A Chinese man shrieked as he was engulfed. The horrifying stench of charred flesh turned the incense-laded air to acrid charcoal.
Hawke leapt aside as the strange man threw a glint of gold at him. Whatever it was, it failed to reach its intended target. In answer, he flung a hand and something green shimmered as it arced towards the unnamed toff.
It flashed so brightly, I was left staring blindly at the aftershocks as they flared black and white in my straining sight.
Hawke’s opponent was not caught so unawares, lowering the hem of his singed jacket from his protected face.
Foregoing whatever tricks they pulled on each other, the gent launched himself at Hawke, a form of lethality the likes I never would have expected from an aristocrat. They collided, staggered back over the far edge of the stage and fell over.
I scrambled atop it, darted under the burning ribbons.
I had not expected anyone to pay me a mind. Battles were not my forte, and whatever madness had seized this place, I could make no mistake—this was war.
And I, apparently, an unwitting soldier in it.
The body that slammed into mine was lethally hard, honed like a blade and agile as a cat. I spun, hitting the stage floor upon my back, and already slamming an elbow into the man’s chin.
Black skin, long plaits. Ikenna Osoba, his face twisted into a ferocious scowl.
He said nothing—a lesser man would have tried.
Rather, as we rolled and struggled for the upper hand, he made it clear that he would not tolerate anything less than total victory. Over me. Over himself. I didn’t know.
The man belonged to the Veil; where I’d thought him too proud to take me on, instead he had accepted my challenge. That was all that mattered.
The ribbons still bound to my wrists wrapped us both in a tangle. He wound up the victor on top, and his forearm pressed into my throat as if he’d waste no time drawing it out. Smart, but then I’d known that.
I was long past the point of numb disbelief.
Creating a hook with my fingers, I jabbed them into his arm—a point where the nerves would cause the limb to spasm. I’d learned that one from a doxie what took no nonsense from her paying men, but rarely was I afforded the opportunity to use it. It required precise placement.
Osoba cursed, growling like the lions he was reputed to tame, as his arm slid from my throat. I gasped for breath, drew up a knee and jammed it hard into the soft flesh between his legs.
His curse strangled.
A dark, lithe shape drew up beside us. Zylphia’s hand buried in Osoba’s braids, wrenched hard enough that his head and shoulder bent back, cords standing out in his throat. “That ginger cove,” she said sharply. “He’s losing the fight.”
“Why,” I rasped, “is that my fault?”
Osoba pushed himself off me, a flex of muscle that all but caused him to go airborne for a fleeing moment. His plaits slid through Zylphia’s grip, and she spared me a hard look from behind a mask of blood. Hers or someone else’s, I could not be sure. “We moved this quicker than we intended. For you,” she said quickly, harsh enough that I knew she was feeling the pain of a wound I could not see. “Do not waste it!”
“Zylla?”
“Go, cherie.” She turned to handle Osoba.
I watched them—the mulatto and the prince clashed in a spectacularly agile tangle that told me it would not be a bloodless battle. Part of me wanted to see this play out. I had never known what Zylphia’s special skillset was, only that she came from a lineage the Veil called “useful.”
I hesitated, torn—I did not care to leave her, and owed no loyalty to the ginger cove she warned was losing. Zylphia clapped her hands once and spoke a phrase in a language I did not know she possessed, a glint of red light appearing in her palm. Where I expected Osoba to come for her, he leapt back as if she’d already burned him.
He flung up his hands, fingers splayed and bloodied, and replied something in the same style of tongue. It did not click, not as I’d heard him say before.
Zylphia laughed. It was not a sound I’d ever heard from her—rich and loud, as if he’d said something she found utterly comical.
Osoba’s gaze flicked to me, then back to the sweet. Inclining his head, he slipped away, over the stage, and once more out of view; challenge forfeited.
Zylphia did not turn to face me. As if a woman possessed, she tipped back her head and let loose a scream that galvanized all who heard it into startled shrieks and awful cheers—a terrible noise, yet so joyful as to be frighteningly out of place.
Fear for her froze me in place.
Too late. A flare of red light, wholly different from what Zylphia summoned, surged from the edge of the stage.
The whole of it shuddered. I had no time to scrutinize my options. The far end blew outwards in an excessive display of energy and power, so forceful as to beat down all who stood in its path.
I shielded my face from the splinters of wood and stone.
A foot connected with my back, just over the wound I’d already reopened. I screamed my pain, howled my anger, even as I fell over that ruined edge of the platform.
The report of a pistol cracked, and the amphitheater returned the echo a thousand times. Whoever had assaulted me, they did not come again.
Groaning amidst the carnage left by that red flare, I forced myself upright. Lurched when my knees wobbled.
What a fearless collector I’d turned out to be. Confident enough of my skills when it came to one on one, but the madness of this place undid me. I had never been trained for all-out war, and that was the hell I found myself in.
For all my befuddlement, still I staggered forward. “Cage...” That his name was the one upon my lips should have infuriated me. It would, later. But I had no name for the ginger gentleman and no real understanding that what I saw did not stem from the opium I’d imbibed.
I had taken too much.
And still, I wanted more. To dull the noise, dull the pain.
Put me to sleep where all the cares of the world could fade to empty silence.
The men fought, heedless of the severe damage they left in their wake. Ginger to black; copper to ink. Blue and violet and sparkling green, they fought with things I could not wholly take in, even as the impact of fists and flesh and the ruby glint of blood smeared all.
Hawke’s white gloves were nearly black with it.
The other man wavered upon his feet.
I lurched into a shuffle.
Then, a sprint.
Hawke shaped that light, malignant and red between his hands, his voice raised in Chinese words I didn’t understand. Yet this time, he changed the inflection—his tone turned nasal, where I’d only ever heard him respond to the Veil in his own deep voice.
Had I required further proof of this abnormality wearing the ringmaster’s skin, this sufficed.
Where was Hawke?
The stranger tripped over fallen candles, sprawled on his backside, and strained until his jaw stood out in stark relief and tendons popped in his forearms—mostly bared, its burned remains reduced to a few clinging threads. I saw the roll of his lean shoulders as if he struggled to push back against whatever force Hawke summoned.
I did not think. I simply leapt at Hawke as he raised his hands, his face a wild mask of triumph and near ecstatic pleasure.
“Cage!”
In that moment, a split second, Hawke’s hands wavered. The light faded out, sizzled to nothing. I collided into his chest; his arms came around me, long-fingered hand splaying over the back of my head as if he would protect me from injury.
With effortless strength, he spun me, utilizing my own momentum to gather me hard into his arms. I looked up, fearing the blue of his eyes and frantic to see traces of the man I desperately hope remained inside.