The Mime Order (60 page)

After a while, which could have been an hour or a minute, a silhouette emerged from the stage curtains. I tensed, reaching for a knife that wasn’t there, but it was Warden who came into the light of the kerosene lamp.

“Good evening, Underqueen,” he said, eyes burning.

I sank back into the coat. “Not feeling that regal.”

As soon as I spoke, a line of fire jumped from my jaw to my ear.

“I must confess,” Warden said, “that you do not look particularly majestic at this time. Nonetheless, you are Underqueen of the Mime Order.” He sat down beside me and clasped his hands. “An interesting name.”

“What time is it?” I touched my hand to the side of my face. “Are you all right?”

“Bullets do no lasting harm to Rephaim. It has been two hours since the scrimmage ended,” he said. “Dr. Nygård will not be pleased that you are awake.”

“Let’s not tell him, then.” With difficulty, I drank from the canteen of water he handed me. It tasted of blood. “Tell me you have amaranth.”

“Sadly not. Dr. Nygård has gone to Seven Dials to collect your possessions, and I quote, ‘before Jaxon can sell them.’ They plan to join Ognena Maria and search the Abbess’s parlor for any evidence of the Rag and Bone Man’s involvement.”

Nick had good sense, and the foresight I should have expected from an oracle. “They won’t find anything,” I said. “The Abbess was just a vessel for his poltergeist. He’ll be back.”

“And you will be ready.”

I looked up at him. “It was
that
poltergeist, wasn’t it?”

“Yes.” His hands clasped a little more tightly. “An old enemy.”

“
Then how could the Abbess have controlled it?”

“That creature obeys Nashira alone. She would have had to command it to comply with the orders of another.”

The implication settled over me. That the gray market might not be between the syndicate and Scion. That it might be a direct pipeline to the Rephaim. The world was suddenly too big for the cramped little cup of pain inside my skull, and I closed my eyes to block it out. I could think about this when I was clear-headed. If I thought about it now, I’d crack.

I risked a glance into the antique mirror propped against the nearest wall, framed with gilt. My face looked awful—grazes and bruises, swollen lip—but the wound along my jaw was the worst by far, worse than anything Jaxon had left. Black darts shot through a red and swollen cut.

“It was a clean wound,” Warden said. “It may not scar.”

I found I didn’t care either way. If this came to war, scars of all kinds were on the horizon.

Farther down the aisle, three sleeping shapes were curled under blankets. Nell, Felix, and Jos, huddled together, the way people had slept in the Rookery to ward off the cold. “They were whitewashed,” Warden said. “They remember nothing of what happened at the parlor.”

“No chance of knowing how the Rag and Bone Man got them to change the pamphlet, then.” I looked past them. Ivy sat on the stage, her thin arms bare, staring up at the ceiling. “How is she?”

Warden looked at her, too. “The bullet had been extracted. Dr. Nygård said that the true pain is in her heart.”

“Cutmouth.” I sighed, making my ribs ache. “I know she’s been through hell, but I don’t know if I can forgive her for what she did.”

“You ought not to be hard on her for acting out of fear.”

It was true. Ivy might have sent countless people to the penal colony, but adding to her guilt would never undo her actions. I took another sip from the canteen. “Where are the Ranthen?”

“
They have retreated to a safe house close to the Old Nichol. They leave to spread the word of your victory tomorrow.” He paused. “Several voyants were whispering that you are a . . . thaumaturge. They can see no other explanation for how you withstood the poltergeist.”

Jaxon had used that word for me before, always in jest. It was whispered by the handful of voyants that worshipped what they called the
zeitgeist
, the spirit that had supposedly created the æther. The faithful didn’t use
thaumaturge
lightly. It referred to someone touched by the zeitgeist itself, someone with unprecedented mastery of the æther’s secrets.

“They don’t know about this.” I picked open the top of my shirt. The pendant was cool, but the vein-like marks still spread out from beneath it. “This is the thaumaturge.”

“And how well it suits you.”

