Transmuted (13 page)

This language would be the death of my tongue. “My apologies,” I said stiffly. “Why is her given name after her surname?”

“Cultural importance,” my tutor replied. “We can talk about this at length another time, but know that for all intents and purposes, you would know her as Miss Zhànzhàn Ma, sister of Mr. Lài Ma.”

Then why switch them at all? I did not say it aloud, but I labored to commit this to my own memory. “Would I call you Miss Ma, then?” I asked her.

She blinked once.

Hawke’s breath hissed out. “There’s no need for courtesy here. Her honor has been bargained away.”

This earned a ripple of varying surprise from all but the girl in question. And, I noted, Uriah—the obvious recipient of such a bargain.

“Sold?” I queried, drawing out the word to indicate exactly how frayed my patience had worn. “By your brother?”

“Do not mistake it for slavery,” Ashmore said when she seemed to struggle with the concept of what I asked. “It is the same and different. There is much to learn about the Chinese, and more to learn of Zhànzhàn’s family, but now is not the time.”

That Ashmore was apparently given leave to speak informally of her did not escape me.

However, my tutor was right. “Then tell only what needs to be known,” I said, shearing through the useless dross with sharp command. I leaned on the table, hands spread upon it, and faced her with all the comportment this mystery allowed me.

I was drowning in the tangled skeins of whatever secrets filled this hall. I did not like the feeling.

Ashmore knew more than I, Hawke was not talking, and Uriah watched us all as though we were the most fascinating of actors.

And all the while, a priceless diamond vanished into the markets I had been detained from.

It wasn’t kind, nor was it entirely fair of me, but I pinned all my antagonized irritation upon Ma Zhànzhàn.

“Now,” I added softly.

Her full mouth curved up at the sides. A modest smile. This time, when she bent her waist at me, I was seized with the feeling that it was sincere.

Respect?

She would not soften me so easily.

“With my virtuous father and intelligent brother,” she said, choosing her English with care, “the humble garden called the Midnight Menagerie came to be.”

That seemed clear enough. It also marked her as something older than the
girl
I stubbornly called her.

Was she Hawke’s age? More or less?

Wait
.

My back stiffened, taking me off that lean that would so scandalize Fanny. “You?” Then, in a higher range than I’d meant, “
You
are the Karakash Veil?”

Her chin dipped.

“You and—” I had wondered at this myself, but had not committed to the conclusion. So many thoughts, words, invectives tangled together in my mind. I wanted to shout them all, to ask my questions, to leap across that table and seize her by her black tunic and shake her until I could form the things I wanted desperately to say.

I wanted to do all these things, and yet, I forced myself to stand still, to take a deep breath and turn my accusations upon Hawke.

Where they bloody belonged.

“And you were just going to sit here and pretend you knew nothing, weren’t you?”

A twitch beneath his eye said I’d scored a mark. “It is not my story to tell.”

“The devil it isn’t,” I shot back.

Ashmore rose. “This is hardly the time—”

“Then when?”

All sound, all motion stopped at my shrill demand. Uriah, who had watched this with no small amusement, now studied me with an eyebrow arched high.

I was trembling. The last reserve of patience had worn through, and all I felt was the bitter draught of anger, of disappointment.

Of betrayal.

How much I owed the Veil; I could not begin to count the ways.

I jammed a finger at the Chinese girl. “She is at least a portion of that beastly organization,” I said, barely managing not to yell. Only just. “Because of her, I was forced to endure so much…” The words jammed in my throat.

It wasn’t about
me.
This wasn’t
my
scar to bear.

What I had done, I had done in full cognizance, even were I to regret the consequence.

What the Veil had done to my friends, to Hawke, did not evoke forgiveness.

My mouth opened and closed, and I knew that mottled color had flooded my face, but I could do naught but shudder in rage and sorrow and
impotence
.

The scrape of Ashmore’s chair filled the pregnant silence, but it was not his hands that curved around my shoulders. Nor was it my tutor’s kindness that forced me to turn, that pressed my face against a chest powerful and wide, sculpted by the very arenas laid out by the Veil I despised.

