Читать книгу The Court of Miracles - Kester Grant - Страница 18

I watch Ettie from the corner of my eye. I have to; Thénardier will beat her if she doesn’t learn fast. And I cannot afford for her perfect face to be marred. Not today of all days.

The inn is crowded early this evening, voices merging into a dull roar. They’ll get louder as the night goes on and people get drunker. The air is thick with the scent of beer and wine long soaked into the floor and the sweet smoke of poppy from the pipes of the Dreamers in one corner. It’s roasting in here, too many bodies in too small a space. Carrying drinks to any table means walking through a maze of wandering hands and lecherous grins. I avoid the men with tattoos behind their ears: those are the ones you don’t want to trip over.

I glance back at Ettie, who’s struggling beneath the weight of a jug. Her skinny arms aren’t used to lifting such things.

I take a deep breath.

I can do this. I’ve rehearsed it in my head a thousand times.

I weave through the customers and bump my hip into a table just hard enough that the man at the far end is jostled into Ettie.

She is fighting to keep her hold on the jug when a large hand darts out and grips her shoulder, steadying her.

“Not used to waiting on tables, are we, little one?”

The voice is a rough, warm growl. My heart sinks into my boots, when it should be soaring.

The world seems to slow. I drop whatever I was carrying onto the nearest table, ignore the protests of the customers, and push through the crowded floor to her.

The man has stood to help her with the jug, and, relieved, she lets him take it.

Don’t look at him, Ettie, I think, despite myself.

But she does, a single golden curl escaping from her white cap as she tilts her head up to see who has saved her from a fall. She’s small and he’s a giant of a man, exuding strength and warmth. He has yellow eyes, a face tanned dark from years spent at sea, hair bleached orange-blond by the sun. The long, corded scars that cross from his forehead to his cheek don’t take away from his magnetic charm. He smiles at Ettie, a smile that is all teeth, and God forgive her, she smiles back.

“What is your name?” the smiling Lord asks.

“Ettie,” I blurt out before she can answer.

She turns to me, her eyebrows raised in question.

“I’m sorry she disturbed you, Monseigneur,” I say, not looking at his face. Definitely not looking at the scars. “Come with me, Ettie. You’re needed in the kitchen.”

I reach out to her, but his hand clamps down tight on her shoulder again.

“Lord Kaplan! Are my daughters bothering you?”

I’ve never been so delighted to hear Thénardier’s voice. The customers watch with interest as he moves through the crowd toward us. It’s a promising spectacle so early in the evening. After all, someone might be about to die—and that someone isn’t them.

Kaplan, the Tiger, is a Guild Lord, and he dresses his huge frame in rough sailor’s garb: loose shirt, trousers, boots, and an old naval jacket he legendarily took from the back of an admiral at sea. He carries no weapons; he doesn’t have to.

Thénardier, in contrast, is only a Guild Master. He is a small man, thin and wiry. He can be recognized from afar by the purple-and-yellow-striped waistcoat he favors. He’s a distraction, like a peacock fanning its brilliant tail. Like many members of the Thieves Guild, he’s given to wearing fine jewelry. His right hand is heavy with rings of gold. I’ve felt the mark of them on my skin too many times to count.

“Eponine, take little Cosette outside.” Thénardier rubs his hands together, as he’s wont to do when bargaining, for he sees Kaplan’s interest; he knows there’s something to be gained here.

My stomach churns. I remember the night the Tiger came for Azelma.

Stay calm. It’s all going according to plan.

I step forward and take Ettie’s hand. Everyone is staring at her and she doesn’t know why.

She tries to pull away from Lord Kaplan. But he doesn’t let go.

“Your daughter too?” Kaplan’s yellow eyes flick to my face.

“Nina is my little Cat,” Thénardier says.

Like everyone we know, he says one thing and means another. He says I’m a Cat, but he means I’m a full member of the Thieves Guild, so touching me is making argument with the Thief Lord. Thénardier is saying back off in such a way it comes out dripping in sweetness. He smiles, his mouth full of gold teeth. He cut them from the gums of soldiers dying on the battlefield and paid a butcher to put them in for him when his own rotted away.

