I wet my lips.
“Léandre,” I said, “give us a moment, will you?”
It was the first time I had spoken since the bridge. With a curt nod, Léandre slid out of the booth. “You have five minutes before we need to leave.”
He moved to stand by the door. Zeke lowered his scarf.
“I need you to go back to London,” I said. “To take a message to the Mime Order. Warden has betrayed the revolution. He knows of three major clairvoyant organizations in Britain. All of them need to be aware of the danger.” They exchanged a baffled look. “Léandre has secured a place for you on a train to Inquisitors Cross.”
“We don’t have papers anymore,” Zeke pointed out. “What if there’s a spot check?”
“It’s a cargo train. Someone will see you onto it. Someone else will meet you on the other side.” As I spoke, I glanced at the transmission screen above the serving counter. “This leak is my fault—I should be the one risking the journey—but I need to stay here, to consolidate our alliance with Le Vieux Orphelin. We’ll need him in the weeks to come. I trust only the two of you and Ivy to do this for me. To make sure London gets this message.”
“How can you be sure Warden betrayed us?” Nadine asked under her breath. “What did he say?”
“Enough.”
“No way. You didn’t see how he was in Passy. He did not leave your side once while you were sick—”
“And you didn’t see him today. He was playing a long game, Nadine,” I said quietly. “I have to safeguard the syndicate. That is my duty as Underqueen.”
Nadine gave her brother a frustrated look. Zeke bit the inside of his cheek.
“Your syndicate thinks we’re traitors,” he said. “They watched us walk away from your side.”
“Eliza will hear you out. Ivy knows the way to her,” I said. “Once you find Eliza and Glym, tell them to warn the communities of Edinburgh and Manchester that their hideouts may be compromised. And tell them to move the London voyants to the shadow houses.”
Nadine frowned. “What?”
“Glym knows about them,” I said. “A few safe havens I kept from the Ranthen. Our voyants will be pressed for space, but they’ll be safe.”
“You had a contingency plan,” Zeke murmured. “In case the Ranthen ever betrayed you.”
“Yes.”
I reached into my coat and removed a thick brown envelope—the one I had inadvertently carried from the safe house, full of Ranthen money. The blood-consort must have left it in my coat, trying to convince me he was on my side. Buying my trust however he could.
“I know what a risk this is. And I don’t expect you to do it for nothing.” I slid the envelope across the table. “For your ship home. I presume the smugglers you know are in London.”
Nadine took the envelope, feeling its thickness. “You need this,” she said. “For the revolution.”
“Not that money. I don’t want it anymore.”
“Come with us,” Nadine pressed, voice low. I shook my head. “Dreamer, I lived with you for two years. I can tell you’re not in a good place. Come home to London, just for a few weeks.”
“Nick would not want us to leave you behind,” Zeke agreed. “You shouldn’t be here alone.”
“I can’t go off course at such a crucial moment. Not when I’m so close. And I have the perdues now.” I looked back up at them. “There’s one more thing. Eliza and Glym need to make it their priority to destroy the Senshield scanners. If Scion ever captures me again, or finds another dreamwalker, they could be reactivated very quickly. Work out a way to get those things off our streets.”
“Should we tell the Ranthen?” Zeke looked nauseous at the prospect. “About Warden, I mean.”
Terebell. It felt like so long since I had last seen her, even though it had only been a couple of months. I hadn’t thought of how she would react when she heard the news.
“Yes,” I said.
Léandre returned and leaned into the booth. “Time to go,” he said, ignoring the bitter look he got from Zeke. No reconciliation there. “A friend is waiting in the station.”
I got up. Léandre reached for his cup, downed the last of his coffee, and shuffled a few notes onto the table.
We crossed the street and walked toward the well-lit building. Gare du Nord was the largest station in Paris, its primary link to the Scion Citadel of London. Ivy waited by an entrance, so bundled up against the snow that she was little more than a dark pair of eyes, recognizable only by her dreamscape. I peeled off my dissimulator and pressed it into her hand.
