The Mime Order

by Samantha Shannon

  Camden Town, the nexus of II-4, was its own small world, where amaurotics and voyants jostled in an oasis of color and dance music. Hawkers came every few days on the canal, bringing merchandise and food from other citadels. Costermongers sold numa and aster, hidden inside fruit. It was a hotbed of illegal activity, as safe a place as any for a fugitive. The clairvoyant night Vigiles had never exposed this market; a lot of them relied on its trade, and a hell of a lot more still spent time here when they were off-duty. It was home to the only underground cinema in the citadel, the Fleapit, one of its many risqué attractions.

  I set off toward the lock, past tattoo parlors, oxygen bars, and racks of cheap cravats and watches. Soon I happened upon Camden Hippodrome: luxury dress shop by day, discothèque by night. A man with a lemon-yellow ponytail stood outside. I knew he was a sensor before I got close: the voyants here often colored their hair or nails to match their auras, though you’d only get the link if you were sighted. I stopped in front of him.

  “Are you busy?”

  He glanced at me. “Depends. You a local?”

  “No. I’m the Pale Dreamer,” I said. “Mollisher of I-4.”

  With that, he turned his head away. “Busy.”

  Eyebrows raised, I stood my ground. His face was carefully blank. Most voyants would have jumped to attention at the sound of the word mollisher. I gave him a hard push with my spirit, making him yelp.

  “What the fuck are you playing at?”

  “I’m busy, too, sensor.” I grabbed him by the collar, keeping my spirit close enough to his dreamscape to make him feel nervous. “And I don’t have time for games.”

  “I’m not playing any. You’re not a moll anymore,” he spat. “Word is that you and Binder have had a disagreement, Pale Dreamer.”

  “Is it, now?” I tried to sound unmoved. “Well, you must have heard that wrong, sensor. The White Binder and I don’t disagree. Now, do you really want to risk a slating, or do you want to help me?”

  His eyes narrowed a little, assessing me. They were shielded by yellow contact lenses.

  “Get on with it, then,” he said.

  “I’m looking for Agatha’s Boutique.”

  He jerked his collar from my grip. “It’s in the Stables Market, past the lock. Ask for a blood diamond and she’ll help you out.” He folded his copiously tattooed forearms. Skeletons were the theme, wrapping his muscles in painted bone. “Anything else?”

  “Not right now.” I let go of his collar. “Thanks for your help.”

  He grunted. I resisted giving him another push as I walked past, heading for the lock.

  Doing that had been risky. If he’d been a Rag Doll, he wouldn’t have let me push him around. They were the dominant gang here, one of the few to have invented their own distinctive “uniform”: pinstriped blazers and bracelets made of rat bones, as well as the colored hair. Their mime-lord’s name was whispered throughout II-4, but only a handful of people had ever laid lamps on the elusive Rag and Bone Man.

  Jaxon must have put word out on the street that I was no longer his mollisher. He was already destabilizing my position in the syndicate, trying to force me back to him. I should have known he wouldn’t wait long.

  I smelled Camden Lock as soon as I got close. Narrowboats floated on the scummy green water, their sides coated with algae and old paint, each manned by a costermonger. “Buy, buy,” they shouted. “Strings for your boots, two quid for ten!” “Hot pies, toss or buy!” “Five bob for an apple and white!” “Chestnuts baked fresh, a note for a score!”

  My ears pricked at that one. The boat was a deep red, trimmed with plum and swirls of gold. It must have been beautiful once, but now the paint was peeling and faded, the stern disfigured by anti-Scion graffiti. Chestnuts roasted away on a stove, scored with X-shaped cuts through which the innards peeped.

  When I approached, the costermonger smiled down at me with crooked teeth. The glow of the stove scorched in her eyes beneath the brim of her bowler hat.

  “A score for you, little ma’am?”

  “Please.” I handed her some money. “I’m trying to find Agatha’s Boutique. I was told it was near here. Any idea?”

  “Right round the corner. There’s a hawker selling saloop that way. You’ll hear her when you’re close.” She filled a paper cone with chestnuts and smothered them with butter and coarse salt. “Here you are.”

