The Mime Order

by Samantha Shannon

  “I’ll catch up,” he said to Nick, who nodded.

  I kept pace with the other two. “She’d better like this,” Eliza muttered. The harsh light made her face look worn. “You know Ognena Maria, don’t you, Dreamer?”

  “Quite well.”

  “She’s the one that wanted Dreamer for her section,” Nick said, chuckling. “As her ID card says she lives in I-5, she’s technically an I-5 denizen. Maria and Jaxon disagreed strongly over it.”

  Stalls that sold forbidden items were easily recognizable. They had shifty-looking owners and tended to be tucked into the darkest corners of the market halls, close to the exits. I lagged behind, sifting through the wares, hardly seeing them.

  Gray market.

  I shook myself. By the time I reached the right stall, Eliza, Nick and Ognena Maria were deep in conversation. “. . . exquisite brushwork,” Maria was saying, “and the paints have clearly been selected with care—that subtle coloring is beautiful. You must have a real symbiosis with your muses to produce this sort of work, Martyred Muse. Does it affect your physiology at all?”

  There was what word again. Symbiosis. “A little, if the muse is irritated, but I can handle it,” Eliza said.

  “Admirable. I think I can find room for—” She caught sight of me. “Ah, Pale Dreamer. I was just about to offer I-4 a pitch in Old Spitalfields. What do you say?”

  “You won’t regret it,” I said, forcing a smile. “I’m happy to sell with Muse, if you don’t mind fugitives on your turf.”

  “Oh, it’s an honor to have you.” Maria shook hands with all three of us. “Mind out for Vigiles on your way back. They sometimes come through on their way to the Guild.”

  “Thank you, Maria.” Nick pulled down the brim of his hat. “Goodnight.”

  “I’ll meet you in a minute,” I said.

  With a small nod, he took Eliza’s arm, and they headed back towards the market’s entrance. Ognena Maria placed the canvas under a table, out of sight.

  “Maria,” I said, “you were supposed to investigate those red handkerchiefs on Hector’s body, weren’t you?”

  “I was, and I did. They were definitely bought from here—the maker puts a hallmark on them—but she sells plenty of them every month.” She sighed. “I suppose we’ll never know.”

  I glanced over my shoulder, then drew the hitman’s red handkerchief from my boot and handed it to her. “Is this one of them?”

  She turned it over, until her thumb found a tiny stitched cross near one of the corners. “It is.” Her voice was low. “Where did you get this, Pale Dreamer?”

  “From a Rag Doll who tried to kill me in I-4.”

  “To kill you?” When I nodded, Maria’s lips pressed together, and she handed the red silk back to me. “You should burn it. I don’t know a great deal about the Rag and Bone Man, but I do know that you don’t want him hunting you. Have you said anything to the Unnatural Assembly?”

  “No.” I crammed the handkerchief back into my boot. “I . . . don’t know if I trust the Abbess.”

  “That makes two of us.” She leaned across the table on her elbows, twisting the woven ring on her thumb. “You remember she wanted to speak to me, don’t you? That day at the auction? I went to meet her at a neutral house in I-2 that night. She wanted at least five of my voyants, but not to be nightwalkers. Just said she’d pay me handsomely if I’d let them do some moonlighting.”

  My chest tightened. “And did you?”

  “No. Moonlighting’s always been illegal. I’ll shut my eyes if my voyants do it of their own accord, but I won’t formally allow it.” Maria straightened. “A few of us still have morals.”

  “I see you’re not going for Underqueen,” I said. “Did you not think about it?”

  “Wouldn’t dare, sweet. I’m surprised there are as many as twenty-five combatants.”

  “Why?”

  “I won’t say Hector deserved to die in his own parlor,” she said, “but he damaged this syndicate on a level that no other Underlord has managed. None of the Assembly will want to be in charge when Scion brings in Senshield. All our sections will be overrun with gutterlings and beggars and Vigiles. The last thing anyone wants is to put themselves at the prow of a sinking ship.”

  “Then we need someone who won’t let the ship sink.”

  She laughed. “Like who? Name me one mime-lord or mime-queen that could turn it all around.”

