Gilded: The St. Croix Chronicles (10 page)

I met dark eyes, near-black in the reflected light of the red lantern nearly concealing him. The boy, his shaggy dark hair hanging into his eyes and his teeth bared in a grin, pointed at me.

I cocked my head.

A child. Perhaps ten, or a well-formed eight. More, I’d bet my last dregs of laudanum that this boy worked at Hawke’s circus; if the way he clung to the post was any indication, he was at least one part agile monkey. His grubby bare feet propped around the ornate iron post as if glued in place.

As I raised my eyebrows, a burst of raucous laughter erupted from the gathering I was afraid would not remain tame for much longer. The boy doffed an imaginary cap, scrambled to the very top of the post and darted over nothing.

He did not fall.

Instead, as the lights dipped and swayed, I glimpsed his nimble figure, a faint silhouette colored by the lights, as he sprinted across the lantern line—as smooth as any tightrope walker as I’d ever seen, back the way I’d come and to find, I assumed, help.

The husky-voiced woman shrieked. “You keep your hands off her, you bleeding sodomites!”

“Keep ’er still, damn it.”

I heard the unmistakable sound of something weighty against flesh.

“You whore,” roared a man, and there was my cue. I leapt over the prostrate form of the useless footman, barreled through the hedge and directly into the broad back of a man in my path. Fortuitous chance. He bellowed like a bull, and all I glimpsed was a frothy pile of blue tulle, blood like a crimson smear against the lace-frosted edge, and a still body upon the ground.

Sweet, golden-haired Talitha, the theatrical “sister” to Jane, who fought in the hands of two other men.

I had no time to take in other details. As I rode the man to the ground, my knees in his back, I reached for the knife slatted into my high-necked collecting corset. It whispered out, obscenely loud in the shocked silence.

The man beneath my weight shifted, shoulders squaring as he braced both hands against the ground. He could easily shake me off. At least until the point of my blade dug into the nape of his neck, impossible to ignore.

He froze. Muscles bulged beneath his shirtsleeves.

“Evening, lads,” I said, pleasant for all my heart pounded in my throat and fear conspired to send sizzling waves of energy to my limbs. I forced a smile. It came too easily. “Collector’s business. What say you fine gents move along?”

Three of them. Blast it. They circled Jane, the hand of one man curled around her throat, but her wide eyes telegraphed a fury the likes I’d seen before.

Huddled in the dark, two more sweets. I didn’t recognize either offhand, one cradled by the other in tactile reassurance, but they were within range. I did not have any cards to play when the game involved a hostage.

One of the three men took a step.

The tip of my blade carved a bloody circle. The sailor beneath me moaned.

“Tsk,” I told them, my gaze stern on the stocky fellow who’d moved. “If you’d like your mate back, I suggest all three of you come and collect him.” Another smile, all teeth. “Before I do.”

“Bitch,” the sailor growled beneath me.

“Come for the sweet auctions?” I asked cheerfully, steadfastly ignoring Jane’s gaze on me. Ignoring Talitha’s still figure half pooled in the dark. Sweat blossomed across my back, but I felt no cold. Instead, I stared into eyes I could not see the color of in the dim light, feeling every muscle in my legs beginning to strain with the effort.

“Get ’er,” growled the bald, tattooed man with his hand around Jane’s throat. She made a sound like a gurgle, her eyes suddenly much wider as those fingers dug into her neck.

I glanced at the man beneath me. Not the leader, then. Pity. I withdrew the blade, at a slightly sharper angle than strictly necessary. His shoulders jerked beneath my knees. “
Allez, hop!
” I launched backward, pulling my weight into a walkover that surprised everyone but me. It placed distance between us, and with my free hand, I pulled the second knife from the tailored back of the corset.

The blades glinted in the dark. “You want a woman, here I am,” I taunted. “Going once  . . .” I tossed one knife up. The lantern picked out its keen edge on a thin line of gold. “Going twice.”

