Corroded tscc-3

by Karina Cooper

  “Shh,” I hissed, turning quickly. Too quickly. The room spun, my breath shortening as if I’d only just taken a shot of opium direct to the lungs, but my head rang hollowly with pain. I winced.

  “I’m so sorry,” softly repeated the girl who set a wide silver tray upon the lacquered, knee-high table arranged in the center of heavily embroidered sofas. Her wide eyes, made all the wider by her dismay, were an innocuous brown, filled to the brim with such innocence that I had never understood how she came to inhabit this debauched den of iniquity.

  Madeleine Ruth Halbard was not a sweet. Nor was she a circus denizen, a trickster, a thief, or worse.

  What she was, what she had always given the impression of, was terribly young. At sixteen years of age and living under Hawke’s thumb, she must have known all the secrets of flesh and sin, but I was hard-pressed to see the knowledge written upon her as so many dollymops and street-women displayed. She seemed fresh-faced, earnest.

  Deucedly uncorrupted.

  I could not fathom it.

  Aware that I was scowling, and that I surely looked a fright with black all over my face and my hair half-tangled down my back, I made at least some attempt to soften my disposition. “The girls are still abed, and like as not had a late night of it.”

  “They did.” Her simple knowledge, indication that she knew what the sweets did by evening, was just one more dent in her so-innocent demeanor. But her smile, when it came, brightened her plain, round face, and the hand she gestured to the platter with was stained by black. “I’ve brought you breakfast, toast and tea. How do you take it?”

  Maddie Ruth had not once brought me breakfast.

  I was immediately suspect. Setting the blackened sheets upon a chair, I answered, “Two sugars,” and remembered enough of Fanny’s stern upbringing to add, “if you please.”

  As the girl, whose build was much like mine in curvature and near enough to my height to make me wonder if she’d surpass me with time, bent to her task, I picked up my corset and brushed off the streaks of smeared soot from the leather.

  I kept one eye on the strange dumpling of a creature.

  What was her intent? A motive. There would be a motive here.

  Yet, almost immediately, I felt shame for the thought.

  What kind of turn had I taken when I immediately held suspect the kindness of a girl bringing tea? I was hungry, this was true, and the smell of warm toast and jam curled into my nose like ambrosia from the heavens. Even the ache in my head had subsided with the promise of sustenance.

  Maddie Ruth was not a decadent thing, not like the sweets abed in the quarters behind me. Certainly I was no threat to her—whatever it was she did for the Menagerie.

  I admit that I felt a certain kinship with the girl. From her round, freckled face to the plain chestnut hair pulled back into a single plait, she was no great beauty. She made no attempt to rectify the lack by dressing well, either. Her blouse was nothing of the sort, but a man’s working shirt in crisp cotton tucked into a plain woolen skirt in drab brown. She wore no gloves, nothing in her hair, no jewelry. A wide belt encircled her waist, and as she saw to my plate, I studied the thick leather gloves—the sort of scarred, heavy apparel a blacksmith or glass-blower might keep close—tucked into the band.

  She was, quite frankly, as unfashionable here in the pleasure gardens as I was in Society above.

  I understood that position.

  Gingerly, mindful of my atrociously filthy clothing, I perched on the edge of a blue, gold and silver embroidered sofa, its patterns reminiscent of the Chinese décor peppered throughout the gardens. I smiled politely when Maddie Ruth set the tea in my hands; my smile warmed to something rather more genuine as the heat of the unadorned teacup saturated my fingers.

  “I didn’t know which sort of jam you liked best.”

  I looked up from the lovely, deeply brown liquid to find the girl hovering. Her smile, awfully wide, seemed to flicker, as if she strained to hold it.

  My eyebrows came together slowly. “I’m quite sure whatever you brought is just fine,” I said, but not wholly with the intent to reassure. Suddenly, I felt very much placed on the spot, and I could not reason out why.

  I set my tea beside the plate of toast. The design upon the table was clearly of Eastern origins, a vanity of birds with truly elegant plumage preening for each other set in vibrant color. The contrast between the craftsmanship of the piece and the undecorated china teacup was laughably evident.

