“How long have I been out?” I said.
“All night and half the day. They kept you under for a while, to make sure you didn’t, er, act up.” His brow pinched. “You were coughing a lot.”
“Even dangerous fugitives get colds.” I pushed my weight onto my elbow. “What time is it?”
“Almost one.” When I let out a small groan, he got up. “Let me shut the curtains. You must have the mother of all headaches.”
The Vigile had hit me like he had wanted to take a good look at my brain. While David went to the windows, I thought as fast as one could after being clobbered with a steel baton.
Someone from Mannequin would have long since returned to the apartment and found it empty. They would have gone straight to Rue Gît-le-Cœur, only to find Arcturus alone. The thought of him sealed my throat. He had sensed my pain and dread before I fell unconscious. He knew I was in danger again.
Just not that I had chosen it.
David returned to his seat. “So,” I said, “is this my cell?”
“Mine is on the other side of the attic. We’re kept out of sight of the officials.” He blew out a breath. “You’re lucky. Luce wanted you hung by your wrists.”
“Yes, what a constant gift it is to be me.” Gingerly, I touched my temple. “You didn’t tell me your Vigiles would knock me senseless.”
“They didn’t want to take chances with a preternatural fugitive. And they’re not my Vigiles.”
“But they listen to your tip-offs.”
“For reasons I will explain.” His voice softened. “I promise you’re safe, Paige.”
“Right, of course. No safer place.”
Whatever sedative they had given me had worn off. I could use my gift. The knowledge gave me the confidence to look him in the eye.
“Go on, then,” I said. “Explain.”
“Let me get you a hot drink before I start. You were soaked when they brought you in.”
“I’m fine.”
A lie. I had a deep-rooted chill.
David reached for a teapot. “This doesn’t have anything nasty in it. They might drug you later, though, before you see Ménard,” he said. “Something to cut you off from the æther.”
“What kind of drug can do that?”
“You don’t want to know. But don’t worry,” he said. “Its effects aren’t permanent.”
He poured some black tea. I took it, if only to warm my hands. My stomach gave a rumble I hoped he couldn’t hear.
“I have a lot to explain,” he said. “I know I must have seemed a little shifty in the colony.”
“Yep.”
With a thin smile, he poured a cup of his own. His arms were freckled and corded with muscle.
“David Fitton was my alias. My real name is Cadoc Fitzours,” he said, “but call me Cade.”
“Cadoc.” To rhyme with haddock. “Welsh?”
“Think so. I’m not,” he said. “I’m from Brittany. Little place called Île-d’Arz.” He cleared his throat. “Éire go brách.”
“Breizh da viken.” It was the only Breton I knew. “Are you fluent?”
Cade grimaced. “Rusty, at best. I stopped learning it when my family died.” He glanced at me. “House fire. I was the only survivor.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Long time ago.” A muscle flinched in his cheek. “I was on the streets for a while before I got a job at the Port of Lorient. Eventually, one of the other dockworkers guessed what I was and reported me. The Vigiles raided my flophouse, and I was sent to the Bastille.”
It was among the most notorious prisons in the Republic of Scion. A stone-built fortress without a single window.
“I was in there for almost three years before I won the blood lottery. The night before I was meant to die, the guards hauled me to a car. It brought me here.” He blew on his tea. “Ménard was visiting his mother in Athens. That meant it was Luce who greeted me.”
Ménard’s mother had moved to Greece not long after Mylène was born. He flew to see her several times a year, leaving Frère to run the country.
“Love at first sight?” I said.
Cade snorted into his teacup. “Not quite.” He drank. “Luce explained that the Grand Inquisitor needed an exceptionally rare voyant to work for him as a spy. If I took the job, I’d be pardoned for my unnaturalness.”
“And you were so enchanted by this offer that you . . . took a flying leap into bed with her?”
He cocked an eyebrow. “You want some fangs with that venom, Paige?”
“Trust me, I wouldn’t usually care who you or anyone else is riding. But Madelle Guillotine herself ?” I sipped my tea. “That’s a very special kind of masochism.”
