It was nine by the time I entered the Lambeth hideout, drenched and shivering, my face raw from the cold. I took off my coat and boots and reached for the golden cord.
There was no reply.
I needed to see him. Now, before he left for the Netherworld. It could be weeks before he returned. To distract myself, I lit a fire and made as much of a meal as I could with our limited stores of food, then boiled some water and filled the tin bath. I sat in it until my fingertips creased.
Had Danica gone to Jaxon with our secrets? Had she been a spy all along—had we walked into the trap because of her? I was doubting everything I had once believed about the people closest to me.
On the other hand, she might have just lost her nerve—and I couldn’t blame her for running from Vance. She had been a small child when Scion had invaded her country, as I had been. She must have a healthy fear of anything related to the army.
I brushed my teeth and tended to my wounds. I could see why Nick had said I looked ill. My face was almost gray. Still, he had been right: being full and clean made me feel more alert than I had in a few days. Now all I needed was more than two hours’ sleep.
I tried the cord again. Nothing. Warden wasn’t coming.
In the parlor, I crawled on to the couch with a blanket, too bone-tired to face the stairs. Beneath the pall of fatigue, I had the same feeling I experienced whenever I thought of Jaxon or saw a Vigile, and it wouldn’t go away. That fight-or-flight sensation.
When the front door opened, I sat up. I heard him step into the hallway, felt his familiar dreamscape. He crossed the parlor and lowered himself into the armchair.
Neither of us looked at the other for some time. Finally, I said, “Was Terebell happy for you to come here?”
“I did not ask her for permission.” Snow was melting in his hair. “What is it you need of me, Paige?”
Even now, I loved hearing him say my name. Loved the way it sounded on his tongue. He imbued it with singularity, as if I were the only person in the world who could ever possess it.
“The report was accurate,” I said. “The scanners have been adjusted to identify the fourth order. The majority of our recruits are detectable now.” I swallowed. “I’ll be announcing it to the Unnatural Assembly tomorrow.”
He was silent for some time. “Until Senshield is fully portable, and fully functional in terms of the orders it can detect, the Mime Order can survive,” he said. “You must focus on gathering and training recruits, preferably by draining them from the Vigiles’ ranks. Then we begin to move against the anchor. With you as its leader, the movement will thrive.”
“You really believe that.”
“I always have.”
There was a half-empty bottle of wine on the table—Nick, again, it must be—and I reached for it.
He was right. Vance had dealt us a terrible blow, but we still had time: it would be a few weeks before there were enough scanners to end free movement.
“Let’s just hope the syndicate doesn’t find out that Vance used me,” I said.
“You have decided not to tell the whole truth, then.”
“It will only cause discord.”
He made no comment. I rose and took a wine glass from the cabinet before returning to the couch.
“Warden, I owe you an explanation,” I said, “and I wanted you to hear it before you leave.”
“You owe me nothing.”
“I do.”
I filled the glass for him and handed it over. His eyes were almost human in their darkness.
It took me a few tries before I began. I wet my lips, looked away, looked back at him.
“When I saw him last,” I finally said, “Jaxon claimed that you were . . . bait for me. That you chose me in the colony on Terebell’s orders, not of your own volition. And that made me think that everything was a lie, that the Guildhall was—” My cheeks warmed. “That it was just a way to cement my trust in you. That you didn’t really mean it.”
“Bait,” he repeated.
“He’s saying that you were ordered to seduce me. For her purposes.”
That brought a flare into his irises.
“And you believed it,” he said.
“I thought—I started to believe it was all a ruse. To make me think you cared about me so much that you would go behind her back to be with me. So I would do anything for you in return.”
The admission hung between us for some time. Warden swirled the dark wine in its glass.
“And are you seduced?”
The heat of the fire was drying his hair. The light brought out notes of darker, chestnut brown I had never noticed before.
“I haven’t decided,” I said.
We studied each other for some time.
“Look, I’m more than aware of how paranoid it sounds, but I lived with Jaxon for three years without knowing the truth about whose side he was on. He must have been laughing at me, when I told him about the Rephaim. When I tried to get him to help me.” I returned the bottle to its place. “Now I just—I don’t know who else I’ve been playing the fool for.”
His next words were soft. “You have heard other Rephaim name me flesh-traitor. It is understandable for you to wonder why I would have chosen this path, if not for some ulterior purpose. It is also understandable for you to doubt those closest to you now Jaxon has shown his true colors.”
“Why, then?”
