The Mask Falling (The Bone Season, 4)

I

BEYOND THE SEA

SCION CITADEL OF PARIS

14 January 2060

A blade flashed, catching the dull moonlight. Death lathed thin and sleek. I thrashed against my chains, retching as if I had been washed up by the tide. Someone was stabbing me.

The basement with its blind grey walls. The light, so bright it scored circles on my vision. And the water – I was choking on it. Suhail Chertan loomed from the shadows and stretched a gloved hand towards the lever.

Instinct led me to the lamp. My bedroom in Paris snapped into relief. As quickly as the fear had hit, I remembered that the shackles were only sheets, that the blade and the hand that grasped it were mine – and that I was fighting my own memory.

Cold sweat dripped from my hair. Each breath strained through leagues of bruising. The alarm clock glowed – 00:23 – and I was gripping the knife I kept under my pillow.

Some nights it was the waterboard, or the bleach-white room where the Vigiles had beaten me. Some nights it was the Dublin Incursion. I would have taken insomnia over this: sleeping too deeply and for too long, only to wake with no tether to reality, half of me trapped in the past.

The door to my room opened. I wiped my brow with my cuff, shaking.

‘Paige?’

‘I’m all right,’ I said thickly. ‘I just thought—’ Wisps of my hair clung to my temples. ‘Was I screaming?’

‘No. You were speaking.’

In the Archon, I had not asked for mercy. In my sleep, I often did.

‘Since you are awake, I wonder if you would care to join me in the parlour,’ Warden said. ‘Unless you wish to rest.’

‘No, it’s fine. I won’t be sleeping again.’ I coughed. ‘Give me a minute.’

‘I will need ten. Wear a coat.’

This was mysterious even for him. I untangled myself from the sheets, my curiosity kindled.

The safe house was on Rue Gît-le-Cœur, a skip and a jump from the River Seine. Two weeks had passed since our arrival. In that time, I had seen no evidence of neighbours. Past whatever legal shadows were in place, I suspected all the nearest buildings belonged to Scarlett Burnish, or the organisation that secretly employed her.

The Domino Programme. The network of spies that supported Burnish and had ordered her to get me out of the Westminster Archon. As yet, I had no idea what they wanted from me; only that they had risked a valuable agent to save me from the executioner.

Once I was warmly dressed, I went to the parlour. A sweet scent hung in the air, the record player crooned, and a note waited on the table.

The locked door.

I raised an eyebrow.

One door in the parlour had been locked when we arrived. Now it was ajar. I padded up the wooden stairs beyond, to a deserted attic, and climbed a ladder into the night.

Warden gave me a hand through the hatch. We stood on the roof of the safe house, beneath the stars.

‘Well, look at that,’ I breathed. ‘Who knew we had a view like this?’

The nearby quay was covered in snow, trimming the river with lace. Beyond it were the forbidding rooftops of the Île de la Citadelle, home of the Inquisitorial Courts and the Guild of Vigilance.

‘I suppose Domino did not mean for us to access the roof,’ Warden said, ‘but when I found the key, I thought we might use it to celebrate.’

‘Celebrate what?’

He nodded to something behind me. I turned.

On a flat section of the roof, overlooking the Seine, a rug from the parlour had been rolled out. Candles flickered in jars around dishes of food, which surrounded a small and ornately decorated cake.

It was past midnight. My twentieth birthday. After everything, it had slipped my mind.

‘I know this is a modest celebration.’ Warden spoke to the chimney. ‘After all you have endured, you deserve—’

‘Warden.’ I gave his wrist a brief squeeze. ‘It’s perfect.’

That made him look back at me. No smile. Unlike humans, Rephs rarely signalled their thoughts or emotions through facial expressions, but his features softened a little – at least, I liked to think they did. I liked to think I was learning to read him.

‘Many happy returns of the day, then, Paige,’ he said. ‘Thank you.’

We sat on the rug, Warden with his back against the chimney. I swung my legs over the edge of the roof and basked in the unbottled air. He knew I had been restless indoors. Here, I could lie under the stars without risk.

He had somehow assembled a picnic for me. A cheeseboard with sliced bread and butter. A bowl of crisp salad, with tiny potatoes and hard-boiled eggs nestled among its leaves. Pears and red apples and oranges. Pastries so delicate they looked as if they would vanish if I picked them up. There was even a dish of chestnuts, roasted with brown sugar – my favourite snack, redolent of winters in London.

