The Mask Falling

by Samantha Shannon

  “Yes. He went back to school today. He’s ten this year. I’m Mylène Édith,” she said. “I’m seven and a half. And Jean-Mi is four. Look, he has all his baby teeth.”

  Jean-Michel proved it with a big smile. Suddenly, painfully, I remembered that my grandmother would leave a silver coin under my pillow whenever I lost a tooth.

  Scion had conscripted my father when I was only a little older than Mylène. He had uprooted me from Ireland, but I had clung to the memory of it. It had kept me sane, reminding me each day that there were other ways to live, a world beyond Scion. Mylène and Jean-Michel had known nothing else.

  “Will you play with us?” Jean-Michel asked shyly. “We like to play hide-and-seek up here.”

  “Do you, now?”

  He nodded. “When Maman and Papa are busy.”

  “This used to be where Mamie Caroline lived,” Mylène said. I knew from my research that Luce had brought her late mother here to nurse her during her final illness. “Maman stopped us coming here after she died, but I found a secret way in, and Jean-Mi followed me one day. The Vigiles aren’t supposed to go out all at once, but they sometimes do, so we play here until they come back.”

  This could be useful.

  “That sounds like fun.” I smiled. “You must do a lot of exploring. Can you show me the secret way?”

  Mylène eyed me. “But then you could escape. And you’re a monster.”

  “Hey, I thought we agreed I’m not a monster?” I crossed my eyes, and they both laughed. “It’s all right if you don’t want to tell me, though. I know it’s your secret. I have secrets, too.”

  “You do?”

  “Lots.” When I sat down on the floor, they copied me. “You said you come here when your parents are busy. Are they busy now?”

  “Yes, with the war.” Mylène looked resigned. “It’s so boring. And Papa is always too cross and tired to play with us.”

  “Cross?” I tilted my head. “About what?”

  “He never says he’s cross. I just know.”

  “I wish we had friends,” Jean-Michel said wistfully in his tiny voice. “Onésime does.”

  “Onésime goes to school in Valençay,” Mylène told me. I knew from the dossier that it was the most expensive boarding school in France. “We have tutors. Maman doesn’t like us to go outside, except in the gardens. She says the bad anormales would kidnap us.” She considered me. “But maybe you are a nice one, like Cade.”

  “Onésime says there are no nice anormales,” Jean-Michel said, his voice muffled by his blanket.

  “Cade must be, silly, because Maman and Papa have let him stay in our house.”

  “Oh.”

  “I don’t know about Paige, though,” Mylène added, giving me a look. She was the spitting image of Frère, but she had inherited that piercing stare from Ménard.

  “Maybe I can prove I’m a good anormale.” I looked between them. “We could play hide-and-seek, and I promise I won’t try to escape. If I keep my promise, that proves I’m not a monster. Deal?”

  Jean-Michel scrambled up, shyness forgotten. “Yes, please!”

  “Are you good at it?” Mylène asked, bright eyed. “I’m the best.”

  These poor kids were so desperate for friends that they wanted to hang out with a prisoner in the attic. Good old Scion parenting. “I’m very good at it,” I confirmed. “I’ve had a lot of practice.”

  “All right. We can play. But you can’t be cross if I win. I always do.” Mylène spoke as if this skill were a great burden. “Do you promise that, too?”

  “Promise.”

  I followed the kids out of the room. Mylène took a set of keys from the lock and tucked it into her pocket.

  It turned out that the room I had been confined in was one of several in the attic, which had clearly been a grand apartment at some point in the recent past. Dust swirled in wide bars of sunlight. Furniture had been pushed against the walls and draped with heavy-looking sheets.

  I was out of my cell. Now I had to get out of the attic.

  Mylène spun as she crossed the floorboards, making her frock wheel around her. “Do you live somewhere nice, Paige?”

  “Very nice,” I said, thinking of the safe house. “I’m staying with a friend.”

  “Maman says that all anormales live in squalor.”

  “What does squalor mean?” Jean-Michel piped up as he clambered over a dust-covered chest.

  Mylène hesitated and looked to me. “Dirt,” I said.