  I picked at my chestnuts as I traversed the market, letting myself soak up the atmosphere of humans going about their business. There had been none of this vigorous energy in Sheol I, where voices had been whispers and movements had been quiet. Night was the most dangerous time for voyants, when the NVD were on the prowl, but it was also the time when our gifts were at their strongest, when the urge to be active smoldered inside us—and, like the moths we were, we just had to emerge.

  The boutique’s windows glistened with fake gemstones. Outside was a girl selling saloop, a petite botanomancer with orchids in her sky-blue hair. I sidled past her.

  A bell tinkled above the door. The owner—a bony, elderly woman, wrapped in a white lace shawl—didn’t look up when I came in. To match her aura, she’d gone fluorescent green in the extreme: green hair in a razor cut, green nails, green mascara, and green lipstick. A speaking medium.

  “What can I do for you, love?”

  To an amaurotic she would have sounded like a chain-smoker, but I knew that rasp was from a throat ill-treated by spirits. I closed the door.

  “A blood diamond, please.”

  She studied me. I tried to imagine what I’d look like if I colored myself to match my red aura.

  “You must be the Pale Dreamer. Come on down,” she croaked. “They’re expecting you.”

  The woman led me to a rickety staircase, hidden behind a rotating curio cabinet. She had a persistent, carving cough, like a chunk of raw meat was stuck in her windpipe. It wouldn’t be long before she became mute. Some speaking mediums cut their tongues out just to stop the spirits using them.

  “Call me Agatha,” she said. “This here is the bolthole of II-4. Haven’t used it in years, of course. Camden voyants scatter all over the place when there’s a scare.”

  I followed her into a cellar, which was lit by a single lamp. The walls were crammed with penny dreadfuls and dusty ornaments. Two mattresses vied for the remaining space, covered by patchwork quilts. Ivy was asleep on a pile of cushions, skin and bones in a button-down shirt.

  “Don’t wake her.” Agatha crouched down and stroked her head. “She needs her rest, poor lamb.”

  Three more voyants shared the second mattress, all with the Sheol look: dead eyes, hollow bellies, faint auras. At least they had clean clothes. Nell was in the middle.

  “So you got away from the Tower,” she said. “We should get a badge for surviving that.”

  In the penal colony I’d hardly spoken to Nell. “How’s your leg?”

  “Just a scratch. I expected more from the Guard Extraordinary. More like the Guard Mediocre, really.” She still winced when she touched it. “You know these two troublemakers, don’t you?”

  One of her companions was the julker boy I’d once helped in Sheol I. He was brown-eyed and dark-skinned, wearing baggy dungarees over his shirt, and his head was tucked under Nell’s arm. The fourth survivor was Felix, nervous-looking and a little too thin for his height, with a shock of black hair and a smattering of freckles. He’d been instrumental in delivering messages during the rebellion.

  “Sorry. I don’t think I ever asked your name,” I said to the julker boy.

  “It’s all right,” he said in a light, sweet voice. “It’s Joseph, but you can call me Jos.”

  “Okay.” I looked into the corners of the cellar, my heart filling my throat. “Did anyone else escape?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “We got a buck cab from Whitechapel,” Felix said. “We had two others with us, but they’re both—”

  “Dead.” Agatha held a cloth to her mouth and hacked from he
r throat. When she took it away, it was flecked with blood. “The girl wouldn’t hold down food. The boy jumped into the canal. I’m sorry, love.”

  A cool prickling started along the backs of my legs. “The boy,” I repeated. “He wasn’t mute, was he?”

  “Michael got away,” Jos said. “He ran down to the river, I think. Nobody’s seen him.”

  I shouldn’t have felt relieved—at the end of the day, another voyant boy had died—but the thought of Michael hurting himself was physically painful. Felix scratched the side of his neck. “So you haven’t found anyone else?”

  “Not yet,” I said. “I’m not sure where to look.”

  “Where are you based?”

  “I’m in a doss-house. It’s best you don’t know where. Are you safe here?”

  “They’re safe,” Agatha said, patting Ivy’s arm. “Don’t you worry, Pale Dreamer. I shan’t let them out of my sight.”

  Felix gave her a tentative smile. “We’ll be fine for now. Camden seems safe. Besides,” he said, “anything’s better than . . . where we were before.”

