Corroded tscc-3

by Karina Cooper

  The Chinese men watched me pass, and the Veil said nothing more.

  Hawke did not so much unhand me as utilize my captive arm as a lever and maneuver me, tottering wildly with the suddenness of it, back out into the vast hallway. Servants passed, humble things that did not look up at the fracas, and I ignored them in turn as I whirled on Hawke. “How dare you?”

  “Go make yourself useful.” He did not address my futile temper. “Do not make me regret this moment.”

  “I regret this moment,” I snapped.

  The hard line of his mouth tilted. A faint lift at one corner that was not a smile, not truly. The harsh edges of his exotic and sensual features, from square jaw to pronounced cheekbones, did inexplicable things to my innards. Most notably, that place between my legs where he had already tasted.

  In that moment, I believed that a Gypsy woman had borne him; that he was Satan given flesh, a veritable serpent in his very own Garden of Eden.

  And that I, an unwilling Eve, was ever so close to temptation.

  I clenched one hand over my corset, like a silly miss determined to still a pounding heart. It did not succeed.

  Hawke did not give me sign or signal that he knew. Instead, inclining his head in one of those infuriatingly mocking half-bows of his, he only murmured, “Good day, Miss Black,” and returned to the Veil’s room of crimson and gold.

  The door closed behind him.

  Belatedly, I shook my fist. “Not any more!” I shouted, hoping that the paneling was not so thick that he couldn’t hear me.

  Servants gave me a wide berth, many carrying trays or baskets, and even the often painfully polite Chinese were staring as I glared at the door that had almost spelled my doom.

  I was no stranger to the concept of copulation. I had grown up among auction rings and flesh-peddlers, be they high—or low-class. Yet I was virginal in true definition, and the ache Hawke left me with was enough to send me fleeing for less dangerous waters.

  Like a collection. Or even a round in the pugilist rings where women were not allowed to go.

  Or a forest full of hungry wolves.

  My fingers cramped into fists; I smoothed them out. I was not as unintelligent as I’d made myself out to feel. I’d known what had nearly been laid upon me by the Veil’s impatience, how narrowly I’d escaped some unfortunate sentence involving more time spent servicing the Menagerie in one manner or another.

  I had foregone my duties, my debts. It was well within the Veil’s rights to place me elsewhere on his roster.

  Yet Hawke’s timely intervention had forestalled the judgment. The rapid syllables exchanged between them, culminating in a single, baritone, “Shì,” had gone too fast for me to follow. I could not even ask for translation; much of the dialect blurred.

  He had saved me. Again. I had no doubt of this.

  How much debt could I earn from one man?

  More, if one debt was to the man who had acted for the Veil, and the other was to the man for acting against the Veil, where did that leave me?

  I didn’t know. For now, I had been given a reprieve, and I had no recourse but to take it.

  Quickly, before either body within that chamber could change his mind, I back-pedaled swiftly, turned and hurriedly made my way back into the gray daylight. I did not look at the servants—did not stop, this time, to care if they were English or immigrants; fair-skinned, yellow or black.

  The Veil hired, indentured, and—I had no doubt—enslaved all who were willing to work. Or unwilling to pay.

  I had fallen among that number. The narrow escape afforded by Hawke’s timely intervention would not last. Whatever my half-formed plans and ideals had been, I had no choice but to face the truth of it: the Veil was very much aware of my existence.

  Not only of my existence, bad as that was, but that I had hopes of cheating them out of the debt they demanded of me. The one was difficult enough, for it drew the Karakash Veil’s eye upon me. I was an independent resource, an uncertainty in the Veil’s structured Menagerie.

  Or, rather, I thought of myself as such.

  The Veil had just corrected that fallacy.

  I could not hope to collect man after man and earn nothing for it. It would no longer suffice to ease my debt.

  Damn the Veil and the Menagerie with it.

