The Mask Falling

by Samantha Shannon

  “I’ll bear it in mind,” was all I said.

  ****

  We spent the next few days in the cellar, which doubled as a training room, complete with weights and a pull-up bar. Arcturus started us off with some light combat to ease me back into drills.

  It took great effort to meet his mock punches. I was graceless, my reactions slow. What had once been a dance of equals—my agility, his strength—was now painfully one-sided. He could outflank me so quickly I might as well have just sat on the floor.

  Dislocating was no easier. My gift had been suppressed while I was imprisoned, and now it shied away from me. It took several excruciating tries before I could peel my spirit from its seat in my dreamscape. I couldn’t imagine being able to take a flying leap from my body the way I had before.

  Arcturus did his best. Sometimes he would make me laugh with some archaic turn of phrase, and I could relax enough into the fight that it flowed. That only lasted for so long.

  It wasn’t just my inelegance that frustrated me. It was the sharp pain that shadowed each breath. It was never having enough breath. It was how often I had to call time for a rest. On top of that, Arcturus seemed reluctant to push me. When I started to cough during one session, he steered me back upstairs and set me up on the couch with a heat pad for the evening.

  He cared too much. If he wouldn’t push my limits, I would have to push them myself. In the small hours of that same night, I wrapped my hands and stole back to the cellar. If I rebuilt the strength in my body, my gift might return, too.

  A rack of weights stood in the corner. I made for the ones I had been able to handle before the scrimmage, hefted them into my hands, and lifted. My arms shook, but the tug in my muscles meant progress. I relished it.

  That was when my wrist folded. I had thought the sprain was healing. With a hiss, I dropped both weights, and they fell with a terrific clangor to the floor. Racked with coughs, I folded onto the mat and hunched over my hand.

  Silence filled the room to its corners. I drew my knees to my chest and rested my brow against them.

  “Paige.”

  Arcturus had appeared in the doorway. My face was hot as a stove, beaded with sweat.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  When I just shook my head, he came to sit beside me. I braced my wrist and flexed my fingers.

  “They broke me,” I said. “In that fucking basement.” The taste of salt filled my mouth. “I don’t know how to get back to being who I was before.”

  “You never can. That person is dead. So is the person you were yesterday,” Arcturus said. “Death is not an ending. It is only a change of seasons. Passage from one state to another. Your new form is fragile, but in time, it will grow strong. Be patient with yourself.”

  I managed a weary smile. “Patience isn’t always easy for those of us who won’t live forever.”

  “I would like you to live for as long as possible, Paige Mahoney.” Arcturus rose. “When Ducos returns, you should ask to see the medical officer.”

  With a reluctant nod, I took his proffered hand and stood. I felt like a fool for wanting to cry.

  We went back upstairs together and sat in the parlor, where Arcturus opened a bottle of red wine.

  “I’ll have one,” I said.

  “As you wish.” He took another glass from the cabinet. “I did not know you cared for wine.”

  “I can’t hold it to save my life,” I said ruefully, “but I’ll survive a splash.” I arched an eyebrow. “Can you . . . get hammered?”

  Arcturus cast me a look. “Hammered?”

  “Drunk. Battered. Ar meisce. In a state of alcohol-induced intoxication.”

  “Not to my knowledge.”

  “Pity.” I put my feet up on the couch. “I’d have proposed a drinking game.”

  “How does one make a game of drinking?”

  “Well, Nadine and I once watched the news and had a shot of absinthe every time someone said unnatural. We were absolutely locked.” I pulled the throw down over my legs. “I always meant to ask you.”

  “Yes?”

  “When you first trained with me, were you just running on instinct?”

  Arcturus filled the first glass.

  “In part,” he said. “It is easier now, since I can sense your spirit through the cord.” He poured again. “However, I based my initial approach on a dreamwalker I knew before you.”

  I stilled. ‘What?’

  “Did you never wonder how Nashira was so well-informed about dreamwalking?” He slotted the cork back into the bottle. “You are the second of your kind to slip between her fingers.”

