King Of Fools. Amanda Foody

exasperation. “They’ll stain. A bit of dirt, a bit of blood—”

      “Well, then,” Enne replied, her voice weary with fatigue and nerves. “Don’t get blood on them.”

      * * *

      Fifteen minutes later, as they wove through the Deadman District’s maze of alleys, Enne slipped on the black silk mask that she hadn’t worn since the Shadow Game. She and Lola walked the path side by side, dressed all in black except for the whites of their gloves and the bits of blue ruffle peeking out from Enne’s jacket. As they approached the end of the street, Enne suddenly wished she’d listened to Lola’s advice and changed her shirt.

      After the attack, the Orphan Guild had relocated into what had once been called the National Prison. It was the tallest building for a mile in either direction, with a watchtower that overlooked the entire North Side. The metal gate stood open, one door broken off its hinges and leaning against the adjacent wall, the other in pieces on the ground, rusting away to nothing. The pathway inside was littered with loose barbed wire, cigarette butts, and wrappers of Tiggy’s Saltwater Taffy.

      Unlike Scrap Market or Olde Town, which crawled with Scarhands and Irons, the National Prison looked vacant, a ruin from a ruined time. If they were to encounter anyone here, it would probably be the ghost of a prisoner executed within these walls, or a revolutionary who’d given their life to see the building blown apart.

      Enne and Lola walked inside. There was no noise, no sign of life, except for the scurrying of a rat.

      “Are you sure they’re here?” Enne whispered.

      “They were this morning,” Lola answered. A crow cawed from outside. Lola jolted so much her top hat fell off, and she had to pick it up and dust it off. Even though Enne knew much of Lola’s tough exterior to be a farce, it was still strange to see her so openly on edge. “Let’s turn through here.”

      A hallway spanned a hundred feet in either direction, lined with cells—most of them empty. The few occupants slept on cots or hung cheap artwork and torn pages of The Kiss & Tell in their new living quarters.

      Enne had already decided she would pick a girl—she had enough male gangsters in her life. But the girls she passed were unbathed and ungroomed, slouching, stinking, with a ferocious look in their eyes. Enne had been naïve to think Lola had ever seemed frightening. She merely collected knives. These girls were knives.

      Everyone looked up as they passed. Some whispered. Enne heard Séance’s name murmured behind her.

      She’d seen her own wanted posters across the city, but here, she felt the effects of her reputation. And, seeing the skepticism on their faces, she already knew she wasn’t living up to it.

      Lola held out her arm for Enne to stop walking. She nodded toward their right.

      A young man sat in a cell, just like the rest of them.

      But he was not like the rest of them.

      His clothing—a white undershirt and black trousers—hung on him, an extra notch cut several inches into his belt to hold the ensemble together. His bones jutted out at unusual angles, all broad shoulders and crooked elbows and protruding hips. The way he stood, with one arm bracing him as he leaned against the wall, his head down, his other arm limp at his side, accentuated the harsh curve of his vertebrae and protrusion of his adam’s apple.

      He looked starved enough to slip through the cell’s iron bars—ghostly enough to haunt the prison, not to own it.

      He made no gesture to show he’d noticed them, and Lola called no greeting.

      Beside him, a show played from a radio. “No,” a female actor murmured. “No, I couldn’t. What would my family think? It wouldn’t be right.”

      “George knew this was the last time he’d ever see her again,” the narrator voiced. “And he knew nothing he could say would change her mind. She was meant for that six o’clock train to somewhere, just as he was meant for his father’s twelve acres of nowhere.”

      “‘Dorothy,’ George said, in spite of it all, ‘Don’t leave like that. Without even saying goodbye.’”

      The narrator returned. “The look Dorothy gave him was not what he expected. It was full of reluctance. The sun was rising, the train was whistling, and Dorothy had one hand on her ticket and the other fiddling with her parents’ ring on the chain around her neck. Just as the train’s whistle sounded across the tracks, he pulled her in for a kiss to make her forget all those dreams of New Reynes, to make her forget about saying goodbye.”

      The Guildmaster reached over and turned the radio’s volume down. “The world isn’t like that anymore,” he mourned.

      Lola rolled her eyes. “It never was.”

      He looked up for the first time, giving Enne a view of his features. His eyes were black; his smile was taut. His lips were full and swollen red, matching the marks trailing across his neck and collarbone.

      “No,” he said. “Dorothy stays with him, in the story. And they marry and have a child and die—tragically—of the fever. And their only child takes that six o’clock train to New Reynes, where he either becomes a victim...or he crawls to me.”

      Enne flinched at the statement. The hall was silent, everyone clearly eavesdropping on their conversation, and the Guildmaster had described the workers here as little more than strays. She supposed that must truly be how he felt, for how else could he suffer a brutal attack from the whiteboots, see several of his associates murdered, and still be open for business in a new location the next day?

      Looking at the Guildmaster, panic rose like bile in her throat. She’d come in the wrong clothes. She’d come without a plan. She was silly and naïve for thinking she was anything other than silly and naïve.

      “I was hoping you’d come,” Bryce Balfour said to Enne. “I didn’t realize until this morning that you knew our little Lola, here.”

      Anyone who described Lola as “little” or in the possessive, Enne suspected, was eager to lose several teeth. But Lola made no sign she’d heard. Although she was over eight inches taller than Enne, she seemed smaller than she ever had, her gaze fixed on the cement floor.

      “She’s my second,” Enne explained. Even to herself, she sounded timid and quiet.

      Bryce gave her a tight-lipped smile. “Abandoning me, blood gazer? We’ve been through so much together.”

      Lola took the smallest, almost imperceptible step back. “It was time for a change.”

      “You hate change.”

      Lola didn’t reply.

      Enne didn’t like the way Lola had gone silent, or the implication that Bryce knew her second better than she did. She cleared her throat. “Is there somewhere private we could speak?” The air here was thick with tension and stares.

      “Of course.”

      Bryce unplugged his radio and led them through the hallway, to the warden’s office.

      A girl sat in the desk chair. She was beautiful, someone who belonged on the front page of the Guillory Street Gossip, sporting the latest designs of Regalliere or taking tea at the South Side’s trendiest salons. Instead, she was in a ruined prison, wearing a dozen strands of fake gems the color of blood and drinking murky coffee out of a tin beggar’s cup. Her hair was golden blond and hung down to her hips. Her eyes were wide-set and her face soft, like a model from an oil painting. At first, she looked like someone lost, but the keenness in her expression as she watched them enter told Enne otherwise. She was exactly where she belonged.

      When Bryce arrived, she got up and kissed him so passionately that Enne flushed a shade as deep as the girl’s necklaces. The display—groping hands and labored breaths—looked more unappealing than erotic, clearly meant to make Enne and Lola uncomfortable rather than show intimacy. Now Enne knew where the numerous marks across Bryce’s