Tangled Webs (5 page)

When Bones had taken Becky in when Arista was thirteen, Arista hadn’t expected the scared, beaten-down girl to last more than a few weeks in Bones’s household.

She would never forget the night Nic had told her that Bones planned to sell her and Becky to the brothels. Arista would have died first, but to her shock, Becky had come up with the idea that
had saved them both. What if she could turn Arista into a proper lady who could attend the parties where jewels and money were ripe for the picking? Bones’s greed had become their savior.
He’d agreed, and from that moment on, Arista’s life was full of reminders about good posture and refined speech. Some days, Nic would sit in on these lessons and twist his mouth to form
proper vowels. It became a game, much to Becky’s displeasure at having her lessons interrupted. His accent diminished somewhat, but he would always have that roughness that defined where they
came from.

One night, soon after they began their new charade, Nic noticed that Arista had avoided one particular gentleman, a portly slobbering fool too drunk to stand. Instead she went for the tall,
stately man who stood on the outskirts of the crowd.

Nic would have gone for the drunk, but Arista had noticed the way the man’s eyes darted around and he fidgeted with his hands. Signs that he was nervous about something. Sure enough, only
moments after Arista walked away, he had been caught stealing a watch from the Duke of Rochester. In the commotion, Arista had taken a very nice pair of diamond cufflinks from the man who appeared
focused, but was in fact high on opium.

Arista’s success at the balls had given Bones the inroad he’d needed to begin blackmailing the aristocracy. She had been his pawn for the last two years.

Becky took her duties very seriously. From the start, she had insisted that Arista look and act like a lady, as if they actually lived in some countryside manor house and Becky was in charge of
preparing Arista to enter high society. The fact that their
home
was a twelve-by-twelve room—made of rough boards, with a lock on both sides of the door and no windows—seemed to
escape the maid’s grasp.

Arista often wondered if the treatment Becky received from her last employer had somehow addled her sense of reality. Surely no one in their right mind would mistake how they lived as
acceptable, yet Becky went about her daily duties with nary a complaint about their living conditions—or about the fact that they were virtually prisoners.

If not for Becky’s amazing skills as a seamstress, Arista would have been forced to wear whatever clothing Nic outgrew, or could find, tossed aside as unserviceable. As it was, Becky could
construct beautiful costumes with hardly any resources. Lady A always went out looking like an aristocrat, though her costumes were always the color of night. Each year as Arista outgrew them,
Becky had sewn something new, fancier most times, but always in black to allow Arista to hide in the shadows of the ballrooms.

At first Arista had protested. She didn’t need fancy clothing to do what Bones needed done. She could conduct business in the shadows, dressed like a boy as usual.

Only once had Arista refused to let Becky dress her—Lady A’s first meeting. Bones got wind of Arista’s complaints, and Becky still bore the scars from that act of defiance. It
had been a dark warning to Arista, and she had listened. Now she let Becky do what she must, if only to keep her safe from Bones’s heavy hand.

Lady A became a familiar shadow at the masquerades with her raven-feather mask, but though people knew who she was, no one dared to think of turning her in to the Watch. Not with so many of
society’s best indebted to Bones. Their secrets gave her a small measure of safety, and Nic watched her back.

And so far, Arista had avoided harm.

“Did you dance, miss?” Becky’s nimble fingers made short work of the task, and soon the blessedly cool air caressed Arista’s hot, itchy scalp.

Becky’s question abruptly brought back images of a highwayman. Specifically, his eyes. Had she really let a stranger put his hands on her like that? As Becky unlaced her stays, Arista
reached for the spot on her neck that the highwayman had touched. Her own fingers traced the path from her shoulder to just below her ear.

It wasn’t the same. It wasn’t even the same feeling as when Nic had touched her in the hallway.

Arista’s mind flew in a million directions. She wanted to get her trousers on, pull the dark wool cap down over her head, and go for a walk. She needed to try and sort out what had
happened at the masquerade so it wouldn’t happen again.

