The Bones of Ruin Read online

  Still. He would have Fool look into it.

  For now, he was excited. More excited than he had been in a long time. His heart was beating, his face flushing, his fingers clenching as the thrill surged through him. Only for his ecstasy to be ruined by Mr. Bradford’s disapproving grunt.

  Bradford, who knew what he shouldn’t know, and what Adam desperately needed to know.

  Bradford, who could destroy everything that mattered to him with just a word.

  All thanks to his father.

  “Stupid boy,” Mr. Bradford said, swearing through gritted teeth. “If what John told me is true, then you have no idea the kind of chaos you’re about to find yourself in the middle of. Just forget all this, Adam. Forget all of it. I will. You have nothing to worry about from me. I swear!”

  Adam shut his eyes, not wanting to see a man he once respected for his political vigor and ferocity suddenly so willing to grovel under the guise of fatherly advice.

  “Just return to your studies and forget it all, my boy.” Bradford’s breathing was labored. “Go back to the way you were. Or, if you wish, we can think of another way to deal with… with what’s to come. The… th-the cataclysm. The Hiva—”

  Adam’s hand twitched. Wordlessly, he placed the knife carefully on the window ledge next to Fool’s black leather shoes.

  “Please! Let me go, dear boy! I will go to my contacts in Parliament and—”

  Adam’s eyes snapped open, and without skipping a beat, he grabbed the revolver hidden in the back of his trousers and shot Bradford through the head. The man slumped over dead as the gun’s smoke cast shadows across Adam’s face.

  Rain dripped down the back of his hair as the wind roared on.

  “Was that really necessary?” Fool cocked his head to the side. “The window is open.”

  “I don’t want the Crown or the Committee to know more than they already do. Besides, there’s nobody around for miles.” After tossing the gun to the floor, Adam lowered his head. “That’ll be all. Leave.”

  Fool never needed telling twice. Dipping his top hat, he bid adieu and disappeared into the cloudy, chaotic night, his black cape fluttering with the wind.

  His blood is on your hands, Father, Adam thought bitterly, taking in the sight of Bradford’s lifeless body with a heavy heart. “And there is no going back,” he whispered.

  A promise made between a young man and a corpse in the middle of the night.

  PART ONE Curtains

  The existence of monsters calls into question the capacity of life to teach us order…

  The monster is not only a living being of reduced value, it is a living being whose value is to be a counterpoint…

  The vital counter-value is thus not death but monstrosity. Death is the permanent and unconditional threat of the organism’s decomposition, the limitation from without, the negation of the living by the nonliving. Monstrosity is the accidental and conditional threat of incompleteness or distortion in the formation of the form; it is the limitation from within, the negation of the living by the nonviable…

  —GEORGES CANGUILHEM, “MONSTROSITY AND THE MONSTROUS”

  1

  STRANGE HAPPENINGS

  (FROM OUR CORRESPONDENTS)

  London Evening Standard

  12 October 1884

  The thirtieth birthday of Mrs. Catherine Wells, wife of the President of the Brighthand Literary Association, abruptly ended in chaos. Held on the evening of the eleventh of October in Agricultural Hall, the forty ladies and gentlemen present at the occasion were rushed out of the venue just before dinner was served. According to eyewitnesses, a young man dressed in very meager clothing entered the hall uninvited and, with no apparent cause, promptly exploded in a burst of electricity. Somehow, the man kept his head. While the hall was in disarray, many bystanders reportedly caught sight of the strange man stealing chatelaine bags and metal coin purses from the waists and necks of several ladies as they ran. He then escaped in the pandemonium with these items in hand.

