The Mime Order (52 page)

“Tempting though it is,” Warden said, “the Ranthen are waiting for me outside. They will want to speak with you before the scrimmage.” He flicked his gaze over my face. “On that note, you would do well to survive this trial, Paige Mahoney. For all our sakes.”

“I intend to.”

There was no smile on his mouth, but I could see it in his gaze, warm and lambent. I raised my hands to his back, so I could feel the slow rhythm of his breathing. Heat reached out from behind my ribs and trailed along my arms, right to my fingertips.

And I had a strange sense that I belonged. Not in the material sense, as I belonged to Jaxon, as I’d once belonged to the Rephaim. This was belonging of a different sort, as things that are alike belong with one another.

I
had never felt like this, and it scared the living daylights out of me.

“Did you sleep well?” he asked.

“Fine. Apart from the knife incident.” I took Nick’s jacket from the door. “Will the Ranthen know?”

“They may have their suspicions. Nothing more.”

Our auras were still pulling apart as he opened the door, letting in the chill wind from outside. I pulled on my boots and followed him from the chandlery, into a crisp fog. The Ranthen were waiting at the other end of Goodwin’s Court, gathered under the only streetlamp. At the sound of our footsteps, they turned in unison to look at us, and Pleione said, “How fares the human?”

“Great.” I raised an eyebrow. “Thanks for asking.”

“Not you. The boy.”

A Rephaite asking after an injured human. I never thought I’d see the day. “Zeke’s fine,” I said. “Warden kept an eye on him.”

The bones of Terebell Sheratan’s face stood out in the electric-blue light, casting shadows under her cheekbones. My fists tightened in my pockets.

“I hope,” she said, “that you slept well. We bring word that Situla Mesarthim, Nashira’s mercenary, has been sighted in this section of the citadel. I am sure you remember her.” I remembered Situla very well, a relative of Warden’s whose only resemblance to him was her physical appearance. “We must leave for our safe house in the East End to await your success in the scrimmage.”

“About that,” I said. “I have a favour to ask.”

“Explain,” Terebell said.

“The last four survivors of the Bone Season were captured by the mime-lord who had Warden. One of them has valuable information I need. Her name’s Ivy Jacob.”

“Thuban’s plaything.”

The word made me flinch. “He was her keeper,” I said. “Without
her,
there might still be voyants who doubt my ability to run the syndicate. The fugitives have been imprisoned in a night parlour somewhere in I-2. I don’t know where, but I know a way into the—”

“You
dare
to imply that we should fetch them for you,” Errai sneered. “We are not your thralls, to be ordered about at will.”

“You don’t scare me, Rephaite. You think I wasn’t beaten hard enough in the colony?” I wrenched down my shirt, showing him the brand. “You think I don’t remember this?”

“I do not think you remember it well enough.”

“Errai, peace.” To his right, Lucida held up a hand. “Arcturus, is this a rational course of action?”

Warden’s eyes were full of fire. “I believe so,” he said. “This Rag and Bone Man was able to capture and imprison me without a great deal of difficulty. He is ruthless, cruel and knowledgeable about the Rephaim. His ‘gray market’ must be stopped, lest he continue to mock us from the shadows.”

“What is the meaning of ‘gray market,’ dreamwalker?” Terebell’s patience sounded as if it was wearing thin.

“I don’t know,” I said. “But Ivy will.”

“You know for certain that this Ivy is imprisoned in the night parlor, then.”

“I didn’t see her, but I felt her dreamscape. I know she’s there.”

“You expect us to risk our lives,” Pleione said, “for a feeling.”

“Yes, Pleione, just like I risked my life when Warden asked me to help him with your rebellion, even though the first one crashed and burned,” I said coldly. Immediately I regretted saying it, but Warden didn’t react. “Everyone will be distracted on the night of the scrimmage. Win or lose, I need Ivy to talk.”

Terebell’s features were hard. “The Ranthen do not generally interfere in such things. The Mothallath belief was that we should never act against the natural events of the corporeal world,” she
said.
“We must not stop their deaths if they were ordained by the æther.”