  Both children looked solemn for a moment. “Well,” Mylène said, pulling on a ringlet, “some anormales must deserve it. They do bad things and hurt people and steal and lie. Onésime said that—”

  “Good morning, everyone.”

  I stopped. Ahead of us, Cade was leaning against the wall, arms folded. When Jean-Michel ran to him, Cade scooped him up.

  “Cade!”

  “Hello, you.” Cade chuckled. “Showing our guest your secret hideout, are we, Mylène?”

  “We are testing Paige,” Mylène informed him. “If she plays hide-and-seek with us and doesn’t run away, then she’s a good anormale. If she’s mean or tries to escape, we tell Papa and she has to have her head cut off.”

  His gaze darted to me. “That sounds like a fun game.”

  I stared him out.

  “I’ve got to take Paige to see someone now,” he said, setting Jean-Michel down and ruffling his hair. Mylène looked sulky. “Hey, you can play another time. Your maman wants you to join her in her apartments. Better get there quick, or the baby will eat all your breakfast.”

  Mylène sucked in a huge breath. “No!”

  She grabbed Jean-Michel by the hand, and they took off, back toward my room, leaving me alone with Cade. I watched the kids until they were out of sight, none the wiser as to how they had got up here in the first place.

  “I take it the game was your idea.” Cade sighed. “Paige, you need to tread carefully for both our sakes. They’re sweet kids, but if they get overexcited and tell Luce—”

  “—I’ll be sent to my death. Which will happen anyway,” I said, “once Ménard realizes I’m worse than useless to him.”

  “Help him, then.”

  “We’ve been over this. Over my bones will the Butcher of Strasbourg have the Mime Order.”

  “I know,” he said. “But I want to show you something that might just put the issue in a new light.” He strode toward the stairs. “Come on. I’d like you to meet a friend of mine.”

  ****

  We made our way down to the next floor, where a single day Vigile guarded the door to the attic. Her hand strayed toward her baton when we approached.

  “Vigile.” Cade lowered his gaze. “The Grand Inquisitor granted us permission to leave.”

  “I am aware.” She opened the door. “Keep to the agreed route.”

  We stepped through. Cade held a finger to his lips, then hurried me across a corridor and down another flight of stairs to the ground floor. We passed a room full of voices and dreamscapes before he swung me around a corner and stopped next to a velvet curtain.

  “You’re about to see the greatest secret in Scion.”

  “I thought the Rephaim were the greatest secret in Scion,” I said.

  He gave me an odd look as he pulled the crimson fabric aside. “There’s more.”

  “Right. Anytime you want to stop being unnecessarily enigmatic, Cade, be my guest.”

  The curtain hid a small door, which he opened with a key. I had to duck my head to fit into the passage beyond, which led to yet another set of steps, this time made of stone. Cade pocketed the key and took a flashlight from a wall-mounted charger. I tried to ignore the sense of the walls closing in as we made our way underneath the Hôtel Garuche.

  When we reached the end of the staircase, Cade tapped a code into a keypad, unlocking a foot-thick door. Once we were inside, he directed the flashlight toward the ceiling.

  “This is a safe room. Protects the Inquisitorial family from in
vasion and disaster, including nuclear warfare,” he explained. “Used to be a wine cellar, apparently, before Scion.”

  “The greatest secret in Scion is hidden in this cellar.” I stifled a cough. “Is it a stash of wine?”

  “Actually, Ménard is one of the few Scion officials who doesn’t secretly drink. In fact, I doubt he’s ever broken a law. Scion is in his bones, his blood. He’s the embodiment of the anchor.” He glanced over his shoulder at me. “That’s what makes him the perfect man to fight the Rephaim. Other officials—the ones who taste forbidden pleasures and benefit from voyant knowledge—could ignore the hypocrisy of working for the Rephaim. Ménard can’t.”

  “You’re not endearing him to me.”

  “I’m not trying to. He’s a cold-blooded bastard, but he’s a cold-blooded bastard with power and money. And that’s what we’ll need if we’re to stand a chance against the Rephaim.”

  He had a point. Without Alsafi and his network of embezzlers, the Mime Order would soon burn through its reserves.

  “You’re considering it.” Seeing me shiver, Cade said, “Do you want my jacket?”