  I chose not to mince my words.

  “Out with it,” I told her.

  Her smile dimmed some. “I’m sorry?”

  “Tell me truly why you’re here, Maddie Ruth.” I stood, aware that even though she was no taller than my petite height, there was something about my carriage that she found to be nervous over. True to form, she took a step back.

  It was then that I noticed there was no accompanying rustle of petticoats or underskirts. No fullness at hip or clean slimness at waist that suggested a corset. She was, much as I had often dreamed to be before circumstances forced my hand, completely free of the constrictive clothing of a lady.

  My respect for the girl climbed a titch.

  But my suspicions did not calm. They increased.

  “Did you come spy on me?” I demanded, hands now on my own uncorseted waist. “Are you here for the Veil?”

  She blanched. “Heavens, no!”

  That, I’d believe, though I still had not figured out who could be trusted to be Hawke’s creature—bad enough as that was—versus the direct puppetry of the Veil. I knew Hawke was the latter. Was it possible that all others answered to him and him alone to the organization?

  Maddie Ruth balled her fists at her stomach, her smile gone entirely. In its place, I watched as she visibly screwed her features into a mask of courage. Her lips twisted hard as she braced herself stiff, her eyes scrunched with the effort.

  My mouth ajar by this determined display, it took me a long moment to realize she’d spoken.

  I blinked. “What?”

  “I said, I want to be a collector.”

  Any passing fancy I had taken for the girl, any warmth, vanished. This time, it was I who took a step back. “No,” I said, so coldly that I half-expected the word to shatter into a thousand icy fragments between us.

  Gone was her own innocent cordiality. Her round eyes crinkled with frustration. “Why not?”

  “’Tis a fool’s hope.” I turned my back, as clear a dismissal as she could ask for. “No one with any intelligence wants to be a collector.”

  “I do.”

  I rounded on her with such a surge of energy, of chemical imbalance within my skin that my anger seared brightly enough to burn. “No, you do not!”

  Her foot stamped hard, rattling my teacup upon its saucer. “You did,” she retorted, with such precision that it found an answering vulnerability within my already teetering sense of responsibility.

  “Don’t you dare—”

  But my threat was to be bitten in half as the door to the sweet’s sitting room burst open. The ball of energy sprinting inside was wrapped in simple shirtsleeves, threadbare trousers and a street-boy’s cap, gamine features so often caught in an impish smile now turned to concern. “Maddie Ruth! Maddie Ruth, come quick!”

  The urgency in the boy’s voice immediately garnered her attention.

  Though her hands fisted at her side, she abandoned her discourse with me to hurry for the boy whose name I only knew as Flip. One of the Menagerie’s circus tumblers, he was a lithe child whose smallness of form belied his acrobat’s strength.

  Flip had saved me once from the Black Fish Ferryman—another of London’s many gangs, this one comprised mostly of them what sell doxies by the pound and employ footpads by the plenty.

  Then again, he’d also called Hawke on me once before, and so my trust for the boy tended toward affectionate caution.

  Now, as he seized Maddie Ruth’s arm and tugged her for the door, the girl—now ignoring me complete
ly—said, “I’ll need my bag first. What’s the trouble?”

  “It’s Topper, miss,” he said, almost before she was done asking. “He took a tumble from the ropes and went black in the head.”

  A bad fall, then, by another tumbler. Flip cast me a brief glance, his smile more worried than truly warm, and the door closed behind them.

  Left alone as suddenly as I’d been accosted, I let the abrupt silence replace all those ugly, suspicious thoughts that had filled my ears prior.

  My jaw ached from clenching it, my throat burned.

  A collector. I had not lied to her when I claimed only the unintelligent chose that route.

  Had I known then what I knew now—had I realized that this double role would cost me everything I knew, everything I’d planned—I would have displayed far more sense than I had at fifteen years of age.

  God in Heaven, was I even younger than Maddie Ruth when I’d begun?