“Why did I choose you in the colony,” he asked, “or why did I kiss you on the night of the Bicentenary?”
I held his gaze. “Both.”
“You will not like the answer to the first.”
Rephaim didn’t make a habit of disclosing their emotions. Warden had made oblique statements about his feelings toward me, but this was the first time he had volunteered any information.
“At the oration, twenty years ago,” he said, “there was a young man with auburn hair and black eyes, full of contempt. While the other humans kept their heads down, he alone stared back.”
“Jaxon,” I murmured.
“He became Nashira’s tenant that year. Her only one.”
“Nashira was his keeper?” It didn’t surprise me.
“Yes.” He paused. “You looked at me in the same way, twenty years later. You looked me in the eye, asserting yourself as my equal.”
I remembered that night all too well.
“I suspected, in the years to come, that Nashira’s favorite was the traitor. It tested my faith in all of humanity. Yet when I saw that glimpse of him in you, I sensed that you might have the courage to rebel; that only I could be your keeper. Terebell had taken an interest in you, but she did not order me to take you in. Quite the opposite. She thought I was a fool for bringing you into such close quarters.” His fingers tapped the arm of the chair. “Of my own accord, I elected to take you into Magdalen and hide your progress from Nashira. She could see your red aura. I knew that she would try to steal your gift.”
“So you did it to protect me.”
“It was not a wholly altruistic act. If Nashira had mastered dreamwalking, she would have become far more powerful, making it difficult for us to revive the Ranthen.”
It was disturbing to hear him talk about Nashira. “But you first chose me because . . . I reminded you of Jaxon.”
He didn’t answer. I tried not to show how deep the words cut me.
“How close were you to him?” he asked.
I considered. “Mollishers are usually closer to their mime-lords than I was to him. They’re lovers, sometimes, but Jaxon doesn’t have any interest in sex. I was his protégée. His project.”
Warden rarely interjected, like a human might to show continued interest, but neither did he look away from my face.
“Tell me, Paige,” he said, “does Jaxon know that you were once in love with Nick?”
“I never told him,” I said, “but he might have guessed. Why?”
“What Jaxon said at the Archon plays upon certain aspects of your past and personality. He knows that you cannot abide anyone trying to make a fool of you—and he knows, most likely, that the first person you loved did not love you,” he said. “Jaxon has carefully poisoned your impression of me. He knows the way you guard your heart. In your mind, I am now someone who might be making a fool of you, who cares nothing for you, and who only means to use your gift for his own gain—another thing you fear.”
He understood so much about me, and I still knew so little about him.
“What he has done is insidious. Nashira must be delighted to have him back at her side.” Warden’s eyes scorched. “There is no way for me to prove to you that I am not what he claims. Not unless I publicly turn against Terebell, which would cause tension within the Ranthen. Perhaps that is what Jaxon expects me to do. To win back your confidence at the expense of our ability to work together.” He looked back at the fire. “With one falsehood, designed to target what he sees as your emotional vulnerabilities, he has demolished the foundation that you and I have laid. Nine months, and your trust in me is fading.”
If true, it meant that Jaxon had thought of everything. This was mental warfare. The only way to fight was to refuse to do what he expected. To trust that Warden was my ally.
“I make no apology for refusing your request in front of the Ranthen. Only for the hurt it caused you,” Warden said. “I would choose Terebell’s orders over yours again—if it meant that we would not be sundered, and if it held the Mime Order together. Hiding what I feel for you, being forced to do nothing to support you in public—this is the price I will pay for change. And we all must pay a price.” He settled back into his chair. “Jaxon’s foul scheming may have left scars on my body, but I will not allow it to scar the alliance we have built together.”
I seemed fated to flee from one set of strings to another, endlessly caught in a web of deceit.
Yet trusting Warden felt . . . right, somehow. It was a feeling I couldn’t deny, a certainty I could never explain.
“I should have told you sooner,” I said finally. “I’ve let it eat away at me for weeks, but . . . I did tell you, in the end. And I still don’t know if this can work—but it will take more than one lie from Jaxon to break my trust in you.”
Warden lifted his head. “Do we have a truce, then?”
“Truce.”
Weeks of dancing around the truth, and just like that, it was over.
A cool tingling started beneath my ribs. Warden laid down his glass and looked at me, and his look pierced me through. It would only take a step to bring us close enough to touch.
Instinct made me glance toward the door. I had heard him turn the key and draw the chain across when he arrived, as we all did when we came in for the night.
