After five attempts, I was able to control the spider without abandoning my own body entirely. I left a tiny drop of perception in my dreamscape, just the barest shadow of awareness. Enough to keep my body upright for a few seconds while I scuttled along the windowsill, until I teetered off my feet and whacked my head against the nearest wall. Spewing profanities, I clapped the oxygen mask over my mouth and drew in shuddering breaths.
If I couldn’t do this at the scrimmage, I had no chance. Every time I jumped, my body would be vulnerable to attack. I’d be killed in the first few minutes. My injuries from Primrose Hill weren’t serious, but I needed a good night’s sleep under my belt for my dreamscape to recover. I switched off the lamp and curled up in my bed, listening to Jaxon’s record player. “A Bird in a Gilded Cage” drifted through the wall, rustling with static.
I didn’t know where I’d be the day after tomorrow. Certainly not here, in my little room at Seven Dials. I could be on the streets, a pariah and a traitor. I could be Underqueen, ruling the syndicate.
I could be in the æther.
Just beyond the window was a solitary dreamscape. I looked past my curtains, down into the courtyard, where Jaxon Hall sat alone under the red sky. He wore his lounging robe and trousers with polished shoes, and his cane lay on the bench beside him.
Our eyes met. He crooked a finger.
Outside, I joined him on the bench. His eyes were on the stars above our den. Their light was trapped in the crypts and furrows of his irises, so they seemed to sparkle with the knowledge of some private joke.
“Hello, darling,” he said.
“Hi.” I gave him a sidelong look. “I thought you were calling a meeting?”
“I shall. Soon.” He clasped his hands. “Do your glad rags fit?”
“They’re beautiful.”
“They are. My medium has talent to rival half of London’s dressmakers.” Jaxon’s eyes were full of starlight. “Do you know that today is the anniversary of the day I made you mollisher?”
So it was. October the thirty-first. I hadn’t even thought about it.
“It was the very first time I let you do a job at street level, wasn’t it? Before that day you were the tea girl, the lowly researcher. And getting quite cross with it, too, I’d imagine.”
“Very.” I couldn’t help but smile. “I’d never met someone who drank so much tea.”
“I was testing your patience! Yes, it was when those dratted poltergeists were loose in I-4. Sarah Metyard and her daughter, the murderous milliners,” he recalled. “You and Dr. Nygård spent the best part of the morning tracking those two down. And what did I say to you, darling, when you came back with your prize for me to bind? I took you to the pillar and pointed out the sundial facing this side of Monmouth Street, and I said to you—”
“‘You see this, O my lovely? This is yours. This street, this path, is yours to walk,’” I finished.
It had been the best day of my life. Earning Jaxon Hall’s approval, along with the right to call myself his protégée, had filled me with such joy that I couldn’t have imagined a world without him in it.
“Precisely. Precisely that.” He paused. “I’ve never been much of a gambler; I never had much faith in chance, my dear. I know we have our differences, but we are the Seven Seals. Brought together across oceans and fault lines by the mysterious wiles of the æther. It wasn’t chance. It was fate. And we shall bring about a day of reckoning in London.”
With that image in his mind, Jaxon closed his eyes and smiled. I craned my neck to look up at the stars, breathing in the thickness of the night. Roasted chestnuts, smoky coffee, and extinguished fires. It was the smell of fire and life and renewal. The smell of ash and death and ending.
“Yes,” I said. Or a day of change.
24
The Rose Ring
November 1, 2059
The clocks of London chimed eleven. Inside the Interchange building in II-4, every light had been extinguished. But beneath the brick warehouse, in the secret labyrinth of the Camden Catacombs, the fourth scrimmage in the history of the London syndicate was about to begin.
Jaxon and I arrived in the buck cab and disembarked in the yard. Participants traditionally displayed the colors of their auras, with the mollishers adopting their mime-lord’s hue, but Jaxon and I were haughtily monochrome (“Darling, I would sooner be caught waltzing with Didion Waite than dressed from head to toe in orange”).
