The Mime Order

by Samantha Shannon

  “Do you want to stay for a while?” I said to Nick.

  “No. I should get back to Dials.” He glanced at Warden. “How long have you been away from the den?”

  “About an hour.”

  “Come with me, then.”

  I looked at Warden, and he looked at me. “I don’t know,” I said.

  “We’ll make an excuse for you to come back. Just keep Jaxon happy for a while, or he’ll give us a curfew.” He buttoned up his coat. “I’ll wait outside.”

  I clenched my jaw as he left.

  “Go,” Warden said, very softly. “I left you often enough in the penal colony, with no words of explanation. Manipulate your mime-lord, Paige, as he has spent his life manipulating others. Use him to your advantage.”

  “I can’t out-Jaxon him. He’s the master of manipulation.” I stood and swung my jacket on. “Nick’s right about the curfew. I’ll come back when I can.”

  “I look forward to it. In the meantime,” he said, “I am sure I will find some way to entertain myself.”

  “You could do that séance.”

  “Perhaps. Or perhaps I will take a few more hours of peace before the war begins one more.”

  There was a light in his eyes that I might have thought playful if he hadn’t been a Rephaite. I couldn’t help but smile as I left him to his own devices.

  15

  The Minister’s Cat

  The minute I walked away from the doss-house again, I wanted to go back. I didn’t want to leave him there alone. Most of all, I didn’t want to scarper back to the den just to keep Jaxon from cutting my pay. My freedom—the freedom I’d fought for, that people had died for—seemed like just as much of a charade in the Seven Seals as in Scion. I was nothing but a dog on Jaxon Hall’s leash.

  I couldn’t keep this up for two more years. I wasn’t a good enough actor to keep spinning along in his danse macabre. The scrimmage was my only chance to break free of his hold.

  We worked our way through Soho. This lattice of backstreets formed the real underbelly of I-4, where the poorest of Jaxon’s people eked out a living or died trying. I kept my head down and my eyes peeled for any sign of unfamiliar couriers.

  “Paige,” Nick said, speaking in a low voice, “I don’t trust him.”

  “I could tell.”

  “I can’t forget that night on the bridge. You pushed him away. You wanted to go home.” He caught my arm, and I stopped dead. “Maybe he had his reasons. Maybe he does want to help you overthrow his own kind. But he kept you prisoner for half a year, to use you as his puppet. He threw you into the woods with one of those monsters. He watched them brand you—”

  “I know. I remember.”

  “Do you?”

  “Yes, Nick.”

  “But you don’t hate him.”

  Those pale green eyes could slice down every shield I’d ever raised. “I’ll never forget those things,” I said, “but I want to trust him. If he isn’t on their side, he must be on ours.”

  “What’s he going to eat? Aura à gogo? Dreamwalker au gratin? Shall I get him the menu and serve him a busker?”

  “Funny.”

  “It’s not funny, Paige. That one in the city gave me my first experience of being fast food.”

  “He’s not going to feed on us. And there’s no reason under the sun why he’d tell Scion where we are. They’d kill him just as fast as they’d kill me.”

  “You do what you like, sötnos, but I’m not helping you see him. If anything happened, I’d never forgive myself.”

  I didn’t say anything. He couldn’t seem to look at me.

  Guilt was written all over him. What they’d done to Ella hadn’t been his fault, but I knew that he would always wonder, in the dark hours, if there was anything he could have done to stop her suffering. And whether he helped me or not, he would think the same if I came to any harm in Warden’s company.

  As I thought of it, Liss Rymore and Seb Pearce rose to the front of my mind for the first time in days, and the agony of their deaths erupted afresh. I’d never had a chance to mourn the fallen of that season. Voyants didn’t hold funeral services—it wasn’t in our culture to grieve over an empty corpse—but it might have helped. Given me a chance to say sorry and goodbye.

  I schooled my expression so it didn’t show. Nick didn’t need my grief on top of his.

  As we passed the sundial pillar, with its sad, painted faces, a medium in a long coat whistled from behind a phone booth.

  “Pale Dreamer.”

