Ringmaster

by Aurelia T. Evans

  “You can’t harm any of the others either. You can’t harm Victor.”

  “You are wrong about that. I can. The law of Arcanium says that I shouldn’t. But I very much can, Kitty.”

  “Victor won’t spill the secret if I tell him not to. The clowns can’t talk to anyone but Bell, and he already knows.”

  “More people will know. Every time I have you is a risk, and the need arises more often now. No one else must know. They must all die.”

  “Is it such a bad thing?” Kitty asked.

  The screaming stopped.

  “They will no longer fear me,” the Ringmaster replied. His voice sounded thin, far away.

  “I doubt that,” Kitty thought dryly. “But if they are that foolish, you can remind them why you are the Ringmaster when you next set the whip to them.”

  “You do not fear me.”

  “I’m not afraid that you’ll kill me. I’m not afraid that you’ll harm me. Even now. But yes, I fear you. As you fear me.”

  There was a long period of silence.

  “We should not be.”

  “Yet we are,” she replied. “We shouldn’t work, but we do. We shouldn’t want each other. We shouldn’t need each other. It defies all logic, all common sense, all decency. But we do. When we were together in secret, the world didn’t spin off its axis because you and I broke some unwritten rule. The world also won’t end if it’s not a secret anymore. Arcanium doesn’t have to end. You came here long before I was even born, and you stay here for a reason. Arcanium is something that you need too.”

  Kitty tumbled to the ground. The darkness pulled back into the Ringmaster as though into a vacuum. Victor winced and groaned at the Ringmaster’s feet.

  But it hadn’t been the Ringmaster who had taken the darkness away. Bell stood in front of Joanne and Jane with his hand raised, glaring every last dagger on earth at the Ringmaster. Behind the twins, the rest of Arcanium had gathered, most of them looking the worse for wear as well.

  “I am very disappointed,” Bell said. He lowered his hand. “Get up, Victor. To the ring, every last one of you. Now.”

  Chapter Eleven

  At first, Kitty tried to help Victor up, but Valorie and Lennon ducked under each of Victor’s arms.

  “We got him,” Valorie said quietly. “It’s okay. You look like you’re going to fall over.”

  “Thank you,” Kitty said.

  She followed the entire Arcanium cast into the big top. Everyone gathered near the partition around the ring, sitting anxiously in silence like schoolchildren who had all been caught doing something they shouldn’t.

  Bell called up the spotlight and conjured the bench to the center.

  “Ringmaster!” he called. His voice didn’t quite fill the room the way that the Ringmaster’s did, but it did well enough to send a shudder through his rapt audience.

  The Ringmaster strode into the ring. He still had a knife sticking out of his back, but he walked as though he didn’t even remember it was there. He stopped in front of Bell, towering over him.

  Bell was not easily quelled by something as immaterial as size.

  The fortune teller grasped the hilt of the knife and yanked it out. The Ringmaster winced and his right knee buckled slightly, but he straightened himself up right after, his face a complete blank except for the swirling darkness in his eyes.

  Now Kitty knew what that darkness was. But she also knew she had the barest understanding of what he was capable of in that darkness. Victor’s screams echoed through her head.

  Bell stepped away from the Ringmaster and went around the ring, holding the bloody knife in his hand, pointing it at everyone he passed until he reached Victor, settled between Valorie and Lennon.

  Bell suddenly threw the knife straight into Victor’s heart.

  Victor let out an oomph like air being let out of an inner tube. He doubled over.

  Then Victor pulled the knife out of his chest. The wound closed quickly, like the gashes of the whip had.

  “Your intentions were well-meant at the beginning. But if the Ringmaster had not already dealt back the suffering that you gave him, I would command you into the ring as well,” Bell said. Neither mercy nor compassion dared touch his expression, stonier than Victor’s could ever be. “For your more impulsive actions and your violence against another member of the Arcanium cast, however, you will continue to suffer your broken bones until after his punishment is dealt. Don’t argue with me, boy,” Bell added when Victor opened his mouth. “You have done things right tonight, but you have also done things wrong. I know men’s hearts. I know demons’ minds. I am the arbiter. I am the law in this land. So hold…your…tongue. Your reckless ignorance has given you enough trouble, don’t you think?”

