The Mime Order (32 page)

He grasped the arm of his chair. “Leave me with my mollisher, if you please, Dr. Nygård. Take a well-deserved break.”

Nick hesitated before he left, but only for a moment. He gave my shoulder a gentle squeeze as he passed.

A distorted recording of “The Boy I Love Is Up in the Gallery” was warbling from the corner. An empty reservoir glass stood on
the
desk. I lowered myself into an armchair and crossed my legs, giving him what I hoped was an innocent, expectant sort of look.

“The scrimmage,” Jaxon said, in a dangerously soft voice, “is less than a month away. And I have seen no evidence whatsoever that you are attempting to prepare for it.”

“I’ve been practicing.”

“Practicing
what
, Paige?”

“My gift. I’ve . . . tried walking without the mask,” I said. It wasn’t quite a lie. “I can do it for a few minutes now.”

“It’s all very well and good to exercise your gift, but your physic al health is just as important. They kept you weak and malnourished for a reason, darling: so you couldn’t fight back.” He placed a small bottle on the desk, full to the brim with greenish liquid. “Worse, you have neglected to treat yourself with the bay laurel I purchased for you.”

I drew my arm toward my chest. Something told me not to tell him that the scars had been washed away by amaranth. It would only lead to questions about where I’d procured it.

“It hasn’t hurt since you bound the Monster,” I said.

“Irrelevant. Until I see some evidence that you are taking care of yourself,” Jaxon said, “I will be withholding your wages.”

The smile slipped off my lips. “I’ve done everything you’ve asked me,” I said, trying to keep the bitterness out of my voice. “Everything. Delivered the messages, gone to the auctions—”

“—and through it all, paid not one iota of attention!” He swept the glass off his desk, along with reams of paperwork. “I suggest you manage your time a little better. I shall ask Nick to train you up for the fight.”

Absinthe soaked into the carpet. My heart hammered. Jaxon took another glass from the cabinet.

“Off to bed with you, now.” He poured the absinthe. “You need your rest, O my lovely.”

With
a curt nod, I left.

How long had it been since he’d left the den? How long since he’d last seen the streets he wanted so badly to rule?

On the landing, Eliza was gazing blankly at the wall, her mouth ajar. Oil paint sleeved her arms from fingertip to elbow. Her hair hung in greasy coils down her back, reeking of old sweat.

“Eliza?”

“Paige,” she slurred, “where have you been?”

“Out.” Her eyelids were drooping. I took her by the elbows. “Hey, when was the last time you slept?”

“I’m not sure. Doesn’t matter. Do you know when Jaxon’s next pay packet is coming in?”

I frowned. “Has he not paid you, either?”

“Said he wanted to see progress. Need to make more progress.”

“You’ve made plenty of progress.”

I led her up the stairs by the arm. She was trembling all over. “I have to carry on,” she muttered. “I have to, Paige. You don’t understand.”

“Eliza, I want you to take eight hours off. In that time, I want you to have a meal, take a shower and get some sleep. Can you do that?”

A titter jumped from her lips. I pushed her into the bathroom with a towel and a lounging robe.

Danica, as always, was working on her side of the garret. I knocked on her door and entered when I didn’t get an answer.

The corners overflowed with bits and pieces she’d picked out of scrap heaps or bought from mudlarks on the banks of the Thames. Danica was sitting on the end of her daybed, hunched over the heavy oak table that served as her work surface.

“Dani, I need a favor.”

“I don’t do favors,” she said. A circle of dense glass magnified one of her eyes to an absurd size.

“It’s nothing too strenuous. Don’t worry.”

“
Not the point. That seat isn’t for people,” she added as I sat down.

“What are you working on?” I scanned the curled scraps of paper on the floor, all scribbled on in neat Cyrillic script. “The Panić Theory?”

Her hypothesis still required empirical research. Jaxon wanted to include it in his next great pamphlet. The formula was simple: take the order of clairvoyance, multiply by ten, take away from one hundred, and the answer was the average age for a voyant of that order to die. It meant that I would die at thirty, which was a cheerful thought. Then again, cheerful thoughts didn’t sell pamphlets.

“Nope.” She picked up a spanner. “The hand-held Senshield.”

“Why does Jax want you working on that?”

