by Chele Cooke
Hadley swept her hair back from her face as she entered, looking down at him. The corner of her lip was darker, the scrapes of teeth marks indented into the flesh. Something was worrying her. They both chewed their lips when they were nervous. He followed her gaze to Anna’s hands, still laid on the table, and her brow knitted low over her eyes.
“Lach,” Hadley said slowly. “I want to leave.”
Lachlan straightened and peered back at his sister, wondering what had worried her so badly. Had she, like him, seen something go wrong within the cirque? Had one of the men, drunk and out of their senses, tried to coerce her into enjoying something she wasn’t comfortable with? Anger flared within him from nowhere and he clutched tighter at his own hands, willing them to remain still.
“You do?” he asked, his voice stiff.
Hadley had been so excited to come to the cirque. She’d begged and pleaded with him, and now she wanted to leave when there were still hours left? He’d been sure he would have been leading her home at dawn as she yawned and regaled him with stories of the sights she had seen, even if he’d been right there alongside her when she saw them.
“I’ve had enough. I think we should go home.”
She said nothing more. He usually found he was good at telling when people were lying or keeping more from him. Hadley had always been more difficult. She’d grown up with him, she knew what he looked for. His pounding head and churning stomach weren’t helping either. He was still so cloudy, he wasn’t sure he’d have been able to pick a lie from a dozen truths in that moment.
There was something familiar about the blond man who followed his sister into the small tented room. Just the sight of him made his stomach lurch painfully and, looking at him, Lachlan could only see the man he had dragged from the menagerie, bloodied and torn apart.
The man rounded Hadley without a word and came to crouch next to Anna.
“Thank you,” he murmured fondly.
He laid his hand on hers. Lachlan glanced away from the private moment to find his sister staring at the hands on the table. She drew her bottom lip beneath her teeth again and looked away to stare at the wall. The chair scraped against the metal floor and Anna stared at the blond man with suspicion as she wrenched her hand back, not an ounce of recognition on her face.
“Anna?” the blond asked, reaching for her again. “What’s going on? Did something happen?”
“She doesn’t remember,” Lachlan said. “I asked for a reading and…”
“You asked for a reading?” Hadley snorted.
Lachlan ignored his sister’s interruption and dragged his chair closer to the table. He placed his hands on top of the patterned silk watching Anna and the blond. His eyes narrowed and his jaw tightened. No different from trying to worm the truth from a suspect.
“When she opened her eyes she was confused. She didn’t remember anything. Said she knew me, but…”
The man’s lips pursed tight and he pushed himself to his feet. He placed his hand on the table, brushing the top few cards from the deck. Anna straightened them without so much as a blink. When the man looked down at Anna there was a caution in his face where Lachlan thought he looked much better smiling. He turned away from Anna and rounded on Hadley instead.
“I’ll take you to the gates,” he announced.
“Wait a second,” Lachlan said. He pushed his chair back sharply and was on his feet. His stomach lurched uncomfortably but he ignored it. “I’m not ready to leave. Something strange is going on here. First that… that man, and now her?”
“What man?” Hadley asked.
Lachlan glanced at his sister. He didn’t want to explain what he had seen. He had always tried his hardest to keep her separate from his work. She wasn’t a soldier and the running of the city was none of her concern. Still, it didn’t mean he liked lying to her.
“It doesn’t matter. I’m not leaving.”
“Lachlan, please,” she begged.
The little girl was back in his sister’s voice, back when she still pleaded for their mother when she was sick. Unexpected heat pricked behind his eyes.
Leaving now would be a mistake, he knew that, but he was feeling increasingly sick and the pounding behind his temple showed no signs of abating. How much could he really learn whilst he was so distracted?
He gulped and nodded. He would be able to learn the rest from the other soldiers if they weren’t too drunk to remember. If not, they’d have to come again. He wouldn’t mind seeing some of that sheen again and he’d be able to check in on Anna and make sure she was alright.
“Alright,” he said. “We’ll go home.”
Lachlan replaced the chair beneath the table. The man rounded Hadley and pulled back the drapes as his sister looked at the woman again. Lachlan didn’t want to leave her like this and opened his mouth to ask whether she should come with them so she wouldn’t be alone, but Anna was staring at Hadley. She slowly got to her feet.
“It’s yours now,” she said.
“Anna?” the man asked.
“Are you alright?” Lachlan added.
“It’s yours,” Anna repeated. She stepped forwards and took Hadley’s hand. When she pulled back, the headscarf was draped over his little sister’s fingers. “Don’t let it make you forget what’s real.”
Hadley stepped away from her, the scarf fluttering down between them. It danced through the air and slid across the metal floor. The man came back to Anna and brushed his hand across the back of her shoulder blades. She didn’t even look at him.
“I want to see the baby,” was all she said.
“I can get us back to the gates,” Hadley said. “You stay with her.”
He moved closer to Anna and took her hand. Her fingers were trembling in his grasp and the man pulled her closer as he shook his head.
“No, I should go with you, just in case.”
Hadley led Lachlan to the opening in the drapes, sweeping it back so that they could pass beneath them. When Lachlan looked back, the man brushed a long braid from Anna’s face, giving her a loving smile.
