Chapter Thirteen
I returned to find the Menagerie in an uproar.
There is an order to things—a way of doing—that is not so much apparent but enjoyed subconsciously by them what attend places as a pleasure garden or a circus. Things happen as per schedule, things are allowed to happen as per need, and then there are those things that happen as per misfortune and must be dealt with quickly by staff and without fuss.
Many would never notice the difference.
I did. I spotted it the instant I arrived near the gates to find not two but four liveried men waiting beside them, impeccably courteous in black and green. I did not enter the Menagerie by way of obvious routes, knowing as I did the ease by which I could climb a wall generally considered too dangerous to try, but I did mark the heightened force.
Men patrolled in the guise of footmen, the sweets walked in groups of three or more. What patrons I saw in my careful jaunt across the lantern-festooned grounds did not appear to notice anything amiss, yet there was a pall—a barely contained tension that I expected to crack at any moment.
I could not put my finger upon it. As I walked beneath hundreds of Chinese paper lanterns, each a different color and pattern, I kept my eyes sharp for anyone—anything—that might impede my progress.
I did not even look up to ascertain the truth of Maddie Ruth’s alchemical revelation.
Tonight, the circus tent was quiet and dark, its canvas still. Whatever displays the gardens offered, it did not involve the rings. Was it market night? Or perhaps the amphitheater attended—it could easily house an orchestra, or a full stage performance.
Or, I thought dourly, my cheeks flushing at the memory, another round at the Roman baths. The first time I’d walked full into one of the Menagerie’s more scandalous entertainments, I’d stumbled across Hawke looking so much more...more...
Rumpled. Relaxed?
No.
Desirable.
No. I wrenched the fog-protectives off my face, both the goggles and mask, and inhaled deeply. That night was the first I’d seen Hawke in anything but his ringmaster’s attire or working togs. His shirt had been left undone near half down his chest, and I remembered the expanse of golden skin bared for stroking by a pretty sweet at his side.
The heat, the laughter, the sounds of pleasure from deep within the bathhouse.
And his gesture to me. A challenge. Come.
I did not. I’d fled, the first I remembered doing so.
Now I fled still, but in a roundabout way. Into the Menagerie, not out. Under the very eyes of them what would own me, or cast me out.
I was doomed to be unwanted everywhere.
I ignored the ache that caused in my heart. It was a feeling I’d long since learned to live with. Neither Society by raising nor street poor by birth, I had lived on the fringes of too many worlds to feel the sting of a third.
I was fumbling for the remnants of the ball of opium—damn my previous concerns, I was a desperate woman—when a bit of pale shadow detached from the greater darkness beneath a delicate garden pavilion. Only the faintest light reached the colorless structure, and the silhouette became the shape of a woman wearing white.
“Cherry!” Hands seized my arm, causing the resin to slip from my fingers. “Thank God you’re—”
I cried out, dropping to my knees to pat the ground. “Don’t step,” I ordered tersely. My lungs stilled. My heart stalled. Where? Where had it fallen? “Not a foot out of place!”
It could be days before I landed the Ripper. It could be too long. I stared fiercely at the ground, scrabbling for any sign of the rock-shaped tar. Dark against dark; I couldn’t see.
I couldn’t see it!
Zylphia, whose face I only dimly recognized in my sudden fervor, knelt in front of me, reached out to pluck a faint shape from where it had rolled to a standstill beside a stepping stone. “This?”
I snatched it from her fingers, shoved it into my pocket hard enough that my coat slid askew. “What do you want?”
Her eyes, when they met mine, were infinitely bleak. “Oh, Cherry.” It was a breath, a whisper of sorrow I would not deign to hear.
“Shush!” I found myself clutching at my coat, over the pocket. But I did not let go. My heart seemed unable to slow. “What are you doing? You near gave me a fright!”
“There’s been an assault.” She kept her hands to herself, this time—much more the thing I expected of her. They twisted together at her waist, and I realized that she wore a bit of frothy attire reminiscent of a swan. White upon white, with black paint over her eyes and dragged to her temples in artful design. Her long legs were bare from the knee down, which must be chilly, but she showed no signs of cold.
Fear turned her exotic features gaunt. Fear, and anger, and no small amount of terrible sorrow.
I hesitated, torn between the urge to comfort and the desire to escape. What would be more welcome?
What would earn me a moment’s freedom?
I waited too long to decide. She took a deep breath and deliberately uncurled her hands, straightening her feathered shoulders. “You can’t go where they’ll see you,” she told me. “They’re looking for you all over.”
A respectable attempt at brisk, but her voice shook.
At least I saw no obvious marring from her time in Osoba’s entertainments.
I frowned. “Aren’t you cold? Let’s get to a fire basket, and—”
“Listen to me.” Zylphia then broke her own rules—a habit she was starting to develop—and once more seized my arm. She dragged me, protesting, under the pavilion, and I lost all sense of her features. The darkness swallowed us, leaving me invisible and her swathed in the faintest bit of pale sheen. “There’s been an attack on a sweet.”
“What has this to do with me?” I asked, sympathetic but confused. “I’ve been gone.”
“It’s Lily,” Zylphia said, and her voice broke on the sweet’s name. “The bastard cut Lily.”
“Wait.” I took a deep breath, feeling the cold bite into my lungs. The shock of it, the cleansing freshness of it, helped clear away my confusion. “Start again. What exactly happened?” I’d done this dance with Zylphia before. The night she hired me to collect the sweet tooth, she’d been so upset that I’d been forced to calm her to make sense of the facts.
It was unbearable, this sense of familiarity. I knew. Somehow, I simply knew what would come next—and I was as powerless to stop it here as I’d been those few months ago.
Zylphia mirrored my breath. Then, quietly, she started over. “Black Lily was to be in the private gardens tonight. When we realized she wasn’t there, we looked before the whips found out, but she wasn’t anywhere. When we told Ikenna, he put out the footmen for searching.”
I didn’t know for sure what happened to Menagerie folk who failed to attend their duties, but given my own experiences, I had at least an inkling. “I imagine he didn’t take kindly to it.”
“Lily is reliable,” she replied sharply. “We all know it, even the whips.”
“All right, all right,” I soothed, though impatience snapped a jarring note through my forced calm. “What next?”
Her figure shifted in the shadows. “Suddenly, we hear a scream, and there’s Lily in the gardens. The private ones, in the maze. She’s...trussed and...blood all over...”
Zylphia collapsed from within, nothing so outward as to swoon, but I saw it, heard it, in the struggle to speak.
I reached out, touched her arm briefly. But only briefly. I simply could not tell whether she welcomed it or would refuse, and her own uncertain approach to it did not leave me feeling particularly confident. “Go on, Zylla. Take your time.”
The gist was already had. A man had attacked Black Lily on her turn about the garden. A terrible thing, but why would it be pinned on me?