The hitman’s knife swung around like a waltzer at a fairground. I picked up the dead woman’s revolver and stayed on the balls of my feet, keeping low. The knife whipped past me, almost catching my cheek. His vision would be blurred from that blow to his torso, already hemmed in by the mask’s small eyeholes. The instant he turned the wrong way, I bashed the revolver into the spot just behind his ear, then kicked him in the small of his back, so hard it jolted pain into my knee. He lurched into the bins before he hit the ground.
Panting, I let myself fall against the brick wall. Sparks wheeled across my field of vision. I wiped my hands before I crouched down and pulled off both their masks.
The woman’s eyes bored into nothing. Both of them wore bone bracelets and pinstripes, like the Rag Dolls. I reached into her coat pocket, and my fingers closed over cool, smooth fabric. Crimson silk pooled in my palm.
A red handkerchief, stained with dark blood.
My fingers curled around it. I knew instinctively that it was Hector’s blood on this little slip of silk. They must have been planning to plant it on my corpse, to use my body as evidence that I’d been the killer all along.
The man gave a short groan. Aside from a small scar near his temple and a smattering of stubble along his jaw, he had no distinguishing features whatsoever. I stuffed the handkerchief into my pocket and gave him a hard clap on the cheek.
“What’s your name?”
“Not saying.” His lids were heavy. “Don’t kill me, dreamwalker.”
“So you’re willing to kill for your boss, but not to die for him. I’d call that the mark of a real coward. Better tell him to send more than two lackeys next time.” I held up the handkerchief. “What were you going to do with this? Plant it on me?”
“Just wait until the scrimmage.” A laugh rocked through him. “One king falls, another rises.”
“You’re mad.” With a surge of disgust, I shoved him back to the ground. “You’re lucky I don’t kill you just for being on the White Binder’s turf.”
“You might as well. Rags will do it if you don’t,” he said. “But you’ve got no real power, mollisher. You’ll always be someone else’s puppet.”
There was already one death on my conscience tonight. What mattered was that the penny dreadful was still inside my jacket, safe and sound. I slid off my belt and fastened the hitman’s hands to the wrought-iron gate. Using the last of my strength, I bumped the man into his twilight zone and left him to his nightmares by the woman’s empty body.
****
By the time I reached the doss-house, it was nearly half past midnight. I got myself up the creaking stairs and unlocked the door.
The room was lit by a single candle and the flicker of the transmission screen. Warden was standing by the grimy, rain-strung window, looking out at the citadel. When he saw my swollen lip and bloody head, his eyes flared.
“What happened?”
“He put a hit on me.” I snapped the bolts into place, slid the chain along its track. “The Rag and Bone Man.”
My heart was still pounding, my vision trembling with lights. I stumbled past him, into the bathroom, and snatched a tin of meager medical supplies from the cabinet.
As I peeled off my trousers and bandaged my shredded knees, I had to wonder what Warden was thinking. No doubt that I was wasting precious time, scrapping in alleys while Scion prepared their empire for war. Only when I opened the door did I realize that my hands were shaking.
Warden didn’t ask me if I was all right. The answer was obvious. Instead, he closed the curtains and poured me a glass of brandywine. I sank on to the couch beside him, keeping my distance, and cradled it between my hands.
“I take it you took care of the hitmen,” he said.
“They’re looking for you.”
He took a sip from his own glass. “Rest assured, I have no intention of being caught off my guard a second time.”
His left hand held the arm of the couch; the right lay on his thigh, the palm upturned. Large, tough hands, scored with scars along the knuckles and an indent at the base of his right thumb.
In the colony he had often watched me as though I were a riddle he couldn’t solve. Now his gaze rested on the transmission screen. Scion’s most popular comedy was on, the one that revolved around vapid amaurotics and their valiant triumphs over unnaturals. I quirked an eyebrow.
“Were you watching a sitcom?”
“I was. I find Scion’s methods of indoctrination quite intriguing.” He switched to the news, where an earlier broadcast was on its second cycle. “Scion has announced the creation of an elite subdivision of Vigiles called Punishers. Their particular function is to track down known preternatural fugitives so they may be brought to justice.”
“Preternatural?”
“A new name for those who commit extreme forms of high treason, it seems. I imagine it was Nashira’s suggestion. A means of making your life in London more difficult.”
“How creative of her.” I drew in a slow breath. “Who are they?” “Red-jackets.”
I stared at him. “What?”
“Alsafihas informed us that, now they have no colony to protect, the red-jackets have been put to work in the citadel. No doubt your friend Carl will be among them.”
“He’s not my friend. He’s Nashira’s bootlicker.” Even the memory of Carl Dempsey-Brown was irritating. I put down the glass. “I can’t pay for you to have more than another night here. Jax is withholding my wages.”
“I do not expect you to pay for my bed and board, Paige.”
I switched off the news, thickening the darkness, and took a gulp of brandywine. His gaze was almost burning a hole in the wall, as if giving me so much as a glance would cause the roof to collapse. I shifted, pushing my hair behind my ear. My shirt came down to mid-thigh, and I assumed he’d seen me less than fully clothed before—he’d removed a bullet from my hip after Nick had shot me.
