Page 22 of The Scarlet Ball

If it was a regular floor on a regular night, it’d be blood on the marble, a sticky mess that someone would eventually have to clean up. Instead, it was the White Ball, when the blood was the heart was the road was a river, and it flowed past us toward the end the hall where we had come in, now obscured by deepening shadows.

I couldn’t take my eyes away from the blood, how there was more of it than there should be even for how gleefully the bitch had bled us. The cuts on my wrist throbbed through the tight binding, and it seemed as if the beat of it, following the beat of my heart, became words: Come to me.

We waited, and from the distant edges of that great room there was an eager murmur, a rustle rising like the sea, and though there was no word there I understood, the meaning came through in the excitement and the anticipation: They are coming, they are coming, and then …

They were here.

They came on wings, I knew that, enormous shapes circling in that hall that I realized must have no roof. The lonely cold light hung suspended from nothing, and from beyond came the lords that we waited for, circling like eagles, the sound of their wings as heavy as the snap of canvas sails. They called to each other in a language pitched below what I could hear. Instead I had to feel it through the tremors in the floor, the way the hairs at the back of my neck prickled. I understood it through the fear that poured in as if through a hole at the top of my head and then soaked through every inch of flesh and bone in me, into my very marrow. They were great, and they were dangerous, and they were here.

We would not have been human if we kept on looking straight, and after all, it was their right to be seen and adored. We lifted our heads to watch them as they came, and as they landed, they took forms as smoothly as water fills a cut-glass bottle. One moment you could barely look at them for the terror, and the next they were men. Specifically, in their fine-cut suits and white kid gloves and shining shoes, they were rich men.

They were not identical, though of course they were all white. Some were slender, others were stout, there was a blond or two among them when all the rest were dark-haired. There were, I thought, more of them than there were of us, but not by many, and you would think we made a fine party indeed until you saw the way the lords never moved like people did, how their hands might fan out into too many fingers, their jaws might grow long and misshapen before they settled back into place.

There was something unfinished about them, I thought. They were the impressions of rich men, almost figments. If my gaze lingered too long on one or another, he blurred as though he could not stand up to the scrutiny. The word incomplete hung in my mind, and I wondered what they were waiting for, what essential piece might be missing.

For several minutes, they kept to themselves, talking with their new mouths, clasping hands as if they were friends. They reminded me of the packs who sometimes came together to the brothels, egging each other on, complimenting each other’s choices as if we were horses or dogs. I realized that that was not what was happening here when I saw one lord raise a hand to strike another lightly across the jaw. It was the kind of rough play that some gentlemen liked with their friends, but the entire group stilled to see what the struck one would do. More human than he had been a moment before, he laughed, shaking his head, and time kept ticking.

“Like dogs in a pack,” I murmured to myself, and I must not have been as quiet as I thought because the girl next to me huffed a soft breath.

“Watch they don’t tear you apart,” she whispered, and I wished I could turn my head to look at her, for she sounded so afraid. I wanted to take her hand, tell her it would be all right, they weren’t so terrifying, she wouldn’t die—but of course they were, and of course she might, so I just watched as the demon lords sorted themselves out and approached us in an order that they had somehow determined.

It seemed random which of us they chose. Two or three of their number, I saw, could not choose at all, and stalked to the far edges of the room, their eyes glowing like coals, brighter than the rest in the dark. I watched them too long, the ones who slunk away, and I got a bad fright when I looked back to find that one of the lords had come to stand before me.

He was not tall, sturdy instead of thin. He had the look of a sportsman, which I never liked when I worked the houses and which I liked even less well now. He stood like a bird poised to strike, and his smile was as affable and friendly as that of any a young brigand or killer I’ve ever known. I remembered at the last moment not to raise my eyes to him, dipping down in a deep curtsy instead to acknowledge his interest. When he offered me his hand, I wanted to draw back from it like I would a poisonous snake, and I only remembered at the last minute to look no higher than his chin. Somewhere above, I got the idea that his features shifted, seeking some kind of equilibrium.

