Noir (12 page)

Ni
neteen

Eyelet

“Not to
wor-ry
,” a cheery voice says. Cool hands pet my head. “It’ll wear off in a minute, or twen-ty . . . maybe a day.” A licked thumb scrubs at my forehead, erasing something from my skin.

I blink, stunned, squinting up at the guilty party, helpless to defend myself. For some reason I cannot move.

Swimming features assemble into a female face before me: blonde shoulder-length hair; white skin; saucer-sized,
striking
violet eyes. A nose, as tiny as a pixie’s, puddles in the middle of a pixie-sized face, with a doll’s dimpled chin below it. A glowing rim of white surrounds her head.

“Have I died?” I ask her.

“Don’t be
sil-ly
,” she laughs, a high-pitched, snorting cackle that pierces my ears. I struggle to raise my hands to cover them, but I can’t.

“They’d never let any of us off that
eeea-sy
!” she continues. Her voice spoils the picture of her face—spilling out all edges and sharp corners and harsh letters, as if she were a caricature of herself. Such a great beauty, to have never been educated properly. Her voice is in literal contrast to her white, flawless, socialite skin.

“What brings you ’ere?” She grins, sits back, and slaps me hard, snorting—apparently thinking herself quite funny. Then her perfect brows crinkle. “Wha—? You the type tha’ don’t fancy
’umour
?”

“Humour, you mean?” I manage the words, though they pop out rather distorted.

“That’s wha’ I said.” She looks at me crossly, her voice pitching in an insistent way. Then her brows lift and her mood falls back into childlike temper. “I’m in for promiscuity,” she whispers to me. “What’s your gig?”

“Promise what?” I slur my words.

“Promiscuity,” she repeats proudly as if she’s excited about it. “Hysterical, that’s wha’ they call me.” She laughs, leaning closer, and the scents of lye and rose hip overpower me. Her face smears, then pulls into a wicked turn, before at last anchoring in place. What on earth is wrong with me? Why is everything blurry, moving? “I likes me men,” she continues, whispering low and sultry. “A little too much, apparently.” She giggles. “Imagine, being guilty o’ likin’ men too much. Idn’it silly?” She cackles and smacks me again, and I feel like my head’s going to blow off.

She leans back, and I’m thankful for it, but then she starts filing her nails. The scratching chews at my spine like the mantle of a giant bug. I feel as though I may be sick. Why is everything so vibrant here? Why is everything so pronounced?

“Truth be known, I likes me women, too.” She cocks her head and whispers to me, “I’m not fussy. I just likes people.” She shrugs her shoulders and folds her hands, tipping her head as if to say . . .
oh my
. . . What is she saying?

I blink at her, bewildered. I’ve never heard of a girl liking a girl before. Not like this. My mind is dizzy with the thought.

“Oh, not to
wor-ry
, though.” She pats my chest. “I don’t like anybody who doesn’t like me back.” Her face melts into concern. “Not tha’ I don’t like you. I like you
plen-ty.
” She smiles. “Just not tha’ way.” She reaches out, twisting the curl next to my cheek. “Unless, of course, you’d like me to.”

My heart takes a fluttering turn in my chest. I don’t know what to say.

“But we can leave that to later,” she goes on. “Seeing as yuh’s no longer able to form words.”

She’s right: even if I could think of something to say, I couldn’t. I suddenly have balloons for lips.

“Oh, look at you. You poor dear. You’re droolin’.” She dips over to one side, comes up with a handkerchief, and dabs the side of my mouth. “They should take you off these pins soon. Though they’s never really done druggin’ us round ’ere—”

“
P-ppp-pins.
” I force the wobbly word from my mouth.

“Yeah. Sorta like the bed of nails. You’re lyin’ on it.” My gaze drops. “Only the pins, they’s not designed to drill through yer back. They’s fulla drugs. To demobilize yuh. Makes it easier for them to drag us round like tha’.” She laughs. “They likes to keep us all hopped up and
stupid.
That way, we’s less likely to try to ex-cape. Can’t go far if yuh can’t move yer legs.” She smiles. “But not to
wor-ry
, pet.” She gets all serious again, runs her hands over my hair. “They’ll be in soon to take yuh off ’em. Too many pins and you’ll never move again.”

