Flesh Circus Read Free

like to put on their shelves, but he was
Trader.
If he looked innocent and harmless, it was only the lure used to get someone close enough for those strong fingers. And that
     tremulous smile would be the last thing a victim ever saw.
    I clipped the collar on, tested it. He smelled like sawdust and healthy young male, but the tang of sugared corruption riding
     it only made the sweetness of false youth less appetizing. Like a hooker turning her face, and the light picking out damage
     under a screen of makeup. The stubble on his neck rasped and my knuckles brushed a different texture—the band of scar tissue
     resting just above his collarbone. It was all but invisible in the dimness, and I wondered what he’d look like in daylight.
    I don’t want to find out. I’ve had enough of this already, and we’re only ten minutes in.
    I stepped back. The collar glinted. My apprentice-ring thrummed with force, and I twitched my hand, experimentally.
    The Trader let out a small sound, tipping forward as he was pulled off-center. His knees ground into the dust. Every bit of
     silver I wore—apprentice-ring, silver chain holding the blessed carved ruby at my throat, the charms in my hair—made a faint
     chiming sound. My stomach turned. It was just like having a dog on a leash.
    I nodded. Let my hand drop. “You can get up now.”
    “Not just yet.” Perry stepped forward, and little bits of cooling breeze lifted my hair. I didn’t move, but every nerve in
     my body pulled itself tight as a drumhead and my pulse gave a nasty leap. They could hear it, of course, and if they took
     it for a show of weakness things might get nasty.
    Ikaros hunched, thin shoulders coming up.
    My left hand touched a gun butt, cool metal under my fingertips. “That’s close enough, Perry.”
    “Oh, not nearly.” He shifted his weight, and the breeze freshened again. His aura deepened, like a bruise, and the scar woke
     to prickling, stinging life.
    A whisper of sound, and I had the gun level, barrel glinting. “That’s close
enough.
”
Give me a reason. Dear God, just give me a reason.
    He shrugged and remained where he was. The Ringmaster was smiling faintly, his thin lips closed over the tooth-ridges.
    I backed up two steps. Did not holster the gun. Faint starlight silvered its metal. “The chain, Perry. Hurry up.”
    He smiled, a good-tempered grin with razor blades underneath. It was the type of smile that said he was contemplating a good
     piece of art or ass, something he could pick up with very little trouble. His eyes all but
danced.
A quick flicking motion with his fingers, the scar plucking, and a loop of darkness coiled in his hands, dipping down with
     a wrongly musical clashing. His left hand snapped forward, the darkness solidified, and the Trader jerked again, a small cry
     wrung out of him.
    Ikaros’s eyes rolled up into his head and he collapsed. Spidery lines of darkness crawled up every inch of pale exposed flesh,
     spiked writing marching in even rows as if a tattoo had come to life and started colonizing his skin.
    Perry’s hands dropped. The Trader lay in the dust, gasping.
    “Done, and done.” The Ringmaster sighed, a short sound under the moan of freshening breeze. “He is your hostage.” Now his
     cane had appeared, a slim black length with a round faceted crystal the size of a pool ball set atop it. He tapped the ground
     twice, paused, tapped a third time with the coppershod bottom. The crystal—it looked like an almighty big glass doorknob except
     for the sick greenish light in its depths—made a sound like billiard balls clicking together, underlining his words. “Should
     we break the Law he will suffer, and through him, I will suffer; through me, all shall suffer. He is our pledge to the hunter
     and to the Power in this city.”
    The Trader struggled up to his hands and knees. The collar sparked, once, a single point of blue light etching sharp shadows
     behind the pebbles and dirt underneath him. He