My hair had been pinned with a fascinator, woven together from swan feathers and ribbon. My lips were black and my eyes painted with kohl, expertly applied by Eliza. Jaxon’s hair shone with oil, and his irises were blanched by white contacts, as were mine. On his head was a top hat with a white silk band around it. During the scrimmage, the matching outfits would show that we were a mime-lord and mollisher pair, permitted to fight together whenever we chose.
“Well.” Jaxon brushed down his lapels. “It seems the hour is upon us.”
The rest of the Seven Seals disembarked from their car, all in black and white. Twenty more specially selected voyants from I-4 were waiting, all supporting the White Binder’s claim to the crown. They kept a respectful distance from us, talking among themselves.
“We’re with you, Jax,” Nadine said.
“Absolutely.” Her brother’s brow was damp with sweat, but he smiled. “All the way.”
“You are too kind, my darlings.” Jaxon clapped his hands. “We’ve talked enough about this night. To battle, then. May the æther smile upon I-4.”
Together, the party walked down the steps to the door of the Camden Catacombs. The dog was nowhere to be seen, but the unreadable guard was there, dressed in black.
“What a show this will be,” Jaxon said against my ear. “The citadel will talk about it for decades, darling, you mark my words.”
His voice stippled my neck with gooseflesh. The guard looked us over. When she gave us a nod, we filed through the door in pairs.
As we walked down the winding steps, my ribcage seemed to grow smaller. I strained to look over my shoulder, but the exit was already out of sight. If there was one place I didn’t want to be going, it was back into the Rag and Bone Man’s lair, where manacles and chains hung from the walls; where people could be swallowed up, never to be found. If he had his way, I would never walk out of here alive. I took in deep breaths, but they weren’t reaching my lungs. Jaxon patted my hand.
“Don’t be nervous, my Paige. I have every intention of winning tonight.”
“I know.”
Inside the Camden Catacombs, the tunnels were no longer decrepit. All the junk and rubble had been cleared, and in the place of broken bulbs there were strings of stained-glass lanterns, each the color of an aura.
The central vault looked nothing like it had when I’d last been here. Grand crimson drapes hung from every wall, turning the vast space into a theatre of war. A painting of Edward VII looked down on us all, holding up the sceptre of a king. Music was played by a line of whisperers: luxuriant, sepulchral soundscapes that played all kinds of havoc with the æther. Two hundred upholstered chairs had been placed near the entrance, some turned to face round tables, each of which was marked with a section number.
Golden bowls glinted here and there, brimming with red wine. Plates of lavish food steamed on burgundy tablecloths. Vast meat pies, drizzled with thick gravy; sandwiches with vintage cheese and walnuts; brisket of beef, boiled with onions and spices. Sponge cakes, as light as you please, layered with whipped cream and strawberry jam. Clearly someone had a cookshop waitron on their side. People were already finding seats, stuffing their faces with plum pudding and flummery and fragile brandy snaps.
“This is grotesque,” Nick said as we walked toward our table. “There are buskers starving out there, and we’ve found money to waste on a party.”
“Thanks, Nick,” Danica said.
“What?”
“I’ve been searching for a long time for someone who is more boring than me. I’m so glad to h
ave found you.”
We stopped at the drinks table. While most of the others chose wine, I scooped my glass through a bowl of blood mecks. Real alcohol could get me killed tonight. I sipped the spiced fruit syrup, scanning the vault.
A wide chalk line separated the seating area from where the fight would begin. And there was the Rose Ring, the old symbol of unnaturalness. Dark crimson rose-heads, one for each participant, had been carefully arranged in a circle that spanned thirty feet. Ash had been poured into it to soak up any blood we spilled. We wouldn’t have to fight within its confines for the whole event, but the Rose Ring would hold all of us at close quarters at the beginning, giving us a chance to strike a devastating first blow.
Eliza came to stand beside me, carrying a glass. “Are you ready?” she said softly.
“No.”
“What are you going to do if—?”
“Let’s cross that bridge when we come to it,” I said.
Voyants were everywhere. All the dominant gangs and more. Some were trailing guardian angels or wisps; there was even a single brooding psychopomp in one corner of the vault. Jaxon returned and whispered in my ear: “Do you see the spirit?” He pointed with his cane. “That is a rare thing: a psychopomp. It has been present at every scrimmage since the first.”