A shudder of cold terror charges through me. Where am I? What’s happening to me?

“It’s all right,” she says, reading my expression. “They don’t fancy killing us. We’s too much fun to torture.” She snorts.

I try to scream, but nothing comes. Not even the slightest sound. My throat feels dry and fat. I no longer have fingers or toes, or the sensation of a neck. I have no idea how I’m swallowing, breathing. Somehow I can still cough.

“I should let you rest.” She pats me lightly on the chest. “I remember wha’ it was like my first time, yuh poor thing.”

First? I drop back, and she tucks the sheet in around my neck.

“Don’t you
wor-ry
.” She grins at me, all sloppily. “I’ll be right ’ere when you wake back up. We’s roommates for life now, you know!”

Panicked thoughts crash in my brain as the drugs overtake me. Her face swirls away, replaced by an image of Urlick thrashing, strung up between posts in the gallows,
screaming . . .
as slowly, he’s lowered into a steaming vat of wax.

Tw
enty

Urlick

I shiver, curled in the corner of my cell. I can’t get warm. Sweat glistens on my skin. I think I’ve caught the fever, being left for so long without so much as a blanket in this cold, dark, dank, underground pen.

Something is playing a trick on my brain. Lately, I’ve been thinking I’m not alone. Perhaps it’s the darkness, or the fever. Or perhaps it’s the result of starvation. I haven’t eaten since the boy came with the potatoes. I don’t know how long ago.

It was to be my last supper. Yet here I wait.

What could possibly be delaying their plans to kill me?

Dark spirits spool before my eyes again, dancing and swooping in and out of the bars. I blink, trying make them go away, but I can’t. They laugh and cajole, taunting me with their freedom. I know they’re not real. But they seem so real . . . I draw in a breath. Perhaps they are. Perhaps I’ve died and I don’t know it, and I’m a spirit now, too.

No!
I shake off the thought.

I close my eyes and look for Eyelet. She is always just behind my lids.

Through the darkness, her fresh smiling face appears, dancing toward me through the trolling brume of Brethren, out of a world I once hated but now love,
because she’s in it.

A world I’d give anything to return to.

Her gleaming agate eyes sparkle like the sheen of finely loomed velvet. Traces of chocolate and caramel drink me in.
“Eyelet!”
I whisper, I can’t help myself—she looks so real. And all at once she’s gone. “EYELET!”

“Sir!”
a voice shouts over mine.

My eyes pop open. It’s the boy, Sebastian.

“You’s ’avin’ a bad dream, sir?” His voice is shaky. I’ve frightened him.

“Yes,” I say.

“You’s all right, sir?”

“Yes, I’m fine. What are you doing here? Has there been word?”

“No, sir. But I’ve brought you this.” He shoves a bowl full of soup through the slat in the bars. “I couldn’t stand the thought of yuh down ’ere without food any longer, sos I poached it for yuh.”

The aroma of potatoes and leeks stimulates my senses. “Where did you get this?” I say, diving forward. It’s too hot, but I slurp it anyway, not caring if I burn my tongue.

“From the kitchen,” the boy says. “I drained the pot when sculleries weren’t lookin’.” The boy pushes in a nub of bread. “I also brought you this. And these. Though I’ve got to get them back.” Something metallic glints in his hands. It catches my eye and I sit up, potato cream drooling down my face.

“What’s that?” I say.

“The keys—” the boy says.

“To my cuffs or the cell?” I interrupt him.

“Cuffs.” He lowers his voice. “I couldn’t get ’old of the cell keys, sir, I’m sorry.”

“Sorry?” I breathe. “This is wonderful!
Wonderful!
”
If I could I’d pat the lad on the head. “How did you manage this?” I say, lurching up onto my knees and turning my back, pushing my hands out through the bars in the cell so he can reach them.

The boy gropes in the dark until at last he finds my hands, his fingers nimble and quick as he unlocks first my wrist cuffs and then my ankle shackles, making sure not to let them clank on the floor as they drop.