“Open it and hold it onto your face until it sticks,” I said under my breath. “Hurry.”
“No,” she husked. “Paige, you need it—”
“I can get another one. Take it.”
She did as I said. When it was done, she fingered her cheeks and brow with a grimace, her features strained into those of a stranger. It was the only protection I could offer her.
“I know you might not want to go back to the Mime Order,” I said, “after everything.”
“No,” she said. “I want to stay here. Maybe join Le Vieux Orphelin, if he’ll let me be a perdue.”
“Then as soon as you’ve seen Eliza and Glym, come straight back. But I need you to bring someone with you.”
She raised an eyebrow when I gave her the name, but nodded.
“Okay. If he’ll come.” She hesitated. “Paige, I’m sorry. That Warden tricked you.”
I wanted to tell her it was all right—that I would be fine—but I couldn’t. Before I could think of a reply, she embraced me. I wished she could stay, and reminded myself that she would be back soon. When we parted, Ivy took a deep breath and reached into her back pocket.
“Take this.” She handed me a small tool, like a key. “It opens standard Scion manholes. If the Rag and Bone Man hasn’t scarpered, he’ll be underground and near a voyant district.”
“You don’t mind us going after him without you?” I asked.
“He’s just a puppet. Just a man.” Her face was a washed slate. “It’s Thuban I want. If it takes me the rest of my life, I swear on the æther, my face will be the last thing he sees in this world.”
She spoke with soft conviction. Looking into her eyes, I believed her.
“All right,” I said. “Come back soon.”
Zeke was next to hug me. Even his coat was cold. “Goodbye, Paige. Thank you,” he said. His stubble tickled my cheek. “I really hope we see each other again.”
“I don’t. For your sake.” I patted his back. “Good luck with the journey.”
“We’ll need it,” Nadine said dryly. “Crossing an ocean will be the easiest part of this.” She drew me close to her with one arm and spoke against my ear: “Thank you for the money. And Paige, it will get better. It never stops hurting, but it gets easier to carry. I promise.”
This time, I could barely even nod in answer.
“We are going to take the fight to the free world. This is our official sign-up to the Mime Order,” she continued. “If you ever make it out of this nightmare republic, make sure you find us. My parents live on Anticosti Island. It’s beautiful.”
“I hope you make it there.” I drew back and tried to smile. “Safe travels, Silent Bell.”
“À notre prochaine rencontre, Pale Dreamer.”
At that moment, a woman stepped out of the station, clad in the winter uniform of a train conductor. She conferred with Léandre and Nadine in swift French before she marched back in.
My friends followed her. Nadine gave me a last, troubled look over her shoulder before she disappeared through the doors, into the glowing warmth of the station.
“You’re certain they’ll be safe?” I said to Léandre.
“I am certain of nothing. But that contact has never betrayed us,” he said, face half-lit, “and since Ivy is disguised, there will be no temptation to turn her in for a bounty. They are as safe as they can be.” He opened his stolen umbrella again and pulled me under it. “There are cab
s near here. We have to get back to Passy before someone sees your face.”
“Warden knows about Passy.” My jaw was rattling. “He could already have told Scion.”
“For now, we have nowhere else to go.” His hold on my shoulder firmed. “Le Vieux Orphelin sent eyes to Rue Montmartre. You were right. The Man in the Iron Mask does hunt there. And now we know where he is hiding.”
The thought of a hunt in the dark was almost enough to unhinge me. My boots hit the ground too hard, the impact jolting my knees. The ground felt too close. Everything did.
Paige Mahoney needed sleep. Needed to be alone somewhere. But until the gray market was gone, I had to be Black Moth. I slid a hand into my pocket and traced the cold and molded features of the mask.
When we had played chess, the blood-consort had taught me an unusual tactic called the king walk, or steel king. Generally, a player protected the king at all costs and kept it out of the way, safe from capture. It waited quietly and let other pieces fall in its defense.
But the king had the capacity to fight. It could sit and tremble in the wings, or it could march up the board, straight for the enemy side, and attack. It might even win the game.
