Corroded tscc-3

by Karina Cooper

  Perhaps he’d thought himself outnumbered.

  Perhaps I owed Zylphia more than the sharp side of my tongue.

  “I am only trying to help you, Cherry.”

  I hissed as she spoke my name, took a step as if I would grab her by the lapels and strike her for her temerity. “Let me be!” The words came on a poisoned point of a knife’s fury. “I’ve no use for a Menagerie whore, now or ever.”

  Zylphia, my once-friend, flinched. She staggered back a pace, raising an arm as if it would ward the blow of a whip or worse, and the guilt twisting my heart sharpened to a razor’s edge.

  “Go,” I snarled. “And mind your back!”

  “You can’t do this alone,” she began.

  I raised a hand—dear heaven, forgive me—and snarled a threat that bore no words. If it would send her home, I would strike her here and now, and no one would be the wiser for my shame.

  Her chin rose. Her jaw, beautifully delineated in smooth dusky skin, hardened. A pinch of sallow fury creased the corners of her full lips. She spun without a word, fled into the fog until I could no longer see the silhouette of her figure. Her footsteps, dampened by the clinging fog, faded to silence.

  For lengthy moments, I struggled to even my breathing.

  There was no call for my horrid behavior. None for the anger welling from a wound too deep for a doctor’s hand, too infected to close.

  I needed no help. I could accept no friends where the fog blew harsh and biting and black. As long as my path intersected that of the collector who’d killed my father and murdered my husband, I would not bend.

  I would not be responsible. Not again.

  My heart pounding inside my chest, I leaned back against the same brick I’d met so intimately moments before and wondered if I was expected to cry.

  Chapter Two

  I returned to the Midnight Menagerie just as the Westminster bells tolled the third hour. I was lacking in collection, exhausted beyond all measure, and my wayward Mr. Coventry had retreated. No matter. When I was ready, I knew where to find him.

  It would take me onto Baker grounds, but I’d been through worse. I was, I can say now with some regret, all too eager to make the attempt.

  A man in green and black livery waited just inside the gates, passing out pamphlets upon which the entertainments of the week were inscribed. I refrained from taking one. I already suspected tonight’s main event took place within the glowing red beacon of the circus tent.

  Years ago, after Vauxhall lost favor with the elite and became instead the haunting ground of footpads and thieves, rumor of a new decadence began to circulate among those with the means or the connections to hear them. Sensing a void—and rather more importantly, a source of ready income—the Midnight Menagerie came to be London’s most fashionable, and fashionably unfashionable, den of iniquity and debauchery.

  Like much of the district, the Karakash Veil owned the pleasure gardens. Yet even in this intimate setting, the Veil was a mystery. Perhaps even more so, for the tale of the shadowy puppet masters behind the curtain were as intriguing to the purse strings as the imagination.

  And what the Veil could not inspire by word alone, the reprehensible ringmaster of the Midnight Menagerie delivered.

  Hawke was, simply put, a bastard. Possibly literally speaking, but most assuredly behaviorally. He was, there was very little doubt, a man whose raw masculinity allowed him a great deal of leeway in an establishment whose credibility resided on what temptations men of a certain reputation could acquire. That which he sold, men who admired or feared the ringmaster would purchase.

  Yet it was not his appearance alone that earned Micajah Hawke such accolades. I was not certain if the rumors of his Gypsy-blooded birth were true or spun fantasy, yet his very bearing—haughty, implacable, powerful—established a right to rule within the grounds that allowed him to treat all who came here as fodder for his games. Or, more like, as flesh to exploit.

  As the Veil’s right-hand, the public façade upon which all who attended the grounds could fawn, Hawke enjoyed nearly unfettered freedoms. I believed, truly, that no ringmaster upon this great earth was capable of accomplishing that what Hawke could with an audience.

  He was in all things a man to watch.

  Tonight, as the circus tent pulsed like a jeweled heart deep within the Menagerie grounds, I considered myself safe from crossing paths with the serpent. He would be inside that crimson canvas, leading the audience, guiding the circus rings, taunting the so-called freaks and sideshow displays. As any good ringmaster must, he would control every detail until the crowd roared with delight, gasped with fear and wonder.