“Where did it come from?”
“No one knows. After the final round, it escorts the vanquished candidate’s spirit to the last light. A final kindness from the syndicate. Isn’t that delicious?”
I looked at the place where the spirit was floating and wondered if it had once served the Rephaim. Why it had chosen to serve the syndicate now.
“And there’s Didion.” Jaxon had the look of a lion sizing up prey. “Do excuse me.”
He kissed my hand and strode away. My sixth sense was jostled by the endless crackle of people and spirits. Warden’s emotions came across the cord as relatively calm; clearly nothing had changed on his end yet. As I took a seat at the I-4 table with the others, Danica tapped my shoulder and leaned in close.
“I finished the mask.” She took a slim pouch from her pocket and tugged out a coil of tubing, so delicate it was hardly visible. Uncoiling the tube with her thumb, she grasped my wrist and wrapped it in a bulky cuff. “The tank is concealed in here, but it also monitors your pulse. Feed the tube through your sleeve and over your ear, so it’s right by your mouth. The second you leave your body, your heart will stop and this will start.”
“Danica,” I said, “you’re a genius.”
“You say that like I don’t know.” She sat back and folded her arms. “The tank is small, so don’t go overboard.”
I pushed the tube past my wrist and hooked it over my right ear, then pulled my sleeve over the cuff. If anyone noticed the tube, it would pass as an unusual earpiece.
It took time for them all to arrive: the mime-lords, mime-queens, mollishers and mobsters of the Scion Citadel of London. These people weren’t particularly concerned about timekeeping.
After what seemed like hours, the seats were filled and rivers of illegal alcohol were flowing. A petite psychographer walked into the middle of the ring, her collar pale against her intensely dark skin. Her coiled black hair was pinned up with a fountain pen.
“Good evening, mime-lords and mime-queens, mollishers and mobsters,” she called over the noise. “I am Minty Wolfson, your mistress of ceremonies for the evening.” She touched three fingers to her forehead. “Welcome to the Camden Catacombs. We extend our thanks to the Rag and Bone Man for allowing us to use this space for our proceedings.”
She motioned to the silent figure on her right, dressed in a greatcoat. A cautious patter of applause welcomed the mime-lord of II-4. He wore a yellowed mask of cloth over his face, with a thin slot for him to see through, and a flat brown cap on top. The Abbess turned her head away as if the very sight of him repelled her.
I sensed he was watching me through that mask. Not taking my eyes off him, I raised my glass.
Soon, you faceless coward.
He looked back toward Minty. It was then that I realized why he chilled me: I couldn’t read him.
Panic flickered through my gut. I glanced at a nearby voyant, reading them at once: soothsayer, specifically a cyathomancer. But the Rag and Bone Man . . . I could feel his dreamscape—a guarded one—but the most I could say about his aura was that he had one.
He wasn’t a Rephaite. The hollowness reminded me of a Buzzer, but he couldn’t be one of those, either. Apart from that, I couldn’t say a thing about his gift.
Minty gave a tinny cough. “As a long-standing patron of Grub Street, I am delighted to tell you that pamphlets will be provided when you leave tonight, free of charge—including the popular and ghastly new penny dreadful, The Rephaite Revelation. If you haven’t yet read this story, prepare to be charmed by the tale of the Rephaim and the Emim.” Cheers. “We have also been granted a glimpse of the first pages of the long-awaited new pamphlet from the White Binder, On the Machinations of the Itinerant Dead, which we all look forward to perusing.”
There was a tumult of applause, and a few voyants clapped Jaxon on the back. He winked at me. I forced a smile.
“I’ll now hand you over to the Abbess, who has acted as interim Underqueen during this time of crisis.”
Minty took a respectful step away from the floor. There she was. The Abbess cut an imposing figure against the stage curtains, dressed in a black crepe suit with white cuffs and high boots. It was only now that I realised both she and Minty were in mourning attire.
