Mechanique by Genevieve Valentine

Author:Genevieve Valentine
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Prime Books
Published: 2011-04-22T04:00:00+00:00

52.

Elena never thought of Alec before he got the wings.

By then the circus was growing. They had Alto and Altissimo (the Grimaldi Brothers, as if they needed another reason to feel smug—Boss got carried away sometimes with the names), and Nayah and Mina with her on the trapeze, and a dancing girl who was just a dolled-up refugee, letting the circus bring her home by degrees as she draped herself in tattered veils and enticed soldiers into the tent every night.

Elena hadn’t wanted her (“What’s next, a brothel under the benches?”), but Boss had a soft heart for lost causes.

Sometimes Boss knocked on her door and asked her to take a look at someone, if it was hard for Boss to get a read through the performer’s desperation to please. (One thing Boss never questioned about Elena was her ability to tell who had the heart for something and who didn’t.)

But Elena ignored when Boss scooped some kid out of the dirt and raised him as a lap dog, and she ignored when Boss saw a handsome face in the crowd one night and pulled him out to be her favorite.

He came through the camp every day of their engagement outside that city, with Little George running after him whenever he passed close enough to catch, and the dancing girl setting down her sewing to wave properly at him. After ten days, Elena couldn’t ignore him any more. Boss had kept them near this city twice as long as they’d ever stayed in one place—he was no camp follower.

He was beautiful (she gave Boss credit for good taste, at least): golden hair and a smile as if he had never seen war. But Elena couldn’t imagine what Boss’s plans would be.

“Will she give him the bones or not?” Elena asked Panadrome. (There was no point asking Boss anything.)

Panadrome watched Alec crossing the camp, and spread his human hands on their metal stems. “Could you cut out the bones of someone you loved?”

Elena thought about the table that had served as a workbench back before Boss had a circus, the little glimpse of the blade before the knife came down, and knowing that whatever came next would have to be better than living.

“He’ll be better off than any of the rest of us,” she said. “Wait and see.”

And that was the last she thought of him. Even when they were back on the road, and he had somehow come with them instead of being left behind in the city like any other visitor would be, Elena thought no more about it than that Boss was a fool to be so loving, knowing how the circus ground everything to powder in its teeth.

Big George came to them with one working arm, asking for work in the crew, and ended up under the knife as a living trapeze.

“I don’t like it,” Elena said.

Boss said, “I don’t care. When I wake him up, take him to the rig.”

“You can’t keep taking everyone,” Elena said.

Boss looked over.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.