“Oh?” I summoned an air of indolent disinterest, though belatedly, I realized I should have held open a book. Too late, now, as I heard two sets of footsteps approach. “I’m not up to guests, Mr. Ashmore, please ask her to return another time.”
He cleared his throat, pointed reproach.
I ignored that too.
Whoever this woman was, she could sod back off to wherever Ashmore had plucked her.
If it was unreasonable jealousy I felt, I was all too happy to turn it reasonable by bloody-minded strength of will.
I expected an argument. Instead, a shape rounded the sofa I sat rigidly upon, darkening the corner of my vision as she approached from my left. Brown skirt—drat that tedious color—and a pale blouse beneath a long-sleeved fustian jacket. A man’s traveling hat perched atop brown hair, and as the first inkling of recognition tugged at my senses, she came to a stop just in front of me.
I could not avoid Maddie Ruth Halbard’s smile, and in that moment, I abandoned all thought of driving her away.
“Maddie Ruth,” I cried, cheer replacing ire so suddenly, it drove the weakness from my limbs. I stood, only be seized in an embrace so tight, my breath was forced from me.
As abruptly as my heart lightened, my throat closed, and I burst into baffled, frantic tears.
Maddie Ruth Halbard’s was not a face I expected to find in this, my grandfather’s library. When last I’d seen her, she had maintained the Midnight Menagerie’s many and varied mechanisms—including the fog-pushers keeping the Menagerie clear of the black shroud covering the rest of London low. She and I had gone ’round and ’round, for Maddie Ruth wanted to be a collector, and I had been unwilling to allow it.
Much of our relationship remained tangled in that opium net I struggled to extract my memories from, but my affection for the girl had not abated.
She embraced me despite my sobbing, stroking my back and muttering nonsense as she waited me out. I cried on her shoulder, embarrassed to have lost such control, but ever so pleased that she stood here, safe and whole, and not at all swept up in the Veil’s machinations.
The girl looked worn, but her rounded figure—like mine before the illness—seemed to be in healthy form, and her cherubic cheeks bright red. Likely from the cold she’d traveled through.
As my sobs died to rueful hiccups and broken apologies, she guided me back to the sofa and sat beside me, holding my hands in her cold ones. She wore no gloves—surprising me, for I recalled she used to keep them often in her belt.
“I couldn’t believe it when this bloke pops out of nowhere,” she said, cheerful despite my outburst. Her boots were thick and warm, new enough that I wondered if Ashmore had furnished them for her. “He says, ‘You Maddie Ruth Halbard?’, all gruff-like. I’m thinking I’d best be calling for Nye, but he takes out this card and hands it to me, like a gent.” She spoke rapidly, her brown eyes sweet and still no less innocent for all I was certain Maddie Ruth knew more of the Menagerie’s wicked ways than even I.
Wiping my face with a sleeve—a gesture guaranteed to have sent Fanny into a fuss, had she seen it—I turned to look behind me. “Ashmore, did you—” My wry inquiry was halted when I found the library empty of his presence.
He must have delivered Maddie Ruth and made good his escape at our reunion. He likely had not even seen me weep.
The shaft of hurt that did to me went unremarked. I could not even fathom why it hurt.
Tamping it down, perhaps to be examined during the loneliness of the night, I turned my attention wholly to the nattering girl, my smile forced. “Was it Mr. Ashmore’s man, then?”
“Aye,” she replied, a little bit breathless with it. “I’d never seen the like. He’d strolled right into the Menagerie, can you believe it?”
That pain turned into a heavy rock inside my chest. After everything else I had burdened myself with, I wanted to avoid thinking any more of the Menagerie. Trapped as I was in this old mausoleum of a house, I did not want to fill it with any more ghosts than it already possessed.
Dredging up the Menagerie would bring to mind the Karakash Veil, and from the Veil, my thoughts would run once more to Hawke—and all that I had given.
“He was dressed fine enough,” she was saying, kicking her booted feet towards the blazing fire, “so I don’t think anyone suspected he’d come by way of Baker land.”