  The impossibly narrow tightrope I walked had just been made apparent. A fitting metaphor, certainly, for I had been in that overly warm chamber before. I bargained for my life, wagered the price of my flesh against the debt they demanded of me—all I’d managed to ensure was that I would not take part in the flesh-peddling auction rings the Menagerie placed its sweets within.

  That left far too much I could be forced to do. Whatever the Veil had intended to say before Hawke’s bold interruption, I shuddered to think it may involve the large red canvas and the circus I had no desire to see, much less participate in.

  I did not know what I would do if they placed me in that big top tent.

  Simply thinking of it was enough to sour my insides, turn anger and indignation to sickly cowardice and choking fear.

  I may not remember all that had been done to me in Monsieur Marceaux’s Traveling Curiosity Show—I might even think of some fondness about the bits I cared to recall—but what I could not recall in daylight hours woke me, gasping for air and bathed in clammy sweat, in the darkest of my nightmares.

  Death was a mercy for those who were lucky enough to fall, to move just wrong enough, to bend when they should have dipped.

  Age accorded the girls in the good monsieur’s employ no favors.

  Such shadowy terrors haunted me, formless and without name in my opium-saturated memories. They were enough.

  I had always avoided the Midnight Menagerie’s circus affairs, and here I was, poised to allow the Veil’s control to place me just there, if they so felt inclined.

  All because of that serum and my father’s bloody hubris.

  I did not feel the cold bite of coming winter, too angry was I at my lot in this life. I hurried, unsure of where to go, but certain I could not stay within the Menagerie any longer. I could not risk the eye of the Veil falling upon me, especially if Hawke’s behavior maddened his keepers any further.

  The Veil, damn that bloody voice to perdition, was right.

  I must up the game. Too much of my well-being depended upon it.

  Chapter Four

  I was angry enough to dwell on the matter, afraid enough to flee the Menagerie for it, but soothed the sting with a bit of my remaining opium. Squashed as it was, the medicinal value did not care what shape it came in, and the tar eased the sharper edges of my uncertainties enough that I could step past it and focus on the matter at hand.

  To wit, how to falsify that which the Veil demanded, slip out from under my debt and possibly humiliate Hawke along the way.

  The third was merely my pride speaking. I would settle for the first two issues, which were difficult enough, and include a fourth: achieve some coin, somehow, with which to acquire more of the Turk’s resin, before I ran out for good. This unfortunate problem filled my thoughts as I left Limehouse’s thoroughfare for Steiney, where the collector’s station was kept.

  Just north and somewhat west of Limehouse, it was out of the Veil’s immediate purview, but necessitated a crossing through Ratcliffe—which bore the dubious distinction of bordering the Black Fish Ferrymen’s patch. A difficult prospect even by day—gray and sickly as the sunlight may be through the black, virulent fog—yet one made all the easier when I did not stand apart from my fellow pedestrians.

  The last time I’d been through the district of Shadwell, I’d been dressed the pristine lady and all but demanding to find myself waylaid as I chased a murderer. The woman whose alchemical creation had turned her invisible had, much to my dismay, taken her fraying sanity out on an aging bookseller, moments before my arrival. My attempt to capture her had earned me too much attention from Ferrymen out for a jaunt about their territory.

  For this par
ticular outing, I was walking at a brisk pace, merely another filthy urchin with his head down and his clothes patched and mended.

  That both of my knives remained hidden beneath my high-necked jacket was a secret I would be all too happy to keep on my cold journey.

  My plan was a simple one, though it would not carry me far for long. I required coin, especially as I would need to spend it in order to hunt down this sweet tooth. In reconsidering all that had been said to the Veil, I reasoned that locating the sweet tooth was the likeliest of my options.

  On the one, I found it unlikely that the man would have the same knowledge as the brilliant doctor he had served. My father might have been mad, but his reputation of genius was equally as well-earned.

  His murdering assistant? Unlikely to be a match.

  Delivering him to the Veil would solve this. It would also allow me to achieve that which kept me below the drift: revenge.

