The Bones of Ruin Read online

  “Perhaps Jinn can help you, then.” A devilish twinkle appeared in Granny’s eyes as she delicately placed the headpiece over his knees. “Wouldn’t you like to? You’re partners, after all.”

  Jinn’s Adam’s apple bobbed quickly as he grabbed the headpiece and handed it back to Granny without a word, just as Iris jumped up and began to stutter clumsily.

  “A-as if I would allow him near the hair you worked so hard on! He would just ruin it!”

  But Granny only laughed. “You two, always fighting.” She plucked the clothes from Jinn’s hands. “You shouldn’t take each other for granted.”

  Silence pervaded the tent but for Egg’s infrequent squawks.

  “She’s leaving, Agnus,” Jinn said, his voice strained but even. “Leaving the company.”

  Iris’s body stiffened as Granny Marlow sat up in surprise. “Leaving?”

  “Leaving.” Jinn plucked a blade of grass out of the ground and threw it away absently.

  “I don’t understand…” The confusion on her old face broke Iris’s heart to pieces. “Did someone offer you a better job?”

  “Don’t be surprised if that’s true, Agnus,” Jinn answered bitterly. “Money trumps loyalty for some.” He smirked. “And here I thought she liked at least you.”

  The bite in Jinn’s voice cut deep. Her blood boiled while her heart sank. Jinn’s words stabbed her in too many places at once.

  “Iris?” Granny rested her hands on her lap and looked up at the trembling girl.

  “It’s so noisy outside.” Iris stepped back. “I should go see if anyone needs me.”

  “But, darling—”

  After one last hateful look at Jinn, she ran off.

  There was just no other way out that she could see

  4

  FIVE YEARS AGO, ONE MIDSUMMER’S evening, Coolie had given Iris and a few other employees the opportunity to see a show at Astley’s Amphitheatre. “Surveying the competition,” Coolie called it. Stealing ideas, more accurately.

  But Iris never forgot the thrill. The smell of horses emanating from the circular stage, the feisty strings from the musicians in the pit. Granny Marlow’s laughter chiming with her own as the Coolie performers sat in a crowded box. The two women let Coolie drown in his jealousy while they enjoyed a night of fellowship bolstered by grand sights arousing the imagination.

  After that night, Iris had promised herself that she would come back to the royal amphitheater one day, not as an audience member but as a performer. Today Granny would be able to watch her on that stage. Iris was finally here.

  Here for her first and last Astley’s show.

  The setup was quite unique. The middle of the octagonal interior was a circus arena, with a high, pea-green painted barrier separating it from the audience. The musicians’ pit was tucked between the circus ring and the theater stage at the front of the house. Right now the red curtains were drawn. The chandelier dangled from the vaulted ceiling, washing light over the old decorations, the drawings and hangings all in shades of red, lemon, and gold. Pillars held up the rows of boxes, now empty, but by tonight the galleries would be filled with spectators.

  With only a few hours left until the show, Iris and Jinn, both dressed in old leotards, practiced their routine with a woolen string spread across the stage to mark their movements since their usual rope had not yet been hung over the circus ring.

  First, their regular rope-dancing choreography. Then came the routine Coolie named “The Bolero of Blades,” in which the Nubian Princess and the Turkish Prince fought for control over Egypt. The story was a doomed one; it was to end like the tale of Mark Antony and Cleopatra: star-crossed lovers of competing kingdoms whose love devolved into blood and tragedy.

  Though knife wielding was Jinn’s expertise, both of them were talented with blades. Jinn packed more power behind his movements. He was fast and brutal. Iris was nimble and delicate. She approached battle as she would any other dance. Their blades—shamshir, Jinn had called them—clashed loudly as the two performers flipped and cartwheeled perfectly, their feet light as feathers on their marks.

  They practiced for almost an hour, each silent as the grave. Despite Jinn’s and Iris’s professional demeanors, the tension between them was palpable.

  Afterward, Jinn decided to leave first. “I’m going for a walk before the show.” The first words he’d spoken to her since Granny’s tent. “If Coolie asks, tell him I’ll be back in an hour.”

