The Mask Falling

by Samantha Shannon

  A hollow ache stretched out within me. It started in the chambers of my heart, in a place that reached eternally for Ireland. I imagined Arcturus working on the music box while the Ranthen watched over his shoulder, wondering why he was squandering time on a trifle.

  He had made me a memory I could hold. I leaned up and placed a soft kiss on his cheek.

  “Thank you.”

  “Hm.” He lifted his wine in a toast. “To you, Paige. And the next twenty years.”

  “Sláinte.” I touched my cup to his glass. “May they be significantly less horrific than the first.”

  We drank. I rested my head against his shoulder, and we watched the stars until dawn painted the horizon.

  ****

  The days of waiting for contact from Domino wore on. So did the long crawl of my recovery. After two weeks, my bruises had gained more earthen tones, but I was still weak as a haystalk.

  My mind was just as slow to mend. Time refused to blunt the edges of the memories. I could no longer sleep through the night. Sometimes I relived my father’s death, saw the open bottle of his body. Sometimes I would get so cold that my fingernails turned gray. More than once, Arcturus checked on me in the night and found me next to the radiator, enveloped in a blanket.

  It was the dark that got to me the most. I had never been able to sleep well with a light on—yet without one, I couldn’t convince myself that I had ever left the pitch-black cell. I had meant to die there, and a part of me had.

  The sedative, at least, was out of my system. Now it was a rattling cough that kept me up at night. That and a sharp pain in my chest, on the right side, when I took too deep a breath.

  At first, I had watched the news every night—to make sure Scarlett Burnish was still alive, to keep one eye on London—but it made me itch to get back to the streets. Never more so than when the news offered glimpses of Georges Benoît Ménard, the Grand Inquisitor of France.

  He was said to be a fanatic, his bloodthirst unrivaled among the leaders of Scion. Certainly he sent hundreds of people to the guillotine each year. His spouse, Luce Ménard Frère, had come to London as his representative in December. Other than that, I knew very little about him.

  Arcturus did his best to distract me. He taught me chess, which I enjoyed even though he always won. I could still wipe the floor with him at cards, having spent years in and out of the gambling houses of Soho. I taught him the finer points of cheating as well as fair play.

  “There is little honor in duplicity,” he pointed out one night.

  “None,” I agreed, “but if everyone is duplicitous, honor is a disadvantage.” I threw down another card. “And whoever said there’s honor among thieves was talking absolute shite.”

  In the colony, he had been named my keeper. In London, I had been his queen and his commander. Now we were just two fugitives, each with no power over the other. At last, we were on level ground.

  I liked spending time with him. It had taken me months to fully admit it to myself, but it brought a smile to my face to see him each morning. I had worried we might run out of things to say within a few days, yet we never did. Sometimes we stayed up talking all night.

  He was intelligent and perceptive in conversation, solicitous, a good listener, with a bone-dry wit that I was never wholly sure was intentional. I told him things I had never told anyone—about my childhood in Ireland, on my grandparents’ dairy farm, and about my time with the Seven Seals. We talked about music I had saved from piles of salvage at the black market, about books he had discovered in the colony. He told me stories Scion had erased.

  He described the Netherworld, so I could almost sketch a map in my head. He conjured its buildings in exquisite detail—colossal, carved from iridescent stone, cities that shone like shattered glass— and described the river, the Grieving, with its bed of pearl-like pebbles.

  “Your river was called the Grieving?” I raised an eyebrow. “The Netherworld sounds like a riot.”

  “It is a poor translation.”

  We shared an interest in languages as well as music. One evening, he asked me if I might consider teaching him my mother tongue.

  “You realize almost nobody speaks Gaeilge these days,” I said. We were playing chess, and I was waiting for him to make his next move. “Not in public, anyway.”

  “All the more reason to learn it.”

  We were into our endgame. There were more black pieces on the board than white, which definitely meant I was winning.