‘Where did you get all this?’ I went straight for a chestnut. ‘Don’t tell me you made it from scratch.’

‘Would that I were so impressive,’ Warden said. ‘Albéric delivered it at my request.’

Albéric was the contact who provided our supplies, including clothes for us both, made to measure. Even though all our requests had been fulfilled – Warden had illegal wine, I had coffee – I had never seen our mysterious benefactor come or go.

‘Cake was, apparently, not available,’ Warden continued. ‘I acquired this one elsewhere.’

A smile pulled at the corners of my mouth. ‘Are you saying you stole me a birthday cake?’

‘A tribute to your vocation, Underqueen.’ My smile widened.

We listened to the steady undersong of Paris. Sirens and traffic and the muffled voices from the transmission screens, which spoke all the way through the night. Blue tone, Nadine had called this sound – that low and ceaseless roar, like one long exhalation, the rush of lifeblood through the veins of a citadel. London was the same. I took a bite from an apple, then a wheel-shaped pastry filled with praline cream.

Warden held up a silver jug. ‘A drink?’

‘What is it?’

‘Le chocolat chaud.’ His voice deepened when he spoke French. ‘Do you care for chocolate?’

‘I do.’

He poured some into a gold-rimmed cup and passed it to me. It was thick and sweet as molasses. I sipped it between bites of food.

For our first week here, I had barely eaten. Now I was ravenous. Once I had sampled everything, I made a start on the cake, which was swathed in coffee icing. It had been a long time since I tasted something so good, something meant to give pleasure.

‘I’m curious,’ I said, cutting a second wedge. ‘What would happen if you had a bit of this?’

‘I would rather not say while you are eating.’

‘Now I’m really curious.’

He waited until I had finished my mouthful before he spoke again: ‘I would vomit.’

A surprised laugh burst out of me. ‘You’re joking.’

‘I think we can agree that humour is not my forte.’

‘Don’t be so hard on yourself. You have a firm handle on unintentional humour.’ A gust of wind blew my hair into my eyes. ‘So you’d throw up if you tried to eat. But you can drink.’

‘Nothing thicker than broth. I cannot digest solid food.’

‘Do you not have a stomach?’

‘I do not know which organs I possess in your terms. Rephaim have never consented to physical examination by humans. Nashira prefers to keep our anatomy a well-guarded secret.’

‘Right. Otherwise we might be able to design weapons that can harm you.’

‘Precisely.’

I still had so much to learn about the Rephs. Now I had Warden to myself, I meant to caulk the gaps in my knowledge.

‘Well,’ I said, ‘I’m sorry you’ll never know the joy of cake. But more for me, I suppose.’

‘Indeed.’

I polished off the rest of my slice. Comfortably full, I lay back on the rug to stargaze, watching my breath rise like steam from a kettle. It felt like eons since my nineteenth birthday. A year ago, Nick had baked me a strawberry cake and served it for breakfast, and Jaxon had afforded me nineteen minutes off to eat it (‘What could be a better gift than a day of hard work for your mime-lord, darling?’). Later, Nick had given me an exquisite chatelaine he had wrangled at the black market, along with a stack of records for my collection, and we had gone out with Eliza for a slap-up supper.

We had been happy then, in the corner of the world we had scratched out for ourselves. I had been able to close my eyes to the real Scion, content to pick a living from the bones it tossed me.

Warden lay on the rug beside me and folded his arms under his head. It was such a relaxed, human posture, I had to look again.

‘Thank you for this,’ I said. ‘And for everything you’ve done since we arrived. I know I haven’t been much company.’

‘You are not here to entertain me.’

I had to wonder what he really thought about birthdays. To an immortal, it must seem masochistic, to celebrate each step of my journey to the grave. Still, it was sweet of him to play along.

A row of three stars flickered above the safe house. Warden followed my line of sight.

‘Orion’s Belt,’ he said. ‘I often saw it from Magdalen.’

‘I always called them the Three Sisters,’ I murmured. ‘I don’t remember the Scion designation.’ I looked back at him. ‘I realised all the Rephs I’ve met are named after stars.’

‘Yes.’

‘Why is that?’

‘Most humans cannot speak our Glossolalic names. Since your kind have long associated stars with the divine, Nashira decreed that we would use their names on Earth.’

‘Did you all choose your own?’

‘The æther did. As it ordains all things.’ His gaze returned to mine. ‘On the subject of my name, I never did invite you to call me by it.’