“Good evening, one and all,” the Abbess said. Her smile was just visible below her birdcage veil. “It has been a pleasure to serve as your Underqueen following my dear friend Hector’s death. We were deeply saddened, three days past, to hear of his mollisher Cutmouth’s demise. She was discovered in a squalid hut in Jacob’s Island, her throat cut from ear to ear.”
Murmuring from the crowd.
“Ostensibly, she was murdered at the hand of the vile augurs of Savory Dock. We mourn her loss. We mourn for a competent, intelligent young woman and what could have been her prosperous reign as Underqueen. And we condemn, with one voice, the actions of her murderers.”
What an actress. The woman could give Scarlett Burnish a run for her money.
“I will now read out the names of all participants who have put their names forward for the scrimmage; as I say each one, the named participant should step forward and take their place in the Rose Ring. I call for silence from the present company at this time.” She opened the scroll. “From VI Cohort: the Hare, of VI-2, and his esteemed mollisher, the Greene Manne.”
Jaxon chuckled as the two of them went forward. One wore a hideous hare mask, complete with ears; the other had painted himself green from head to toe. “What’s funny?” Eliza’s smile was nervous.
“Every mime-lord outside the central cohort, my lovely. Suburban amateurs.”
The Rag and Bone Man had detached himself from the crowd. I stood. Jaxon looked at me with raised eyebrows.
“Are you going somewhere, Dreamer?”
Nadine watched me over the rim of her glass. “Don’t be long. You’re up in a minute.”
“Good thing I’ll only be a minute, then.”
Leaving them to watch the parade of combatants, I followed the masked man into the corridor. There would be enough pomp and ceremony for a quick word with him.
The route to the labyrinth had been blocked with wire fences, and each one had a Rag Doll guard. As I passed the foul-smelling alcove that served as a lavatory, a gloved hand grabbed my arm and shoved me against the wall.
My muscles seized up. The Rag and Bone Man loomed over me, his mask fluttering against his breath. It fell down to his upper chest, disguising his face and neck.
“Go back, Pale Dreamer.”
The stench of sweat and blood was on his coat. His voice sounded strange, too deep, as if it had been mechanically altered. “Who are you?” I asked softly. A muffled thud hammered at my ears.
“Are you going to confess that you had Hector and Cutmouth killed, or let someone else take the blame for it?”
“Do not interfere. I will cut your throat, as a pig’s for the slaughter.”
“You, or one of your puppets?”
“We are all but puppets in the anchor’s shadow.”
He let go of my wrist and turned his back on me. “I’m going to stop you,” I said as he walked away, into the darkness of the tunnel. “And your gray market. You may think you’ve won this, Rag and Bone Man, but you won’t be the one wearing the crown.” When I tried to follow, two Rag Dolls blocked my path. One of them shoved me away.
“Don’t try it.”
“What’s he hiding in there?”
“Do you want me to deck you, brogue?”
“If you don’t mind me decking you back.”
She took a revolver and leveled it at my forehead. “Can’t shoot me back, though, can you?”
I gave her a heavy nosebleed before I turned away.
By the time I got back to the table, it was almost our turn to stand. Jaxon seemed deathly calm. As he smoked, he grasped a heavy ebony cane with a solid silver pommel at the top, shaped like a disfigured, scarred head. Danica had modified it with a mechanism that enabled the blade to be fully withdrawn or shot out of the end, delivering a lethal, spring-loaded stab before it retracted.
“From II Cohort: the Wicked Lady, and her esteemed mollisher, the Highwayman, of II-6.”
Cheering. The Wicked Lady was a favorite among gamblers. With a dismissive wave of her hand, she took her position behind one of the roses.
“Remember, Paige,” Jaxon said, “this is a show. I know you could kill them in a heartbeat, darling, but don’t. You must grandstand. You are a debutante at your very first ball. Show them the whole spectrum of a dreamwalker’s talents.”
Then the Abbess was calling us to the ring: “Our favorites from I Cohort: the White Binder, and his esteemed mollisher, the Pale Dreamer, of I-4.”
There was thunderous applause and stamping from the I Cohort tables, even from some of the others. Nick touched a hand to my back. I stood and followed Jaxon to the ring. The joints in my legs felt motorized. I took my place on Jaxon’s left side, keeping the rose between my boots.