The Mime Order

by Samantha Shannon

  “This is it,” I said.

  “It doesn’t look like anyone lives there.”

  “They might just have the lights turned off.” I gave him a nudge toward it. “I need you to climb up as high as you can and keep an eye out. If you see anyone coming, make a noise.”

  “I can use this.” He held up a tiny silver crescent of metal. “Bird warbler. It’s loud.”

  “Good idea. Just be careful.”

  He ran toward the building and started to climb, using windowsills and protruding bricks to steady himself. I sat by a wall and reached for the golden cord again.

  Yes, he was here. I could feel his dreamscape now, an unsteady gleam.

  I skirted round the edges of the building until I reached a flight of concrete steps. There were two dreamscapes at the bottom: one animal, one human. I crept down a few steps and peered into the shaft. A woman sat on a crate, smoking with one hand and adjusting a portable radio with the other. An enormous dog slept beside her, curled up in the warmth of a small bin fire. Behind the pair was a black door, daubed with a line of unintelligible red graffiti.

  The woman was unreadable. Clever mime-lord. Nothing could affect her mind, not even my spirit. I could try possessing the dog and making a fuss, but the door was padlocked. The guard would only panic and run off with the key.

  I retreated back to the yard and looked up at the building again. There were no other entrances. Unless . . . well, if you couldn’t go over, you could usually go under.

  Close to my feet was a drain. I crouched down, dropped a small stone through the gap and heard it ping against a solid floor.

  This was no drain. It was a vent. There was open space under the Interchange, right beneath my boots. I’d heard of such passages before, of course—there was a lower world of sewers and passages beneath the streets of London, built during the monarch days—but I’d never heard of a tunnel system in Camden. I dug my fingers into the slats and pulled, but the plate wouldn’t budge.

  I still had no idea how to use the golden cord to communicate, but I could guess. I thought of an image, like an oracle might create khrēsmoi. I pictured the grille, down to the very smallest details: the cast-iron metalwork, the granite sett paving, the seams that ran between metal and stone. And as I held the image in my mind’s eye, I felt him again—and this time, it was more than a sting at my senses. The lantern of his dreamscape flared to life, as if he’d woken from a deep sleep. The image I received in return was dark at the edges, like a frame from a silent film. A cell with bars. A chain. A guard with an orange aura.

  I was seeing through Warden’s eyes. Against all odds, I’d found him.

  Jos jumped down from a ledge and ran over. “Nobody’s coming. Did you find anything?” he said.

  “Something.” I straightened, my eyes aching. “What’s on the other side of the Interchange?”

  “The canal, I think.”

  “Let’s have a look.”

  We climbed over a set of railings, then a brick wall, and dropped on to a towpath. A bridge curved over the dirty water, right next to the Interchange building. Jos hopped across the roofs of several narrowboats and perched on the other side of the canal.

  “Look,” he called, pointing. “Look from this side.”

  I joined him. When I faced the towpath bridge again, I saw what he meant. There was a yawning space underneath it, like the mouth of a cave, where the water disappeared under the building.

  “What’s that?” I said.

  “Dead Dog Hole, the old canal basin.” He crouched, squinting at it. “You think that’s the entrance?”

  “I do.” There was a stack of flotsam by the nearest boat. “And I think I’ve got a way in.”

  Between us, we got a piece of wood into the water. It looked like part of a crate, large enough for one person to sit on. I’d have to find another way to get Warden out. Jos kept an eye on our surroundings, watching for passers-by as he handed me a plank to serve as a paddle.

  “Should I keep watch again?” He clung to the railings with one hand. “What if the Rag and Bone Man comes?”

  “I’ll handle it.” I grasped the sides of the wood. “You keep watch and whistle if you see them.”

  “Okay.”

  “Jos.” He gave me an expectant look. “Do not be seen. Watch from somewhere safe. At the first sign of trouble, you run back to Agatha and pretend I was never here. Got it?”

  “Got it.”

  He watched from the edge as I pushed off on my makeshift raft, into the absolute darkness of Dead Dog Hole.