“Did you remember everything I taught you, then?” Becky interrupted her thoughts, and a prickle of irritation swept over Arista. The girl loved to talk, especially after Arista had
gone to a party.

Arista wanted to snap back that yes, she had remembered her rehearsed dialect and subdued graces after they’d been pounded into her head for years, but she held her tongue. Becky
didn’t deserve abuse for her show of concern.

Arista glanced over at the girl who had become her friend. She flitted about the room, seemingly wrapped up in her own thoughts. Becky might have been pretty once, but now she walked with her
head down and turned away from anyone who might look too closely. From the left, she appeared normal; but on the right, her skin was misshapen and lumpy from her temple to her chin.

The deep burns had not been tended to properly, and as the skin healed, that whole side of her face had been left horribly disfigured. No one but Arista knew the circumstances behind the injury.
After two years of teaching Arista the finer graces, Becky had reluctantly told Arista the story.

Becky had worked as a lady’s maid for a family in Piccadilly. Becky and the lord of the house had had a disagreement over her young charge’s future husband, and he had beaten her. As
she lay on the floor cowering from him, he had taken a candelabra and tipped the hot wax over her face. There were smaller, matching scars on her arms where she’d tried to protect herself
from the burning wax, but her sleeves usually hid those.

Her employer had then turned her out with nothing. Arista wanted to gut the bastard, but Becky refused to name who had done it.

“Yes, I remembered everything you taught me.”

Becky beamed as she shook out the black silk dress and carefully hung it away, to be brushed down later for the next time it would be needed.

Arista exhaled, her first real breath without the constraint of the corset, and pulled a ratty, stained chemise over her head, followed by a plain brown shirt. It had grown threadbare in several
spots, but Becky’s nimble fingers had patched the holes as if they were never there. Not that it mattered. Arista always wore the shirt under an even darker brown coat that hid it, and her
shape, effectively.

Black wool trousers covered her legs, rough and familiar. She strapped her knife to the outside of her thigh, in plain view now for anyone thinking of trying his luck. She slipped bare feet into
an old pair of Nic’s boots that now fit her perfectly.

“I’ll be back by morning.” Arista grabbed her wool cap off a peg that was wedged into the cracked wall and clicked the lock to their room open.

Before she left the room, her glance slid to the crude charcoal drawing on the boards lining the far wall. Nic had made it for her when she was barely eleven. They were supposed to be picking
pockets at the market, but instead, Nic had wanted to show her something. They’d spent an entire day at the docks watching the ships arrive and depart.

There had been a ship there unloading goods from India. She recognized the same smells that used to come from Nalia’s tea. A man in a turban and clothes unlike anything she’d ever
seen before stepped off the ship, and when he reached the dock Arista saw a monkey perched on his shoulder. A real, live monkey. He must have seen her staring, because he smiled and approached
them.

“A pence to carry your bags, sir?” Nic asked.

Instead, the man handed them each a shilling and told them both stories while the monkey wound around his head and chattered as if he, too, were telling tales.

It had been the best day of her life, that afternoon on the docks.

When the ship finally emptied, the man bowed and thanked them for their time. She had never met anyone so kind, except for Nalia. Arista watched him walk away, his words still conjuring vivid
images in her head.

“I
will
go there someday,” she told Nic.

When they returned that evening, Nic had drawn the ship and a crude monkey on the wall, so she could see it from her pallet on the floor. Every night before she closed her eyes she imagined
herself on board that ship, sailing far away from this life.

Except six years later, they were still here.

Arista quietly made her way down the hallway to the door they’d come in through, the one that led outside to the alley, with Becky close behind. “Open it for me,” Arista
said.

“But, miss…” Becky always protested when Arista went out at night. The seediest of characters came out under the cloak of darkness, but that meant little to Arista. She knew
the shortcuts through the alleys and the blind spots where a thief was likely to hide in wait. She knew because she was one of them.

“I’ll be fine. I just need some air.” Arista cracked open the door and peered up and down the alley. When she saw no one, she exited and waited until the click of the lock
sounded before she turned and sprinted off down the alley.