  “Scion made a concerted effort to destroy all evidence of the Irish language after the Molly Riots,” I said. “You won’t find many books, and you’re not likely to be able to talk to anyone but me.”

  “I enjoy our conversations very much.” Arcturus moved one of his pawns. “And I would like to be fluent in another human language.”

  “How many do you already have?”

  “Six,” he said. “English, French, Swedish, Greek, Romanian, and Scion Sign Language.”

  “Only six?” I slid my black queen across the board. “You’ve been here two centuries, lazybones. I already have half as many as you and I haven’t had unlimited decades to learn.”

  “Clearly yours is the superior intellect, Paige—”

  “Well, I didn’t want to say—”

  “—but you still cannot best me at chess.” He set down his white bishop. “Checkmate.”

  I stared at the board. “You . . . infuriating bastard.”

  “You only had eyes for the king and queen. Remember not to overlook the other pieces.”

  With a sigh, I sat back. “Well played. Again.” I shook his hand. “Fine. I’ll teach you Gaeilge if you teach me Gloss. Deal?”

  “Humans cannot learn Gloss. It is the language of spirits.”

  “Polyglots can speak it.”

  “They do not learn it. They are born with it.”

  “Try me,” I pressed. “Say a word in Gloss and I’ll copy you.”

  He humored me and made a soft, chime-like sound, which I had a stab at mimicking.

  “Wrong,” he said.

  “How?”

  “You are not Gloss-articulate. Even if you were to perfectly imitate the sound I made, you would only be speaking with your vocal cords, not your spirit.”

  I tried not to look crestfallen. Gloss was beautiful, and I would have liked to call him by his real name.

  Still, the thought of holding a real conversation in my mother tongue was tempting. My grandmother had been born on an island where Gaeilge had once been spoken daily, and had passed it onto me—a bright jewel, a shared joy, that I had kept buried for years.

  Scion had outlawed all the Celtic languages during the Molly Riots. They would die out soon; now families were too afraid to teach them to their children even in secret. I liked the idea of a Rephaite knowing mine. Through him, it would be immortal.

  “All right,” I said. “I’ll teach you. But fair warning—nothing in Irish sounds like it looks.”

  “I enjoy a challenge.”

  “Good.” I took a pen and paper from the table and scribbled the longest word that came to mind, grianghrafadóireacht. “Your best conjecture, then. How would you pronounce this?”

  Arcturus considered it, then served himself a large glass of wine.

  “This may take some time,” he said.

  ****

  We found a collection of films and took to watching them together in the evenings. I looked forward to that time, when we would sit on the couch and I would eat my supper. Often I would fall asleep there. In the morning, over breakfast, he would tell me how the film had ended.

  One such evening, not long after my birthday, found us sitting in the parlor as usual. Arcturus was immersed in the film. After weeks of stress and separation, it was strange to be resting at his side. The set of his jaw was softer, his hand at ease on the arm of the couch.

  A month ago, I might have moved closer. He might have drawn me to his chest and pressed his lips to my hair.

  Someti
mes I wished we could talk about how it had been. Not that there was much to say. I had ended our trysts because as Underqueen, I could put nothing and no one above the revolution—and because if they had found out, the Ranthen would never have tolerated it.

  And yet I was Underqueen now only in name. And there were no Ranthen here to see us.

  As if he had sensed the thought, Arcturus glanced at me. I looked away a second too late.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Fine.” I put my plate aside. “I just can’t believe you’re here sometimes. That we both are.”

  “Hm. We have come a long way since you last contemplated killing me.”

  “We have.”

  Out of habit, I traced the silver marks on my palm. When I had banished the spirit that powered Senshield, it had joined the scars there, forming the word kin. I had no idea what it was supposed to mean, or how I had banished the spirit without knowing its name.

  Women with damson lips and penciled eyebrows glided across the screen. There was just enough light to remind me that I was no longer chained underground. Curled up next to Arcturus, I slipped into a drowse. I was warm. I was clean. I was safe, if not entirely free.

