The Mime Order (29 page)

“No. They are all half-sighted.”

Good. It took effort for a half-sighted voyant to keep their sight focused for too long. In the dark, we could elude them.

A door clanged in the distance. Warden grasped my arm and swung me into an alcove, so my back was pressed against his chest. “. . . feed him at some point,” someone was saying. A man, gruff and loud, with a shadow of the East End in his accent. Each word echoed through the damp tunnels. “He almost sapped Cloth last time.”

“You were holding him too close.” A woman. Londoner, like the man, but I couldn’t place the district. “They can only feed at a certain distance.”

“You sure none of ours have squealed about him?”

A sharp laugh. “Who would they squeal at? The Underlord is dead. Without him, the Unnatural Assembly is a shambles. Not that it was ever more than that.”

I kept a tight hold on my revolver. At my side, Warden leaned heavily against the wall. His eyes were already cooling back to chartreuse.

A shout of alarm rang from the cell, so close to our hiding place that I started. “What the hell is this?” the man roared. “Where’s the creature?” Rattling chains. “
Where is it
? You think we paid you to lose our leverage?”

My
mouth was dry as dust. “Chiffon,” the guard groaned, “some . . . brogue bitch came in and took him away. Her aura was . . . red.”

The woman must be La Chiffonnière, the Rag and Bone Man’s mouthpiece in the district. I wanted to see what the hell she had to say for herself, but Warden was too weak to leave alone.

“And where’s your brogue now?” Footsteps. “What did she look like?”

“Black hair and a red cravat over her face. She’s gone.”

“Is she, now?” Chiffon said, her voice strangely flat. “Then consider yourself unemployed.”

A single gunshot echoed through the catacombs. One of the dreamscapes faded from my perception. “His nose was bleeding, and we’re looking for a brogue with a red aura. Sounds like the Pale Dreamer’s our girl,” Chiffon concluded.

Shit
.

“Rags will have someone killed for this,” the man said. “We’ve just lost our bargaining chip.”

“We weren’t the ones guarding him. Besides, I doubt the creature’s limped too far. We can still catch him.”

“So long as we find him.” Footsteps again. “We should keep our sights up.”

Warden took my arm. We kept moving, staying close to the walls. I flicked my torch beam at them, searching out familiar markers. My feet were light, but Warden’s injuries made him cumbersome. Each footfall was like a homing beacon, telling the pair where we were heading, but the clinking jewelry the captors were wearing was just as useful. Every time we heard metal, we changed direction.

Soon enough we reached the main vault, where I killed the light and reached for Warden’s hand. His fingers slid between mine. As we passed the spotlight cart, I pulled out the power cord, throwing us into total darkness again. Warden kept going, his eyes pinpricks of faint light in the black. I let him lead me. We’d reached another
passage
and concealed ourselves behind what felt like a velvet curtain by the time the two strangers reached the vault.

“Now someone’s janxed the light.”

“Shh. Even dreamwalkers breathe,” Chiffon whispered.

I risked a look through the curtains. The two of them walked past with their flashlights, searching behind curtains and under tables.

“Now, where would a giant hide, if he could?” Chiffon passed right by our hiding place, but her senses weren’t as keen as mine. “In the biggest room of the house, I’d say.”

Warden was still and silent. Beside him, I felt deafeningly human, each breath like a draft.

“There’s nowhere to run, Rephaite.” The man was close. “All the exits are blocked. If you don’t come out, I’ll take my sweet time killing your friend. You can keep her in your cell, if you like . . .”

Sweat slithered down my back. I hooked my finger over the gun’s trigger. The last thing a murder suspect should be doing was shooting someone, but I might not have a choice. Beside me, Warden touched my arm and nodded toward something that I’d thought was a table. A jukebox was concealed behind the curtain.

The other abductor’s heavy footsteps were getting closer. With a quick movement, Warden flicked on the machine, and an old recording fanfared from inside it. My skull rang like a bell as a woman sang out in jubilant, trilling French, accompanied by what sounded like an entire orchestra. Nothing could be heard but the song. We moved to the left, behind the nearest curtain, and edged along the wall. I sensed the two dreamscapes shifting in the other direction.

The vault was a cavern of echoing voices; it was impossible to tell where the music was coming from. “Find it,” Chiffon snapped.

