The Mime Order

by Samantha Shannon

  Felix held his mask away from his mouth. “Okay,” he said, “but that was a pamphlet. You’re suggesting a penny dreadful. A cut-price horror story for people with too much time on their hands.”

  “I used to read Marvelous Songbirds for Sale. You know, the one about the orthinomancer who’s a gutterling and sells talking birds,” Jos said, “but my kidsman found my stash and threw them all in a pit fire.” He wasn’t on Scion’s radar yet, but Nell had bundled him up in a scarf and hat anyway.

  “Good. That stuff will rot your brain.” There were rings under Nell’s eyes. “And Grub Street pumps it out at a rate of knots.”

  “I just don’t know if we should make it a horror,” Felix continued. “What if people think it’s fiction?”

  “How do you kill a vampire?” I asked. Felix struck me as the sort of guy who pretended he read Nostradamus in the evenings, but kept a battered copy of The Mysteries of Jacob’s Island between the pages.

  “With garlic and sunlight,” he said. Bingo.

  “But they don’t exist,” I said, trying not to smile. “How do you know?”

  “Because I read it in—” He flushed. “Fine, fine. I might have read a couple of penny dreadfuls when I was Jos’s age, but—”

  “I’m thirteen,” Jos groused.

  “—can’t we just write a serious pamphlet? Or something like a handbook?”

  “Oh, great. The Rephaim will be shaking in their boots over Felix Coombs and his handbook,” Nell said, deadpan.

  His lips pursed. “I’m serious. Binder could help you, couldn’t he, Paige?”

  “He doesn’t like rivals. And the difference between a pamphlet and a penny dreadful is that pamphlets claim to tell the truth. Penny dreadfuls don’t. We can’t just shout about the Rephs in the street,” I said. “A penny dreadful will turn them into an urban legend.”

  “What good will that do?” Nell rubbed the skin between her eyebrows. “If we never prove it—”

  “We’re not trying to prove anything. We’re trying to warn the syndicate.”

  Opposite me, Ivy was hunched over an untouched cup of saloop, her breath steaming from below a pair of round, gold-framed sunglasses. The distinguishing feature in her photo—the bright blue hair—had already been shorn away. Bony fingers tapped the table, their knuckles raw with calluses. She hadn’t said a word since my arrival, nor looked up from her saloop. She’d been treated like dirt by her Rephaite keeper. Those wounds wouldn’t heal easily.

  “We should do it,” Jos said. “Paige is right. Who’s going to listen to us if we say it’s real?”

  “You’re all off the cot. You know that?” When she saw our faces, Nell clicked her tongue. “Fine. I guess I’ll have to do most of the writing.”

  “Why you?” I said.

  “I got a job on the silks at the Fleapit. We can use the box office to write.” She took a few gulps of cola. “I reckon I can knock a decent story together. Jos can help me smooth it out.”

  Jos’s eyes brightened. “Really?”

  “Well, you’re the expert.” She stifled a yawn. “We’ll get working on it tomorrow. Today, I mean.”

  Some of the tension bled from my neck and shoulders. There was no way I could work on a penny dreadful for days without Jaxon picking up on it. “It might be best to write two copies in case one gets lost. And make sure you include the pollen of the poppy anemone,” I said. “That’s how they can be destroyed.”

  “Can you buy it on the black market?”

  “Maybe.” I had a feeling it wouldn’t be there, but black-market traders could get hold of almost anything. “How soon do you think you can get it done?”

  “Give us a week. Where should we send it when it’s finished?”

  “Leave it at the Minister’s Cat gambling-house in Soho. I know one of the croupiers there—Babs. She works from five to midnight all week. Make sure you seal it.” I sat back. “How’s Agatha treating you?”

  Jos pulled a face. “I don’t like her that much. She wants me to start singing in the market.”

  “The food she gives us is terrible,” Felix added.

  “Stop it,” Ivy snapped, emerging from her silence so suddenly that Jos flinched. “What’s wrong with you? She’s hiding us from Rags and feeding us with money from her own pocket. Whatever she’s given us, it’s all she can afford. And it’s a damn sight better than what the Rephaim made us eat. When they let us eat.”

