Page 45 of The Mask Falling

I waited. Arcturus sank onto the couch and rested his glass of wine on its arm.

“When she discovered that Emma had escaped,” he said, “Nashira sent a red-jacket to find her. Not long after, several women were brutally murdered in Whitechapel.”

My back prickled. “The Ripper.”

A stiff nod. “The final woman was identified as Marie Kelly. I discovered later that she had been known on the streets by several other names—one of which was Fair Emma.”

“You think MariewasEmma.”

“Or it was a case of mistaken identity. Either way, to my knowledge, Emma was never seen again.”

I had seen photographs of that crime scene. Tinkers sold copies on the black market.

“Nashira must have been fuming.” I tried to blot the picture from my mind. “I always wondered how she got the Ripper. Your theory would solve it. He returned to Sheol I, only for her to kill him and bind his spirit—either to punish him for not finding Emma, or for her murder.”

“Yes,” Arcturus said. “As you know, Nashira turned the bloodshed to her advantage. She had been waiting for the right chance to bring down the monarchy. As soon as Prince Edward was crowned, she sprang her trap, and he was forever known as the Bloody King.”

She had framed him for the murders, painting him as the bringer of unnaturalness, so Scion could rise in his place. If Arcturus was right, it had started with a dreamwalker.

“You are the only dreamwalker I have met since,” he said.

“No wonder.” I drained my glass. “Nashira is never going to stop hunting me, is she?”

“No.”

At least he didn’t sugarcoat the truth. I would return the favor.

“Arcturus, I need you to push me harder in training.” I sought his gaze. “We agreed to always do whatever was necessary. Not to let anything get in the way.”

As I spoke, I remembered that night in the dark, when I had crushed whatever had been flowering between us. I had done it so we would never put each other above the revolution.

I can’t afford to feel the way I do when I’m with you.

Silence fell between us, thick and deep. Arcturus drank before he said, “As you wish.”

“Okay.” I got up. “If you don’t mind, I want us to only speak in French for a while. I imagine that’s what Frère uses in private.”

“A sound idea,” Arcturus said. “Bonne nuit, petite rêveuse.”

“Bonne nuit.”

****

As February loomed, Arcturus met me in the training room each day, and he helped me draw my spirit out. It was hard work. I responded best to danger, and there was none in the apartment. In the end, I was forced to use my imagination to ignite my gift.

I pictured the waterboard. I pictured my friends gunned down by faceless soldiers. I pictured the massacre I had witnessed as a child. At last, with supreme effort, I dislocated and concentrated the ensuing pressure on Arcturus. My nose bled, but it was a start.

When I wasn’t in the training room, I was memorizing everything there was to know about Frère from the documents Ducos had given me.

Luce Isabella Frère had been born in the Scion Citadel of Toulouse, the eldest of the three daughters of the Minister of the Exchequer. After her parents had separated, she and the middle sister had moved with their mother to Marseille.

Since childhood, Frère had fostered ambitions of becoming Grand Raconteur, and she had earned a first-class degree in Scion History with that end in mind. At twenty-three, she had met the future Grand Inquisitor of France at a dinner party in Grenoble. They were engaged in 2049, the same year he became Minister for Justice, and had married five months later. Now they were two sides of a coin, rarely seen apart, and had three children—Onésime, Mylène, and Jean-Michel—with a fourth on the way. Frère had formally announced her pregnancy on the fourteenth of December, when she was three months along.

The dossier on Frère included a video file of her public appearances. I watched for any habits, took note of her bearing, listened to her feathery laugh. Frère crossed her legs at the ankles when she sat and only smiled with the left side of her mouth. When pregnant, she often placed a hand on her stomach. Years in the capital had eroded her southern accent, but occasional words lured it out. I took note of those words.

Like her spouse, Frère was ardent in her hatred of clairvoyants. When England had unveiled NiteKind—a form of painless execution for voyants—she had been its fiercest opponent, arguing that brutality was essential to keep unnaturals in line. NiteKind had never made it to France. She had also represented Ménard at many of the so-called blood lotteries, where prisoners in the Grande Bastille were selected at random for execution.

The main guillotine stood in the Place de Grève. I found one recording of a triple execution, where Frère could be seen in the witness stands, a newborn Jean-Michel in her arms, while the voyants waited to die. The corner of her mouth lifted when one lost control of his bowels.

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