It was not Ashmore I leaned on.

Had I enough presence of mind to think about it, I wouldn’t have leaned on Hawke.

That suggested a weakness I was not prepared to show.

Yet there I stood, shaking with all the matters I couldn’t untangle long enough to form into words, clutching at Hawke’s shirt as he cradled my head in one large hand.

He remained silent. What was there to say?

Nothing he could possibly frame would ever undo the scars upon his back, left there by the Veil that had him whipped for the temerity of utilizing his flesh and his sorcery to save my life. Nothing could undo the beast within him, unshackled by the Veil’s own alchemically fueled cruelty and collared by physical humiliation.

Nothing would ease Zylphia’s anger, or return to the Bakers their lives.

The Veil had done much to earn my hatred.

But I could not assault Ma Zhànzhàn for it.

Was I weak? A coward?

A low whistle broke the stillness of the moment. “Sounds like there’s a lot more history here than what I suspected,” Uriah said, his loud voice echoing from wall to wall. “China girl, you’re in bad loaf.”

“I daresay you knew exactly how much trouble she’d bring when you accepted her commission,” Ashmore said dryly.

Uriah’s laughter thrummed. “You’ve the wrong idea,” he chuckled. “I didn’t buy her. I’m just keeping an eye on her ’til her brother comes back.”

I lifted my head. Though Hawke’s grip did not gentle, he allowed me the mobility.

I dared not meet his searching stare. Could not tip my face up to look at the man who’d seen in me a tempest, and did not see fit to mock me for it.

What was I supposed to feel about that? I was conflicted. Shame that I’d cracked so obviously brawled with a strange melancholy that he had not lapsed into the more familiar mockery that usually framed our conflicts.

I was not ready to face either. Nor was I willing to admit, even to myself, what it meant that his kindness had provided something of a balm for my tumult.

I turned to stare at Uriah. Hawke’s hands settled at my shoulders. “Comes back when?”

She saw fit to answer that herself. “Soon. My brother is many good and intelligent things, but he—” She hesitated, lapsed again in her native speak.

Ashmore frowned. “He is wasteful.”

“This.” She nodded. “The loss of the
chái
slowed his advance.”

“Doglike animals,” Hawke translated without my having to ask. His voice dripped menace. “The beastmen.”

Without pausing to think of what it must look like, one of my hands lifted to Hawke’s on my shoulder. His fingers tightened under my palm, but he did not move it.“What have you to say to that?” I demanded of Zhànzhàn.

“I humbly request forgiveness,” she said softly, lowering her eyes to the floor. A low, throttled growl locked in Hawke’s chest.

“It won’t be so easily granted,” I said, boldly speaking for us all. “You will help us, Ma Zhànzhàn. Whatever your brother plans, you will help us put an end to it.”

“I hope to do so,” she replied, once more lifting her gaze. “Since the passing of our illustrious father, much has changed. Too much. I would help.”

“But to do that,” Uriah cut in with booming cheer, “you’ll need to pay me for her.”

“I thought she didn’t belong to you,” I countered.

Ashmore scrubbed at his face, clearly weary. “But he did say he’d look after her until her brother returned. What will you give himto break his word?”

“Buy my word,” Uriah corrected. “Buy. Give me some credit, won’t you?”

“For how much?” dryly returned my tutor.

I expected our host to laugh.

He slapped the table, causing the things upon it to rattle, and said, “For one service, and a little credit, you gain the China girl’s freedom.” He held out a hand. “Thank you for offering.”

I made to take a step forward.

Hawke gripped my shoulders, holding me still.

Ashmore’s hand dropped from his face, and the look he shot Uriah was one of such loathing that I blinked in rapid succession.

I’d never seen such an expression on Ashmore’s face before.

“You magnificent bastard,” my tutor said.

It was no compliment.

Uriah’s smile stretched ear to ear, but his hand held steady and wide. “You been gone too long, friend.”

“Obviously.”

The laws of the Underground might be mutable, but the bargain was asked and the terms set. If Ashmore backed out now, we’d leave the Chinese girl behind—where she would, I had no doubt, become a thorn in our collective side.