“I have my reasons.”
“Did you have your reasons for propositioning me in the colony?”
Cade had the decency to look contrite. “You remember that.” He rubbed his face with one hand. “Look, I know you won’t believe me, but I didn’t actually want to sleep with you.”
“Could have fooled me.”
“It was an act, Paige. When I saw you, I did feel drawn to you. You were a fellow jumper, and I wanted to help you survive, so I gave you some of the information I had been collecting for Ménard.” Cade breathed out. “And then you threatened to tell the Rephaim what I knew. And I thought you might mean it. That they’d find out why I was in the colony.”
He ran the same hand over his reddish curls. With pursed lips, I waited for him to finish.
“I covered my tracks by acting like it had all been a ruse to get you into bed,” he said, sounding tired. “Fucking stupid, I know, but I panicked. Better you thought I was a lowlife than a spy.” A mirthless huff. “And then I felt shit for doing it, so I tried to help you again.”
I wasn’t sure whether or not to believe him.
“I’m sorry. You know what it was like in that place. Made you paranoid.” Cade looked at me. “I knew your rebels had spiked the drinks, that last night. I never betrayed you. We’re on the same side.”
It was true that he had at least kept his mouth shut. Sedating the red-jackets had gone to plan.
“Fine.” I set the tea down on the table. “Carry on. Before all this, what exactly did Frère propose?”
Cade settled back in his chair, one ankle resting on one knee.
“Ménard had received a summons to the Bicentenary,” he said, “to sign the Great Territorial Act. A formal agreement between the Republic of Scion France and the Suzerain that the former would host a penal colony for unnaturals. Now, most Scion staff with first-level security clearance are aware that there’s a power above Weaver, but they have no idea who—or what—it is. Ménard needed someone to find out.”
“You’re saying Scion is spying on itself ?” Ducos was going to love this. “In the colony, you said there was still a grain of sense left in the Archon. You meant the Hôtel Garuche.”
“I could hardly just come out and tell you I was spying for the French,” Cade said, amused. “But, yes. Frère issued me with a false identity and sent me to London to get myself arrested. As a rare voyant, I was sent to Sheol I. The whole time I was there, I was observing on Ménard’s behalf.”
“He wanted to know what he was agreeing to host in his country,” I said. “Before he signed up to it.”
“Exactly. I was his canary in a coal mine.”
The pieces of the jigsaw were at last forming a picture. “How did you escape the colony?”
“Do you remember Aloys Mynatt?” Cade said. The former Grand Raconteur of France, who had retired in November. “He was there to extract me. He got me onto the next train out.”
“And that’s when Frère became pregnant,” I said. A tiny nod. “I don’t know why you’re still working here. She’s due in June. If the baby is yours, shouldn’t you run while you still can?”
“When you’ve spoken to Ménard, you’ll see why I want to help him for as long as possible. You might even want to do the same.”
“You
think I’d work with a tyrant?”
“Sometimes you need to shake hands with the enemy. You trusted the Warden, didn’t you?”
I wanted to point out that my alliance with Arcturus had been forged when I realized he was a fellow prisoner, and that Arcturus had never betrayed any desire to behead hordes of innocent people with a weighted blade. Cade cracked his neck and stood.
“Ménard expects you at nine, after the staff and officials have gone. I put in a good word for you,” he said. “Cooperate and you won’t be restrained.”
“Words to inspire an alliance of equals. You should write the propaganda.”
“Just friendly advice, Underqueen.” He had the cheek to wink. “You can keep the shirt.”
He rapped his knuckles on the door and was let out. I heard the distinct click as the guards locked it behind him.
Already I had useful intelligence for Ducos. Tonight would bring more. High risk for high gain. Still, no matter how many secrets I unlocked during my stay, they would be no use to anyone unless I got out of this place alive.
I got up from the daybed. When I parted the dusty curtains, I found myself looking at a significant fall to a lower rooftop. Even if I somehow got down there without breaking my legs, I would be shot before I could reach the ground. Ménard had put snipers on the gate.
