Who was I to be helped by one of his own? What could she possibly help me with?
What rights did I have to step between a whip and his mark?
“Collector’s business,” I said, answering each of those unspoken questions with a challenge of my own.
“I know what you are, Miss Black.”
Hawke’s own moniker, put to use again. I resisted the urge to frown. That it bothered me, his chosen name on everyone else’s lips, was something I was not equipped to examine. Not then.
“Then you know that I earn the highest of all collectors for Menagerie bounties,” I returned. I folded my arms across my chest in mimicry of his masculine posturing.
He did not answer me. I hoped the Veil was not so talkative with all whips. I spoke the truth, but I did not know how much of my increasing debt was common knowledge.
As he did not call me on it, I hoped very little of the truth was known.
“And?” he finally asked when the silence drew out too long.
“I needed help.” A flash of inspiration hit me, and I half-turned to show off the brass apparatus slung on my back. “I was having trouble repairing my net-launching device.”
He did glance at it, which was something. Maddie Ruth, to her credit, did not look up, so if she was surprised by my lies, I could not be sure.
“Maddie Ruth helped me fix and test it. ’Tis not quite up to snuff,” I added, in case he needed to know. “I apologize for taking her from her duties.”
I didn’t like apologizing for things that were not my doing, but the alternative seemed worse. Maddie Ruth trembled silently, her breath practically held, it was so shallow.
For a long moment, the lion-prince of Africa held my gaze.
It took some effort to hold it. Sweat bloomed across my skin, but I had held more fearsome gazes. That of the sweet tooth, looming over my inert body. That of Mad St. Croix, my own father, as he attempted to kill me.
Hawke’s, whose own stare was filled with a carnal knowledge he did nothing to mitigate and had not wholly earned.
The lion prince did his level best to out-do them all.
My mouth dried. I did not hold my breath, for such things were an easy tell, but I did mentally calculate the distance between the far exit and the likelihood of my getting Maddie Ruth out fast enough to save both our skins.
Fortunately, I did not have to put the half-formed measures into effect. The man inclined his head. “Very well. In the future, she should be more careful of her commitments.”
“I will be absolutely sure not to impose,” I lied, and felt nothing for it. According to Hawke, my very presence was an imposition. Bully for him.
“Go, then,” he bid, and Maddie Ruth did not wait for a second offer. She hurried past him, shoulders rounded.
“Maddie Ruth,” I called.
She hesitated, turning awkwardly as if she could not be sure which direction might provoke the least dismay.
I shrugged out of the device. “It needs some finer tuning. Would you mind? At your leisure?”
She scooted back under the arch, snatched the straps from my hands, and all but ran as fast as she could while lugging the weight over her shoulder.
Fair enough. Maybe next time, she would consider twice a fool move as she’d attempted.
“You are a peculiar thing,” Osoba told me.
I glanced at him, then again at the space between him and the rest of the open gate. “Oh?”
“I have only just cautioned her to mind her commitment, and you demand more of her.” The observation did not land without a mark. I hid a wince. “Are you attempting to challenge my authority or her will?”
Damn and blast, I hadn’t expected that. I shook my head. “Neither,” I said, and this one not really a lie. “I apologize. Maddie Ruth is the only one who seems to understand the nature of such apparatuses.”
He weighed me—both with stare and, I think, based on my words and tone. This time, I held his gaze somewhat more easily. Perhaps I was getting used to it.
Perhaps he’d dimmed that thing that made his presence nearly impossible to ignore.
“Very well,” he said again, and seemed inclined to leave it there. He gestured with a bare hand, the skin of his palm pinker than the rest of him. “Do not let me keep you from your collections.”
“Thank you,” I said politely, and passed through the gate. I smelled a spice about him, something reminiscent of Hawke but drier. Like burned grass in the height of summer, and the charring of wood.
I paused, turned to find him still watching me. “I’ve news for Hawke. Where is he?”
“He is occupied,” Osoba said. That, I think, was to be the end of my line of questioning.
His Highness did not know me well at all. “Where can I find him?”
“If it is important,” he said instead, “you may tell me.”
Awareness trickled across the cold air; the fine hair on the nape of my neck, smeared down with the soot and sweat as it was, prickled in abject alarm.
Something was amiss. Something Osoba did not want me to know.
How I knew this, I don’t know. Only that my instincts were not dulled by the opium I consumed, or the pain radiating from my hands. Had I managed to eat the tar I kept intending to—had I found a place where no eyes could watch me do it—I would have felt neither anxiety nor pain.
A part of me demanded I stop long enough to tend to my hands, ease the pain of heart and flesh. Another latched on to the unspoken thread in Osoba’s words and followed it.
Was Hawke in danger?
“Where is Hawke?” I asked quietly, my tone so serious that it must have made clear my concern. Mine was not the manner of one simply asking out of curiosity; I had no patience to play the polite miss now.
If I had thought the man intimidating before, I had not realized he possessed the capability to project such warning that only a dead man might miss. His features closed, his eyes burned. “Leave the matter,” he advised me, so reminiscent of the ringmaster that my hackles lifted like the lions Osoba tamed.
Unlike his lions, I was not his to pacify.
Without another word, I turned and sprinted across the open ground. I half expected him to run after me, to keep me bodily from whatever it was that he wanted to keep me from. Perhaps to unveil a whip I had not seen wound about his person and lash it as a noose around my neck.
He did not. To my unexpected relief, the lion-prince let me go.
Chapter Seven
I must have appeared quite the demon, dashing through the market stalls peppered with workers intent on evening preparations, across the paths with no regard for direction, and all the way to the small but elegant estate where some in the Menagerie lived.
Or seemed to, anyhow. I did not know if members of the Karakash Veil lived on the grounds or merely operated here, or if anyone else truly lived here so much as work. I did know that the Veil had chosen to entertain my presence here both times I was summoned.
Servants, startled from routine, gasped or shrieked upon my arrival. I burst through the front door, which did not step into a foyer as I was accustomed but into a large receiving hall. The décor was unapologetically Chinese in origin, again with the imprinted wallpaper and distinctly foreign furnishings. The rug was thick and much larger than my own at what had once been my home.
Seven men and women paused in various states of surprise and dismay.
“Hawke,” I gasped, struggling to breathe after my impromptu dash. The corset about my chest did not give. “Where is Hawke?”
Seven pairs of eyes looked at me with one part disdain, for I was no image of cleanliness, and some part confusion.
I let the door close behind me, a hard thump. “Where is Hawke?” I demanded again. “Bloody bells, never mind.” I left them staring after me, once more pushing off into a sprint. I followed corridors I had been through once, obeying nearly-forgotten directions until I found myself outside Hawke’s quarters.