  A rational man would dismiss these witness statements as the ramblings of drunkards; but while Mrs. Wells’s soiree indeed provided respectable amounts of alcohol along with tea, these stories hover too familiarly close to the unexplainable events occurring throughout the city and beyond. Despite this, the government remains rather quiet on such matters, particularly these days. Much more parliamentary attention is, as of late, being lavished upon Britain’s recent guests, the special envoys from Africa whose steamer docked at Plymouth two evenings ago. The delegates, said to be of royal blood, have come from the Oil Rivers region of the west coast to persuade the government to intervene in the National African Company’s mining projects in the lower Niger region. Though the government certainly has a duty to manage its colonial affairs overseas, there are growing concerns that the strange happenings at home have become entirely too frequent over the past decade to ignore for much longer…

  October 23, 1884

  “She’s going to fall!” a girl cried. “My God, she’s going to die! I can’t look!”

  Iris picked the voice out from among the chaotic shouts in the alley twenty feet below her, though admittedly only because of its tone, a shriek so nasal that Iris thought she would slip off the tightrope from cringing. The rope itself was fixed from the third stories of two buildings—an old mill and a bakery. It took all her discipline not to drift along with the devilishly seductive, sweet scent of bread rising from the red-bricked chimney. The fresh aroma signaled that there were still bakers who hadn’t yet rushed out of the building to witness George Coolie’s carefully planned morning spectacle.

  “Carefully planned,” yes. Meticulously planned. One wouldn’t typically find a gorgeous, dignified lady like herself balancing on a string between two very tall buildings without a satisfactory reason, at least not so early in the morning. The Coolie Company needed promotion for their first show since returning to England, and London in particular had no shortage of entertainment. From Piccadilly to Westminster, it was a strange town with an insatiable appetite for freakery—and Coolie, ever the businessman, did his utmost to use this fact to his monetary advantage.

  Coolie… As if her mind was punishing her, that money-grubbing man had snuck back into her thoughts, particularly his red face shouting at her at daybreak in front of all the other performers at camp.

  “You know very damn well how important this is, so I don’t want any mistakes. Not one. We need to get those bloody butts in the seats, you hear?”

  He’d seemed more agitated than usual, his square balding head dripping sweat, his gut jiggling with each swear. Coolie kept his appearance as tidy as he kept his manners.

  She shivered as a chilly breeze brushed past her bare shoulders and arms. Coolie had her in one of her performance costumes: a bright peppermint-green dress that hugged her chest and fanned out in layers of tulle, leaving everything past her knees bare. Skillfully sewn, courtesy of Granny Marlow, but not her attire of choice for such a cold morning, to be sure. Not in the least a proper dress for a lady either, but the circus tended to have looser rules of attire than regular civil society.

  Besides, Iris was sure there was not a single soul in the gawking crowd below her that truly thought of her as a “lady” according to their traditional standards.

  “That colored circus girl is going to die for sure!” she heard a young man yell. “I’ll bet you money, she’s going to fall and crack her head open right here on the road.”

  Just the usual.

  Iris sighed. The wind fluttered the boa feathers weaved into her black hair, which, despite its length and coarse texture, had somehow been pressed down and rolled up into an ordered bun at the base of her neck—once again courtesy of the hours Granny Marlow spent lovingly doting on her.

  Iris was a spectacle, to be sure: George Coolie’s own professed “African rope-dancer,” a girl who, according to him, he’d plucked straight out of the Congo jungles, where she’d grown up among the lions and jackals—and after re
scuing her single-handedly from the “heart of darkness,” he’d trained her to become the greatest stunts woman England had ever seen.

  A lie. And of course people believed it. Well, according to Coolie, “Stupid people believe anything, my dear.” Cruel, but accurate.

  The truth was, she’d found him in his office ten years ago after he’d put on a rather disappointing show in Blackburn. He was very drunk, and to get to his desk, she’d had to quite carefully maneuver around half-broken bottles of bourbon and strewn-about paperwork, some of which documented his never-ending gambling debts.

  Despite the mess, she’d asked for a job.