  There was a brief silence before Jos mumbled an apology. Felix turned pink at the ears.

  “Agatha’s all right. Staying with her is cheaper than a doss-house.” Nell scraped a hand through her hair. A forked scar caught the light, sweeping from the corner of her left eye to her earlobe. It was too pale to be recent. “Hey, who are you betting on in the scrimmage, Paige?”

  “Yeah.” Felix leaned toward me, rubbing his hands. “Is Binder going for it?”

  “Naturally,” I said.

  “So if he wins, you’ll be mollisher supreme.” Nell’s gaze was piercing. “I think you’d do a decent job as the Underlord’s moll, you know. You got us all out of the colony, didn’t you?”

  “Julian and Liss did a lot to help. And the Warden.”

  “You got everyone on to the train. You got us all to keep fighting at the end. Besides, you’re the only survivor who might be able to get the Unnatural Assembly to do something.”

  “Like anyone will, after what happened to Hector,” Felix said. “Who do you think did it?”

  “His mollisher,” Nell said. “I always thought she adored him, but if she didn’t do it, why wasn’t she there?”

  “Because she knew she’d be judged for it, no matter how much that lecherous, drunken bastard deserved it.” All eyes turned to Ivy, who’d choked out the words as if they were barbs in her throat. “He gave Cutmouth that scar, you know. Got blind drunk one night and did it with one of his knives. She hated his guts.”

  It was impossible to see her eyes through those lenses, but her fingers bunched into a fist. I exchanged a glance with Nell and said, “How do you know that?”

  When she replied, it was hardly loud enough to hear. “Just heard it on the streets. You hear a lot as a gutterling.”

  Nell looked suspicious now. “Nobody in my district thought Cutmouth hated Hector. People said she was half in love with him, if anything.”

  “She was not,” Ivy bit out, “in love with him.”

  “You knew her, didn’t you?” I said. Ivy looked between us. “I saw her the night Hector died. She asked where you were hiding.”

  Ivy opened and closed her mouth. “She asked—” Her whole body was trembling as she leaned across the table. “Paige, what did you tell her?”

  “I told her I didn’t know where you were.”

  Mixed emotions thrashed their way across her face. Like me, Nell had clearly caught a scent. “How did you know her?” she said.

  Shoulders hunched, Ivy pulled her knuckles up to her chin. “We grew up in the same community.”

  “But she got the scar when she was working for Hector, and I’ve never heard that story about him cutting her,” I said, watching her face. “So you stayed friends with her after she became his mollisher, and she confided in you about how much she hated him. That’s dangerous information to share with a gutterling.”

  Something like panic was crashing over Ivy’s features now. “You know they’re saying it was you who killed him, Paige?” she said, with an edge to her voice. “Agatha told me. The Unnatural Assembly cleared you, but you were at his parlor that night. Why are you so interested in Cutmouth?”

  I fell silent and leaned back in my seat, trying not to notice the look of confusion Jos gave me. She had me there. If I could prove Cutmouth guilty, it would clear my name and rid me of the need for Jaxon’s “protection”—but I couldn’t press Ivy in front of the others, or they’d wonder the same thing.

  “I’m tired.” She stood, pulling her sleeves over her shaking hands. “I’m going back to the boutique.”r />
  Without another word, she walked toward the stairs, her head ducked. As I rose to go after her, Nell caught my arm. “Paige, don’t,” she murmured. “She’s confused. Agatha’s been giving her sedatives to help her sleep.”

  “She’s not confused.”

  I pulled my arm free and swung my legs over the balustrade, on to a wrought-iron stairway that zigzagged down the side of the building, leaving the other three to finish their drinks. Below me, Ivy was making her way out of the bar at top speed, back towards the inner market. I jumped down and jogged after her, into a close pathway that was packed with empty stalls.

  “Ivy.”

  No reply. Her pace quickened.

  “Ivy,” I said, raising my voice, “I don’t particularly care why you know Cutmouth, but I need to know where she might be hiding.”

  Her shaved head was bowed, her hands shoved into her pockets. When I got within a few feet of her, she turned on her heel and thrust something toward me. A switchblade glinted in the blue light of a streetlamp.

  “Just leave it, Paige,” she said, with a coldness I’d never heard from her. “It’s none of your business.”

