The Mime Order (11 page)

They were pouring from the bars, shouting from the windows. “Weaver! Weaver!” Their roars were blood and thunder. “WEAVER. WEAVER.”

Too
many dreamscapes. Each and every one of these people was pressed flush to my senses: their emotions, their
frenzy
, the bright flames of auras as they passed. Voyant. Amaurotic. Voyant. A supernova of invisible colors. When a gap emerged in the tide of human bodies, Alfred pulled me off the street and into the doorway of a jerryshop, where I fought to regain control of my sixth sense. He reached into his pocket, took out a handkerchief, and mopped at his brow.

Away from the crowd, a strange calm came over me. Little by little, I tuned out the æther. All I had to do was focus on my own body: my shallow breaths, my beating heart.

We waited until a large part of the throng had walked past before moving again. Alfred grasped my arm and strode back on to the street.

“I’ll take you to the intersection. You can continue to Seven Dials from there.”

“You shouldn’t.”

“Oh, you think I should leave you here in I-5? And expose myself to Jaxon’s fury?” He clicked his tongue. “As if I would ever abandon his mollisher to such a fate.”

We kept to the backstreets as much as we could, away from the crowds and the transmission screens. As we drew closer, we picked up our pace. There was only so much time until the Archon stopped repeating the broadcast. Without the magnetic influence of the screens, the denizens would be all over the citadel, hunting for traitors. I’d heard of vigilante action during red zones.

By the time we reached the intersection between I-4 and I-5, Alfred was puffing like a locomotive. I was so focused on the border that I didn’t sense an aura until it was too late, and a Vigile stepped out in front of me.

Knuckles smashed into my stomach, sending me sprawling against the wall. When I got a good look at my assailant, hot fear
surged
through me. The Vigile pulled out her machine gun and pointed it at my head.

“Unnatural. Up. Get up!” Making no sudden movements, I rose back to my feet. “Freeze,” the Vigile barked at Alfred, who hadn’t moved. “Hands up!”

“I
am
sorry, Vigile, but I think there may have been a mistake,” Alfred said. He was red in the face, but his smile was perfectly congenial. “We were just on our way to see Inquisitor Weaver’s—”

“Put up your hands.”

“All right, all right.” Alfred raised his hands. “Aside from having no sense of direction, may I ask what we’ve done amiss?”

The Vigile ignored him. Beneath her visor, her eyes were darting over us. Sighted eyes. I held still.

“Jumper,” she whispered.

There was no greed in her expression. She wasn’t like the Underguards on the train, thrilled with their catch, already picturing the wealth they’d get for a red aura.

“On your knees,” she barked. “On your
knees
, unnatural!” I did as she ordered. “Both of you,” she said. With difficulty, Alfred lowered himself to the pavement. “Now, put your hands behind your heads.” We both obeyed. The Vigile took a step back, but the red sight of the gun still hovered at the center of my forehead. I made myself look down the barrel. A finger on a trigger was all that stood between us and the æther.

“That won’t hide you.” The Vigile pulled off my hat, exposing my white-blonde hair. “You’re going straight to Inquisitor Weaver. Don’t think I won’t send you, murderer.”

I didn’t dare answer. She may have known the Underguards I’d killed. Maybe she’d been on the scene when they found the second man, driven insane, salivating garbled pleas for death. Satisfied with my silence, the Vigile reached for her transceiver. I looked at Alfred. To my shock, he
winked
, like he got detained in the street every day.

“
Perhaps,” he said, reaching into his pocket, “I can tempt you with this. You’re a cyathomancer, aren’t you?”

He held up a small gold cup, about the size of a fist, and raised his eyebrows. “This is 521,” the Vigile said into her transceiver, ignoring him. “Request immediate backup in I-5, subsection 12, Saffron Street east. Suspect 1 is in custody. I repeat, Paige Mahoney is in custody.”

“You’re unnatural, too, soothsayer,” I said. “You need a numen. Talking into that radio won’t change a thing.”

