The Mime Order

by Samantha Shannon

  “Nothing that juicy, I’m afraid. Most of the doctors are testing the new Senshield prototype for SciORE.”

  “Yes, I imagine they are. How is your Danica faring around that?”

  I was certain Danica hadn’t met this man in person; she wasn’t exactly a social butterfly. Jaxon must have told him about us, real names included. “She’s sixth-order,” Nick said. “It can’t detect her yet.”

  “Yet,” Alfred said.

  I wondered whether Danica would have gone back to work immediately after the escape, and felt lower than dirt when I realized I had no idea. She only worked part-time for SciORE, but I was willing to bet that she’d reported for her shift after the rescue.

  “The new Senshield won’t be ready by Novembertide, in any case,” Nick said. “Not for citadel-wide use.”

  “They have them in the Archon already, my friend. They’ll want them in the Grand Stadium. Mark my words, they’ll have a lavish welcome ceremony for Inquisiteur when he arrives.”

  “I look forward to all fifty celebratory hangings.” Nick steered me towards the staircase. “Sorry, Alfred—I should get Paige some painkillers. Good luck avoiding Minty.”

  “Hmph, not to worry. ‘Fortune, seeing that she could not make fools wise, has made them lucky.’ ”

  “Shakespeare?”

  “Montaigne.” With a click of his tongue, the scout returned his attention to his book. “Farewell, halfwit.”

  It was gloomy in the inn. We creaked up the stairs to the attic floor, where the carpet was worn thin and the walls were the dull brown of an old bruise.

  “Alfred and Jaxon go back a very long way.” Nick unlocked the door. “He’s remarkable—probably the most talented bibliomancer in the citadel. Fifty-seven years old and works eighteen hours a day. He claims he can read anything and just sense if it’s going to sell.”

  “Has he ever been wrong?”

  “Not to my knowledge. That’s why he’s the only psycho-scout. He put all the others out of work.”

  “What does he do for Jax?”

  “Pitches his pamphlets to the Spiritus Club, for one thing. He made a small fortune from On the Merits.”

  I didn’t comment.

  Nick switched on the light. The room was fairly nondescript, furnished with nothing more than a mirror, a cracked sink, and a bed with threadbare blankets. It didn’t look as if it had been dusted in a century. A few essential items from his apartment were dotted around the room.

  “Do you rent this?” I said.

  “I do. It’s not exactly Farrance’s, but sometimes I just need to be around other voyants, not including Jax. Call it a holiday home.” He steamed a flannel with hot water and passed it to me. “Tell me what happened with Hector.”

  “He said he was going to see Jaxon.”

  “Why?”

  “The summons.” I dabbed my lips. “He was going to find out who’d sent it. He realized it was me and got the Underhand to do this.”

  He grimaced. “I wish I could say I was surprised. No meeting, then?”

  “No.”

  “Were they still going to see Jaxon?”

  “I called him to warn him. He wanted me to come to Dials. I said no.”

  “He wasn’t angry about the summons?”

  “Not as angry as I expected.” When I took the flannel from my face, it was smeared with blood and grime. “He’s threatening to make Nadine his mollisher, though.”

  “He’s been grooming her for it, sötnos.” When I frowned, he sighed. “Nadine was pushing to be mollisher as soon as you went missing. They’ve been having private meetings, and he’s let her do a lot of your work—collecting rent, Juditheon auctions, that sort of thing. It’ll stop if you go back, but Nadine won’t be happy about it.”

  “Why did he choose Nadine? I would have thought it’d be Zeke or Dani, as they’re furies.”

  He raised his hands. “Far be it from me to guess at the workings of Jaxon Hall’s mind. Anyway, he won’t make her mollisher unless you tell him outright that his dreamwalker will never work for him again. Do you really want to quit?”

  “No. Yes. I don’t know.” I chucked myself on to the bed. “I can’t forget what he said. That he’d make my life hell if I ever left his service.”

  “And he will. You’ll be shut out of everything if you quit. You need money. Scion watches all its employees’ bank accounts,” he warned. “I can’t keep withdrawing cash for your rent, or they’ll start asking questions. Say what you like about Jax, but he pays good money.”

