The Mime Order Read online

  The Mime Order

  The Mime Order

  Samantha Shannon

  For the fighters—

  and the writers

  Mimes, in the form of God on high,

  Mutter and mumble low,

  And hither and thither fly—

  Mere puppets they, who come and go

  At bidding of vast formless things

  Edgar Allan Poe

  Contents

  Map of I-5

  A Note to the Reader

  PART I - The Rogue Dial

  1Alight

  2Long Story

  3Then There Were Five

  4Grub Street

  5Weaver

  6Seven Dials

  7Under the Rose

  8On the Devil’s Acre

  9The Bloody King

  PART II - The Rephaite Revelation

  Interlude

  10Ding Dong Bell

  11Urban Legend

  12Fool’s Errand

  13Thief

  14Arcturus

  15The Minister’s Cat

  16Flower and Flesh

  17Gambler

  18The Patron’s Puppet

  19Ciuleandra

  PART III - The Monarch Days

  Interlude

  20Misprints

  21Symbiosis

  22The Grey Market

  23Liminal

  24The Rose Ring

  25Danse Macabre

  26Thaumaturge

  27The Mutual Friend

  The Seven Orders of Clairvoyance

  Glossary

  Acknowledgements

  A Note on the Author

  A Note to the Reader

  At the back of this book you will find a record of the members of the Unnatural Assembly, composed of the clairvoyant mime-lords and mime-queens who operate in each section of Scion London, as well as additional maps of key sections. You will also find a chart of the Seven Orders of Clairyoyance and a glossary of terms unique to Scion and the slang of the clairvoyant underworld.

  PART I

  The Rogue Dial

  For are we not vastly superior to them, we Unnaturals? For though we pick the Bones of Society, though we crawl in Gutters and beg for our Keep, we are living Conduits to the World Beyond. We are Proof of an auxiliary Existence. We are Catalysts of the ultimate Energy, the eternal Æther. We harness Death itself. We unhorse the Reaper.

  —An Obscure Writer, On the Merits of Unnaturalness

  1

  Alight

  It’s rare that a story begins at the beginning. In the grand scheme of things, I really turned up at the beginning of the end of this one. After all, the story of the Rephaim and Scion started almost two hundred years before I was born—and human lives, to Rephaim, are as fleeting as a single heartbeat.

  Some revolutions change the world in a day. Others take decades or centuries or more, and others still never come to fruition. Mine began with a moment and a choice. Mine began with the blooming of a flower in a secret city on the border between worlds.

  You’ll have to wait and see how it ends.

  Welcome back to Scion.

  ****

  September 2, 2059

  Each of the train’s ten cars was upholstered in the style of a small parlor. Rich red carpets, polished rosewood tables, the anchor—Scion’s symbol—stitched in gold on every seat. Classical music drifted from a hidden speaker.

  At the end of our car, Jaxon Hall, mime-lord of I-4 and leader of my gang of London voyants, sat with his hands folded atop his cane, staring straight ahead without blinking.

  Across the aisle, my best friend Nick Nygård gripped a metal hoop that hung from the ceiling. After six months away from him, seeing his gentle face was like looking at a memory. His hand was strung with swollen veins, and his gaze was fastened to the nearest window, watching the safety lights that flashed past every now and then. Three other members of the gang were slumped across the seats: Danica sporting a head wound, Nadine with bloody hands, and her brother, Zeke, grasping his injured shoulder. The last of us, Eliza, had stayed behind in London.

  I sat apart from them, watching the tunnel disappear behind us. There was a fresh scorch on my forearm where Danica had disabled the Scion microchip under my skin.

  I could still hear the last command Warden gave me: Run, little dreamer. But where would Warden run? The closed door of the station had been surrounded by armed Vigiles. For a giant he could move like a shadow, but even a shadow couldn’t have slipped past that door. Nashira Sargas, his erstwhile fiancée and leader of the Rephaim, would spare no effort to hunt him down.