  Her face twitched and her hand trembled, but her eyes were almost black with resolve. Bruises were still fading from her skin. She kept the knife pointed at my heart until I took a step back. “Ivy, I’m not going to hurt her,” I said, raising my hands a little. The knife flinched up again. “She could be in danger. Whoever killed Hector will be looking for—”

  “You know what, Paige? I don’t know if she loved or hated him. I thought I knew her once,” she spat, “but I’ve always had a knack for trusting the wrong people.” Her voice was threadbare. “Back off, Pale Dreamer. Run back to your mime-lord.”

  The knife snapped closed. She cut through a line of hanging rugs and disappeared into the market.

  ****

  It might be nothing. Maybe Cutmouth and Ivy had been friends who’d stayed close enough to share their secrets and that was the end of it. It was clear she had some idea of where Cutmouth was, but she had no reason whatsoever to trust me with the information. She didn’t know me from the next person she’d met in the colony. I was just the white-jacket from the meadow whose keeper had been kind to her.

  Back near the Underground station, I climbed into a rickshaw and pulled my hood over my eyes, watching the stars sail in and out of the clouds. At least we’d all agreed on the penny dreadful. It was the most secret breed of rebellion I could imagine, putting words on paper. But hadn’t Jaxon’s pamphlet completely changed the structure of the syndicate? Hadn’t it dictated our protocol, our rivalries, the way we looked at one another? Jaxon had been a nobody, a self-educated gutterling, yet his pamphlet had done more than any Underlord, simply because people had read it in droves and found something worth acting on.

  Writing didn’t carry the same risks as speaking. You couldn’t be shouted down or stared at. The page was both a proxy and a shield. The thought was enough to bring a smile to my face for the first time in days, though it faded when I saw the nearest transmission screen.

  The rickshaw took me back to I-4. As it rattled into Piccadilly Circus, it swung to the right, jolting me in my seat. The driver glanced over his shoulder. Automatically, I pulled my scarf up to my eyes.

  A paddy wagon was parked in the center of the Circus, where a unit of Vigiles had rounded up nine voyants and bound their hands. In front of me, the driver muttered to himself, cursing his job, flex-ing his fingers on the handlebars. We were hemmed in by the sheer weight of traffic, brought to a standstill by a red light and the curiosity of the passengers. Another rickshaw client was standing up, craning to see the show.

  “. . . miscreants, seditionists, and the vilest of unnaturals,” a Vigile commandant was bellowing through a speaking-trumpet. His pistol was aimed at the heart of a soothsayer, whose head was bowed. Beside him, a medium had broken down in tears of fright. “These nine traitors have confessed to being seduced by Paige Mahoney and her conspirators. If these fugitives are not found, they will spread the plague all over our citadel! They plot to destroy the laws that PROTECT you! Let London BURN before the Bloody King’s legacy continues!”

  The red light blinked off, and the bus moved on. Another jolt, and the rickshaw was weaving around traffic again.

  “Sorry,” the driver called, wiping the sweat from his forehead. “Would’ve taken a different route if I’d realized.”

  “Have you seen a lot of that?” I asked.

  “Too much.”

  He was amaurotic, but he sounded sad. I didn’t speak again. Every move Scion made was controlled by Nashira. Those nine voyants would be dead before the week was out.

  The rickshaw dropped me off at the base of the Seven Dials pillar. The vibrant blues and golds on the sundials at the top had been replaced by red, white and black, with silver anchors in the middle of each oval. Chat had painted them during the night, coating their beautiful symbols with Scion’s colors. It looked authentic, like something done for Novembertide, but the sight of the enemy’s symbol on that pillar hurt my heart. I took out my keys and walked away from it.

  When I got back to my room, I found four small Grub Street booklets on my bed. I picked up the nearest and skimmed my fingers over it. The History of the Great Syndicate of London: Volume I. This must be what Jaxon had meant by “homework.” I sat down in my armchair and opened it.