  This was unexpected. Even Jaxon, self-professed authority on clairvoyance, had never found living proof of other dreamwalkers. I had come to accept that my gift was a one-off.

  Yet it did make perfect sense for there to have been someone else. Nashira had been consumed by her desire to dreamwalk long before I arrived in the colony. That obsession had to have grown from a seed.

  “Emma Orson,” Arcturus said, seeing my face. “She was captured after the third Bone Season and brought straight to the colony.” He held out a glass. “In secret, we Ranthen contrived her escape. It was too dangerous to have such a powerful clairvoyant near Nashira.”

  Gaze fixed on him, I took the glass. “You learned about dreamwalking through her.”

  “Enough. Terebell and I were only able to speak to her twice. She did not call herself a dreamwalker, of course.”

  Because Jaxon had coined the term. “What happened to her?” I pressed. “After you let her escape.”

  “I have one theory.”

  I waited. Arcturus sank onto the couch and rested his glass of wine on its arm.

  “When she discovered that Emma had escaped,” he said, “Nashira sent a red-jacket to find her. Not long after, several women were brutally murdered in Whitechapel.”

  My back prickled. “The Ripper.”

  A stiff nod. “The final woman was identified as Marie Kelly. I discovered later that she had been known on the streets by several other names—one of which was Fair Emma.”

  “You think Marie was Emma.”

  “Or it was a case of mistaken identity. Either way, to my knowledge, Emma was never seen again.”

  I had seen photographs of that crime scene. Tinkers sold copies on the black market.

  “Nashira must have been fuming.” I tried to blot the picture from my mind. “I always wondered how she got the Ripper. Your theory would solve it. He returned to Sheol I, only for her to kill him and bind his spirit—either to punish him for not finding Emma, or for her murder.”

  “Yes,” Arcturus said. “As you know, Nashira turned the bloodshed to her advantage. She had been waiting for the right chance to bring down the monarchy. As soon as Prince Edward was crowned, she sprang her trap, and he was forever known as the Bloody King.”

  She had framed him for the murders, painting him as the bringer of unnaturalness, so Scion could rise in his place. If Arcturus was right, it had started with a dreamwalker.

  “You are the only dreamwalker I have met since,” he said.

  “No wonder.” I drained my glass. “Nashira is never going to stop hunting me, is she?”

  “No.”

  At least he didn’t sugarcoat the truth. I would return the favor.

  “Arcturus, I need you to push me harder in training.” I sought his gaze. “We agreed to always do whatever was necessary. Not to let anything get in the way.”

  As I spoke, I remembered that night in the dark, when I had crushed whatever had been flowering between us. I had done it so we would never put each other above the revolution.

  I can’t afford to feel the way I do when I’m with you.

  Silence fell between us, thick and deep. Arcturus drank before he said, “As you wish.”

  “Okay.” I got up. “If you don’t mind, I want us to only speak in French for a while. I imagine that’s what Frère uses in private.”

  “A sound
idea,” Arcturus said. “Bonne nuit, petite rêveuse.”

  “Bonne nuit.”

  ****

  As February loomed, Arcturus met me in the training room each day, and he helped me draw my spirit out. It was hard work. I responded best to danger, and there was none in the apartment. In the end, I was forced to use my imagination to ignite my gift.

  I pictured the waterboard. I pictured my friends gunned down by faceless soldiers. I pictured the massacre I had witnessed as a child. At last, with supreme effort, I dislocated and concentrated the ensuing pressure on Arcturus. My nose bled, but it was a start.

  When I wasn’t in the training room, I was memorizing everything there was to know about Frère from the documents Ducos had given me.

  Luce Isabella Frère had been born in the Scion Citadel of Toulouse, the eldest of the three daughters of the Minister of the Exchequer. After her parents had separated, she and the middle sister had moved with their mother to Marseille.