  Spent coin as if there would be no tomorrow in which to regret its absence.

  I remembered little enough of my time in Monsieur Marceaux’s Traveling Carnival, but the sticky sweat of fear and the heat surging from the anticipatory crowd was a thing that haunted easily.

  Sometimes, if I were to let my guard down at the wrong moment, a memory would come from nowhere to trickle into my thoughts like a cold bath. The hiss of a knife’s edge as it ghosted past my ear. The terror of a tightrope pulled taut beneath my feet, and a distance so far to fall, it pulled cold, clammy sweat from my skin in shuddering recollection.

  I remembered, at times, the dread stemming from a poor day rifling pockets, or the fear that came when the good monsieur decided that what a crowd demanded most was blood.

  Of all the places in the Menagerie I did not go, I hated that round-top canvas the most.

  The grounds, vast and miraculously clean, were another matter entirely. I could not deny how truly lovely the Menagerie by night could be. Lit by thousands of Chinese lanterns strung high on cords between lamp posts, they illuminated deliberately carved trails into the dark, pointed the way along the most common paths where guests could wander, stroll arm in arm, or deliberately leave. Many was the couple, arrived together or strangers at first meeting, to get lost in the cleverly shrouded alcoves along the walk.

  Clever if only because a cunning mind with a keen eye could just as easily look upon a tryst as the lovebirds could find a dark corner to engage.

  All things came at a price in this wicked garden. For some, that price was a quiet kind of exhibitionism. The worst of Vauxhall’s rumors then could not touch those dark things whispered of the Menagerie now; for all the disreputable gossip of London’s prior pleasure garden, the Midnight Menagerie had made a game of achieving so much more—and charging for the leisure.

  I turned away from the heavily-trodden path that would lead to the circus and its accompanying sideshows, kept to the lit paths and turned my back on the memory of the dangerously seductive ringmaster with his exquisitely tailored evening clothes and wicked whip.

  I did not like the man, but I would not deny that Hawke was very good at what he did. He tempted. All who strode his grounds, he knew their desires, knew how to garner them, how to feed them.

  I was not much of an exception; I would not be the rule.

  Hawke attracted me as a man does a woman of weak will, he always had, but I was no feeble miss or bored lady to fall into his gloved palm, no well-played toy. I owed him a debt, and that grated enough for one lifetime.

  There were women plenty all too keen on serving him a pound of their own flesh, of that I was sure.

  Weariness dogged my every step. It might have been more secretive to stay in the dark, but I kept to the light, because a woman found walking alone off the path could be construed as fair game. I was not keen on dulling the edge of my blade on some hapless fool who might think me simply playing the virginal milk-maid, eager for his conquest.

  I passed couples along the way, passed single men of modest and less-than-modest persuasion. Two doffed a gentleman’s hat to me; courtesy, I think, for there was nothing feminine about my apparel.

  That, or either man was looking for a youth of my apparent persuasion. Among the Menagerie’s delectable offerings, even those men who swived other men could find a bit of cr
umpet, as they say.

  For my part, I said nothing, kept my face down and my stride hurried. Soon enough, passing the empty market stalls and the occasional littered bit of parchment, I found the turn to the gated enclave where the sweets’ quarters remained.

  By the time I let myself inside, I was bone-weary, my soul weighed as if by rocks strapped to the soles of my aching feet. The communal room was quiet, a fire snapping in the grate and a bevy of feminine voices trilling from the shared boudoir beyond.

  I tapped gently and pushed open the doors. The sweets inside the large sleeping quarters paused in various states of dress and undress. Four women of varying height, color, and costumed garb immediately launched into a chorus of croons and questions.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Oh, Lord above, you’re back already. We’re late, aren’t we?”

  “Welcome back,” chirped Black Lily, a cherub-faced girl with English roses in her cheeks and hair black as mine when the lampblack had set. “Did you get the bastard?” Two of the women laughed outright, and Jane—a sweet whose skin I’d saved not so long ago from overzealous patrons—hissed a maternal warning and waved dismissively.