  Coolie had quickly realized the gift he’d been given after witnessing proof of her abilities—her uncanny senses, her hunter-like nimbleness. And though this particular audience of gawking Londoners hardly deserved it, what with the unflattering names they shouted up at her, Iris completed her task as the job commanded and gave them the same wondrous sight she gave every crowd, every performance. To the gasps and screams of many, she tumbled upon the tightrope, her small bare feet gripping the rope with ease, staying in perfect balance.

  Coolie had once remarked that her instincts were otherworldly. Well, of course; rope-dancing was a dangerous art that required the utmost precision and, paradoxically, a certain sense of reckless abandon, a devil-may-care attitude that allowed the dancer to at least pretend that she didn’t care one way or the other whether she lived or died.

  Most dancers did care, even if they feigned otherwise. Iris did not. And she didn’t have to pretend either.

  Since she couldn’t die.

  “Oh my, there goes the other one!”

  The sound of an excited woman down below signaled the arrival of Iris’s partner. Her foot had touched down at the end of the rope. She turned just in time to see the young man leap into the air from the ledge of the bakery rooftop, so high children were screaming. Surely he’d miss his mark, they must have thought frightfully. Surely the sheer force of the wind would blow him off course as he twisted his body like a gymnast in the air. Just a fraction to the right or to the left and he’d be reduced to a fleshy smear upon the pavement.

  But this was a trick the young man dubbed “Jinn” had performed many times before. Over his white body-length tights was a pair of beige billowing pants that cinched in at his knees; an orange vest hugged tight against his slender chest. His white tights made it more difficult to grasp the rope, but his toes gripped it nonetheless, his feet steady.

  Iris’s eyes rolled quickly with just a flicker of annoyance as she heard swooning down below, likely due to her partner’s striking physical features. Very few of them could resist the sight of his sandy skin glowing under the sun or his chestnut-brown hair fluttering with the breeze. It happened after every show, like clockwork. The moment the curtains closed, a good handful of audience members, women and men alike, would discreetly find their way backstage to catch a glimpse of the bedazzling young man, a boy of nineteen, to gaze upon his sharp jawline up close, his long fluttering lashes, his slender build and angular nose. And each time they saw him, his dark, catlike eyes would stare back at them with a chilling, almost hateful expression that either chased them away or enticed them further.

  Iris gazed into them now, but only—as she inwardly insisted—to watch for her cue. Their routine was a complicated one.

  Simultaneously, the dancers lifted their arms and waved to the crowd neither of them particularly liked. “The Nubian Princess and the Turkish Prince,” Coolie dubbed the pair, because it was easy for Londoners to remember and exciting enough to bring in those with an appetite for the so-called exotic. Coolie had given Jinn his stage name for that exact reason as well.

  “You have a wild look in your eyes, boy,” Coolie had once said in his growling tone while balancing a cigar on thin lips. “Like a tiger in a cage. The jinn are like devils to you people, aren’t they? The name will be a perfect fit. It’ll make you look even more dangerous. The audience will love it! I’ll bet they don’t see too many Ottomans in the circus.”

  Coolie didn’t much care for sensitivity or accuracy. Jinn had silently accepted the name anyway, never protesting, never sharing his real name no matter how many times Iris pestered him for it, and never speaking of the parents who’d given it to him. It wasn’t as if anyone would care, Coolie had told them. Least of all the audience.

  For Iris, it wasn’t so fun to be inspected and dissected by the gaze of people who saw her as nothing more than a curious oddity. But she’d been given a task today, and the work she completed for the Coolie Company had so far rewarded her with food, funds, and a temporary home. That was enough for now.

  She nodded to Jinn, who nodded back. Together, to gasps and applause, they wheeled their bodies sideways, their hands touching down first, their feet catching the rope at the same time. The distance and timing had to be calculated to the letter: Jinn’s strong, slender legs were quite longer than hers as a man that stood above five foot ten. The top of her head brushed the bottom of his neck, and so they carefully measured out the length of their strides.