I clasped my hands in my lap, my throat suddenly aching. “I was just thinking of them. Maddie Ruth, how is Communion? Is he well?”
Maddie Ruth’s eyes no longer went big at mention of the man. Although Communion had a reputation as fearsome as his large size, he had saved Maddie Ruth’s life once—and mine a few more than that. To see such affection bloom in her expression did much to ease the burden of my heart. She scratched at her cheek with a work-callused hand. “The Ferrymen and the Bakers are at war, you know.”
“What, officially?”
She nodded. “Near enough. The Ferrymen been edging in on Ratcliffe, and the Veil’s let it be. There’s blood’n the streets.”
“Is Communion all right?”
“As rain,” she hastened to add, perhaps because I’d leaned forward and lost the color from my cheeks. She caught my shoulder when I swayed. “Are you?”
I waved that away. “Are they looking for territory?”
She shrugged. “The Veil’s letting them have at, long as they stay out of Limehouse and don’t disrupt business.”
That seemed rather like the Veil. “And the Menagerie? Last I recall—”
Fire. Blood. A flash of blue light filled my mind’s eye, brighter than anything natural, and I squeezed my eyes shut as her face went spotty. Like the memory of Ashmore’s dogs that surfaced from the fog in my head, another sliced free. Hawke’s eyes, blue where they should not have been, dancing madly in the reflected glare of a brilliant scarlet bloom of light.
Leave me.
My lungs constricted; when I gasped for air, it came to me tainted by the noxious fumes of the Veil’s maddening incense. I battered at nothing in front of my face as my heart slammed in my chest.
Maddie Ruth’s fingers twined with mine, jarring me from the waking dream I suffered. “Take deep breaths, now. Same as me. See?” She took a breath, slow and steady, and let it out at the same pace. This time, when I followed suit, I smelled only the fragrance of the wood in the fire, and the faintly musty scent of the books surrounding us. After three deep breaths, my head no longer seemed poised to fall right off my neck.
I shook it hard. “I’m all right,” I said when she took a fourth.
She let it out on a laugh. “You’re better than when I saw you last. I’d’ve passed on a wager for your living long.” A beat, and a horrified o shaped her mouth as I opened my eyes. “I mean—I don’t mean to say—”
I squeezed her hands. “I know it,” I said wryly. “No need to fall over yourself.”
She sighed a blustery thing. “You’re too thin, though,” she added.
I looked down at myself. “Ashmore’s been starving me.”
“I doubt that. No appetite, am I right?”
“Right enough.”
She nodded. “Same happened to my da, but he was too far gone for saving. Seems that cove out there is doing right by you.” At that, I grimaced. She raised her eyebrows. “Isn’t he?”
I didn’t want to speak of that. There were too many things I hadn’t worked out for myself. While I had come to understand that my own recollections of the man were wildly out of bounds, I still had not acclimated to my own efforts to seduce him; that he rejected such efforts made it all the more difficult to broach. I hadn’t truly given up on my theory, but I hadn’t the physical endurance nor the strength of pride required to follow-up.
Explaining all of that, relegating the art of seduction to a scientific hypothesis, without sounding like I belonged in Bedlam was beyond me.
I returned the subject to one she’d sidetracked herself from. “The Menagerie, Maddie Ruth. What has the Veil been up
to?”
“A sight less than I expected,” she replied, waving a hand between us. “And on the subject of things what aren’t expected, why didn’t you let on you were a toff?”
She referenced the fact that I’d maintained a secret identity as London’s only female collector—a black-haired woman with no name, usually called Miss Black by Hawke and his ilk, or variations of “girl” by everyone else. All of that had been torn apart the night the Veil called in the debt I owed, and Hawke revealed me with my distinctive red hair to members of Society whose tastes ran towards the darker pleasures.
I did not want to address that, either.
I grimaced at her. “You are avoiding my questions, Maddie Ruth.”
Ah-ha! A guilty wince as she looked at the mantle. Her gaze lifted to the cloth-draped painting. “What is—”
“Maddie Ruth.”
