Free Engraved: Book Five of The St. Croix Chronicles by Karina Cooper

with beating them until docile, as was often the practice.
    Whatever powers of persuasion this man possessed, it allowed him to escape the rings unscathed night after night.
    Not a small endeavor. Only the knife-thrower’s apprentice could be lauded for the same courage.
    And now this dangerous man sat upon my sofa—borrowed though it may be—extending a metaphorical hand to me.
    What would he do if I bit him?
    “I’ve a question,” I said, watching him for any sign of emotion or missed control. He seemed wholly at ease, which bothered me—bothered my pride, no less. Despite my many and varied accomplishments in a collector’s role, he did not fear me in the slightest. He should have. I intended to ensure he one day did.
    He inclined his head. “I may answer.”
    I softened no edges. “When did the Menagerie start peddling children?”
    There
. A twitch, a flicker of an eyelid and a subtle tightening about his mouth. “After your departure.”
    The answer was obvious, but it did not require prying; it was no white flag of surrender, but the cautious regard of a truce that he offered me. He did not lie or deflect, and allowed me a glimpse of his distaste for the subject matter.
    As a proper whip, he’d like as not be unaware of further details, anyhow. He had never acquired new flesh for the sweets, to my knowledge.
    Now was not the time to seek revenge. As much as I disliked Osoba, as dearly as I wanted to make him suffer for what he’d done to Black Lily during that aborted uprising against his Veil masters, he might very well be the only one who could facilitate a meeting between myself and Hawke.
    Without dealing with the Veil’s new ringmaster, anyhow. I was unprepared for such a face-to-face meeting. I wasn’t certain that I’d ever be ready for such a reunion.
    I lifted my chin. “Tell me of Marceaux.”
    Osoba’s nostrils flared, like one of the large felines he was reputed to tame. “No.”
    “Why?”
    “Because we are not, nor will we ever be friends.”
    “Poor excuse,” I replied flatly.
    “Find your sources elsewhere,” Osoba returned without batting a thick black eyelash. Exotic in his ringside costumes, he was something only barely civilized in everyday garments. No amount of cloth would strip him of that nature that simmered just under the surface.
    “How will you bring me to Hawke?” I asked.
    “By the most direct method,” he replied.
    “Why should I trust you?”
    “You should not,” he returned easily, leaning back in the sofa. The brocade indented beneath his lean shoulders. He watched me as closely as I watched him; two opponents in a pugilists’ ring. “Shall I tell you a story?”
    I crossed my arms, bracing my elbows upon the back of Ashmore’s chair. This position would provide little enough protection should Osoba wish to come at me, but all I needed was a little warning. I was not the helpless lamb he thought to treat me. I raised my chin. “Is that how you tame your lions? By story?”
    Only one corner of his mouth curled up, and a black eyebrow lifted in tandem. “Perhaps.”
    Curiosity had always been something of a weakness. I sighed, just so that he might know how much of a trial he was to me. “Tell me.”
    He spoke with a powerful current in his deep voice, a quality reminiscent of a gifted storyteller. “Hawke was seventeen years of age when he first stepped foot in Limehouse.”
    Two years older than I at my first visit, and while I did not know Hawke’s age to the year, I knew him older than me by several. “Was he a free man then?”
    “There are none free,” Osoba replied, and left it at that. It told me nothing but that the storyteller had a gift for the philosophic. “Much of the East End was overrun. The gangs you know now were not the same then, and blood flowed in the streets as easily as the fog that chokes the life from this miserable city.” A venomous edge.
    I watched his eyes carefully, studied his hands when he leaned forward and