The Mime Order (18 page)

When we reached the perimeter of the Devil’s Acre, I approached the entrance. A sheet of corrugated metal served as a door on Old Pye Street, barred from the other side. I knocked, hard.

“Doorman!”

Nothing. I gave the door a kick.

“Doorman, it’s the Pale Dreamer. I have an urgent proposal for Hector. Open up, you lazy bastard.”

The doorman didn’t answer—not so much as a snore—but there was no way I was going back to I-4 without the painting. Eliza wouldn’t get a wink of sleep until it was found.

“Wait here,” I said to the glym jack. “I’ll find a way in.”

“As you will.”

These walls were no friend to a climber. Coils of razor wire would tear my hands to shreds, and the corrugated metal was streaked with oily anti-intruder paint. I made a few rounds of the acre, searching
for
gaps, but everything was sealed. Clearly Hector was a tad more intelligent than he was hygienic. I was almost ready to admit defeat when the sole of my boot hit something hollow. A manhole cover.

Crouching, I heaved the metal lid to one side. Instead of the small access chamber I’d expected, a tunnel curved under the wall, dimly lit by a portable lantern.

Hector’s bolthole. Strange that he hadn’t put a padlock on it.

The tunnel was padded with soiled cushions and foam so caked in dirt it looked like stone. I lowered myself in and replaced the bolthole’s lid. At the end of the passage I found a grate. Dim light sifted through it. I focused on my sixth sense, letting everything else drain away. There were no dreamscapes or spirits at all. Odd. Hector was always boasting about his enormous collection of spirits, from wisps to ghosts to poltergeists. Hector and the gang must have left again, unless they’d decided to wreak havoc in another section before returning home. Still, they should have a guard watching the bolthole, and there was no reason for all those spirits to have left.

This was my chance. I could sneak in, grab the painting and sneak out again. Job done. My heart raced. If I was caught trespassing in the Devil’s Acre, I was worse than dead.

I surfaced from the tunnel in a shack, where the air was close and smelled of petrichor. Keeping low, I cracked open a door. Beyond it was a tiny collection of low-lying houses, cobbled together with brick and metal. I’d expected more from the Underlord’s lair.

Each and every building was empty. When I came to the largest, which looked as if it might once have been a grand town-house two centuries ago, I knew it was where Hector lived. The walls were lined with blades of all kinds. Some of them were definitely imported, bought in secret from the black market; they were too fine to be street weapons.

Across the hallway, another set of double doors was ajar. A smell skimmed my nose, stale and unpleasant. I took the hunting knife
from
my bag and hid it behind my jacket. Warm light flickered across the carpet, but there was no sound.

I pushed open the doors. And I saw the drawing room, and I saw what was inside it.

Hector and his gang were here, all right.

They were all over the floor.

9

The Bloody King

Hector lay on his back in the middle of the drawing room, legs splayed wide, with his left arm resting across his abdomen. Dark blood was spilling from his neck, and no wonder: his head was nowhere to be seen. I could only identify him from his eternally dirty clothes and the golden pocket watch.

A row of red candles had been lit along the mantelpiece. Their dim light made the lake of blood look like crude oil.

Eight bodies lay on the floor. The Underhand was at his master’s side, as always. Head still attached, glaze-eyed and open-mouthed. The others were in pairs, like couples in bed. All lying in the same direction, with their heads facing the windows of the west-facing wall.

The insides of my ears tingled. I looked back through the doors and reached for the æther, but there was no one else in the building.

And there was Eliza’s beautiful painting, propped against the wall. Arterial spray dripped down the canvas.

The
sour stench of urine reached my nostrils. And the
blood
. So much blood.

Run
. The word drifted through my thoughts. But no, the painting. I had to get the painting. And I had to take note of what was here; they’d clear it all away when word got out that Hector was dead.

