The Mask Falling

by Samantha Shannon

  “I can’t stay indoors.” My heartbeat was a fist on velvet, thick and heavy in my ears. “I have to get to Warden.”

  “No rescue attempts. I told you.”

  She took me through a number of streets before she stopped near a telephone box. After a short wait, Stéphane pulled up, and Ducos bundled me into the heated interior of their car.

  “Her auxiliary was detained. I will keep looking for Eléonore,” she said in French. “Take her.”

  She slammed the door and walked back into the snow. I shivered uncontrollably, dread and nausea puncturing the icy shell around me.

  “Where is Rue Vernet?”

  I sounded nothing like myself. Stéphane glanced at me. “Very close to the Arc de Triomphe and the Grand Cours. Expensive area,” they said. “You will not be there for long.”

  It was among the most famous districts in Paris. It was also north of the river, much closer to Passy.

  “You never found Albéric, then,” I said.

  Their long hands tightened on the wheel.

  “No,” they said, in clipped tones. “If Cordier has also been detained, I can only think that one of the other two agents has betrayed us. Mannequin is compromised.” Silence. Then: “Do you know how long the average lifespan is for a spy in the Domino Program?”

  “Do I want to?” I asked dully.

  “No.” Stéphane let out a mild chuckle at that. “But know one thing, Flora. All of us are on borrowed time.”

  I was quiet for the rest of the journey.

  Stéphane dropped me in Rue Vernet with a key, a small amount of money, and a new dissimulator. I waited until the car was out of sight before I smoothed the dissimulator onto my face and strode back into the snow. The golden cord was soundless and unmoving, but I poured a promise into it.

  I will find you, I told him. Hold on. Just hold on.

  23

  Evenfall

  The Eiffel Tower gleamed before the late-afternoon sun. There were dreamscapes at its summit—as well as a tourist attraction, it was a transmission station for use in national emergencies—but I had evaded all notice as I climbed into its northern leg, where I had spent most of the day. Concealed in the snow-lined latticework, I watched the Scion Citadel of Paris.

  A night and almost a full day had passed since the arrest. My gaze darted across the frozen citadel, to the stone-built tower that was the Bastille. Bleak and windowless, the prison cast a long shadow over the nearest district.

  Though my eyes were dry, grief vised my throat. I was tired to the point of numbness, but not in my bones, not in my limbs. It was the same desolation I had felt after I had watched my father die. The detached sense that nothing really mattered. Loss was not a sharp pain, but a formless gray that rounded off the edges of the world.

  I pinched myself to stop it from taking me. Arcturus was not lost yet. He was imprisoned—badly hurt, no doubt—but I could save him. Unless I saw his head on a spike, I would not give up on him.

  Le Vieux Orphelin had advised me against this vigil, but I needed to see as much of the citadel as possible. Arcturus was usually a guiding star in the æther, even at a distance. Now darkness had stolen between us. My internal compass was broken, the needle spinning. He might be anywhere.

  Scion knew my abilities. They must have force-fed him a drop of Emite blood to conceal his location.

  Sooner or later, it would start to wear off. In the small window of time between one dose and another, I had to be able to determine his precise location in the citadel. This viewpoint would help me do that.

  Hold on. I willed him to hear me. I’m here. I’m with you.

  A heavily disguised Léandre waited a long way below me, electing not to venture any higher than his perch. His moto waited in the Champ de la Tour. The moment I felt a shiver from the golden cord, he would drive me in the right direction. Le Vieux Orphelin had reluctantly given him permission to help me, but regretted that he could not send any more of the perdues to my aid, with the Man in the Iron Mask still at large. It was already a great risk to send Léandre. Nadine and Zeke had offered to help, as had Ivy. I had a burner phone to contact them.

  A shift in the æther made me stiffen. My gaze snapped eastward, straight toward the Île de la Citadelle.

  This was it. The compass had trembled, pointing me to him. Breath clouding, I started to climb down.

  I’m coming. I repeated the words like a prayer. Hold on.