“I don’t want them to believe I’m some sort of miracle-worker, Warden. My achievement here is wearing a necklace.”

“You are free to correct them later. For now, there is no harm in letting them talk. Your job is to heal.”

We sat in silence for a while, with the lantern between us. How far we’d come in the space of a few weeks. “I have a question for you,” Warden said. “If I may.”

I drank again. “If it won’t make my head hurt.”

“Hm.” He paused. “When Jaxon employed you, he seemed willing to pay you any sum of money you desired for your services. Yet you cannot be the wealthy mollisher I once believed you to be, else you would not have been forced to solicit the Ranthen’s patronage. What did you do with your contract money?”

I’d wondered when he might ask me that.

“There was no money. Jaxon doesn’t even have a bank account,” I said. “All his money comes from our work and goes into a little jewel-box in his office to be shared between us. That’s our payment. After that, I don’t know where it goes.”

“
Then why continue to work for him?” He watched me. “He lied to you.”

A husk of laughter came out of me. “Because I was naïve enough to be loyal to Jaxon Hall.”

“That was not naïveté, Paige. You cared enough for Jaxon to continue working for him. You understood that he was necessary for your survival.” His gloved hand lifted my chin. “You will not need Terebell’s money forever. In the end, loyalty will outweigh greed. When they have hope.”

“Isn’t hope just another kind of naïveté?”

“Hope is the lifeblood of revolution. Without it, we are nothing but ash, waiting for the wind to take us.”

I wished I could believe it. I
had
to believe it—that hope alone would be enough to get us through this. But hope couldn’t control a syndicate. Hope wouldn’t bring down the Westminster Archon, which had stood strong for two hundred years. It wouldn’t destroy the creatures inside it, who had watched the world for far longer than that.

Warden dimmed the kerosene lamp. “You ought to rest,” he said. “You have a long reign ahead of you, Black Moth.”

Across the hall, Ivy was still sitting on the stage, motionless. “I need to talk to her first,” I said.

“I will find Nick’s medical kit. He left another dose of scimor-phine for you.”

He made to stand, but I touched his arm, keeping him there. Wordlessly, I leaned into him, so my brow rested against his. Gentle blue fire started in my dreamscape, illuminating it. We stayed like that for a long time, silent and still, Rephaite and human. I could have stayed like that for hours, just breathing him in.

“Warden,” I said, so quietly he had to lean closer to hear me, “I don’t—I don’t know if . . .”

Fire played in his eyes. “You are under no obligation to decide tonight.” After a moment, his lips grazed my forehead. “Go.”

Seeing
that he understood lifted a weight from my shoulders. I was a different person now than I’d been before the scrimmage, still in metamorphosis, uncertain of who I might become tomorrow. But I sensed that whatever I decided, he would still be with me. On a whim, I kissed his cheek. He gathered me to his chest, his arms crossed tightly over my back.

“Go,” he repeated, softer.

Leaving him to find Nick’s case, I got myself across the auditorium and on to the stage. Pains shot through me, but the medicine held some of it at bay. Ivy didn’t move when I sat beside her.

“It was brave of you to tell the truth.”

Her raw hands gripped the edge of the stage. On her right upper arm was the twisted mess of scar tissue where her tattoo had once been, a shock of pink and scarlet that plowed through the undamaged skin.

“Brave,” she repeated, as though it were a word she didn’t know. “I’m a yellow-jacket.”

A code understood only by those who had lived through the first nightmare. Her fingernails dug into the burnt flesh.

“I used to beg Thuban to kill me, you know.” She shook her head. “When I heard about your plan to break out of there, I considered not getting on the train. I had no right to it, after what I’d done. And I was so sure Chelsea had betrayed me.”

“You thought she told Rags it was you who reported him?”

“That’s what I thought until I found her. After you told me she was looking for me, I bribed the doorman outside Jacob’s Island. She told me she’d passed my report to Hector and let slip that it was me. And then he told Rags.” There was nothing left in her voice but grief. “She always tried to see the best in Hector. Always trusted him. It killed her, in the end. Wanting a better life than what we had as kids in that slum. I left her and went back to Agatha, thinking she’d be safe . . .”

