Engraved: Book Five of The St. Croix Chronicles (27 page)

I closed my mouth. Then thought better of silence and said cheekily, “Not your finest welcome.” Rather more bold than the situation warranted, perhaps.

He, like Hawke, was not the sort to bandy words. He got right to the point. “I cannot decide if you’ve the Devil’s own luck,” he said, studying me as though I were some interesting species of insect, “or if you’re genuinely witless.”

With my eyes cautiously fixed to the long, black coil dangling from his hand, I eased to my feet. At my back, the corner of the storage facility. To my left, a dead end leading to a wall I couldn’t scale without help. To my right, the open lawn.

Not an ideal battleground.

“I wonder at that myself,” I admitted. I kept my hands loose at my sides, though my stance shifted subtly. My weight transferred to the balls of my feet; readiness that might not matter.

I’d seen him at work with that whip. He turned a length of leather into a living thing.

“What was the thought this time?” he queried, his tawny eyes sharp. They remained on me—on my eyes, which told me everything I needed to know about his fighting style.

A body’s hands and chest could lie, projecting a false move for a feint. A fighter’s eyes often telegraphed every move.

Unfortunately for him, I was too well trained for that.

“I’ve come to bargain with the Veil,” I said. No reason to lie.

His black eyebrows hiked, one much higher than the other. “You’re joking.”

“Not even a little bit.”

“What could you possibly offer?” he asked, and the amusement in it stung.

I spread my hands in front of me. “Myself,” I said. “I’m rather tired of this farce.” When his eyes widened—genuine shock, near as I could read the whip’s features—I pressed my point. “I’d like to see Hawke freed from his prison, even if he’s never free of the Menagerie.”

“Do you think that he will then fight for your Bakers?”

Shrewd, that lion prince. I hoped that Hawke would alter the current landscape enough to give the Bakers a fighting chance, but it was not my primary motivation. “I don’t know,” I said, smiling a little more helplessly than I think he expected.

The hand holding the whip’s wrapped handle lowered a fraction.

“But I hope to offer my servitude to the Veil in exchange for clemency for Hawke, Zylphia and Communion,” I finished. “No more, no less.”

Osoba watched me as I spoke, mouth tightening to a thin ream. If he was cold in his plain shirtsleeves and dun trousers, he did not give any indication. Even his cuffs were rolled, baring tensile forearms patterned by ropy muscle.

I recalled easily the muscles revealed by his circus costume—a fight with him would not end well.

I owed him more than a bit of blood, but in the scheme of it all, I owed my friends more.

Perhaps it was a return to the staff I counted as family. Perhaps it was a softening of my resolve. I didn’t know. All I could be sure of was that Osoba, like Hawke—like myself—was a prisoner of a force greater than him.

What he owed the Veil, I couldn’t begin to guess.

It did not absolve him of his crimes, but I did not feel quite so at ease with acting the executioner.

“What do you say?” I queried when the silence stretched too long. “Will you take me to the Veil?”

He took a step back, but it wasn’t the sort to suggest he intended to depart. It firmed his stance. “Why do you do this?”

I cocked my head. “What, exactly?”

“Work so hard.” He shifted his grip upon the whip, not so trusting as to put it away entirely. The twisted end coiled atop the earth. “Why do you fixate so much on others?”

I hesitated. “Do you think I do?”

He nodded once, a sharp jerk of his chin. “It’s bothersome.”

I couldn’t help a brief chuckle, and I raised my hand to wipe it from my face. “I am weary,” I said, and though a smile still tugged at my lips, my voice came tinged with sorrow. I did not mean to be quite so honest, but when Osoba frowned in confusion, I allowed it.

How long had it been since I chose honesty over that of deceit and manipulation?

“I have spent much of my life doing as I pleased,” I said, clasping my hands together before me. I shifted a touch, easing strain in my legs, but dared not move too obviously. “That pleasure came at great cost to those entangled in my wake. Hawke, Zylphia, now Communion and his Bakers.”

To say nothing of the others murdered, denied their homes, bloodied and broken. My family, my husband, my friends above the drift—names I would not give him.

There were too many, and I had touched them all in some way.

Rarely for the better.

