by Y. S. Lee
Clowns and acrobats leaped and pirouetted up and down the parade line, handing out cards and posters and sometimes sweets to the little hands that reached eagerly for them.
He wondered what the children would think if they knew what those performers actually were, and what many of the veiled circus carts truly contained. He wondered what the parents would think if they knew the sweets were laced with myth, compelling those who ate them to follow the circus wherever it went.
In most circuses, the fantastic was portrayed only through sleights of hand; it was all illusion work. But in this circus, there were no illusions. The mermaids who stared lifelessly out of the lumbering aquatic carts were real. A team of bedraggled unicorns pulled a yawning manticore through the streets. A sullen harpy glared from her perch. The only limit to the show was the beholder’s ability to believe their own eyes.
One of the great aquatic carts got stuck as it passed from the cobbled street to the bridge over the great, stinking river that wound through the city’s heart.
The entire procession shuddered to a halt. To keep the crowd from becoming focused on the stuck cart, the clowns performed an impromptu acrobatics display, and sticky-faced children screamed with delight.
The hound sat and pulled at the collar first with one paw, then with the other. When he realized everyone was watching the acrobats, he lay on the ground and inserted both paws while the others watched him listlessly.
The buckle loosened and then fell away. He went to his nearest companion and began worrying at his collar. Then another and another, until at last, exposure to the magic in the collars stung him with the force of a hundred bees. He yelped, and the final hound looked at him mournfully.
Go.
The scarred hound bowed his head, lowering his ears in sorrow. I will return for you. I swear it.
His companion bowed to him and turned away.
The other hounds had already disappeared into the crowd. The scarred hound ran next to the unicorns, gnawing through their traces until they could pull free. The harpy begged him for help from her wheeled cage, but he had no key.
I will return for you, he repeated.
For that, he knew, was his mission. To free his companions from slavery, and perhaps return magic to a world that had once known it.
He nipped at the jesses of a molting phoenix who huddled on a goon’s fist, and though he could scarcely feel his mouth, he chewed through the muzzle of the golden sphinx.
He did not stop to watch as they took flight. He ran through the ensuing chaos, making straight for the bridge.
As he came alongside the stuck cart, one of the mermaids saw her chance. The glorious arc of her tail curved over him as she leaped from the caravan. She did not quite make the railing, though, and crashed to the cobblestones in front of him.
She lay still for one moment, her kelp-colored hair streaming, her mouth forming bubbles of terror. Her scaled arms reached for him, the poison-tipped fins at her wrists opening and closing like deep-sea fans. The gold-edged gills on her sides gasped for air. She was being slowly crushed by the weight of air and the want of water.
Help me.
He heard Sally’s screams and the hobnailed boots of the goons as they pounded toward him. He looked up at the Ringmaster running toward him, drawing a revolver from his waistcoat.
As delicately as possible, he gripped the mermaid’s shoulder with his teeth. Then he pulled her hard toward the river, while her sisters sang a sea-dirge for her in the cart behind them.
Terror striped her scales a dull, muddy red. Her watery eyes met his.
Please.
The hound felt something slide across his flanks—a net, perhaps—and through the melee, he heard the click of a mechanism sliding home.
He looked over his shoulder. The Ringmaster loaded the revolver with bullets glowing green with myth and pointed it straight at the mermaid. The hound pushed with all his might. The mermaid wrapped her arms around the rough banisters and pulled herself through, scraping scales onto the stone. For one moment, she hung off the bridge, and then she wriggled through the air and into the roiling river below.
As the bullet left the chamber, the hound dove off the bridge and into the brown stench of the Thames after the mermaid. The screams of bobbies and goons chased him into the water, and two more bullets followed him. One grazed his shoulder, unwinding a thin ribbon of blood into the water. Yelping, he struggled to stay afloat before the strong current pulled him under.
Kelp-green arms surrounded him. I could take you down into the depths, she said softly above the choke and tumble of the waves. We could live happily there, you and me.