“He doesn’t tell me
why
. He tells me
what
and
when
.”

I couldn’t think why Jaxon would need such a thing. “If you get bored,” I said, reaching into my pocket, “do you think you could modify the portable oxygen mask for me? I need it to be a bit smaller.”

She turned it over in her callused hands. “That’s as small as you’ll get it. It needs a decent air chamber.”

“How about something I can conceal?”

“Jaxon won’t pay me for that. This is the job he gave me.”

“It’s for the scrimmage. Besides, you haven’t bought so much as a sock since last year,” I said.

“This may come as a shock to you, but I need the money to pay the mudlarks. They charge me like they’re selling gold dust.” She dropped the mask on the table. “If I say yes, will you go away?”

“If you also make sure that Eliza eats a full meal before she goes back to work.”

“Done.”

That was the best I’d get out of her. I passed Eliza as she tottered into her room and collapsed on her bed in a heap. When the muses approached her, I forced them into a spool and knocked them unceremoniously to the other side of the garret.

“
She needs to rest. Bother someone else for a while.”

Pieter shot off in a huff. The newest muse, George, brooded in the corner while Rachel and Phil hung sadly above the door. Eliza was already sound asleep, her arm hanging off the edge of the bed, face half-buried in the pillow. I pulled a thick blanket over her shoulders.

Jaxon didn’t want me to
rest
. If he was interested in giving his voyants rest, Eliza wouldn’t be wandering around like an automaton in clothes she’d been wearing for a week.

My mime-lord was waiting in the doorway of his office, watching me. With a slanted smile, he waved me into my room. I slammed the door in his face.

Curled up on my bed, I picked open the pillowcase stiches with the tip of my knife. There was enough money in there to buy one more night for Warden at the doss-house. After that, he was on his own. I turned on to my side and rested my head on one arm, listening to the white noise machine.

After an hour or two, Jaxon’s dreamscape dimmed. I lay awake until the den was quiet; until the streetlights bathed the streets with blue and even Danica had succumbed to her exhaustion. The penny dreadful was waiting in Soho. Warden was waiting in the doss-house. Under my pillow, my hand lay on the handle of my knife. I hadn’t felt this alone in a long time.

At midnight, my door swung open. I sat up with a pounding heart, the knife still in my hand.

“Shh. It’s me.” Nick crouched beside my bed. “You’re sleeping with a knife?”

“You sleep with a gun.” I laid it on the nightstand. “What’s the matter?”

“Go.” He nodded to the window. “Go back to the doss-house and see Warden. I’ll leave Jaxon a note. Tell him we’re training.”

“I thought you said—?”

“
I did, but I’m tired of doing everything by Jaxon’s book,” he whispered. “I don’t like it, Paige, but we need to work out what the Rag Dolls are planning. And I trust that you know what you’re doing.” He still didn’t look happy. “Be careful,
sötnos
. And if you can’t be careful—”

“—be quick.” I kissed his cheek. “I know. Thank you.”

****

It must have been hard for him to let me go, but it felt good to have Nick back on my side. Even if we both agreed that me seeing Warden was risky, it was better than having no Rephaite help whatsoever.

There was a cold snap in the air. I climbed my way out of the den, bundled up in a jacket and cravat, and took off down Monmouth Street. Jaxon’s office window was dark; his dreamscape swam with the muddied tint of alcohol. I spied a unit of Vigiles patrolling on Shaftesbury Avenue and took a different route across the rooftops to Soho.

The district was heaving with denizens, mostly amaurotic, with the odd voyant darting through the throng. The people came here for what little pleasure Scion afforded them: the casinos, the underground theatres, and the 3i’s Coffee Bar and its music, played by the few whisperers who’d clawed themselves into amaurotic jobs. This was where Eliza had spent her youth.

When I reached the square, I slipped into one of the more popular voyant establishments in the district: the Minister’s Cat, a gambling-house tailored to voyants, with stringent rules on which orders could bet (oracles, soothsayers, and augurs always ineligible, given their prophetic gifts). There was a lottery held here every month, with the winner entitled to a sum of money from Jaxon. It was also the only place in I-4 where members of other gangs were
allowed
to linger without express permission, as they generated so much money for the section. Most districts had a handful of “neutral” buildings, where turf disputes and grudges were ignored.

