Читать книгу The Court of Miracles - Kester Grant - Страница 14

Breaking into a place under cover of night is usually a simple matter of finding an entry point. A loose window, a door with a lock begging to be picked. Sometimes you have to toss up a rope or scale a wall to get to a building’s weak spots. Other times you might creep across rooftops and let yourself down a cold chimney. But the same techniques are much more difficult by day, when you’re likely to be spotted by any number of people: the merchants and workers; the laundrywomen hauling their linens to the boats floating on the Seine; the musicians, the beggars, the tradesmen, all the common people of the city, who aren’t children of the Miracle Court. By day the city seethes with life: it is a nest of mice scurrying to and fro, everyone hurriedly going about their business.

I shift impatiently under the lowering sun as the city hums its frenzied song. It is not yet time for me to be about; every inch of me longs to retreat until the daylight is truly gone. Dogs of the Thieves Guild work by day, and we Cats despise them because of it. Cats glide across the rooftops in the moonlight like dancers, while Dogs roam the arrondissements and slip silky hands into rich men’s pockets. Cats would never lower themselves to such petty work.

But today I’m not even a Cat. Today I’m a flower girl. I stole a dress, an apron, and neat slippers from a girl down at the floating baths. She likely walked home half-naked, poor thing. I took the basket of flowers from a distracted woman who was eating breakfast. Breakfast is a luxury for most of the Wretched, one I am rarely afforded.

A building looms before me, all yellowed stone and tiny windows. I’ve watched it since sunup, and it’s been silent all day.

My heart is skittering in my chest; the hair at the back of my neck stands on end. I know the danger of what I am about to do, and I am afraid.

Everyone is afraid.

Azelma’s words float toward me on the cold breeze. And I do what I always do when the fear threatens: I remember her whispering to me by candlelight. I wear her words like a shield as I set forth.

It’s been three months since Femi first brought me to the Thieves Guild. Three months of delivering takes to Lord Tomasis while secretly scrambling up the walls of every Flesh House I can find in the city. Three months of watching and waiting and learning that the houses of flesh come alive only after the sun has set. Three months of cramped limbs from perching on window ledges in the rain, counting the heads of a hundred girls, searching for one that looks like her. I climbed a hundred walls, slipped into a hundred windows before I found her.

I take a deep breath and approach the building from the side, avoiding the front, with its door of flaking blue paint, and the outrageously fat man sitting on a barrel. Weeks of spying on this house have shown me that when he’s sober, he’s as strong as an ox and as violent as a caged bear. But right now, he’s still in the depths of a daylong hangover. Last night was a wild night. He indulged in too much wine—good wine. I would know. I stole it from the cellars of the Marquis de Loris, an avid collector, and dosed it with poppy purchased from the Guild of Dreamers to ensure he would sleep deeply. Although the guard is snoring, I won’t risk the front door and instead slip to the side entrance, where kitchen deliveries are made. I push open the door, and as I knew they would be, the kitchens are empty at this hour.

I ease into a corridor. At its end is a door to the chamber of the madam who runs this establishment. Her door is ajar, and from inside comes the sound of snoring. Good. Her wine, too, was laced with poppy, and I paid a sailor on his way in to make sure he delivered it to her. He was delighted to do so. A grateful madam would earn him more time with the girls.

I should leave. I always leave at this point. It’s too dangerous to stay. But today will be different. Today I am going to rescue her.

I look up the stairs.

Do not go looking for her, Tomasis said.

I should obey him, but I can’t.

As if mesmerized, I’m drawn up the stairs, creeping quietly, hand on the banister. The gaudy peeling wallpaper shows exotic scenes of the Qing lands.

The top of the landing is lined with doors half-open in invitation. But only one room calls to me: the last one on the left. I walk to it with purpose and push against the door, and my breath catches in my chest.

She’s lying on the bed, her body curled into a ball as if to protect itself. The room is seedy: an open cupboard with a few fading costumes, a small dressing table with a cracked mirror, a clutter of colored bottles of watered-down perfume, cheap powders and rouge, a brittle calling card from a customer, two syringes lying used and empty.