“Your Cat has claws.”

Kaplan releases his hold on Ettie. She sways into my arms.

I grab her and begin moving us toward the door, hoping the Tiger’s eyes will follow us. Hating that they do.

“And the blond one?”

“My ward.”

“I didn’t know you were in the habit of dispensing charity, Thénardier.”

“Her mother pays me for her keep.”

We’re almost at the door, and Ettie is protesting because I’m pulling her arm too hard, but I must, to get her out. Out of the room, out of sight, out of his presence.

I yank the rough door open. The wind comes racing in, biting at my cheeks. Ettie is saying something about the cold, but I ignore her. I drag her out and tug the heavy door closed behind us. The last thing I hear is Lord Kaplan’s voice, as clear as the bells of Matins: “How much can I pay you to take her off your hands?”

I suck in deep breaths of the cold air. My mind is racing. I’ve just heard the words I needed to hear. He’s taken the bait.

So why, then, do I feel so miserable? I look Ettie over. She’s a little thing. Twelve years old and unable to fend for herself. At her age, I had been a member of the Thieves Guild for three whole years. She hasn’t the cunning to survive the Miracle Court. And yet I find myself trying to hide her, winding baggy boys’ clothes around her like armor to protect her from hungry eyes. I tuck her rebellious golden curls into an old cap so she’ll look like me.

You hide her like Azelma hid you. The thought comes unbidden.

An act, I tell myself, so as not to be too obvious until the time is right.

“Is Thénardier sending me away with that man?” she asks curiously, digging the toe of one oversized boot into the watery muck on the ground, as if perhaps it mightn’t be so bad if Kaplan took her. She thinks anything would be better than living with Thénardier and his drunken rages.

She has no idea.

“That man is the Tiger,” I say.

Ettie takes a step back. Young though she is, she recognizes the common name whispered for the Lord of the Guild of Flesh.

I shake my head roughly; I can’t afford to think about it now.

“Will he harm me?” Ettie’s little body shakes. “Nina …?”

It’s the same reaction I had only a few years ago, when I stood shaking before the truth of what the Tiger was.

Ettie always looks to me for answers. I’m the one who tells her how to keep out of trouble. I shouldn’t have bothered to disguise her; it was a silly, disjointed attempt to protect the lamb I was planning to offer up. To keep people from seeing what she is. For Ettie is beautiful, the kind of beautiful that would draw attention even clothed in rags. The kind you spend years hoping to find, the kind you convince Thénardier he must take in, the kind you know the Tiger will want.

“Will he kill me?”

Ettie’s words shake me from my reverie. I need to get her away now, to hide her so that neither Thénardier nor the Tiger can find her; thwart them, make them mad with the wanting of her. Only then can I demand my price.

I catch my breath.

“Yes, he’ll kill you,” I lie. He won’t kill her. What he’ll do is much worse. She will look for death and it will not come.

Ettie’s face crumples. She breaks into little sobs.

The first night I brought her back to the inn, she looked around and promptly burst into tears until Thénardier’s reprimand left her cheek a mass of blue-black bruises. When the last customer was gone and dawn was peeping through the wooden shutters, I crawled up to my bed and found her curled in a ball, shivering under the bedsheets. She was half frozen with fear and sorrow. I should have given in to my exhaustion, ignored her, and fallen asleep. But she stared at me entreatingly with those enormous blue eyes. So I lay down beside her, put my arm around her for warmth, and told her a story.

“Stop crying,” I say shortly, and grab Ettie’s hand. “Come on.”

“Where are we going?” She sniffles.

I smile. A smile that she should never trust.

“Somewhere he will not be able to find you,” I say, which is only partly a lie.

We rush down a tangle of back streets, keeping to the shadows.

She’s breathless and struggling along behind me, but at least she’s stopped crying.

She thinks I’m going to save her. When I’m sending her to a fate far worse than the seven hells.

But sometimes we must pay a terrible price to protect the things we love.