“Back to back, darling.”
I turned to face the audience, the bloody knife held out in front of me. “What’s the story?”
“Only five to go. The crown’s in the bag! Perhaps we should take down this miserable imbecile.”
I flinched when I saw who he meant. The Glym Lord walked with a shuffling gait as he hauled a screeching mollisher across the ash. “Why is he walking like that?” I shouted over the clashing of weapons and the screaming of the audience.
“He’s a physical medium, darling. He’s let some angry spirit take his body and puppeteer it.” He pointed his cane. “I will dislocate the intruding spirit with my boundlings. You will cast out his.”
Having crushed his opponent’s windpipe, Glym was staring at us with clouded eyes. His mouth hung open; he panted like a bellows. “Come back to yourself, you old bastard,” Tom the Rhymer roared at him. I thought of how Eliza looked when she was possessed.
“We don’t have to kill him,” I said to Jaxon.
“Do, or he’ll be back to haunt us. Every person in this ring left alive will challenge us for that crown.”
A rope of saliva hung from Glym’s lips. The spirit inside him was waiting, poised to attack. With a sneer, Jaxon called one of his boundlings with his left hand. His fingers bent into claw-like arches, and the veins along his arm snaked with hot blood. His lips moved, commanding the boundling. Glym fell to his knees and clapped his hands over his ears. There was a struggle—Jaxon’s teeth gritted, and a vessel ruptured in his eye—before he seized my wrist and swung me toward his victim.
“Now!”
I pitched my spirit toward him.
The intruder and Jaxon’s boundling were already at the edge of Glym’s dreamscape, and they tumbled out when I came soaring in. Outside, his body would be crumpling. I passed through the landscape of his mind in one sprint. My dream-form threw out a hand and grasped Glym’s spirit, tossing it gently into his twilight zone. I burst out of him and flew back to my own body.
Silence had fallen over the audience. The only people left in the ring were me, Jaxon, the Wicked Lady and the Wretched Sylph. The latter looked as wretched as her name. One of her fingers hung by a thick tress of skin, and tears shone in her eyes, but she didn’t run.
“You take the Sylph,” Jaxon murmured.
“No,” I said. “I’ll take the Lady.”
The Wicked Lady had set her sights on him first, but now she turned her attention to me. She wore no mask over her face. Jaxon twirled his cane, gravitating toward the Wretched Sylph. I walked around my opponent: the woman who controlled the poorest slums, who had kept them in a cycle of poverty and misery. The back of her hand swiped across her upper lip.
“Hello, Pale Dreamer,” she called. “Do we have a feud I missed?”
I circled her, as Jaxon circled his foe. Both of our opponents’ mollishers lay unconscious or dead on the ash. We were the only allied pair that remained. The audience began to shout the names of their favorites, or whoever they’d put money on. White Binder was the loudest of them all.
“No,” I said, “but I wouldn’t mind starting one.”
We were too far from the crowd to be heard now, close to the spotlight cart. The Wicked Lady held out her cutlass. “Any particular reason,” she said, “or are you as mindlessly violent as everyone seems to think you are?”
“You’ve left half of your voyants to rot in a slum.”
“The vile augurs? They’re nothing. And are you so virtuous? Murderer and madwoman, Scion calls you.”
“Do you listen to Scion?”
“When they talk sense.”
She slashed at me with her cutlass, and I stepped back.
“You know, it’s good that Cutmouth’s dead. She got a cut too far above her station. A lowly Jacob’s Islander at the side of the Underlord . . . I should have got rid of her before she could cross my fence.” I struck at her with my knife, but she avoided me neatly. “As for the Jacobite, as she calls herself, she won’t last long. He sent her away for betraying him—poetic justice, he called it—but this time he’ll cut her throat and be done with it.”
“Poetic justice? What the hell are you talking about?”
“You must have at least guessed, Pale Dreamer. Or are you too noble to have thought of it?”
She was in league with them, too. Whoever they were. The Abbess was watching us from the dais, smiling. I kicked the Wicked Lady in the ribs, doubling her over.
“We almost asked you to join us, you know. Until you started meddling.” She wheezed a laugh. “It does seem like a shame to have to kill you, honey, but I have my orders.”
