she was to be decorous and courteous and genteel.

  Sod propriety.

  Had I the skills, I would have drawn upon the alchemical precepts of the Trumps in full view of the gala. But I did not. Neither Apis nor Bacatus-Typhon would cure the onset of an unknown poison’s symptoms. No other Trump came to mind as readily as I had grown to expect; my senses faltered, my intellect failed.

  With naught else to fall back on, I screamed for Lord Piers as the first convulsion tore through my tutor’s rigid frame.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Later, I would be informed that it required two footmen to bear Ashmore into the gondola, and two more to ensure I did them no harm in the madness that claimed me. Within the gondola, the story claimed that Lord Piers himself held on to me as though I were a patient of Bedlam, determined to make of herself a terror.

  I could neither blame fever nor the bliss of opium’s dream to excuse my behavior, and grief could not be named as culprit without admitting that there was a thing to grieve over.

  What I knew of my own accord was that I refused to let Ashmore go. And if I could do nothing but fight any that would do him harm, I would do so until we both lay upon those cobblestones in silent repose.

  I could not bear to face a world wherein Ashmore was not part.

  Such grief I had borne already. I dared not risk what sanity I had left in braving that endless oubliette again.

  Ashmore was my rock. Though another might claim my bruised heart, it was to my tutor that I owed my sobriety—and a measure of respect greater to that of any I had known.

  What Society thought of this little drama, I did not know. All passed in vicious distortion.

  So it was that I found myself ensconced within a parlor I did not recognize, cradling a porcelain teacup so fine as to be nearly thin as parchment in my gloved hands. The hour was unknown to me, but the lamps burned bright within, and the darkness weighed heavy without.

  I felt heavier than my weight allowed, leaden at limb and battered of heart and mind. That I still wore my widow’s finery was a matter I hadn’t considered attending, and my hair fell down my back in tangled knots with pins caught within.

  I could not hunch for the corset I was forced to wear, but the whole of my being—body and soul—drooped.

  A fire roared to my left, its orange fingers jumping and snapping in wicked fury; the warmth it forged did little to soothe the chill attached most dreadfully to my flesh.

  The tea within my cup had gone cold. When had the steam drifted away?

  How long had I held it?

  As I stared into its murky depths, a ripple formed upon its surface. I was a stranger here, that much I could sense. The appointment of this parlor was beyond censure, furnishings of polished oak and lush upholstery in damask, brocade and of silk woven in such a way as to provide the appearance of wealth without flamboyance.

  Various accoutrements of a parlor’s welcome filled shelves, tables, and the walls. Paintings of landscapes I did not recognize, brushed lamps turned up brightly, and other such tastefully applied items of worth, note and interest decorated the interior.

  This was not Piers’s bachelor townhome.

  Perhaps it was the curse of my father’s madness, that gift handed down from both brilliant parents that allowed one portion of my mind to tick through facts and figures as though all that affected me now was a simple equation.

  The tea caught within my cup jostled.

  Firming my grip did nothing to still my tremors.

  With great care for the woven rug beneath me, lest I splash it with the untouched liquid and stain it irreparably, I set the cup down upon a saucer decorated with matching bluebells and gilded edges.

  A footstep behind me should have earned an anticipatory thump of anxiety from my heart, but so cold was I that all my mind could do was take note—and wait.

  What would the bearer of that step say? What news would it bring?

  The face of Mr. Bennett, froth dripping from his slack mouth, filled my mind.

  I stared down at my fists clenched tightly upon layers of black crape; and how fortunate to be already wearing the guise of mourning when death so eagerly followed.

  There was a lengthy moment of silence, that keenly felt gravity of a moment stretched to the finest thread, and then a breath. “Cherry.” A dark voice, raw masculinity tasked with the greatest of concern.

  Hawke was not a man to whom tenderness came easy.

  And yet, for all he spoke only a single word—my name, caught in so familiar a voice as to strip of me what fragile composure I’d managed—I heard within a wealth of feeling.

