They weren’t close. Their father was.
I lowered myself down a few more steps. When I felt a draft, I switched my flashlight on and cupped my hand around the beam. There was an uneven opening to my right, just above my head.
The staircase continued to the ground floor. I should keep going, try to get to Kornephoros before my guards returned to the attic —but Ménard was so close, and the prospect of eavesdropping on him was too much of a temptation. I had come here to spy, after all. Before I could think better of it, I wedged my head and shoulders into the opening and squirmed through. With the flashlight clamped between my teeth, I used my hands to pull myself forwards until I could feel colder air above me. I surfaced in a tight passage and killed the light again.
Icy air leaked under my collar. I was in the hollow space behind a lath-and-plaster wall. Quiet as a spider, I moved along on my stomach, breath setting like honey.
Small spaces, I could handle. Not the dark. I swallowed and pressed on, even as dust scored my throat.
A voice thrummed nearby, to my left. That was Ménard—and he was with someone who seemed to have no dreamscape. When I could go no farther, I stopped and pressed my ear to the wall.
“—four days ago, Rackham,” Ménard was saying. “I am not accustomed to waiting upon the pleasure of unnaturals.”
I stayed absolutely still.
“Show me the names.” After a long silence, Ménard spoke again, still in English. “This is extortion. Do you think me a fool, that I would pay these prices?”
“I would think you a wise man, Inquisitor Ménard,” said his guest. “Consider it a form of insurance.”
All feeling drained from my face. I knew that metallic voice, distorted by a mouthpiece. I had heard it only once—just before the scrimmage—but I could never forget.
I freed my arm from where it was pinned to my side, flexed the numbness from my fingers, and ran them along the wall, looking for anything that might help me see through it. They soon caught on a break in the laths. There was a hole in the plaster beyond, letting in a needle-thin ray of light. I peered through it.
What I saw was the Salon Doré.
Ménard stood behind his desk, pristine in a white shirt and gold cufflinks. His guest was in front of it, back turned to me. Instead of the cap and cloth that had shrouded him in London, he wore a helmet-like contraption to conceal his identity. The dirty greatcoat was still in place. He stood with his gloved hands clasped behind him, steel-capped boots planted apart, the soles crusted with mud.
The Rag and Bone Man. He was here. And Ménard had just called him by a name.
Rackham. Find Rackham.
A dying Scion official had given me that name as I fled the first colony. Rackham, the mysterious figure who had worked alongside Jaxon and Hector to sell voyants to the Rephaim.
Rackham. I shaped it with my lips. Rag and Bone Man.
“The Grand Overseer empathizes with your situation, Inquisitor Ménard. To be doubted by the Suzerain is an undesirable state to be in,” the Rag and Bone Man said. When Ménard glanced up, I flinched away from the spyhole, even though he couldn’t possibly see me. “These prices are high, yes. Reflective of their value. The potential gains, for you, are enormous.”
I listened, committing his every word to memory.
“Nashira Sargas wants these anormaux very much. Sponsor their journey to her,” the voice went on, “and I assure you that your standing with the Rephaim will dramatically improve.”
I stole another glance at the Rag and Bone Man. This was the specter who had tried to have me killed when I got too close to the truth. The man who had done the dirty work. He had escaped justice for his crimes in England—I was damned if I was leaving Paris until he was dead.
Ménard placed his hands on the desk. He was looking down at something, but I was too low to see what. The candlelight hollowed out his eyes.
“I know this name. Ignace Fall,” he said. “Le Vieux Orphelin.”
“Yes.”
My ears pricked. The missing grand duc.
“If you truly have him, that price is worth paying.” Ménard breathed in through his nose. “We became . . . acquainted when I served the anchor in Lyon. He has been a thorn in my side ever since.”
“I make it my business to strip away thorns.”
“How did you find him?”
“He discovered my arrangement with the other two grands ducs and was planning to expose it. They offered him to the gray market.”
Arcturus had been right. Le Latronpuche and La Reine des Thunes had sold their fellow leader to silence him.