  Somewhere in the darkness was the golden cord, linking Warden’s spirit to mine. I let the æther wash over me but felt no answer from the other side.

  Scion couldn’t be unaware of the uprising. Something would have got out before the fires destroyed the communication systems. A message, a warning—even a word would have been enough to alert them to a crisis in their colony. They’d be waiting for us with flux and guns, waiting to send us back to our prison.

  They could try.

  “We need to do a headcount.” I stood. “How long until we reach London?”

  “Twenty minutes, I think,” Nick said.

  “Do I want to know where the tunnel ends?”

  He gave me a grim smile. “The Archon. There’s a station right underneath it. S-Whitehall, it’s called.”

  My stomach dropped a notch. “Don’t tell me you were planning an escape through the Archon.”

  “No. We’re going to stop the train early and find another way out,” he said. “There must be other stations in this network. Dani says there might even be a way back into the Underground proper, through the service tunnels.”

  “Those service tunnels could be crawling with Underguards,” I said, turning to Danica. “Are you sure about this?”

  “They won’t be guarded. They’re for engineers,” she said. “But I don’t know about these older tunnels. I doubt anyone at SciORE has ever been in them.”

  SciORE was Scion’s robotics and engineering division. If anyone would know about the tunnels, it would be someone from there. “There must be another way out,” I pressed. Even if we did get back into the main Underground network, we’d be arrested at the bar riers. “Can we divert the train? Or is there a way up to street level?”

  “No manual override. And they’re not stupid enough to have access to street level from this line.” Danica lifted the rag from her head wound and inspected the blood that soaked it. There seemed to be more blood than rag. “The train’s programmed to go straight back to S-Whitehall. We’re setting off the fire alarm and leaving through the first station we find.”

  The idea of taking a large group of people through a decaying, lightless tunnel system didn’t seem sensible. They were all weak, hungry, and exhausted; we needed to move fast. “There must be a station under the Tower,” I said. “They wouldn’t use the same station to transport voyants and Scion staff.”

  “That’s a long way to walk for a hunch,” Nadine cut in. “The Tower’s miles away from the Archon.”

  “They keep voyants in the Tower. It makes sense to have a station underneath it.”

  “If we assume there’s a station at the Tower, we need to time the alarm carefully,” Nick said. “Any ideas, Dani?”

  “What?”

  “How can we identify where we are?”

  “Like I said, I don’t know this tunnel system.”

  “Take a wild guess.”

  She took a little longer than usual to answer. Her eyes were ringed with bruises. “They . . . might have put markers on the lines so the workers didn’t get disorientated. You find them in Scion tunnels. Plaques stating the distance to the nearest station.”
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br />   “But we’d need to get off the train to see those.”

  “Exactly. And we’ve only got one shot at stopping it.”

  “Sort it out,” I said. “I’ll find something to set off the alarm.”

  I left them to debate and walked toward the next car. Jaxon turned his face away. I stopped in front of him.

  “Jaxon, do you have a lighter?”

  “No,” he said.

  “Fine.”

  The train’s sections were separated by sliding doors. They couldn’t be sealed shut; nor was the glass bulletproof. If we were caught in this thing, there would be no getting away.

  A crowd of faces looked up at me. The surviving voyants, all huddled together. I’d hoped Julian might have boarded when I wasn’t looking, but there was no sign of my co-conspirator. My heart clenched with grief. Even if he and his unit of performers survived the rest of the night, Nashira would have them all trimmed at the neck by sunrise.

  “Where are we going, Paige?” It was Lotte, one of the performers. Still wearing her costume from the Bicentenary, the historic event we’d just ruined with our escape. “London?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Look, we’re going to have to stop the train early and walk to the first exit we find. It’s heading for the Archon.”

  There was an intake of breath, and wild looks were exchanged. “That doesn’t sound safe,” Felix said.

  “It’s our only chance. Was anyone awake when they put us on the train to Sheol I?”

