The Mime Order (7 page)

“Sorry. I don’t think I ever asked your name,” I said to the julker boy.

“
It’s all right,” he said in a light, sweet voice. “It’s Joseph, but you can call me Jos.”

“Okay.” I looked into the corners of the cellar, my heart filling my throat. “Did anyone else escape?”

“I don’t think so.”

“We got a buck cab from Whitechapel,” Felix said. “We had two others with us, but they’re both—”

“Dead.” Agatha held a cloth to her mouth and hacked from her throat. When she took it away, it was flecked with blood. “The girl wouldn’t hold down food. The boy jumped into the canal. I’m sorry, love.”

A cool prickling started along the backs of my legs. “The boy,” I repeated. “He wasn’t mute, was he?”

“Michael got away,” Jos said. “He ran down to the river, I think. Nobody’s seen him.”

I shouldn’t have felt relieved—at the end of the day, another voyant boy had died—but the thought of Michael hurting himself was physically painful. Felix scratched the side of his neck. “So you haven’t found anyone else?”

“Not yet,” I said. “I’m not sure where to look.”

“Where are you based?”

“I’m in a doss-house. It’s best you don’t know where. Are you safe here?”

“They’re safe,” Agatha said, patting Ivy’s arm. “Don’t you worry, Pale Dreamer. I shan’t let them out of my sight.”

Felix gave her a tentative smile. “We’ll be fine for now. Camden seems safe. Besides,” he said, “anything’s better than . . . where we were before.”

I crouched beside Ivy, who didn’t stir. “I was her kidsman,” Agatha said. She took off her lace shawl and draped it around Ivy’s shoulders. “Thought she’d given me the slip. I had all the little horrors out searching for her, but we got nothing. Knew they must have nibbed her.”

Now
I was on edge. Kidsmen picked up gutterlings and trained them to steal and beg, often giving them cruel injuries to attract sympathy. “I’m sure you missed her terribly,” I said.

If she picked up on my tone, she didn’t acknowledge it. “Aye,” she said. “I did. She’s been like a daughter to me, this one.” She stood and rubbed the small of her back. “I’ll leave you to your business. I’ve got my own to run.”

The door clunked shut behind her. Coughing echoed through the stairwell. Felix gave Ivy a gentle shake.

“Ivy. Paige is here.”

It took Ivy a while to come to. Jos helped her into a sitting position, propping her up with cushions. Her hand came to rest on her ribs. When her dark eyes finally focused on me, she smiled, giving me a glimpse of a missing tooth at the front of her mouth. “Not dead yet.”

Jos looked worried. “Agatha said you shouldn’t get up.”

“I’m fine. She’s always been a worrywart,” Ivy said. “You know, we should really send Thuban an invitation to my deathbed. I’m sure he’d love to see the fruits of his labor.”

Nobody smiled. The sight of her bruises shook me to the core. “So,” I said, “Agatha’s your kidsman?”

“I trust her. She’s not like other kidsmen—she took me in when I was starving.” She pulled the lace shawl more tightly around her shoulders. “She’ll hide us from the Rag and Bone Man. She’s never liked him.”

“Why do you need to hide from him?” I took a seat on the mattress. “Isn’t he your mime-lord?”

“He’s violent.”

“Aren’t most mime-lords?”

“Trust me, you don’t want to get on the wrong side of this one. He won’t want a bunch of fugitives causing trouble in his section. No one knows his face, but Agatha’s met him once or twice. She’s
been
in charge of the bolthole for years, since before I worked for her.”

“Who’s his mollisher?” Nell asked.

“I’m not sure.” Ivy lifted a hand to her shorn head, looking away. “They’re secretive here.”

I’d have to ask Jaxon more about this guy. If I ever spoke to Jaxon again. “Why come back here at all, then?”

“Nowhere else to go,” Nell said, pulling a face. “We’ve got no money for a doss-house and no friends who could afford to put us up.”

“Look, Paige,” Felix cut in, “we ought to work out what to do, and do it soon. Scion’s going to be on the hunt for us, given what we know.”

“I’ve called a meeting of the Unnatural Assembly. We need to spread the word about the Rephaim,” I said. Ivy’s head jerked around. “Let every voyant in London know what Scion has been doing to us.”