  Victor continued to hold himself against the pain, resentment and resignation in the set of his mouth. But not hatred. Bell was right. He usually was. Victor might as well try to beat against moonlight.

  Bell moved on from him, taking just a few steps before stopping in front of Kitty, who sat next to Joanne and Jane, with Maya, Caroline, Colm and Riley behind her.

  Bell held out his hand.

  Kitty knew better than to question or deny him in this state. She put her hand in his and lifted her torn and filthy skirt to step over the partition.

  “First, Kitty, I must apologize to you,” Bell said. “With the Halloween season, I was busy and became complacent. I knew the danger too late. When the Ringmaster did not come for Maya’s session, only then did I seek to recognize the threat to Arcanium, and that threat was spread out in different parts of the circus. With the clowns near enough to Caroline to protect her and with the Ringmaster after you, I had to direct my attention to our homes where more of us were at risk.”

  Bell lifted her chin to inspect the bruise on one cheek and the knife wounds on the other and around her mouth.

  “The Ringmaster dealt their punishment well,” he murmured. “I’d already seen that a band of cowards like these would strike. I anticipated an influx of slaves so that I could bring my funhouse to fruition. It makes the attack that much more of an embarrassment to me.”

  “I don’t expect you to be omniscient or omnipresent, especially since I’m the one who encourages you not to live so much in other people’s minds,” Kitty said. “You wouldn’t put me in danger on purpose. And without the Ringmaster there, you wouldn’t have abandoned me. I know that.”

  He leaned his forehead against hers, closing his eyes.

  Kitty wrapped her arms around him, drawing his head down to her bloodstained breasts. “It’s okay,” she whispered. “Justice has been and will be dealt. You haven’t seen Arcanium’s end tonight. We’re all okay.”

  In the sixteen years that Kitty had spent in the circus, it had never been struck with such forethought, strategy or intent—and their attackers hadn’t even realized what they had been attacking. She’d heard stories. After all, Colm had been trapped in human form and bound to the carousel for fifty years for trying to take Arcanium away from Bell. But Kitty had never experienced it personally before. Most violence committed against them was what the law considered crimes of passion and opportunity—improvised, hardly the invasion of Normandy.

  Bell gathered himself back together and removed himself from her embrace, but his gaze was gentle. It was brief, but Kitty thought she saw the broken places inside of him—the fear he’d experienced for his people—as they mended.

  If anyone around the ring was stunned by Bell losing his composure in front of them, they made no mention of it or gave any sign of derision. He had many negative qualities, but no one could accuse Bell of not fiercely loving and protecting Arcanium.

  “There is still balance left to restore,” Bell said. He stepped away from Kitty and faced the Ringmaster. Of all the people to condemn Bell for his unconcealed emotional weakness, the Ringmaster might have, but he merely continued to stand there, staring at the bench in the center of the spotlight. It was a simple thing, just three pieces of wood nai
led together, gray with age. The golems cleaned the blood off after every beating.

  “You,” Bell said, his voice once again effortlessly filling the room. “You were brought into Arcanium to dole out its punishments. Tonight, you and Victor traded violence for violence, sometimes for the good of the circus—however misguided—and sometimes for your own gain. If you had stopped when Kitty stopped you, perhaps the scale would have been balanced. Then you, of all people, stepped over my line and dealt pain when the man was no longer a threat to you.”

  Bell drew the Ringmaster’s discarded whip from the small bag on his leather belt, which should not have been able to hold a whip.

  “I cannot allow such a thing to come from my own lieutenant,” he said. Then he softened his voice but not his tone, which became more brittle with each word, as he confined the rest of the chastisement to the small triangle he, the Ringmaster and Kitty made. “Not even for a woman.”

  He didn’t look at her, but Kitty sensed his awareness of her.