  “Yes, he pays me to bully Didion and sell fake paintings at the black market. He pays Nadine to play her violin. He pays Zeke to be his lab rat. And what the hell is the point?”

  “He’s a mime-lord. It’s his job. It’s your job.”

  “Because of Hector.” I stared at the ceiling. “If he was gone, someone else could take over the syndicate and unite us.”

  “No. Both the mime-lord and the mollisher supreme need to be gone before a scrimmage can be called. If Hector died, Cutmouth would become Underqueen,” he said, “and she’s no better. Hector’s only in his forties, and he certainly isn’t starving. He won’t be heading to the æther for a while.”

  “Unless someone gets rid of him.”

  His head turned. “Even the most violent mobsters would condemn a coup,” he said, his voice low.

  “Only because Hector supports their violence.”

  “Are you suggesting that someone should organize a coup?”

  “Do you have any better ideas?”

  “They’d have to oust Cutmouth as well. Even if it did happen, the Unnatural Assembly still wouldn’t put up a fight against Scion,” he said gently. “Most of them got those positions through murder or blackmail, not bravery. Hector’s only part of the problem.” He poured some saloop from a flask. “Here. You look freezing.”

  I took it. He sat down on the bed opposite me and sipped from his own cup, looking down at the court.

  “I’ve been having visions since we got back,” he said. “It’s probably nothing, but some of them . . .”

  “What did you see?”

  “A waterboard,” he said, as if he were still seeing it, “in a room with white walls and a blue tiled floor. I’ve had visions like that before, but this one feels more specific. There’s a wooden clock on the wall behind the board, with leaves and flowers carved around the face. When midnight strikes, a tiny metal bird springs out and sings an old song from my childhood.”

  My pulse tripped. An oracle’s gift mostly involved sending images, but sometimes they’d receive unsolicited messages from the æther, too. To Nick, they were an endless source of fear and fascination “Have you seen a clock like that before?”

  “Yes. It’s called a cuckoo clock,” he said. “My mother had one.”

  Nick hardly ever spoke about his family. I shifted a little closer to him. “Do you think it was meant for you, or about someone else?”

  “The song felt personal.” Every time he looked at me, the shadows on his face seemed deeper. “I’ve had visions since I was six years old, and I still don’t really understand them. Even if the water-board isn’t meant for me, they’ll find out what I am sooner or later. We like to think we’re brave, but in the end, we’re only human. People break bones trying to get off the waterboard.”

  “Nick, stop it. They can’t torture you.”

  “They can do what they like.” His eyelids lowered. “In all the years I’ve worked for Scion, I’ve saved thirty-four voyants from the gallows and two from Nitekind. It’s kept me sane. It’s what I live for. We need someone in there, or there’s nobody to fight for them.”

  I’d always admired Nick for what he did. Jaxon hated the fact that his oracle worked for Scion—he wanted him to be utterly committed to the gang—but it had been part of his contract that he kept the day job, and he was happy enough to share his earnings when he could.

  “But you, sötnos—you can still leave,” Nick continued. “We can’
t get you over the Atlantic, but there are ways to reach the Continent.”

  “It’s just as dangerous there as it is here. What would I do? Join a freak show?”

  “I’m serious, Paige. You’re streetwise and your French is good. At least you wouldn’t be here in the heartland. Or you could go back to Ireland. There’s only so far they’ll go to find you before they give up.”

  “Ireland.” I let out a dull laugh. “Yes, Inquisitors have always had great respect for Irish soil.”

  “Not Ireland, then. But somewhere.”

  “Wherever I go, they’ll follow.”

  “Scion?”

  “No. The Rephaim.” Nashira wouldn’t give me up that easily. “Only five people definitely survived the escape. I’m the only one of those five people who has sway enough to make a difference.”

  “So we stay.”

  “Yes. We stay and change the world.”

  His face lifted in a tired smile, but it looked like hard work. I couldn’t blame him. The prospect of going up against Scion wasn’t exactly heartening.

  “I need to get to the cookshop,” he said. “Do you want some breakfast?”