Two sets of eyes traced it, and I flung the second with unerring precision.

“Sold.”

A man’s short scream pierced the grounds, echoed by the rattled shock of the two watching sweets. The man I’d already dropped would not move for the moment; not while my blade pinned one hand to the earth.

It was not a wound that would heal lightly, but neither was it a deathblow. A small courtesy he would not thank me for.

Two of the men disengaged from Jane’s presence. “All right, little girl,” said one, reaching behind him to withdraw a blade that made mine look like children’s toys. I swallowed hard, eased my weight to the balls of my feet. “Rumor ’ad it there were a collector bitch.” I tended toward hound euphemisms. Something about a dog collecting bones; I’m sure I didn’t know. He grinned. “Can’t wait to see what your ’ead costs.”

He charged me.

For a brief, yet seemingly eternal moment, silence reigned. That terrible waiting that always precedes a skirmish; that moment when all parties weigh the odds, and stack them where they could.

I’d done no such thing. I had no need. I’d done all my weighing prior and gave no thought to consequence.

Yet the sailor did not reach me.

A crack shattered the taut moment. Before any could react, myself included, a black snake uncoiled from the shadows and wound around the charging fellow’s thick neck. It snapped tight, jerked him solidly off his feet, left him clawing and struggling for air as his backside slammed into the ground.

I spun, my last knife held at an angle parallel with my wrist, and ducked the wild swing of a second man. I heard a gasp, a shuddering intake of air, and I didn’t know if it was the first bloke or Jane, but I pushed forward with all my strength and jammed my shoulder square into my opponent’s stomach.

He retched, as I knew he would, dropping to the ground, hands and knees. He gasped, heaved; a fancy bit of a trick I’d learned from a Baker ages ago.

That crack came again, that terrible hiss of sound, and I realized where it came from.

I turned, blade at the ready, but I had no need.

As Jane flung herself at Talitha’s side, the last man—the sailor whose voice I readily picked out—fell to his knees. The whip coiled around his neck, one meaty fist curled around it as if it would help loosen its grasp.

I sucked in air as fast as I could, my hands shaking with strain. With raw fire and energy.

The man’s face was red. It only mottled harder as he struggled to breathe.

From the shadows alongside the path, on the other end of the taut length of black, Micajah Hawke stepped into view. Even dressed for his part as ringmaster, he cut the finest figure. His long, powerful legs were encased in slim black trousers, their high waist and tailored fit only serving to showcase the lethality of his lean build. His shirt was also black, but the fitted waistcoat and coattails he wore tonight were a blue so vivid, no sapphire would ever match it.

He must have come direct from the rings, for the whip he carried would fit upon the belt slung around his hips. His straight midnight hair, always so well maintained, was tousled, as if he’d run his fingers through it—or, rather likelier of the intended effect, been caught by a woman who’d done the same.

He did not look at me. He did not have to. Energy turned over into an awareness so sharp, it was all I could do not to gasp. Sweat coated my face, my shoulders. Even the woolen shirt I wore was too hot, but I did not step away.

This was a battle of another sort entirely, and I would not lose.

“Her head,” Hawke informed the kneeling, shaking man, “is worth more than your miserable lives will ever see.”

Not exactly a compliment.

His fist coiled around the whip, tightening it until he towered over the sailor, the gallows to the man’s impromptu noose. The man choked, gasping for it, his skin flushing now to purple.

Hawke had no questions, apparently; I don’t believe he asks them often. The rules of the Menagerie are clear. Any man, lord or merely drunk as one, who breaks them does not often see a second chance.

As the man rasped something guttural, choked off by the rawhide about his neck, I turned and bent at the one whose hand I’d pinned. He moaned; I ignored him, wrenching the blade free.

This time, his scream cut off on a crude hope for my imminent demise.

I wiped the blade on his shirt, shaking my head, and tucked both knives into my corset once more. As I did, footsteps pounded the grounds behind me. Within moments of recognizing the sound, a figure in satin—and so little of it that I entertained a bemused uncertainty of where to put my hands—threw herself into my arms.