“You’re mad,” Ivy said, staring at me. There was a tremor in her voice. “You think
Hector
would do anything about it? You think he would care?”

“It’s worth a try,” I said.

“We have our brands,” Felix pointed out. “We have our stories. We have all the voyants who are still missing.”

“They could be in the Tower. Or dead. Even if we did tell everyone, there’s no guarantee it would change anything,” Nell said. “Ivy’s right. Hector won’t believe a word. Friend of mine tried to report a murder to his henchmen once, and they beat him senseless for his trouble.”

“We need a Rephaite to prove the story,” Jos piped up. “The Warden will help us, won’t he, Paige?”

“I don’t know.” I paused. “I don’t know if he’s alive.”

“And we shouldn’t work with Rephs.” Ivy looked away. “We all know what they’re like.”

“
But he helped Liss,” Jos said, frowning. “I saw it. He got her out of spirit shock.”

“Give him a medal, then,” Nell said, “but I’m not working with him, either. They can all rot in hell.”

“What about the amaurotics?” Felix said. “Can we work with them?”

Nell snorted. “Sorry, remind me why the rotties would give a rat’s ear what happens to us?”

“You could show some optimism.”

“Yeah, the weekly executions make me
really
optimistic. Anyway, London rotties outnumber us ten to one, if not more,” she added. “Even if we got a tiny number of them on our side, the rest would overpower us. So there goes that brilliant plan.”

You could tell they’d been stuck in a small room for a while.

“The amaurotics could end up helping us. Scion have always taught their denizens to hate clairvoyance,” I said. “Imagine how the average denizen would react if they found out Scion was
controlled
by voyants. The Rephs are more clairvoyant than we are, and they’ve had us wrapped around their finger for two centuries. But we need to focus on voyants first, not rotties or Rephaim.” I went to stand by the window, watching the narrowboats pass with their wares. “What would your mime-lords say if you asked them for help?”

“Let’s see. Mine would beat me,” Nell mused, “then . . . hm, probably throw me out to beg with cuts on my arms, seeing as he’d think I was such a good liar.”

“Who’s your mime-lord?”

“Bully-Rook. III-1.”

“Right.” The Bully-Rook was as much of a brute as his name suggested. “Felix?”

“I wasn’t a syndie,” he admitted.

“I wasn’t, either,” Ivy said. “Just a gutterling.”

I sighed. “Jos?”

“
I was a gutterling, too, in II-3. My kidsman wouldn’t help us.” He hugged his knees. “Will we have to stay here, Paige?”

“For now,” I said. “Will Agatha ask you to work?”

“Of course she will. She’s already got twenty gutterlings to feed,” Ivy said. “We can’t just sponge off her.”

“I understand, but you’ve all been through a lot. Nell, you’ve been away for ten years. You need time to adjust.”

“I’m just grateful she’s putting us up.” Nell leaned back against the wall. “Getting back to work will do me good. I’d almost forgotten what it was like to be
paid
for doing a job,” she added. “What about your mime-lord, anyway? You’re with the White Binder, aren’t you?”

“I’m going to talk to him about it.” I looked at Ivy, who was pushing at a callus on her knuckle. “Does Agatha know about the colony?” She shook her head. “What did you tell her, then?”

“That we broke out of the Tower.” Ivy kept shaking her head. “I just . . . couldn’t face explaining it. I want to forget it all.”

“Keep it that way. The truth is our best weapon. I want it to be heard for the first time at the Unnatural Assembly, or they’ll think it’s just a rumor that’s gone out of control.”

“Paige,
don’t
tell the Assembly.” Her eyes widened. “You didn’t say anything about fighting back or going public. You said you’d get us
home
. That’s it. We have to stay hidden. You could put the rest of us in—”

“I don’t want to stay hidden.” Jos’s voice was small, but firm. “I want to make it right.”

Agatha chose that moment to return, carrying a tray of food. “Time to leave, love,” she said to me. “Ivy needs her rest.”

“If you say so.” I glanced back at her four charges. “Stay safe.”