  “You tried to take over my circus to create your own dungeon,” Bell said in a dangerous purr, circling the Ringmaster. “You almost drew all these souls and demons whom you have protected all these years into the hell from which you came, the hell which you came here to escape. If you ever bring your hell here again, if you ever try to take over my Arcanium, I will not give you a third chance, Ringmaster. I will cast you out into the world that will no longer admire you, no longer fear you, and I will find myself another ringmaster. Now, if you want to stay here, with your people and the woman who fills the hollow, dark places in your head…”

  He raised his voice once more, the privacy shattered in favor of more public punishment. “Strip yourself of your clothing and submit to the punishment that, under different circumstances, I would have you deal.”

  The Ringmaster curled his hands into fists.

  But among all those in Arcanium who might underestimate Bell, the Ringmaster was perhaps the only one who could fully understand what Bell was. Kitty thought she did pretty damn well for a human woman. The Ringmaster, though, wasn’t of the earthbound jinn that made up the rest of the Arcanium demons. They were immortal, but nothing in their demeanor or behavior suggested they knew anything of forever the way that the Ringmaster and Bell did. Those two tethered themselves to Kitty’s level for her, but Kitty knew better than to try to grasp them.

  And the Ringmaster knew better than to disobey.

  In all things, the denizens of Arcanium ultimately answered to the Ringmaster. But the Ringmaster always had to answer to the true master of Arcanium. The wish that bound him here, the secrets that Bell held against him…these compelled the Ringmaster into submission.

  The Ringmaster brought his fingers to the fastenings of his jacket. He removed it, handed it to Kitty then began on his trousers.

  Kitty could practically hear the air being sucked out of the ring. The Ringmaster was actually going to bring himself low before the entire assembly. The man they so greatly feared, who had dealt them unimaginable pain, now offered himself for the same humiliation.

  It was the very definition of inconceivable, and yet the Ringmaster toed off his boots and bared his massive form to the gaze of Arcanium. He only had eyes for Kitty as he did so. He handed her the rest of his clothes.

  The Ringmaster stood in the spotlight, naked, vulnerable, yet magnificent. Kitty felt oddly invaded by the fact that others could see him as well when it had been a sight solely for her for so long. However, none of them had seen his true form. That was still only for her, and Bell didn’t ask for her to give that up as well.

  “Yes, you are right to look to her,” Bell said to him. “Your obvious offense was against Victor, but he is unable to punish you in his present state, and it is the soul-deep offense against Kitty that matters most. I cannot run or protect Arcanium without you, nor can I do that without her.”

  Bell grasped the Ringmaster’s jaw, his fingers digging into the cheek hollows above the curl of the Ringmaster’s facial hair. He spoke again for Kitty’s and Ringmaster’s benefit alone. “And you cannot function without her either. We are three of an Arcanium kind—the jinni, the demon and the woman. I will not have you destroy that in defense of a truth already etched into your bones.”

  He thrust the Ringmaster’s face away.

  “Now, present yourself for your whip.”

  Bell took the clothes from Kitty’s arm as she stared at him in shock.

  “I can’t do that,” Kitty said.

  He gave her the handle of the whip. “You can. And you will.”

  “I don’t know how.” She couldn’t think of anything else to say. She stared at the whip as though it was one of Lady Sasha’s vipers.

  “Now you do.”

  And she did. Simple as that, when she wrapped her hand around the handle, she knew how to wield it—as though the Ringmaster himself had imbued the leather with his knowledge and memory of every session.

  “I’m not the one—” Kitty tried to say.

  “You’re the only one,” Bell said, touching his fingers to her lips to silence her. “You don’t have it in you to be cruel, Kitty, but this is not about cruelty, as it is for him. This is about balance. It’s about control. He will accept this whip from you and you alone. And only you can deal his punishment as it is meant to be dealt. You’ll see. Ringmaster, I will not tell you again. Present yourself, or I will remove you like a leech from this circus.”

  A murmur came from the shadow of the audience as the Ringmaster ignored Bell but looked to Kitty holding the whip…

  And lowered himself onto the bench, the broad expanse of his back bright against the spotlight, one hand between his legs to guard his genitals but nothing to cover his firm, sculpted ass or his thighs. His knees reached the ground to brace him, and he pressed his free hand against the sawdust of the ring he usually commanded. The spotlight, however, couldn’t reach his eyes, no matter how hard it tried.