“I was able to lift ’em from the guard’s pocket as ’e lay back in ’is chair asleep. ’E’s got a drinkin’ problem, that one.” His voice falls. “I waited until ’e was on duty, after I was done with the grub run, then I pinched the key from ’im and come down ’ere.”

“So where do they think you are?”

“In the manse of the church, cleanin’.”

“Won’t you get caught?”

“Not if we ’urry. ’Sides, I did a bit of ’omework. And I knows now ’oo you are.”

“Pardon?” A strange streak of terror rolls through me, thinking the boy’s found out about my specimen status and has made plans to trade me for his freedom.

“Ain’t right, you being locked up ’ere,” the boy goes on. “What with you being royalty, and all.”

“Royalty?” He unfastens the last clamp around my ankles and lowers it to the floor, and I twist around.

“That’s right!” His voice lilts.

“Don’t get me wrong.” I struggle to move my stiff arms, rubbing my tender wrists. “I’m thankful for this, truly thankful, but . . . I’m afraid you’ve got me mixed up with someone else.”

“No mix-up, sir. You’s the one. The last living heir to the throne. Says so right in the official book in the church. I checked.”

“What are you talking about? What book?”

“Brethren’s official birth registry. I ’eard the officials all goin’ on about it. So the next time I was in there cleanin’, I thought I’d check for meself. And there yuh was, right on the page she said you would be.”

I stare into the darkness, blinking.

Heir. Throne. Registry. Church. That’s not possible. It can’t be.

Can it?

“I overheard the Ruler talking ’bout what theys was gonna do with yuh because of it,” the boy continues. “That’s why all the delay. The Ruler’s all in a fix ’bout how she’s gonna ’ide yer body from the Clergy. That’s why she ’ad yuh stuck down ’ere. It all makes sense now—”

“My name . . . you saw my name, in a register?”

“Yes, sir, and yer description.”

“What?”

“The registry mentions the purple mark of royalty on the baby’s face.” I hear him drop his head. “Beggin’ your pardon, sir, but I couldn’t ’elp to notice yuh’ve got some interesting marks on yuh—” He stops himself.

I raise a hand to the open-mouthed-snake scar on the side of my cheek. “So they’ve known all along. That’s why they’ve been trying to capture me. To lock me away, where I’ll never be seen again.”

“That’s ’ow you ended up down ’ere in the ’ole. It was the Ruler ’oo gave the orders.”

“Where is the book now?” I cling to the bars.

“The Ruler ’ad the guards lock it up in a cage and ’ide it in the crypt of the church, so’s nobody will ever find it.”

“How do you know this, then?”

“I was there when they did it. It was me they sent down into the crypt. Small boy. Small body, yuh know?”

“Is there any way you can steal the book out of there?”

“I dunno, sir. It’s pretty risky. I ain’t got no business over there in the crypt no more.”

“I need that page,” I tell the ceiling.

“I’ll see what I can do, sir—”

“No. You can lead me there once we’re free. Right now, you’d better get out of here.” I pass him the bowl through the bars.

“Right, sir. You’re sure—”

“Positive. Now get going.”

The boy stoops for the keys and rushes off in the opposite direction of the stairs.

“Where are you going?” I holler to him through the darkness.

“Back through the cavern to the manse of the church. I’m not finished cleanin’,” he hisses.

“There’s an underground passageway?”

“Yes, sir. But it only leads from here to the manse and back. The walls are fortified with steel.”

“Who knows of this passage?”

“Only the guards and meself, why?”

My mind bursts with an idea. “Is there
any
way you could filch the keys to my cell?” I lunge at the bars.

“No, sir.” The boy is adamant. “The guard ’oo carries that lot ain’t no slacker. ’E ain’t never gone to sleep on the job. I could never lift from ’im.” He swallows. “And if’n I don’t get these ones back soon, and the drunk wakes up—” He holds up the keys and they jangle.

“No, no, of course, it’s too risky.”

“Thank yuh, sir.” The boy turns and bolts away.

“Don’t forget to keep an eye on my old cell.”

“Don’t forget to act like yer shackles is still on if anyone comes!” he calls quietly to me over his shoulder, then races on through a door, padding off through the darkness of the passageway.

“I will,” I tell the walls.

