Karina Cooper - Corroded

With trembling lips, I took a deep breath, held it for a moment until the train’s whistle pierced the silence—so close, it left my ears ringing with shrill warning.

I exhaled my defeat into a weary two words. “ Allez , hop. ”

Holding his arms around me, I pulled us both over the bridge.

The collector managed only a gasp, a shocked cry; my sudden motion wrested his balance from him, and we fell together.

The air currents took us, frigid air cushioning our fall. We spun— one two three —so morbidly slow, and as if that dream played without me, as if I watched it unfold on a tapestry, gravity tore his arms from my grasp.

The flapping ends of his greatcoat left a dark stream around us. In the searing glow of the oncoming train, my hair tangled like spun rubies. The lantern affixed to the front of the locomotive highlighted every movement. Every expression.

The bowler hat he’d always worn low went sailing off into the shadow.

Sharp features. A nose like a blade. A laconic edge to a twisted mouth.

His brown eyes sparkled, so much pride—and a terrible, crushing sorrow.

Thin hands seized my ribs. In a split second, faster than I could have dreamed, the man I had once known as my dearest friend took my lips in a kiss as sweet as it was brief.

What happened next came as a blur.

Wrenching his weight in mid-air, he tightened his grip over my ribs and threw me bodily aside, forcing us both from the trajectory I’d chosen. The train shrieked, brakes applied as the conductor must have seen us, but too late. I hit the ground hard enough that my senses lurched, tangled and went black.

But I heard the impact. Felt it as the solid train tore through the Honorable Theodore Helmsley’s body as if he did not matter a whit. A wet mist splattered where I lay, gasping for breath.

It took me too long to realize I wore his blood.

Sobbing in denial, in a grief I could not even begin to express, my body snapped back in shattered recoil.

Agony overwhelmed me.

In that moment of terrible weakness, I hoped never to wake again.

There was a scuffle. A feeling of arms carved out of oak and stone around me and the mountainous rumble that was Ishmael’s familiar voice against my ear. “Why do you take her?”

Voices in quieter refrain. A cool threat, and a strangled growl I’d never heard from him.

“You’d risk a war?”

“No war,” answered a man’s soft-spoken promise. “Only death.”

The world upended itself, spinning violently until I was sure that I’d retch from the speed at which it moved. I was jarred; pain erupted along my side.

Blunt fingers at my forehead, as if he pushed aside my hair. “Sorry, girl.”

I slid into a faint so deep, I did not twitch again when that bloody surreal voice called my name. The woman. A haunt, a ghost of a memory I could not shake.

Opium smoke given form.

Calling for me. Begging me. For what?

Cherry ...

The high-pitched chant of a Chinese tongue tore me from the grasp of bloody webs. I pitched out of oblivion and into a reality that crackled with golden dust, yellow shimmering suddenly blue as it took form before my eyes.

The noxious cloud settled to my exposed flesh, burned like fire. I screamed.

But it did not hurt. Not wholly. It simply peeled back the layers of my skin, frothed and hissed. I bowed and twisted, thrashing against the bonds of grim-faced Veil servants. The pallet beneath me juddered sharply beneath my efforts.

A man said something, a foreign command, and I was rolled over.

This time, the powder he smeared into my wound sizzled, and agony stole my wakefulness from me.

When I finally woke again, it was to a pressing heat. Sweat already dampened my skin, and as I inhaled deeply, I smelled spice and something thicker. Smoke.

Opium.

I tasted it upon my tongue, felt its spider fingers as it entered my nose and spread like a warm cloud.

I sucked in air greedily, clambering to my hands and knees. My body twitched, but it did not scream as it had when last I’d woken. I thrust my tangled hair from my face, already aware that I would see two screens. One backlit by the glow of the fire the Veil preferred, and one to mask the Veil’s spokesman.

“I know you’re there,” I shouted, heedless of the gravel my voice had become.

There was silence. Empty. Eternal.

It took me some effort, but I managed to push myself to my feet. I swayed, tottered.

I was not, as I’d thought initially, nude. Once more, I found myself in a simple, bulky robe with wide sleeves and a large sash to close it. The hem folded underfoot as I attempted a step.

This time, I could not catch myself. I fell to the polished wood floor, crying out when my elbow barked the unforgiving ground and my head bounced a breath behind.

I lay in silence for the space of a heartbeat—one whose eternity lingered, thanks in part to the smoke I inhaled.

A gentle clearing of the throat alerted me to my host’s presence. “The sleep you have had,” said that bloody polite voice from behind a screen, “often leaves one bewildered. Sit for a moment. Gather your strength.”

I desperately desired to tell the voice exactly what uncivil practices he could do with his advice, but I did not. It would serve me nothing. Bruised, battered, driven beyond all measure of perseverance, I pushed myself up and I sat in place.

In silence, I waited—and I desperately clenched my teeth against the nausea roiling in my stomach.

The quiet stretched.

Then, a small sigh. My moment of peace was over. “That is three,” the Veil said. “Your life, Coventry’s failed collection, and now, your life again. You are an expensive habit, Miss Black.”

I bared my teeth, but dared not unseal them. The room swam.

“How are you feeling?”

“What do you care?” I managed to grit out. My palms flattened against the too-hot floor. My hair clung to my neck, my sweaty cheeks—a bloody veil of my own. I blew it aside in loud impatience. “You’re only here to take your pound of flesh.”

“A quaint enough truth,” replied the Veil. Once more, I read nothing in his nasal tone. Simply a voice. “You will be prepared, Miss Black, and you will take your place tonight.”

I sneered. “I thought I wasn’t pretty enough to fetch a price.”

“For this?” An oddly tinkling chuckle, as if I’d deeply amused him. “A very special event will be held, all in your honor. Rest assured, you will bring a price. And more.”

My fingernails dug into the wood so deeply, one snapped below the quick. The sharp pain was nothing as to the fear that swallowed me whole. “No,” I whispered, all bravado forgotten. “The rings? The circus? I can’t... You wouldn’t...”

“You can.” The veil’s tone sharpened. “You will. If you attempt to escape, if you balk even once, if you so much as open your mouth and dare to contradict us, we will punish you.”

That I could take. That, I wholly deserved. I shuddered, though I forced myself to straighten my shoulders.

Yet even as I opened my mouth, the Veil continued in the same razored manner. “We will begin by punishing our ringmaster, who has been too lenient with you.”

My chin jerked up.

“We will punish our sweet, who has failed in her endeavors to report on your actions.”

My teeth came together again, so tight that pain drummed sharply in my temples. I inhaled deeply through flared nostrils, held the opium-laden smoke in my lungs.

“We will punish the agreeable girl who maintains our Menagerie apparatuses.”

“Why?” I hissed out.

The tone did not change, matter-of-fact pleasantry. “Because it will hurt you to watch us do so.”