  Menagerie justice was something I did not often inquire about. This time, I intended to ask after every detail.

  The thought of it did not cause a resurgence of my sickly ague. I attributed my calm to the opium I had consumed, leaning upon its benefits to my demeanor with easy acceptance.

  If it would see me through these next few days, then I would happily take what it would give.

  The details of my plan to find my rival had not quite made themselves clear to me, but I worked best when my body was otherwise engaged. To that end, I resolved to find another collection note—one whose bounty did not stem from the Veil or the Menagerie. Focusing upon a new quarry would allow me to expend this restless energy I felt rattling about inside my skin, and earn me enough coin to obtain more resin.

  Ah ha!

  The moment I thought of it, I smiled, ducking my head before anyone might see. Already, I felt marginally better about my lot in life.

  At some point, I thought rest may also need to be included into my plan. With every breath of the prickly fog, I found the raw passage of my throat to be no less aggravated, and that worried me.

  I did not like to consider it, but perhaps I would be best served seeking Maddie Ruth out in her rooms soon. She was a dab enough hand at a quick mend, and I’d seen her focus when Flip had come calling for help. Perhaps her rustic fishwife wisdom would provide an easy salve for this ague that seemed to come and go.

  An unfair assessment, to be true, but as I made my way through the waxing and waning strains of day laborers, knots of running and screaming children—I kept one hand where my purse remained tucked beneath my coat; I knew such tricks intimately, after all—and the stalled carts waiting impatiently for locomotion, I reminded myself sternly that Maddie Ruth was not about to be my friend.

  My friends did not choose to be collectors. Collectors, after all, did not easily help one another. My friends did not willy-nilly wander about asking for a shivving in the dark.

  I did that. I chose that life, and simply by being close to me, it made my friends targets.

  Hadn’t I learned that best only a fortnight ago?

  Maddie Ruth may not like me much, but she would forget this nonsense. She may not thank me for her life, either, but at least she would not lose it for her folly. I could not stomach watching another good man or woman die.

  I took a deep, scratchy breath, shouldering between two large men who attempted to direct the flow of the walkers by shouting. A bit of broken glass lay between them, to be docked, no doubt, from the day’s wages.

  “Off wit’ya,” one snarled, tossing a dismissive fist my way as if he’d a mind to box my ears but made no effort to reach.

  I bit back a cheeky word and hurried on.

  ’Twould do me a fat lot of good to be caught in a tiff with a man whose head was worth nothing.

  Coin. The only focus I needed to maintain. Coin to spend when I needed it, coin to purchase opium, and coin to grease the palms of those wayward cogs in the machine that was London. There were always them cogs what need greasing.

  London above the soiled drift or London below, it all ran on at least one shared principle: greed.

  Anything that a body can get for as little as can be spent for it.

  I found myself whistling aimlessly as I walked, feeling much more cheerful than when I’d set off. With a goal firmly in mind—collect a bounty—and a bit of the tar taken to soothe the nerves, I found my mood vastly improved.

  A mild ache still prodded at my head.

  I considered that spot, tender and raw inside my own forehead as if I’d poked it repeatedly from the inside of my skull. Like a bruise or a seeping wound, I could not stop myself from worrying at this intrusive bother.

  If I could have put a finger in my own eye and wiggled it about to get the measure of the hurt, I would have.

  I have never been what one might call a good patient. To be honest, I rather considered taking more of the opium I carried—its relief from pain was one of the many reasons it was so valued by doctors and patients alike.

  I did not, though. Much as I wanted to, the thought of running out before I had more coin was frightening enough.

  Collection first. Resin second. Rest, possibly, following all that, for I need to be sure that I did not fall to illness.

  Such thoughts occupied me in slow, deliberate detail, punctuated by the ebb and flow of them what lived in this fog with me. The bit of tar I’d chewed was not enough to take my senses away—I could not afford that much—but I nevertheless enjoyed its effects.