  Whether it was his to feel or mine to wish most desperately for, I could not differentiate.

  I stood quickly, turned ere I’d fully found my balance, and if Hawke was at all surprised when I came for him, he did not show it. Instead, as though ready—as though it were the most natural of things—he caught me in his arms, held me tight against his chest and allowed me the discomfort of pounding at his chest with both fists. “Where were you?” I demanded, unfairly though I knew it was.

  I could not keep myself from it.

  He did not hum, soothe or sway. He did not whisper nothings, nor bestow upon me words of comfort nor encouragement. He held me in utter stillness, his hand as always at the back of my head, mired in the loose curls that was all that remained of my once-elegant dressing.

  If what I craved was the decorum of a gentleman, it would not be to Micajah Hawke I turned.

  So why did he stand there and allow me to assault him?

  He was but a statue prepared to bear every brunt of my fists upon his chest; rock steady and bruising to my flesh, until I had no more energy and my breath came in dry sobs.

  His heart beat beneath my ear, a rhythm both strong and forceful. His flesh, always too warm, radiated a primal intensity not at all shielded by the too fine material of his shirtsleeves. If anyone were to see him clad so thinly, especially in company of a lady, there would be untold scandal.

  If any were to know just what such promise of smooth, golden skin and hewn muscle did to me, there would be worse.

  I could not accept gentleness. Not here, and not from him.

  When I could gather of my wits a semblance of comportment, I made as though to step away. The hand at my hair tightened, and another curled around my upper arm. I tipped my head back, and in the blistering fervor of his mismatched gaze, I read an argument in thunder.

  Or perhaps it was that I retreated into preparations for a row, for it would be easier to contend with than any deeper emotion.

  “Release me,” I ordered quietly. “I must go to Ashmore.”

  Oh, that such words had not sprung as a weapon from my tongue. The hand at my arm tightened to a throb of pain, and a twitch at his jaw said I’d scored. “No.”

  Any other man might have included a counter, a reaso
n that I not be allowed, but not Hawke. Never him, with his fundamental desire to order me about.

  I wrenched at his grip. A knot of something dark welled in my chest. Something hard and angry.

  This was what I knew; familiarity to retreat within. “Let me go.”

  In answer, his fingers at my hair bent to a fist, and then a tight knot that forced my head at a tilt. I could not look away from his eyes, hungry and never cold. Not when he looked at me.

  “Ashmore lives,” Hawke said, a guttural note to the revelation that might have been a growl but for the words he shaped. He spoke as though it angered him to do so.

  As though it rubbed him raw.

  I braced both hands against his chest, hot and hard beneath my palms, even through my gloves. I had not stripped them off, as was my wont.

  I’d barely remembered they were there at all.

  Now I was grateful for the barrier, fragile as it was, and pressed against him to force a gap. “Let me go,” I said again, insistent and sharp. “If he lives, ’tis all the more reason to—”

  “No,” he said over me, budged not an inch. If anything, the air thinned between us. His fingers left my arm, but only to fold around my chin, a cradle of callused hands and the untoward focus of his gaze.

  I would not beg.

  But I was not above the petty comfort of insult. “You cannot force me.”

  His mouth, sculpted perfection, flattened into a hard line.

  “If we stood in my Menagerie,” he said, low and harsh, “I would clad you in silks.”

  “You don’t havea Menagerie,” I retorted, impatient and cruel. “And I’ve no need of silks.”

  This did not salve his point in the slightest. “I would have a kingdom,” he returned shortly. “Silk or canvas or clothed in nothing but my gaze, you are mine, and I’d have all know it.”

  The breath fled from my lungs, as though sucked away by the heat of his own against my lips. So close was he that all I’d need was a flex of my feet to close the gap between us, to press my lips against his.

  The bonds of his silken web folded around me, and all I could do was fall. To bathe, conceit and anger merged into a fine point of discomfort, in the words he lavished upon me.