The sweet tooth, the rival collector who had murdered my father to save me, only to murder my husband for no particular demand, must have made off with the device.
Why? Why in all the hells of all the religious texts in the world had I not considered this?
And why leave it here, now?
Yet even as I worked my way through the manic rise of furious questioning, my skin turned cold. I turned, wrenching myself free of Osoba’s grip, and asked sharply, “Was anyone hurt?”
The gaze he levied upon me was considering. “Yes.”
I flattened a hand against my chest, where my heart jerked. “Who?”
“A sweet awoke with an aching head and no memory of her assailant.” Sensing my next question, he added, “She will mend.”
“So no one saw the man—” I caught myself, “—or woman who left it?”
Another burst of Chinese assailed me.
Osoba looked at the servants, then again to me. “The Veil demands recompense.”
Damn and blast and as many other invectives as I could reasonably imagine in a moment’s notice. I had no room with which to maneuver, no direction that was not blocked by the lion-prince or the two Chinese servants. I drew up my chin. “I had nothing to do with this.”
“Is that not your face?”
I couldn’t very well admit to it being my mother’s. That would open up a great deal of questioning that I did not want the Veil to have. Josephine St. Croix’s many accomplishments had been held over me for years. I would not allow the ghost of my mother to force my hand now.
I set my jaw in mulish determination. “The Veil may go soak his head.”
I had half-hoped to earn a gasp of shocked dismay. None of the men surrounding me delivered. All I could read in Osoba’s intent came in the subtle easing of weight, the firming of his shoulders. I knew without having to look that the men behind me had taken the stance I was learning to recognize as their way of preparing for a brawl.
Fine. They could have it their way. Exhaustion had ebbed to a simmering edge of anger and adrenaline, and it was this I drew upon as I lashed out a foot not at Osoba, but at the younger of the Veil’s servants.
To my utter delight, the ball of my foot connected with his knee. He grunted.
The rest fell upon me in a great snap of momentum.
Osoba was not a frontal assault brawler. I had expected him to come at me, and this he did, but not in any way that I predicted. Where he had begun in front of me, he came at me suddenly from the left, utilizing my distraction from the older servant as that one slipped beyond my guard and delivered an open-handed strike to my plated ribs.
It surprised him, I think, when his hand connected with slatted leather. The effort did push me back several steps, which allowed Osoba room to twine behind me and link my arms so tightly in his, I could not understand how he’d done it without dislocating his own.
Not impossible, given the nature of a circus’s performers.
However, he had not considered my own training—or perhaps was just unaware of it.
My corset provided support and shape, but it was not meant to keep my figure from collapsing in upon itself. I rolled my shoulders back so far that my shoulder blades touched, an act I hadn’t had to accomplish for some time. It hurt enough that would regret this decision, too, come tomorrow.
I think I surprised the so-confident whip. I was half from his floundering grasp—earning a brief and reverberating chuckle that surprised me—when the two servants rejoined the fray.
I stood no chance.
I started cursing when each grasped an arm, freeing me entirely from Osoba’s slacking hold, and only got louder as they dragged me back into the halls I’d only just left.
“What is this madness?” I demanded. “Take your hands from me!” My efforts earned no ire from my captors. They handled me with almost graceful synchronicity, maneuvering me in such a way that every attempt to impair or disengage fell victim of my own momentum.
Osoba followed, his occasional bout of laughter after a particularly crude threat only stabbing red-hot rage through the fear I refused to reveal. “Do not fight,” counseled the still-amused lion-prince. “This debt will be discharged for one night’s work.”
This time, the room I was forced into was not so elegant as Hawke’s, nor as empty. Two female servants, both Chinese and wearing the simple tunic and trousers I’d expected of the foreign women in the Veil’s employ, waited with well-mannered patience. Between them, a bathtub was filled with water, though it lacked soap bubbles or the slick of oils for scenting.
The implications were clear. I was to bathe.
Like hell I would.
I lashed out with my feet, my elbows, anything that would give me purchase, but the men who held me did not capitulate.
The women did not appear troubled by my exertions.
Words flew, orders or explanations or even warnings of care, and Osoba said from the door, “If you do not bathe willingly, the Veil will be forced to punish all who failed in their orders.”
“Does that include you?” I asked, panting from my efforts. I was not standing on my own, grasped between the men and held as if I were weightless between them, my legs sagging.
“Yes,” he replied, surprising me with his honesty. His gaze held mine, tawny gold and no longer laughing. “As well as the men holding you, and the servants who are to tend you.”
The former I could well appreciate. The latter bit deeply. The Chinese girls had done nothing to me, and I had no doubt the Veil would have all of them whipped for a failure that would not be theirs.
I bared my teeth in a soundless snarl.
Osoba must have read capitulation in the act, for he said something in that blasted Chinese tongue and the men dropped me. I fell to the floor, barking my elbow painfully.
One of the girls gasped, and both hurried to my side.
The men bowed once, hands once more easing into their sleeves, and left the room.
I allowed one of the servants—the younger of the girls, with light brown eyes and almost no eyebrows to speak of—to pull me to my feet. “I despise you,” I said, glaring at Osoba.
He nodded, rather more readily than the observation warranted. “That is your right.” Saying nothing else, he closed the door, trapping me in the room with two efficient servants, a cooling bath, several pieces of polished wood furniture, and a vibrant blue and green folding screen.
What was it about the whips of this Menagerie that I could not provoke them into foolish action? Perhaps if he’d done something, anything at all but watch, I could have made my escape from this intolerable situation.
He had not. And would I have attempted escape knowing what I did of the Veil’s threat? That these innocent women would be punished for it?
Bloody bells.
In moments, I was stripped of my clothing and submerged to my neck in the tub, hissing when the temperature proved too cool for my liking. When one made a motion that I took to mean I was to get my hair wet, I jerked upright. Water, blackened and already turning gritty, cascaded from my shoulders. “No,” I said flatly.
I would not walk into the Veil’s machinations with my red hair bared. My identity was still my own. At least, I hoped so. I could not assume otherwise. The Veil had not once called me by name, and though Hawke knew, he had never given any indication of my identity after the disastrous ball where he had offered his bargain.
The servants exchanged a glance. Then, the younger girl said in heavily broken English, “Your hair.” Another sign that I was to wet it.
I shook my head. “I will not.”
“We fix it?”
“You will not fix it,” I told her, folding my arms over my bared chest and glaring. “You will leave it alone.”