You have risen from the ashes before, Arcturus had told me. The only way to survive is to believe you always will.
The memory of those words tempered my nerves. I had survived this once—I could do it again. I would hear what Ménard had to say.
****
For the rest of the day, I observed the Vigiles who patrolled in the front courtyard of the mansion. There was no clock in the room, so I used the sun to estimate the time. I also took note of my position. My room was in the west wing. Ménard had placed me as far away from his living quarters as possible.
I could sense hundreds of people working downstairs. Staff and guards and officials. Close to sunset, a Vigile delivered me a cup of water and some clothes. A simple white blouse, gray trousers, a black sweater. Slip-on shoes with liners—flimsy things, not snug enough to run or climb in.
There was a sink in my cell, beside a door that led to a cramped toilet. The tap dripped. Beside it sat a hard-bristled toothbrush, toothpaste, and a bar of soap. Better than my last prison, though I suspected Ménard wanted me clean for my guards’ sake, not mine. Cast-iron radiators taunted me from the walls, icy to the touch.
I tried the golden cord. Arcturus needed to know that I was alive. Even as I willed myself to be calm, to hold the cord with both hands, everything conspired to distract me. My cough. My hollow stomach. The ever-growing shadows, which made me feel surrounded. Try as I might, there was a wall between us. In the end, I gave up. I would try again later.
At dusk, Alexandra Kotzia entered the room and looked me over, her face tight with dislike.
“Hello again, Aleka,” I said.
Her nostrils flared. “Drink this.” She handed me a glass, full of something gray and pungent. “Tout de suite.”
Despite the hour, two day Vigiles flanked her, pistols aimed at my kneecaps. I steeled myself and drank the stuff in one go. It slid down my throat like cold grease, tasting of must and rot, like water tainted with peat.
What came next was worse. As Kotzia snatched back the glass, the æther turned woolen around me. It wasn’t absent—it never was —but it seemed farther away, harder to reach. An intense feeling of dread and hollowness gripped my insides.
“What was that?” I managed to say. “What the hell is it?”
“Security.” Kotzia sniffed. “Try anything, and you will be shot.”
The foul taste rocked my stomach. For a dangerous moment, I thought I would throw up all over her pristine white heels. Whatever she had given me, it was obstructing my gift. I could only sense the nearest dreamscapes.
Six armed Vigiles waited for me by the door, including the commandant who had knocked me unconscious. They marched me to the floor below, to the doors of the Salon Vert, where I had eaten with Ménard. Kotzia knocked on the door, and a voice called from within.
Inside, it was dimly lit. Ménard sat beside Frère, with Cade on the other side of the table.
Frère was first to lock onto me. Her chin jutted. She took her spouse by the hand.
“Thank you, Aleka.” Ménard spared me a level glance. “Vigiles, kindly wait outside.”
“Are you certain, Grand Inquisitor?” the commandant asked.
“She has been neutered.”
I stayed where I was as my escort retreated. When Cade patted the chair beside him, I sat mechanically. Frère looked as if she would throttle me with her necklace if I came within reach.
“I brought you here, anormale, to explain your situation. So there is no confusion as to why you are in my home, and not on the guillotine.” Ménard addressed me in crisp English. “After what you did to my spouse and our child, that is certainly where you belong.”
I elected not to answer.
“When I heard that Luce had complained of a migraine, I was concerned,” Ménard said. “Migraines, seizures, blackouts—more often than not, such things are the heralds of unnatural influence.” The very excuse I had used to cover my tracks had tipped him off. “Coupled with reports from England that the fugitive Paige Mahoney could infiltrate even the most secure buildings, and that she had escaped Inquisitorial custody, my suspicions grew.”
He drew his cup and saucer toward him, slow as you please. No one else moved.
“The meal we shared included a test,” he said. “You were clever to report your own detection. At first, I was sure it was Luce— that she had simply been unwell. I was at ease. Only one aspect struck me as curious. I had expressly requested that bouillabaisse was served, since Luce does not care for it, and expected her to send it away at once.”