“Thank God you’d come!” the sweet said tearfully. I recognized her, now that I realized she was nearly as short as I. Lily, often called Black Lily for style, had hair normally as black as mine below the drift, but today she wore a wig of false hair. Red, like mine above. Odd enough to give me pause. “It was terrible, they came demanding time, laid out Peter—”

I was in very real danger of soaking my shoulder with her tears. I patted her mostly bare back awkwardly. “All’s right now, Lily,” I said, reassuring as I could.

Frankly, I’d been lucky. I wasn’t completely ignorant. I looked over her head, frowning at Jane and her prone friend. “Talitha?”

“Out,” Jane called, her tear-streaked face still as beautiful as sunshine. “She’ll come ’round. Grateful, too.”

Four men spilled into the clearing. Within seconds, Hawke ordered them all into action. Only two footmen were needed for the suitably cowed offenders; I noticed they did not head for the gates.

Menagerie justice was something I learned long ago not to inquire about.

Hawke slowly coiled the whip. His eyes, mismatched in a truly unique fashion, met mine. They were dark brown, the kind of rich color earned when a painter has taken layer upon layer of tawny gold and deepened it with shadow. In the middle of his left iris gleamed a brilliant swath of blue, as if the devil himself peered out from a single eye.

“Escort the ladies back,” he said, but not to me. The footmen, one already bending to pick up Talitha with more care than I would have credited either, did so. Lily gave me a final squeeze, and hurried after the rest, red hair swaying near to her backside.

The leather creaked in Hawke’s gloved hands. Blue gloves, to match the fine waistcoat and jacket. It brought out that blue river of flame in his eye. Warned me as to the level of the ringmaster’s fury. “You lack all sense, Miss Black.”

I raised my chin, suddenly wishing I’d kept at least one knife out. “All due respect,” I replied, sincerely meaning anything but, “if I had not come, those girls would be in worse shape for it.”

“Unlikely.” He did not move to close the distance between us, which surprised me. And put me even more on edge. Hawke was, for all his outward polish, a brute of a man, prone toward aggression to make his point. “Why are you here?”

Truth, then. “I came to ask the sweets about a possible murder.”

“You should know better.”

In the daylight, Hawke is a man worth watching. His swarthy skin suggested Gypsy blood somewhere in his parentage, while his black as night hair only furthered the appearance of barely restrained savagery. Sculpted cheekbones, a mouth that might be considered feminine were it not for the face it appeared within, and a build both broad at the shoulder and tapered at the waist conspired to turn heads likely wherever he traveled.

I had plenty of opportunity these past three years to perfect my impression of the man.

By night, however, gilded by the light of half a dozen paper lanterns, he turned into Satan himself. He looked at me now, running that whip through his gloved fingers as if he considered using it upon me in kind.

I shivered. Cold, I’m certain.

I could have played my hand closer to my breast, but in this case, it would serve me nothing. “There’s a bounty out for the one calling himself Jack the Ripper. Did you post it?”

“No.” A bit of truth. I had no reason to trust all that came from the ringmaster’s mouth—his role was to tempt, after all—but most Menagerie postings bore the name. He gave me more without prodding. “Whoever he is, he’s never come to my Menagerie. The matter does not concern me or mine.” His jaw shifted. “That includes you.”

“Much obliged,” I replied cheerfully, deliberately smearing on the saccharine gratitude because I knew it grated him. “However, you are wrong. I am not you
or
yours.”

His smile, wordless and paired with a raised black eyebrow, did more to unnerve me than any words.

I scrambled for mental purchase. “I didn’t come to ask the girls about that, either. It’s about a murdered professor,” I told him.

To this, not so much as a flicker of an eyelash. Instead, he turned, strode once more down the path and toward the gleaming tent. I hesitated, a fraction of a second, then hurried to catch him up. “Hawke, it’s serious.”