  I stopped. It was one of Jaxon’s couriers, someone I recognized. “What is it, Hearts?”

  “Got a message for you,” he said, stepping towards us. “From somebody called 9. She says the project’s finished and it’s waiting for you at the location you agreed on.”

  Nell’s number. It must be the penny dreadful. “That’s it?”

  “That’s it.”

  A mouthful of broken teeth grinned at me. I turned out my empty pockets. With pursed lips, Nick passed him a few coins from his wallet. “When did you get the message?” I said.

  “Only ten minutes ago, but the courier who spoke to me said it had taken her two days to deliver the package. The Rag Dolls are checking the pockets of every courier who leaves II-4,” he said. “Took some time to smuggle the envelope out of the section without them noticing, apparently.”

  Hearts doffed his hat and stowed the money in his coat before he slunk into an alley. Nick and I waited until his dreamscape was a good distance away before we continued.

  “It’s you they’re looking for,” Nick murmured. “Have you ever heard of couriers being searched?”

  “No, but we just smuggled a Reph out of their section. They might be feeling paranoid.”

  “Exactly. You can’t go back.”

  As soon as we were through the red door of the den, Jaxon summoned us to his office. He was sitting in his bergère with his fingers steepled, wearing his favorite brocade lounging robe and a stiff expression. I stood beside Nick and raised my eyebrows.

  “Another stroll, darling?” he said curtly.

  “I sent her out to find a busker for me,” Nick said. “He owed us money.”

  “I do not want my dreamwalker leaving the den without my express permission, Dr. Nygård. In future, you will send one of the others.” He paused. “Why are you in that ghastly uniform?”

  “I came straight from work.” He cleared his throat. “Jax, I think my position in Scion has been compromised.”

  Jaxon turned on his chair. “I am listening.”

  As Nick explained what had happened, Jaxon picked up a fountain pen and twirled it between the fingers of one hand.

  “Much as I despise your moonlighting with Scion, we do need your income, Dr. Nygård,” he concluded. “You had better return to your work next week and continue to feign ignorance. It would only incriminate you further if you were to abandon them now.”

  We couldn’t need money that much. Even after what had happened at the black market, I-4 had been running normally. “Jax, he’s in danger,” I said. “What if they arrest him?”

  “They won’t, honeybee.”

  “You’re raking in a fortune from the buskers’ rent alone. You can’t possibly—”

  “You may be my heir, Paige, but unless I’m mistaken, I am currently mime-lord here.” He didn’t deign to look at me. “One glance from a voyant girl is not enough to implicate our oracle in anything.”

  “So you’re happy to risk that oracle’s neck for a few more pennies in your coffers?” I said hotly.

  He grasped the arm of his chair. “Leave me with my mollisher, if you please, Dr. Nygård. Take a well-deserved break.”

  Nick hesitated before he left, but only for a moment. He gave my shoulder a gentle squeeze as he passed.

  A distorted recording of “The Boy I Love Is Up in the Gallery” was warbling from the corner. An empty reservoir glass stood on the desk. I lowered myself into an armchair and crossed my legs, giving him what I hoped
was an innocent, expectant sort of look.

  “The scrimmage,” Jaxon said, in a dangerously soft voice, “is less than a month away. And I have seen no evidence whatsoever that you are attempting to prepare for it.”

  “I’ve been practicing.”

  “Practicing what, Paige?”

  “My gift. I’ve . . . tried walking without the mask,” I said. It wasn’t quite a lie. “I can do it for a few minutes now.”

  “It’s all very well and good to exercise your gift, but your physic al health is just as important. They kept you weak and malnourished for a reason, darling: so you couldn’t fight back.” He placed a small bottle on the desk, full to the brim with greenish liquid. “Worse, you have neglected to treat yourself with the bay laurel I purchased for you.”

  I drew my arm toward my chest. Something told me not to tell him that the scars had been washed away by amaranth. It would only lead to questions about where I’d procured it.

  “It hasn’t hurt since you bound the Monster,” I said.

  “Irrelevant. Until I see some evidence that you are taking care of yourself,” Jaxon said, “I will be withholding your wages.”