  The blade’s hilt hot in her grip, Iris watched his retreating figure until he’d almost reached backstage. Then, steeling her nerves and sucking in a breath, she dropped her knives, ran up to him, and gripped his bicep with both her little hands. “Buy me a present!”

  That certainly got his attention. Jinn turned around, incredulous. “What?”

  “It’s my last show.” She looked up at him, batting her eyelashes. “I want a present.”

  Jinn shook his head. “You’re unbelievable.”

  “One of a kind.” Placing her hands behind her back, she leaned in. “A hat, perhaps?”

  She smiled. No matter what had happened between them, she didn’t want to leave on bad terms.

  Gazing up at him, Iris could count every thick lash blanketing his eyes. Not that she wanted to. But as they signaled his indecision with a quick flutter, hope suddenly bloomed within her. She half expected him to respond with something like, “How about a straitjacket?” She desperately wanted him to. It was better than the painful nothing he gave her instead.

  He left the stage without a single word to her.

  With slumped shoulders, she spent the following excruciating minutes not knowing what to do with herself beyond sitting on the stage and watching the other acts practice. Her thin legs dangled over the edge. Natalya the Russian Fire Eater was phenomenal as usual in her lacy green tutu. As Iris applauded, the woman asked her where Jinn was.

  “He and I were going to be partners, you know,” she said, her mouth still smoking. “Jinn showed off his skill for Coolie and me on his first day. He was phenomenal. A real natural.” Natalya swung her extinguished fire rods. “But in the end, he didn’t much like it and rejected the job. Said that while he was good at it, he actually wasn’t much of a fan of fire and put in for a different act. Anyway, I think he’s far happier being your dance partner. Everyone says so.”

  Iris’s blush suddenly gave way to numb hands. Everyone says so. Jinn…

  Natalya’s words echoed even after Iris was ushered away by the juggling duo and the pantomimes who needed to rehearse. Backstage was even more chaotic, with everyone busy getting ready for that night’s performance.

  “Who brought the bloody goose here?!” Iris heard the riding master yell as Egg disappeared around a corner with a princely squawk.

  Meanwhile, even in these narrow halls, the other performers had time to ask her the same questions every time she passed:

  “Iris, are you really leaving the company?”

  “Oi, someone said you broke your neck this morning. That true? Bloody brilliant!”

  “How’re ya still walking around, then? You in one of those cults? You a Mason?”

  “You’re Iris. The Iris, aren’t you?”

  The last question she hadn’t been expecting. Everyone knew her here.

  A young man had asked it just after she’d left the gallery. He stood in front of the main entrance, his face blocked from view as he held up one of Coolie’s posters for their show, on which she and Jinn were drawn with cartoonish exaggeration as two little figures flipping on the rope. She could see only the man’s expensive black loafers and perfectly tailored brown jacket and pants. But his very presence made her stomach flop and her skin tingle with electricity. She took a step back.

  “I saw you this morning. When I told my younger sister about your show at Astley’s, she begged me to get your signature for her.” He dipped his right hand into his jacket pocket, folding the poster with one hand.

  It was him. Messy black hair and deep
sapphire eyes. The young man who’d made her slip and die at this morning’s performance, whose very presence had turned her already precarious life upside down. She suddenly felt as if she’d been punched in the gut.

  “You…” An acute shock of pain ran from her elbows down to her back at the sight of him. Her heart began hammering in her chest as he drew out his pen and gazed at her.

  His essence was familiar to her, the first one she’d felt since meeting Granny so long ago. It filled her now that her attention was wholly attuned to him. The resultant quivering of her body sent her two entirely different messages:

  Go to him. He’ll never betray you.

  And the other…

  He smiled. “My name is Adam Temple.”

  Run.

  Iris backed away and turned so fast she nearly tripped over herself. She gripped her head, trying to catch her quick breath.

  “The exhibit,” she whispered before she could catch herself.

  “Excuse me?”