There was another tunnel across the vault. We’d have to make a run for it. Treading lightly, I slipped out from behind the curtain. I could just make out the back of the man’s head in the flashlight’s beam, with short hair that gave way to a bald patch. Warden followed me. We
almost
reached the tunnel before the spotlight cart blazed back to life, blinding me, and two masked figures whipped around to face us.

“Here she is. The red brogue and her Rephaite,” the man said.

The painted masks had mouths that looked as if they had been slashed open, with plastic, sharpened teeth bared in grins. Light glared behind them. Without a moment’s hesitation, I flung my spirit straight at the man’s dreamscape. He fell back with a scream that raised every hair on my body. As soon as I was back in my own skin, I grabbed Warden by the jacket and ran, blinking lights from my eyes.

Chiffon sent a spool after us. I deflected two drifters and fired a bullet over my shoulder before Warden pulled me to the left, into another tunnel that forced us into single file. I didn’t dare stop.

“There’s no way out, you know,” Chiffon called, laughing. “It’s a labyrinth down here!”

Every tunnel looked the same. The abductors’ voices boomed in the darkness, sending fear wrenching through my abdomen. Somewhere, a dog was barking, searching for the intruder. And then there was light, right at the end of a long, narrow passageway. I sprinted toward it, Warden limping behind me. On either side of us, crates were piled up to the top of the tunnel. Before I could ask, Warden acted. Even with his strength depleted, he was much stronger than I was. He took hold of a crate and pulled it out from the bottom of a stack. In the narrow tunnel, the noise they made as they crashed down was deafening. Glass shattering, wood breaking apart, manacles and chains rattling against stone. A flood of red wine came pouring from the largest. My boots thumped up a set of steps until I crashed headlong into a set of bars. I picked through the keys, my fingers shaking.

Spools came flying past me, catching the edges of my dream-scape. I crouched down and flung one back, smashing memories into the man’s dreamscape. He was bleary-eyed, confused by the
shock
to his system. A heavy crate crashed down on his legs. This time his scream was cut short.

The right key was made of tarnished steel. As soon as the gate opened, I let Warden through and locked it behind us.

The Interchange building was enormous, derelict and empty. Without stopping for breath, I fired a few bullets into a tall window. When the last one hit, the glass fell from the frame in a cascade of shards. Warden gave me a leg up, and I climbed over the windowsill, swinging my head under a wooden plank. The dog was still barking below, but they’d have to find another way to reach us now.

“Come on.” I grasped Warden’s elbows. “Just a bit farther. Climb.”

His jaw was stiff and his neck strained with the effort, but he got himself through the gap. Even after taking aura, he was so weak. I hooked my arm around him again, and this time he put his weight on me.

A black car with tinted windows was parked on the cobblestones. Nick flashed the headlights. Relief filled me to the brim. He reached over and opened the back door.

“Is anyone following you?”

“Yes. Quickly, go.”

“Fine. But—wait, Paige, what are you—?” He stared as I helped the exhausted Warden into the car. “Paige!”

“Just drive.” I pitched myself in after Warden and closed the door with a thump. “Drive, Nick!”

A figure came running around from the front of the warehouse, slim and quick, a sawn-off shotgun in both hands. Nick didn’t ask questions. His hand yanked at the gearstick, and his foot slammed into the accelerator. The car’s engine was twenty years old and janxed to hell, hauled from a pile of scrap at the Garden, but by some miracle, it worked. With a jolt that snapped my teeth together, it roared into reverse. The masked gangster fired, but the range of the shotgun was too short. Nick pulled at the wheel, spinning the car toward the main road.

The
gangster lowered the shotgun. Several other people sprinted out from the warehouse, all in those same terrible masks. Together, they converged on a black van.

Sweat stood out on Nick’s brow. Our car was a painted rust bucket, used only in emergencies; it was in no state for a chase. He kept his foot down, taking us out of sight of the warehouse and down Oval Road, but he didn’t drive straight toward I-4. Instead, he pulled straight around on a crescent.

“We’ll double back on them,” he said. “Go through the market and down to I-4 through the backstreets.”

I looked over my shoulder. The van’s red taillights slashed past with a scream of tires, down the road they thought we’d taken. “Watch out for others,” I said. “They might have more cars.”