She lunged toward me and swung with the cutlass, aiming for my throat. It was such a quick motion, I could only whip my head to one side to avoid it. The blade opened a cut from my earlobe to my jaw, almost to my chin. Pain blinded me, white-hot and screeching. My hand jerked up to the wound automatically, and another hard jolt of agony flared from my fingertips.
The tear along my face began to pound. Still reeling from the blow, I threw out pressure from my dreamscape. My temples throbbed, but I pushed until her eyes and nose leaked blood. She let go of the cutlass. I wrested it from her hand and threw it out of the ring. It clattered across the floor and spun to a halt under the nearest table. A courier picked it up and cheered.
My fingertips were wet with blood. The Rag and Bone Man had his hands on the back of a chair. Like the Abbess, he was waiting. The Wicked Lady looked across the room at him, and her grin widened, giving me a flash of a silver canine. Another rich mime-queen.
And I understood.
The Rag and Bone Man and the Abbess hadn’t entered because they planned to put someone else on the throne. A figurehead to control from the shadows. A face for whatever dirty work they were doing. How many people in this ring had been conspirators, helping the Wicked Lady to win? How many of these corpses wore bones on their skin?
Now it wasn’t just important that I won. It was imperative. And I had to trust that I could do it; that I was more than just the Pale Dreamer, the White Binder’s protégée, the rebel slave, the dreamwalker.
I had to trust in myself to knock this pawn off the board.
We circled each other, gazes locked. Jaxon had been cruel to put voyants into a hierarchy, but he’d been right about one thing: the three lowest orders had fairly passive gifts. The Wicked Lady was some kind of augur. Without a numen, she couldn’t use her gift in battle. At least, that was what I believed about augurs until she whirled a spool together and threw it not at me, but at the candelabra hanging from the ceiling.
And the spool caught fire.
It was as if they were made of flammable gas. Five burning spirits came soaring towards me like comets, leaving tails of blue flame in their wake. The combustion took me so completely by surprise, I almost didn’t duck at all. At the last second I rolled to avoid them, but two seared across my upper arm, burning away my sleeve. The pain wrenched a scream from the back of my throat. Above me, the spool broke apart like a firework, leaving a shadow in its wake, before all five spirits extinguished themselves. In the audience, screams for the Wicked Lady doubled.
My arm scorched. The livid skin was already blistering. The Wicked Lady had to be a pyromancer. I’d always thought they were hypothetical, but there was no doubt about it: her numen was fire.
“Done?” She wiped her bloody hands on her trousers. “If you play dead, I might let you off lightly.”
“If you like,” I said, through gritted teeth.
My empty body buckled and collapsed. In the instant she was surprised, I bowled myself straight through the junkyard of her mind, knocking her spirit out into the æther. Her silver cord snapped, as easily as if I’d cut through string with scissors. I killed her for Vern and Wynn, for Cutmouth, and for Ivy. She stayed upright for a moment, a look of mild shock on her face, before she tipped off her heels and collapsed on the ash. Her hair lay around her head like a wreath.
Almost in chorus,
Jaxon struck the Wretched Sylph with a boundling. Her head snapped to the side, and she collided with the floor.
And just like that, Jaxon Hall and I had won the fourth scrimmage in the history of London.
The audience stood as one and broke into thunderous applause. It rattled the tables. “White Binder,” they roared. “WHITE BINDER. WHITE BINDER.” They stamped their feet so loudly I thought they would raise the warehouse from on top of us; that Scion would discover the nest of sedition hidden beneath. They were calling my name and Jaxon’s name, calling and calling. Roses came flying at us, skidding through the ash and the blood of our opponents. Jaxon grabbed my hand and lifted it with a laugh, intoxicated by his first, sweet taste of victory.
The boy they’d once called gutterling was king of the whole citadel.
His arms spread wide, embracing the applause. The cane—held aloft, like a scepter—was glossy with blood. I couldn’t even smile. My wrist was limp in the grasp of his hand.
Over our heads, Edward VII, the Bloody King, looked down with frozen eyes. The hint of lip beneath his beard seemed to smile.