  Did I even have half as much will then as she did now?

  Were I told what I had just shouted at Maddie Ruth, I knew what my course of action would have been. At that age, I recall easily doing exactly what I wanted, disregarding all who warned me off. Fanny had done her best to drum propriety into my very bones, yet I knew what it was to be so headstrong.

  This is what my stubborn disposition had cost me. This terrible pit inside my skin, an ache so severe that I dreaded waking to face the day. I missed Booth and his wife, missed dear Fanny with her stern sympathies. My family, such as I could claim, was no longer mine. My staff dismissed, my house taken.

  The man who had offered me freedom nearly unparalleled in Society’s measure had paid a price so steep, his cold grave would forever mark my shame.

  My stomach twisted, a ripple of gooseflesh erupting along my spine as I fought the shudder that claimed me.

  Maddie Ruth could not begin to understand, yet she would not let this lie. I knew it as clearly as if I looked into a mirror, and I did not know what to do to warn her off. Did she want to die? Did she want to see those she loved most drawn into terrible games of blood and vengeance?

  I wondered if she would listen, were I to sit her down and explain just why a girl such as she could not be allowed to pursue this dangerous life.

  Maddie Ruth would not care to hear it.

  A shame, but I would not bend on the matter. Under no circumstances would I apprentice any other collectors. I could not bring them into the dark.

  I would not feed anyone—much less a girl as fresh as her—to the madness.

  The smell of toast and jam, once so welcoming, now turned nauseating. The illness I’d worried over upon waking seemed to intensify, a bit of ague that hovered between aching limbs and swirling belly.

  Fighting back the urge to bend, to wrap my arms around my stomach and will the ache to fade, I turned my back on Maddie Ruth’s thwarted bribery.

  Let her return to find her offer rejected. Perhaps she would take the hint.

  Like as not, she would only try the harder.

  Foolish girl.

  I used the heavy silver bowl arrayed behind a floral screen, washed my face and all exposed skin. The fire in the parlor had been allowed to die, and would not be stoked again until closer to waking. The chill in the air cooled my too-hot flesh, and I welcomed it. I quickly gathered black remnants of charcoal, worked it through my hair until I was satisfied.

  Once done, I tightly plaited it before twisting it up and securing it with my dwindling supply of pins, then washed my hands again in the blackened water.

  I put on my corset, the thin metal slats between leather facings fitting into place as designed. I’d made it specially so that I could lace it without help, and as I fastened the high collar in place, as the bindings tightened, I felt a little more the thing.

  It was a new day. A new opportunity. Coventry was to be collected, and I needed to place some distance between myself and the Menagerie denizens who would not leave me be.

  All I wanted, all I desperately needed, was to be left alone to my own devices. I needed to consider my path, how I might be able to achieve my goals. The Karakash Veil held me accountable for Hawke’s saving of my life. I had been given order to repay the debt by fetching Mad St. Croix’s alchemical serum, yet I knew I could not fulfill the request.

  First, because the bloody device had long since disappeared. Second, and perhaps more importantly, I refused to hand over something that powerful—or, at least, with such potential—to the Veil.

  This meant that I would be forced to act on a plan, and soon. I could no longer juggle my attempts to appease the Veil with collections acquired for no real purse and locate the sweet tooth to enact revenge. I would have to choose, and soon.

  I simply needed an opportunity. A slip of the rival collector’s hand, anything upon which I could pin my next move. It had become, much to my impatient dismay, a game of patience.

  So I brought in collection after collection, and did not ask for pay. I slept in the sweets’ quarters and did not make a fuss. I waited.

  The devices I chose to embrace were not of anyone else’s liking, I will admit, yet I refused to give a good bloody damn.

  So braced, I gathered the sheets into my arms, opened the door and stepped out into the clear air of the Menagerie grounds.

  I did not make it one foot from the door. I halted abruptly, my path blocked by a stocky foreign man wearing a plain white robe-like tunic with long bell sleeves. His breeches, knotted off at the knees, were black and slightly billowing, his calves bare and his feet clad in thin black slippers.

