This would be my first alchemical compound of my own making, and I refused to get it wrong.
“Allez, hop,” I sighed.
Ashmore chuckled behind me.
Chapter Seventeen
By the time the meeting hour arrived, I was as ready as I was ever going to be—and near enough to losing the contents of my meal as to seal my teeth together in fear of it.
This time, we left nothing to chance.
The salve of Ashmore’s devising altered my skin’s hue to a nutty brown, a shade that turned my eyes into vivid jewels within my face.
I smelled like a walking spice market, to be sure, but there could be no denying that I had succeeded in the exercise laid out for me. Between that and Ashmore’s unusual skill with cosmetics, I barely recognized myself.
A good portion of my hair had fallen victim to Ashmore’s carefully wielded shears, but the end result did not leave me as bare-headed as it felt. After his attentions, my hair had become a dark blue-black, exotic in shade and coaxed into thick, gleaming curls that bounced and swayed to the small of my back. My eyes were rimmed with thick black kohl, as I’d seen the sweets wear, and my skin glistened with the faintest golden shimmer. This was courtesy of the gold dust ground into the salve, a final pièce de résistance to our design.
I felt rather more on show than I was comfortable with, but this was the point.
In truth, when I looked at myself in the mirror, I felt as though I belonged on one of those Menagerie pamphlets; a mysterious female from a far off island. I imagined what the Society matrons might have to say about this particular fashion, and barely stifled my laugh. Surely not a single one would recognize me with such drastic alterations.
We waited at the designated meeting spot, a man’s hat pulled down over my head. “Stay out of the wet,” he warned again, voice low as the afternoon market stalls hawked around us. We’d agreed to meet the man who would smuggle me inside at a busy intersection outside of Limehouse. Close enough for an easy jaunt, not so near that we’d be hassled by idle Ferrymen. “If your hair is dampened, the salts won’t last.”
I tucked a curl under my nose and inhaled. It reeked of something sharp, but not altogether unpleasant. “Where did you learn these formulae?”
He smiled, a knowing curve mirrored by the glint in his brown eyes, but did not answer me. As quickly as it appeared, his amusement faded. “The only risk now is that you will be selected for the wrong rings.”
I squinted into the fog, resisting the urge to pat my own face. The salve itched a little, thanks to my fair English skin, but it wasn’t anything I couldn’t handle for the duration. The coal-smeared miasma caused more discomfort, were I to compare.
“My skills will put me in the ring,” I said, summoning every ounce of courage I possessed to sound bold and daring. “I’ll see to that.”
“Which skills?” Ashmore asked, and when I turned to study the inclination of his tilted chin, I realized what it was he meant.
If I showcased the contortionism I’d learned as a child and maintained throughout my collector’s profession, I could still end up a sweet. There were some who paid extra for such flexibility, and them what had the resilience of the training lasted longer.
I frowned down at my garb—a simple skirt and blouse beneath a mended coat. “You’re right,” I admitted. “I hadn’t thought about that.”
“I’d be rather more worried if you did,” muttered my escort, but I ignored this as he’d ignored my question.
“I’ll have to choose something else,” I mused instead. Perhaps demonstrate that I could walk a line? Or a turn on the trapeze? I couldn’t recall if I’d ever spent time upon one, but I was a fair hand at acrobatics. Leaping to a moving bar was much more intensive than leaping to a platform held still, but I might risk it for the chance to get inside the tent.
A man pushed through the market throng, clad in similar garb to what one might expect from the masses. Only the set of his shoulders—much more confident than a barker or a cabman—caught my eye.
Ashmore saw him the same as I, and pushed away from his leaning position to stand before me. The man’s features were graveled by age, but not unkind, with lush white chops streaked by fading yellow. His eyes flicked to me, widened some, then pinned on Ashmore with a greedy flare. “This your bint?”
Oh, a charmer.