But with a leader like Jaxon Hall, I foresee only blood and revelry—and in the end, destruction.
He was the King of Wands, the one Liss had predicted.
He was lord over London, and he had to be stopped.
Two psychographers ran out from behind the curtains. One carried a large book; the other, a small cushion, made from deepest purple velvet. On that cushion was the symbol of the Underlord’s power. A few more voyants stepped out and began to remove the bodies from the ring.
Supposedly stolen from the Tower by a loyal servant when the monarchy fell, Edward VII’s crown had been stripped of its jewels and reworked into a corolla with many types of soothsayers’ numa: keys, needles, shards of crystal and mirror, animal bones, dice, and tiny ceramic images of the tarot, all woven with wire into something like a wreath. Light was thrown off it from all angles. On this special occasion, it was strung with the perishable numa of augury: flowers, mistletoe, even slivers of ice. Minty Wolfson took it from the cushion and walked towards us.
“It is with great pleasure that I announce that the White Binder has won the scrimmage—and that his mollisher, the Pale Dreamer, still stands beside him. In the tradition of our syndicate, I will now crown him Underlord of the Scion Citadel of London.” She turned to the audience. “Does anyone know of any reason why this man should not hold such a title? Why this man should not rule the syndicate for as long as he lives?”
“Actually,” I said, “I do.”
As Jaxon turned to face me, his hand tightened around his cane. The clatter from the audience died down, leaving a backcloth of creased brows in its wake.
“I’m Black Moth.” With a heavy heart, I stepped away from him. “And I challenge you, White Binder.”
Not so much as a whisper broke the silence.
A few feet away, Minty handed the crown back to one of her hirelings. The room was so quiet, I heard their fingers grazing across the velvet.
Across the ring, the Abbess rose from her seat with suitable elegance, but a flush swept into her cheeks. Her lips parted as she walked toward the ring, heeled boots ticking on the stone.
“What?” Jaxon said, very softly.
I didn’t repeat myself. He’d heard me. With one quick motion, he snatched my wrist and wrenched me closer.
“If I’m not mistaken,” he breathed, “you just publicly challenged me.” His eyes bored into mine. “I saved you from a life of servitude. I mobilized the Seven Seals to get you out of that colony. Had any of them been seen, twenty years of my life’s work could have been undone in a heartbeat—but I was willing to risk it. Stop now, Paige, and I will forget your ingratitude.”
“You saved my life. I will always be grateful, Jaxon.” I stared him out. “That doesn’t mean you own it.”
“Oh, but I still know your secret.” His fingers dug into my forearm. “Did you forget, darling?”
I smiled. “Secret, Jax?”
Jaxon stared at me, his nostrils flared. I gave him a glimpse of the skin beneath my sleeve, just enough to show him that the Monster’s parting gift was gone.
And oh, it was glorious, watching Jaxon Hall put two and two together. Watching him understand, inch by agonizing inch, that he could no longer blackmail me into submission. That words, for all their worth, would not protect him this time. His eyes turned to glass fixtures in his skull. For once in his life, he would have to play by someone else’s rules.
Slowly, he drew away from me. I stepped back, pulling my wrist free of his hand.
“You see,” he said quietly. Then, in a shout: “Do you see, my dear friends? I predicted this betrayal. You saw it yourself, mistress of ceremonies, when you received my message of flowers. Did I not place monkshood at its very center—the flower of treachery, of warning? But did you expect my very own mollisher to turn on me? I think not. I think that this has shocked you all.”
Murmuring.
“Is this permissible?” the Abbess asked Minty. A smile crept along her mouth. “Surely she can’t declare herself this late, under a separate identity.”
“There’s no rule against it,” Minty said, watching me. “To my knowledge.”
“She is a wanted fugitive,” Jaxon bit out. “Tell me, how is she to lead us when Scion knows her face, her name? And do you really want to allow this backstabber to partake in these proceedings, Miss Wolfson? If she can challenge her own mime-lord, what will she do to her subjects?”
“Coward,” I said.
Jaxon turned to face me. There were a few jeers from the audience, but other than that, silence reigned. “Say that again, little traitor.” He cupped a hand around his ear. “I didn’t quite catch it.”