  The silence was broken only by echoing drips. Once I was out of sight of the path and the streetlamps no longer reached me, I switched on my flashlight. Riveted columns ran from the ceiling and vanished into the black water. The walls on either side of me were the red brick of the warehouse, though thick with algae and dirt. They couldn’t have taken Warden this way.

  Through two archways was what looked like a passage. I tossed my backpack on to the ledge. As I shifted my weight to my feet, ready to leap after it, the wood capsized. My fingers caught the stone, but most of my body plunged into freezing water. A gasp of shock escaped me. I hauled myself into the passage, my arms shaking with the effort. My wet clothes were a second skin. The toes of my boots pushed at the wall, lifting my legs clear of the canal.

  I crawled a few feet and grasped two corroded iron bars. There was just enough space between them for my head and body to slip through. I peeled off my soaking jacket and tied the sleeves around my waist. My fingers were already stiffening, and my clothes reeked of whatever slime and dirt was in the water.

  Why would the mime-lord of II-4 be holding a Rephaite in his compound? He had to have known what he was doing, or he would never have been able to capture one. As soon as I was through the rusted bars, I sensed the two dreamscapes. One was Warden—I recognized the arc of his mind—but the other was unfamiliar. Human. Voyant. The guard with the orange aura. Whoever had trussed Warden up down here, they didn’t want to leave him alone—with good reason. I’d never seen him kill, but if he could fight the Emim, his strength must be immense. I reached into my boot for my hunting knife.

  If I was discovered in a rival mime-lord’s den, his hirelings would be well within their rights to drag me to the Unnatural Assembly. Or just kill me, so long as they told Jaxon about it.

  My boots were soft leather; they hardly made a sound. I walked until I found myself in a man-made tunnel, a remnant of an age of mines and steam and railway wagons. The walls were tangled with chicken wire. Naked, broken bulbs hung in cages from loose wires. I moved into the blackness, avoiding the brooding spirits that drifted past. Just wisps. Nothing dangerous. Jos’s dreamscape was somewhere above me. He must have climbed up to the warehouse roof.

  It soon became apparent that this place was something like a maze. Perhaps it hadn’t been built for that purpose, but with only the occasional glint of light to indicate where you were, it was disorientating. I took note of what was in each vault: barrels of alcohol, mattresses and lanterns, rubble and junk. Decades of accumulated scrap. A den for the Rag Dolls. It must have once have been a basement under the warehouse, but it stretched beyond the Interchange, too.

  And manacles. My breath stopped in my throat.

  There were manacles on the walls.

  Jos had said that a gutterling who’d dared to come near this place had never been seen again. I moved slower, listening for footsteps. When I reached one tunnel, I could see people in the market above through circular grates in the ceiling. Their shadows flickered past. I kept close to the walls, though I doubted they could see me.

  I dug a bag of climbing chalk from my backpack and drew a tiny line on the wall. As I followed the passages, I marked each one with chalk. One unventilated room was enormous: a great underground vault, at least a hundred feet long, not dissimilar to the Garden’s market cavern. The ceiling was low, with vast, sweeping arches. It looked as if it was being refurbished. A spotlight cart stood in the far c
orner, casting harsh electric light through the arches. Crimson curtains had been hung over the walls, some half-attached to rails, and tables and chairs scattered around the place. I checked the æther and darted across the stone floor, heading for a passage on the other side of the vault.

  A thin, filthy cat bounded from under a table and streaked past me with a yowl. I slammed my back against the wall, my heart clobbering my ribs. The animal disappeared into another tunnel.

  If a cat had found its way down here, there must be another way out. It was a small comfort in this place. I could imagine them dragging Warden’s dead weight through the passages. Nearly there. I pictured the room with arches, but got nothing in return.

  The fuzzy sound of a radio soon came to my attention, tuned to Scion’s only news station. I switched off my flashlight and peered around the corner. An old signal lantern sat on the floor in the next tunnel, illuminating the door of Warden’s prison.

