The Mime Order

by Samantha Shannon

  Then I saw why. My body was still standing, straight-backed. A thin line of blood had seeped from my nose, and my eyes looked vacant, but I was upright. The silver cord was holding me in both dreamscapes.

  I could still do this.

  Jaxon’s body fell to its knees. I reached out a hand and saw a white silk glove. “In the name of the æther,” I started in his voice, and this time I didn’t slur.

  Wait. His dream-form’s voice was a whisper in my ear. Stop.

  “—I, the White Binder, mime-lord of I Cohort, Section 4—”

  Stop. No, no, get out, GET OUT!

  “—yield—”

  STOP IT! SHUT MY MOUTH! Jaxon’s suppressed spirit was fighting me, kicking and screaming, banging on the lid of the burial vault. His body’s hand slapped against the floor. Damn you to hell! I fed you! I clothed you! I took you in! You would be dead if not for me. You would be nothing. Do you hear me, Paige Mahoney? YOU WILL BE THEIRS IF YOU ARE NOT MINE—

  “—to my mollisher,” I finished, gasping the last words, “the Pale Dreamer.”

  Rigid fingers seized my consciousness. My vision flickered back to Jaxon’s dreamscape, where the statue of the angel had me in its grasp. Jaxon’s dream-form was on its knees, howling with rage. With a crunch of ancient stone, it pitched me into the darkness. I went hurtling into the æther and back into my own flesh, just in time to hear Jaxon regain control. I raised my arms, but the cane was blocked by another pair of hands. Eliza was standing over me, pushing Jaxon back, but his hands clawed at my throat.

  “Stop it, Jaxon, stop!”

  “The scrimmage is over.” Minty Wolfson stepped into the ring. “Unhand her, White Binder!”

  His hands were wrenched away. My knees folded beneath my weight. A pair of arms came around my waist, lifting me back to my feet. Nick. I gripped his forearm with white knuckles, heaving.

  “You did it,” he whispered in my ear. “You did it, Paige.”

  It took six people to restrain Jaxon. His nostrils were flared, his eyes wide with rage, and blood dripped from his chin. The I-4 tables were divided. Some were booing, but they were drowned out by clapping hands and stamping feet and roars of “Black Moth! BLACK MOTH!”

  But the undercurrent of murmuring still set my nerves on edge. I let Nick and Danica pull my arms around their necks and help me to the other side of the ring. The other two had gone to hold Jaxon back. Eliza joined us at the edge and clamped a padded dressing over my side.

  My ears rang. I couldn’t think straight. It seemed impossible that I’d just defeated Jaxon Hall.

  “Order,” Minty called. “Order!”

  She clapped her hands, but it took a long time for the audience to settle down. Jaxon stood with Nadine, who was offering him a handkerchief for his bloody nose, and Zeke. He stayed close to his sister, but his throat bobbed as he looked at Nick, who said nothing as he pressed a pot of fibrin gel into my hand. I daubed a generous amount on to my ribcage, but my front was already soaked with blood. They’d be calling me the Bloody Queen by sunrise at this rate.

  Eliza came back with adrenaline. I caught Nadine’s eye across the room. She didn’t smile, but she gripped Jaxon’s shoulder to steady him.

  “Bring forth the crown,” Minty commanded, to deafening cheers. “We have a winner!”

  “Wait.” The Abbess strode through the ash and blood. “What is the meaning of this?”

  “The White Binder has yielded to his mollisher.”

  “Mime-lords do not yield to their mollishers.”

  “This is a first, then.”

  “It is clear,” the Abbess said, with a stare at me, “that the great mime-lord of I-4 did not yield out of choice. The girl is a cheat.”

  “She is a dreamwalker. The scrimmage allows for unlimited use of an individual’s clairvoyance. If the æther has gifted the Pale Dreamer with any ability, then it was, and is, her right to use it.”

  “And what of her blatant treachery? What of her contempt for the love and authority of her mime-lord?”

  “There is a lex non scripta regarding a mollisher’s loyalty, but no written laws about the nature of combat. You’d know that if you’d read a single book about this syndicate and its history. And if we cared about morals, I doubt you’d be a mime-queen, Abbess.”

