Corroded

through the fear I refused to reveal. “Do not fight,” counseled the still-amused lion-prince. “This debt will be discharged for one night’s work.”

This time, the room I was forced into was not so elegant as Hawke’s, nor as empty. Two female servants, both Chinese and wearing the simple tunic and trousers I’d expected of the foreign women in the Veil’s employ, waited with well-mannered patience. Between them, a bathtub was filled with water, though it lacked soap bubbles or the slick of oils for scenting.

The implications were clear. I was to bathe.

Like hell I would.

I lashed out with my feet, my elbows, anything that would give me purchase, but the men who held me did not capitulate.

The women did not appear troubled by my exertions.

Words flew, orders or explanations or even warnings of care, and Osoba said from the door, “If you do not bathe willingly, the Veil will be forced to punish all who failed in their orders.”

“Does that include you?” I asked, panting from my efforts. I was not standing on my own, grasped between the men and held as if I were weightless between them, my legs sagging.

“Yes,” he replied, surprising me with his honesty. His gaze held mine, tawny gold and no longer laughing. “As well as the men holding you, and the servants who are to tend you.”

The former I could well appreciate. The latter bit deeply. The Chinese girls had done nothing to me, and I had no doubt the Veil would have all of them whipped for a failure that would not be theirs.

I bared my teeth in a soundless snarl.

Osoba must have read capitulation in the act, for he said something in that blasted Chinese tongue and the men dropped me. I fell to the floor, barking my elbow painfully.

One of the girls gasped, and both hurried to my side.

The men bowed once, hands once more easing into their sleeves, and left the room.

I allowed one of the servants—the younger of the girls, with light brown eyes and almost no eyebrows to speak of—to pull me to my feet. “I despise you,” I said, glaring at Osoba.

He nodded, rather more readily than the observation warranted. “That is your right.” Saying nothing else, he closed the door, trapping me in the room with two efficient servants, a cooling bath, several pieces of polished wood furniture, and a vibrant blue and green folding screen.

What was it about the whips of this Menagerie that I could not provoke them into foolish action? Perhaps if he’d done something, anything at all but watch, I could have made my escape from this intolerable situation.

He had not. And would I have attempted escape knowing what I did of the Veil’s threat? That these innocent women would be punished for it?

Bloody bells.

In moments, I was stripped of my clothing and submerged to my neck in the tub, hissing when the temperature proved too cool for my liking. When one made a motion that I took to mean I was to get my hair wet, I jerked upright. Water, blackened and already turning gritty, cascaded from my shoulders. “No,” I said flatly.

I would not walk into the Veil’s machinations with my red hair bared. My identity was still my own. At least, I hoped so. I could not assume otherwise. The Veil had not once called me by name, and though Hawke knew, he had never given any indication of my identity after the disastrous ball where he had offered his bargain.

The servants exchanged a glance. Then, the younger girl said in heavily broken English, “Your hair.” Another sign that I was to wet it.

I shook my head. “I will not.”

“We fix it?”

“You will not fix it,” I told her, folding my arms over my bared chest and glaring. “You will leave it alone.”

Another exchanged glance. Then, the older woman made a circle, muttering a few terse syllables.

The girl nodded. “You will put it in...” She hesitated. “Like this.” She grasped her own long plait with her wet hands, then wrapped it about her head like a crown.

A simple effort. “That’s all?”

“Shi.”

That sound, I knew. I’d heard it from Hawke’s own lips. I frowned. “Does that mean yes?”

“Shi. Yes,” she repeated. “To say understand.”

At least I had come to recognize one word in the complex language.

I subsided, gritting my teeth when the servants scrubbed my skin clean, had me stand and poured cool water over me to wash the remnants of the grit away. They washed my face and my shoulders with cloths, gave me a brush and said nothing as the heavy lampblack in my hair turned my fingers gray. I washed them at their direction, pretended compliance, and all the while, I plotted.

The Veil had agreed that I would remain off the auction tables. He would not go back on his word easily, though I suppose he could have if he had no care for his word. Somehow, I did not suspect this was the case.

What else would the Veil have me do? Something that required bathing. Which indicated that I would be among other people.

The worst possible outcome coalesced so suddenly that pain blossomed behind my forehead. A mirrored hole opened within my belly. “What am I to wear?” I asked, striving for calm.

I prayed that I was wrong. That I leapt to a conclusion that was unfounded, impossible.

The girl glanced at the older woman, whose almond-shaped eyes wrinkled with distaste at the blackened bathwater I left behind. A short conversation ensued, so rapid that I could not separate one syllable from the next.

They wrapped me in a simple robe of shapeless design, too plain and ill-fitting to be the answer I sought, and the girl stepped behind the screen.

As the older woman cleaned the water spatters around the tub, the other returned carrying items that did not offer much clarification until she lay them out, one by one, upon the single chair.

The little voice urging its warning turned to a choking scream. I bit it back before my panic could give it words.

There are some who believe that the loss of one’s memory, the muddling of reality until it becomes little more than an absent dream, is enough to bury a fear forever. They are wrong. Opium had stolen the memories, the details, of my time in Monsieur Marceaux’s Traveling Curiosity Show, but no smoke or bitter tar could ease the lash of instinct and ingrained habit.

The things that occurred to me were this: there is an appearance, a fashion, that is uniquely ascribed to a circus. No sweet determined to seduce or entice would wear such a thing as laid out before me, because the whole was not meant to seduce. It was not overly exotic, nor was it scandalous—or, at least, scandalous in terms of the usual performing fare, though Society might consider otherwise outside the rings.

What the girl laid out began with a corset in a blue so rich as to put a peacock’s feathers to shame. Following, a cream-colored skirt whose blue-trimmed front ruffles would not reach my knees, stockings in a striped violet and green, and various accouterments designed to draw attention to—without hiding or masking— long limbs. My arms would be bare of all but cream ruffles just under the shoulder, and matching at the wrist. My throat, shoulders and decolletage bare.

The ensemble spoke for itself.

One could not bend in a full corset like that, which is why I’d made mine special and without the low hips. This indicated that one wearing such a fancy piece would not be among those required to fly upon the trapeze or silks, or bend for the admiration of a crowd. I was not convinced that the Veil even knew that I could do any of these things; a secret I intended to keep to myself.

The colors were bright enough to assure an audience’s attention, yet the material not so heavy as to hide anything from the eye.

This suggested a role that would demand awareness. Applause.

A bend to the left, a tip-toe across a narrow rope, and the whispered warning of a knife’s edge just by my left ear.

My hands shook so badly, I buried them in the too-large robe. “I see,” I said, and could not hide the tremble