Tears
choked her. “You got on the train, Ivy,” I said. “You must have hoped you could still have that life.”

“I got on the train because I’m too much of a coward to die.” A smile trembled on her lips. “Weird, isn’t it? Even though we’re voyant, even though we know there’s something more, we’re still afraid to die.”

I shook my head. “We don’t know what waits in the last light. Even dreamwalkers don’t know that.” Ivy chewed on her knuckles, still stroking her scar. “When the Unnatural Assembly gets back on its feet, you’ll be given a fair hearing and a trial by jury. And I promise you this: the Rag and Bone Man will be charged for his crimes.”

Her face twitched. “That’s all I can ask. Justice.” She finally met my gaze. “I want to see his face, Paige. Before the end.”

“I’d be curious to see it myself.” Every muscle ached as I pushed myself off the stage. “Chelsea died in my arms. Do you know what she said to tell you?” Silence from behind me. “That you were everything to her, and that you had to make it right.” I walked away. “So make it right.”

Still Ivy didn’t move or speak. When I got back to the kerosene lamp, I lay down on the coat and rested my hand on the crown—the symbol of the syndicate, the weapon I would use to bring down Scion.

Warden closed my hand around the syringe. I pushed it into my hip and pressed down on the plunger.

****

With the help of scimorphine and the steady presence of Warden’s aura, I slipped into a fitful doze. It didn’t last long. As the first light of dawn crept into the hall, a cool hand shook me back to life.

“I’m sorry, sweetheart.” It was Nick, and he looked shattered. “You need to see this. Now.”

27

The Mutual Friend

Danica’s Scion-made laptop sat on the floor in front of me, a clear glass screen with a delicate silver keypad. I pushed my weight on to my elbow, unsteady.

Scimorphine was still slithering through my bloodstream. “What is it?”

Nobody answered. I rubbed my temple, trying to focus. Nick, Eliza and Danica were all around me, surrounded by bags and suitcases. They must have just returned from Seven Dials. Behind me, Warden was leaning toward the screen, his eyes scorching in the gloom.

“It started about half an hour ago,” Eliza said. “It’s been on repeat since then. All over the citadel.”

My gaze focused on the screen.

The broadcast was silent, with no commentary from ScionEye, though its symbol rotated at the corner of the screen. A line of small text gave the camera’s location as I Cohort, Section 5, in the district of Lychgate Hill. This was the inner courtyard of Old Paul’s, where unnaturals were traditionally executed. The condemned stood
alongside
each other on a long scaffold, each an arm’s length apart from the next, their bare feet planted on scarlet trapdoors. Their faces had been left uncovered.

A tight knot worked its way up my throat. I recognised the woman in the middle. Lotte, one of the last Bone Season survivors, dressed in the black shift of a convicted unnatural. A deep cut crossed her forehead. Her hair was bound in a knot at the side of her neck, which was stippled with fresh bruises, like her forearms. I pressed a finger to the screen, zooming in on them. Charles was on her right, bruised and bleeding—Charles, who had guided other voyants to the train—and on her left was Ella, whose shift was caked with dry vomit.

“Paige.” I heard Warden say it, but I couldn’t take my eyes off the screen. His voice was far, far away, somewhere I wasn’t. “You must not obey the summons. This is a message to you, and you alone. To lure you out of hiding.”

As if to confirm it, the screen switched to a white background. The anchor kept rotating in the corner. A mocking little spinning-top.

PAIGE EVA MAHONEY, SURRENDER YOURSELF TO THE CUSTODY OF THE ARCHON. YOU HAVE ONE HOUR.

The broadcast returned a moment later, panning over the whole courtyard. I said, “You say this started half an hour ago?”

Eliza exchanged a glance with Nick before she nodded. “We got here as fast as we could.”