Engraved: Book Five of The St. Croix Chronicles Read Online Free PDF

welcome—or that they would not turn on me in their anger, and such a thing would be understandable. I took a risk.
    When Maddie Ruth had come to me during my convalescence, she spoke of darker deeds than what even I had come to know from the Menagerie. Sweets came back injured, some did not return at all. This was a shoddy way to treat a commodity, and that was the first inkling I’d entertained as to Hawke’s safety. I thought Hawke might truly be in trouble, for he had never been one to ill-use his wares.
    Devil or serpent, tiger or ringmaster, Hawke was in all things a man of business, and without flesh to sell, there would be no coin to accrue.
    Hawke understood the precepts of running such a scheme.
    Marceaux, on the other hand, tended to fritter away commodities, for there were always those willing and able to take the place of a nicked child or a maimed performer.
    I did not know how the old man had come to the Menagerie, or what brought him to settle, but I suspected the Veil paid him handsomely to do what he did best.
    Circus arts could be taught, and those who took to it well were rewarded. Those that did not were sacrificed in the rings—a calculated fall, a knife gone awry.
    A tumble without a net.
    Fear gave the rings a bite that in turn infected the audience.
    Blood sport was an amusement old as time, far back as decadent Rome, and Marceaux had always had a finger on the pulse of an audience’s dark delights.
    The paths split, and though I wanted to step foot into the rough lawn and beyond the hedges, the gown I wore would only get in my way. I hurried, eyes sharp for those who might question my efforts. The sweets’ quarters were restricted to Menagerie staff only. The girls needed somewhere to sleep; I had slept there many a time myself.
    Yet it was not peace and footmen I saw as I approached the brightly lit refuge but a bevy of creatively clad figures milling about in front. The air was cool enough for me to wince in sympathy for the girls forced to wear such revealing attire, but a large fire had been stoked within a gilt cage, and this sent orange and yellow fingers across the whole.
    Men lingered here, and some women gowned for an evening out. I hesitated at the bend of the path, studying this unusual tableau with more than a little surprise.
    How much had changed in a season?
    Enough that the sweets’ quarters were no longer off limits to patrons. Brats younger than the usual fare wore scandalously thin attire and served libation to the lounging guests who ogled them openly.
    Frankly, too much had been allowed to change.
    I patted my hair, made sure the wig remained in place, and summoned all the bravado I would need to forge my way in this new and decidedly revolting manner of life.
    Hawke had never allowed children into the sweets’ purview. The only ones I had seen were them what took care of the grounds; honest labor for a dishonest employer.
    My stomach twisted as I approached the scene, passing a young girl who couldn’t possibly be more than twelve years of age. Another looked fourteen, a little rounder in the cheek and the bosom, whose delicate layers of clothing would have been sheer were it not for the ruffles strategically placed.
    I searched the faces as I smiled in reply to various trills of welcome and comfort.
    Seven sweets of appropriate age. Eleven that were not.
    I recognized none of them.
    A small hand slipped into mine, and I looked down to find a young child in something approaching Roman attire smiling up at me with coquettish delight.
    I took in large eyes framed by kohl expertly applied, a berry-stained mouth, and a knowing in the shape of it that broke my heart.
    A boy. One of several, to boot. Though Maddie Ruth had warned me, the reality of it was so much worse. What in the name of all that was reasonable had happened to this garden?
    “Wine, mistress?” asked the boy, with the faintest leavings of a rural assignment in his dialect. “Grapes, peeled as you watch?