  Since childhood, Frère had fostered ambitions of becoming Grand Raconteur, and she had earned a first-class degree in Scion History with that end in mind. At twenty-three, she had met the future Grand Inquisitor of France at a dinner party in Grenoble. They were engaged in 2049, the same year he became Minister for Justice, and had married five months later. Now they were two sides of a coin, rarely seen apart, and had three children—Onésime, Mylène, and Jean-Michel—with a fourth on the way. Frère had formally announced her pregnancy on the fourteenth of December, when she was three months along.

  The dossier on Frère included a video file of her public appearances. I watched for any habits, took note of her bearing, listened to her feathery laugh. Frère crossed her legs at the ankles when she sat and only smiled with the left side of her mouth. When pregnant, she often placed a hand on her stomach. Years in the capital had eroded her southern accent, but occasional words lured it out. I took note of those words.

  Like her spouse, Frère was ardent in her hatred of clairvoyants. When England had unveiled NiteKind—a form of painless execution for voyants—she had been its fiercest opponent, arguing that brutality was essential to keep unnaturals in line. NiteKind had never made it to France. She had also represented Ménard at many of the so-called blood lotteries, where prisoners in the Grande Bastille were selected at random for execution.

  The main guillotine stood in the Place de Grève. I found one recording of a triple execution, where Frère could be seen in the witness stands, a newborn Jean-Michel in her arms, while the voyants waited to die. The corner of her mouth lifted when one lost control of his bowels.

  All this served as a reminder that Frère was the enemy, a disciple of the anchor who craved the extinction of clairvoyants. I would still treat her body with as much respect as I could afford it, and not abuse my power any more than necessary. She had her morals. I had mine.

  There was one more thing to consider. To guard against my ability to infiltrate its buildings, Scion had taught some of its personnel to recognize the signs of possession. I had learned that the hard way in Manchester. There was no telling who in the Hôtel Garuche—if anyone—had been informed I was still alive. Who might be able to catch me out. This possession had to be flawless.

  ****

  Early one morning, Arcturus found me chewing oatmeal in the kitchen, eyes puffy. My soul-destroying cough had kept me up all night again. It seemed as if it was getting worse, not better.

  “Possess me,” he said, in French. It was all we spoke now.

  I finished my mouthful of oatmeal. “It’s half past five.”

  “We do not have long until February. You have regained your ability to dislocate your spirit. Now you need to dreamwalk.”

  He had kept his promise to push me. I abandoned my half-eaten meal and followed him.

  In the cellar, we faced one another on the flagstones.

  “To kill with your spirit, you must be fast and firm, as you know,” Arcturus said. “For a silent possession, however, you should glide into the dreamscape. The gentler you are, the smaller the chance that your host will bleed.”

  “It’s hard to breach the dreamscape without some force. If I’m too slow, Frère will notice the pressure.”

  “Then be quick. Quick, but light-handed. In any case, Frère is amaurotic. She will have few defenses.”

  His own defenses were lowering. “Maybe we can skip all this,” I said, thinking aloud. “You and I combined our gifts to steal a memory from Vance. Could we do that to Frère?”“Not without alerting her.”“She might not realize what was happening.”“And if she does?” he said, even-toned. “If Vance warned anyone of what we can do?”He had a point. In this case, possession might carry less risk. I weighed up whether to take it slow, or to be ruthless.

  “Brace yourself,” I said.

  I cast off all restraints and jumped.

  It was agony. Red-hot agony. A moment later, I was too far away to feel it. I slipped into his dreamscape and walked past the red drapes that hung there, my fingers luminous against them. They lit an otherwise dark place. In his mind, I glowed like a candle.

  Arcturus waited for me in the centre of his dreamscape. Seeing me approach, he stepped aside so I could take control. I was careful not to make contact with him as we switched places.

  Possessing him was far harder than taking hold of a human. I fought to find purchase, to fill him—but little by little, my host accepted me, and the training room shivered into relief.

  Arcturus was sighted. Three ghosts appeared as glowing threads in front of him. I had a moment to marvel before my senses were blown open, and I almost crashed to my knees. His knees.