  “I’m fine.”

  He nodded and pressed ahead, past crates and shelves, before he stopped and pointed his flashlight. I stared at what its beam revealed.

  A Rephaite.

  Even though he sat on the floor, I could see he would be taller than Arcturus standing—taller, in fact, than any Rephaite I had ever laid eyes on. His muscled arms were shackled to the wall above his head, each thicker than both of mine put together. Iron chains twined with familiar red blossoms crisscrossed his torso, which was gray where the flowers touched it. He looked as if he could tear me in two with his bare hands.

  He was also asleep, or unconscious, his face still. Dark hair fell in waves to his waist.

  “What is this?” I asked Cade under my breath. “And who is this?”

  “Nashira sent him in October. He was meant to . . . persuade Ménard to sign the Great Territorial Act, then to stay on as a keeper in Sheol II.” Cade handed me the flashlight and gave one of the chains a tug. “Morning, Kornephoros. I brought someone to meet you.”

  Kornephoros. That was a name that tasted of power.

  The chains scraped and clinked. Slowly, I shone the flashlight at the Rephaite. His sarx was silver, warmed by the faintest undertone of copper.

  “Fitzours.” The voice was deep and scorched. “Here you are again.”

  Cade saluted. The Rephaite lifted his head, and his eyes, subdued by hunger, settled on me.

  “Another red aura,” he said softly. “How perfectly you match. I hope this one is for me.”

  “Absolutely not,” Cade said. “And you treat her like food at your peril.”

  “Why, you are defensive today, Fitzours. Could this be your mate?”

  “I’m not his type,” I said. Cade pursed his lips.

  The Rephaite looked between us. He bore a close resemblance to Terebell, with the same strong features—though his mouth, which had an amused set to it, was more generous than hers. A scar cleaved his chest from his left shoulder all the way down to his last rib on the other side. I should have sensed him as soon as I’d gotten here, but his dreamscape was little more than a watermark in the æther.

  “Who are you, then, human?” he asked me. “Why does Ménard have you in his home?”

  “You first,” I said. “Who are you, Rephaite?”

  “You have the privilege of standing before Kornephoros, Warden of the Sheratan.”

  “Never heard of him. The only Warden of the Sheratan I know is Terebellum.”

  “My Ranthen cousin.” Kornephoros reclined into his chains. “She gave up the right to be Warden when she chose the losing side. It is my title now. Just as it always should have been.”

  “You sound very impressed with yourself,” I remarked. “I’m looking for a reason why.”

  His lip curled. I had grown used to Rephaim over the past year —their stature, their auras—but, even chained to a wall, this one reminded me how brittle and mortal I was.

  “Perhaps you do not need to introduce yourself,” Kornephoros said. “Could it be that you are Paige Mahoney, the dreamwalker who has tempted the great Arcturus Mesarthim into flesh-treachery?”

  “How disappointing,” I said, “that someone of your clear importance should trouble himself with gossip.”

  “But you are the human in question.”

  “I am.”

  “Paige Mahoney.” He regarded me with newfound interest. “I expected him to be drawn to someone taller.”

  “Okay, first off, I am taller than average,” I said, nettled. Beside me, I heard Cade snort. “Second, the whole thing is a fabrication. Arcturus and I are allies.”

  Kornephoros kept looking at me, relentless.

  “I thought so,” he said. “The blood-sovereign is judicious in so many things, but even to discredit the Ranthen, it was unwise of her to tell what was so plainly a lie. Even the former Warden of the Mesarthim—a wanton traitor to his kind—would not stoop so low as to lie with a human.”

  I doubt even his standards are this low.

  My wrists began to ache. All at once, the underground shelter was the basement, and I was tied like cold meat, basted with my own vomit, and a red-eyed Rephaite was whispering in my ear.

  “Have I upset you?” That charred voice brought me back to the present. “If you wish to cry, do. We Rephaim cannot weep. I find it charming.”

  I recovered my composure. “Another Rephaite sadist,” I said. “Are you friends with Thuban Sargas, by any chance?”

  “Do not liken me to that craven. He spends his time pulling the wings off mayflies. I prefer prey that fights back.” His eyes grew just a little hotter. “Tell me, how is Arcturus?”