  The smile slipped off my lips. “I’ve done everything you’ve asked me,” I said, trying to keep the bitterness out of my voice. “Everything. Delivered the messages, gone to the auctions—”

  “—and through it all, paid not one iota of attention!” He swept the glass off his desk, along with reams of paperwork. “I suggest you manage your time a little better. I shall ask Nick to train you up for the fight.”

  Absinthe soaked into the carpet. My heart hammered. Jaxon took another glass from the cabinet.

  “Off to bed with you, now.” He poured the absinthe. “You need your rest, O my lovely.”

  With a curt nod, I left.

  How long had it been since he’d left the den? How long since he’d last seen the streets he wanted so badly to rule?

  On the landing, Eliza was gazing blankly at the wall, her mouth ajar. Oil paint sleeved her arms from fingertip to elbow. Her hair hung in greasy coils down her back, reeking of old sweat.

  “Eliza?”

  “Paige,” she slurred, “where have you been?”

  “Out.” Her eyelids were drooping. I took her by the elbows. “Hey, when was the last time you slept?”

  “I’m not sure. Doesn’t matter. Do you know when Jaxon’s next pay packet is coming in?”

  I frowned. “Has he not paid you, either?”

  “Said he wanted to see progress. Need to make more progress.”

  “You’ve made plenty of progress.”

  I led her up the stairs by the arm. She was trembling all over. “I have to carry on,” she muttered. “I have to, Paige. You don’t understand.”

  “Eliza, I want you to take eight hours off. In that time, I want you to have a meal, take a shower and get some sleep. Can you do that?”

  A titter jumped from her lips. I pushed her into the bathroom with a towel and a lounging robe.

  Danica, as always, was working on her side of the garret. I knocked on her door and entered when I didn’t get an answer.

  The corners overflowed with bits and pieces she’d picked out of scrap heaps or bought from mudlarks on the banks of the Thames. Danica was sitting on the end of her daybed, hunched over the heavy oak table that served as her work surface.

  “Dani, I need a favor.”

  “I don’t do favors,” she said. A circle of dense glass magnified one of her eyes to an absurd size.

  “It’s nothing too strenuous. Don’t worry.”

  “Not the point. That seat isn’t for people,” she added as I sat down.

  “What are you working on?” I scanned the curled scraps of paper on the floor, all scribbled on in neat Cyrillic script. “The Panić Theory?”

  Her hypothesis still required empirical research. Jaxon wanted to include it in his next great pamphlet. The formula was simple: take the order of clairvoyance, multiply by ten, take away from one hundred, and the answer was the average age for a voyant of that order to die. It meant that I would die at thirty, which was a cheerful thought. Then again, cheerful thoughts didn’t sell pamphlets.

  “Nope.” She picked up a spanner. “The hand-held Senshield.”

  “Why does Jax want you working on that?”

  “He doesn’t tell me why. He tells me what and when.”

  I couldn’t think why Jaxon would need such a thing. “If you get bored,” I said, reaching into my pocket, “do you think you could modify the portable oxygen mask for me? I need it to be a bit smaller.”

  She turned it over in her callused hands. “That’s as small as you’ll get it. It needs a decent air chamber.”

  “How about something I can conceal?”

  “Jaxon won’t pay me for that. This is the job he gave me.”

  “It’s for the scrimmage. Besides, you haven’t bought so much as a sock since last year,” I said.

  “This may come as a shock to you, but I need the money to pay the mudlarks. They charge me like they’re selling gold dust.” She dropped the mask on the table. “If I say yes, will you go away?”

  “If you also make sure that Eliza eats a full meal before she goes back to work.”

  “Done.”

  That was the best I’d get out of her. I passed Eliza as she tottered into her room and collapsed on her bed in a heap. When the muses approached her, I forced them into a spool and knocked them unceremoniously to the other side of the garret.

  “She needs to rest. Bother someone else for a while.”

  Pieter shot off in a huff. The newest muse, George, brooded in the corner while Rachel and Phil hung sadly above the door. Eliza was already sound asleep, her arm hanging off the edge of the bed, face half-buried in the pillow. I pulled a thick blanket over her shoulders.

