The Mask Falling

by Samantha Shannon

  Ménard was like a statue. For someone who despised the Rephaim, he could look just as emotionless.

  “France will seem like a bastion of stability in comparison, and you—Benoît Ménard—like the only worthy replacement for a fool and a marionette,” I said. “You could take England. We wouldn’t be averse to that, so long as you keep working against Nashira Sargas.”

  “And in return?”

  “You will suspend all capital punishment of clairvoyants.” I placed both hands on his table. “I know you can’t release all the prisoners in the Bastille without compromising your public support. That support keeps you in power. But you can keep the prisoners alive. You can retire the guillotines.”

  “And how am I to justify this sudden absence of executions in France?” Ménard asked, unperturbed. “The people expect blood. Since the dawn of human civilization, they have thirsted for it.”

  “You’re a clever man. Perhaps you can pretend you understand the concept of mercy.” I leaned closer to him. “I’ve been busy in the year since I was arrested. As you said yourself, I have made a great many connections that I could, at any moment, exploit. If you break this ceasefire—if you kill one clairvoyant, even in secret—I will know. Do not test us.”

  “That is all you want, then.” He laid a hand on his mask. “An end to the bloodshed.”

  “For now. Prove that you can keep to this arrangement and resist your deep-rooted urge to murder innocents, and perhaps, in a few months, we can discuss the ways we might work together to bring down the Suzerain. To save humankind.” I straightened. “But make no mistake, Inquisitor Ménard—this is a marriage of convenience, nothing more. We might both be human beings, but we have very different ideas of what humanity means.”

  Ménard dredged up a grim smile at that.

  “I will announce a suspension of public executions in a week. I will say that we must show greater restraint than monarchs like Esteban de Borbón,” he said. “Two years, Madelle Mahoney. That is what I will give you. Two years of clemency. If I hear a single whisper from the Mime Order against me before this truce comes to an end . . . I will burn all of you.”

  “I would expect nothing less.” I turned away. “Enjoy your evening, Inquisitor Ménard. You’ll be hearing from us very soon.”

  I left.

  Outside, Cade was leaning against the wall, arms folded. When I blazed past, he followed me down the steps. “That was quick,” he said. “Did you get what you wanted?”

  “That remains to be seen.” At the bottom of the steps, I turned to him. “Have you had enough yet?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m asking you if you’re ready to stop working for him. If you’d like to work for me instead.”

  Cade glanced up the stairs. The door had just closed above us.

  “Meet me on the Pont Neuf. I need some air,” he said. “Getting a little stuffy in this place.”

  ****

  We returned to the checkered floor. Cade left first, to avoid drawing attention, while I lingered in a corner. I shook my head when Le Vieux Orphelin moved to approach me. If someone saw me with him and reported it to Ménard, he would know exactly what Le Vieux Orphelin looked like, and I could not give him that power. He had to fear the specter of the streets.

  Léandre came to my side instead. “Well?” he said. “Did he agree?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well done.” He breathed in through his nose. “Although . . . all of this seems too easy.”

  “That’s why I’d like another lick of varnish on the deal. We need someone on the inside. Someone to watch him.” I glanced up at him. “Wait for me. I won’t be long.”

  “Where are you going?” Léandre asked, but I was already heading for the cloakroom to retrieve my coat.

  The cold hit me like a solid wall of ice. I pulled on the coat as I walked past the Vigiles outside, away from the light show at the front of the cathedral, past the line of last-minute arrivals and the limousines. Cade was nearby. If I could get him on side, it would make my deal with Ménard watertight. Let it be my next move in the game against Nashira Sargas.

  And the blood-consort. Let him see that I was not defeated. Steel queen. Iron heart.

  I crossed the cobblestones, my head bowed against the snow-flecked wind, and followed the street left toward the Petit Pont. Cade was waiting for me under a lamppost.

  He had removed his mask. When he looked at me, I stopped dead. Fatigue was stone-rubbed under his eyes, which were dull and bloodshot, and his brow shone with sweat. He wiped it with his sleeve. Despite it, he was clearly feeling the cold, burrowed deep into his coat.