I would heed that lesson. I had hidden for too long. Queens could be steel, too.
I walked on.
****
On Rue Montmartre, blue streetlamps glowed through gently falling snow. Four of us had gathered for the hunt. Le Vieux Orphelin walked at my side, Ankou on the other, Léandre just ahead.
I still didn’t have the ledger. If it was gone, so, for now, was our proof.
There were manholes here and there, each a potential door. When Ankou touched my elbow and pointed, I followed his line of sight. The façade of the nearest building was more elaborate than those around it, decorated with personifications of Scion values. One of them—Diligence—stretched out a stone arm. From its wrist hung a swatch of threadbare red cloth.
A hand surrounded by crimson silk. A soothsayer had seen a vision of this in London, when I had asked her a question about the Rag and Bone Man. The silk fluttered now, like a flag, a welcome. The hand on that pale arm pointed straight to our right.
We entered the street next to the building. Boarded-up windows and a stained mattress. No one to be seen. You could disappear without a trace into a street like this. When we reached the manhole, I crouched beside it and took out the tool Ivy had given me. Ankou helped me hoist it up.
When the way was open, the four of us stood around it. I clipped the wings that flapped in my stomach. After the carrières—after the flood—this should be nothing.
A ladder took us under Rue Montmartre and onto a bridge. Water rushed beneath it, flushed through by the storm drains, and my breathing deepened.
Blue light leaked in through a vent above us. It only took a moment to spot the ribbon: red silk again, tied around the handle of an otherwise inconspicuous hatch. Léandre crouched and lifted it, revealing a spine of rungs, brittle with rust, that led down into absolute darkness.
Nick had told me once that grief came in waves. The hot denial had come and gone. This next one must be a cold wave, come to numb me. My limbs felt wrapped in layers of lead.
I climbed in first. Into the bones of the old sewer, long since buried by the new. One of the rungs snapped under my boot near the bottom, and I plunged knee-deep into reeking water.
My throat clenched. I took off my mask so I could breathe. With a small cough, I groped in my oilskin for my flashlight and illuminated a large chamber, partly flooded. Seeing a ledge, I waded out of the sump and hoisted myself onto it.
Next, my light revealed a smaller tunnel. There had to be a dry area, somewhere the Rag and Bone Man could keep his captives until they could be transported.
A stench congealed in my throat. Something visceral, rotten. I pressed my sleeve to my nose.
“I can feel a dreamscape.” My voice belonged to someone else, someone hollow. “Very faint.”
And familiar. I just couldn’t think where I had felt it before. Ankou showed me his scanner, which confirmed that there was a single, unmoving person nearby.
We stole into the second tunnel. The Rag and Bone Man seemed to like the spaces between the ribs of citadels—the forsaken corners where dust gathered, almost lost to the world above. He must relish the fact that he alone still used them. Here and there, smeared over the crust of filth on the walls, I glimpsed a reddish spray that could only be blood.
My fear calcified into a sense of purpose. For months, I had craved this confrontation, and now, at last, I was close. I walked out of the tunnel and switched on my flashlight.
And there he was. On the floor, a dark lake was congealing around him.
There was his travel-stained greatcoat. There was the sinister helmet that magnified his labored breaths. Gauntlets covered his hands, which were holding in slick pink snakes of intestine.
Le Vieux Orphelin waded to a stop beside me. “We are too late to deliver justice,” he said.
“No,” I said. “He’s alive.”
I knelt beside the Rag and Bone Man, the specter who had haunted me since my escape from the colony. He reeked of shit and gore. With gloved hands, I unfastened the bolts that closed the helmet and lifted it from his head. And I shone my flashlight on his face—a face I knew.
Thin gray hair, slimy with sweat. A crooked mouth, meant for smiles, peeled back over bloodstained teeth. Purses of puffy skin under his eyes, which were glazed in the agony of a slow death.
Le Vieux Orphelin crouched on the other side of him. “Do you know this man, Underqueen?”
