I should leave. I always leave at this point. It’s too dangerous to stay. But today will be different. Today I am going to rescue her.
I look up the stairs.
Do not go looking for her, Tomasis said.
I should obey him, but I can’t.
As if mesmerized, I’m drawn up the stairs, creeping quietly, hand on the banister. The gaudy peeling wallpaper shows exotic scenes of the Qing lands.
The top of the landing is lined with doors half-open in invitation. But only one room calls to me: the last one on the left. I walk to it with purpose and push against the door, and my breath catches in my chest.
She’s lying on the bed, her body curled into a ball as if to protect itself. The room is seedy: an open cupboard with a few fading costumes, a small dressing table with a cracked mirror, a clutter of colored bottles of watered-down perfume, cheap powders and rouge, a brittle calling card from a customer, two syringes lying used and empty.
My heart contracts as I look at her. Her makeup is smeared across her face. Her hair has been curled into unnatural ringlets. In the last few months, she’s grown thin and hollow-cheeked. The dress she’s wearing is torn in several places, with uneven stitches along the hem. She who once sewed so quick and neat can make only uneven stitches now, her hand unsteady from the drugs, or from a beating. The syringe has tattooed her arm with black pinpricks, each one flowering into a yellow-blue bruise. Her skin is bumpy with gooseflesh, but she was too tired to pull the threadbare sheet over herself.
I reach out and gently trace the mark of her Guild. The Tiger doesn’t tattoo his children with ink. He has other ways of marking them. Her mark runs across her eye like a stripe from her cheek to forehead, a scar of raised flesh against smooth skin.
At my touch her lashes flutter groggily, her gaze heavy and unfocused with the poppy they’ve shot into her veins. Her eyelids close again. I know that she does not recognize me. Perhaps she thinks I’m a dream, a memory of another time when she was another girl. While in other beds throughout this building, and in hundreds of houses around the city, her sisters dream uneasily as well.
It wasn’t always this way. When Lady Kamelia led the Guild of Sisters, there were five thousand women of the night. But hers was a reign of seduction and luxury, and all of her daughters flourished under the protection of the Law. Since the Tiger wrested control of the Guild, it is said that twenty thousand Sisters sleep under his thrall.
“Zelle, Zelle!” I hiss softly in her ear, but she doesn’t stir. I shake her, and when that fails I grab a jug at her bedside and spill icy water over her face.
She splutters awake, gasping. One eye is dark brown, the other filmy and blinded by the cat-o’-nine-tails that cut into her, marking her as a child of the Guild of Flesh.
She tries to sit up but is too weak, so I try help her. Trembling, she edges away from me, her hands raised to protect herself—she’s afraid I’m here to give her a beating.
“Zelle, it’s me. It’s Nina….”
Between her fingers her good eye finally focuses on my face and she gives a sharp intake of breath.
“No, no, no…”
She’s shaking violently now, wet and cold, as I try to drag her to her feet.
“Zelle, please, we have to go before they wake. Come quickly.”
“No!” She twists out of my grasp and tears herself away from me, backing into the wall. “I won’t go, I won’t, I won’t. They broke his hands. They broke him….” She stops, and something in her gaze hardens.
“Zelle,” I say calmly. I approach her slowly, like a person trying to tame a frightened beast.
I hear the creak of a door opening downstairs, and a raised voice berating someone. I curse under my breath. The Fleshers have arrived, and they must have realized that something is wrong. Voices grow louder. I don’t have much time.
“Zelle, it’s me, Nina,” I say.
“Nina? Nina, no…not Nina. Not Nina…” Her words are slurred, her voice ragged. “You must leave, before they come….They broke him. They broke—”
“Shhh,” I say, even as footsteps pound up the stairs. It’s only moments now until they begin to check on the girls, until they find me here with her.
Azelma’s eyes focus on my face, and for the first time since I have stood here before her, I think she truly sees me.
Boots thunder down the hallway. Doors slam. Voices call out that the girls are asleep. Azelma’s eyes dart to her window, terror raw on her face.
“You must go,” she says urgently.
“Not without you.” I reach for her. “Come with me.” She looks at my hand, and she takes it. We dash to the window, which I throw open, and I clamber onto the ledge, then turn to her.
I see it then, the clarity amid her confusion, the resolve beneath her fear. My sister stares into my eyes; she is so close I feel her breath against my cheek.
“Run,” she says, and she pushes me as behind her the door flies open. I watch my sister’s face as I fall in slow motion, and then abruptly she is gone and a man is leaning out, yelling and pointing.
I hit the ground with a shuddering impact. Pain laces my side. The wind has been knocked out of me, and I gasp for breath, willing my limbs to move, finding that they obey far more slowly than I can afford. I barely manage to rise to my feet as several men burst out of the building. They’re giants, like all of the Tiger’s sons, chosen for their brawn, their complete absence of morals, and their unspeakable propensity for inflicting pain. They circle me like sharks. They ask no questions; they don’t want to know who I am or why I am there. My being there is enough for them.
The sun is setting fast. I have time to call out only once, so I whistle loud and sharp, the call of the Thieves, knowing that even if anyone hears, it will probably be too late.
A voice rings out, and the words are so ridiculous that even in the depths of my fear, I almost laugh.
“Six grown men against a child seems incredibly cowardly to me.” The voice is amused, young. Its owner clearly has no idea that he is addressing some of the most dangerous men in the whole city.
“If we could return home without getting into any trouble for once, I would be most grateful,” says another, wearier voice.
“They’ve got a child there, St. Juste. Take a look.”
“Dear heavens, you’re right.” Which is followed by a barked order. “Unhand that child immediately or you will have cause to regret it!”
The voice—St. Juste’s, it seems—is well modulated, educated; the voice of someone who is used to being listened to.