Warden spoke first: “I take it your mime-lord has approved of your staying here for another night.”
“Do you think I report to him about everything?”
“Do you?”
“No, actually. He has no idea where I am.”
We were both fugitives, both separated from our allies, both on the wrong side of Scion. We had more in common than we’d ever had before, but this wasn’t the Warden I’d left at the doss-house a few hours ago. Something had changed in the hours I’d been away, but I hadn’t got him out of that hovel for him to turn into another monster. There were plenty of those on my doorstep already.
“You have questions,” Warden said.
“I’ll start by asking you for the truth.”
“A grand request. About what, specifically?”
“You,” I said. “The Rephaim.”
“Truth looks different in every lens. History was made by liars. I could tell you of the great cities of the Netherworld, and the Rephaite way of life—but I sense those are truths for another night.”
I tried to smile, just to dispel the tension. “Well, now you’ve got me curious.”
“I could not describe the Netherworld’s beauty. No words can.” A light rose in his irises, something of the Warden I knew. “If I had my salvia, I would show you. But for now”—he placed his empty glass on the table—“I will tell you of the history of Rephaim and humans. You will need it to understand the Ranthen, and to understand what we fight for.”
My head was killing me, but I’d wanted to hear this for a long time. I swung my legs on to the couch. “I’m listening.”
“First,” he said, “know that the spoken history of the Netherworld has been distorted over the centuries. I can tell you only what I have seen, and what I have heard.”
“Noted.”
Warden leaned back on the couch, and for the first time in a while, he set his gaze on mine. It was a relaxed posture, human-like. A petty inch of me was tempted to look away, but instead I looked right back.
“The Rephaim are a timeless race,” he
began. “We have been in the Netherworld for time immemorial. Its true name is She’ol, hence the penal colony’s name. We existed only on æther, for nothing grows in the Netherworld. There is no fruit or flesh. Only æther and amaranth, and sarx-creatures, like us.”
“Sarx-creatures?”
“Sarx is our immortal flesh.” He flexed his fingers. “It does not age, nor can it be extensively harmed by amaurotic weapons.”
As he told the story, his voice grew slow and soft. I took another sip of brandywine, turned on to my side and sank into the cushions. Warden glanced at me before he continued.
The Rephaim had always been in the Netherworld. They were not born, like humans, nor had they evolved (to their knowledge); instead, in Warden’s words, they emerged, fully formed. The Netherworld itself was the cradle of immortal life, the womb in which they were created. There were no Rephaite children. From time to time, more Rephaim would surface, though the waves of creation were sporadic.
Once upon a time, these immortals had seen themselves as the mediators between life and death, between the two planes of Earth and æther. When humans had first appeared in the corporeal world, they elected to keep close watch over them to ensure they did no damage to the fragile balance between worlds. Originally, this watch had taken the form of sending spirit-guides, the psychopomps, to escort the spirits of dead humans into the Netherworld.
But as time went on—and Rephaim, he told me, still had trouble grasping the concept of time, a force which had no effect on the Netherworld or its inhabitants—humans had became more and more divided. Full of hatred for one another, they fought and killed over everything imaginable. And when they died, many lingered, refusing to go on to the next stage of death. Eventually, the ethereal threshold had risen to dangerous levels.
At that time, their leaders were the Mothallath family. The star-sovereign, Ettanin Mothallath, had decided that Rephaim should enter the physical world and soothe the ethereal unrest, encouraging the spirits to go into the Netherworld, where they could come to terms with their deaths in peace.
“So that’s what the Netherworld is for,” I said. “To ease the passage of death. To stop spirits lingering here.”
“Yes. We were to prepare them for their journey to the last light. For their true, second death. Our intentions were pure.”
“Well, you know what they say about good intentions.”
“I have heard,” he said.
I was silent as he pressed on with the tale. From time to time, he would pause mid-sentence; his eyes would narrow a little, and his mouth would thin and turn down at the corners. Finally, he would choose a word and press on, still with a faint look of dissatisfaction, as though the English language had failed him in some way.
A proud and respected family of scholars—the Sargas, whose duty had been to study the ethereal threshold—had decided that crossing the veil would be an act of inconceivable desecration. Their belief was that interaction between Rephaim and humans should be avoided, that their immortal flesh would perish on Earth. But the threshold was climbing higher, and the Mothallath rejected their counsel. As the judgment was theirs, they would send one of their own as the first of the “watchers.”
The first watcher, the daring Azha Mothallath, had successfully crossed the veils and communed with as many spirits as she could. She had returned safe and sound, and the threshold had lowered. It seemed the Sargas had been wrong. There was no harm in the crossing.
“That must have pissed them off,” I said.
“Immensely,” he confirmed. “The watchers would go through the veil whenever the threshold pushed too high, wearing armor to protect themselves from corruption. We Mesarthim, who were guardians to the Mothallath, desired to escort them—but we soon discovered that only they could go through.”
“Why?”
“That remains a mystery. To protect themselves, the Mothallath made a strict law that they would never reveal themselves to humans. They were always to maintain their distance.”