This was as close to freedom as Arista would ever get.

There was a spot by the river that she’d found years ago, hidden from view in the recesses of a burned-out warehouse. She could think freely there. Already she had outlived the lifespan of
an orphan, but only because Bones saw her as a commodity he could exploit for his own purposes. If he ever decided he no longer needed her, she’d be on her own. Or worse.

Noxious scents wafted from the blackest corners of the alleys, where garbage and refuse and decaying animal carcasses piled up. The night soil men, the ones who kept the main streets clean,
rarely ventured this close to the river to clean up. The comfort of the working class was not a priority to anyone. The rich simply pretended that they didn’t exist; or if they thought of
them, it was as just another kind of garbage.

Arista wrinkled her nose and hurried on, past the dark window of the bookmaker’s shop, until she finally came out on Fleet Street. The sounds changed, and in the pools of the streetlights,
girls of all ages milled around, waiting for an intoxicated man to proposition them.

“Aye, there, sweetie.” A woman twice her age stepped into the glow of the oil-lit streetlamp and grinned at Arista. Her black-stained teeth were visible even at that distance, and
her face was framed with a mop of unwashed dark hair.

The whores on Fleet Street were the lowest of the low. Rarely would a real gentleman make use of their services, as the girls at Covent Garden were much prettier and cleaner, though more
expensive as well. These ones gave away their bodies for mere pennies to the scurvy-addled sailors who passed through in a constant flow.

“Fancy a little bit o’ fun, do ya?” The woman grabbed her breasts and jiggled them.

“Bugger off, you pox-ridden whore.” The deep-voiced retort slid off her tongue, and she kept walking. Dressed as she was, she’d come to expect this from the street girls. She
watched them out of the corner of her eye. Their emotionless faces were painted thick with rouge, eyes lined heavily with kohl.

The woman, the one who’d called out to Arista, had on a dirty, torn shift that barely came to her knees. Her stays were laced tight enough to cause ample exposure of what she sold.
“Think yer too good for the likes of us, then, li’l guvnor?” The woman extended her pinky finger and waggled it at Arista. Another woman snickered loudly.

That could have been her—very well
would
be her, if Bones ever decided that Arista was no longer useful to him. It would be a far worse hell to sell her body for a shilling than
anything she had endured so far.

The woman’s attention shifted and Arista saw a man staggering down the street. A chorus of high-pitched voices called out to the man as the group began shouting prices and services at him.
Wretched.

I’d sooner die than peddle myself on a corner.

The voices grew fainter and Arista pulled her coat closer to her body. In the dim light, from a distance, she could easily pass for a boy—a slight boy, perhaps, but clearly one with a
knife strapped to his thigh.

No one else bothered her. She made it to where the unused warehouse stood, its tattered edges outlined against the sky. The spot where she liked to go was just past the dilapidated building,
through the overgrown path leading to the river’s edge. Though it was completely hidden from view, if she was spotted, she’d have nowhere to run but into the Thames. As she could not
swim, it would be a certain death for her. She had to be careful.

Footsteps came faintly from the right, growing louder with each breath she took. A stack of empty crates gave her enough cover to hide behind, and she forced her lungs to quiet as the Watchman
made his rounds. In only moments, he turned and ambled away, taking the faint lamplight with him. Next to the river, the night was even darker. The working dock sat much farther upriver. There was
no need for anyone to be around at this hour except the occasional Watchman.

The air grew damper as she moved closer to the river. In the stillness, she could hear faint whispers of the water lapping against the riverbanks. She exhaled softly and straightened. Though her
boots were heavy, she barely made a sound as she hurried around the corner of the long building.

There had been a fire years before and the old building had been destroyed. The only thing left of the loading dock was a small bit of wood jutting out a few feet into the river. Weeds grew up
along the bank, effectively hiding it, and giving Arista the perfect place to sit and watch the lights reflect off the water. The cool air there didn’t reek of refuse and deadness so much
during the night. Only under the thick midday fog did the stench test the stomachs of even the most hardened of seamen.