My heart contracts as I look at her. Her makeup is smeared across her face. Her hair has been curled into unnatural ringlets. In the last few months, she’s grown thin and hollow-cheeked. The dress she’s wearing is torn in several places, with uneven stitches along the hem. She who once sewed so quick and neat can make only uneven stitches now, her hand unsteady from the drugs, or from a beating. The syringe has tattooed her arm with black pinpricks, each one flowering into a yellow-blue bruise. Her skin is bumpy with gooseflesh, but she was too tired to pull the threadbare sheet over herself.

I reach out and gently trace the mark of her Guild. The Tiger doesn’t tattoo his children with ink. He has other ways of marking them. Her mark runs across her eye like a stripe from her cheek to forehead, a scar of raised flesh against smooth skin.

At my touch her lashes flutter groggily, her gaze heavy and unfocused with the poppy they’ve shot into her veins. Her eyelids close again. I know that she does not recognize me. Perhaps she thinks I’m a dream, a memory of another time when she was another girl. While in other beds throughout this building, and in hundreds of houses around the city, her sisters dream uneasily as well.

It wasn’t always this way. When Lady Kamelia led the Guild of Sisters, there were five thousand women of the night. But hers was a reign of seduction and luxury, and all of her daughters flourished under the protection of the Law. Since the Tiger wrested control of the Guild, it is said that twenty thousand Sisters sleep under his thrall.

“Zelle, Zelle!” I hiss softly in her ear, but she doesn’t stir. I shake her, and when that fails I grab a jug at her bedside and spill icy water over her face.

She splutters awake, gasping. One eye is dark brown, the other filmy and blinded by the cat-o’-nine-tails that cut into her, marking her as a child of the Guild of Flesh.

She tries to sit up but is too weak, so I try help her. Trembling, she edges away from me, her hands raised to protect herself—she’s afraid I’m here to give her a beating.

“Zelle, it’s me. It’s Nina …”

Between her fingers her good eye finally focuses on my face and she gives a sharp intake of breath.

“No, no, no …”

She’s shaking violently now, wet and cold, as I try to drag her to her feet.

“Zelle, please, we have to go before they wake. Come quickly.”

“No!” She twists out of my grasp and tears herself away from me, backing into the wall. “I won’t go, I won’t, I won’t. They broke his hands. They broke him …” She stops, and something in her gaze hardens.

“Zelle,” I say calmly. I approach her slowly, like a person trying to tame a frightened beast.

I hear the creak of a door opening downstairs, and a raised voice berating someone. I curse under my breath. The Fleshers have arrived, and they must have realized that something is wrong. Voices grow louder. I don’t have much time.

“Zelle, it’s me, Nina,” I say.

“Nina? Nina, no … not Nina. Not Nina …” Her words are slurred, her voice ragged. “You must leave, before they come … They broke him. They broke—”

“Shhh,” I say, even as footsteps pound up the stairs. It’s only moments now until they begin to check on the girls, until they find me here with her.

Azelma’s eyes focus on my face, and for the first time since I have stood here before her, I think she truly sees me.

Boots thunder down the hallway. Doors slam. Voices call out that the girls are asleep. Azelma’s eyes dart to her window, terror raw on her face.

“You must go,” she says urgently.

“Not without you.” I reach for her. “Come with me.” She looks at my hand, and she takes it. We dash to the window, which I throw open, and I clamber onto the ledge, then turn to her.

I see it then, the clarity amid her confusion, the resolve beneath her fear. My sister stares into my eyes; she is so close I feel her breath against my cheek.

“Run,” she says, and she pushes me as behind her the door flies open. I watch my sister’s face as I fall in slow motion, and then abruptly she is gone and a man is leaning out, yelling and pointing.

I hit the ground with a shuddering impact. Pain laces my side. The wind has been knocked out of me, and I gasp for breath, willing my limbs to move, finding that they obey far more slowly than I can afford. I barely manage to rise to my feet as several men burst out of the building. They’re giants, like all of the Tiger’s sons, chosen for their brawn, their complete absence of morals, and their unspeakable propensity for inflicting pain. They circle me like sharks. They ask no questions; they don’t want to know who I am or why I am there. My being there is enough for them.

The sun is setting fast. I have time to call out only once, so I whistle loud and sharp, the call of the Thieves, knowing that even if anyone hears, it will probably be too late.