“But someone didn’t,” I guessed.
“Correct. We do not know exactly what happened, but the Sargas informed us that one of the Mothallath had crossed the veil without permission.” His eyes dimmed. “After that, everything disintegrated. That was when clairvoyance entered the human world. That was when the Emim appeared. That was when the veils between the worlds grew thin enough to let all of us through.”
I hesitated. “Clairvoyance hasn’t always been there, then.”
“No. It was only after that event—the Waning of the Veils, as Rephaim call it—that humans began to interact with spirits. You have been here since ancient days, but not quite as long as amaurotics.”
I’d always liked to think that we’d been there since humans had existed. In my heart, I’d always known it was a self-indulgent fantasy. Amaurotics were the originals, the naturals. I took a long, deep breath and let it go.
War had torn through the Netherworld then, war that turned Rephaite against Rephaite and all factions against the Emim. The creatures had crawled out of the shadows like a plague, rotting the Netherworld in their wake. The Rephaim stopped being able to exist purely on the æther, which they had once breathed the way humans breathed air. They had starved and perished in their thousands, as the Sargas had predicted. Finally, Procyon, Warden of the Sargas, had declared himself blood-sovereign and waged war against the Mothallath and their supporters, blaming them for letting death into their realm. Those who were still loyal to the Mothallath called themselves Ranthen, after the amaranth—the only flower that grew in the Netherworld.
“I’m assuming you were on the Ranthen side,” I said.
“I was. I am.”
“But?”
“You know the end. The Sargas won. The Mothallath were usurped and destroyed, and the Netherworld could sustain us no longer.”
Rephaite faces didn’t lend themselves to grief, but there were times when I thought I could see it in Warden. Small things gave the regret away. The dwindling of the light in his eyes. The slight tilt of his head.
An impulse moved my hand toward his. Seeing it, he curled his fingers into a fist and pulled his arm to the left.
Our gazes jarred for the briefest instant. The back of my neck grew hot. I reached for my glass, as if that was what I’d been doing in the first place, and leaned against the opposite arm of the couch.
“Carry on,” I said.
Warden watched me. I cradled my forehead in one hand, trying to ignore the warmth that bled into my cheeks.
“To save themselves,” he said, “the Ranthen declared loyalty to the Sargas. By that point Procyon was incapable of leadership, and two new members of the Sargas family had risen to take his place. Nashira—one half of this pair—declared that she would take one of the traitors as her blood-consort, to show them that even their leaders would conform to the new order. As ill luck would have it, she chose me.”
Warden stood and placed his hands on the dusty windowsill. Rain poured down the panes.
I shouldn’t have tried to comfort him. He was a Rephaite, and it was clear that whatever had happened in the Guildhall had been a mistake.
“Nashira was—and still is—the most ambitious of the Rephaim.” When he spoke of her, his eyes burned. “As we could no longer connect to the æther, she said we would have to see if we fared any better on the other side of the veil. We waited for the ethereal threshold to reach its highest ever point before a large party made the crossing in 1859. There, we discovered that we could feed on the link certain humans had with the æther. Where we could survive.”
I shook my head. “And Palmerston’s government just let you in?”
“We could have survived in the shadows, but Nashira was determined that we had to be apex predators, not parasites. We revealed ourselves to Lord Palmerston, telling him that the Emim were demons and we, angels. Almost without question, he surrendered control of the government to Nashira.”
The wings struck off the angels in the church
es, making way for the new gods. The statue of Nashira in the House. Gomeisa had been right: we’d made it so easy for them to take control.
“Queen Victoria was allowed to maintain an appearance of power, but she had no more sway over England than a pauper. The death of Prince Albert hastened her departure. On the day he was crowned, their son Edward VII was framed for murder and accused of bringing unnaturalness into the world. And the inquisition into clairvoyance—our establishment of control—began.” He raised his glass. “The rest, as they say, is history. Or modernity, as the case may be.”
We were quiet for some time. Warden emptied his glass, but didn’t let go of it. It was strange to think that his world had always existed alongside this one, unseen and unknowable.
“All right,” I said. “Now tell me what the Ranthen want. Tell me how you’re different from the Sargas.”
“First and foremost, we do not wish to colonize the corporeal world. That is the foremost desire of the Sargas.”
“But you can’t live in the Netherworld.”
“The Ranthen believe the Netherworld can be restored, but we do not wish it to be isolated from the human world, as it once was. If the threshold can be lowered to a stable level, we wish to have an advisory presence in the human world,” he said. “To prevent the total collapse of the veils.”
I sat up straighter. “What happens if they collapse?”
“It has never happened before,” he said, “but I feel it will end in a cataclysm, as do many other Rephaim. The Sargas aim to bring it about. The Ranthen aim to stop it.”
I watched his face, trying to draw something from it: an emotion, a clue. “Did you agree with Nashira?” I asked. “When you first came here. Did you agree that humans should be subjugated?”
“Yes and no. I believed that you were reckless, destined to destroy both yourselves and the æther with your endless, petty wars. I thought—perhaps naïvely—that you would benefit from our leadership.”