“Ignace Fall is mine. He has eluded me too many times, mocked me from the shadows,” Ménard said softly. “Twelve years I have waited to see his blood on the guillotine, and I will not have that pleasure stolen from me by a scum-sucking Rephaite. I want him for myself. Arrange it, Monsieur Rackham.”
“That is no longer possible, Grand Inquisitor. He has already been transported to Sheol II.”
“I will pay you what you gave the grands ducs for him,” Ménard said, “five times over.”
There was a long silence. An itch in my throat warned me of an impending cough.
“Since your offer is so generous,” the Rag and Bone Man concluded, “I will put it to the Grand Overseer. It may take a number of weeks to finalize the transaction.”
“I want the cockroaches he calls lieutenants, too. His so-called perdues,” Ménard almost spat. “Le Prince Creux. Renelde du Linceul. La Tarasque. All of them.”
“The hunt for them has already begun. If you wish, they can all be yours. For a price.”
At this point, the Rag and Bone Man stepped closer to Ménard, who stiffened. No doubt the stench off that coat was eye-watering.
“Grand Inquisitor,” he said, “will you accept my offer, and sponsor these unnaturals on their journey to redemption?”
Ménard looked back down at the desk.
“To reassure the Suzerain of my allegiance, you will tell her that I give these anormaux to her as tokens of my loyalty,” he finally said. “Once this transaction is complete, however, you will not extort another penny from me.”
“It is not extortion we trade in. It is opportunity.” The Rag and Bone Man extended a hand. “Sign beside the names, if you will. Your official signature.”
With a starched expression, Ménard took a pen from his desk. I pressed my eyes shut, willing my breath to stop scuffing my throat. The air in this hollow was smoky with dust.
“Minister Auclair will arrange your payment in the morning,” Ménard said. “Is there something else?”
“Paige Mahoney.”
The sound of my own name made me inhale, and the spark in my throat burned hotter. My whole torso bucked with the effort of holding it in.
“Not only is she in Paris, but she is aware of my presence here,” the Rag and Bone Man said. I clamped my sleeve to my lips. “For the sake of peace in the empire, she must be muzzled.”
The bastard grands ducs had ratted me out. It was no surprise.
“If you find her,” the Rag and Bone Man went on, “alert me at once, so I may deliver her to the Grand Overseer. He will reimburse you—generously—for your efforts.”
“There has been no sign of Mahoney,” Ménard said, sounding bored. “Nonetheless, we remain vigilant.” He was a good liar. “Is that all?”
For a moment, there was only the sound of slow breathing, magnified by the helmet.
“I remind you,” the Rag and Bone Man said, “that if you should discover Paige Mahoney’s whereabouts and withhold that information from the Grand Overseer, there will be serious consequences. Those consequences may touch Madelle Frère. And your children.”
At that, Ménard raised his head. His face gave me a chill. For the first time, I could see the killer under his façade.
“Threaten my family again,” he said, “and I will deal out consequences of my own.” His eyes were two blank spaces. “You are an abomination. An af
front to nature. You stand here because I allow it. You breathe in my presence because I deem it acceptable. And I no longer do.”
The two men stared at each other.
“My ledger,” the Rag and Bone Man said. “If you please.”
“Not yet. One of your pawns may collect it tomorrow. In the meantime, it will make for a thought-provoking read. I would be very interested to see how wealthy you have all become . . . from a trade I sincerely doubt the Suzerain ever formally sanctioned.”
After a terrible silence, the Rag and Bone Man turned and walked with a heavy gait toward the door. At last, I could hold it in no longer. A tiny cough jolted my chest.
He stopped dead. So did my heart. I could feel his cloaked aura, but he should not be close enough to sense mine. He looked toward Ménard, who was still. Then he looked toward my hiding place.
A moment that lasted a lifetime. Finally, he trudged from the room. Ménard stayed where he was for a time, looking at whatever was on his desk, before he straightened his tie and left the Salon Doré, drawing the door shut behind him. I heard the lock activate and sensed him walk away.
As soon as he was out of earshot, I moved. This was my chance.