  “So,” he said, with a dour smile, “what kind of employment are you offering, Paige?”

  “I need someone to make sure Ménard doesn’t execute any more voyants.”

  “You got him to agree to that?” He chuckled. “Killing voyants is his favorite pastime. I wouldn’t like to see what happens when Ménard gets bored.”

  “I won’t go into specifics,” I said, “but I could use a spy. You’re close to him, Cade. You can report on what he’s doing.”

  “To you?”

  “Or one of my associates. All you’d have to do is give us a report on where Ménard has been and who he’s been meeting so we can investigate. You’ll be compensated for the risk, of course.”

  We started to walk again. Side by side, we stepped onto the Quai des Grands Augustins, which was closed to traffic for the night. Cade looked straight ahead and breathed out.

  “Compensated how?” he finally said.

  “Financially, of course,” I said. “But there are other ways. If the baby does turn out to be yours, and if that fact is very obvious, we can get you out of there. Give you somewhere to hide.”

  Cade contemplated my face. Slowly, a smile turned the corners of his mouth.

  “What?” I said.

  “You’ve just . . . done so much. For voyants. And in such a short amount of time.” He rubbed his hands together and blew into them. “You know it’s been a year to the day since you were arrested for murdering two Underguards.”

  “I didn’t, no. That’s—” I slowed. “How do you know when I was arrested?”

  “Oh, you know. Records, conversations. You’re a person of interest to everyone, Paige.”

  The stalls were all closed tonight. Seeing them, I suddenly realized where we were. I saw the crimson sign—the sign reading rue gît-le-cœur, a name that spoke of a heart at peace. The safe house. I stopped.

  Memories were breaking through my armor. For the first time since that night, I saw the house where I had lived with the blood-consort for months, sat with him under the stars, slept at his side.

  And I saw that the door had been smashed down. That was no surprise: Nashira hadn’t known he had been working for her. His mission had been known only to him.

  The shattered window on the second floor was harder to explain. There had been a struggle in that building.

  Why would he have struggled?

  A chill seeped between my shoulders. Seeing me waver, Cade grasped my arm to steady me.

  “Paige. You all right?”

  “Yes.” I looked at him for what felt like the first time. “You don’t look well, though, Cade. Not sleeping?”

  Our gazes met. “I’m fine, Paige.”

  The æther quivered. It was trying, desperately, to tell me something. To warn me. And I listened, because I was clairvoyant, and the æther was my guide.

  So I looked at Cade again. I looked harder. This close, I could see the blue tinge to his mouth. The sight of that darkness made something coil like an adder inside me. He had kept a pair of gloves on as we danced, so I couldn’t tell whether he had the same discoloration in his fingers. My own lips were painted by the æther, a permanent mark of my gift.

  Cade was an oracle. I knew that.

  Cade Fitzours, whose name was linked to mine.

  I thought of Arcturus that night. His cold stare. His crue
lty. How flat the light in his eyes had been for most of our confrontation—exactly the way they had looked in the mirror when I had possessed him—and how, when he had raised a hand to me, his arm had seemed to resist a command it had been given. A command to strike a blow that could have killed me.

  The scar on my hand was suddenly cold. I clenched my fingers over the three-letter word there.

  It would take a dreamwalker incredible strength to turn an unwilling Rephaite into a marionette. It was impossible. And yet, I had done it myself. Not for long—not for anywhere near as long as Arcturus had taunted me—but for a few moments, I had known control over a god . . .

  And how could I have sensed a dreamwalker, when all my life I had believed I was alone?

  My hand slid into my coat and closed around the grip of my revolver. At the same time, Cade stepped closer.

  “Recognize this place, Paige?”

  Warm breath on the back of my neck. I managed one stunned look into his eyes, and then—

  A blow, as from a battering ram, but not into my body. Into my dreamscape. It smashed through my defenses, into the haven in my mind, the place no one had ever seen. I stumbled backward and fell hard on the ice, and as blood leaked from my nose, Cade bled, too.