  The guard was a slim man with artificially orange hair, slouched against the wall, bobbing his head to the radio. A few days’ worth of stubble had crawled down his neck, right to the hair on his chest, and a coat of dirty grease lay on his skin. A summoner. I’d have a big fight on my hands if I faced him. Summoners could pull spirits across vast distances if they knew their names.

  I fitted myself into an alcove. Like an arrow, my spirit streaked through the wall and into the guard’s dreamscape. By the time his defenses came up, I’d already nudged him into his twilight zone. When I snapped back, my temples thumping, I heard a distinct sound of a limp body collapsing on stone.

  When I reached the tunnel, I found him on the floor, face down. He was unconscious, but breathing. There was no padlock on the door; just a chain that prevented it from opening more than a few inches. Nobody had expected a break-in. I pulled away the chain and stepped into the cell.

  13

  Thief

  Handcuffed to a pipe in the light of a dead-flame lamp, his head hanging between his shoulders, Arcturus Mesarthim looked nothing like the keeper I’d shared a tower with for six months. His clothes were plastered with filth and dust, and beads of water seeped from his hair. I dropped my flash-light and fell into a crouch beside him.

  “Warden.”

  He didn’t answer.

  Fear came snaking around my chest, pushing against anger. Someone—multiple people, by the looks of it—had beaten the shit out of him. His aura was a candle in a draft, flickering and weak.

  White breath billowed past my lips. My boots could hardly grip the icy floor around him. With a running nose and trembling hands, I grasped his shoulders and shook him. No breath lifted his chest.

  “Warden, wake up. Come on.” I tapped his cheek, hard. “Arcturus.”

  At the sound of his true name, his eyelids parted. A dim, yellowish light bled into his irises.

  “Paige Mahoney.” It was almost too soft to hear. “Good of you to come to my rescue.”

  Relief crashed over me. “What did they do to you?” I could hardly get the words out through my chattering teeth. “Does the guard have the key to your chain?”

  “Leave the chain.” A rattle escaped his throat. “You ought to leave. My captors will return before long.”

  “I’ll be the judge of when I leave.”

  Outside the door, I rolled the guard on to his back and rummaged through his pockets. With one heavy key I unlocked Warden’s manacle, freeing his wrist. I scooped an arm around his shoulders, trying to pull him into a sitting position, but he was a dead weight.

  “Warden, you have to move. I can’t lift you.” I pulled the lamp closer. Green-black stains were blooming under his skin in curious patterns, like fern frost. “Tell me where you’re hurt.”

  His gloved fingers twitched. I turned my flashlight downward. A bangle of scarlet poppy anemones hung on his left wrist, the sort of thing I’d often twisted together with daisies as a child. The whole of his arm was peppered with necrotic tissue, shot through the smooth dark gold of his skin.

  “They are like irons.” His eye-light was fading. When I reached for the first chain, it flared up again. “Don’t.”

  “We don’t have time to—”

  “I have not fed in days.” The last word ended in a growl. “The hunger is taking me.”

  “It isn’t taking you anywhere. I am.” I took his face between my hands. “Terebell and Errai sent me to find you.”

  Some of the light returned to his gaze. “You look different,” he said. “The mind-sickness . . . I will not remember you, Paige . . .”

  He was delirious. “Warden, what do you need? Salt?”

  “That will wait. I have no bites. It is the fever in my mind that must be dealt with first.”

  “You need aura,” I realized.

  “Yes.” Each breath ground through his throat. “They have tormented me for weeks, letting me take only a little at a time . . . keeping it just out of my reach . . . I confess, I am starving. But I will not take yours.”

  I smiled grimly. “Good thing there’s an alternative, then.”

  The guard really was having a bad night. I took him by the wrists and hauled him into the cell on his back. Dry groans punctuated each pull on his arms. I shackled him to the pipe and held my knife to his throat. Warden watched in hungry silence.

  “Did this one beat you?” I said.

  “On multiple occasions.”

  The guard stirred. Blood slithered from both his nostrils, right down to his chin. “The hell did you do to me?” His breath smelled of stale coffee. “My head . . .”