“This is she,” Ashmore agreed, and plucked a jingling pouch from an inner pocket. The man’s gaze dropped to it, and stuck. “Here’s the agreed-upon price, with another matching once I ascertain her safe delivery.”
“Cor,” breathed the man, and he saluted sharply—a move I had not expected. “You can rely on me, guv. I owe Dabby fer more’n one.”
“Excellent.” Ashmore turned to me, blocking most of my soon-to-be escort’s view, and took the opportunity to straighten my collar. Not that it needed it. The coat we purchased upon consignment was remarkably sturdy. “Are you prepared?”
I had no answer for that. “Dabby?” I asked instead.
“Colonel Erastus Q. Dabershire,” he replied quietly, but not with the tones of one wholly sidetracked. “He owes me a favor or two. A long story.” His fingers caught my chin with gentle care, forcing my attention upon his face. “’Tis not too late. You don’t have to do this.”
Oh, but I did. I knew that I did, even as the offer he extended stole the strength from my quailing limbs. I forced my knees to remain unbowed, but could not similarly force a smile.
He read my answer somewhere in my cosmetically altered features, for his mouth twisted into a lopsided slant and his fingers eased from my face. “Would that I were as lucky a bastard,” he muttered, looking at my shoulder as he did.
A pang of regret assailed me; fear would not let it take hold as strongly as it might. I touched his arm, the only comfort I could give, then took a deep breath. “I am ready.”
The man over Ashmore’s shoulder waited patiently, rocking back and forth on his heels and looking respectfully elsewhere.
I might have misjudged him.
Ashmore caught me by the forearm as I stepped around him, holding me still so that he might speak into my ear. “You will be alone, Cherry. My reach extends only so far.”
“I know it,” I said.
He let me go. “I’ll try to prepare for all eventualities,” he said, once more a practical man. “If things go sour, get out of the Menagerie by whatever means.”
“I will.”
He did not say goodbye. Nor did I.
On deceptively steady legs, I approached the man who was to escort me into the Menagerie and bestowed upon him a smile. “Thank you for the company,” I said.
He doffed his cap just enough to reveal a bald pate reddened around a fringe of white. “Don’t know why yer tryin’ to get in,” he said with surprising candor, “but it helps me slice and earns me pay.”
“Fair.” I tugged my hat farther down upon my brow. “I am in your hands, sir.”
Ashmore watched us depart, his gaze like a sharp weight in the back of my head. I dared not turn to look.
As fearful as I was of this plan, it was easier to maintain appearances when I couldn’t see the canvas tent. In like danger, if I looked back now, Ashmore’s presence would become the safety net I would not disservice him by falling into.
Fisting my hands into the pockets of my jacket, I followed the peddler into Limehouse. The fog swallowed us with oily yellow fingers.
We met with the rest of his wares near the Menagerie gate, and I almost balked when I noted the children. Anger surged through me. My pulse knocked in shuttered warning, and I clenched my fists lest I act on it and ruin my sole opportunity. The warmth this forced into my limbs helped somewhat.
At the very least, angry though I was, it was better than the hollow ache of fear.
“What are they for?” I asked.
“Coin,” replied my escort, and that was all there was to it.
He did not bother with a cart, but had no need when he had oth
ers to watch the wares for him. Aside from the children, of which there were three boys and two girls of passable appearance, there were three women of a pleasant age and two men who appeared to be something of a partnership. Given the lean muscle barely disguised beneath shoddily patched coats, I suspected they were trained in some physical art or another.
Where they all came from was anybody’s guess. The brothers—for they looked enough alike—probably came from a traveling show, or a smaller rural affair. They bore the wide-eyed wonder of rustic breeding.
One of the girls and another boy sniffled as they were herded along the eastern wall. A handler shoved at one, growling, “Shut it.”
I caught the girl by the shoulder, tucking her shorter figure along my side. “Easy, now,” I murmured. “There’s a girl.”
