The Mime Order (The Bone Season, #2)

by Samantha Shannon

I still couldn’t believe he was forty-eight. There was scarcely a line on his face, and his black hair showed no hint of gray.

Murmurs blew from ear to ear. My skin prickled. Didion Waite had just unmasked me. Although the Pale Dreamer was well known, her face and real name were not.

Jaxon had always made me wear a red cravat over my lips and nose when I carried out my duties as his mollisher.

“Is the White Binder so in love with his own reflection that he’s painted it on to his mollisher?” My hair had been dyed black and cut so it was level with my chin, baring the length of my neck. The contact lenses were hazel rather than Jaxon’s pale blue,

“We had quite a few of them leave I-5 recently. They seem to be repelled by one street in particular. I can’t see anything wrong with it, unless someone’s botched a séance in one of the houses.”

one of the few churches in London that hadn’t been gutted and repurposed as Vigile stations. It had been disfigured in the early twentieth century, of course, like all things associated with the afterlife and the monarchy—the wings struck off the cherubim, the altars destroyed by republican vandals—but

“If we’re going to do something, we have to work from the bottom. Let the syndicate know, then the rest of the citadel.” “Yeah, I know. It was wishful thinking.” Zeke cleared his throat. “By the way, did Nick tell you—?” “Tell me what?” “Nothing. Forget it. Did you get the spirit?” he asked quickly.

The black market was situated between Covent Garden and Long Acre. An underground cavern of about fifteen thousand square feet, it had been the hub of illegal trading for decades. Most hawkers earned their flatches on the fringes of the amaurotic markets, but this one was entirely voyant, and entirely secret.

The flagship booth of I-4 specialized in funerary art, winding sheets and other morbid luxuries for the affluent clairvoyant.

Behind the table, Eliza was a vision in a deep-green velvet dress. Her golden hair fell in polished ringlets down her back, and her arms were wound in delicate black lace.

Zeke spent the time charming people with stories of his years in Oaxaca. They clung to him like flies to honey, desperate for tales of a country beyond Scion’s influence. The free-world was a paradise in their eyes, a place where voyants could find peace.

when I opened my eyes, it was Jaxon looking down at me. “No, my sleeping walker, you’re not in that dreadful slum any longer.” A strange smell hung on his breath, eclipsed by the scents of white mecks and tobacco.

When numa are left without a voyant for a long time, they do not respond well to being handled. Only someone of the same order as the dead owner has a chance of touching it without injury.”

As promised, a glym jack was waiting. He was all muscle, hooded, with a green lantern in one hand. Their purpose in the citadel was to escort amaurotics to their destinations at night, ensuring protection from unnaturals and their crimes, but Jaxon had one or two on his side.

I pushed open the doors. And I saw the drawing room, and I saw what was inside it. Hector and his gang were here, all right. They were all over the floor.

All lying in the same direction, with their heads facing the windows of the west-facing wall.

First, the corpses. From the spray, they must have been killed here, not moved. I’d seen bodies before, some in the late stages of decay, but these identical positions were grotesquely theatrical. Streaks of blood led up to each body.

Each face was resting on the left cheek. Each right arm lay on the floor, parallel to the torso. All the furniture— armchairs, a séance table, and a coat rack—had been pushed against the walls to make room for them all.

There was one person missing. Cutmouth. Either she’d escaped, or she’d never been here. As well as arranging the bodies, the killer had left a calling card.

I focused, straining my perception until my temples ached. I’d thought they might be hiding, but they didn’t emerge. New spirits almost always lingered close to their empty bodies. I stepped back, into a pool of blood. The æther, which had been still, began to vibrate. Like water touched by a tuning fork.

“You killed him,” he said, stunned. “No. He was dead.” “You’ve got blood all over you.” He stepped away. “I’ll have nothing to do with this. Binder can keep his coin.”

“I must admit, I did expect some minor injuries to contend with—but not to find you unconscious in Birdcage Park, my walker.” “You found me?” My jaw ached with each word. “Well, I collected you. Dr. Nygård sent me an image of your location. It seems the æther finally sent him something useful.”

A phantom blade is a purely spiritual phenomenon, but similar in theory—poltergeists can inflict their own phantom sensations, usually something they specialized in when they were alive. It’s a particularly nasty breed of apport, the sort of ethereal energy commanded by breachers,

“Wait.” Jaxon raised a hand. “I hope this is glaringly obvious to you all, but if any of you ever lets slip that we knew of Hector’s death before its official announcement, we will all be under suspicion. We will be dragged before the Unnatural Assembly.

“There’s a message in the murder, Paige. And I don’t think it’s simply a reference to Hector running around like a headless chicken for the last eight years.” “Mockery,” I ventured. “He was getting too big for his boots. Acting like a king.” “Quite. A very Bloody King.”

And now”—his smile widened—“well, if Cutmouth does flee, someone must be clever enough to win the next one.” Only then did it sink in. A new Underlord. We were getting a new Underlord.