“Just wait here until I get back, okay?” he said. “I’ll take you to the baby.”
Lachlan heard the lie as soon as it passed the man’s lips. He frowned and considered going back inside. Maybe he should take Anna with them to ensure her safety. She didn’t remember anything, she was just a confused woman. Maybe he’d be able to find her work in the city. Hadley took his hand and pulled him further through the gap.
In the little room, Annalise nodded and slid back into her seat. The man followed them through the drapes and they swung closed. The last thing Lachlan saw of her was as she picked up the card of the woman in the flowing white dress.
Jack kept his hands shoved deep into his pockets as he led Hadley and Lachlan down the loading ramp towards the midway. He gripped the flick knife against his leg, his gaze darting to each face they passed, praying he wouldn’t see the one looking for one, if not both of the Tack siblings.
Mr. Hatliffe didn’t like weapons on the staff. A few jumps before, one of the roustabouts had decided to go rogue. He’d robbed a string of patrons as they left in the early morning on Seixin, meaning they had to pack up in a hurry before the mob came back for retribution. That whole stop had been a disaster, now that he thought about it. One of the Liberty Horses had skidded on the metal in the ring, breaking its leg as it went down. The cats had eaten well, but Laliyah had been depressed for weeks. It had taken a lot of coaxing to get her out of bed to train the other horses into a change in the act. Hatliffe blamed the amount of sand in the ring, claiming there hadn’t been enough. Since then, he’d been rather picky about it. The Ringmaster was picky about everything.
There were a few crew members who were allowed to keep weapons on them whilst they were grounded, just as a precaution to fend off trouble. Jack was not one of them. Weapons were permitted to those the Ringmaster trusted and Jack knew he was not in that circle. He was accepted, put up with, but even then he was sure that
was only because of Annalise. He was sure Hatliffe wouldn’t have taken him on if it hadn’t been for Annalise’s prediction. He still didn’t know if it was true, if she’d really seen him as a member of the crew, or if she’d simply told Hatliffe the tale so that he would take him on. Not that it mattered anymore. The cirque owner had taken him on with just her word and it had been the first time Jack saw how seriously the man took her sight. It had been the first time he realised that her visions might be more than just a trick to draw money from gullible patrons.
“Jack?”
He turned, looking back at the brother and sister hurrying along behind him. The lamps of the midway brought out the colour in Hadley’s cheeks where her brother was so pale he looked almost green. He stepped back to join them.
“What’s happening to her?” Hadley asked.
“Anna?”
She nodded and looked down at her feet, but only after glancing warily at her brother.
The warmth of Annalise’s body against his in the dead of night flooded through him. The way she had smiled and chastised him for watching her sleep. She’d told him that there would be a new one, that he would forget her in lieu of this newcomer. Her words, however, were not what worried him at the moment. The warmth of her body was chilled by her words, telling him that she would be the first to forget. She had said that she would forget him.
“I don’t know,” he said.
Hadley sighed and turned towards the gates, only taking two steps before Jack grasped her elbow, pulling her to a stop. She looked at him, her hazel eyes wide under the flickering of the torchlight.
“Not that way,” he said.
Both Lachlan and Hadley stared at him. Jack felt his stomach tie itself into a knot.
“There are people watching the gates,” he admitted. “They saw you enter. It was how my boss knew about you, Lachlan.”
“What exactly does he know?” Lachlan asked. His eyes were narrowed in measured suspicion but against his pale green skin, he didn’t look as stern as he did sick.
Jack turned them away from the gates and led them around the side of the freak show tent. There were only a few patrons milling about. Most had come to the midway tents earlier in the evening and a raucous laughter from the other side of the thick material told him that those inside were enjoying the quiet time, probably with a few drinks.
He waited until they were past the tent, the lanterns getting fewer with every step. The glow faded away into the darkness and Jack squinted into the black, trying to pick out the guide ropes.
“He knows you’re a soldier,” he said. “He knows that you were here earlier in the day checking out the ship. The pilot saw you and your men. I don’t know how many others they recognised, he only assigned me to you.”
“Assigned?” Lachlan asked. “To do what?”
The knot in his stomach tightened and a flush of embarrassment warmed his cheeks making him glad for the dark. He didn’t know why he felt so bad about it. It wasn’t like this was the first time he’d been assigned to keep tabs on a soldier. Perhaps it was because Lachlan seemed like a good guy or because his sister was so… Jack shook his head. It wasn’t right to think about that either.
“To make sure you had a good time,” he said.
“Why would your boss care if Lachlan had a good time?”
“Because if he has a good time, maybe he won’t bring soldiers here tomorrow in a raid,” he admitted.
“He thinks that would work?”
“It would have, if you hadn’t…” Jack swallowed the growing lump in his throat. “If you hadn’t seen what you did.”
Lachlan scoffed but the last colour in his face drained away at the mention of the murder in the menagerie. He looked grey in the dim light.
“You can’t know that,” he mumbled, though he didn’t sound very certain himself either.