“Wait a second.” Felix scrawled a phone number on a scrap of paper. “Just in case you need us. It’s for one of the hawkers, but she’ll take a message if you call her.”

I tucked the paper into my pocket. On my way up the rotting
stairs,
I cursed Agatha. What kind of idiot was she that she’d let two voyants die on her watch? She seemed kind enough, and this burden had been dropped on her unexpectedly, but Ivy would follow them to the æther if she wasn’t careful. Still, to see four survivors safe and clean and fed, with a place to sleep and other voyants to protect them, was more than I could have hoped to gain from this excursion.

A light rain was falling when I left Agatha’s Boutique. I wandered through the covered market, where naphtha lights burned down on a wealth of hot street food. Shiny buttered peas, steaming in paper ramekins; masses of mashed potato, some fluffy white, some tinged with pea-green or rose; sausages spitting in a cast-iron pan. When I passed a tray of drinking chocolate, I couldn’t resist. It was silky sweet, and it tasted like conquest. Everything I ate and drank was another way to spite Nashira.

It soon sat oddly on my stomach. Liss would have given an arm for a sip of this drink.

A shoulder knocked against mine, sending the rest of the cup flying.

“Hook it.”

The voice was gruff and male. I almost said something back, but the sight of their stripes and bone bracelets stopped me. Rag Dolls. This was their turf, not mine.

With a few hours until sunrise, I left the night market and headed south, keeping an eye out for any passing rides. It didn’t take long to arrive at the border of I Cohort. When I reached an alley, I leaned against a wall to check my watch. It was an abandoned busker hideout, dirty and silent, full of burned-out rubbish bins from fires made near the doorways. In retrospect, it was a bad place to stop.

My sixth sense was slow. I didn’t feel them coming until they were right on top of me.

“
Well, look who it is. My old friend, the Pale Dreamer.”

My stomach plummeted into my boots. I knew that oily voice, all right. That was Haymarket Hector.

4

Grub Street

The Underlord of the Scion Citadel of London was not a pleasant sight at any distance. Still, now his face was only inches from mine, I was reminded why darkness suited him so well. A scabrous nose, broken rods of teeth, and eyes threaded with blood vessels were all arranged in a grin. Beneath his bowler hat, his hair was limp with grease. His horde—the Underbodies—clustered around me, forming a tight semicircle.

The Undertaker, the binder of I-1, brought up the rear, recognizable by his top hat. His right arm had been hewn with so many names, it was little more than a sleeve of scar tissue. Beside him was the Underhand, Hector’s enormous bodyguard.

“The little Dialer is a long way from home,” Hector said softly.

“I’m in I-4. I
am
home.”

“What sweet sentiment.” He passed his lantern to the Underhand. “We missed you, Dreamer. How lovely it is to see you again.”

“I’d love to say the same for you.”

“Your time away from London hasn’t changed you. Binder didn’t tell us where you’d gone.”

“
You’re not my mime-lord. I don’t report to you.”

“But your mime-lord does.” A thin smile. “I understand you two have had a quarrel.”

I didn’t answer that. “What are you doing in I-4?”

“We got a few bones to pick with your boss.” Magtooth grinned at me, showing a left incisor inked with a tiny tarot image. He was a dab hand at tarocchi, Magtooth. The most gifted cartomancer I’d ever played. “One of his lackeys has summoned a meeting of the Unnatural Assembly.”

“It’s our right to summon meetings.”

“Only when I feel like it.” Hector pressed his thumb to my throat. “As it happens, I’m not in the mood for any tedious gatherings. Imagine if I were to answer
all
the summons I get in my dead drop, Pale Dreamer. I’d never be doing anything but listening to the woes of my more pious mime-lords and mime-queens.”

“Their woes might be important,” I said coolly. “Isn’t it your job to answer summons?”

“No. It’s my underlings’ job to deal with the herd. It’s
my
job to keep you all in line. The petty problems of this syndicate are important only if I deem them to be important.”

“Do you think Scion is important? Do you think it’s important that they’re about to crush us with Senshield?”

“Ah.” Hector placed a finger on my lips. “I think we’ve found our suspect. It was
you
, wasn’t it, Pale Dreamer? You called the meeting, didn’t you?”