My smile wobbled. “You, yourself, have borne the brunt of it, have you not?” After all, with Hawke’s imprisonment, he’d been forced to pick up the ringmaster’s slack. It couldn’t have been easy, to serve a master who demanded one whip one’s friend.

Even Black Lily’s murder came at the behest of the master he served.

To know I’d all but caused it, forcing the Veil’s hand out of my own selfish need for revenge, would never stop hurting. It might not absolve him entirely, it might not allow me to forgive, but I understood.

He did not deign to acknowledge my inference. “So you believe your worth to be that of three collections?”

“I don’t know,” I said, shaking my head. I plucked my cap from my hair, smoothing back frizzed tendrils. They stuck, courtesy of the damp, but wouldn’t for long. “What I do know,” I added after a moment, “is that I can’t keep fleeing the consequences of my actions. I intend to make this right.”

“That is selfish.”

“Why?” I asked.

“You are laying down your burden because you are tired.” Scorn for the effort, dismissal of my feelings, dripped from the declaration that was too close to the truth for my comfort. I frowned. “You wish to be absolved through death or through control, but you no longer wish to fight. Selfish.”

My frown eased. “You may be right. I am tired, I cannot watch my friends fall one by one. Perhaps I am weak.” Osoba’s head tilted, and I gave him a rueful shrug. “’Tis what I can live with. I can no longer sit by and be protected from the penalties my decisions have incurred. Frankly,” I added wryly, “between this and returning above the drift to playact the imprisoned widow, I’d rather be here.”

This earned me a speculative scrutiny. “Why?”

“Because,” I said readily, “my sacrifice there might make one or two vengeful souls feel better, but here, I hope to save lives.”

Osoba’s snort was filled with exasperation, and he turned his back on me. His multitude of fine plaits swept across his back, bound by a leather thong, and clattered softly. “I cannot decide if you are overly optimistic or utterly daft.”

“Likely a bit of both,” I volunteered. “It runs in the blood.”

“I know nothing of your blood,” Osoba countered, but turned back before I could take a step closer—or away. “But I’ll grant you this. Your sacrifice is noble enough.” He lifted the whip, pointing the drooping length at me. “Sadly, you overestimate not only yourself, but the Veil.”

“Oh?” It was a rare day when I might be accused of overestimating the Karakash Veil.

“They care nothing for nobility,” he said curtly. “The promises made to you, who is less than a servant, are not worth keeping. No honor is lost in such a deception, and so you would be made to suffer with those you intend to save.”

Bloody bells.
I took a step back, my fingers curling into the cap I strangled between my hands. “How do you know?”

The look he gave me was pitying. “I still wonder at your intelligence, Miss Black. For all your years, you have never truly understood the nature of the game you played.”

This might have been true. It likely was. “So coming here is worthless?”

“For you?” His teeth gleamed in a smile that lacked all humor. “Yes. But not for me.”

“Osoba, wai—”

He moved like liquid—from rest to action with a strike of a long arm that seemed to extend from shoulder to the very tip of the whip flicked towards me. I lifted a hand in warding, and fire snaked around my wrist.

I hissed out a breath as pain seared into my flesh. Only the cuff of my coat kept the skin intact, but it hurt. “Why?” I gasped, jerking my arm at an angle that stretched the whip between us.

Osoba’s eyes met mine across the length of the taut leather. To my surprise—to my confusion—sympathy flickered there. Sympathy, and no small amount of grim determination. “You have never comprehended the precepts of slavery,” he said simply. “It would be best if you died here.”

“What will that accomplish?” I demanded. I wrenched at the binding, only to dig my feet in when he tugged back. “What could you possibly hope to gain?”

“An end,” he replied readily enough. “Hawke will no longer suffer for sake of your hide. The Ferryman already move against the Bakers. It’s over.”

I jerked. “Move? What do you mean?”

“I mean that you are too late. The Ferrymen have gone to dismantle Baker territory. The war has begun.”

That explained the unusual quiet of the grounds. All too well. There was a day left on Communion’s promised four, but the Veil had moved first.

Was I too late for everything?

He did something with his arm I could not follow. The whip uncoiled from my wrist, as though a serpent coaxed to obey, and the whole slipped over his shoulder in preparation for another assault.