I slink down to sit on the floor of my cell, rubbing the stiffness from my limbs, thankful to at last be partially free.
Royalty, eh?

Has everything I’ve ever known been a lie?

The story of my birth—did my father not step in to help because he was
not
my father?

The purple mark of royalty. What does that mean?

I reach up and touch the welt on my face.

Could it be this is not the horror it seems?

Tw
enty-One

Eyelet

My eyes flutter open to the sound of the same high-pitched voice as before. It takes the room a moment to stop spinning. I hope it’s a dream. But it isn’t a dream. My greatest nightmare has come true.

I’m trapped within the walls of Madhouse Brink.

“Hi, I’m Livinea.” A stuck-out hand dances before my blurry eyes. “Dunce of me not to introduce myself before now. Livinea. Livinea Mae Langtry.” The girl takes hold of my hand and shakes it vigorously. My shoulder aches. My limbs feel tired and heavy. I feel heavy all over—and her perky voice is not helping. “Pleased to meet yuh.” She smiles full-on. Her teeth are bone straight and lily white. A rarity here in Brethren unless you’re from royalty. Or another country’s royalty.

She can’t be royalty. Can she?

“Langtry?” I squint, fighting hard to dredge up the memory. I know I’ve heard that name before. It finally registers. “As in the famous Lyla Langtry? The moving-picture star?” I sit up, and my eyes whirl a bit. I’m amazed at how long it took me to wrangle that thought to the front of my brain. What has happened to me? Why can’t I remember?

“Yeah.” The girl’s disposition brightens, then she suddenly scowls. “Only I don’t think we’s ’ad any relations.”

“You mean, you don’t think you’re related.”

“Yeah. That.” She nods her head. “Though I wish I were.” Her voice turns singsong. She rolls her eyes dreamily toward the ceiling. “Fancy ’er being yer muvver, eh?”

“Mother, you mean?”

“Yeah.
You’s smaaaart.
” She playfully cuffs me on the arm. “I didn’t ’urt yuh, did I?” She looks worried.

“No.” I launch up onto my elbows, overcome by wooziness, amazed by how blurry everything still is.

“You feeling all right? Not gaseous, are yuh?”

“You mean nauseous?”

“Yeah, that.”

“No.” I dab my brow. “I’ll be fine.”

“Yuh sure? ’Cause if’n yer not, I can ring the guard—”

“No! Don’t do that.” I swipe a thick hand through the air, stopping her from lunging up.

“How ’bout some cinnamon tea? That’ll fix yuh up!” She turns, and from under her cot she slides a wooden box the size of a trunk. She opens the lid and starts rummaging through clothing, shoes, household goods. “It ’elps to chase away the aftereffects of the pins.”

“Pins?” I vaguely remember having this discussion. Or did we?

“Yeah, they gives them to everybody on the way in. Sort of an initiation. Yuh live through tha’, yuh can live through anythin’ ’ere.” She turns to face me. “Yuh landed on a bed of ’em on yer way in. That’s why yer ’ead feels like a marshmallow. There it tis!” She turns back, pulling a pouch and a tin cup out of the box. “Tea?” She grins.

“No, thank you.”

She frowns.

“All right, maybe just one cup.” I feel the need to appease her. Maybe then she’ll stop talking. Her voice is rattling my burned-out gas-bulb brain.

She stands and slinks toward the back wall of our cell, checking over her shoulder as she goes.

“How are you going to get the water?” I squint, wishing things were clearer.

“Shhhhh,” she hisses and removes a brick from the wall, exposing the pipe that runs behind it. “But you mustn’t tell.” She brings a finger to her lips.

“I won’t,” I say, astonished.

She spins a wheel connected to a tap, and the pipe behind jitters, then purges steam. Hot water streams out of a handmade spout constructed from a bootlace and a bamboo shoot. She fills the cup, shuts off the tap, and replaces the brick with the ease of an engine. “Here,” she says, turning back to me. “Drink this.” She sprinkles in some leaves and passes me the cup. “Remember, it’s our little secret,” she says.

“Not to worry, your secrets are safe with me.” I mimic her, stooping to sniff the brew. The smell of Christmas morning floods my nostrils. I tip up the cup.