  “Far away, I imagine.” I pointed the flashlight at Cade. “So this is your big secret. Does he have a gift we can use, or have you worked out how to weaponize arrogance?”

  “He does have an interesting gift,” Cade admitted, “but that’s not why I brought you to see him.” He turned back to his prisoner. “I’m afraid we’re not here for a heart-to-heart, Kornephoros. I’m here to give Paige a demonstration.”

  The trace of a smirk left Kornephoros, turning his face to metal.

  “When I leave this place, Fitzours,” he said, “I will make you rue the day you helped them incarcerate me.”

  “Yes, I’ll die with my head on backward. We’ve been over the details.” Cade glanced at me sidelong. “Paige, you might consider taking a step back.”

  I raised an eyebrow and stayed exactly where I was. Cade approached a steel trolley. When he came back into my flashlight, he was holding a syringe.

  “Sorry, my friend,” he said to Kornephoros. “You know I hate this.”

  “Head on backward,” was the cold reply. “I will hear your spine crunch between my—”

  Cade struck. The needle hit Kornephoros hard in the crease of his right arm.

  What happened next was swift and brutal. The light in his eyes guttered. His aura pulled inward, as if it were bound as fast as the rest of him. Mottled bruising spread from the puncture in his arm, all the way to his fingertips, and fanned across his shoulder, into his chest.

  A chill sharpened the air. My flashlight shook. Kornephoros strained against his chains—so hard I heard the crack of bone—and let out an awful noise, rough stone across metal. It woke a memory I had tried to suppress.

  A forest in the dead of night. Endless trees, and that buzzing, like a swarm of carrion flies. Running across a land strewn with mines, pursued by a thing that screamed for my flesh. My wrist snapping under the weight of my fall.

  Emite . . .

  “Stop,” I barked at Cade. “I’ve seen enough.”

  He was already back with a syringe of darker fluid. Kornephoros snarled at him like an animal, teeth snapping together. Cade flinched beyond their reach and stabbed him in the abdomen.

  Kornephoros went limp. His head rolled forward
. I tightened my grip on the flashlight as he shuddered, his giant hands clenching into fists.

  For a long time, all I heard was my own breath. Finally, Kornephoros looked at Cade. Light waxed back into his eyes, embers blown into red flame. His aura brightened to match. Cade took a few drunken steps backward, and I steadied him before he could topple over.

  “You okay?”

  “Yeah,” he said in a strained voice. “Never feels any better when they feed.” Blood seeped from his hazel eye. “You understand now.”

  You will work it out yourself, Arcturus had told me. You are perceptive, and you have all the pieces. Sooner or later, you will fit them together.

  “Yes,” I said softly. “I understand.”

  Arcturus had been right. I had seen more than enough to work it out. Yet never once had I allowed myself to fit the pieces together, because never once had I imagined that the Ranthen would have kept a secret of that magnitude from me. Especially not him.

  In 1859, the English government had secretly relinquished control to the Rephaim, believing only Nashira Sargas could protect humankind from the Emim—the flesh-eating creatures of nightmare that had come from their world to ours. They had thought she was a benevolent guardian, come to save us from the monsters at our door.

  She had declined to mention one very fine detail.

  They all had.

  “The Emim,” I said. “The Emim . . . are Rephaim. Or were, at least.”

  I couldn’t take my eyes off Kornephoros. Bone-jolting aftershocks racked his frame.

  “They call it the half-urge.” Cade walked back to the trolley. “As far as I can tell, Rephs are immune to all human pathogens. I’ve injected him with smallpox, malaria, syphilis, even plague—no dice. This is the one and only sickness they can get.”

  Distantly, I wondered just how many times Cade had tried to make this Rephaite ill.

  “To pass on the half-urge,” Cade continued, “all an Emite has to do is bite or claw a Rephaite, hard enough to break their sarx. As soon as that happens, the Rephaite starts to run out of time.”

  The Emim carry an infection called the half-urge, which causes madness and death if left untreated.

  Arcturus had told me that in the colony, before I had learned enough about the Rephaim to question him. Terebell must have already sworn him to secrecy. I closed my eyes for a moment.