I tipped my head back, until I could see at least a portion of Hawke’s features. They had shuttered, as was his wont.

But when his eyes slid to me, they burned. Anger, I thought. Perhaps something worse. Something uglier.

“Will you murder her outright?” I asked softly.

The place his fingers held me ached from the force. “Of the two,” he replied, a low murmur I felt thrum in his chest against my back as much as heard, “she was the most tolerable. If she makes herself useful, I will withhold my vengeance.”

“And if she does not?”

“Then no power in this world or the next will save her worthless hide.” It bore every signature of a vow, one carved in bone and blood.

Ice slipped down my spine.

“Then I shall make of her a useful ally,” I whispered.

A muscle in his cheek twitched.

“You have yourself a deal,” Ashmore said, a sigh as much as a promise, and clasped Uriah’s hand. “But if you cross me, Leopold Uriah, you will wish the hounds of hell had come for you years ago.”

The large man gripped Ashmore’s hand, smile wilting not at all, and said, “You are already too late.”

***

The prophetic nature of this was all too soon made readily apparent.

Once our services had been sealed, the games ended. Meriwether’s so-called test—to pit me against Zhànzhàn’s sword, testing Ashmore’s credibility and her skills—and the politics between Ashmore and Uriah fulfilled some function I didn’t know. Near as I could piece together, it all seemed keyed into gaining our assistance in some manner or another. I had been allowed the opportunity to cede for myself a price. This option was not given the Chinese girl, who became one of our party forthwith.

We were given no other chance to speak alone, but bundled away in a sort of overly cautious secrecy that mirrored that of the agents of the crown. What conversation we managed as we moved deeper into the Underground came in fits and starts.

On our journey through the maze of tunnels and passages, I learned somewhat more of Ma Zhànzhàn. To wit, that her name indicated that although she was the elder of the twins, her worth was less—a matter of gender I found appalling, yet oddly similar to matters engaging my own society.

Of course, no matter what it seemed, she did bear half the power of the Veil once their father had passed.

This felt at odds with the front of humility and culture she presented, and so I vowed to keep only one matter in mind: she was not guiltless in the many and varied transgressions enacted upon me and mine.

Even so, she would not admit which transgressions were of her doing and which were not.

This frustrated me until Ashmore stepped in to explain that for all they were two different people, they acted as one. To separate out which was whose fault was to remove the face of the Veil.

This appeared to be of further cultural importance.

To be certain, the Veil had seemed one entity—or at least one organization with one voice. When I considered this, I remembered the single time that the spokesman—who had sometimes been the sister and sometimes the brother, or so was explained to me—had lapsed into the use of the singular, rather than the plural.

I would have my tiger returned!

A clear enough demand from the brother, but what of Zhànzhàn? What did she wish for? I had no opportunity to ask.

Our hosts pushed us at a steady pace that sapped my strength. While I had made great progress since my days of withdrawals, I still weakened somewhat more readily when it came to physical exertions. Given the nature of my already flagging body, it did not take long for me to question my own health. By the end of our jaunt, my chest felt tight, my breath rasping. To my envious regard, Zhànzhàn appeared to be not at all worn.

Ashmore remained closer to her than he did me, which served my purposes nicely.

Should she try to escape, he no doubt had a trick or two up his alchemical sleeve to counter it. That left Hawke nearest me, and of that, I was exceedingly aware.

I was always mindful, when it came to his regard.

After three hours spent in the noxious aroma of the Underground, my nose had long since shut off all faculties. The stench no longer bothered me.

This gave me ample opportunity to study the halls we traversed through. This was no kingdom of cavernous rooms and vast corridors. All was cramped and narrow, and those passages that widened were not tall. Sometimes, Hawke and Ashmore were forced to stoop.

Uriah escorted us personally, but his size did not work against him as I’d expected. Like a true rat of the Underground, he’d developed a rather unique method of mobility that caused him to dip and jerk oddly—a sort of scurry that was as close to scarpering as I’d ever seen an adult manage. It did not, however, slow him.

For my part, I had little trouble. The Underground was at least one place where my short stature was not a burden but a blessing.