“It should ’elp to lighten up the effects of the pins much quicker.” She scratches her head. “You got a name?”

“Eyelet.” I slurp. “Eyelet Elsworth.”

“Eyelet.” She ponders the word for a moment. “I like tha’. Sounds like music, it does. Somethin’ classical.” She looks dreamily at the ceiling again.

“Thank you,” I say.

I lower my head, my heart cinching at the memory of my father, his choice of my name, and my mother—God rest her soul.

“That’s
one
thing about me mum,” the girl continues, wagging a jaunty finger. “Say what you want about ’er running off on me. At least she left me with a
stunning
name.”

“Your mother ran off and left you?”

“Sort of.” The girl’s expression sours. “She passed me on to me auntie and didn’t come back.” She wrings her hands.

“Oh.” I take a sip of tea. “I see.”

My mind shifts to Urlick, another abandoned soul. I struggle hard to see his face before me, but he’s not there. What’s wrong? What’s happened to me? I push hard at the thought and he finally appears, but in faint detail—and then he’s gone. Why can I remember certain things from the past so clearly, and not others? Why can’t I remember why I came?

“Me auntie Octavia’s done ’er best by me, don’t get me wrong,” the girl rambles on. “I got nobody to blame but meself for me trouble.”

“What trouble? What did you do?” I realize by the look on her face after I ask it, I shouldn’t have.

“It was just that I was so lonely, you know?” She lowers her voice and bends her neck toward me. “Growing up in that old spinster house, all alone. With only me auntie—and ’er ’aving all that trouble, she did, with the
laudanum
.”

“The laudanum? Your auntie, she was—”

“Addicted.” She finishes my sentence and folds her hands, soft and pretty over the lap of her dress. “As such, she wasn’t much company to me.” She lowers her voice even quieter then, and her eyes flash. “So’s I started sneaking out at night and going down to the pub to chat with the men.” She looks back over her shoulders, then adds quietly, “Apparently, that’s not wise.”

“No, I suspect it isn’t.”

“You ever touch yourself?”

“What?”

“You know.” She goes to show me.

“I know what you mean,” I snap, horrified.

She squints her eyes into delighted slits. “Oh, you should,” she hisses, leaning closer. “It’s delightful. Just don’t ever get caught.” She shakes her head. “Doesn’t go over well in some circles.”

I get a sudden start in my heart. “I don’t think we should be talking about this, Livinea.” My eyes dart left and right.

“We shouldn’t,” she affirms, smiling. “That’s what makes it so
delicious
!”

“No, it’s not.”

“You ever think about touching men?”

“No!”
I gasp. I pull the blanket up tight around my chin, as if to keep her thoughts out. I’ve never met such a creature before, so beautiful, yet so bold. So linguistically
daring
, with a far-too-promiscuous mind. I’ve had a thought or two of my own about men, but I’d never air them in public.

“Oh, you really should.” She pulls back, her lashes blinking, smiling all cheeky. “It’s wonderful.”

“Enough already.” I catch my breath, my cheeks reddening. “Let’s talk about something else. How long have you been in here?” I’m desperate to change the conversation—the one I can’t believe we’re having—to something more conventional.

“I’m not sure.” She falls back and stares at the ceiling. “Hard to tell time without a window. Hard to tell night from day. But according to me scratch over there”—she points to rows of crossed-out scratches on the wall—“near as I can figure, it’s been ’bout a year.”

“A year?” It seeps out of me breathlessly.

“Yeah, that.” She breaks out into a snorting smile. “I put a fresh mark up every time they serves me supper. I figure that’s the pass of a day.”

“And no one’s said when you’re getting out of here?”

The girl laughs. “Never, I ’xpect. Ain’t nobody ever gets outta ’ere. ’Less they escape.” Her eyes grow fearful and lose their warmth. “Which I wouldn’t try doin’, if I was you.”

“They can hold you here, forever, just for indecent thinking?”

“They can ’old you ’ere for whatever they want, miss,” the girl says, passing me a hanky when she sees me tearing up. “Come on now.” She dabs my eyes. “The tortures aren’t so bad.”