  The world seemed a titch brighter, even in this thick haze. All seemed a little more manageable.

  I passed an empty storefront just in the upper northeastern corner of Ratcliffe. The windows were boarded and the remnants of the glass long since turned black from too much time without a washer’s rag, and the inside likely as blackened and rotted as the out. Ratcliffe was not a wealthy district by any means, catering to the dock-born, the grubby-handed laborers who could not manage to land work above the drift at the upper West India Docks, and those who made their wages any way they possibly could.

  I’d noticed a few more Chinese here and there, but mostly on the eastern edge—where Limehouse’s reach dwindled, but the Veil was not entirely disregarded. I’d also noticed more dock workers than usual; one may learn to recognize them by mode of dress and roughened hands, which were often gnarled like a sailor’s but lacking the distinctive sea-born calluses.

  There had been rumors of strike not that long ago, union men demanding fair conditions and equal pay as those who worked above, but I’d heard nothing of late. This many unemployed, lazing about the open porticos of the pubs and prostitutes who made their homes here, was not a comforting sign.

  A glimpse into the smudged film coating the remains of the storefront glass assured me that I looked no more out of place than a working man who was not at work, and I blew out a silent breath of relief.

  My nerves did not settle. A sign of something more afoot, as I had learned long ago to trust my fog-sense—that instinct of those who made their way in the smoke. Opium might have dulled my anger, but it did little else noticeable.

  As I passed the abandoned store, past the slender alley mouth dripping fog from its narrow crevasse, it was only by chance of that mucky reflection that I glanced sidelong into the lane instead of watching the walk at my feet.

  The shadow that flitted back from view did not escape my attention.

  My heart stuttered once. Then it slammed into my rib cage and hammered hard enough to turn my vision into a narrowed, brittle focus.

  I was not alone on these streets—or rather, alone in the sense that a person walking in a crowd may be.

  I did not stop—I remembered well what happened last time I threw myself into the smoke and fog in search of a murderer—but my fists clenched against my sides. My throat swelled on words—on an anxious, terrible anger—that I could not expel. The commotion of Ratcliffe about me, the shouting men and laughter of conversation not far away, the cheer of children playing marbles in a smooth pat
ch of sand-filled mud, faded to a throbbing beat.

  Was he close? Was he reaching for me even now?

  I found myself straining to hear a whistle in the dark.

  But it was not dark, was it? I wasn’t alone in the smoke and the fog, haunted by a murderer’s laugh.

  I shook my head hard, and the world came back into rights about me. Laughter turned strident and tinny, but it was real. Normal.

  What ever that was, I did not know. My heart slammed against my ribs as if it would tear itself out of its bodily cage. The world seemed suddenly too bright, too shrill, too much in all the things I looked at.

  Still I walked, my hands fists by my sides, my fingers drenched in damp sweat. My jaw hurt from the clench of my teeth, and I forced myself to loosen it. It would not do to tip off whoever followed me—assuming, of course, that I had not fallen to ghosts of my own making.

  I deliberately relaxed, easing into a stride I’d practiced for months before I’d learned to do it right. A street rat as I aped learned the art of walking at a pace that made it seem as if one was in no hurry, but that moved quite briskly indeed. Between the flick of a wrist and the clink of a coin purse, that walk turned into a run that could only be called a scarper.

  I employed that talent now, walking as if I had not a care in the world—no school, no mum to worry for me, no thought as to from where my next meal may come.

  And all the while, I found excuses to look behind me. I employed distractive techniques—a wave at a young girl here, a nod at a gnarled old man there—that allowed me to semi-turn and glance into the fog around me.

  The trembling in my knees eased.

  I was in fact, being followed, but I was suddenly certain that it was no sweet tooth come to finish what he’d started in that bloody fog.

  If it had been, I was rather sure that I would not have seen traces of him as often as I saw glimpses of this less clever cat. I couldn’t know if it were a footpad after my pockets, meager as they promised to be, or something else, but it would be easy enough to learn.