‘Arcturus?’

‘Yes. Warden is a title – a title that was stripped from me, at that,’ he said. ‘We have known each other for almost a year. If you wish, you are welcome to call me Arcturus.’

He had a point. I should have stopped calling him Warden months ago, but to me, it had become a name. Or perhaps I had used it to draw a line between us – a tissue of formality that kept me from growing too close to him. Whatever the reason, it was long past time.

‘I’d like that,’ I said. ‘Arcturus.’

Another siren in the distance. Somewhere in the night, Nashira Sargas was considering her next move.

I had always had a healthy fear of her power and her reach. She was the one we would have to defeat if we meant to win this war. Yet before my imprisonment, Nashira had never kept me up at night. There had always been a reassuring sense of distance between us.

No longer. I had seen the fire in her eyes when I escaped her clutches for the second time. After everything I had done to defy her, I had also refused to break. I had refused to be silent. I had refused to die. She would never give up her pursuit.

A tiny sound drew me back to the present. Warden – Arcturus (it would take a while to get used to this) – had placed a small object beside me.

‘A gift.’

It was an oblong parcel, neatly wrapped in newspaper. ‘You didn’t have to get me anything.’ I sat up. ‘The picnic was more than enough.’

‘I was under the impression that a gift was traditional on the anniversary of a womb birth.’

‘Womb birth. Great.’

The parcel was heavier than I had expected. I opened it with care to reveal an ornate box. A moth gleamed on its oval lid, fashioned from smoked glass, perched on a bell-shaped oat blossom. I remembered telling him in Oxford that it was my favourite. In the language of flowers, it meant the witching soul of music.

I turned a gold key on the side of the box. The lid opened, and a figurine of a bird – a ring ouzel, black with a pale breast – emerged from inside. It beat its tiny mechanical wings and whistled like a living thing.

‘Arcturus,’ I said softly. The artistry of it was exquisite. ‘Where did you get this?’

‘Originally, it was one of my snuffboxes. Now it is a boîte à oiseau chanteur.’

A songbird box. ‘It’s beautiful.’ I looked at him. ‘Wait. You made it by hand?’

‘A modest conversion.’

Even the underside of the lid was stunning, painted to resemble a poppy field. He moved to sit beside me and turned the key the other way. The bird stopped moving, and instead, the box played music. As I listened, I had a muted recollection of my grandfather restoring a harp in his workshop, singing in his pebbly voice. An air about a long-lost soulmate.

A hollow ache stretched out within me. It started in the chambers of my heart, in a place that reached eternally for Ireland. I imagined Arcturus working on the music box while the Ranthen watched over his shoulder, wondering why he was squandering time on a trifle.

He had made me a memory I could hold. I leaned up and placed a soft kiss on his cheek.

‘Thank you.’

‘Hm.’ He lifted his wine in a toast. ‘To you, Paige. And the next twenty years.’

‘Sláinte.’ I touched my cup to his glass. ‘May they be significantly less horrific than the first.’

We drank. I rested my head against his shoulder, and we watched the stars until dawn painted the horizon.

The days of waiting for contact from Domino wore on. So did the long crawl of my recovery. After two weeks, my bruises had gained more earthen tones, but I was still weak as a hay stalk.

My mind was just as slow to mend. Time refused to blunt the edges of the memories. I could no longer sleep through the night. Sometimes I relived my father’s death, saw the open bottle of his body. Sometimes I would get so cold my fingernails turned grey. More than once, Arcturus checked on me in the night and found me next to the radiator, enveloped in a blanket.

It was the dark that got to me the most. I had never been able to sleep well with a light on – yet without one, I couldn’t convince myself that I had ever left the pitch-black cell. I had meant to die there, and a part of me had.

The sedative, at least, was out of my system. Now it was a rattling cough that kept me up at night. That and a sharp pain in my chest, on the right side, when I took too deep a breath.

At first, I had watched the news every night – to make sure Scarlett Burnish was still alive, to keep one eye on London – but it made me itch to get back to the streets. Never more so than when the news offered glimpses of Georges Benoît Ménard, the Grand Inquisitor of France.

He was said to be a fanatic, his bloodthirst unrivalled among the leaders of Scion. Certainly he sent hundreds of people to the guillotine each year. His spouse, Luce Ménard Frère, had come to London as his representative in December. Other than that, I knew very little about him.

