Free Wicked as She Wants by Delilah S. Dawson Page B

musician. Keen is my servant. Everybody got that?”
    “I don’t like it,” I said.
    “Neither do I,” Keen said, hard on my heels.
    Casper didn’t even turn around. “Tough.”
    We had reached the gate by then, a huge and rusty affair with a lamp-lit guard box to the side.
    “Papers!” the guard shouted, his voice magnified by a speaker. I couldn’t even see his face, just a tall brown hat and goggles. He might as well have been a brass clockwork, for all I could see. Which was probably the point.
    Casper put a packet of brown papers into a metal box, which withdrew into the guard post with a ringing clank.“Casper Sterling. Lorelei Keen. Anne Carol. Will you be returning to London?”
    “Lorelei and I will. My niece is traveling to be a governess in Muscovy.”
    The box shot back out, and Casper took our papers.
    “May Saint Ermenegilda have mercy on your soul, Miss Carol,” the guard said.
    Before I could ask what on earth he meant by that, Casper had me by the arm and propelled me and the trunk toward a large gray vehicle that shuddered, chugging in place against a dark and cloudy sky. We stepped up stairs mere inches away from the heavy treads, and Casper handed the driver our tickets.
    “About time,” the thick man muttered around a pipe before clomping outside to stow our trunk.
    I ducked through the narrow door. The inside of the bus-tank didn’t smell any better than the fuggy cloud around the begoggled driver. It was less than half full, and most of the other passengers looked to be of the low-class, seedy sort I’d only read about in newspapers. Traveling salesmen wore extra-tall top hats buttoned tightly under the chin, with enormous unfolding suitcases beside them on their seats. Young men who had likely sold their souls to the navy or something more piratical quivered fearfully in place, en route to sinking ships and sea monsters. One other woman, who looked more masculine than the driver, held a corncob pipe clenched in yellow-streaked teeth, squatting across two seats like a citadel over a river.
    Casper led us to the back, pointing me toward the very last seat. He shoved our bags into the bins overhead. As Keen settled in front of me, Casper slid onto the bench, his leg pressing warm against mine.
    “I brought you something to read.”
    He shoved a rolled-up tube of greasy newspapers into my hand. I felt something hard in the middle and sighed in relief. A corked vial of blood, wrapped with yet more newspaper and tied with twine. I untied it and held a section of newspaper in front of my face to hide the vial as I gulped, and Casper leaned over to block the view from the aisle. His face was so uncomfortably close that my eyes sought the newspaper, and that’s when I noticed that it was the London Observer, and I was staring at a section labeled “News of Sang,” including updates on “Victory in Freesia.”
    “Victory in Freesia? That does sound like a good read, uncle,” I said.
    He chuckled darkly and handed me a red handkerchief, which I stared at in confusion.
    “I think you’ll be disappointed, niece. Don’t forget who writes the papers in London.”
    I expected him to leave me then, but he didn’t budge from my side. As I scanned the story and finally understood the depth of my country’s trouble, I put my head to his shoulder and wept.

9
    When I pulled my face away from Casper’s shoulder, the handkerchief between us was sticky with blud tears. Much to my surprise, his arm was around me, and even more to my surprise, I didn’t care. The fall of my family may have seemed like a victory to the Pinkies of London, but for my people and my country, it was a tragedy.
    Casper had told me the truth. Freesia was collapsing. My parents were recently executed, my sister and I had been missing for years, and my younger brother, Alex, was in thrall to Ravenna.
    According to reports from Muscovy, the upstart gypsy witch had deposed or murdered several landed barons and hand-picked