“His name is Alfred.” I set down the helmet. “An old friend of the Grand Overseer.”
Alfred from the Spiritus Club, who had helped me publish a pamphlet to warn voyants about the threat of the Rephaim. Jolly, apple-cheeked Alfred, who used books to touch the æther, who kept a tin of cookies in his office and thought reading was a miracle.
He was among the last people in the world I had expected to see behind that mask.
Alfred finally noticed me. The gaze I had once thought kind was now cold and greedy.
“Hello, dear heart,” he rasped. I had to lean close to hear him, close enough to smell his foul breath. “I would bow if I could.”
I was already hollowed out from one betrayal. There was no more heat in me for anger.
“You never did tell me your surname when we met. I think I know now,” I said. “Rackham. Alfred Rackham.”
Alfred ground out a chuckle. “So,” he said, “s-someone let my name slip. I was not as careful as I should have been when we first began our trade.” Red bubbled at the seam of his lips. “Alfred Hayhurst Rackham, founding member of the gray market.”
Alfred.
The hawk-eyed scout who had plucked an impoverished Jaxon Hall from a garret and shown his words to the citadel. Who had profited from the bloodshed On the Merits of Unnaturalness had left in its wake. Who had stitched a monster into being. He had seemed harmless, with his passion for good literature and his quaint little office.
He and Jaxon had known each other since before the latter had been taken to Sheol I. Since before he was even called Jaxon Hall. It was because of the pamphlet they had published together that Jaxon had been arrested in the first place. On his return, he must have gone straight to his old friend—his redeemer—to tell him the secret behind Scion.
And so the two of them had decided to branch into a new line of business. To take advantage of the knowledge Jaxon had attained.
How blind I had been.
“It was you who edited The Rephaite Revelation,” I finally said. “You made it glorify the Sargas.”
“Too easy. All of it was too easy. N-no one would suspect a fusty old fellow with a penchant for poetry and cake.” A damp wheeze of laughter escaped him. “Be grateful I only hindered you, Paige. I did try to have you removed from the game altogether, if you recall.”
The bag over my head. A saw-toothed blade.
“Jaxon had Hector and his entire gang slaughtered for selling me to Scion,” I said. “You were very brave to try killing me after that.”
“Oh, he was most upset when he found out. Threatened to spatchcock me if I touched a hair on your head again.” His eyes were unfocused. “He always . . . keeps his promises. In the end.”
That was when I looked down, at the wreath of flowers on his chest, like the ones sold at the black market, intended to be read counter-clockwise. I picked it up. One by one, I decoded the flowers.
White puffs of bittercress: paternal error. Monkshood, purple and poisonous: treachery. Fragrant bay leaves with golden blooms: I change but in death. Barberry, like drops of blood: sourness of temper.
And last, white clover: think of me. A sign-off as mocking as it was tender.
“The Grand Overseer is alive.”
The tunnel echoed my words. I thought of the man Nadine had mentioned, the silver-haired binder who had carried me away from the flood. When I tried to remember the period between that desperate swim and waking up in Passy, there was only white.
And I wondered. I wondered whether Jaxon, who had worked in the same building as Scarlett Burnish—a spy for Domino—could have somehow got his hands on a dissimulator. Whether he could have worn it to escape the burning Château de Versailles, tacked himself to our group as we left, and dented my memory with white aster when I put two and two together.
Even as I thought it, I sensed truth. I had told him I was onto the Rag and Bone Man. He had been confident enough in my talent to be sure that I would find this place, this wreath.
Paternal error. He had made a mistake by trusting Alfred. Jaxon Hall had lost his temper at last, and this was the consequence. It was also his apology. He had ended Alfred—just as he had ended Hector, except this time he had done it himself. He had carved his old friend like a leg of lamb.
If I didn’t care about you, Paige, would I have butchered nine people for you?
Please don’t try to impress me with that again. I closed my eyes. You didn’t even bother to butcher them yourself.
“How could he have survived?” Le Vieux Orphelin wondered aloud. “He did not escape with us.”
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