  I crouched beside Ivy, who didn’t stir. “I was her kidsman,” Agatha said. She took off her lace shawl and draped it around Ivy’s shoulders. “Thought she’d given me the slip. I had all the little horrors out searching for her, but we got nothing. Knew they must have nibbed her.”

  Now I was on edge. Kidsmen picked up gutterlings and trained them to steal and beg, often giving them cruel injuries to attract sympathy. “I’m sure you missed her terribly,” I said.

  If she picked up on my tone, she didn’t acknowledge it. “Aye,” she said. “I did. She’s been like a daughter to me, this one.” She stood and rubbed the small of her back. “I’ll leave you to your business. I’ve got my own to run.”

  The door clunked shut behind her. Coughing echoed through the stairwell. Felix gave Ivy a gentle shake.

  “Ivy. Paige is here.”

  It took Ivy a while to come to. Jos helped her into a sitting position, propping her up with cushions. Her hand came to rest on her ribs. When her dark eyes finally focused on me, she smiled, giving me a glimpse of a missing tooth at the front of her mouth. “Not dead yet.”

  Jos looked worried. “Agatha said you shouldn’t get up.”

  “I’m fine. She’s always been a worrywart,” Ivy said. “You know, we should really send Thuban an invitation to my deathbed. I’m sure he’d love to see the fruits of his labor.”

  Nobody smiled. The sight of her bruises shook me to the core. “So,” I said, “Agatha’s your kidsman?”

  “I trust her. She’s not like other kidsmen—she took me in when I was starving.” She pulled the lace shawl more tightly around her shoulders. “She’ll hide us from the Rag and Bone Man. She’s never liked him.”

  “Why do you need to hide from him?” I took a seat on the mattress. “Isn’t he your mime-lord?”

  “He’s violent.”

  “Aren’t most mime-lords?”

  “Trust me, you don’t want to get on the wrong side of this one. He won’t want a bunch of fugitives causing trouble in his section. No one knows his face, but Agatha’s met him once or twice. She’s been in charge of the bolthole for years, since before I worked for her.”

  “Who’s his mollisher?” Nell asked.

  “I’m not sure.” Ivy lifted a hand to her shorn head, looking away. “They’re secretive here.”

  I’d have to ask Jaxon more about this guy. If I ever spoke to Jaxon again. “Why come back here at all, then?”

  “Nowhere else to go,” Nell said, pulling a face. “We’ve got no money for a doss-house and no friends who could afford to put us up.”

  “Look, Paige,” Felix cut in, “we ought to work out what to do, and do it soon. Scion’s going to be on the hunt for us, given what we know.”

  “I’ve called a meeting of the Unnatural Assembly. We need to spread the word about the Rephaim,” I said. Ivy’s head jerked around. “Let every voyant in London know what Scion has been doing to us.”

  “You’re mad,” Ivy said, staring at me. There was a tremor in her voice. “You think Hector would do anything about it? You think he would care?”

  “It’s worth a try,” I said.

  “We have our brands,” Felix pointed out. “We have our stories. We have all the voyants who are still missing.”

  “They could be in the Tower. Or dead. Even if we did tell everyone, there’s no guarantee it would change anything,” Nell said. “Ivy’s right. Hector won’t believe a word. Friend of mine tried to report a murder to his henchmen once, and they beat him senseless for his trouble.”

  “We need a Rephaite to prove the story,” Jos piped up. “The Warden will help us, won’t he, Paige?”

  “I don’t know.” I paused. “I don’t know if he’s alive.”

  “And we shouldn’t work with Rephs.” Ivy looked away. “We all know what they’re like.”

  “But he helped Liss,” Jos said, frowning. “I saw it. He got her out of spirit shock.”

  “Give him a medal, then,” Nell said, “but I’m not working with him, either. They can all rot in hell.”

  “What about the amaurotics?” Felix said. “Can we work with them?”

  Nell snorted. “Sorry, remind me why the rotties would give a rat’s ear what happens to us?”

  “You could show some optimism.”

  “Yeah, the weekly executions make me really optimistic. Anyway, London rotties outnumber us ten to one, if not more,” she added. “Even if we got a tiny number of them on our side, the rest would overpower us. So there goes that brilliant plan.”

  You could tell they’d been stuck in a small room for a while.