First, the corpses. From the spray, they must have been killed here, not moved. I’d seen bodies before, some in the late stages of decay, but these identical positions were grotesquely theatrical. Streaks of blood led up to each body. They must have been dragged around the room like dummies before being posed. I pictured faceless hands propping up legs, lifting arms and tilting heads to the desired angle. Each face was resting on the left cheek. Each right arm lay on the floor, parallel to the torso. All the furniture—armchairs, a séance table, and a coat rack—had been pushed against the walls to make room for them all.

I crouched down by the nearest body, my breath shaking. Bile crept into my throat. This corpse had been Magtooth. It seemed impossible that he’d been taunting me a few days ago, his lips sneering and his eyes alight with malice. His cheeks had been hacked with a knife, most of his nose was missing, and small, V-shaped cuts split his eyelids.

The killer would have known that Hector was never by himself. There must have been more than one person here to take down the whole gang. I checked the corpses again. Hector, the Underhand, Slabnose, Slipfinger, Bloatface, Magtooth, Roundhead. At the bottom right corner of the arrangement, next to Magtooth, was the Undertaker, his mouth still set in a line. Death had hardly changed his expression. That explained why all the spirits had fled. Once a binder’s heart stopped beating, his boundlings were free to go.

There was one person missing. Cutmouth. Either she’d escaped, or she’d never been here.

As well as arranging the bodies, the killer had left a calling card. Each body had the right palm turned toward the ceiling, and in each
was
a red silk handkerchief. A few of the gangs had calling cards—the Threadbare Company left a handful of needles, the Crowbars a black feather—but I’d never seen this one.

Cautiously, I rested the backs of my fingers against Magtooth’s bloody cheek. Still warm. His watch was stuck at quarter past three. The clock on the mantelpiece told me it was now almost half past the same hour.

A chill bolted down my spine. I had to leave. Get the painting and run.

The spirits of the Underbodies would need the threnody, the essential words of release from the physical world. If I denied them that basic mercy, they would almost certainly develop into poltergeists, but I didn’t know most of their names. I stood over the decapitated body and touched three fingers to my forehead as a sign of respect.

“Hector Grinslathe, be gone into the æther. All is settled. All debts are paid. You need not dwell among the living now.”

There was no response from the æther. I turned to Magtooth, unsettled.

“Ronald Cranwell, be gone into the æther. All is settled. All debts are paid. You need not dwell among the living now.”

Nothing. I focused, straining my perception until my temples ached. I’d thought they might be hiding, but they didn’t emerge.

New spirits almost always lingered close to their empty bodies. I stepped back, into a pool of blood.

The æther, which had been still, began to vibrate. Like water touched by a tuning fork. I ran between the two rows of corpses, heading for the painting, but the quake soon caught up with me. The candles blew out, the ceiling cracked, and a poltergeist exploded through it.

The breacher’s impact threw me against the floorboards. I realized my mistake at once: the pendant was in my pocket, not around my
neck.
Then the agony came, and so did a gut-wrenching scream. Spasms rocked my insides. Hallucinations seared past my eyes: a woman’s cry, a torn and bloody dress, a spike concealed by artificial flowers. I gasped for air, clawing the floor until my nails ripped, but the thing was writhing like a snake inside me, digging its claws into my dreamscape, and every breath I took seemed to freeze inside my lungs.

Somehow, my fingers got to my pocket, gripped the pendant, and slammed it against my heart. The spirit thrashed in my dreamscape. I thrashed, too, my neck straining—but I kept it pressed to my skin, like salt to a wound, burning out the infection, until the poltergeist was expelled from my mind. It sent out a burst of tremors before it took off through the window. Glass burst from the frame. I lay on the floorboards, covered in the Underbodies’ blood.

After what felt like hours, I drew in a breath. My right arm, which I’d thrown out to protect myself, was already beginning to stiffen. I dragged myself onto my hands and knees. Shards of glass fell from my hair. I opened my eyes slowly, blinking tiny crystals from my lashes.