  My poppies closed in self-defense. Too late. He was already at my centre. Darkness came, swift as a falling sword, as surely as if every light in Paris had gone out.

  ****

  I woke to the far-off sound of a siren. Not the commonplace kind that echoed across every citadel. Not an ambulance or a fire engine, or a black van looking for unnaturals. This was a measured, overlapping drone that rose and fell in waves, far louder than the sirens in the first colony.

  A deep ache filled the joints of my arms. When I shifted, the rattle of chain links followed. So did pain.

  Agony crested at the front of my skull, a pressure that made my eyes prickle. Afraid to move, I drew in a delicate breath. This was deeper pain than I had ever felt in my life, as if someone had struck me head-on with a spike maul, but worse. A feeling of wrongness and violation leaked through me. Nausea roiled in my stomach, and before I could stop myself, I had coughed bile down my front. The sound of my retching was all I could hear.

  Trepidation bubbled in my chest as I tried to latch onto some light. I found none. I could feel myself sliding back into my dark room, and I had nothing to keep me grounded.

  No. I had to think. Whatever had happened, however I had gotten here, I needed to stay calm.

  I remembered leaving the masquerade. Cade waiting for me under the lamppost. Walking together off the bridge and down the Quai des Grands Augustins—

  Then nothing. Just darkness.

  There was no point in screaming. No one was close. Beneath the sirens, all I could hear was my own uneven breath. Dreamwalking out of this one was impossible; the migraine was too distracting. And while Eliza had taught me to pick a lock, I had no idea how to slip a chain.

  It was pitch-black. From what I could feel, I was manacled by my wrists to the wall, loosely enough that I had some range of motion in my arms. I could also feel something pressing against my side.

  The phone. The phone Ducos had given me, tucked into a hidden pocket in my jacket.

  I was not going to die in another dark room. Teeth gritted, I got one knee onto the floor and turned over, so I faced the wall.

  Using the chains for purchase, I rose, bent my head, and unzipped the pocket with my teeth. Next, I angled my elbow so it was underneath the phone. It slid around like a bar of soap. Finally, I managed to winch it up a couple of inches, so it jutted out enough for me to bite it.

  Then I realized. I was underground. No signal.

  With a huff of frustration, I let the phone drop back into my pocket. That was when a door opened behind me, and Kornephoros Sheratan appeared.

  “Your mistakes have caught up with you, dreamwalker.” He stood in the dim light from beyond. “I trust you are feeling well.”

  “Kornephoros. What—” The muted light in his eyes broke the darkness. “Is this the Hôtel Garuche?”

  “Indeed. You seem to be the newest test subject. Which you deserve,” came the voice, “given that you did not honor your word to free me. I expected nothing less of a human.”

  Ménard must have come after me. His agreement to my plan had been a trap. Cade might already be dead. “I did try.” My tongue felt bee-stung. “I see you got free anyway.”

  “I am no bird to be caged, dreamwalker.”

  My head was aching too much to fully take in his words. “What the hell is that noise?” I rasped. “Those sirens—”

  “Civil defense sirens,” Kornephoros said, with a conversational air. “They are activated by Inquisitorial authority in the event of a national or interimperial emergency. But fear not. You are quite safe here, fleshworm.”

  His aura loomed, and suddenly, he was there, in front of me. All I could see were disembodied red eyes.

  “I said I would hunt you. In the end,” he said, “someone else did. And now here you are.”

  Under the pain, I was waking up to a chilling reality. I was trapped in the dark with a monster, and something terrible was happening above, and I had no idea how or why.

  “Who brought me here?” I croaked. It took great effort to hold my head up. “Who hunted me?”

  “I am sure he will explain your situation in due course. For now, he has business with the Suzerain. I imagine he caught you by surprise,” Kornephoros remarked. “Even I had no idea of what he was, or his allegiance. But it certainly opens a world of possibilities.” He walked toward me. I tensed. “This is for your lies, oathbreaker.”