The crowd was hungry for this kind of drama. I sensed it in their dreamscapes, in their auras, in their faces. This was a first in syndicate history, a real-life revenge tragedy that could only end in death. A mime-lord and a mollisher at war. I stepped through the ash and the blood.
“I said you were a coward.” I held up my blade, letting it catch the candlelight. “Prove me wrong, White Binder, or I’ll send you to the æther tonight.”
There it was. The beast lurking in Jaxon Hall. The film of ice that spread across his eyes: the look I’d seen before, when he struck a pleading beggar with his cane or told Eliza he would fire her from the job that was her lifeline. The look in his eyes when he’d told me I was his, that I was property. An asset. A slave. His lips tilted, and he bowed to me.
“With pleasure,” he said, “O my dearest traitor.”
25
Danse Macabre
Jaxon Hall wasn’t one to waste time when he wanted something done, and it was clear that he’d had no absinthe today. The blade came singing toward me in a flash of silver and a gust of dark wood, almost too fast to avoid, but I was ready for him to strike. I’d sensed his aura move to the right a split second before he had.
He was as easy to read as a book to a bibliomancer. For the first time in my life, I could predict my mime-lord’s intentions. With two quick turns, I avoided the stab and stopped myself dead, like a wind-up dancer in a music box.
With arched eyebrows, Jaxon took a second swing, this time with the blunt end. It hit the flagstones with a heavy, gong-like chime, but the blast of air soon came again. The chunk of metal caught the front of my shoulder, knocking me back a few steps. My hands came straight back up.
Jaxon herded me toward the crowd. Their auras registered like a wall of heat on my back. I cartwheeled past him and spun on the spot, back in the middle of the ring. A smattering of cautious applause broke out from the I-4 supporters. Jaxon’s head turned toward the audience. If he won this battle, they would pay for their treachery.
He stayed where he was, with his back facing me. An open invitation to strike. It would have been irresistible to most participants, but I knew him too well to take the bait.
“Rotten ploys, Jaxon,” I said. “Las
t I checked, no voyant used a cane to touch the æther.”
“Yet you seem to be dancing out of its way, O my lovely.” The cane’s blade dragged across the flagstones, sharp enough to leave sparks in its wake. “If I didn’t know you better, I’d say that was a sign of fear. Now, tell me—where did you learn these pretty pirouettes?”
“From a friend.”
“Oh, I’m quite sure you did. Tall sort of fellow, is he?” His footsteps matched my heartbeat. “Variable eye color?”
He didn’t swing for me; instead, he stabbed with the spring-loaded blade. Its reach was much farther than I’d anticipated, forcing me into an awkward step backward. “In a manner of speaking,” I said, ignoring the laughs in the audience. “Are you seeing him behind my back?”
“I know more than you might think about the sort of company you keep. More than I care to know, my sweet traitor.”
It sounded like banter to the watching crowd, who expected a good show for this unprecedented finale, but there was meaning underneath the mockery. He knew about Warden, but what else did he know? When I looked at him now, with the raw clarity of adrenaline, I saw a mask with empty eyes, soulless as a mannequin.
“Of course, this is a duel,” Jaxon said, “much like the duels of the monarch days, when honor was settled with blood and steel. Whose honor are we settling today, I wonder?” Swing, spin. “You know very well that your reign will never be accepted by these good people. Even if you win this fight, you will always be remembered as the Underqueen who murdered her own mime-lord. And, as rumor has it, the Underlord.” Spin, clash, an arc of sparks. “I don’t think we’ve yet thought of a name for someone so callous, so ungrateful, that she turns on the man who kept her safe for years. Who fed her and taught her and put silk on her precious back.”
“Call me whatever you want,” I said. “London is what matters. London and her people.”
That got a fair few cheers from the spectators, enough to ratchet up my confidence.
“As if you care for people.” His voice was too soft for the crowd to hear. “You’re lost to them, Paige, and London does not forget a traitor. It will suck you down, O my lovely. Into the tunnels and the plague pits. Into its dark heart, where all the traitors’ bodies sink.”
The Mime Order Page 42