Königrufen
and tarocchi were the most popular games. My fingers itched—I loved tarocchi, and winning a few games could get me a pocketful of cash—but I didn’t have nearly enough money to enter the tournament.

As always, it was full to bursting with people from all over the citadel. I slid my way between sweating bodies and round tables, leaving looks and whispers in my wake. This particular establishment was a breeding ground for syndicate gossip. Babs was presiding over a game of tarocchi in the corner. I’d have to wait.

Maybe I could find help somewhere else. There were plenty of voyants selling knowledge in here.

Knowledge is dangerous.

Dangerous, but useful.

A soothsayer sat in a booth nearby, dark of skin, late twenties. Her hair was a cloud of tiny corkscrews, restrained by a thin band of violet silk. Large eyes looked up at me from below heavy lids. The right was deep brown and the left, green, with a loop of yellow around the pupil and no colobomata. It was the second time in my life that I’d seen a pair of eyes like that.

“Got time for a reading?”

She rubbed the bridge of her broad nose. “If you’ve got coin for it.”

I handed her the meager change in my pocket. “That’s all I’ve got.”

It was enough for her to buy another few glasses of mecks. “Well,” she said, “I suppose it’s better than nothing.”

Her deep voice held the remnant of an accent. I sat down in the booth and clasped my hands. She pulled a velveteen curtain along its rail until we couldn’t be seen by the gamblers.

“You’re an astragalomancer,” I said. Her fingernails were painted
white,
dotted with black. There were flecks of white above her eyes, too. She took two small dice from her sleeve. Knucklebones, flecked with ink.

“Now, here’s how this works,” she said, holding one up between her thumb and index finger. “Not all ’stragas work the same way I do—most of them do some really complicated shit with answers on paper—but I keep it very simple. You ask five questions and I’ll give you five answers. They might be vague, but you’ll have to deal with it. Give me your hand.”

I did, and she grasped it—then dropped it like it was a frayed wire. “You’re cold,” she said, giving me a suspicious look.

At first I didn’t realize what she meant—if anything my hands were uncomfortably warm—then I opened my palm and remembered. “Sorry.” I spread my fingers, showing her the cuts. “Poltergeist. They’re about ten years old.”

She shook her head. “It’s like shaking hands with a corpse. Give me the other one.”

The scars had always been a bit cooler than the rest of me, but I’d never known anyone to react like that to my touch. She took my right hand instead, holding the dice in her free palm.

“Right,” she said, relaxing. “Ask your questions.”

I didn’t miss a beat: “Who killed the Underlord?”

“Dangerous question. Make it better. The æther won’t just deliver a name like a vending machine.”

I paused, mulling it over. “Did Cutmouth kill the Underlord?”

The dice rolled across the table. A two and a two. The soothsayer lifted her empty hand to her temple.

“Scales,” she said, in that strange monotone Liss had used during my reading. “One side of the scale is full of blood, weighing it down. Four figures stand around the scales—two on one side, two on the other.”

“Right. Does that answer the question?”

“
I said it would be vague. In my experience, the scales usually point toward truth. So you’ve got two people who are on the right side of the truth and two who aren’t,” she said. “You should get it. The æther’s response to a question is for the querent’s understanding only.”

If the æther had a personality, I decided, it would be a smug bastard.

“Next question, then,” I said. “Did Cutmouth kill the Underlord?” “You just asked that.”

“I’m asking it again.”

“Are you testing my abilities, jumper?” She didn’t seem insulted; just vaguely amused.

“I might be,” I said. “I’ve seen more than one charlatan in here. How do I know this isn’t a rainbow ruse?”

So she did it again. A two and a two. I repeated the question once more and got the same answer. The soothsayer took a few gulps of mecks.

“Please, enough. I get the same damn image every time. And you’ve only got two more questions.”

There were so many I wanted to ask, particularly about Warden, but I had to be careful. “Say I wanted to know about a group of people, but I didn’t want to say who they were,” I began.

“So long as
you
know who you’re talking about, that should work. You’re the querent. I’m just the channel.”

My fingers tapped the table. “How does . . . the one who lives underground . . . know about the puppet masters?”