  She heard his voice behind her. But she was already scurrying up the wooden flight of stairs to the second floor of the lobby. She had no time to plan her escape. The ladies’ retiring room to the left would do, except that this Adam followed after her, calling her name with worry. Her feet stumbled to a stop just as he cut her off, blocking the entrance.

  “Miss. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.”

  He sounded sincere. So sincere, she looked at him once more, at his sharp jaw and high nose bridge. At his otherwise delicate, almost feminine features. Then all of it blurred, and her head once again began to ache.

  Ache with a memory.

  An exhibit at South Kensington. And a child gazing up at her, holding a white dress for her to wear. Gazing in arrogance, in awe.

  Madame, tell me… are you… a goddess?

  A child with messy black hair and bright blue eyes.

  “It was you.”

  “Excuse m—”

  Iris tackled the young man through the door only for the lavatory to explode with the scandalized screams of half-dressed trapeze artists. She didn’t care, not even when boots began flying at their heads. Iris kept her hands firmly around Adam Temple’s neck, and as he struggled to breathe, all she could think about was that new memory, barely a shadow, and this man, pretending he didn’t know what he was doing to her.

  “Stop, you’re hurting him!” one woman yelled, snapping Iris back to reality. She let him go immediately, shooting to her feet as Adam rubbed his neck and began coughing. As the trapeze artists gasped in fear, he put up his hand to signal he was okay. Iris felt sweat dampen her forehead.

  “No autographs…,” she said absently.

  “You could have just told me.” Adam laughed a little as he stood, dusting off his pants.

  How could he laugh?

  Iris pushed him out the door before he could gain his bearing and slammed it closed between them.

  “What’s wrong with her?” whispered one woman as she crouched in the corner.

  “I heard she and Jinn had another fight,” whispered another. “Just let her be.”

  They went back to dressing and doing their makeup as Iris pulled her knees up on the floor, her hand covering her mouth. She hadn’t the time nor the presence of mind to parse out what had just happened before she heard Adam’s voice again through the door.

  “Miss Iris—”

  “Enough,” she yelled, burying her head in her knees. She could still remember the feeling of a body—her body—recomposing, muscles, flesh, and bone. And another memory: wandering through that chaotic South Kensington fair, the white dress she’d been given fluttering as people rushed past her. Other than that, her thoughts of the day were disjointed, unreliable. Painful. “I want nothing from you.”

  “What about secrets?”

  Iris’s back straightened, the air slowly and deliberately filling her lungs as she lifted her head and stared at the door separating them.

  “What about knowledge?”

  Adam’s voice was even. Firm. Confident.

  “What about truth?”

  Iris opened the door and shut it behind her quickly, pushing him farther into the hall. The two stared at each other in silence, though only he smiled cordially.

  “You don’t have a sister, do you?” Iris’s fingers flexed and relaxed, ready.

  “I did. She’s gone now. Died long ago.” Genuine sadness crept into his features. He shut his eyes, and when he opened them again, only a hint of his melancholy lingered.

  “That boy was you,” she whispered, her throat dry. “In South Kensington…”

  “Just as I guessed. You don’t remember anything, do you? You’re really…”

  His simple words struck her nerves.

  “Iris.” Adam caressed her name. His deep, elegant voice made it sound beautiful. It calmed the fear instinct in her enough to get her thoughts in order. “Aren’t you tired of hiding?”

  He knew her, somehow. It was why he was at the performance this morning.

  “Tell me.” She stepped forward before she could stop herself. “Tell me what you know.”

  “I wonder if I should. It may not end very well for me.” His rubbed his neck and winced. “How about this? How about you come to me when you’re ready?”

  He pulled a card out of his pocket and handed it to her.

  LORD ADAM TEMPLE

  19 MELBURY ROAD, THE CITY OF LONDON

  “Of course, I’ll never force you. Everything is entirely your choice.” He straightened his jacket. “But when you’re ready to speak of secret things, Iris, come and find me.”