  “I can’t.” Needles skittered up my sides. “I sometimes wish I could enter myself, but I’m told mollishers are ineligible.”

  Even insinuating this to her was a terrible risk. She’d always seemed like a decent woman, and she had no love for Jaxon, but there was no guarantee that she wouldn’t go to him with that sort of information. Still, I had to see a reaction. Had to see how a member of the Unnatural Assembly would respond to the thought of a traitor mollisher as Underqueen.

  Ognena Maria didn’t react the way I thought she would, though she did glance up at me. “There’s no specific rule against it,” she said, “at least to my knowledge. And I’ve been a mime-queen for a decade.”

  “But people wouldn’t like it.”

  “Honestly, Pale Dreamer, I don’t think anyone would care. Some mollishers are far more skilled than their superiors,” she said. “Look at Jack Hickathrift and the Swan Knight. Both brilliant voyants, organized and reasonably honest, and what do they do? Bow and scrape for lazy, corrupt leaders that probably maimed and swindled their way into those roles. If either of those two were to go for the crown, I’d be cheering their names.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “Do you think all of the Assembly feel that way?”

  “Oh, no. I’d say that most of them would declare you a traitor and an ingrate. But that’s only because they’re afraid of you.” She placed her hand over mine. “It’d be nice if we got someone competent this year.”

  “We can only hope,” I said.

  “We’re running low on hope in this citadel.” Her smile disappeared, and she snapped her fingers at her mollisher. “Pobŭrzaĭ . I don’t pay you to look pretty.” The woman rolled her eyes.

  The car was waiting outside, its headlights blazing through darts of rain. I climbed into the back with Eliza. “Are you going to tell us what’s happened?” she said.

  “Wait.” Zeke started the engine. “We shouldn’t talk here. Maria said there were Vigiles all over the place. Primrose Hill is safe enough, isn’t it?”

  We all looked to Nick. His eyes were smeared with shadows.

  “Half an hour,” he said. “I don’t want to be out this late. Should Jax know about this, Paige?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I’ve been out without permission. He might not want to hear it.”

  As the car navigated the streets, my mind wandered to dark places. What if Ognena Maria did pass the information on to Jaxon? It might be safer to stay somewhere else until the scrimmage, but breaking away from him now would only piss him off. I might not even be allowed to take part if we were no longer an allied pair.

  Primrose Hill stretched between I-4 and II-4, a rolling green space on a shallow incline. Scion had planted a vast number of oak trees and thousands of primroses here in memory of Inquisitor Mayfield, who had apparently enjoyed a spot of gardening alongside hanging, burning and beheading traitors. This close to November, there were no flowers left. Leaving the car on the street, the four of us trudged up to the crest of the hill, far away from the streetlamps and listening ears, until we reached its highest point. I looked up at the black expanse of sky, just visible between the leaves.

  Warden was out there somewhere, keeping his distance. I focused on the golden cord, picturing the pattern of the stars. He could find me tonight if he knew where to look. Until then, I had some news to break.

  We stopped in the shadow of a tree and stood in a circle, facing each other. “Go on,” Nick said.

  “The Abbess killed Hector and his gang.” I spoke softly. “She just killed Cutmouth, too.”

  N
one of them spoke, but they all stared at me. In hushed tones, I told them what had happened after I’d left Eliza; how I’d found the hidden building down the mail rail, watched Agatha die and run to Cutmouth in time to hear her last words.

  “Tattoo,” Eliza repeated. “Did she mean the Rag Doll mark? The skeleton’s handprint?”

  “That’s what it’s called?”

  “Yeah. All of them have it put here when they join.” She patted her upper right arm. “If they leave the gang, they have to let the Rag and Bone Man burn it off. They’re not allowed to visit a tattoo parlor.”

  “So if she still has the mark, it means she’s still working for him?” Zeke said, eyebrows raised. “The guy she’s supposed to hate?”

  “She must be,” I said. “After he shot Agatha, the Monk offered the Abbess lithium for whatever she was about to do. She said didn’t need it because the symbiosis was strong.” I looked to Eliza. “What does it mean, that word?”