  Kornephoros brushed my cheek with one finger. White-hot pain roared from his touch. It was as if his hand was a magnet, and my jaw was iron, bent to his will. He moved to my throat, choking my cry and immobilizing me as the same excruciating pain drilled into the bones of my neck.

  Then he reached upward, to where my chains were bolted to the wall. They gave way and jangled to the floor, and my arms fell heavily to my sides, numb and cold. I stared at him, lost.

  “I do this not as a favor to you,” Kornephoros said, “but to honor an oath of my own.” He turned his back on me. “No doubt I will see you again soon, dreamwalker. Farewell.”

  Before I could try to question him, he was gone. And the door was open. Still nauseous, I limped toward it and lurched up the stairs beyond, holding the banisters with both hands, in so much pain I could barely see. I was trembling all over, but not just because of the cold. I felt hollow-boned, like a bird. Vulnerable, as if someone had stripped me.

  The Hôtel Garuche was dark and deserted. Somewhere, a clock struck eleven. All I could perceive were two dreamscapes, which made no sense. I walked drunkenly through its corridors until I reached a familiar staircase, and from there, I entered the private apartments.

  The first thing I saw was Alexandra Kotzia. She lay on her side, her hand a few inches from a pocket pistol. Red hair covered her face. Beside her lay a pallid Onésime. I went to him first and felt for breath, exhaling when I felt air whisper against my fingers. Kotzia was still alive, too, but cold to the touch, her pulse faint. Blood had dried under both their noses.

  Luce Ménard Frère was nowhere to be seen.

  I remembered then. Dark lips against blue-tinged skin. The shadows under his eyes. The gloves. And when those pieces came together—when I realized not only what had happened, and how I had gotten here, but the clues that I had missed—the blood drained from my face.

  “Onésime?”

  As the realization froze my blood, I looked up. Ménard was in the doorway, flanked by bodyguards. He was staring at his nine-year-old son, who must appear dead, and me, on the floor beside him, close enough to the gun that it could have fallen from my hand. Before I could move, before I could explain, Ménard had grabbed me with both hands by the throat and slammed me onto my back.

  “So this is your attempt to ensure I keep to my end of the bargain,
anormale,” he hissed. I shoved at his chest, but he only squeezed harder. “You attack my family a second time?”

  His hands were stronger than they looked. In any other fight, I would have beaten him, but anger had charged his muscles and steeled his grip. His eyes yawned wide and hollow, and a vein swelled in the middle of his brow. Darkness gathered at the edges of my vision.

  “Where,” he whispered, “is Luce?” I could feel his breath. “Does Le Vieux Orphelin have her?”

  “Papa, stop!” Suddenly Mylène was there, face tearstained, voice rusty with fear. “Please—”

  His gaze darted toward her. In the half second his grip slackened, I lashed out at him with my spirit, broke his chokehold, and kicked him off. Mylène grabbed his shoulders, as if she could stop him lunging after me. I coughed violently, my cheeks hot and damp, while Ménard, on his knees, wiped his bloody nose. He was breathing almost as hard as I was.

  “I just woke up in your fucking cellar,” I rasped. “Clearly, whoever took Luce is the same person who brought me here. The same person who released the Rephaite in your basement.” I held my throat. “Most of your personal guard was at the masquerade. Someone had a two-hour window to take advantage of that.”

  Ménard was silent. Without looking at Mylène, he wrapped an arm around her and drew her close to him, and she buried her face in his shoulder. One of the bodyguards spoke into her radio, calling for urgent medical assistance, while the other aimed his rifle at the stairs.

  “Where is Fitzours?” Ménard said to me, very softly.

  I met his gaze. “I don’t know.”

  Mylène clung to her father, lip trembling. “Papa,” she said, “I want to go to the safe room now, with Onésime and Jean-Mi. Please, c-can we go?”

  Though his gaze remained blank, Ménard clenched his jaw, as if in defeat. His hand came to the back of her head.

  “What the hell is happening out there?” I asked him. “The sirens—”

  “Get out,” he said, so quietly I almost missed it. When I didn’t move, he looked up at me. “Do not make me tell you a second time, anormale.”