  Jaxon didn’t want me to rest. If he was interested in giving his voyants rest, Eliza wouldn’t be wandering around like an automaton in clothes she’d been wearing for a week.

  My mime-lord was waiting in the doorway of his office, watching me. With a slanted smile, he waved me into my room. I slammed the door in his face.

  Curled up on my bed, I picked open the pillowcase stiches with the tip of my knife. There was enough money in there to buy one more night for Warden at the doss-house. After that, he was on his own. I turned on to my side and rested my head on one arm, listening to the white noise machine.

  After an hour or two, Jaxon’s dreamscape dimmed. I lay awake until the den was quiet; until the streetlights bathed the streets with blue and even Danica had succumbed to her exhaustion. The penny dreadful was waiting in Soho. Warden was waiting in the doss-house. Under my pillow, my hand lay on the handle of my knife. I hadn’t felt this alone in a long time.

  At midnight, my door swung open. I sat up with a pounding heart, the knife still in my hand.

  “Shh. It’s me.” Nick crouched beside my bed. “You’re sleeping with a knife?”

  “You sleep with a gun.” I laid it on the nightstand. “What’s the matter?”

  “Go.” He nodded to the window. “Go back to the doss-house and see Warden. I’ll leave Jaxon a note. Tell him we’re training.”

  “I thought you said—?”

  “I did, but I’m tired of doing everything by Jaxon’s book,” he whispered. “I don’t like it, Paige, but we need to work out what the Rag Dolls are planning. And I trust that you know what you’re doing.” He still didn’t look happy. “Be careful, sötnos. And if you can’t be careful—”

  “—be quick.” I kissed his cheek. “I know. Thank you.”

  ****

  It must have been hard for him to let me go, but it felt good to have Nick back on my side. Even if we both agreed that me seeing Warden was risky, it was better than having no Rephaite help whatsoever.

  There was a cold snap in the air. I climbed my way out of the den, bundled up in a jacket and cravat, and took off down Monmouth Street. Jaxon’s office window was dark; h
is dreamscape swam with the muddied tint of alcohol. I spied a unit of Vigiles patrolling on Shaftesbury Avenue and took a different route across the rooftops to Soho.

  The district was heaving with denizens, mostly amaurotic, with the odd voyant darting through the throng. The people came here for what little pleasure Scion afforded them: the casinos, the underground theatres, and the 3i’s Coffee Bar and its music, played by the few whisperers who’d clawed themselves into amaurotic jobs. This was where Eliza had spent her youth.

  When I reached the square, I slipped into one of the more popular voyant establishments in the district: the Minister’s Cat, a gambling-house tailored to voyants, with stringent rules on which orders could bet (oracles, soothsayers, and augurs always ineligible, given their prophetic gifts). There was a lottery held here every month, with the winner entitled to a sum of money from Jaxon. It was also the only place in I-4 where members of other gangs were allowed to linger without express permission, as they generated so much money for the section. Most districts had a handful of “neutral” buildings, where turf disputes and grudges were ignored.

  Königrufen and tarocchi were the most popular games. My fingers itched—I loved tarocchi, and winning a few games could get me a pocketful of cash—but I didn’t have nearly enough money to enter the tournament.

  As always, it was full to bursting with people from all over the citadel. I slid my way between sweating bodies and round tables, leaving looks and whispers in my wake. This particular establishment was a breeding ground for syndicate gossip. Babs was presiding over a game of tarocchi in the corner. I’d have to wait.

  Maybe I could find help somewhere else. There were plenty of voyants selling knowledge in here.

  Knowledge is dangerous.

  Dangerous, but useful.

  A soothsayer sat in a booth nearby, dark of skin, late twenties. Her hair was a cloud of tiny corkscrews, restrained by a thin band of violet silk. Large eyes looked up at me from below heavy lids. The right was deep brown and the left, green, with a loop of yellow around the pupil and no colobomata. It was the second time in my life that I’d seen a pair of eyes like that.