  “You work for the Rag and Bone Man,” I said, smiling. “Tell me who he is, or I’ll ask my friend to drain you very, very slowly of your aura. How would you like to be amaurotic, summoner?”

  When he found a knife at his throat and a chain at his wrist, the guard struggled. My knee pinned his free hand. “Better rottie to the core than sleeping with the bloaters,” he hissed. “Rags will throw me in with weights on my ankles if I say a word.” He took in a deep breath and shouted, “Sarah Whitehead, I summon you to—”

  I slapped a hand over his mouth.

  “Try that again and we’ll skip the draining,” I said, leaning close to him. “I’ll just shoot you. Understood?”

  He nodded once. As soon as I removed my hand, he said, “Bitch.”

  Warden played his part beautifully. He shifted toward the guard on all fours with the slow precision of a predator, his pale yellow eyes like a wolf ’s in the gloom. Muscle shifted under his skin. The man yanked at his chain in a panic, kicking at the floor. Even I shivered. Rephaim looked relatively human by daylight, but in the dark, they lost the veneer of humanity.

  “Call him off.” The closer Warden came, the more the guard pulled at his manacle. “Call him off, brogue!”

  “I’m afraid he’s not a dog,” I said, “but you’ve treated him like one, haven’t you?” My knife dug into his neck. “Tell me who the Rag and Bone Man is. Tell me his name and I might let you live.”

  “I don’t know his name!” he shouted. “None of us know his name! Why would he tell us?”

  “What was he planning to do with the Rephaite? Who’s he working with? Where is he now?” I grasped his throat and angled the knife toward the underside of his chin. “You’d better get talking, summoner. I don’t consider myself patient.”

  He spat at me. Warden’s face turned utterly cold. “You’ll get nothing out of me,” the guard repeated. “Nothing.”

  I pushed my spirit against his dreamscape, hard. More blood swelled from his nostrils. “Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t tell you,” he choked. “He’s only here once in a blue moon. We take orders from his moll-isher.” When Warden moved toward him again, he gasped for air. More than air. “You said you’d call him off!”

  “I didn’t, actually,” I said.

  There was no violence. Nothing but a look. Warden stared at the guard and breathed in. His chest expanded, and his eyes scalded like signal lights before filling up with vivid orang
e. The guard slumped against the frozen pipe, his aura thin as tissue paper.

  A ripple went right the way through Warden’s body. Ectoplasm glowed in the veins beneath his skin, which suddenly appeared translucent. I stayed where I was, keeping a few feet between us. When I lifted the flowers from his arm, a deep growl rumbled up from his chest.

  “My captors ventured outside for food,” he said. “They will not be long.”

  “Good. I’d love to meet them.”

  “They are dangerous.”

  “So am I. So are you.”

  His eyes were growing brighter. They flooded me with the stranger memories of my imprisonment. A gramophone’s blacklisted music, telling lovers’ stories to the gloom. A butterfly held out inside caged fingers. His lips on mine in the Guildhall, hands gliding over my hips, my waist. I tried to focus on removing the next flower chain, but I was too aware of his movements now. Each rise and fall of his chest, each flex of tendon in his neck.

  Above us, the pale moon was just visible between the metal slats. When there were no chains left, I took my burner from my backpack and stuck a new module between my teeth while I pried the back cover off. Warden let his head fall back against the wall. I stayed beside him as I called the I-4 phone booth, hoping on hope for a signal. We weren’t too far underground.

  “I-4,” said a courier’s voice. The line was bad, but I could just about hear.

  “The Red Vision,” I said. “Quickly.”

  “Bear with me.”

  I didn’t have much time to bear with him. Warden’s eyes strayed to the summoner again, to the wisp of aura that still clung to him. After a minute, Nick spoke: “Everything okay?”

  “I need a lift,” I said.

  “Where are you?”

  “Camden. The warehouse at the top end of Oval Road.”

  “Ten minutes.”

  The line went dead. I pulled out the identity module and slid it into my back pocket, then took the signal lantern in one hand and hoisted Warden’s heavy arm around my neck. He grasped my shoulder as he stood. The weight of his hand sent tremors down my sides.