  “Surprise me.”

  “All right. Just keep the curtains closed.”

  He shrugged on his coat and headed outside. I pulled the heavy curtain past the window.

  The revolution in Sheol I had beaten the odds. With the right reasons, at the right moment, even the most beaten and broken of people could rise up and reclaim themselves.

  The mime-lords and mime-queens of London were not broken. Scion’s indoctrination and cruelty had given them the opportunity to rise. They were comfortable in their underworld, with a sprawling network of couriers, pickpockets and footpads to do their dirty work. Somehow, they had to be convinced that overthrowing Scion would give them better lives—but while Haymarket Hector lived, his people would stay lazy and corrupt.

  I leaned over the sink and rinsed saliva out of my hair. Nick said Hector wasn’t worth killing, but when I looked at the rising bruise on my cheek, I had to wonder. He was a symptom of the diseases in the syndicate: the greed, the violence and, worst of all, the apathy.

  Murder wasn’t exactly a capital crime to people who were certain of an afterlife. Hector got rid of plenty of syndies, and no matter how brutally he did it, no one batted an eyelid. But killing the leader of the syndicate . . . That would be a very different matter. You could kill a busker or a fellow gang member, but you couldn’t go against your own mime-lord, or your Underlord. It was an unwritten rule. The syndicate’s high treason.

  Maybe—just maybe—I could talk to Cutmouth. Away from Hector, she might be different. But that was about as likely as Hector voluntarily handing the crown to someone competent.

  Keeping a cold compress against my cheek, I sat back on the bed. It seemed I had no choice but to take up the mantle of mollisher of I-4 again. To turn the syndicate against Scion, I had to be close to the Unnatural Assembly, close enough to command respect and be privy to its workings—but unless Warden returned, I had no proof of the Rephaim’s existence. I’d have to spread the word without a shred of evidence. I pulled on the golden cord again.

  You needed me to start this, I thought. I need you to help me end it.

  No answer. Just the same, grave silence.

  5

  Weaver

  Nick left for work a few hours later. The room at Bell Inn was free for me to use, and it was about time I left the I-4 doss-house. I rested there for a few hours, but it felt bare without Nick. In the evening, I set off to find something to eat. Music drifted from a record shop and doors were left ajar for séances. I passed a voyant beggar, wrapped head-to-toe in filthy blankets. It was always the augurs and soothsayers who found themselves on the streets as winter approached, fight-ing for their lives.

  Were Liss’s parents still alive? Were they out there in the cold, offering card readings, or had they returned to the Highlands when their daughter went missing? Either way, they would never know what had happened to her. They would never have the chance to face her killer, Gomeisa Sargas. He might be in the Archon now, coordinating a response to the rebellion.

  That is how we see your world, Paige Mahoney, he’d told me. A box of moths, just waiting to be burned.

  It was strange to be back in I-5, the financial center of Scion, where I’d lived since I was nine. Long before Jaxon Hall had come into my life, I’d spent my free time ambling through the green spaces that slithered between the skyscrapers, trying not to notice as my gift struggled to emerge. My father had rarely stopped me. So long as I had a phone, he’d been content to let me wander.

  When I reached the end of the street, a coffeehouse lurched up on my left, hardly visible in the thick fog. I stopped dead. The sign above the door read BOBBIN’S COFFEE.

  My father was a man of habit. He always liked to have a coffee after his shift at work, and he almost always went to Bobbin’s. I’d been there with him once or twice myself when I was in my early teens.

  It was worth a try. I could never approach him publicly again, but I had to know that he was alive. And after everything I’d seen, everything I’d learned about the world, I wanted to see a face from before. The face of the father I’d always loved, but never understood.

  As always, Bobbin’s was crowded, the air dense with the smell of coffee. Glances came in my direction—sighted glances, assessing my red aura—but nobody seemed to recognize me. The voyants of Grub Street had always considered themselves to be a cut above syndicate politics. A thin, bruised girl was no immediate threat, even if she was some sort of jumper. I still chose a seat in the darkest corner possible, hidden by a screen, feeling as if I’d been stripped. I shouldn’t be outside. I should be behind curtains and locked doors.