With gritted teeth, I took hold of the painting and concealed it inside my coat before snatching up my bag. That poltergeist must have been waiting to spring on the first person that happened upon its old master’s corpse, purely for its own entertainment.

Leaving the bodies, I made my way back through the bolthole. When I emerged, Grover took my good hand and pulled me up.

“Done?”

“He’s dead,” I said. “Hector, he’s—”

I could hardly speak. Grover dropped my hand and looked at his own. It was wet with blood.

“You killed him,” he said, stunned.

“No. He was dead.”

“You’ve got blood all over you.” He stepped away. “I’ll have nothing to do with this. Binder can keep his coin.” He took his lantern from the wall and broke into a run.

“
Wait,” I shouted after him. “It’s not what it looks like!”

But Grover was gone. Dread sank into my veins.

He would tell someone. Probably the Abbess. I thought about sending my spirit after him, knocking him dead so he’d take what he’d seen to the æther—but I couldn’t just kill innocent bystanders. And it wouldn’t change the fact that I was covered in blood, all alone, and miles from Seven Dials.

There was no way I could walk back to I-4 like this, and I doubted any rickshaws would take me. Calling Jaxon wasn’t an option; I didn’t have my burner. But there was a lake about five minutes from here, in Birdcage Park. It would be dangerous to go there—it was close to Frank Weaver’s estate in Victoria—but unless I found a water fountain, I didn’t have much choice.

I ran, cradling my arm to my chest. The slum was swallowed up behind me. I dumped the painting in a waste container on the corner of Caxton Street. It was too heavy to carry any farther.

Birdcage Park was one of the few remaining green spaces in SciLo. Fifty-seven acres of grass, trees, and winding flower beds. Now, in late September, fallen leaves scattered the paths. When I reached the lake, I waded in up to my waist and washed the blood from my face and hair. I couldn’t feel a thing above the elbow, while my forearm was in so much pain I wanted to hack off everything below the shoulder. A silent scream wrenched at my throat; I had to press a fist to my mouth to hold it in. Hot tears filled my eyes.

There was a pay phone near the edge of the lake. I dragged myself inside, took a coin from my pocket. My fingers stumbled on the code for the I-4 booth.

No answer. There was no courier standing by.

Somewhere in the fog, instinct returned. I lurched back to my feet. My ears were sizzling. Was there a fire? It didn’t matter. I had to hide, to carry the pain somewhere where I wouldn’t be seen. The
trees
by the lake cast deep enough shadows. I stumbled into the undergrowth and curled up in a bank of fallen leaves.

Time slowed. And slowed. And slowed. All I could register was my shallow breathing, the sound of fire, and the pain that pounded through my arm. I couldn’t move the joints in my fingers. A Vigile was bound to do a patrol of the lake before dawn, but I couldn’t get up. Nothing worked. Pitiless laughter filled my ears, and I blacked out.

****

Pain welled behind my eyes. I opened them a little. The smells of rose oil and tobacco told me where I was.

Someone had propped me against the cushions on Jaxon’s couch, switched my bloody clothes for a nightshirt, and covered me to the chest with a chenille throw. I made to turn over, but every limb was stiff and I couldn’t stop shivering. Even my jaw was locked. When I tried to lift my head, my neck muscles contracted painfully.

The night’s events came flooding back. Anxiety trembled in my stomach. Trying to use only my eyes, I looked down at my arm. The wound was covered with what looked like green slime.

A creak on the landing announced Jaxon’s arrival. He had a cigar wedged between his back teeth on one side of his mouth. Behind him were the others, minus Danica and Nick. “Paige?” Eliza crouched beside me and placed a hand on my forehead. “Jax, she’s so cold.”

“She will be.” Jaxon blew out a cloud of bluish smoke. “I must admit, I did expect some minor injuries to contend with—but not to find you unconscious in Birdcage Park, my walker.”

“You found me?” My jaw ached with each word.