  “Symbiosis?” She frowned. “It’s the relationship between a medium and the spirit that possesses them. If you have good symbiosis, you work together well. I have good symbiosis with Rachel now that I’ve been working with her for a few years,” she said, “but a new muse takes me a while to get used to, so I wind up being sick after the first few possessions. Once symbiosis happens, we reach an . . . understanding. If that makes sense.”

  Nick’s face was tight. “The Abbess is a physical medium. Could she have used a spirit to kill Hector?”

  Eliza hesitated before she said, “It’s possible that she was possessed when she did it, which would have given her the spirit’s emotions on top of hers. It might have made her faster, too. But she had to get through seven people to kill Hector, then cut off his head. The spirit doesn’t give you any extra physical strength, and the Abbess doesn’t look as if she could take down eight people.”

  “Wait, wait.” Zeke held up a hand. “Even if the Abbess did kill Hector, why isn’t she entering the scrimmage?”

  “That’s what I’m wondering,” I said.

  His eyes were full of sympathy. “You found Cutmouth. Where? Did she say anything?”

  “I realized where she’d be: Jacob’s Island. It took a while to get past the doorman, then the islanders held me up, and—” I took a deep breath. “I wasn’t fast enough. She’d been stabbed by the time I arrived. The last thing she said was that I had to stop the gray market.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I don’t know,” I admitted. “If a black market is illegal, I guess a gray market is . . . unauthorized. Or tolerated.”

  “Jax has to know this,” Eliza said.

  “What can he do about it? He can’t report the Abbess to the Abbess,” I said, and she sighed. “She’s interim Underqueen. If he lets on that he knows about it, she’ll just kill him, too.”

  There was a short silence. Nick turned to look at the citadel, the lights caught in his eyes. “The scrimmage will decide what happens next. We know the Rag and Bone Man has some knowledge of the Rephaim,” he said. “He captured Warden. So we can assume that this gray market has something to do with—”

  “Whoa, what?” Zeke interrupted, staring at him.

  “Sorry, Warden’s back? As in, Paige’s keeper?” Eliza let out an angry sort of laugh. “When were you going to drop that bombshell?”

  “Shh.” I looked over my shoulder, certain my sixth sense had flickered. “He’s been back for a while. I tried telling Jax when his allies showed up on our doorstep, but he didn’t want to—” I stopped. “Wait. Someone’s coming.”

  I’d only just picked up on the presence of the dreamscape, creeping up on us from somewhere behind the tree. Almost as soon as I said it, a skinny man stepped out from behind the enormous trunk, barefoot and clad in little more than rags. I took a wide step away, hiding my face behind my hair.

  “Evening, sirs and ladies, evening.” He swept off his hat with a bow. “Penny for a busker?”

  Nick’s hand was already in his coat, on his pistol. “Bit remote for you here, isn’t it?”

  “Oh, no, sir.” His white teeth caught the half-light of our flash-lights. “Nowhere’s too far for me.”

  “You’re supposed to busk first,” Eliza said, with a nervous laugh. At the same time, she took a step to the left, blocking his view of me. “I’ll give you a tenner if you’re good. What do you do?”

  “I am but a humble rhabdomancer, milady. I give no prophecies, make no promises and play no pretty songs.” He pulled a silver coin from behind his ear. “But I can take you to treasure, sure as there’s a nose on my face. We rhabdomancers are like a compass when it comes to treasure. Take a walk with me, and you shall share it, milady.”

  “Don’t,” I said, hardly moving my lips.

  “He might have overheard us,” she whispered. “I’ve got some white aster in my bag. We can make sure.”

  Every fine hair on my arms was standing on end. He’d been close enough to listen in us. Nick looked wary, too, but he didn’t argue. The rhabdomancer looped his arm through Eliza’s and led us down the hill, joking and telling tales as he went. Zeke ran after them, giving Nick a worried look. I kept my cravat over my face, wondering if I should just hightail it in the other direction.

  The rhabdomancer weaved his way down to the trees. I stayed well behind. When he led us toward a dense thicket, I put on my English accent and called to the rhabdomancer, “You’re not taking us in there, are you?”