  He bowed in that uniquely obeisant way of his people, causing the high tail of his topknot plait to fall forward. When he straightened, I looked into the dark brown eyes of a Chinese envoy of the Karakash Veil and knew what it was he wanted.

  I would not be left alone at all, it seemed.

  My smile was small, my chest tightened.

  “You are summoned,” he said in thickly accented English; the only three English words I had heard the Veil’s extremely stoic footmen speak. Possibly the only words I’d ever heard them speak at all. Usually they only gestured. Then they waited.

  “I am busy,” I returned evenly. “These bedclothes require laundering and the water in the parlor needs changing.”

  I did not know if he understood that much English, for he said nothing. Instead, true to form, he waited.

  “I am not going right now,” I told him.

  This time, I watched a faint shift of weight. It was a tiny thing, all but imperceptible to them what wouldn’t know to look, but I’d spent a great deal of time looking. I knew danger where I saw it.

  I had only just bemoaned my need for patience. I truly needed to be more careful of what I wished.

  I was out of time to plan.

  Rashness had become my refuge. The urge to behave in such a reckless manner as was not expected of me had grown these past few weeks, but at the time I had called it anger, frustration.

  Melancholy.

  Dropping my sheets, I surged forward, eager to test this small foreign man’s mettle, and could not even track the motion as he turned to one side. As I sailed past him, a sharp pain bit the side of my neck. Tendons popped in that terrible way of plucked catgut strings, and my breath caught. The muted daylight turned black, and then I felt no more.

  Chapter Three

  I came to consciousness already perspiring, which told me more about my surroundings than the brilliant haze of crimson slowly congealing into focus around me.

  “Wŭ’ān,” said a voice, nasally spoken but pleasant enough despite.

  My eyes closed again. I groaned my dismay into the floorboards beneath my overwarm face.

  This room was not unfamiliar to me. I had been here before, the night after my first ill-fated brush with the alchemical serum that had nearly destroyed me, and I recognized its ambience. Even as my vision strained to merge into a single focused line, I knew without having to look that the walls were papered with the most ornate patt
erns I had ever seen. It gleamed like silk embroidery, reflecting back the heat and brilliant color of the fire stoked across the room in a thousand shades of red and gold. The smell I breathed, an aroma both sweet and exotic in its intensity of spice, was likely incense of some kind, whose subtle haze softened the sharp angles of the folding screens arrayed in the center of the room.

  Summoning my tottering strength, I pushed myself up from my undignified sprawl on the Karakash Veil’s polished wooden floor. “Good afternoon,” I returned, though sullenly. “I have received kinder invites.”

  “Our invite was kind, Miss Black. The assent was your doing.” The voice that greeted my return to consciousness did not lose even an iota of its maddeningly even character as it switched languages from what I assumed was native Chinese—a language I never had the opportunity to learn—to the Queen’s English, completely without trace of accent. “We are pleased to find you did not suffer unduly in your...haste.”

  The commentary came from behind one of two embroidered screens, each gleaming red silk panel shot through with gold. The room was brilliant, illuminated brightly by fire and gaslights affixed to each wall, and decorated in matching crimson and gold panels. Tigers and dragons battled for supremacy in the uncomfortable heat.

  “You look flushed,” observed the voice when I said nothing. “Are you unwell?”

  I did not turn to see if two of the Chinese servants waited by the doors. I knew they would, blank-eyed men with matching top-knots, undecorated robes and slippered feet. Like Chinese soldiers made of tin, they would hold their positions and would not allow my departure unless the Veil willed it.

  I tucked my hands behind me and studied the dividers with as much impassive patience as I could summon.

  My neck hurt, that did not surprise me, but the ache behind it, that rasp in my throat I could not ignore, suggested I had more to worry about than a thump from a foreigner.

  I was coming ill. A touch of the ague from all this frolicking about in the cold and damp, no doubt. I frowned. “As well as can be expected,” I said, giving no ground. “What can I do for you, sir?”