Arcturus did his best to distract me. He taught me chess, which I enjoyed even though he always won. I could still wipe the floor with him at cards, having spent years in and out of the gambling houses of Soho. I taught him the finer points of cheating as well as fair play.

‘There is little honour in duplicity,’ he pointed out one night. ‘None,’ I agreed, ‘but if everyone is duplicitous, honour is a disadvantage.’ I threw down another card. ‘And whoever said there’s honour among thieves was talking absolute shite.’

In Oxford, he had been named my keeper. In London, I had been his queen and his commander. Now we were just two fugitives, each with no power over the other. At last, we were on level ground.

I liked spending time with him. It had taken me months to fully admit it to myself, but it brought a smile to my face to see him each morning. I had worried we might run out of things to say within a few days, yet we never did. Sometimes we stayed up talking all night.

He was a good listener, intelligent and solicitous in conversation, with a bone-dry wit that I was never wholly sure was intentional. I told him things I had never told anyone – about my childhood in Ireland, on my grandparents’ dairy farm, and my time with the Seven Seals. We talked about music I had scavenged from piles of salvage at the black market; about books he had saved from destruction in Oxford. He told me stories Scion had erased.

He described the Netherworld, so I could almost sketch a map in my head. He conjured its buildings in exquisite detail – colossal, carved from iridescent stone, cities that shone like shattered glass – and described the river, the Grieving, with its bed of flawless pearls.

‘Your river was called the Grieving?’ I raised an eyebrow. ‘The Netherworld sounds like a riot.’

‘It is a poor translation.’

We shared an interest in languages as well as music. One evening, he asked me if I might consider teaching him my mother tongue.

‘You realise almost nobody speaks Gaeilge these days,’ I said. We were playing chess, and I was waiting for him to make his next move. ‘Not in public, anyway.’

‘All the more reason to learn it.’

We were into our endgame. There were more black pieces on the board than white, which definitely meant I was winning.

‘Scion made a concerted effort to destroy all evidence of the Irish language after the Molly Riots,’ I said. ‘You won’t find many books, and you’re not likely to be able to talk to anyone but me.’

‘I enjoy our conversations very much.’ Arcturus moved one of his pawns. ‘And I would like to be fluent in another human language.’

‘How many do you already have?’

‘Six,’ he said. ‘English, French, Swedish, Greek, Romanian, and Scion Sign Language.’

‘Only six?’ I slid my black queen across the board. ‘You’ve been here two centuries, lazybones. I already have half as many as you and I haven’t had unlimited decades to learn.’

‘Clearly yours is the superior intellect, Paige—’ ‘Well, I didn’t want to say—’

‘—but you still cannot best me at chess.’ He set down his white bishop. ‘Checkmate.’

I stared at the board. ‘You … infuriating bastard.’

‘You only had eyes for the king and queen. Remember not to overlook the other pieces.’

With a sigh, I sat back. ‘Well played. Again.’ I shook his hand. ‘Fine. I’ll teach you Gaeilge if you teach me Gloss. Deal?’

‘Humans cannot learn Gloss. It is the language of spirits.’ ‘Polyglots can speak it.’

‘They do not learn it. They are born with it.’

‘Try me,’ I pressed. ‘Say a word in Gloss and I’ll copy you.’

He humoured me and made a soft, chime-like sound, which I had a stab at mimicking.

‘Wrong,’ he said. ‘How?’

‘You are not Gloss-articulate. Even if you were to perfectly imitate the sound I made, you would only be speaking with your vocal cords, not your spirit.’

I tried not to look crestfallen. Gloss was beautiful, and I would have liked to call him by his real name.

Still, the thought of holding a real conversation in my mother tongue was tempting. My grandmother had been born on Oileán Chleire, an island where Gaeilge had once been spoken daily, and had passed it on to me – a bright jewel, a shared joy, that I had kept buried for years.

Scion had outlawed all the Celtic languages during the Molly Riots. They would die out soon, now families were too afraid to teach them to their children even in secret. I liked the idea of a Reph knowing mine. Through him, it would be immortal.

‘All right,’ I said. ‘I’ll teach you. But fair warning – nothing in Irish sounds like it looks.’

‘I enjoy a challenge.’

‘Good.’ I took a pen and paper from the table and scribbled the longest word that came to mind, grianghrafadóireacht. ‘Your best conjecture, then. How would you pronounce this?’

I held up the paper. Arcturus considered it, then served himself a large glass of wine.