  A squeeze of her hand, a strong upward toss, and Iris was in the air, flipping. She had to admit, there was something a little thrilling about the sheer terror her feats inspired in spectators who mistakenly believed she followed the same rules of life and death as they did. There was a collective sigh of relief as her toes expertly touched down upon the rope behind her partner. Their aerial routines were her favorite. Kissing the air, touching the face of the heavens even just for one moment gave her the feeling of freedom she longed for. Freedom was hard to come by for someone in hiding.

  Where better to hide a freak than in a circus?

  “Oi.” Behind her, Iris could hear Jinn hissing amid the chatter below. “You’re doing too many rotations in the air. I’ve told you before: if you overdo it, you won’t be able to spot your landing. Or maybe you really do want to fall and crack that thick skull of yours?”

  Iris narrowed her eyes, but it was a stretched-out, forced grin he saw when she swiveled around to face him. It never ceased to amaze her how someone who seemed so quietly feral could in reality have such a nagging disposition. A cantankerous old geezer trapped in a handsome, youthful body. And he’d been as much ever since they began working together.

  “My rotations were fine. I found the rope, didn’t I?” Iris insisted through a gritted smile.

  Jinn smirked. “Luckily for you.”

  “Luck has nothing to do with it. Not when you’re as good as I am.” Lifting her arms above her head she twirled on one foot, adjusting for the sudden force of the wind. Beautiful and elegant like a ballerina on a stage not nearly so high. “You should be aware by now, Jinn, but I’m in perfect control of my body.”

  But her breath hitched in her throat and her heart gave a flutter as Jinn’s hands suddenly clasped her waist, catching her off guard. The little smirk on his face told her he’d noticed her tremble. Drat.

  “Perfect control.” He stifled a laugh before lifting her high in the air, much to the audience’s delight.

  “Ladies and gentlemen—doesn’t this sight thrill you? Doesn’t it make you just quiver in the utmost ecstasy of excitement?”

  Coolie was always a bit of a ham when advertising. Iris couldn’t see him among the crowd below as her gaze was focused on Jinn’s for the sake of her concentration, but she recognized the circus proprietor’s voice well enough after hearing it for the past ten years.

  “If you want to see more, you’re in luck. George Coolie’s company is putting on a show beginning tonight at Astley’s Amphitheatre. Jugglers and clowns, acrobats and animals—there’ll be no shortage of the wonders you’ll witness!”

  On cue, Jinn tossed her up as they’d practiced.

  “Ah,” she sighed. She could feel him. Jinn. There, in the sky, she could feel his warmth, his kindness, his presence. His essence. More strongly than a regular human should. This wasn’t about some crush. This was that otherworldlines
s Coolie often spoke of when referring to her abilities. Her instincts. Her uncanny senses. Though she couldn’t see him, she could feel Coolie too if she concentrated hard enough. How and why was the endless mystery that defined her life.

  Jinn caught her again, keeping his hands strong and steady around her waist. She trusted him. Trusted him with her life. And though she wasn’t particularly concerned about preserving it, she relished it nonetheless. Theirs was a bond not so easily broken, an assurance borne from two years of camaraderie.

  No matter how far she flew, his hands would find her every time.

  And so she closed her eyes, letting him throw her up into the air again.

  Iris breathed in the air. Spotting of a pair of butterflies, she watched them happily, their large wings, bright orange and pink, glinting in the light of the sun. A peace always washed over her when she was high in the sky. Up there with the birds, she could feel her blood pumping through her veins, sense the gentleness of the nature around her. She could hear her own heart beating and wondered to herself, in that silent moment, how long it had actually been beating for.

  The day she arrived at Coolie’s doorstep was the first day of her life that she remembered. Everything that may have happened in the weeks and months and years before was under lock and key somewhere deep in her mind. An unsettling condition, one temporarily eased only when she was flying free in the sky.

  When she first began working for Coolie’s company, most of the other workers at the circus had believed her to be around seventeen or eighteen years old. And slowly as the decade passed, many of them began to wonder why her youthful face had not aged a day. She’d wondered the same thing. She still wondered, though she tried not to.