The gun jerked back up. “Shut your mouth. Before I put a bullet in it.”

“How long do you have before they exterminate you? Noose or NiteKind, do you think?”

“
This is 515. Detain suspect until our arrival.
”

“Mind your tongue or I’ll break your legs. We know you can run.” The Vigile reached for the handcuffs at her belt. “Hold out your hands, or I’ll break those, too.”

Alfred swallowed. The Vigile grabbed my wrists with one hand.

“Bribes won’t help you,” she said to Alfred. “If I bring this one to Weaver, I’ll be free to buy whatever I like.”

My vision shook. Red didn’t just come running, but
gushing
from the Vigile’s nose. As she raised a hand to stanch it, dropping the handcuffs, I pushed my spirit into her body.

The dreamscape I found was a room full of filing cabinets, lit by stark white lights. This was a clean, precise person. She fitted every thought and memory into a sterile box. It was easy for her to separate what she did at work from her own identity as a clairvoyant. There was color in here, but not a great deal; it had been diluted, washed away by her hatred of herself. In the darkness were her fears, taking the form of specters in her hadal zone: the amorphous figures of other clairvoyants, cruel unnaturals in the shadows.

I was glad, then, when I took her over.

At
once I could feel the difference in my body. My new heart took up a staccato rhythm. When I looked up, I saw my own corpse. Paige Mahoney was crumpled on the ground, deathly pale, and Alfred was shaking her with both hands.

“Speak to me,” he was saying. “Not yet, dear heart. Not yet.”

I stared, transfixed. That was
me
.

And I was . . .

My fist clenched around the transceiver. It was like lifting a dumbbell, but I raised it to my mouth. “This is 521.” My voice came out as a slur. “Suspect has escaped. Heading towards I-6.”

I could hardly hear the response. The silver cord was drawing my consciousness away from my host. Her eyes were failing to see, rejecting the foreign body behind them. I was a parasite, a leech on her dreamscape.

And then I was expelled. I opened my eyes and almost head-butted Alfred as I sat up, trembling and sweating. My throat was closed. He slapped me on the back, and I took a gasping breath.

“Good gracious, Paige—are you all right?”

“Fine,” I heaved.

And I was. My head was aching, like a hand had gripped the front part of my skull, but it was a tolerable pain.

The Vigile lay unconscious, blood leaking from her ears, nose, eyes, and mouth. I pulled her pistol from its holster and pointed it.

“Don’t shoot her,” Alfred said. “The poor woman is voyant, at the end of the day. Traitor or otherwise.”

“I won’t.” My temples throbbed. The sight of that bleeding face was ghastly. “Alfred, you can’t tell anyone about this. Not even Jaxon.”

“Of course. I understand.”

He didn’t.

I kicked the transceiver from the Vigile’s limp hand and brought my boot down on it. After a moment, I crouched down and pressed
two
fingers to her neck. A huff of relief escaped me when I felt a pulse ticking above her red collar.

“Dials isn’t far,” I said. “I’m going on alone.”

“If you can make denizens bleed at your command, far be it from me to stand in your way.” Alfred forced a smile, but he was visibly shaken. “Keep to the fog, dear heart, and move swiftly.”

He left the Vigile and dashed away, his umbrella shielding his face. I went in the opposite direction.

I kept to the backstreets, looking for an opportunity to climb. I joined a large crowd heading down the Grandway and broke away at the first right turn, into the smaller roads behind Holborn station. The freezing wind made my bruises ache, but I only allowed myself to stop when I reached the concrete playground of Stukeley Street, where Nick had trained me to fight and climb when I was seventeen. There were huge bins and rails and low walls in abundance, and all the buildings were derelict. My bare palms burned as I dragged a bin across the road and climbed on to it to reach a drainpipe. At the top, I hooked my fingers into the gutter and pulled myself on to a flat roof. The muscles in my shoulders screamed. They were screwed up tight, lacking their old flexibility.

By the time I reached my territory, I was drenched in sweat and hurting all over. I saw the sundial pillar first, rising red-hot from the fog. When I reached the right building, I pounded on the door.