  Kitty stepped forward as though in a dream. She swung the thong and fall of the whip behind her as though sweeping her skirt back. It brushed the sawdust like his fingers.

  “How many?” she asked, her gaze fixed upon the Ringmaster’s back. Was this how he saw every person lying on that bench? As a blank canvas waiting for the unflinching strokes of a master artist?

  “As many as you believe he needs,” Bell replied. “It is why I cannot be the one to wield his whip. I am unable to remain objective, and the scope of what constitutes an appropriate punishment from me would take far too long.”

  “Please step back,” Kitty said.

  She wasn’t sure, because he retreated to the corner of her eye, but she thought she saw the trace of a chillingly tender smile on his lips before he stepped out of view. Kitty chose not to examine it. Instead, she focused all her attention on the Ringmaster. It was easy to do. The audience beyond the edges of the spot fell away into far kinder darkness than the Ringmaster could offer.

  He lay there, beautiful from head to toe. His nakedness only revealed how lovely he was to her.

  Kitty brought the handle up in front of her shoulder, the braid looping behind her, then brought her arm forward with a flick, pointing the handle directly at the Ringmaster’s back. She didn’t have to give it all her strength in order for it to inflict tremendous pain, but the Ringmaster always gave it great strength, and she did what she could to compare.

  The whip was a dangerous tool that wasn’t as easy as it looked, but Bell had given her the knowledge, the way he imbued anyone in the circus with the skills they needed. The whip felt as comfortable in her hand as she imagined it felt in the Ringmaster’s, and she knew how to ensure the maximum amount of pain upon his flesh without hurting herself in the process. There had been quite enough of that tonight.

  The whip cracked right where it hit the Ringmaster’s shoulder, curling over the contours at a rate beyond the speed of sound and decelerating as it went, but that didn’t make it slow.

  The Ringmaster twitched violent
ly at the contact. When Kitty brought the tail back toward her, it revealed a perfect welt, a bleeding line in the center where she’d split the skin.

  One blow wasn’t enough.

  How many times had the cast of Arcanium wished they could be in this position? Perhaps that was part of the reason that Bell had handed the Ringmaster over to her. She had no personal vendetta to repay from any whipping that he had given, no scars deep in her mind where the healing potions could never reach.

  She carried with her the memory of his hand on her ass, on her cheek, but no sense of revenge. She nurtured none of that in her heart, not even with what he had done to Victor in a mixture of fear and jealousy—the latter which he needn’t have felt and the former which she could understand completely.

  Even this humiliation before the cast would be better than for his desire for her to cause them to question him. To question his utter disregard for the integrity of their hides, the thousands of ways that he longed to torture them. To question his very demonic nature—dismiss it the way they dismissed such mild demons as Lennon, Ciàran and Moss.

  If anything, they might fear him more after Kitty had finished with him. He’d have more reason to show even less mercy when he got behind his whip again, just to ensure that no one believed that he’d been tenderized by the punishment.

  However, after admitting that Kitty had a place in his darkness, there was no way for the Ringmaster to take back the revelation that he was as capable of emotional weakness as any human soul—not unless he completely destroyed her in an attempt to destroy that weakness.

  As long as she resided in Arcanium, the Ringmaster could not harm her without further and increasingly worse punishment. And Kitty thought that this evening showed that she was not so easy to exorcise from what passed for his heart, no matter how great his fear.

  Driven by the rhythm of the whip, Kitty found she felt very much the same. An astonishing calm settled on her like the weight of his arm in her tent or of the blankets over her in the winter.

  Somewhere after the first seven or so strokes, she lost count. The number wasn’t important. What was important was the darkening of the flesh planes of his back. The way that the blood pooled in the valley of his spine and between his buttocks, dripping onto the sawdust below and on the hungry wood of the bench. The way he jerked under the leather, his muscles tensing and releasing with each blow.