Two days after the killings, a letter had appeared in our dead drop, along with a sprig of hyacinth. The mistress of ceremonies had called for anyone with knowledge of the murder to come forward and give evidence. After four days, another notice had been sent out, giving Cutmouth three further days to present herself to the Unnatural Assembly and clear her name before she could claim the crown. Finally, a third letter had appeared to announce the date of the scrimmage.

That was the bank that sustained this citadel, funded the capital punishment of voyants, and pumped money to Scion’s network of citadels and outposts. No doubt it was also responsible for ensuring that the Rephaim were kept in extraordinary opulence.

And this was what I was trying to fight. The empire and its riches against one woman and her pillowcase of pennies.

Something had happened to Zeke that had made him lose his original gift and become unreadable. Jaxon and Nadine both knew, but the rest of us were in the dark.

It was insane that we’d once spent every day clambering up buildings and hanging by our fingertips from ledges, inches from death. Knowing how to run and climb had almost saved me from the red-jackets, that fateful day in March.

I pushed up one sleeve to look at the poltergeist’s mark. I took in a deep breath at the sight of it. The gnarled black “M” was about five inches wide and wept a clear fluid that reeked of metal.

The Monster was unable to occupy your dreamscape, but it has forged its own passageway into it. This tiny crack in your armor allows the Monster to cause you pain whenever it so desires.

The tip of Jaxon’s blade touched the Monster’s mark, wetting the blade with that strange fluid. Then he turned it on to his own skin, drawing a thread of blood from his inner arm. “Allow me to educate you in the noble art of binding.”

“One can’t carve one’s skin with any old lettering, darling.” Jaxon continued slicing. “Names are important, you see—more important than you can possibly imagine.”

As the spirit hurtled through the window, Jaxon flexed his fist, pushing blood down to his fingertips. “Stop, Rhynwick Williams.” The spirit stopped dead. Ice spread across the mirror on the wall.

“Is there no way to get rid of it?” “Not that I know of, darling. Perhaps if we had an exorcist to send the creature to the last light, but alas, we do not.

As I looked at the Abbess, I tried to read her aura. Definitely a medium. A physical medium, from the feel of it. Quite a rare gift. She had the sort of dreamscape that called out for spirits to seize control of her.

Most of the syndicate’s hideouts were derelict places: abandoned buildings, closed stations, sewer chambers from a time long past. We gathered in the under, the hidden, the forgotten.

So long as I was with him, I was safe. So long as I was his dutiful Pale Dreamer, my name would be just clear enough for the Unnatural Assembly to quell their suspicions about me. But if I ever struck out on my own, he would expose the dirty secret underneath my sleeve. Jaxon had never meant to use this meeting to protect me. He’d used it to trap me.

“Danica is designing a jamming device,” Jaxon intervened. “The same technology that created Senshield, beautifully enrobed in a convenient, hand-held form.” “I took the basic design from Scion,” she said. “They’re working on a portable version of Senshield.”

If Senshield could be carried by amaurotic Vigiles, they wouldn’t need sighted eyes on the streets. The voyants who had turned on their own kind, who had hunted their fellow unnaturals, would no longer serve a purpose in Scion.

I have decided to apply for the position of Underlord.” I closed my eyes. No surprise there.

As I sipped my coffee, I sensed two auras nearby. Gooseflesh rose along my abdomen. Two silhouettes were just outside the window. The cup fell from my fingers. Two pairs of eyes looked back at me, firefly lights in the gloom of the passage. No. Not now. Not them.

In exchange for his protection, he was asking me to close my eyes to everything I’d learned. “I can’t understand you,” I said hotly. “They are here, in I-4. How can you just ignore it?” “You don’t need to understand my actions, Paige. You need to do as you are told, as we agreed.”

You’ve always known that their inquisition into unnaturalness is reprehensible. But only now do you think we should intervene. Were you too afraid to strike when their corruption was only human, my Paige?” “I’ve seen what started it. I’ve seen what indoctrinated them,” I said. “And I think we can stop it.” “You think fighting the Rephaim will bring a halt to the inquisition? Don’t labor under the illusion that Frank Weaver and his government will become devoted friends of yours if you destroy their masters.”

You want to turn it into a force for good. Jaxon isn’t interested in ‘good.’ He wants to sit on his throne and gather spirits and be king of the citadel until he dies. That is all he cares about.

“Say I was to apply. Would you be my mollisher?” His face twitched. “I would,” he said, “because I care about you. But I don’t want you to do it, Paige. At best you’ll be a traitor Underqueen. At worst you’ll lose and wind up getting killed. If you wait two years, Jaxon will give you the section anyway.

“People died to get me out of Sheol,” I said quietly. “People like us are dying every day. If I hide in the shadows while this continues, I’m spitting at their memories.”

I would have to think bigger. Become not just a mollisher, not just a mime-queen, but the Underqueen of the Scion Citadel of London. I had to have a voice too loud to silence.