“Jaxon!”

There were no lights in the windows. If they weren’t here, there was nowhere else to go. I was sure I could feel a dreamscape.

I looked over my shoulder. No voyants were on my radar. Seven Dials was abandoned—even the oxygen bar across the street was empty of patrons—but Frank Weaver was still talking in Piccadilly Circus, where the enormous I-4 transmission screen was located.

Was Jaxon doing this to spite me? I was still his mollisher. Still his dreamwalker. He couldn’t just leave me out here to die.

Could
he?

Panic set in. The cold was in my face, in my hands, in my head. I was dizzy with it. Then the door opened, and light came pouring out.

6

Seven Dials

As I crossed the threshold of the den, my knees almost gave way. A strong pair of hands got me up the first flight of stairs and into a wing chair. My nose was streaming, my ears ached and a vicious burn clawed at my cheeks. It was only when sensation returned to my lips that I looked up to see who had rescued me.

“You’re blue,” Danica said.

I managed a laugh, though it sounded more like a cough.

“It’s really not funny. You’re probably hypothermic.”

“Sorry,” I said.

“Don’t know why you’re apologizing. You’re the one who’s probably hypothermic.”

“Right.” I unbuckled my boots with clumsy fingers. “Thanks for letting me in.”

Save a single lamp on a filing cabinet, the den was completely dark—every curtain drawn, every light put out—but it was wonderfully warm. Someone must have fixed the boiler at last. “Where are the others?” I said. I was getting déjà vu.

“
Out searching for you. Nadine saw the broadcast when she was walking back from the Juditheon.”

“Jaxon went, too?”

“Yup.”

Maybe he cared more than I thought he did. Jaxon rarely did search work (“I’m a mime-
lord
, O my lovely, not a mime-peasant”), but suddenly he was leaping to my rescue. Danica took a seat on the footstool and pulled a familiar machine toward the wing chair.

“Here.” She unhooked the oxygen mask from the tank. “Take a few breaths. Your aura’s all over the place.”

I lifted the mask to my face and inhaled.
Fear is your real trigger
, Warden had told me. Warden, who had known more than anyone about dreamwalking.

“How’s your head?” I said.

“Concussed.” As she turned her head to the light, I could make out the long cut above her eye, held together with a series of thin stitches.

“Are you all right now?”

“As ‘all right’ as you can be with mild traumatic brain injury. Nick stitched it up.”

“Have you been back to work since we got back?”

“Oh, yeah. They would have been suspicious if I didn’t go. I did a job the next day.”

“While concussed?”

“Didn’t say I did a
good
job.”

I took another breath from the oxygen mask. A botched job by Danica Panić was probably still a lot better than what most engineers could manage on top form.

“Going to turn off the light downstairs. Jax said we had to be in lockdown mode.” She got up. “Don’t turn anything on.”

As soon as she was gone, the æther flickered at eye level,
disturbing
my vision. Pieter Claesz, Eliza’s favorite art muse, was beaming deep reproach at me.

“Hi, Pieter,” I said.

He floated into the corner to sulk. If there was one thing Pieter hated, it was people leaving for months at a time without a word of explanation.

Danica puffed her way back up to the landing. “I’ll be in the garret,” she said. “You can finish my coffee.”

Warmth was finally reaching my core. I took in the familiar surroundings as I sipped the tepid coffee. In the mirror, I caught sight of a greyish stain around my lips. My fingertips had the same discoloration.

The smell of the den fell like dust around me: tobacco, paint, lignin, rosin, cutting oil. I’d spent most of my first year working at one of these tables, doing research into the history and spirits of London, studying
On the Merits of Unnaturalness
, sorting out old newspaper clippings from the black market, making and updating lists of the voyants registered in I-4.

My heart caught at the sound of keys in the lock. Boots thundered on the stairs, and the door was flung open. Nadine Arnett stopped dead when she saw me. Since I’d last seen her, she’d cropped her dead-straight hair so it just covered her ears.