  I was a little bit of a mascot among the sweets. Not only had I taken a job from them, but I was a female collector—it was practically unheard of. They had no name for me, had adopted Zylphia’s cherie as a nomme de plume that I had no willingness to fight. It was close enough to my name to be understood as mine, and I didn’t care to give them any other.

  “Cherie, your face!” Jane fluttered as if she were only moments from seizing me to her beautifully displayed bosom, framed in powder blue silk.

  Either my features had gone black beneath a fine coating of soot, or she referenced the bruise I was sure to be sporting after my scuffle with Coventry. I resisted the urge to touch my cheek, certain I’d only set it to throbbing again if I tried.

  I summoned a smile from within a black grimace. “I’m well enough, thank you. Only a bed for the night, if it’s no trouble?”

  “Talitha’s on the evening.” Jane beckoned at Lily, Delilah, and a girl whose black skin was nearly so dark as to gleam blue beneath the lamplight. FFeathers affixed to her high cheekbones by some kind of glue framed her eyes in startling hues of blue and green, making her gaze seem all the more exotic. She did not afford me much curiosity, seeing to her readiness in silence.

  “Thank you,” I said to them, because I was, after all, a creature of hard-taught propriety. Below the drift I might be, I could easily imagine Fanny’s stern glare were I to neglect such small kindnesses.

  She flashed me a smile, sweet as a peach in summer. “Be quick, girls,” she told them. “Time’s near.”

  Each sweet was readying for a role. Lure or decoration or flesh for the taking, I did not ask.

  “Her bed is free,” Jane added to me. “I’ll take her in mine tonight. Tomorrow, Lily’s offered hers as she’s on the market and won’t be abed until day.”

  I nodded my thanks, and again to Lily.

  We had never been friends, the sweets and I, not like Zylphia and I once, but most of the girls had accepted my presence in the women’s quarters with an air of understanding. Each of the sweets who didn’t mind took turns offering me their beds, then shared with another for the evening.

  It was kinder than I had any right to expect.

  “You get some rest, now,” Lily called, adjusting her curled and pinned hair with quick fingers.

  The sweets did not leave; I would never expect them to abandon their own quarters for me. Instead, as their idle chatter and the rustle of clothing filled my last waking moments, I fell into one of the two dozen beds arrayed side by side, managing only to relieve myself of shoes, coat, and corset. I would be leaving black in Talitha’s sheets.

  No matter, I would have them washed tomorrow. I was too tired to bother bathing tonight.

  I don’t recall drifting to sleep, or even being aware that I could without a piece of opium to ease the transition. All I remember was that the voices of each girl turned to the howling shriek of marauders in the night; that I inhaled the acrid burn of fog laced with flame, singeing my throat and nose.

  I ran in my dreams, ran as if the Devil himself chased me on cloven hooves, and each step took me farther and farther from the lean, patient figure of Earl Compton—my lord husband, my great burden, waiting patiently in the dark.

  Skeins of red hair, glinting like the finest rubies of India, wrapped around my wrists, my ankles. A woman laughed, musical and fine.

  “You will learn to love me,” the Devil crooned behind me, rich as my lord husband’s voice had ever been and so real that I woke shuddering in damp sheets, my tumbled hair plastered to my forehead and neck. The quarters remained dimly lit, with some girls already abed. Others undressed in the simple light of a single candle, carrying on in whispers and muted laughter.

  Not home. Not at all my bed.

  A wretched urchin in somebody else’s care.

  The square of opium had squashed somewhat beneath the heat of my body, but I fished it from my trouser pockets and bit a corner. The tar burned my tongue, a bitter pill almost too hard to swallow. Too precious to spit out.

  I forced it down, my shaking fingers clenching the wax paper into a sharp-edged globule.

  I imagined that I could trace the gobbet of sweet bliss as it entered my esophagus, slid to my belly and pooled there. Warm, welcoming. Soothing as only medicine could be.