  “You dare. You’re in league with this turncoat, aren’t you?” the Abbess sneered. “You and your hacks.”

  “I am the mistress of ceremonies. And my decision is final.”

  Beneath her golden veil, the Abbess’s face drained of emotion. She was stripped of the interim Underqueen’s power now, power she’d stolen from Hector and Cutmouth. Her head turned as she scanned the vault, no doubt for her partner in crime, but the Rag and Bone Man was nowhere to be seen. Her lace-clad hand pulled into a fist over her heart.

  Commotion broke out on the other side of the Rose Ring. With a growl, Jaxon shoved away a hireling who had been tending to his wounds. “Get back,” he barked. “I may not be Underlord by Grub Street’s corrupt standards, but I will have my due from this day. Get out of my sight.”

  The hireling scarpered out of the way of his cane, whimpering apologies. The spectators fell silent, waiting for the defeated mime-lord’s traditional speech.

  “The Seven Seals are broken,” was all he said, in a voice almost too soft to hear. But I heard it.

  I heard it.

  Jaxon Hall was far too proud to watch his former mollisher be crowned Underqueen, but he wouldn’t leave without having the last word. He walked toward the audience, his cane making soft clinks against the floor.

  “Do you know, my Paige . . . I find that I’m altogether quite proud of you. I truly believed you would stay your hand in the Rose Ring, like the weakling you were when you first came into my service, and walk away without a single death on your conscience.” He stopped in front of me, his face inches from mine. “But no. You have learned, O my lovely, to be just like me.” He caught my wrist, squeezing so tightly I felt the blood pumping in my veins, and whispered against my ear, “I will find other allies. Be warned: you have not seen the last of me.”

  I didn’t answer. I wouldn’t play his games, not any more. With a smile on his lips, Jaxon drew away.

  “So the queen will fight for freedom, and her subjects for survival. But in the end, my Paige, those who seek freedom will only ever find it in the æther.” He touched the blade of his cane to my bleeding cheek. “So enjoy your freedom, when the ashes fall. The theatre of war opens tonight.”

  “I look forward to it,” I said.

  His smile widened.

  They parted to let him through. Not even the most foolhardy mobster dared taunt him as he left: the White Binder, mime-lord of I-4, the man who was almost Underlord. The man to whom I owed so much, who’d been my mentor and my friend; who could have been the man to lead us, if only he’d opened his eyes to the threat in the shadows. I’d never known it was possible to feel so much pain from the bruises and still hurt more inside. Nadine took his coat from his seat and went after him.

  At the doorway, Jaxon stopped. He was waiting, I realized. Waiting to see which of his Seven Seals would go with him.

  Danica stayed sitting on her chair, arms folded. When I raised my eyebrows at her, she shrugged. She would stay.

  Beside me, Nick was hard-faced. Tears swelled into Eliza’s eyes, and she took a shuddering breath, but she didn’t follow him.

  They would stay.

  But Zeke took a step forward. Then another. He swallowed, hard, and closed his eyes. With no expression, he took his jacket and pulled it over his shoulders. Nick reached for his hand, and he squeezed it once before his fingers slipped away. He gave me a quick, remorseful look, then walked out of the vault after his sister and Jaxon. Nadine took his arm as they rounded the corner. Several of the most loyal I-4 footpads and buskers went after him.

  Now the adrenaline was wearing off, all sorts of pains were flood-ing through my body. The sight of Nick’s face broke my heart, but this ni
ght wasn’t over. Not by a long shot.

  With a gentle hand, Nick pushed me forward. I walked into the center of the Rose Ring. Minty lifted the crown from the velvet cushion.

  “Ready?” she said.

  My throat was aching, stopping anything I might have said in return. Carefully, Minty lowered the crown on to my head.

  “In the name of Thomas Ebon Merritt, he who founded this syndicate, I crown you Black Moth, Underqueen of the Scion Citadel of London, mime-lord of mime-lords, mime-queen of mime-queens, and resident supreme of I Cohort and the Devil’s Acre. Long may you reign.”

  The silence went on. I stood tall, raising my chin.

  “Thank you, Minty.” My voice came out too soft.

  “Who is your mollisher?”