“You could have told me you were doing this,” Nick gripped the steering wheel with white knuckles. “Who the hell were those people? Rag Dolls?”

“Yes.”

Nick swore. Only when he switched on the heating did I realize I was still drenched to the bone and freezing cold. Instinctively, I shifted closer to Warden. Shallow breaths lopped past my ear. As the car continued toward I-4, I pulled the used identity module out of my pocket and flicked it through the window, into the gutter. Nick glanced into the rearview mirror.

“Before you were captured,” I said to Warden, “where were you sleeping?”

“An electrical substation on Tower Street.” His voice chafed his throat. “We monsters do not sleep on feather beds. Not anymore.”

Tower Street was right by the den. If I’d been in Seven Dials when he arrived, I might have sensed his presence before it was too late. His head fell back against the seat, and I felt his consciousness fade. “He can’t go to Dials,” Nick said to me, looking straight ahead.

“I know.”

“
Or my apartment.”

“He’s going to a doss-house. There’s nowhere else to go.”

****

“That was too close, Paige. Far too close.”

In the smallest room in a Soho doss-house, the lights were off and the curtains drawn. We both looked at the bed, where Warden was in a deep sleep. I’d helped him out of his filthy coat, but he’d deposited himself on the bed and withdrawn into his dreamscape before we could do anything more.

“He can’t stay here forever.”

“Most of the Rephs want him dead, and Scion will be after him.” I spoke softly. “We can’t throw him out to die.”

“He’ll have to leave at some point. Neither of us can afford to pay his rent.”

With a sigh, I scraped a hand through my limp hair. It was hard to remember a time when I hadn’t been regularly caked in dirt and sweat. “Nick,” I said, “there’s a link between the syndicate and the Rephaim. There has to be, or they wouldn’t have known how to capture Warden. I have to find out how much more they know. And get the fugitives out of that district.”

He frowned. “You’re not going back to II-4, Paige. The whole district will be looking for you.”

“Do you think they’ll go to the Assembly?”

“No, I don’t. They have no evidence that you were there, and I doubt they want to broadcast the fact that they had someone tied up in their den.”

I studied his face. “You’ve been in the syndicate longer than I have. What do you know about this guy?”

“The Rag and Bone Man? Not much. He’s been mime-lord of II-4 since I joined the syndicate.”

“
Have you ever seen him?”

“Not once. Even by the Unnatural Assembly’s standards, he’s considered fairly reclusive. He and the Abbess have bad blood between them, though nobody knows why.” His voice was low. “You’re already too caught up in this, Paige. If these people had the guts to capture a Rephaite, they’ll have the guts to do the same to you. I know you’ll ignore me, but . . . don’t do anything stupid.”

I offered a tired smile. “As if I ever do.”

He clicked his tongue. His finger rubbed a spot just above his left eye in a soothing, circular motion I recognized. Migraines struck him once every few weeks, sometimes accompanied by visions, leaving him bedbound for days at a time. Jaxon always declared that a “headache” was nothing to gripe about, but Nick went to hell and back on those days.

“The thing I’m trying to understand,” he said, his face tight, “is how a syndicate mime-lord could know about the Rephaim. Has anyone ever escaped from a Bone Season before?”

My pulse thickened. “Two people. Twenty years ago.”

Out of all the prisoners, only two had escaped from the massacre that followed the rebellion. One had been a child; the other, the traitor who had told Nashira about the insurrection. She’d killed every human and tortured every Rephaite involved in it, including her blood-consort.

“Warden might know something,” I said. “I need some time with him.” When he gave me a look, I raised my eyebrows. “Nick, I was trapped with him for six months. Another day won’t kill me.”

“He won’t wake for a while. Come back to the den for a few hours. Jaxon’s been asking about you all day.”

“I’m covered in canal. He’ll notice.”

“I’ll keep him busy while you change.”

I glanced at Warden. “Give me a moment.”

His mouth thinned, but he didn’t argue.

As
soon as he was gone, I sat on the edge of the bed and lifted my hand to Warden’s coarse hair. His body was heavy with sleep, his face turned into the pillow. He didn’t make a sound, or move an inch. If anyone discovered him here, in this weakened state, he wouldn’t last a minute.