“The
what
aren’t so bad?” Thoughts collide in my brain.

Livinea scooches closer, throwing an arm around my shoulders. “As long as yuh don’t cause them any trouble, they ain’t gonna really ’urt cha. ’Sides, we ’ave each other now.” She snaps my rigid body toward hers, slapping my ribs to her side, and I fall apart.

A clang at the bars has both our heads shooting up. “What’s going on ’ere?” A guard stands peering in at us over a lock. He is tall and thin, the wiry sort. His fingers shake, not like he’s nervous, but like he abuses drink—which is clear by the stink of him. He wears a moustache waxed into curls at the end. A tiny piece of dried snot bobs atop the hairs. His eyes, dark and pebble-small, find me behind the bars. “I’d watch that one if I were you,” he says to me, leering. “She’s been known to fancy anything—”

“Except you,” Livinea says, tossing him a cool jilted look.

The guard runs a sinister eye down Livinea’s front, sticking on her plentiful breasts.

Livinea leans back and spreads her legs at him.

I turn my head, aghast at her antics. Petticoats aside, she still shouldn’t act that way. Then again, we are in the Brink.

“You.” I feel the press of the guard’s eyes on me. “Get up.”

“Me?” I touch my chest, trembling inside, feeling doused with the coldest water.

“That’s right. Get up. Yer comin’ wif me.” He turns the lock and swings open the door.

“She can’t.” Livinea springs to her feet and dives between us. “She’s already ’ad ’er treatment today. One a day. You know the rules.” She gets up in the guard’s face.

“She ain’t ’ad the kind I’m gonna give ’er.” He grins, revealing one golden incisor. “Now get outta me way.”

He reaches past her and hauls me out of bed, his dark pebble eyes ogling me. My chest tightens. My limbs are still weak and rubbery; I can barely stand.

“Where are you taking her?” Livinea shouts.

“That’s none of your business.” The guard strong-arms Livinea aside. She falls with a thump to her cot.

“Take me instead.” She struggles back up.

“Get out of the way.” The guard pitches her aside.

Tearing open the front of her corset, she stuffs his hand down inside, rolling his palm over her nipples, and I pull my eyes away. “There, you see,” she rasps in a trembling voice. “You’d rather have that, wouldn’t you?”

The guard smiles and closes his fist, hard. Livinea lets out a sharp scream.

“What’s going on here?” A woman in a mourning gown sweeps up to the bars of our cell. Her boots snap together when she stops. She’s dressed all in black, layer upon layer. A heavy, sheer black veil hangs over her face. The guard jolts back when he realizes what’s happened, leaving Livinea standing with her tit flopped out.

I turn away, embarrassed for her.

The woman’s eyes squint to slits. “You little whore,” she says and grits her teeth.

“It’s not what it—”

“Quiet!”

I spin around. I know that voice, or at least I think I do. I strain to make out her identity, still dizzy from the aftereffects of the pins. She’s tucked in the shadows, wearing a veil over her face, making it near impossible to discern her features, yet . . . those eyes, those cold, grey eyes behind that sheer veil, look so familiar. She purses her thick, red-painted lips.

“I didn’t mean—” Livinea says.

“I said to
shut up
!” The woman reaches out and slaps her. Livinea moves her hands to her face. “Take her away,” the woman barks to the guard and turns to leave.

“No, please!” I leap to my feet.

The woman whirls back.

“She didn’t do anything.”

She steps into the cell, studying me long and slow, a ring of keys on her hip.

“You are the new one, aren’t you?” she says in a low voice, a curly black hair dancing on her lip.

“I guess I am,” I say bravely.

“Consider yourself lucky. She’s taking on Black Bart in your place. Most newcomers don’t have that luxury.” The woman’s almond-shaped eyes shrink to slats. With the flick of her head, the guard drags Livinea away, pleading.

I fall to the bars as the woman backs out of the cell, yanking the door shut behind her with a heavy clang. She turns her back and walks away, keys jangling on her hips, ignoring Livinea’s screams.

“Livinea!”

Livinea turns, her violet eyes full of tears, as the guard forces her through a set of black, howling dark doors at the end of the hallway.