She slumped, slanting me a sideways plea. “I only just arrived, and I’m not to talk about the Menagerie. You don’t want to see that cove toss me out so soon, do you?”
A very nicely turned bid for sympathy. Unfortunately for her, the guilt I already carried made her futile attempt feel like a soft breeze in comparison. “A fair attempt.” My words earned a quick grin before it was gone again. “To refute your theory, you are to be my companion and make certain I don’t expire of boredom, go nosing about for the laudanum Ashmore keeps around here somewhere—”
This time, the expression flitting over her round features was concern. I ignored it.
“—and most important of them all, save him from having to deal with me personally.” If my smile was a little more bitter than I intended, I hoped she’d attribute it to my convalescence. “I am an invalid, Maddie Ruth, but my intellect is not affected. Now, the Veil. What happened after my departure?”
Rescue, more like, but I wouldn’t quibble.
She sat back more fully into the sofa, facing me with a newly gathered demeanor of gravity. “You know yourself it’s not all fun in the Menagerie,” she began, and I nodded. “After the mutiny—”
Already, I interrupted. “The what?”
Her nose, more snub than attractive but darling as a button in her plain country features, wrinkled. She had always been lacking in the finer face that would have forced her to be a sweet for the Menagerie’s selling. Instead, her keen grasp of mechanical workings and a dab hand at tending injuries allowed her a measure of freedom from the other girls.
A freedom that had allowed her to help me without too much fuss. I owed her too. More than I could ever say.
“You didn’t know?” was her surprised rejoinder.
I glowered. “I did not.”
“Oh.” She touched her thumbs together, looking at them rather than me. “There was talk of mutiny against the Veil. Them what were tired of the lashings and the rules and such.” More than that, I’d wager. Even I had noticed a worrisome decrease in tolerance from the Chinese masters running the Menagerie through mouthpieces like Hawke. Whips, they called them. If there was more to the unrest, I wouldn’t be surprised.
“Zylphia was among them,” I said. Not a question, and Maddie Ruth did not take it as such. At her nod, I frowned. I desperately wanted to pace, but felt sure I’d only lose the ability halfway.
So I sat still, gripping my knees through my wrapper and nightshift, not at all concerned by how familiar it had become to entertain another’s attention while wearing them, and struggling to slog through all the memories choked up in that smoky fugue.
How much had I missed when I had been so bent on myself?
The last I saw Zylphia, she had been fighting with the ferocity of a born scrapper—yet I felt as if there had been more in that moment, important knowledge lost to the fog I had lived in.
I had been given so much opium that night.
My thumb slipped between my lips as I worried the edge, worrying the memories at the same time. Nothing came to me. Only a faint bit of pain from my teeth gnawing at worn flesh.
The morning before that fight, Zylphia had informed me of my exile from the Menagerie. It had come just after the night I shared myself with Hawke—giving in to the temptation of his command as so many other women had done, I was sure. Betrayed, I had left without a backwards glance.
I grumbled around my thumb and extracted it before I drew blood. “Is she all right?”
Maddie Ruth did not hesitate. “She’s in Baker territory, but that’s a secret.”
I could not hide my relief. “If Communion’s got her, then even the Veil will think twice.”
“I’m not so sure,” came the reply.
“No?”
“After the Veil’s men lifted you from the Bakers,” Maddie Ruth explained, “there’s been tension ’tween ’em. I think the Veil is waiting for the turf to settle before closing in on the Bakers.” I only vaguely remembered a bit of a scuffle. I was half out of my mind with grief and denial, gone on a ball of opium that should have lasted me days were it not for the fear of the monsters I hunted.
Regardless of what I remembered, if the Veil had sent warriors to retrieve me, Communion had no chance. He’d done the intelligent thing by handing me over without quibble; I would not hold it against him.
“Do they know Zylphia is there?” I asked.
“Nah.” She shrugged. “Not for sure, but I don’t know they need a reason to check. Besides, the Veil is—”
At that, her eyes grew large, and she clapped a hand over her mouth.
I reached over, quick as a wink, and circled her wrist, tugging her hand away sharply. “What?”