  With a cordial bow, he left her

  A MEETING AT CLUB URIEL

  52 Pall Mall Street

  947 days since the Spring Day Massacre

  T HE WIDE, ROUND TABLE IN this room of shadows was not fit for any knight. Six members of a secret brotherhood sat in their seats instead, each suspicious pair of eyes sliding from person to person, ready to react to the slightest hint of mischief.

  Mischief, as it were, was Adam’s forte. Which perhaps was why he was the last to arrive.

  The sound of the door shutting behind him, courtesy of Madame Bellerose’s butler Pierre, reverberated across the high ceiling. The flickering lights from the seven candles melted silently into their candlesticks, casting shadows across the seven banners draping the golden-brown walls.

  One candle and one banner for each member.

  And one candle in the center, impossible to miss; it stood as a white pillar in its bronze candlestick, towering over a man’s rusted skull carefully plated. A former member, or so Adam heard. The long dagger in the skull’s mouth glinted as its bones screamed a silent oath.

  The silver chandelier sparkling above, along with the candle flames and the dying evening light seeping through the narrow openings in the velvet window curtains, helped Adam to better see his enemies.

  The Enlightenment Committee.

  It was a room no one but they could enter, on the sixth floor of Club Uriel, a building that, to the outside world, simply housed one of the many clubs that high-society gentlemen used as an escape from their domestic prisons. Only those of the most prestigious standing—politicians, explorers, businessmen—could obtain membership.

  Here, the seven members that formed the upper echelon of that club planned in secrecy.

  “Good of you to join us, lad,” said Gerolt Van der Ven of Belgium to Adam’s right, his thick, hard stomach tense as he laughed low like the rumble of an earthquake. Still in his navy-and-gold military suit despite the fact that the injuries he incurred during the Franco-Prussian War more than ten years ago had forced him out of service. The silver cane he used to walk. The silver saber he used to kill. Despite his jolly laughter, he looked as though he wanted to kill Adam now, his black eyes trained on him. “You’re late.” His thick black brows drew together.

  Adam watched the black hairs of the impatient man’s beard shift underneath an expulsion of breath. The boar upon Van
der Ven’s violet banner looked as if it may strike him as well. “You’ll have to forgive me. I was otherwise engaged,” Adam answered simply.

  “Oh?” Madame Bellerose, next to Van der Ven, leaned over, her golden-gloved finger perched underneath her bottom lip. Perhaps she chose gold today to match the color of her banner. “With what? Or perhaps I should ask with whom?”

  Originally, it was Madame Bellerose’s older brother who sat in her seat. But that seat became hers a decade ago after she revealed he was selling Enlightenment secrets to the Romanovs of Russia. It wasn’t usual to have a woman among them. In fact, Bellerose was the first. Once the Committee saw how much pleasure she took in executing her brother with a bullet to the brain, they decided to take her under their wing. Ruthlessness knew no gender.

  “You’re not the type to keep women company, or perhaps I have you mistaken?” Bellerose grinned. “Should I guess at who the lucky girl is?”

  Adam checked the grandfather clock next to the door behind him. Six o’clock. Iris’s performance would begin in two hours. Since finding out she’d been hiding in the circus, he’d been curious about what had led her to such a life. His suspicions were confirmed by their encounter today—she’d lost her memories. It wasn’t an act. He could tell by the terror in her brown eyes. Amnesia… perhaps a result of what she’d experienced in the past. Many war veterans went through similar experiences. Sometimes the mind had to protect itself from the truth.

  But that such a powerful, beautiful creation had no idea of what she was capable of only made him tingle with excitement. An elevated being traipsing about on a tightrope to thunderous applause. The very premise filled him with boyish glee. He’d been dying to watch a show of hers. Adam could only hope this meeting of monsters would be finished by then.

  “Enough.” A series of unsettling coughs erupted from the withered throat of Luís Cordiero, an old man whose gray hair draped his shoulders. His family founded the Commission of Africa, created to fund Portugal’s plundering of the continent. He could afford his medicine. “What matters is that he’s here now. Though not as punctual as his father used to be.”