He shook his head against her. It was all he could do.
Then be free, little king, she said. But know you will have my gratitude forever. Call on my father’s name, and my people will aid you.
She whispered the name in his ear before the water took him.
Abigail Chen was not who you’d call an ordinary London girl. At a glance, she could pass for full British, with her mother’s brunette curls and lush mouth, but her upswept phoenix eyes and pert nose harkened back to her father’s home in Guangdong. Here in Shadwell, though, her mother held sway as proprietress of the Oriental Quarters, taking in lascars and other refugees who reminded her of her dearly departed husband, Abigail’s father Ah Chen. Canton Kitty, as her mother was called, was indefatigable, a lifeline for those who often struggled in London’s harsh dockyards to make a living. No one would dare speak unkindly to her daughter.
Canton Kitty was not to be crossed, it was true, but Abigail did so regularly. Today, for instance, against her mother’s express orders, she was mudlarking. It seemed fair sport; the Thames was always turning up something interesting. Perhaps she’d find something unusual or valuable on the mudflats that would allow her to finance the more expensive tastes her mother denied her. Maybe a few coins, a silver spoon, something she could take to the rag-and-bone shop in trade. She’d had her eye on a stylish bonnet at the milliner’s stall for quite some time, but her mother had dismissed the need for such frippery out of hand. “You don’t need to be catchin’ no one’s eye with that, Abby-girl,” she said. “When your old bonnet is wore out, we’ll find you something practical. We’re not fancy folk, after all.”
Since her fiancé Edward’s death, with Abby facing the prospect of spinsterhood, her mother saw no point in anything but practicality. Hence, Abby found herself here, holding her skirts as high as she could with one hand and clutching her boots and stockings in the other.
She was near to a bridge—her toes increasingly cold, the stench of the mud beginning to overpower even her normally stolid senses—when she saw the pale lump near one of the pilings. She couldn’t quite figure out what it could be. A dog or a pig, maybe, until she saw the long, narrow foot.
A person.
Every hair on the back of her neck stood up and warned her not to go closer. Since she seldom heeded any warning, she moved closer, cold mud squelching between her toes. The person was a young man, with the fine features of one who shared her heritage. His long black hair was clotted with mud. A silver scar slashed across his nose and ended just under his right eye. A fresh scrape along one bicep was beginning to scab over. She took in the rest of him in one blushing breath because he was quite naked—the broad, hairless chest; the sculpted abdomen…
He was breathing.
Her boots thudded in the mud near his shoulder.
His eyes opened. Rich and deep, like polished amber.
He coughed and sat up, expelling dirty water from his lungs.
She backed up several steps, ready to take flight, boots be damned. But then her bolder nature got hold of her again, and she said, “Reckon I didn’t expect to find this sort of thing today!”
At first, the way he looked at her, she wondered if perhaps she should have tried her father’s native tongue, but she had no sense of whether he was from Canton or farther north.
He saved her the trouble when
he said, “Mudlarks seldom prosper.” He half-smiled, and then coughed again.
He sounded like her mother.
Abigail removed her shawl. She handed it to him and said, “I’m Abby Chen, sir. Pleased to make your acquaintance. And you are?”
He covered himself as best he could with the shawl, hiding the faint blush in his cheeks behind the tangle of his hair.
“Syrus Reed,” he mumbled. He paused, uncertain. “Syrus Reed,” he said again, more loudly, as if he’d just remembered his own name.
His face shifted, his lips twisting as he struggled to contain some emotion she could not guess. Perhaps for the first time in her life, cold logic poured down her spine and begged the question of what she thought she was doing helping this stranger, but she brushed it aside and gave him her hand instead.
“Come with me,” she said. Like her mother, she had a softness for strays.
She picked up her boots and led him back to the stairs, cursing softly when she discovered that even her new stockings inside the boots were splattered with mud. “Reckon they’re not the only thing I’m going to have to answer for,” she muttered to herself.