I pushed at the surface above my head. No give. Instead, I dug my fingers between the laths and pried at one until it broke. A splinter nipped my thumb. Throwing caution to the wind, I writhed into a different position and kicked at the wall, over and over, snapping the laths, crumbling the layer of plaster beyond. I scrambled through the gap, onto the red carpet of the Salon Doré, where I gave rein to the coughs that had been bursting to come out.
I rose and eyed the gaping hole I had made in the wall. This break-in needed to be worth the risk.
Cade had been right. Even in his own study, Ménard was cautious. All that lay on the desk was a sheet of letterhead paper, a gold fountain pen, and a leather-bound ledger with crinkled pages. I hefted the ledger open.
I knew immediately what this was. This was a list of everyone the gray marketeers had caught for the last two Bone Seasons, penned in a crabbed hand. People I knew and had known leapt out at me, as if their names were limned in gold.
The gray market had provided just over a quarter of the prisoners to the Rephaim that year. As well as voyant types and the places and dates of arrest, a sponsor—whichever evil bastard had procured us for the market—was also recorded. Their names seemed to be signed in their own hands, with a fingerprint beside each one. As well as a record, this was insurance, meant to stop the traffickers from betraying the ring.
I already knew mine was Hector Grinslathe. When I saw how much coin my arrest had earned him, I stared at the figure until it blurred. There was my value to Scion, in cold sterling. Even though I had seen the glister of his intestines, his organs dumped on a blood-soaked floor, all I wanted, in that moment, was for Hector Grinslathe to die again.
He could never have spent so much money. I was asking myself why he would have entered the sum in the ledger at all—he had sold me behind the other marketeers’ backs—when I noticed the tiny stains beside his signature, which was rickety. He had signed this just before his death.
Like a confession.
I turned to the next page, which recorded the voyants who had been abducted for the twenty-first Bone Season. There, at the top of a list of ten, were three names I knew, as well as the one Ménard had mentioned.
Nadine and Zeke. They were alive. So was Michael, who had been missing for months. And there was P. Waite—Le Latronpuche, brother of Didion Waite. He had sold Le Vieux Orphelin.
Arcturus had wondered how the gray market could still be turning a profit. I was beginning to understand.
Jaxon Hall was laundering us.
You soulless reptile.
A dreamscape was heading for the study. I pressed down the strangling rage and grabbed the ledger. It was too important to leave, hard evidence of the traffickers’ crimes. Holding it to my chest, I kicked the crumbled plaster into a corner, then released one of the curtains from its sash and drew it behind me as I crawled back into the false wall, covering the hole I had made.
I edged back to the staircase. At the bottom, I found myself in another passage and pulled my elbows in to stop them being skinned. When I reached the end, I felt an ill-fitting panel, pressed back into place by small hands, and moved it aside. It took a moment to see through the gloom.
A greenhouse-like ceiling let a small amount of light into the Winter Garden. I slid out of the wall, replaced the panel, and ran through an arched doorway, my gift keeping me alert to dangers. As I slipped into the next corridor, I shoved the ledger into my jacket and secured it with the utility belt.
Snow rushed against the windows. An attendant rounded the corner with a tray. I hid behind a pair of curtains until she passed, then ran out again, my sock-clad feet quiet on the carpet. I ducked under a desk to avoid a pair of Vigiles, and then, at last, I reached the cellar door and used the key I had stolen from Cade. Heart pounding, I locked the door behind me and lit my way down with the flashlight from the wall.
Kornephoros wore his chains like jewels. The flowers woven through the links constricted his aura, keeping him weak. When he saw me, his eyes ignited, still red as a sunset. Keeping well out of reach, I took a seat in front of him and set the flashlight down on the floor.
“It must be past your bedtime,” Kornephoros said, satin soft. “To what do I owe this visit?”
“I’m here to make you an offer.”
“I do not trade with your kind.”
“Why?”
“If a Rephaite breaks a true oath, they must live with the ramifications for eternity. They will be known forever as a liar, a backstabber. Humans have no understanding of consequence. A broken oath is nothing to you. You die too quickly to plumb the depths of guilt.”