“That’s ridiculous,” I said, appalled. “Nobody’s death is
ordained
.”

“So you say.”

“They fought to survive. They fought to get out of your colony. If you want me to get you an army, you have to get me Ivy.”

They didn’t speak for some time. I stared them out, shaking with anger. Terebell gave me a last look before she led them away down the alley.

“Was that a ‘yes’?” I said to Warden.

“I suppose it was not a ‘no.’ In any case, I will persuade them.”

“Warden”—I caught his arm—“I’m sorry for saying that. About the first rebellion.”

“The truth requires no apology.” The light in his eyes dwindled to a low, beating flame. “Good luck.”

The weight of his gaze made my skin prickle. That, and the stillness of our bodies. When I didn’t move, he touched his lips to my hair.

“I am no soothsayer, nor oracle,” Warden said to me, his voice a low rumble, “but I have every confidence in you.”

“You’re mad,” I said into his neck.

“Madness is a matter of perspective, little dreamer.”

The last I saw of him was his back disappearing into the fog. Somewhere in the citadel, a bell began to ring.

****

Jaxon Hall was locked into his office when we got back to the den, playing “Danse Macabre” so loudly we could hear it from the downstairs hallway. Eliza and I parted on the landing and tiptoed to our rooms. I waited for a bang on the wall, but there was nothing.

Trying not to make too much noise, I prepared myself for the
scrimmage.
I took a hot shower to loosen my muscles. Laid out the clothes Eliza had made for me. Sat on the bed and practiced possessing a spider that had strung a spangled web across my window. After two humans, a bird and a deer, such a small creature was easy to control. Inside its dreamscape I found a delicate maze of silk.

After five attempts, I was able to control the spider without abandoning my own body entirely. I left a tiny drop of perception in my dreamscape, just the barest shadow of awareness. Enough to keep my body upright for a few seconds while I scuttled along the windowsill, until I teetered off my feet and whacked my head against the nearest wall. Spewing profanities, I clapped the oxygen mask over my mouth and drew in shuddering breaths.

If I couldn’t do this at the scrimmage, I had no chance. Every time I jumped, my body would be vulnerable to attack. I’d be killed in the first few minutes. My injuries from Primrose Hill weren’t serious, but I needed a good night’s sleep under my belt for my dreamscape to recover. I switched off the lamp and curled up in my bed, listening to Jaxon’s record player. “A Bird in a Gilded Cage” drifted through the wall, rustling with static.

I didn’t know where I’d be the day after tomorrow. Certainly not here, in my little room at Seven Dials. I could be on the streets, a pariah and a traitor. I could be Underqueen, ruling the syndicate.

I could be in the æther.

Just beyond the window was a solitary dreamscape. I looked past my curtains, down into the courtyard, where Jaxon Hall sat alone under the red sky. He wore his lounging robe and trousers with polished shoes, and his cane lay on the bench beside him.

Our eyes met. He crooked a finger.

Outside, I joined him on the bench. His eyes were on the stars above our den. Their light was trapped in the crypts and furrows of his irises, so they seemed to sparkle with the knowledge of some private joke.

“
Hello, darling,” he said.

“Hi.” I gave him a sidelong look. “I thought you were calling a meeting?”

“I shall. Soon.” He clasped his hands. “Do your glad rags fit?”

“They’re beautiful.”

“They are. My medium has talent to rival half of London’s dressmakers.” Jaxon’s eyes were full of starlight. “Do you know that today is the anniversary of the day I made you mollisher?”

So it was. October the thirty-first. I hadn’t even thought about it.

“It was the very first time I let you do a job at street level, wasn’t it? Before that day you were the tea girl, the lowly researcher. And getting quite cross with it, too, I’d imagine.”

“Very.” I couldn’t help but smile. “I’d never met someone who drank so much tea.”

“I was testing your patience! Yes, it was when those dratted poltergeists were loose in I-4. Sarah Metyard and her daughter, the murderous milliners,” he recalled. “You and Dr. Nygård spent the best part of the morning tracking those two down. And what did I say to you, darling, when you came back with your prize for me to bind? I took you to the pillar and pointed out the sundial facing this side of Monmouth Street, and I said to you—”

“‘You see this, O my lovely? This is yours. This street, this path, is yours to walk,’” I finished.