Mr. Reed said nothing, but climbed carefully after her, avoiding the stares and rude gestures of everyone who mocked him and his escort on the way to the Oriental Quarters. They had a long go of it across the rough cobbles, their feet bruised and covered in filth by the time they reached the alley and took the back stairs up to the kitchen.
Abby brought Mr. Reed in through the back door. Cook took such fright that she nearly dropped the entire tureen of soup she was carrying into the dining hall.
“Fetch Mother, please,” Abby said. Cook set down the tureen, threw her apron over her head, and ran from the room.
Abby winced as she searched for something to wipe their feet with, but the stranger stood stock-still by the hearth, as though he feared the kitchen would dissolve if he moved.
A few moments later, Canton Kitty arrived. She was a stout matriarch, dressed in sedate homespun buttoned almost to her chin. Though her mouth was hard, her eyes were kind, and she wore her widow’s cap with grace and a sad pride. She took one look at Syrus and said, “Let’s get him upstairs.”
They helped him up the servant’s stairs, for his legs trembled and did not seem to want to work by the time they reached the narrow little door to the first level of upstairs chambers where Kitty and Abigail lived.
“Where?” Abby breathed.
“Edward’s old room,” Kitty said.
Abby could feel the young man trying to help them, trying not to become deadweight between them, but he was fading fast.
When they got him into her fiancé’s old room, Syrus Reed collapsed onto the bed. No one had been in here since Edward had passed six months ago. No one except Abby. She’d made sure the bedclothes and counterpane were straight, that Edward’s coat still hung in the wardrobe and that his shoes were still neatly arranged at the bottom of it. Even the dresser still held all her fiancé’s things—his worn pocket watch, his straight razor and strop, a carnelian pinkie ring Abby had given him against her mother’s admonitions.
The oddity of having a man in Edward’s bed again made Abby cross her arms over herself, as if warding off a blow. She didn’t want to remember the last time she’d lain here with Edward, having sneaked out of her room down the hall because she could not bear the fire in her body any longer. Nor the final time Edward had lain here—his normally ruddy skin so unearthly pale—before Doctor Ah Yue had closed his staring eyes and declared him gone.
But Syrus…he was as different from Edward as could be, she thought. Dark where Edward had been fair. Mysterious where Edward had been so plainspoken and earnest. By the look of him, she doubted he’d stay long. But then, Edward had intended to stay forever, and now he was six feet under.
“I imagine this one will be shipping out as soon as he’s better,” her mother said, as if to confirm her thoughts. “Good luck to him, poor boy.”
Abby crossed her arms over herself, trying to banish the thought that she’d hoped he might stay.
Her mother turned to her. “Not a word he’s here, understand? I don’t want to run afoul of whatever landed him on the riverbank.”
Abby nodded. “I’m afraid more than a few saw us making our way here. A man wrapped in naught but a shawl is hard to miss.”
“Be that as it may, anyone asks, we don’t know nothin’. Worse comes to worst, we can stow him in the Mousehole.” The Mousehole was what her mother called a suite of hidden apartments her father had built for those who needed even deeper sanctuary. Of course, people who wouldn’t hesitate to blacken Ah Chen’s name had gossiped that he smuggled more than just refugees into London, but the rumors were baseless.
Like her husband, Kitty used the Mousehole to help people in need.
“Have Myrtle get the fire going in here so we can have some hot water. He wants bathing.”
“I can help—” Abby began.
Her mother raised a brow at her. “I think not, young lady. Now do as I ask, and then be about your chores. And no more mudlarking, do you hear? Lord knows what trouble you’ve brought on us now.”
Abby complied, but she couldn’t help smiling sadly at her mother’s attempts to keep her from glimpsing Mr. Reed in his natural state. She’d already seen everything she needed to see.
Little king, little king, where do you hide?
Little king, little king, who will be your bride?