I was prepared, this time.

He lunged, hand flicked, and as the leather slipped through the air, slick as any blade, I sprang into a series of back handsprings that put me far closer to the storage facility than safety demanded.

I staggered back as the whip arced over my head, and my spine collided with the corner of the building.

I slipped around it before Osoba could press his advantage.

It bothered me that I could find no argument with Osoba’s logic. If I could take him at face value, he had done me a service by assuring me of the Veil’s complete lack of regard where I was concerned.

Even so, I would not sit by and do nothing.

Osoba might calmly accept his servitude, his punishments, but I was not the same.

I clambered over an unsteady mound of crates. Osoba rounded the facility. “You cannot run from me,” he told me.

“Oh?” I didn’t have the breath for any other rejoinder. I launched from the edge of the crates with an added, “
Allez
,
hop!
” and swung to the very top of the stacked crate tower. Glass clattered and clinked as the whole swayed.

My insides sloshed and swayed in tandem. The ground looked very far away.

Osoba watched this with a curl to his lip. “Fool,” he began, and whatever else he said was lost as the tower came tumbling down.

I jumped, caught the edge of the roof and swung myself up. This pulled at my shoulder badly enough that I felt my face blanch; the whole roof tilted sharply to the side as I rolled onto the rooftop.

High ground.

Not exactly the advantage I hoped when I lacked all weapons to fight with and bitter shards of pain popped and sparkled.

Osoba watched the crates collapse, features caught in that interminable mask of amusement he always seemed to default to where I was concerned. He was like a cat toying with a particularly awkward mouse.

Admittedly, I felt awkward enough to suit the metaphor.

“Look,” I said, barely refraining from gasping with it, “shall we agree to simply disagree on the subject of my well-being?”

“I am afraid not,” he replied below me.

“Do you intend to starve me out?” I asked, peering over the ledge. It wasn’t so high that I couldn’t jump, though if I misjudged the landing even by a fraction, I might injure myself deeply.

He had coiled the whip, pulling the loop of it over his shoulder. The mess of the crates beneath me did not leave for easy climbing. He couldn’t reach the ledge. He’d have to jump to catch the edge, and then I’d have the opportunity to boot him in the face.

Hardly elegant, but serviceable.

What I’d do after, I didn’t know.

Osoba turned his back to me. “Stay put,” he told me.

“As if I would,” I replied.

I knew he was smiling without having to see it. He took several measured paces back over the lawn, but did not continue—drat the man. Instead, he faced the facility once more.

Sure enough, he was smiling. Widely enough that I shuddered at the predatory certainty of it.

When he launched into a sprint, my eyes widened. He leapt at the structure itself; I sucked in an awed breath. Glass shattered, courtesy of the boot he kicked into the window frame, and utilizing that as a launching point, he leapt fully onto the flat roof with me.

My mouth fell open.

Because he was, in the end, the lion prince, he sketched a sardonic bow. “Do not underestimate me,” he said.

A palpable satisfaction to which I replied a sharp, “Bugger.”

He laughed.

The sound had not yet faded when he uncoiled the whip and let it fly.

This time, the skin at my palm and the back of my hand split as I caught the damn thing, wrapped it hard in place, and jerked. He was prepared for just such a thing, and leapt forward to force slack in the leather.

My heart in my mouth, I met his challenge with a foot to his knee, gave him all my weight and launched over his head with the whip firmly in hand. It jerked tight into his throat, but he bent backwards, forcing the loop over his head, and the slack between us snapped taut again.

We’d swapped sides of the roof.

Panting with the effort it had taken, I couldn’t help a faint smile. “Don’t underestimate me, either.”

He shook his head. “Witless,” he said again, and jerked on the whip I held. It startled me enough that I had to take a few steps forward, which put me in range of his long legs.

He kicked like a mule. It hit square in the chest, stole the last of my breath and forced me back again until the leather snapped tight between us.

I reeled at the edge of the roof, caught my balance before I could swing too wide, and darted to the side. He spun with me, but I was quicker this time. I dove for his feet, he sidestepped easily.

The coil I held looped at his ankles.