  Mindful of the ice, I returned to Léandre, who was crouched at a juncture between iron girders, breathing into his hands. Seeing me, he raised his eyebrows and pulled his climbing gloves back on. My dissimulator had unsettled him at first, but he seemed to have got used to it.

  The stairs took us most of the way down. Close to the bottom, we ducked into the latticework again to avoid two maintenance workers, who were speaking in voices thickened by colds. We dropped unseen to the ground, and then we were back into the dirty snow, running south.

  Léandre unlocked his moto and tossed me a helmet. I climbed onto the back and wrapped my arms around his waist, and we were off.

  With more Vigiles than usual on the south bank, Léandre crossed a bridge over the Seine and drove on the other side. The cord flickered. I followed it—my seventh sense—as I had once in London, when the Rag and Bone Man had buried Arcturus, thinking nobody would find him. The golden cord was a living tie between our spirits, and it was making itself known to me. A light glinting in murky water.

  I stopped Léandre with a gesture. He pulled over, and we found ourselves staring once more at the Île de la Citadelle, this time at the splendid complex that occupied its western side. Cone-shaped roofs topped the crenellated towers.

  “There?” Léandre said.

  “Yes,” I said. “Somewhere in there.”

  He tightened his grip on the throttle. “La Forteresse de Justice. That would make sense.”

  There would be no justice done in that place. “We need to see its defenses.”

  With a nod, he drove on. As I slung my arms around him again, I tried not to look at the towers.

  The sun was leaving bloodstains on the sky. Léandre went as far as the Pont au Change, where we had to dismount and walk the moto between us. It was hard to tell it was a bridge, so tall were the houses and shops that towered on either side of it. Jewelers and pawnbrokers and goldsmiths plied their trade here, peddling the riches of Scion. People shouldered around us, breath feathering, hunting for bargains or trying to forge a way home through the concourse of wrapped-up bodies. People who had no idea that a fugitive now walked among them.

  At the end of the bridge, we both climbed back onto the moto. Careful not to slow down, Léandre took us along the main boulevard of the Île de la Citadelle, past the elaborate gates of the Forteresse de Justice, home of the Inquisitorial Courts. A dozen soldiers, armed and armored, were posted both in front and beyond them, on the steps, as well as two Punishers, the elite Vigiles.

  Nashira. Only she would have brought those bodyguards. I sensed her now. Even though the cord was somehow blocked again, I could sense Arcturus, too. His dreamscape was so close.

  Hold on.

  Léandre left his moto locked beside a tree. We strode down the nearest steps to the river path and walked until we were in the darkness under a bridge, where we both took off our helmets.

  “You can’t go in there.” He made it fact. “Le Vieux Orphelin would say the same if he were here.”

  “There’s an entrance to the left of the gates. A passageway. I saw it as we passed,” I said under my breath. “That place is not the Bastille or the Archon. There are windows, multiple exits—”

  “If it’s so easy, why hasn’t the Rephaite already found a way out?”

  “Because they’ll have him restrained.” I tried not to picture him bound like Kornephoros, flowers twined around iron chains. “I didn’t say it would be easy, but it’s not impossible. I’ll need a diversion, a disturbance—something like a brawl on the Pont au Change. It wil
l draw the soldiers away from the fortress.”

  “People could get hurt. You know what krigs are like.”

  “A small fight will do. Just enough to get them away from the entrance, not to open fire. You could make that happen.”

  Léandre drew a long breath in through his nose and folded his arms.

  “We might have to use your free-world friend. The Québécoise,” he said. “You will have one shot at this, marcherêve.”

  “I only need one.”

  Léandre didn’t point out my low chances of success. We both knew how insane it was for me to break into another Scion-controlled building and expect to come out alive, but I had done it more than once. He took a burner phone from his coat and made a call.

  Arcturus, I’m coming.

  ****

  Dusk approached the Scion Citadel of Paris. Stars tinseled a dimming sky. Far below, all seemed peaceful as sunset drew to a soft close. Portugal had fallen. Spain was almost won. All was well.