  When I was certain that no one had identified me, I bought some cheap soup with the handful of money Nick had left me, careful to use an English accent and keep my eyes down. The soup was made with barley and garden peas, poured into a hollowed loaf of bread. I ate it at my table, savoring each mouthful.

  Nobody in this coffeehouse had a data pad, but most people were reading: Victorian tomes, chapbooks, penny dreadfuls. I cast a glance at the nearest patron, a bibliomancer. Behind his newspaper, he was thumbing through a well-worn copy of Didion Waite’s first anonymous poetry chapbook, Love at First Sight; or, the Seer’s Delight. At least, Didion liked to think he was anonymous. We all knew who’d written the dreary collection of epics as he named every muse after his late wife. Jaxon was waiting on tenterhooks for the day he tried to write erotica.

  The thought made me smile until a bell clanged above the door, diverting my attention from the book. Whoever had just come in had a familiar dreamscape.

  An umbrella was hooked over his arm. He transferred it to the stand by the counter and stamped his boots on the doormat. Then he was walking past my table, waiting in line for a coffee.

  In the last six months, my father’s hair had flecked itself with gray, and two faint lines cupped his mouth. He seemed older, but he didn’t have a torture victim’s scars. Relief came crashing into me. The voyant waitron asked for his order.

  “Black coffee,” he said, his accent less noticeable than usual. “And a water. Thank you.”

  It took all my willpower to stay quiet.

  My father sat at a table by the window. I hid behind the screen, watching him through a swirling pattern of glass panes in the wood. Now I could see the other side of him, I noticed a purple welt on his neck, so small you’d think it was a shaving cut. My hand strayed to the matching flux scar on my lower back, gained on the night I’d been arrested.

  Another clang, and an amaurotic woman came into the coffeehouse. She caught sight of my father and went to join him, swinging her coat from her shoulders as she went. Small and plump, she had brown skin, light eyes, and black hair in a loose braid. She sat down opposite my father and leaned across the table, her hands clasped in front of her. Ten delicate silver rings shone on her fin
gers.

  A frown creased my brow as I watched them. When the woman shook her head, my father seemed to lose control of himself. He dropped his forehead into his hand, and his shoulders slumped and shook. His friend placed both her hands over his free one, which was balled into a fist.

  Fighting down a sudden thickness in my throat, I concentrated on finishing my soup. The jukebox played “The Java Jive” when someone dropped a coin in it. I watched him take the woman’s arm and walk into the darkness.

  “Penny for your thoughts, dear heart?”

  The voice startled me. I found myself looking at the sinking face of Alfred the psycho-scout.

  “Alfred,” I said, surprised.

  “Yes, that tragic fool. I hear he’s far too old to approach beautiful ladies in coffeehouses, but he never learns.” Alfred examined me. “You look far too glum for a Saturday evening. In my many years of experience, that means you haven’t had quite enough coffee.”

  “I’ve haven’t even had one.”

  “Oh, dear me. You are clearly not of the literati.”

  “Evening, Alfred.” The waitron raised a hand, as did some of the patrons. “Haven’t seen you in a while.”

  “Hello, hello.” Alfred raised his hat, smiling. “Yes, I’m afraid the powers that be have been nipping at my heels. Had to pretend I had a real job, the muses forbid.”

  A round of good-natured laughter went up before the voyants went back to their drinks. Alfred placed a hand on the chair opposite mine. “May I?”

  “Of course.”

  “You’re very kind. It can be absolutely unbearable to be surrounded by writers every day. Ghastly lot. Now, what can I get you? Café au lait? Miel? Bombón? Vienna? Or perhaps a dirty chai? I do enjoy a spot of dirty chai.”

  “Just a saloop.”

  “Oh, dear.” He placed his hat on the table. “Well, if you insist. Waitron! Bring forth the beans of enlightenment!”

  It was easy to see why he and Jaxon got on so well. They were both completely off the cot. The waitron almost ran to fetch the beans of enlightenment, leaving me to face the music. I cleared my throat.