The Mime Order (The Bone Season, #2)

by Samantha Shannon

“They were whitewashed,” Warden said. “They remember nothing of what happened at the parlor.” “No chance of knowing how the Rag and Bone Man got them to change the pamphlet, then.”

“Several voyants were whispering that you are a . . . thaumaturge. They can see no other explanation for how you withstood the poltergeist.”

The faithful didn’t use thaumaturge lightly. It referred to someone touched by the zeitgeist itself, someone with unprecedented mastery of the æther’s secrets.

“There was no money. Jaxon doesn’t even have a bank account,” I said. “All his money comes from our work and goes into a little jewel-box in his office to be shared between us. That’s our payment. After that, I don’t know where it goes.”

But hope couldn’t control a syndicate. Hope wouldn’t bring down the Westminster Archon, which had stood strong for two hundred years. It wouldn’t destroy the creatures inside it, who had watched the world for far longer than that.

“Weird, isn’t it? Even though we’re voyant, even though we know there’s something more, we’re still afraid to die.” I shook my head. “We don’t know what waits in the last light. Even dreamwalkers don’t know that.”

Lotte, one of the last Bone Season survivors, dressed in the black shift of a convicted unnatural.

I pressed a finger to the screen, zooming in on them. Charles was on her right, bruised and bleeding—Charles, who had guided other voyants to the train—and on her left was Ella, whose shift was caked with dry vomit.

PAIGE EVA MAHONEY, SURRENDER YOURSELF TO THE CUSTODY OF THE ARCHON. YOU HAVE ONE HOUR.

They were looking to their Underqueen to make the call. I gazed at the screen. All three of the prisoners’ mouths were sealed with dermal adhesive. I said, “I’ll go to the Archon.”

“I said I was going,” I said. “Not that I was going in person.”

We already existed on a level of hell. And we would have to walk right through this hell to leave it.

Identifying single buildings was difficult in the æther, but I knew the Westminster Archon when I saw it. The whole place had the look of death and fear, and its insides were crowded with hundreds of dreamscapes.

“You’ll spare theirs,” I said, “or I’ll take his.” In a single movement, the Vigile’s pistol was in my hand and aimed at Frank Weaver’s heart.

Gomeisa laughed, a sound like grinding metal. “It seems you were wrong, Nashira. 40 is willing to take a fellow human’s life for her own ends.” “I am,” I said. “For all the lives he’s taken in your name.”

Lotte wrenched her arms from behind her back—someone must have smuggled her a blade—and cut right through the binding on her lips. Blood unfurled from her mouth, but her eyes were sparkling with wild triumph. “BLACK MOTH RULES IN LONDON,” she screamed at the camera. “VOYANTS, DO YOU HEAR ME? BLACK MOTH RULES IN—”

“I would almost believe that this syndicate of yours did not exist, were it not for the steady stream of voyants we have received from the Unnatural Assembly over the years.” Do you hear me? “The gray market was never supposed to exist,” the enemy continued, “but I confess, it has had its uses over the years. The voyants we received through that channel were always far more powerful than those that Scion plucked from the street. The Rag and Bone Man has been our ally for many years, along with the Abbess, Haymarket Hector, and the Wicked Lady.”

“Oh, but I have an old one.” Nashira didn’t smile. “A very old ally. One who returned to me at two o’clock this morning, after twenty long years of estrangement. One who does not recognize you as Underqueen, despite your . . . association.”

The doors swung open. I looked up, knowing the mistake I’d made, knowing what a fool I’d been to trust, to care, to let him live. “You,” I whispered. “Yes.” His hands were gloved in silk. “Me, O my lovely.”