She clung to my jacket hem, head down and lank hair falling across her face. A bit of raw red peeked out from beneath the tangled curtain, a sickly bit of yellow, and my heart broke for the child. Phossy jaw, unless I missed my guess; a condition that assailed them children who worked the matchstick factories.
She must have sold herself, or parents unwilling to care for a brat whose jaw would soon rot off did the selling while they could.
Another boy with short blond hair seemed the pick of the litter, with smooth skin beneath a stain of soot and wide blue eyes. He’d be sorted for the sweets, I was sure of it.
Unless the others showed some talent or promise, I couldn’t tell which way their fates might fall. If there was kindness to be found, they’d be turned away. Once upon a time, I might have not been so unkind, but the Menagerie was not quite so much a bargain. A fair day’s work no longer seemed enough.
We paused outside a wooden gate, a servants’ entrance of sorts, and waited while the white-haired peddler negotiated with a man on the inside. After a moment, he turned to us. “Wait here.”
We did, though not as dutifully as expected. The handlers were brutes, holding court by menace alone. They loomed and glared, and the girl at my side sobbed, her face muffled in my arms.
Not far from where we stood, the fog swirled and danced, tendrils of it testing the boundaries of the Menagerie’s draft. Though Maddie Ruth no longer serviced the fans, they operated smoothly. Was it because her crew still worked without her?
If so, I might consider them something of an ally on the inside.
In shorter time than I expected, the muffled patter of footsteps in a rush filled the quiet. The peddler returned, face red, and managed, “Hurry, hurry!”
We were pushed within, corralled by the handlers, and I recognized this far corner as a place off-limits to all but the Menagerie’s staff. Likely where much of the daily service was tendered.
Neither by word nor deed did the peddler afford me any extra courtesy, and I appreciated that, even as my stomach came to clench and cramp with fear. Whether he considered me little more than an extra bit of pay or something else, I couldn’t say.
He beckoned us all farther in, into a large edifice not so much designed for living than for a place to attend to affairs out of the cold.
The warmth was a welcome.
The company was not.
Monsieur Marceaux, out of the circus attire I’d always mentally attributed to him, looked little more than a rotund old man with more white in his thinning hair than he allowed in his mustache. Obviously overwhelmed, he shouted at various servants as they darted to and fro, carrying boxes and crates and props made to glitter and shine.
For a moment, it was not navy wool and gray trousers I saw, but the stripes of a ringmaster’s togs, and a cane in hand. He did not direct sweating servants, but gestured to the star of whatever show was meant to play.
For some, it was the lanyard. For others, a trapeze.
For me, it had been the knife.
The knife.
A hard hand shoved into the small of my back, and I stumbled forward, tripped on the hem of my skirt, and fell hard to my knees. Another gripped my face, forced it up until Marceaux’s beady-eyed scowl filled my vision.
All of my senses, all of my instinct, froze on a note of panic.
“What is your name?” he demanded, hard but for the French accent that still colored his dialect. When I did not answer quick enough, he jerked my chin so high that my neck threatened to snap. I managed to carry my weight upon my feet, a smooth transition that earned a speculative scrutiny from my sharp-eyed host. “Never mind it,” he said immediately. “We’ll give you a new one. Have you training?”
“Aye,” I managed. A single note. Good. I stammered something that might have been a village’s name, but the sneer on Marceaux’s lined visage told me he did not care.
“Contortionist?”
Say what one might of the vile man, he knew how to gauge the movement of the body. He should. He’d trained me, after all. Petrified beneath his stare, I managed a note of assent before recalling the concern Ashmore had placed. “And,” I added when his eyes fell to the figure not wholly shrouded by the clothing I wore, “knife-throwing.”
That gave him pause. He let me go. “Knife-throwing, you say?” His streaked eyebrows knotted as he gave the peddler behind me a hard stare. “Where did you acquire her?”
The man paled. “Ah, well, y’see...”
My heart thudded in my throat, until I thought I might retch from it.
Marceaux, clearly impatient, waved off his own question. “It does not matter. Get her ready for tonight,” he snapped, and waved me away as though it were already decided.