  I jolted awake when a spirit glided through the window, frosting the panes. A psychopomp. I held still as it approached Arcturus.

  “What did it say?” I asked when it had gone.

  “That Hildred Vance’s replacement has been summoned,” he said. “Vindemiatrix Sargas, the blood-heir, is on her way to London. She will assist Scion with Operation Albion.”

  “Vance isn’t dead?”

  “No. Hospitalized.”

  Alsafi should have finished her off. I might have known she would cling to life with every finger.

  “Operation Albion.” I rubbed my eyes. “That sounds familiar.”

  “It is the formal name for the eradication of resistance in the homeland. This includes the complete dismantling of the Mime Order.”

  A military operation within Scion. I sat up a little. “You think this . . . Vindemiatrix Sargas is going to help with that?”

  “Her principal duty for the last two centuries has been to monitor the free world. She likely intends to put some of her skills to use to find and infiltrate the Mime Order.”

  “I assume the Ranthen have warned Glym and Eliza.”

  “Yes.”

  The Mime Order was still very young. Its divisions had made it fragile from the beginning, then Senshield had paralyzed it for weeks. Now this. A coordinated effort to destroy it.

  The capital was still under martial law, thronged with ruthless soldiers. Eliza and Glym, who were ruling in my stead, would have to work around the clock to keep this operation from snuffing the flame of revolt.

  “What are the Ranthen doing at the moment?” I asked.

  “We cannot entrust too much information to psychopomps, since they can be intercepted,” Arcturus said, “but before I left, Terebell told me that her current aims were to reconstruct Alsafi’s network of human contacts, and to continue making Rephaite allies.”

  “Good.”

  The film ended. Arcturus gave a half nod of approval—I took that as a seven out of ten—before he rose.

  “I must take aura,” he said. “I will not be long.”

  It was a risk for either of us to go outside, but he had no choice. “Be careful.”

  He stopped beside me on his way out, to cover me with a second blanket and tuck it around my shoulders. As the door closed behind him, my thoughts returned to the threat in London.

  I had faced an army, but never had to contend with spies. Ognena Maria had once told me it was thanks to espionage that Scion had crushed the rebel militia in Bulgaria. Leaks had opened in its ranks, one by one, until it sank without a trace. That could happen again.

  I was still Underqueen. Even though I was over the sea, I had a duty to protect my syndicate.

  My body was still reclaiming lost sleep. Close to midnight, the sound of the door woke me. I traipsed downstairs, collected the supplies, and restocked the fridge and cupboards.

  Under a warm loaf of bread, I found an envelope. Inside was the map of the citadel I had requested from Albéric. Once I had looked it over, I folded it and tucked it into my pocket.

  There was no reason Scion should know I was in Paris. To avoid damaging faith in the regime, it was possible they hadn’t even told the Vigiles I had escaped the executioner.

  I knew how to avoid detection. I had done that before, under worse circumstances. I could go outside. It would be a risk, but the news from home—that the revolution was once again in danger— had galvanized me. I could not just sit and wait for Domino.

  I had arrived in London as a frightened child. I had left as the ruler of its underworld. If there was one thing I knew how to do, it was twine myself into the sinews of a citadel. I needed to acquaint myself with Paris, find its voyants, and help the Mime Order.

  Not long after our arrival, I had glimpsed some hair dye in the bathroom cabinet. I dug it out, scrubbed it through my curls, and set a timer. As always, it took a while to negotiate the shower, and I shook as I rinsed out the dye and watched it drain away, red as old blood. When I blow-dried my hair, it sprang back richly copper, each curl shiny as a coin. And I almost looked—

  —like my father.

  My father.

  Saliva washed into my mouth. I hunched over the sink, gripping its edges so tightly it hurt.