  “I was,” an augur said.

  “So there’s an exit at the Tower?”

  “Definitely. They took us straight from the cells to the station. But we’re not going through there, are we?”

  “Unless we find another station, yes.”

  While they murmured among themselves, I counted them. Not including myself and the gang, there were twenty-two survivors.

  How would these people survive in the real world after years of being treated like animals? Some of them would barely remember the citadel, and their gangs would have forgotten them. I pushed the thought away and knelt beside Michael, who was sitting a few seats apart from the others. Lovely, sweet-tempered Michael, the only other human that Warden had taken under his wing.

  “Michael?” I touched his shoulder. His cheeks were blotched and damp. “Michael, listen. I know this is scary, but I couldn’t just leave you at Magdalen.”

  He nodded. He wasn’t quite mute, but he used words carefully.

  “You don’t have to go back to your parents, I promise. I’ll try and find you a place to live.” I looked away. “If we make it.”

  Michael wiped his face with his sleeve.

  “Do you have Warden’s lighter?” I said, using a soft voice. He dug a hand into his gray jacket and pulled out a familiar rectangular lighter. I took it. “Thank you.”

  Also sitting alone was Ivy, the palmist. She was a testament to Rephaite cruelty, with her shaved head and hollow cheeks. Her keeper, Thuban Sargas, had treated her like a punching bag. Something about her twisting fingers and trembling jaw told me that she shouldn’t be left on her own for long. I sat down opposite her, taking in the bruises that bloomed beneath her skin.

  “Ivy?”

  Her nod was barely visible. A dirty yellow tunic hung from her shoulders.

  “You know we can’t take you to a hospital,” I said, “but I want to know you’re going somewhere safe. Do you have a gang that can look after you?”

  “No gang.” Her voice was a wasted husk. “I was . . . a gutterling in Camden. But I can’t go back there.”

  “Why?”

  She shook her head. Camden was the district in II-4 with the largest community of voyants, a busy market town that clustered around a stretch of the Grand Canal.

  I placed the lighter on the gleaming table and clasped my hands. Old moons of dirt sat under my fingernails.

  “Is there no one at all you can trust there?” I said quietly. More than anything I wanted to offer her somewhere to stay, but Jaxon wouldn’t put up with strangers invading his den, especially as I wasn’t intending to go back there with him. None of these voyants would last long on the street.

  Her fingers pressed into her arm, stroking and grasping. After a long pause, she said, “There’s one person. Agatha. She works at a boutique in the market.”

  “What’s it called?”

  “Just Agatha’s Boutique.” Blood seeped from her bottom lip. “She hasn’t seen me in a while, but she’ll take care of me.”

  “Okay.” I stood. “I’ll send one of the others with you.”

  Her sunken eyes were set on the window, far away. The knowledge that her keeper might still be alive made my stomach roil.

  The door slid open, and the other five came in. I picked up the lighter and walked across the carpet to meet them. “That’s the White Binder,” someone whispered. “From I-4.” Jaxon stood at the back, grasping his bladed cane. His silence was unnerving, but I had no time for games.

  “How does Paige know him?” Another, frightened whisper. “You don’t think she’s—?”

  “We’re ready, Dreamer,” Nick said.

  That name would confirm their suspicions. I focused on the æther as best I could. Dreamscapes teemed within my radius, like a seething hive of bees. We were right underneath London.

  “Here.” I tossed Nick the lighter. “Do the honors.”

  He held it up to the panel and flipped the lid open. Within a few seconds, the fire alarm glowed red.

  “Emergency,” said the voice of Scarlett Burnish. “Fire detected in rear car. Sealing doors.” The doors to the last car snapped shut, and there was a low-pitched drone as the train glided to a halt. “Please move toward the front of the train and remain seated. A life-preservation team has been dispatched. Do not alight from the train. Do not attempt to open any doors or windows. Please operate the slide mechanism if extra ventilation is required.”