The fire crackled as we moved toward each other, as he gathered me into his arms. As I searched the deep, endless pupils of his eyes, I let him learn my face with his hands. He must have known every inch of it, but he traced my features as if he wanted to decipher them.
“We shouldn’t start this again.” I rested my head against his chest. “Maybe it’s best if we just . . . let it go.”
Warden said nothing to contradict me. No words of comfort. No white lie to make things easier. After all, it would be best.
“You must think about the risk. The Mime Order would collapse if the Ranthen knew. Everything we’ve worked for—”
He waited for me to continue, but I couldn’t.
“I consider your company worth the risk,” he said into my hair, “but the choice is always yours.”
I drew back and considered his face for a last time. I couldn’t ask any more questions tonight; couldn’t keep second-guessing myself. Jaxon was the liar, the snake in the grass. Warden had earned my trust. I had to let myself believe that he was worthy of it—for now, at least.
I sought his lips first. The choice was mine.
We held each other in the firelight. It was some time before I led his hands into my blouse. The kiss broke as he met my gaze, as he parted the silk from waist to throat. A chill spread over my stomach and breasts.
There was a low fire in his eyes as he took me in. I was perfectly still, trying to tell what he was thinking. After a few moments, his gaze flicked to mine again. When I nodded my assent, he brushed the backs of his knuckles over my collarbone, then my shoulder and throat. I linked my arms around his neck. I was cocooned by his aura. His other hand glided over the seam in my side, where the skin was knitting back together.
A truce couldn’t last when we were at war. For the time I had him to myself, I wanted as much of him as he would give.
Vance’s trap had made me remember my mortality. I was tired of holding back from Warden. Tired of yearning to be close to him. Tired of denying myself. I cupped his face with my hands and kissed him deeply, as I never had before. As if he sensed the need in me, he took me fully into his arms. A soft ache bloomed between my legs. I felt my lips quake, heard the blood throbbing through my veins, as he lowered his head to where the wound tapered off, just shy of my breast, and kissed the delicate new skin. I lifted myself into his hands.
Once he had seen to my side, he worked his way down my body. His lips lingered on my stomach, making me shiver, but he went no farther. Not yet. That was for another night. He laid his head on my chest, and I combed my fingers through his hair.
It might be naïve, but I wanted to believe in this.
“Warden.”
“Hm?”
“You never told me why you kissed me, at the Bicentenary,” I murmured. “You only answered my first question.”
“So I did,” was all he said.
I let it go. It was enough that he was here. It was enough to be beside him, to know that he was with me.
The next kiss was softer. We shifted our positions, so my back was against his chest, and stayed like that in the light of the fire. We looked at each other for a long time, not speaking.
The room was an hourglass that hadn’t yet turned. My breathing and my heartbeat grew slower, falling into line with his. When I was close to drifting off, Warden drew me deeper into his arms and lowered his head a little, so his cheek lay alongside mine. My skin prickled as he touched his lips to my jaw, where the welt was. I threaded my fingers between his knuckles.
“There is one way that you might see proof that I am on your side. Something that would betray me,” he said, his voice a rumble in his throat, “if anyone but you could see.”
I was so fire-warmed and drowsy, I couldn’t think of what he might be talking about.
“What can I see?”
He only held me closer. I tucked my head beneath his chin and tried to keep my eyes open, so I could savor these fragile hours. In the softened state that comes before oblivion, I imagined that this moment could be safe from time, like he was. I imagined that the dawn would never come.
“Denizens of the citadel, this is . . .”
My eyes opened, furred with sleep. The fire had gone out, leaving a chill on my skin. I couldn’t work out what had woken me.
Warden’s arm was around my waist, his hand on my back. Sleep had made his body heavy beside mine. I nosed closer to his chest, where it was warmest, and lifted the blanket over my shoulder.
“. . . internal security has been compromised . . .”
I snapped upright, muscles tensed. There was no key in the lock; no footstep in the hall. No dreamscapes here but Warden’s and mine.
It took me a moment to work out that the disembodied voice was coming from Nick’s data pad, muffled by the cushion that had fallen on to it. With slack vision, I lifted it from the floor. Warden stirred beside me.
“We must not be tempted by change, when change, by its very nature, is an act of destruction,” Frank Weaver was saying. “Mahoney’s group, ‘The Mime Order,’ is now classified as a terrorist organization under Scion law. It has shed the blood of Scion’s denizens and threatened the Inquisitor’s peace.”
I waited, not breathing.