  I had never experienced the æther like this. Not only could I see its inhabitants, but I could feel it in a way I had never imagined was possible. He carried it within him, in his very blood. In my own dreamscape, I was a bubble in black water—aware of the æther, in touch with it, yet shielded from it, too. Though I was voyant, I was human, and flesh muffled the æther. Sarx conducted it.

  The initial shock began to fade. When I willed his fingers to move, they rewarded me by flinching.

  Very good.

  “Wait, how are you talk—?” I started when his voice rolled out. “Oh, wow. I forgot I was going to sound like you.”

  I am sorry if my voice disappoints you.

  “It’s a beautiful voice. I’m just feeling the pressure to use fancy vocabulary,” I said. “At least you sound less of a Sasanach now.” My accent lilted up his words. “Seriously, though, you should be out of action. Why can I hear you?”

  Another side effect of the golden cord, no doubt.

  “Great. A body with a back seat driver.”

  If you would prefer silence . . .

  “No, no. It’s your body. Bloody hell, your voice is deep,” I ground out. “It’s almost tiring to have a voice this deep.” I squared his shoulders. “I thought I was sensitive to the æther, but this is something else. It’s as if you exist on both planes.”

  Not restfully. To be a creature of the in-between is to not belong on either side.

  As he said it, I felt the strain in his aura. I had the distinct impression that what I was feeling—the swallowing vastness of existence—still paled in comparison to what I would have felt if his aura had worked the way it once had, before the Rephaim had needed to feed on clairvoyants. Where mine linked me smoothly to the æther, something hindered his.

  “It’s like hunger,” I said. “In your aura.”

  A mercy for you. If my aura was at its full strength, I imagine this experience would have shattered your sanity by now.

  I didn’t doubt him. Humans were not supposed to comprehend immortality.

  My body stood nearby, surrounded by scarlet radiance. He had taught me how to keep it breathing even while I possessed someone else, but it took concentration. On the mission, at least, I would have a ventilator, allowing me to leave altogether and focus on Frère.

  “I’ve always thought of it as feeding when you
use clairvoyant auras. Like you’re parasites. But that’s not quite right,” I said, thinking aloud. “You’re not consuming anything, are you?”

  Go on.

  “Our auras are like solder. They seal the rift between yours and the æther. You’re not feeding. You’re . . . bridging.”

  It exhausts the clairvoyant if they try to fight it. In that sense, we do drain you. I looked down at his scar-riven hands. Walk to the mirror.

  Easier said than done. He was so much larger than me, his limbs so much longer. I moved like an automaton. Even without trying, I knew how easy it would be to break anything I touched—his body coursed with tremendous strength. I almost envied him, moving through the world with bones too solid to be broken and a frame too robust to be thrown to the ground.

  I almost envied him. Not quite. Though Rephaim were intrinsically strong, a single red flower could strip their might away. Then there was the pain in his back. It gnawed at him, deep and constant, as if someone had beaten him with a mace.

  You feel them.

  Jaxon was responsible. It was his betrayal of the Ranthen that had led to this punishment.

  Do not pity me, little dreamer, Arcturus said. I have lived with those scars for twenty years.

  “I don’t pity you, but I am sorry.”

  Your sympathy is noted.

  I finally reached the mirror. Just comfortable enough to be fascinated, I leaned close to see how my presence affected his face. All that gave me away was the stillness of his eyes. Usually they were living flames—their light would brighten and flicker and dim in ways I could occasionally interpret. Now that light was flat.

  “I’m tempted to indulge in some real vulgarity, just so I can hear you swear,” I mused.

  I trust that you are above such low humor.

  “You think too much of me.”

  Never. For your first task, Arcturus said, raise my hand. And try not to make it look as if a string is pulling it.

  7

  Rootless

  For the last few days of the month, he taught me how to move him as I moved myself. Possessing him was always a challenge—it was hard to keep my foothold in his dreamscape—but I kept at it. If I could do this, Frère would be easier to grasp.