  Originally, the clairvoyant people of London had only ever met in small groups. There had been a few large gangs with voyant members, like the Forty Elephants, but it was a “mirror-reader” named Tom Merritt who had stepped up and taken charge of it all in the early 1960s. Interesting that the first Underlord had been a soothsayer, the lowest of Jaxon’s orders. Along with his lover, the “flower-caster” Madge Blevins, he’d divided the citadel into sections, created the black market, and given each clairvoyant a job. The most committed were raised to positions of power, becoming the first mime-lords and mime-queens. In 1964, his work was done. He declared himself Underlord, and Madge his faithful mollisher.

  It was strange to see a record that didn’t use the Seven Orders clas-sification system. Mirror-reader and flower-caster had long since been replaced by catoptromancer and anthomancer. There were other archaisms scattered through the text: numina for numa, spirit-reel for spool.

  The first scrimmage had been held twelve years later. Good Tom and Madge had both been killed in a freak accident, leaving the syndicate without a leader. The resulting battle for the crown—the first scrimmage—had been won by the first Underqueen, who’d called herself the Golden Baroness. She had ruled for another four years before being brutally murdered by an “axe-diviner.”

  Upon the Underqueen’s gruesome Demise, it was decreed by the Unnatural Assembly that her Mollisher, the Silver Baron, would inherit the Crown in the style of the deposed Monarchs of England, whose line was interrupted by the arrival of Scion ( for are we not, as one Mime-Queen said, the monarchy of those who have been crushed beneath the Anchor?). From that point on, Mollishers would always inherit, except in the rare situation that both Underlord and Mollisher were killed at the same time, or the Mollisher refused or ignored their Claim.

  That might explain Cutmouth’s disappearance. It was safe to assume that whoever had killed Hector wanted her dead, too. She’d chosen to go into hiding rather than announce herself to the Unnatural Assembly. When I opened Volume III, published in 2045, I clenched my jaw.

  It is in this period of our History that the great Pamphleteer, known under the pseudonym “An Obscure Writer”, stepped forth to reorganize the Syndicate. In 2031, the Seven Orders of Clairvoyance—published in the pamphlet On the Merits of Unnaturalness—caused a minor spate of Disagreements (including the historic imprisonment of the Vile Augurs) before its implementation as the official System by which we understand Clairvoyance in the Syndicate. Grub Street is proud to have published this stupendous and ground-breaking Document. As of the present time, Obscure Writer, now formall
y known as the White Binder, is Mime-Lord of I Cohort, Section 4.

  “A minor spate of Disagreements”? Was that what this historian called all that senseless murder, all those gang wars? Was that what he called the divisions that still riddled us? I turned to the section on syndicate customs.

  The Scrimmage is based on the medieval art of mêlée. Mime-Lords, Mime-Queens, and their Mollishers fight in close Combat in a “Rose Ring,” an enduring symbol of the Plague of Unnaturalness. Each of the Combatants fights for his- or herself, but a Mollisher may work with his or her Mime-Lord or Mime-Queen at any time during the battle. The last Candidate standing is declared Victor and is presented with the ceremonial Crown. From that moment, the Victor rules the Syndicate, and bears the title of Underlord or Underqueen, depending upon their Preference.

  When there are only two Combatants left in the Rose Ring, and they are not a Mime-Lord or Mime-Queen and Mollisher duo, they must do battle to the Death in order for a final Victor to be declared. Only by using a specific invocation—“in the name of the æther, I, [name or alias], yield”—can a Combatant end the last fight without bloodshed. Once this word is spoken, the other Party is automatically declared Victor. This Rule was introduced by the Golden Baroness, first Underqueen of the Scion Citadel of London (ruled 1976–1980).

  Jaxon rapped on the wall with his cane. I closed the book and laid it on the nightstand.

  In the office, I was hit by the waxen smell of flowers. There were cuttings all over his desk, along with a heavy pair of scissors and a length of orange ribbon. On the couch, Nadine picked through the week’s earnings. She glanced at me before looking back at the pool of coins in her lap.

  “There you are, Paige.” Jaxon waved me to a seat. Our argument had already been forgotten. “Where did you go this morning?”

  “Just to Chat’s for a coffee. I woke up early.”

  “Don’t wander off. You’re far too precious to lose, O my lovely.” He sniffed, his eyes bloodshot. “Wretched pollen. I’d like my mollisher’s opinion, if you’d care to cast your eye over these blooms.”