Syrus surfaced from dreams of mermaids singing and caressing him as they swam past. Their mockery and the depths at which he’d been entrapped by them left him cold and feeling half drowned again. Memory broke over Syrus, sharp as a wave of standing alone on a battlement above the sea, listening to the mermaids singing.
He had no idea how long he’d been asleep—a day perhaps? He looked around at the plain room, the little fire and kettle swung away from the hob, a tray of food sitting close to the hearth but not close enough to burn. Syrus had the distinct feeling this had been someone’s room—a man’s, perhaps—the impression made stronger by the items carefully placed on the dresser.
His head spun as he stood. He took a breath, running his hands along the unfamiliar shirt that scratched his ribs, the even-scratchier trousers that hugged his legs. His lungs still felt waterlogged. He considered looking in the wardrobe but thought better of it. Instead, he squatted on the floor and reached for the tray.
Syrus picked up bread with trembling fingers and crumbled it in his mouth, then pushed the kettle closer to the little fire.
With food, the weakness abated somewhat, though he found himself longing for an extremely rare bit of meat and hating that longing. He couldn’t say when he’d last eaten. The Ringmaster had always been stingy with rations for his charges.
He stared into the flames, thankful to be clean and ostensibly safe for the time being, though he knew such safety was an illusion. Memory floated up, a leaf on a still pond. He had escaped once before, he knew. They had caught him; that was when Sally had whipped him.
Syrus’s fingers drifted over the scar. He sighed, wondering how he appeared now in human form. What did it matter, anyway? In all of Scientia, no one had dared befriend him. But he doubted anyone could have overcome the yearning and bitterness he felt for Olivia.
Scientia. Olivia. These were new names to him. He turned them over in his mind like jewels. He had a dim memory of the city of Scientia, with its aerial streets and deep tombs. He recalled a throne room, and Olivia taking her place by the dais.
Once the queen he had served and loved, Olivia’s true nature as a warrior automaton had been revealed by Nikola Tesla. She had become a general in the battle that had ensued.
Syrus could not now remember why the battle had been fought—there was a sense of creeping horror, a dark shadow over his memory. But he knew that the girl he’d loved was lost to him forever, little more than a living statue.
Pan ruo yun ni, he whispered. As different as Heaven and Earth
. So he and the clockwork general would always be.
He heard again the mermaids’ taunt: “…who will you take for your bride?”
He shredded the rest of the bread on the plate into tiny pieces. No one, he thought.
Meat. He needed meat. More to the point, he needed to hunt to forget the sharp ache that Olivia left inside. He could smell mice in the walls, a cat who hunted them curled in the kitchen. He could smell the grease Cook used sizzling in the pan, and the half-rancid bit of beef the hungry serving boy kept sawing bits off when no one was looking.
He sighed.
The door opened and he smelled the girl. He had never hungered after human meat until his enslavement in the circus, and then his hunger had been mostly born of rage and revenge. People smelled differently in the place he came from. Here, they smelled like food.
But this girl…it seemed impossible that she could smell of good things in a place like this, but he caught a whiff of scent that reminded him of the wild roses in the Forest of his birth. A whiff that made him think she might be like him. Had that been why she’d found him and brought him here, rather than leaving him to lie in the muck? Might there be others like him stuck in this world?
Before he knew it, he was up and had hold of Abby’s wrist. “Are you also a werechild?” he asked, peering into her hazel eyes.
Her pupils widened. She hesitated, but then pulled herself out of his still-weak grip.
“Begging your pardon, Mr. Reed, but I have no idea what you’re going on about!” she said. Her accent was thick and rollicking, like the river itself. He was at pains to understand her; it was like being caught between the different halves of himself, wavering in and out of form. Of both worlds and yet none.
“My mistake,” he said. “Humblest apologies.” He sat down dejectedly on the edge of the bed. There was only one place where there were others like him. A place he dared not go if he valued his freedom, and yet the only place he could go if he wanted to ensure the freedom of those he’d left behind.