It had been the best day of my life. Earning Jaxon Hall’s approval, along with the right to call myself his protégée, had filled me with such joy that I couldn’t have imagined a world without him in it.

“Precisely. Precisely that.” He paused. “I’ve never been much of a gambler; I never had much faith in chance, my dear. I know we have our differences, but we are the Seven Seals. Brought together across oceans and fault lines by the mysterious wiles of the æther. It wasn’t chance. It was fate. And we shall bring about a day of reckoning in London.”

With
that image in his mind, Jaxon closed his eyes and smiled. I craned my neck to look up at the stars, breathing in the thickness of the night. Roasted chestnuts, smoky coffee, and extinguished fires. It was the smell of fire and life and renewal. The smell of ash and death and ending.

“Yes,” I said.
Or a day of change
.

24

The Rose Ring

November 1, 2059

The clocks of London chimed eleven. Inside the Interchange building in II-4, every light had been extinguished. But beneath the brick warehouse, in the secret labyrinth of the Camden Catacombs, the fourth scrimmage in the history of the London syndicate was about to begin.

Jaxon and I arrived in the buck cab and disembarked in the yard. Participants traditionally displayed the colors of their auras, with the mollishers adopting their mime-lord’s hue, but Jaxon and I were haughtily monochrome (“Darling, I would sooner be caught waltzing with Didion Waite than dressed from head to toe in orange”).

My hair had been pinned with a fascinator, woven together from swan feathers and ribbon. My lips were black and my eyes painted with kohl, expertly applied by Eliza. Jaxon’s hair shone with oil, and his irises were blanched by white contacts, as were mine. On his head was a top hat with a white silk band around it. During the scrimmage, the matching outfits would show that we were a
mime-
lord and mollisher pair, permitted to fight together whenever we chose.

“Well.” Jaxon brushed down his lapels. “It seems the hour is upon us.”

The rest of the Seven Seals disembarked from their car, all in black and white. Twenty more specially selected voyants from I-4 were waiting, all supporting the White Binder’s claim to the crown. They kept a respectful distance from us, talking among themselves.

“We’re with you, Jax,” Nadine said.

“Absolutely.” Her brother’s brow was damp with sweat, but he smiled. “All the way.”

“You are too kind, my darlings.” Jaxon clapped his hands. “We’ve talked enough about this night. To battle, then. May the æther smile upon I-4.”

Together, the party walked down the steps to the door of the Camden Catacombs. The dog was nowhere to be seen, but the unreadable guard was there, dressed in black.

“What a show this will be,” Jaxon said against my ear. “The citadel will talk about it for decades, darling, you mark my words.”

His voice stippled my neck with gooseflesh. The guard looked us over. When she gave us a nod, we filed through the door in pairs.

As we walked down the winding steps, my ribcage seemed to grow smaller. I strained to look over my shoulder, but the exit was already out of sight. If there was one place I didn’t want to be going, it was back into the Rag and Bone Man’s lair, where manacles and chains hung from the walls; where people could be swallowed up, never to be found. If he had his way, I would never walk out of here alive. I took in deep breaths, but they weren’t reaching my lungs. Jaxon patted my hand.

“Don’t be nervous, my Paige. I have every intention of winning tonight.”

“I know.”

Inside
the Camden Catacombs, the tunnels were no longer decrepit. All the junk and rubble had been cleared, and in the place of broken bulbs there were strings of stained-glass lanterns, each the color of an aura.

The central vault looked nothing like it had when I’d last been here. Grand crimson drapes hung from every wall, turning the vast space into a theatre of war. A painting of Edward VII looked down on us all, holding up the sceptre of a king. Music was played by a line of whisperers: luxuriant, sepulchral soundscapes that played all kinds of havoc with the æther. Two hundred upholstered chairs had been placed near the entrance, some turned to face round tables, each of which was marked with a section number.