“I shouldn’t.”
“You’d best,” I warned her, glaring with all the repressed irritation I’d reserved for Ashmore. “What is the Veil doing?”
“You won’t like it,” she warned, but quietly—and with more than one glance over my shoulder to the door. If Ashmore intended on bringing us tea, he was taking his time about it.
I leaned forward, letting her go only so that I could brace my flagging weight against the cushion between us. Eyes narrowed, I lowered my voice. “Tell me, or I’ll—”
Her fingers came up over my mouth, callused and still cold from the wintry air she’d come from. “Don’t do that,” she admonished, but gently. Sadness filled her eyes, where I was so accustomed to simple good-nature. “You don’t have to do that.”
Shame bit hard. Swallowing back a heated retort, I looked away.
I was rather too used to threats and outright lies to get my way. I did not like the hurt it painted on Maddie Ruth.
“Keep your voice down,” she continued after a moment, sighing with deep resignation. “At least if I get tossed out on my ear, I’ll have a bit of warmth before I go.”
I nodded, although I did not do so patiently.
After another hard look at the door across the library, Maddie Ruth leaned over and lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Things are very bad,” she said. “Most of the girls are coming back with injuries what wouldn’t be tolerated before. There’s less freedom to come and go, and everyone’s always watched. Worse, the sweets aren’t allowed out of their quarters unless it’s time for them to perform.”
“The Veil is tightening the leash, is it?”
She nodded slowly. “When I saw Zylphia last, right before that cove’s man tracked me down, she said the Bakers’ve been feeling some resistance from places that usually let them or their smuggled goods pass.”
“What kind of resistance?”
“Everything to do with Limehouse, including permission to cross it.” She rubbed her hands together, the dry rasp of her toughened palms like rough paper. “Something about the Menagerie has changed, but no one’s talking about what.”
“Something?”
“Someone,” she amended.
I studied her face for a moment before the strange emphasis in the word slotted into place. My heart thudded against my chest. “Hawke.”
She nodded. “And it’s only getting worse.”
Ch
apter Nine
“Them what survived the fighting were punished.”
“I remember a little bit,” I said, staring into nothing as I labored to draw the names and faces from the slurry my memory had become. “Delilah and Talitha were there, I think. As flesh for the show.”
“And Jane.” Maddie Ruth lowered her voice even further. “Black Lily’s death hit Jane hardest, and after, she was talking to some of the girls about escaping. They took her away. She were still cursing when they dragged her from the quarters.”
My stomach clenched as anger bubbled forth, drowning the shards of broken guilt. “What happened to her?”
“That’s just it. No one knows.”
“She’s just gone?” I glowered at the brocade beneath my fists. “That’s not likely. Has anyone asked Hawke?”
“Are you barmy?” Maddie Ruth snorted rather rudely. “He’s as bad as the worst.”
I looked up. “Tell me.”
She did. The circus had become the main event most nights, only tolerable because the market had turned even more dodgy than usual fare. Goods included that of wares crafted to charm the coin from a rich pocket and flesh peddled for an evening’s service. Maddie Ruth’s solemn gaze did not waver as she said, “Some girls are sold and don’t come back for morning. There’s boys, too, now, and brats younger than usual.”
The thought left me feeling ill. “That can’t be allowed,” I insisted. “Does Hawke do nothing?”
Only then did her eyes turn away from me. “He doesn’t.”
“That isn’t like him.” I frowned. “Tell me.”
She needed no more prodding. In no uncertain terms, Maddie Ruth spoke of a man so cruel that he was kept locked away by the Veil when not required for performances so dark and dangerous, blood spotted the rings after. She spoke of eyes of wicked blue and tastes the likes of which turned my insides to a quivering mass of remembered fear. I did not wholly remember all that had been done to me, neither under Monsieur Marceaux’s tutelage nor the opium haze of my last confrontation with Hawke, but that what she described left me breathless and disbelieving. It was unholy; it was so far beyond that of the Menagerie’s common fare that I could discern no coin in the offering.
Tempered: Book Four of The St. Croix Chronicles Page 11