  “Just a little way, ma’am, I promise.”

  “He could murder us,” I hissed at Nick.

  “Agreed. I don’t like it.” He cupped his hands around his mouth. “Muse! Diamond! Wait a minute!”

  But she was already following the busker into the trees, and his words were snatched away by the wind.

  Nick switched on his flashlight and followed, keeping hold of my arm. My heartbeat came in heavy thumps. My boots crunched on dry leaves. Or a skull . . . Adrenaline came shooting through my veins. Suddenly I was back in my pink tunic, bundled in a jacket and staring at the trees of No Man’s Land, waiting for the monster to emerge. My fingers dug into Nick’s arm.

  “You okay?”

  I nodded, trying to keep my breathing steady.

  The rhabdomancer had led them deep into the trees. Glass-like teardrops hung from the leaves, and each was fringed with crystals. Sheets of clear ice coated the branches, making them creak. A spider’s web, strung among the foliage, had been transformed to a silver lacery. Its creator hung from a thread, petrified. Nick’s flash-light beam fell on the others’ footprints, but they were already beginning to freeze over. My breath billowed in dense white clouds.

  “Can you feel any spirits?” Nick murmured.

  “No.”

  We quickened our pace. Zeke was crouching near a small body of frozen water and Eliza was kneeling beside it. I stopped dead. Bluish fog lingered a few inches from the ground. Behind them, the busker was talking with animated gestures: “. . . for years, you know, sir, and I always said there was treasure underneath it. Now, if you’d be so kind as to take this and try to break the ice.”

  “Looks like a perfect circle.” Zeke ran his finger around the edge. “How likely is that?”

  It didn’t just look like one. It was a perfect circle.

  “Diamond, are you all right?” Nick said.

  “I’m fine. Have you seen this? It’s incredible . . .”

  Zeke took the coin from the rhabdomancer and brought it down on the ice. “Twice more, sir.” The rhabdomancer looked over his shoulder. “Twice more.”

  My sixth sense was ringing like a set of bells. I’d seen this before, with Warden. The woods. The cold. The absence of spirits. As Zeke tapped the coin against the ice a second time, a wave surged through the æther. The realization punched the breath from my lungs.

  He was knocking on a door that shouldn’t be opened.

  “Get away from it.” I ran towards them. “Diamond, stop!”

  Eliza started. “It’s just
ice, Dreamer. Relax.”

  “It’s a cold spot.” There was a rough edge to my voice. “A portal to the Netherworld.”

  At once, Nick hooked his arms under hers and pulled her to her feet, away from the ice. Zeke retreated too, swearing, but the rhab-domancer punched him hard in the jaw, making him stagger and fall. The coin slipped from between his fingers and rolled toward the ice. Without hesitating, I snatched one of my knives and hurled it at the rhabdomancer’s head, missing by an inch. He grabbed the coin and cradled it to his chest with one hand, scrambling toward the cold spot with the other.

  “They’re coming,” he said. His eyes were unfocused, his lips tilted. “To give me my treasure.”

  “Stop!” My revolver was already in my hands. “Don’t do it. You won’t find any treasure there.”

  “You’re a dead woman,” he said, and raised the coin.

  This time, the impact cracked the ice. The cold spot exploded. A million shards burst up from the ground, blinding me with diamond dust—and with a scream that echoed all over II-4, a Buzzer crawled out of the gateway, into London.

  ****

  With impossible speed, the creature was on top of us. It leaped on the rhabdomancer, clapped its jaws over his head and, with a jerk of muscle, ripped it away. The body slumped, twitching as if it had been shocked. Dark blood pulsed from what remained, spilling on to the cold spot.

  It was looking at me. The creature generated its own darkness—a cloud of black static on my vision—but for the first time, I could just about see the rotten giant. It was muscled and grotesque, with a blunt head, and its skin had a shiny, bloated look. Everything about it was too long, as if it had been stretched: its arms, its legs, its neck. A spine pressed through its skin like a knife edge. Its eyes were pure white orbs, slightly luminous, like moons.