  He was gone. He was dead. I saw the block again—the swing of the gold-plated sword, the blood that had dripped from its blade. I met my own eyes, the eyes of a daughter who had abandoned her father to his doom. Who had defied Scion, knowing he might pay the price, and had not lifted a finger to protect him.

  I would make it right the only way I knew how.

  And I would start tonight.

  2

  Paris

  When Arcturus returned, he looked stronger, as he always did after a feed. He found me sitting at the table with a coffee. I had pinched my cheeks and dabbed concealer over my dark circles.

  “Hi,” I said.

  “Paige.”

  He made no comment on my hair. Just took off his coat and hung it up.

  “Albéric came,” I said. “We have more wine.” I cleared my throat. “Can I talk to you?”

  “Of course. No need for a formal request.”

  “Says he who talks like he just rolled up in a horse-drawn carriage with Queen Victoria.”

  “Touché.”

  He left his gloves on the mantelpiece and sat. I slid a glass of wine toward him. Red wine was all he ever drank, even at the crack of dawn. I had tempted him with coffee and tea in vain.

  “I’ll cut to the chase,” I said. “I’ve decided to go out.” When he was silent as a church, I clasped my hands on the table. “Nothing strenuous, I promise. I just want to find out where the syndicate is based. If we play our cards right, the voyants of Paris could be valuable allies to the Mime Order, and we need allies now. It’s time to escalate the revolution.”

  “And you believe your fatigue no longer presents an issue.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “The darkness under your eyes serves as compelling evidence of that. As does the full bowl of coffee.”

  I cocked my head. “Did you just master sarcasm?”

  “Paige.”

  “It’s a cup of coffee. With . . . no handle.” I rubbed the bridge of my nose. “All right. It’s a bowl, and I’m knackered, but I can handle a couple of hours on the streets. Half a morning.”

  “I need not remind you that behind the curtain, you remain the most wanted individual in the Republic of Scion.”

  “Most of the Republic of Scion thinks I was shot dead in Edinburgh. I doubt more than a handful of officials know the truth.”

  “I cannot stop you from leaving, Paige. Your choices are your own.”

  “I’m asking for your blessing. And your help.” He remained impassive. “Look, any day, Scion could shatte
r the Mime Order,” I pressed on. “All our work and sacrifice from last year will have been for nothing. I won’t hide away when there are things I can do to protect it.”

  “You deactivated Senshield.”

  “I can do more.”

  He studied my face.

  “It was not easy for any of us to watch you surrender yourself to Scion.” His voice was low. “The others believed the bullet had killed you. I knew otherwise. I sensed your fear.”

  That silenced me for a moment. “Why didn’t you use the golden cord?”

  “I did. Every day.”

  Not once had I felt him in the darkness. My thoughts had been trained on survival, but I had listened for his voice, or some hint of his presence. It would have helped me to hold on.

  “You have not always acted prudently in your desire to move the revolution forward,” he said quietly. “In London, you fell into a trap that resulted in deaths.” I looked away. “I do not remind you of this to be cruel, Paige. Only to point out that it was your hunger for action that blinded you to the peril that night. That, and your exhaustion. If you push yourself too hard now, if you are impatient, you will put both yourself and others at risk.”

  “Terebell was pressuring me to score a victory at any cost,” I reminded him. “I shouldn’t have let her turn the screw. Those deaths are on me, but I’ve learned from them. I won’t put anyone else in danger.”

  “Except yourself.”

  “I know I can survive out there. I plan to find the syndicate, and I’d stand a much better chance if I have your help.”

  “Domino ordered us to wait for contact.”

  “They won’t know,” I said. “I’d like us to work together. Isn’t that what we’ve always done best?”

  He deliberated for some time. If he called my bluff, I would have to accept defeat for the time being. It would be madness to strike out on my own while I was this physically weak.

  “I gave you my word that I would stay with you,” he said at last. I looked up. “As you say, we have accomplished a great deal together. Let us see what comes of this.” He picked up the wine. “How shall we find the syndicate?”