  On the Pont au Change, a woman elbowed through the crowds. Clad in a velvet coat and tinted lenses, she could have been a raconteur or a fashionable denizen of the Rive Droite. Gloves hid her peeled fingers. She marched to a stall that glittered with jewelery—a stall that had appeared not long before—and slammed her handbag onto it, unspooling scarves and banknotes from inside.

  “You. Cheating swine, you lied to my face,” she snapped in French. The vendor straightened, tensing in expectation of a fight. “Everyone, gather round and mark the face of a charlatan!”

  Her own face was so fury-stricken, nobody paid much attention to her accent, which was not quite French. A crowd gathered, drawn to the prospect of a spectacle. The pickpockets of the bridge ought to have been circling this affluent denizen, but none of them went near her.

  “You are mistaken,” said the vendor, with pockets full of bribe money. “My gems are among the finest in Paris.”

  “I have the evidence,” the woman proclaimed, fist clenched. Nadine was enjoying herself. “He claims to sell the best emeralds of the Rila”—she emptied a succession of lucent green jewels onto the table, drawing gasps of wonder at their size, the brightness of the gold that connected them—“but I ask you, do these look like emeralds to you?”

  At this, she dropped the lovely necklace to the ground and slammed down the heel of her boot. The ersatz jewels shattered beneath it, brittle as boiled sweets.

  Outrage erupted at the sight. People craned to look. Already, those close enough to overhear were beginning to suspect that they might also have been hoodwinked. Teeth bared, the vendor overturned the table. Every one of his jewels soared, yet none of them broke as they scattered the cobblestones. Quick-fingered gutterlings darted for the treasures.

  “See,” the vendor bellowed over the clamor of angry voices. “This woman accuses me of forgery, but she is the only one holding false jewels. It was not me who sold her that necklace!” He pointed at her. “She is a liar. She probably made the damned thing herself.”

  “Only an unnatural would accuse an honest person of lying,” the woman retorted. The word froze the crowd. “Perhaps you work for the grands ducs, who terrorize us from the shadows. Perhaps you fund their criminal activities with the sale of forgeries!”

  Now the scent of a fight was in the air. With my mask in place and a hood over my hair, I watched as more and more people were drawn into the disagreement. As words became shouts, then shoves, then blows. And then I watched the soldiers clock what was happening.

  One of them nodded to the others. Moving in regimented unison, they stepped from their posts.

  Léandre and Nadine had bought me time, but it was sand in an hourglass. I could not waste one grain. I sprinted for the Forteresse de Justice.

  I ran through the side passage and into the courtyard beyond, where I stared up at the nearest building. Arcturus was much closer than I had realized. I took in the high walls of the church-like edifice, topped with a dark wooden spire.

  Dreamscapes were closing in. Guards, no doubt, called to cover the front gates while the soldiers were away. With little choice, I slipped into the building and closed the doors behind me.

  The crypt-like space beyond was barely lit. There was still a rosy glow in the sky, but the windows in this place were small. Gilded struts streamed like sunrays from the ceiling, swooping down to kiss the tops of crimson pillars. It did not strike me as a likely entrance to a prison.

  I found a winding stairway in a corner. Nerving myself, I began to climb. At the top, I stopped, wonderstruck.

  This was definitely not a prison.

  I was standing in the corner of a jewel box. Stained-glass windows soared to a starry vault high above me, which was crisscrossed by ribs of gold. The moribund light of dusk spilled in, scattering the marble floor with splinters of a rainbow. For several moments, I could do nothing but absorb it, the shimmering iridescence of the hall.

  Though its name eluded me, I knew of this place. A former chapel, it was famed for these spectacular windows, which had once portrayed hundreds of scenes from a religious text. Wanting to preserve its beauty, if not its purpose, Irène Tourneur had ordered the medieval glass to be rearranged. Now the windows narrated the story of Scion. Not all of it, of course. Just the parts we were allowed to know.

  Chandeliers were suspended on chains, so delicate the candles seemed to float in midair. By their light, I could make out a figure at the other end of the chapel. Unbound. With a low sound of relief, I crossed the hall and all but threw myself onto him. My arms went straight around his waist.