  “You won’t trick it for long,” Danica stated. “Once it sees there’s no smoke, the train will go again.”

  The end of the train was home to a small platform with a guard rail. I hitched my legs over it. “Pass a flashlight,” I said to Zeke. When he did, I aimed the beam at the tracks. “There’s room to walk next to them. Any way to turn the tracks off, Fury?” The switch to her syndicate name came naturally. It was part of how we’d survived for so long in Scion.

  “No,” Danica said. “And there’s a fairly high probability that we might suffocate down here.”

  “Great, thanks.”

  Keeping a wary eye on the third rail, I let go of the platform and dropped on to the ballast. Zeke started to help the survivors down.

  We set off in single file, giving the rails and sleepers a wide berth. My filthy white boots crunched through the trackbed. The tunnel was vast and cold, and it seemed to stretch on forever, dark in the long intervals between the security beacons. We had five flashlights between us, one with a flagging battery. My breath echoed in my ears. Gooseflesh raced up the backs of my arms. I kept my palm pressed to the wall and concentrated on putting my feet in the right places.

  After ten minutes the rails trembled and we threw ourselves against the wall. The empty train we’d taken from our prison came hurtling past in a blur of metal and lights, heading for the Archon.

  By the time we reached a junction signal, where a single green lamp shone, my legs were shaking with exhaustion.

  “Fury,” I called, “know anything about these?”

  “Says the track ahead is clear and the train was programmed to take the second right turn,” Danica said.

  The left turn was blocked. “Should we take the first one?”

  “We haven’t got much of a choice.”

  The tunnel widened around the corner. We broke into a run. Nick carried Ivy, who was so weak I marveled that she’d reached the train at all.

  The second passageway was illuminated with white lights. A filthy plaque had been drilled on to a sleeper, reading WESTMINSTER, 2500M. The
first tunnel yawned before us, utterly black, with a plaque reading TOWER, 800M. I held a finger to my lips. If there was a squad waiting on the Westminster platform, they would have received an unoccupied train by now. They might even be in the tunnels.

  A slim brown rat darted through the ranks. Michael recoiled, but Nadine shone the flashlight after it. “Wonder what they’re living on.”

  We found out, of course. As we walked, the rats multiplied, and the sounds of chattering and teeth clicked through the tunnel. Zeke’s hand shook when the flashlight beam found the corpse, rats still feeding on the last of its flesh. It was clad in the sorry rags of a harlie, and the ribcage had clearly been crushed by a train more than once.

  “The hand’s on the third rail,” Nick said. “Poor bastard must have come without a flashlight.”

  One voyant shook her head. “How did he get so far on his own?”

  Someone let out a quiet sob. He’d so nearly made it home, this harlie who’d escaped his prison.

  At last the flashlights fell upon a platform. I stepped across the rails and pulled myself on to it, my muscles throbbing as I lifted the flashlight to eye level. The beam cut through the crushing darkness, revealing white stone walls, a hygienic strip-sprayer, and a storage unit full of folding stretchers: a mirror image of the receiving station on the other end. The stench of hydrogen peroxide was eyewatering. Did they think they’d catch the plague off us, these people? Did they bleach their hands once they’d dumped us on the train, scared clairvoyance might rub off on them? I could almost see myself pinned to a stretcher, racked with phantasmagoria, manhandled by doctors in white coats.

  There was no sign of a guard. We swung our flashlights into every corner. A giant sign was bolted to the wall: a red diamond chopped in two by a blue bar, with the name of the station written across it in tall white lettering.

  TOWER OF LONDON

  I didn’t need a map to know that Tower of London wasn’t a registered Underground station.

  Beneath the sign was a small tablet. I leaned closer, blowing dust from the embossed letters. THE PENTAD LINE, it read. A map showed the locations of five secret stations under the citadel. Tiny lines of text told me that the stations had been built during the construction of the Metropolitan Railway, the old name for the London Underground.