“However, all is not lost. Thanks to a recent development in Radiesthesic Detection Technology, we were able to use Mahoney’s own unnaturalness to recalibrate our Senshield scanners.” No. No, no, no. “Four of seven types of unnaturalness are now detectable.”
“Vance,” I whispered.
It was her. Weaver might be the one speaking, but I sensed her face beneath his, her fingers knotted in his strings.
They had made the announcement before I could, and they had laid the blame at my door. If the syndicate believed it, they would never forgive me.
I should have insisted on speaking to the Unnatural Assembly hours ago, curfew or otherwise . . .
“To ensure that Senshield is used with the greatest possible efficiency, and to support internal security forces at this time,” Weaver continued, “I have no choice but to execute martial law, our highest level of security.”
Warden lifted himself onto his elbows.
“A division of ScionIDE, our loyal army, has been recalled to safeguard this citadel. They are led by Grand Commander Hildred Vance, who is determined to restore our capital to its former state of safety before the new year. Upon the arrival of the First Inquisitorial Division in the capital, martial law will be effective in the Scion Citadel of London until Paige Mahoney is in Inquisitorial custody. All denizens should remain indoors until further notice. There is no safer place than Scion.”
The broadcast ended, leaving the anchor to spin on the screen.
Martial law. We had guessed it was coming, yet hearing it from Weaver made it truly real.
The short-lived warmth was torn away from me, like rind off fruit. I snatched my blouse from the floor and left the pocket of heat in the room, needing air, needing the cold to shock me back to reality. When I flung open the front door, the night hit my body like a shout hits the ears. I leaned against the door frame, clutching my blouse around me. The wind scalded my legs and cheeks.
Something was straining in my dreamscape. I could hear things I hadn’t heard since I was six years old. Gunfire and screaming. Hoofbeats. My cousin’s tortured cries.
Warden stood in the doorway to the parlor. I took deep breaths.
“I need to see the commanders, now. The syndicate won’t survive martial law for long.” I towed the cold into my lungs, as if it could freeze the fear. Ice was spreading through my core, forking out to every limb. “You get the Ranthen. Find me as soon as you can.”
I strode past him, back into the parlor. As I searched for my phone, I didn’t make eye contact with him. I dug the burner out from behind the couch, where the shapes of our bodies were pressed, and buckled on my coat and boots while Warden prepared for the séance.
Neither of us spoke, even when I left.
In case of emergency, our meeting place was always Battersea Power Station, which was close enough to the safe house for me to go on foot. I didn’t allow myself to think as I ran, weaving past squadrons of Vigiles, urging my legs through freshly piled snow. Soon I was squirming under the fence that surrounded the derelict—the skeleton of a massive, coal-fired power station that had long since fallen out of use. Stars glistened above its four pale chimneys.
A few sets of footprints had already spoiled the snow. I found Glym, Eliza and the Pearl Queen waiting inside, all with grave expressions. Behind them, Maria was slumped over a control panel. Her hair flamed against her pallid brow, and she was strangling a bottle with one hand.
Memories gathered like crows in my mind. None of them were clear, but I had the sense of being surrounded. Suffocated.
Tom and Nick arrived. Next was Minty Wolfson, whose dress, hands, and face were spattered with ink. “Where the hell is Wynn?” Maria bit out.
“She’s coming,” I said.
When Wynn arrived, she stood apart from the others. For the first time since I had met her, she was armed. I could see the leather strap of a holster where her coat fell open.
“Have all the cells been informed that everyone is to stay indoors, as agreed?” I asked. Nods. “We need to act quickly to get our voyants to safety. ScionIDE is coming to crush the Mime Order. With Senshield, they’ll root us out in days, and they won’t be anywhere near as easy to avoid as the Vigiles.”
“We might have a chance if we stay on the move. Or go to ground here as best we can.” Maria drank from the bottle again. “The First Inquisitorial Division has spent years stationed on the Isle of Wight. We know these streets. They don’t.” She wiped her mouth with a shaking hand. “This could be fine.”
She didn’t sound convinced.
“It won’t work. We can’t hide in plain sight anymore,” I said quietly. Her face crumpled. “Senshield would have pushed us into hiding in the end. This just . . . forces us to take action earlier than we expected.”
The silence that followed was almost painful, heavy with shock and grief. Never, in all of syndicate history, had voyants been forced to leave their districts, their sections, the streets that were their homes. What I was proposing—what I was ordering—was an evacuation.
I was suddenly conscious of the æther; my sixth sense swamped the others. Nick touched my arm, jolting me back.
“Paige?”