“As I would have.” Frère dealt me a mocking smile. “I suppose you researched me for your deception. You imagined that because I lived in Marseille, I must like bouillabaisse, hm?”
Beaten by a bowl of fish stew. What a spy.
“You did not remark upon it. Still,” Ménard said to me, “you never tasted it, either. Instead, you left it untouched. It was . . . a plausible reaction, if not the one I anticipated. Until the end of the meal, I must confess, I was convinced. You did well.”
I spoke for the first time. “What gave me away?”
“When you avoided discussing baby names.” He clasped his hands, so I could see his gold spousal ring. “Luce and I have already decided what to call our fourth child.”
“Of course. The happy family,” I said. “So happy, so devoid of paranoia, that you decided to set a test for your own spouse . . . because she told her secretary she had a migraine.” I raised my eyebrows at Frère. “Is this a marriage or a noose?”
“I would be happy to demonstrate the difference,” Frère said, deadly soft.
“Are you proposing, Luce?”
Frère half-rose. Ménard tightened his grip on her hand, and they seemed to have a silent conversation. Finally, she sank back into her seat, one hand on the firm swell of her stomach, her gaze roaring hatred. Under the table, Cade gave my wrist a warning squeeze. I pulled my arm out of his reach.
He was right. Sitting across a table from this pair of murderers was harder than I had expected, but I had to watch my tongue. Frère would be only too pleased to have it torn out.
“Later,” Ménard continued, “Fitzours summoned me to the Salon Vert, where he had found Luce wandering in the dark. When he told me he had sensed unnatural influence on her, it confirmed what I had already supposed. A criminal had stolen her body. Violated our family home.”
I dared not look at Cade.
“You are here, in our country,” Ménard said, “because Frank Weaver failed to execute you. I imagine he would like you back so he can remedy that mistake—urgently, if he is to placate his Rephaite masters.” His tone was almost clement. “You are a shrewd
woman. You will have already grasped that this situation makes you a valuable bartering tool.”
“You’re no friend of Weaver,” I said. “A fool and a marionette, I think you called him. Why would you want to barter with him?”
“To rid us of the true unnaturals.” He moved the silver dish of sugar. “The Rephaim.”
I waited for some evidence of a joke. The Grand Inquisitor of France did not smile.
Ménard melted a cube of sugar into his coffee and stirred. The room waited for him to speak again.
“When Fitzours brought me news of those creatures, those things,” he said, “I was sickened to the core of my being. After all we have done to uphold this empire, to curb the threat of unnaturalness—” His lips peeled back for a flash as he spoke. “It is a betrayal of Scion.”
“The Rephaim created Scion.” I shook my head. “How could their existence possibly betray it?”
“The Rephaim compel us to hunt and imprison your kind, yet they, too, are unnatural. Unnatural parasites.” He set down his spoon with a delicate clink. “The system they created is perfect. Necessary. They, however, are not. The hypocrisy, the deceit—the natural order revolts against it.”
“On that note, you have an unnatural working for you. Living in your attic.” I tilted my head toward Cade. “Would you not call that hypocrisy?”
“It serves a higher purpose.”
“The higher purpose of saving Scion from its own makers?” My mouth twitched. “I knew you must be soulless, but not delusional. Scion would be meaningless without the Rephaim.”
“Not meaningless. Liberated,” Ménard corrected. “Free to use its power to benefit humanity, unshackled from its Rephaite masters— and from sycophants like Weaver, who obey them.”
“Or to collapse.”
Not that I would mind. If Scion buckled under the weight of its own contradictions, it would save me a lot of time and effort. No, in poking holes through his logic, I had no intention of putting him off this line of thought. I just needed to understand how he had drawn it.
“Believe what you will,” Ménard said, his attention fixed on me. “I mean to rid us of this infestation. To purge every last Rephaite. To clean unnaturalness in all its forms from the face of the earth. And to make a human-controlled Scion the one and only power in this world.”
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