I looked back at the peddler and his charges. The children huddled together, fear a pallid mask upon them all. The girl with a bit of phossy sobbed uncontrollably.
I had no opportunity to plead for their case. A woman older than I and with the tired sag of the well-used took my arm without preamble and tugged me away. I thought of resisting, but the large room was not the place.
Marceaux was no doubt used to such antics, and the peddler’s handlers would be keen on ensuring their wares did not cost them in pay.
I would accomplish nothing if I attempted to intervene.
Gritting my teeth, I allowed the servant to lead me away.
At least Marceaux had not recognized the altered face of an old protégé. I had no reason to suspect that he would. Children came and went, many by way of death or nicking, and I’d wager he’d had plenty more after my forced retirement.
Now I only had to hope that my disguise fooled the rest.
Chapter Eighteen
The following hours passed too swiftly as I was put through various tests of ability. This was done before circus veterans—one man and a woman who seemed to operate in tandem. They both wore their hair long, straight and brown, but differences in shade and shape of mouth and nose led me to believe them acting siblings and not truly blooded.
I did not recognize them, but then, I had never attended the rings in which they excelled.
I wondered if it would ordinarily have been Hawke doing the testing. He had always struck me as a man who preferred to control all aspects of his domain.
To my relief, they did not request anything overtly complicated. I displayed various tricks; the walkover, the back bend, the cartwheel, making of myself a ring that could roll about, folding into a trunk without too much effort, and a decent balance upon the rope they strung for practice not far off the ground. I climbed another, hand over hand, and winced when the scar upon my forearm pulled, but I seemed to impress them enough—for a sold bit of flesh, anyhow.
Concentrating on these maneuvers took a great deal of effort. A wobble might be forgiven, a tumble might be welcomed—I wanted neither, for each might suggest I was nothing more than a sacrifice.
The ache of my body varied, from fear that cramped inside my belly to the pleasant and much more familiar burn of muscles stretched to the maximum. I concentrated on the latter, and focused fully on ensuring each maneuver was done smoothly, deliberately. Without panic or a haste that might be deemed unpleasant to watch.<
br />
Along with my testing, there were others who practiced in the hours before the circus would open. All were unfamiliar to me, and I felt it a surreal sensation. I was so accustomed to knowing the faces in the Menagerie that it did not occur to me that there was an entire roster I’d never bothered to learn.
The physical exertions kept my body and mind occupied, and when it came time for the knife-throwing display, I was nearly calm. Nearly. A tremor upon my third blade’s throw cost my target, and the glance my evaluators exchanged put another knot in my belly.
Whatever it was that look meant, it did not lose me the role.
“Good,” said the woman, “you’ll do.”
“Maybe you’ll last longer than the others,” muttered the man. She elbowed him, forcing a cough and a rueful rub at his chest. “Well, it’s true.”
“Just focus on each night,” she told me, ignoring him. She pointed down a far hall, where a corridor led into the unknown. The sound of flesh hitting padded mats, of the twang of rope and grunts of effort filled the air.
All too familiar, even as it seemed to me to be wholly alien. I clung to my wrists, conscious of the tremors I fought to hide.
“Turn left at the far end,” the older woman said. “You’ll find a room second to the right. You’re sharing with Drusilla and Penelope, and if Georgie’s in there again, give him a bolloxing and send him right out.”
I tilted my head. “Georgie?”
“Penelope’s boy,” the man offered, and rubbed a hand over his own hair. A shade darker than hers, and without hint of curl. “Thinks himself smitten.”
“You’ve got less than an hour. The girls’ll show you what to wear,” the woman cut in again, all stern business.
I hesitated. “Excuse me—”
“Lord have it, what?” she snapped.
The man behind her set to the task of fetching the knives I’d flung—the one I’d sent astray seemed the hardest to pluck.
At least I’d missed what would have been the target’s head.
Engraved: Book Five of The St. Croix Chronicles Page 20