“Other Rephaim have made deals with me.”
“Other Rephaim were fools.” He observed me like a hunter. “Does Fitzours know you are here?”
“No.”
“So these are secret dealings.” His voice was lazy. “I knew you would return. My suffering troubles you, even though you believe me to be allied with Nashira.” He leaned toward me as much as his chains would allow. “I trust you, then, with the truth. I am no servant of the Suzerain. I am Ranthen.”
“Ranthen.” I tried to keep the skepticism from my voice. “What are you, a spy for them?”
“No. My Ranthen-kith are unaware that I survived the war,” he told me. “I fought alongside them in the Waning of the Veils. Arcturus knows me well.”
“He’s never mentioned you.”
“Likely he thinks I was destroyed. Likely it pains him,” Kornephoros said. “We were . . . close.”
I checked the time on the transceiver. Quarter of an hour until the accomplice in the kitchen finished her shift. Whatever I did next, I needed to do it fast.
“Paige.”
The sound of my name on his lips raked my spine.
“Paige,” Kornephoros said again, spinning out the syllable. “An archaic word for a messenger or servant, as I understand it. Incongruous, since you appear to resist authority. Or perhaps you were named for a leaf of paper, blank, its tale yet to be written. Which is it?”
“I wouldn’t know,” I said. “My mother chose my name.”
He regarded me.
“Help me, Paige Mahoney. You are a friend to Arcturus Mesarthim. If he were here now, he would release me. I have lived for months in agony and darkness. I beseech you,” he said in a whisper, “let me out of this prison. Let me return to my Ranthen-kith.”
“I came down here to make a deal,” I said. “You were meant to take a job as a keeper in Sheol II. If you tell me where it is—what name the city had before—I will release you.”
Kornephoros leaned back against the wall. “That is all you want?”
“Yes.”
“Then you mean to be rid of it,” he surmised. “Compromise another of our fortified havens, and not only will we be more
likely to become Emim, but those that already exist will no longer be drawn to a congregation of us. The colonies are a beacon. Without them, the Emim will scatter across your world. Is that what you want?”
“Some risks are worth taking.” I raised my eyebrows. “Do you want to stay in here for eternity, Kornephoros?”
His eyes smoldered, and I knew I had him. This Rephaite was a fellow opportunist. I was a golden opportunity.
“A city lies to the west. It hides a hall of many reflections,” he stated. “The Sun King held court there before the fall of his dynasty.”
“Versailles,” I breathed. “The Château de Versailles.”
I should have known. I could have guessed the answer. There could be no more perfect seat for the Rephaim in France than the long-abandoned seat of the House of Bourbon.
That was it. I had everything I had come here to find. Kornephoros watched me stand.
“Fitzours has the key to my chains,” he said, “but if you remove the flowers, I will be strong enough to break free.”
“Not just yet.”
Tendons rose in his neck. The chains jangled as gargantuan muscles strained against them.
“I’ve one more thing to ask you, Kornephoros Sheratan.” I forced myself to stand perfectly still. “You see, I think there is a way a Rephaite can be destroyed altogether. You behead it with a blade made from opaline. Am I wrong?”
His eyes were like lava. “You have witnessed a sequestration.”
“At the hand of the blood-sovereign herself.”
His wolf-like gaze never left my face.
“You’re afraid,” I said, after a long moment. “You’re afraid Ménard is going to realize there’s a way to destroy you without any risk at all that you’ll turn. That he’ll have you all slaughtered.”
“I fear nothing, dreamwalker. Least of all a human. But be warned, should Ménard learn the truth, and should he come into possession of opaline, he will spare no Rephaite,” Kornephoros said. “Not even Arcturus.”
“You keep talking about Arcturus. Maybe you did know him. Maybe you are Ranthen,” I said, “or maybe when you saw me yesterday, you marked me for a tender-hearted fool. If I let you go, you might well run straight to Nashira and tell her I’m on my way to Sheol II.”
The Mask Falling Page 22