  “I have two. The Red Vision,” I said, “and the Martyred Muse.”

  Eliza looked at me, startled. I raised my bloody hands, removed the crown and threw it on to the ash.

  Murmurs of confusion followed. Minty looked as if she might say something, but her mouth clamped shut.

  “As you can see”—I indicated my blood-stained clothes—“I’m not really in a fit state to be talking for too long. But I owe you an explanation for why I turned on my mime-lord and broke the unwritten rule of this syndicate. Why I risked everything for the opportunity to speak without hindrance. And it wasn’t for a crown, or a throne. It was so that I would have a voice.”

  I focused on Nick’s face, and he nodded.

  “This syndicate—the SciLo syndicate,” I said, lifting up my voice, “is facing threats from the outside, and we’ve ignored them for long enough. We all know that Haymarket Hector ignored them. In a month’s time, Scion aims to have Senshield installed all over the citadel. Walking the streets freely and invisibly, as we always have, will be a thing of the past. If we don’t fight back,” I continued, “we’ll be crushed beneath the anchor. We’ve already been pushed into an underworld, hated and despised, blamed even for breathing— but if this continues, if Scion takes another step, there will be no syndicate left by the new decade.”

  “Senshield is a Scion-made fabrication, vomited from the bowels of the Archon. Not only is this Underqueen a liar and a cheat,” the Abbess shouted, “but she is also the prime suspect in the murder of our last Underlord. My own glym jack saw her leave the Devil’s Acre with Hector Grinslathe’s blood on her hands!”

  The crowd descended into chaos. Some were already on their feet, screaming for my head; others for hard evidence, for proof, for the glym jack himself to come forward and speak.

  “You have no evidence of this, Abbess,” the Pearl Queen called out in a withering tone. “The word of an amaurotic, without good evidence to prove their veracity, is rotten. And if you knew that the Pale Dreamer had killed Hector, why have you shielded her for all this time?”

  “I believe the claims of those I employ.”

  “I ask again. Why did you shield her, when there was ample opportunity to have her convicted at the last meeting of the Assembly?”

  “The White Binder convinced me that she was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time,” she said, spitting out the words. Her smokescreen of soft charm was breaking down. “It seems even his faith in her was misplaced. She is a backstabber and a murderess. I see now that if she could turn on her mime-lord, if she has so little respect for this syndicate’s time-honored traditions, then she must be Hector’s murderer. How sad that I overlooked it.”

  “You believe the claims of your employees, Abbess,” I interrupted her, “but I believe in what I’ve seen with my own eyes. And what I’ve seen is tyranny built on a lie: the lie that clairvoyant people are unnatural and dangerous. That we should despise ourselves enough to will ourselves into extinction. They ask us to hand ourselves over to be tortured and executed, and they call it clemency!” I shouted at the crowd, turning to face them. “But Scion itself is the greatest lie in history. A two-hundred-year-old façade for the true government of England. The true inquisitors of clairvoyance.”

  “Of whom do you speak, Underqueen?” the Heathen Philosopher asked.

  “She speaks of us.”

  Every head turned toward the entrance to the vault, and a clamor of shouting and gasping ensued. In the doorway was Arcturus Mesarthim, and at his back were his allies.

  “Rephaim,” Ognena Maria murmured.

  Courage came rushing back.

  “No,” I said. “Ranthen.”

  26

  Thaumaturge

  Eight of them had come. Some of them I hadn’t seen before, all in heavy black silks and velvets and leathers, regally magnificent. Terebell was there, but there were others, too: silver and gold, brass and copper, all with the same chartreuse eyes. In the dim, confined space of the vault, they seemed enormous. And deeply threatening. The crowd surged away from the ring.

  “That is a Rephaite,” someone said.

  “Just like the pamphlet . . .”

  “They’ve come to save us . . .”

  At least they knew what they were looking at. Warden stepped forward with Terebell. The others formed a semicircle on either side of them.

  “You have heard of us”—Warden’s gaze swept along the rows of voyants—“in the pages of a penny dreadful. But we are no work of fiction. For two centuries we have controlled the arm of Scion, let down the anchor in whichever cities we desired and transformed this Citadel into a feeding ground. Your world is not your own, voyants of London.”