  When I finally slept again, I dreamt of a woman I imagined to be my mother. Her voice eased my fevered mind.

  Sweet, sweet girl...

  * * *

  My mouth was dry. As if I’d spent all night sucking on cotton, my tongue felt coated in grit, my throat sore. I woke mounded in bedclothes, huddled beneath the makeshift tent I’d made of the sheets over my head.

  No light pierced through the fabric to tell me what time it could be, or how many sweets had made it back to their beds. My ears felt stuffed full of the same cotton I had apparently swallowed.

  I felt like death warmed for tea, and worried that I might be gaining ill.

  I had no time to waste on a sickbed.

  Muffling a groan, I pushed the bedspread off of me. Daylight seared through my tired, gummy eyes. I almost gave in to the fierce surge of lethargy, almost flipped the blankets right back over my head, I was so desperate to nestle down into the comforting dark. Somehow, I refrained, even if only barely.

  The light, more faded than expected in my bedroom above the drift, was still bright enough to trickle through the fine pale curtains. The strength of it told me it was past morning.

  The sweets, being nighttime labor, were rarely expected to wake before noon, at the earliest. This would allow me time to clean most of the soot from my skin, repair the lampblack in my tangled, half-fallen mass of hair, and have Talitha’s bedclothes laundered.

  My stomach growled beneath my ill-fitting clothing.

  I would eat, as well. The Menagerie staff ate at all hours, and the kitchens would be able to spare a plate easily. They rarely took note of which members of this garden came to beg a plate at what time, for many were the men and women employed by the Veil’s demands.

  I had been here, making my way among the staff of these grounds, for near a fortnight, and almost all had come to know me by face. Them what didn’t learned of my free passage—often attached to Hawke’s permission, which still rankled. It had taken me only a few days to learn that I was considered his to leash, and his to claim.

  While I appreciated the freedom this earned me, the speculation it engendered galled.

  Still, the staff left me alone but for my few needs, and did not overly burden me with idle gossip.

  In some ways, I missed the easy camaraderie shared between myself and Betsy—and later, with Zylphia.

  As if it were an eternity ago.

  Quietly as I could, I eased from Talitha’s narrow bed, mindful of the sleeping women surrounding me. Few were recognizable
beneath blankets and, in some cases, feather pillows pulled over tousled curls and braided plaits. To my left, I recognized the bright gold heads of Talitha and Jane, who looked near enough alike that they often play-acted sisters. Jane slept on her back, one arm slung across her eyes, her mouth open and a murmured snore leaking out into the crisp afternoon air.

  Talitha, her now-frizzy curls tangled and the remains of rouge smudged across her mouth and cheeks, slept curled upon her side, her high-necked shift all that protected her from the cold.

  Black Lily, her glossy raven’s wing hair tucked beneath a night cap, slept on her stomach, one arm hanging from the mattress. Beside her, the stunning red hair of a milk-white Irish lass tumbled in copper-bright waves from beneath a still mound of blankets.

  I did not look for others; most every bed was full, and I dared not risk waking them. I stripped the bed quickly, collected my shoes, corset and coat, and crept past the beds. I was forced to squint through the unforgiving light, but I managed to make no noise as I bypassed protruding feet and pooled blankets.

  I was nearly out when a rustle behind me seized my passage. Holding my breath, I glanced over my shoulder, already prepared to whisper an apology. Instead, I let it out silently when I saw only Jane, elbowing up to tug the bedsheets once more over Talitha’s figure. A bleary glint of guileless blue through a curtain of blond was all the recognition I received as she turned to her stomach and settled back into sleep.

  Feeling oddly content by the simple display, I stepped out of the shared sleeping quarters, and shut the door behind me.

  My head ached fiercely.

  “Good morning!”

  The cheerful, painfully bright voice hammered a railroad spike through my skull. Jolting in my skin, my corset slid from my hands and flapped to the floor, the thin metal slats causing it to topple over my foot as I bit back a surprised shriek. The sheets crumpled.

  “I’m so sorry!” The same voice nailed another metaphorical pin next to the first, and I flinched.