Thank God—or more appropriately, thank Mielle—my body knew better. My hand settled as lightly as a bird on his, as if I might fly away at any moment, and it seemed to me his thumbnail grew sharper as he traced it over my knuckles. He would like it if I flew, or at least, he would like it if I tried.

Up and down the line, the lords claimed their partners, and we sorted ourselves into a long doubled row down the hall, men on the left, women on the right. As we turned to the front to begin the procession dance, the demon lord who had chosen me laughed quietly as if at some joke.

It’s safer to stay silent, Mielle whispered in my memory. It is safer by far to stay silent. They cannot trick you into any bargains if you stay silent. You can give offense by your silence, but you, especially you, will have more opportunities by far to give offense if you speak.

She was right. Of course she was right, and on that point, nuns and madams and Madame Valois could agree. There was trouble on my tongue, and so I held it as the musicians from some unseen balcony struck up a long tuning note.

When the music started, it was Turtledove and Swan, and we commenced, forward and back, forward and back, drop hands to face your partner, curtsy or bow, join again. At the end of each repetition, the couple at the head of the line crossed each other and had a count of twenty-four to run to the rear of the line, cross again, and take their new places at the end before joining hands again. It was not a difficult dance, but it had to be done flawlessly so that nothing in the dark would have the excuse to eat you. We danced, the first couple split, and the hair went up at the back of my neck as something great and dark passed behind me, the lord running to his place as the girl across from him picked up her skirts and ran with her spine perfectly straight. She gained her spot, the lord took his with just a beat to spare, and the dance started again, forward and back.

“You do not ask me why I laugh,” my partner murmured as we came together. I remembered at the last moment to keep my eyes down. His voice had a strange rasping note to it—I realized that he must be new to its use. “Are you not curious to hear what the joke might be?”

“My lord, I am sure that if the joke was meant for me, you would tell me so.”

He snorted. He knew that the only thing that protected me here were the rules of civility, rules he had agreed to abide by solely because if I faltered or failed, he was permitted to do as he liked. Of course it was funny. Another couple split and crossed, and I saw the face of the girl dashing down the row, her eyes wide and rolling like a racehorse’s to show the white.

“You’re funny. You’re all so funny,” he said as if it were self-evident. “You are funny when you speak. You are funny when you run. You are funny when you fall.”

On his word, as if he had willed it so, the girl stumbled. She foundered like a ship in a storm, and the two lords closest to her in the line wheeled about. As they did, their faces shifted, grew long and monstrous, their mouths like snapping shears, and if they caught her, if they bore her to ground—

They lunged for her, and one caught her upflung hand in his jaws, but brave girl, she never stopped. She didn’t let them turn her, she tore her hand away and I saw a ribbon of blood in the air for a split second before it landed on her skirts.

The taste of blood must have distracted her pursuers, because the pause was enough to win her away, and she gained her place as the music changed, red on her white cheeks, blood on her dress. She took her partner’s hand with her own awash in blood, and forward and back we went again.

“Do you think you’ll make it?” my partner asked with interest. “Do you think you’ll do as well as even she did?”

“My lord, I can only hope I do,” I responded. There was a hollowness to my own voice in my ears, something faraway, and grimly I forced myself back into my own skull, back into my own skin. Fear did that to me sometimes, shook me free of my body until it was safe to return, and right now, I could not afford that.

“Do you think we’re dogs?” he asked me as we approached the head of the line, and for a moment he looked at me with a dog’s face. I kept myself from flinching when he snapped his teeth, I was made of stronger stuff than that, but he laughed again.

The music changed, we bowed to one another, and I pushed off, throwing up an arm to bar him from snapping at my face as we crossed, and then I was running. I could run barefoot, I could run with the gendarmes at my heels, and I could for certain sure run from the demon lords who had rules that men didn’t.

I ran, my feet hitting the stone almost in time with the beat, eighteen, nineteen, twenty, and I crossed my partner again. I saw the sour look on his face, human again, because he knew I had won, and I caught my laugh in my throat because I could dance, I could run, I could win, but I couldn’t laugh, not here.