  “What is this, Underqueen?” a hireling shouted. “A joke?”

  “Clearly,” Didion said, though his eyes were popping, “these are costumes. And this is an elaborate jest.”

  “You’re an elaborate jest, Didion,” Jimmy said.

  “It’s no jest,” I said.

  The group of Rephaim walked toward the dais, parting the voyants. Ivy was with them, trailing behind Pleione, her wrists and ankles blistered with the shadows of restraints. The other three fugitives brought up the rear with Lucida and Errai. Relief surged up inside me. They looked shaken, but they were alive and walking. I stepped down to meet Warden. His gaze darted over me, measuring my injuries.

  “They were being held captive at the night parlor, as you suspected,” he murmured. “Ivy insisted on being brought here at once to address the Unnatural Assembly.” His eyebrows lifted as he noticed the Rose Ring, littered with corpses and limbs. “Or . . . what is left of them, in any case.”

  I nodded. Warden turned to face the crowd, and the other Ranthen stood on either side of him. In the long silence that followed, I stepped back on to the dais.

  Whatever the reason behind the pamphlet being doctored, it had worked to my advantage in the end. There was fear of the Ranthen all around me, but it was mingled with curiosity, even wonder, rather than hostility.

  “These are the Rephaim,” I said, “or one faction of them. Their race are the true inquisitors of Scion. They have controlled our government for the last two centuries, directing Weaver and his puppets to suppress and destroy us. This small group of them”—I indicated the eight—“are willing to help us survive. They respect our gifts and our autonomy.” Not quite true. “But there are other Rephaim in the Archon that care nothing for humans. They will enslave all voyants if we let them.”

  “This is shameful,” the Abbess said, trying her best to sound disappointed. “Do you take us all for fools?”

  “Hortensia,” Ivy spat, her face contorted, “if anything in this room is shameful, it’s you. You and your lies. Our lies.”

  The Abbess fell silent.

  Under the eyes of every voyant of note in the Scion Citadel of London, Ivy stepped toward the dais. She stood before the spotlight in her dirty clothes and bare feet, her head tilted away from the glare. Dark hair was growing back, but the shape of her scalp was still clearly visible.

  “Announce yourself, child,” the Pearl Queen said.

  “Divya Jacob. Ivy.” Her gaze dropped. “Most of you won’t know my real face, but I used to go by the name
of the Jacobite. Until January this year, I was mollisher for the Rag and Bone Man.”

  Some of the II-4 voyants looked shocked; others, outright aggressive. Ivy gripped her right arm with her left hand.

  “When I was seventeen, I ran away from Jacob’s Island and worked for a kidsman called Agatha for three years. The Rag and Bone Man watched me for all that time. When I was twenty, he made me his mollisher and asked me to join him on an . . . ‘endeavor,’ as he called it. Said his people were suffering—people like me—and he wanted to make it better.”

  I listened in silence. Ivy stood perfectly still, her slender arms folded.

  “He was selling voyants to Scion,” she said.

  Uproar. I stood.

  “Let her speak,” I called.

  When there was enough quiet for her to continue, Ivy spoke again. I listened, cold all over.

  It couldn’t be. Of all the things I’d imagined, it was the only one that made perfect sense, but my syndicate could not be that corrupt. The Unnatural Assembly were lazy, yes, and cruel, but surely not this . . .

  “He called it the gray market. He said we were recruiting them into the Rag Dolls.” She drew in sharp breaths, looking wildly around at the audience. “But the people I sent to him . . . I never saw them again. I went to Cutmouth, Hector’s mollisher, and reported it to her. She came to see him with a group of bodyguards and asked to see the catacombs, and she found someone in chains.” Her hands dug into her arm, as if she was only just holding herself together. “She said she had to tell Hector. That an operation like that couldn’t go on without his knowledge.”

  The Pearl Queen gripped her cane. “Did he do anything to stop it? Was that why he was killed?”

  “No. He didn’t stop it. He joined in with it.”

  This time the commotion lasted for a full minute before Ivy could speak again. Now I understood what Cutmouth had meant. Selling us. As Scion had sold us to the Rephaim, our own leaders had sold us to Scion.