  “Arcturus.” I pressed my cheek to his chest. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I took so long.”

  Relief had clouded my vision. That was why I missed the change in him. I had looked without truly seeing.

  His stance was stiff, his arms at his sides. When I drew back and saw his face, his eyes gave me an unanticipated chill. Their light was that of a long-extinct sun, a dead and distant echo.

  I took half a step away and found that he was dressed from head to toe in black. That was usual. The uniform, however, was not. Boots covered him to the knee, a silk-lined cloak swept to the floor, and leather gloves were pulled halfway up his forearms.

  This was how he had dressed as blood-consort.

  “Arcturus,” I said, unnerved.

  He said nothing.

  His appearance, and his silence, almost stole the words from my tongue. I recovered enough to say, “We need to go. Before the soldiers—”

  “Neither of us is leaving, 40.”

  The number stopped my blood. Dark memories woke in the back of my mind.

  “What did you call me?” I whispered.

  Red-hot brand. Nameless, numbered.

  The Emite blood. It had to be. They had given him too much, and it had affected his mind. That hardly explained why he was dressed like this. Why he was standing free as a bird.

  The night before last, his hands had discovered my body, and his eyes had seldom left my face. They were fixed on my face again now, but too intensely. As if he wanted to melt skin from bone.

  “Arcturus,” I said, “what—”

  “Do not presume to use that name.”

  Through the encroaching fog, I racked my mind for an explanation. He was acting. This was some kind of tableau, like the one Hildred Vance had created for me in Edinburgh, designed to devastate my sanity. I glanced up at the ceiling and toward the rose window, searching for cameras, for snipers, anything to help me understand.

  “There is no one watching us,” came his cold voice. “Were you so convinced I cared for you that you are unable to face the alternative?”

  He sounded so unlike himself that I almost laughed, but the mask of his features locked my voice box.

  “Jaxon Hall once gave you a warning. He told you that Terebell Sheratan ordered me to seduce you,” Arcturus said. “He was not so far from the truth. I was not ordered. I chose. And I did not do it for Terebell.”

  A numbing agent was rushing thr
ough me, anaesthetising every limb. As if in preparation.

  “No,” I said, after an excruciating silence. “You can’t have been acting. Not all this time. You would have—”

  “Perhaps I should help you understand,” Arcturus said softly. “The blood-sovereign needed information about the clairvoyant syndicate. She wanted Jaxon Hall, who had eluded her for years. When I discovered that you were his heir, I saw an opportunity to retrieve all that she desired. Without her knowledge, I set out to do this.”

  Every hair on my arms stood on end as I stared up at him.

  “Through past actions, I was already a traitor. It was not such a fall, to become a flesh-traitor. To gain your trust,” he said. “In London, I found out all I could about Jaxon Hall. I stayed at your side while you investigated the gray market. After the scrimmage, once I knew exactly where he was and all that he had done to mock Rephaite rule, I paid Jaxon a visit. I forced him to return to the anchor. I also delivered three of the fugitives who escaped from the first colony.”

  Their corpses on a scaffold, on a screen. Jaxon, gaunt and tired in his borrowed finery.

  “No,” I said again, faintly.

  “I decided to remain by your side. To learn every secret of every clairvoyant organization,” Arcturus said, “so that one day, we Rephaim could eradicate them all. You were thorough: London, Manchester, Edinburgh, Paris. You never questioned whether you should tell me all you knew.”

  Through me, he knew our leaders, their organization, their hideouts. I had let him into every part of my life without a second thought.

  He knew about Domino, too. About Ménard.

  He knew everything.

  The enormity of my error stared me in the face. With this, he could not just damage the revolution. He could destroy it. Every person I loved would swing from the gallows, and they would be there because of me.

  I had shown him how to win. How to make sure that Scion would never face a flicker of resistance.

  “I see you are recognizing the scale of your complicity,” Arcturus said. “You were generous to furnish me with so much information. Of course, I could not have foreseen how far you would go to reach Senshield, else I would have stopped you then.”