“Wait,” I said, and ran from the control room.
Scaffolding had been left to rot on one side of the power station where property developers had been defeated by its age. I clambered up it, ignoring their calls for me to wait. A mass of dreamscapes was approaching from the south, moving past us at a steady pace. Regimented.
Nick was in pursuit, navigating the vertical labyrinth. When I reached the top, I ran to the base of one of the four chimneys and grasped the rungs of a ladder. Behind me, Nick heaved himself off the scaffolding.
“What are you doing?”
“I need to see.” I tested the ladder with my boot. “Something’s coming.”
“Paige, that thing has to be three hundred feet.”
“I know. Can I use your binoculars?”
His lips pressed together, but he handed them over. I slung them around my neck and climbed.
I moved like clockwork past concrete scabbed with paint. When I thought I was high enough, I turned to behold the starfield of blue streetlamps—London in the dead of night. I could see the illuminated skyscrapers of I Cohort in the distance and the bridges closest to the power station, two of many that reached over the river. The nearest was for trains, but the one beyond would normally be weighed down with traffic, even in the small hours. I took one hand off the ladder and lifted the binoculars.
A convoy of black, armored vehicles was thundering across the bridge, coming from a main road close to here. I almost stopped breathing when I saw the tanks among them. Each vehicle was flanked by armed foot-soldiers. I couldn’t see the end or the beginning of the convoy; there must have been hundreds, thousands of them on their way into the heart of the capital.
My heart climbed into my throat. I pressed myself against the ladder when a helicopter rushed over. A helicopter emblazoned with SCIONIDE.
I descended as quickly as I could. When he saw my face, Nick didn’t need to ask. Wordlessly, we scrambled back down the scaffolding. The others were waiting for us at the bottom.
“They’re here,” I said. Minty lifted a hand to her mouth. “A massive convoy. We need all of our voyants from the first four orders evacuated now—into every available hideout—maybe some of the abandoned Underground stations—”
“Jaxon knows those places.” Eliza was holding her own arms. “We need somewhere he’s never been.”
“Damn it, think,” Maria barked. “Where can we go?”
“There’s always the Beneath.”
It was Wynn who had spoken. She was standing by the window, her hands in the pockets of her coat. As one, we all turned to look at her.
“The underground rivers. The deepest tunnels. The storm drains and the sewers,” she said. “The lost parts of London.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Wynn, don’t be an idiot,” Maria burst out. Wynn raised her eyebrows. “The Beneath is the mudlarks’ and the toshers’ territory. We all know the sewer-hunters have no interest in dealing with syndies. They protect their kingdom of shit like it’s a river of gold. Any time we’ve ever tried to push too far underground, they’ve driven us off with spears.”
“Ruffians,” the Pearl Queen said.
“Can we not force our way in?” Tom asked.
“Fighting them would end in deaths. I’m not going to slaughter one community to protect another,” I said sharply. Yet going deep underground could protect us from Senshield, and from Vance.
Minty raised an unsteady hand. “I’m afraid force isn’t an option,” she said. “The Beneath is the territory of the mudlarks and the toshers, beyond debate. It was agreed in 1978 that the deep parts of London would be theirs, and theirs alone. Their right to the Beneath is enshrined in syndicate law. And as you say, Maria, they protect it fiercely.”
“There must be some way to convince them,” I snapped. “It’s our only way out of this. ScionIDE won’t think to look there; even Jaxon will have no inkling. If we stay below the streets, we can move around the citadel without activating the scanners. If the Mime Order can go where Vance’s soldiers can’t follow—”
Wynn cleared her throat.
“If I might finish speaking,” she said, “I happen to know how we can access the Beneath, without force and with the toshers’ permission.”
Every head turned in her direction. Maria was good enough to look slightly embarrassed.
“Several years ago, the toshers came to us—the vile augurs—with a plea,” Wynn went on. “They needed access to a lost river, the Neckinger; I believe there was treasure there. The entrance sat on Jacob’s Island, our land. We allowed them access and to plunder the treasure. In return, their king promised each vile augur a favor. It so happens,” she said, “that I never claimed mine.”
“Wynn,” Nick said, “are you saying you might be able to get us into the Beneath?”
Wynn stared hard at each of them in turn, then at me.
“Know this, Paige Mahoney,” she said. “If you had punished Ivy at all during that trial, if you had even touched a hair on her head, I would have left you all to rot, and done it gladly.”
The silence was absolute. When I could speak again, I said, “Send word to the syndicate. We’re going underground.”