  “The amaurotics could end up helping us. Scion have always taught their denizens to hate clairvoyance,” I said. “Imagine how the average denizen would react if they found out Scion was controlled by voyants. The Rephs are more clairvoyant than we are, and they’ve had us wrapped around their finger for two centuries. But we need to focus on voyants first, not rotties or Rephaim.” I went to stand by the window, watching the narrowboats pass with their wares. “What would your mime-lords say if you asked them for help?”

  “Let’s see. Mine would beat me,” Nell mused, “then . . . hm, probably throw me out to beg with cuts on my arms, seeing as he’d think I was such a good liar.”

  “Who’s your mime-lord?”

  “Bully-Rook. III-1.”

  “Right.” The Bully-Rook was as much of a brute as his name suggested. “Felix?”

  “I wasn’t a syndie,” he admitted.

  “I wasn’t, either,” Ivy said. “Just a gutterling.”

  I sighed. “Jos?”

  “I was a gutterling, too, in II-3. My kidsman wouldn’t help us.” He hugged his knees. “Will we have to stay here, Paige?”

  “For now,” I said. “Will Agatha ask you to work?”

  “Of course she will. She’s already got twenty gutterlings to feed,” Ivy said. “We can’t just sponge off her.”

  “I understand, but you’ve all been through a lot. Nell, you’ve been away for ten years. You need time to adjust.”

  “I’m just grateful she’s putting us up.” Nell leaned back against the wall. “Getting back to work will do me good. I’d almost forgotten what it was like to be paid for doing a job,” she added. “What about your mime-lord, anyway? You’re with the White Binder, aren’t you?”

  “I’m going to talk to him about it.” I looked at Ivy, who was pushing at a callus on her knuckle. “Does Agatha know about the colony?” She shook her head. “What did you tell her, then?”

  “That we broke out of the Tower.” Ivy kept shaking her head. “I just . . . couldn’t face explaining it. I want to forget it all.”

  “Keep it that way. The truth is our best weapon. I want it to be heard for the first time at the Unnatural Assembly, or they’ll think it’s just a rumor that’s gone out of control.”

  “Paige, don’t tell the Assembly.” Her eyes wide
ned. “You didn’t say anything about fighting back or going public. You said you’d get us home. That’s it. We have to stay hidden. You could put the rest of us in—”

  “I don’t want to stay hidden.” Jos’s voice was small, but firm. “I want to make it right.”

  Agatha chose that moment to return, carrying a tray of food. “Time to leave, love,” she said to me. “Ivy needs her rest.”

  “If you say so.” I glanced back at her four charges. “Stay safe.”

  “Wait a second.” Felix scrawled a phone number on a scrap of paper. “Just in case you need us. It’s for one of the hawkers, but she’ll take a message if you call her.”

  I tucked the paper into my pocket. On my way up the rotting stairs, I cursed Agatha. What kind of idiot was she that she’d let two voyants die on her watch? She seemed kind enough, and this burden had been dropped on her unexpectedly, but Ivy would follow them to the æther if she wasn’t careful. Still, to see four survivors safe and clean and fed, with a place to sleep and other voyants to protect them, was more than I could have hoped to gain from this excursion.

  A light rain was falling when I left Agatha’s Boutique. I wandered through the covered market, where naphtha lights burned down on a wealth of hot street food. Shiny buttered peas, steaming in paper ramekins; masses of mashed potato, some fluffy white, some tinged with pea-green or rose; sausages spitting in a cast-iron pan. When I passed a tray of drinking chocolate, I couldn’t resist. It was silky sweet, and it tasted like conquest. Everything I ate and drank was another way to spite Nashira.

  It soon sat oddly on my stomach. Liss would have given an arm for a sip of this drink.

  A shoulder knocked against mine, sending the rest of the cup flying.

  “Hook it.”

  The voice was gruff and male. I almost said something back, but the sight of their stripes and bone bracelets stopped me. Rag Dolls. This was their turf, not mine.

  With a few hours until sunrise, I left the night market and headed south, keeping an eye out for any passing rides. It didn’t take long to arrive at the border of I Cohort. When I reached an alley, I leaned against a wall to check my watch. It was an abandoned busker hideout, dirty and silent, full of burned-out rubbish bins from fires made near the doorways. In retrospect, it was a bad place to stop.