“Look, it’s safer this way,” Jack insisted, stepping over a tent peg. “We had some groundlings try to break in during the day of our last hitch. There’s not been a chance to fix the fence so you’ll be able to get through. Give the fence a wide enough berth and they’ll never see you through the dark.”
Lachlan nodded and followed with slow, cautious steps. He flung his arms out to his sides, fingertips brushing the tents on either side of him as if the canvas would keep him upright.
“Groundlings?” Hadley asked. “Is that what you call us?”
Jack couldn’t hide the grin as he glanced over his shoulder and saw her look of indignation. He nodded.
“Don’t be too offended,” he told her. “You don’t want to hear what we call each other.”
Picking through the dark, avoiding tent pegs and guide ropes, it took them ten minutes to reach the perimeter fence. On this side of the ship, the ground hands and roustabouts had stacked piles upon piles of crates and spares to clear out the loading dock for the show. They had a habit of hanging out in the backyard whilst the show was on, and so Jack had to urge Hadley and Lachlan behind a tall stack of linen crates until two men had finished their smoke break and headed back towards the ship.
It took another ten minutes of feeling along the fence to find the broken links in the dark whilst Hadley and Lachlan hid. It was only once he’d located the gap that he went to collect them. Lachlan crawled through first, holding the wires out of the way on the other side for his sister to follow. She paused and looked back at him.
“Why was your boss looking for me?” she asked. “Was it because of Lachlan?”
She sounded like a child trying to prove that they weren’t scared of the monsters under the bed. Jack shook his head and glanced at Lachlan. He was listening, even as he stared off in the other direction.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Anna told me he’d asked about you but she didn’t say why.”
It twisted his insides to lie to her. He wanted to tell her the truth about what Annalise had seen, but he couldn’t, not without knowing if it was true or not.
“Anna?” she asked. “Why would he ask her? She didn’t even give me an understandable reading. Obsession and transformations. It made no sense. And telling me that the scarf was mine?”
The bottom of his stomach had vanished. If he swallowed, he was sure he would feel it drop all the way to his heels. Annalise had said someone would join them, someone he liked. Hadley had been able to see him when she shouldn’t, remember him even. He couldn’t think of how to explain it. Her brother listening in didn’t make it any easier. Maybe it had been a mistake, another dark-haired woman. Sometimes Annalise only got glimpses of people.
Even as he thought it, he knew he was lying. Annalise didn’t make mistakes.
“I’ll try to find you tomorrow, okay?” he said. “I’ll explain everything then but you have to go and I need to get back to Anna to figure out what’s going on.”
She looked like he’d dropped her on an uninhabited planet and told her he was taking the ship. Looking down at her feet, she nodded and moved to the fence. He took her hand, pulling her to look at him. She still avoided his gaze as he leaned closer.
“Don’t let your brother bring soldiers here,” he murmured into her ear. “I know Hatliffe, and if he does… I can’t protect him if he brings the coalition down on us.”
Hadley met his gaze for the briefest of moments before she nodded. She tugged her hand from his and Jack could still feel the warmth of her hand in his, like someone had chopped off one of his limbs and his brain hadn’t registered it. He stepped to the fence and helped fold the wire back.
She crawled through on her hands and knees. Brushing herself off as she got to her feet, she looked at him again, far bolder now the fence was between them.
“Barnard Street,” she said. “Number twenty-four.”
Jack smiled at her.
“I’ll see you tomorrow.”
He waited by the fence until they had disappeared into the night. The memory of skin still prickled against his fingers, and he rubbed his hand roughly against his jeans to get the
sensation away. He began picking his way through the supplies back to the ship.
Back to Annalise.
Every wall was draped in material hiding the worn and rusted metal beneath. She had peeled back each hanging in turn, unsure whether she was hoping to find something or nothing behind them. When she came to the heavy ocean velvet, she lifted it like she had the others, expecting a door, or another wall. Instead, she found throngs of people. They went to and fro, some dragging small children along with them. It all felt so familiar but each time she tried to grasp onto a memory, the smoke of names and places slid through her fingers.
The blond man with the chestnut eyes had called her Anna. Lachlan had called her the same. That was as much as she knew for certain.
He had asked her to stay here. He’d promised to take her to the baby when he returned, and so she took a seat at the gaudy table, picking up the deck of cards and turning them over in her hands. Each card was beautiful. They were worn, but every colour picked out the detail to perfection. She paused at the card of the mother for a long time.
She couldn’t remember the baby’s name. No matter how hard she tried, no name came with the image of the child. It was a girl. She could remember how it felt to hold her in her arms, like nothing would ever matter as much again. She turned the card over and placed it down on the table.
“Anna?”
She lifted her head but the name did not feel familiar to her. It felt like a name she might have been trying out for a time but had decided against. He fixed the velvet back in place, blocking out the world beyond. He took longer than he should as he smoothed it down and ensured each inch was positioned perfectly. When he faced her there was a young man before her, much younger than he had looked so short a time ago, when his worries were professional and controlled. These fears were personal and cut him deep. He wrapped his arms around his stomach and looked down at his fingers, dragging his nails across his flesh.
“Anna, what’s going on?” he asked.
