Page 48 of The Mask Falling

In Germany and Switzerland, there are clocks mounted with wooden birds that pipe the same notes every hour. They are called pendules à coucou, and coucous is what these children called us—mad and mechanical, unable to do anything but sing our anthem, which we often did when they approached. They were blind to the truth: that it was they who were automatons, their clockwork wound by unnatural hands.

Pendules à coucou. That gave me pause. Only a few weeks ago, Nick had seen a vision of a waterboard and a cuckoo clock.

I had to get this possession right.

Disgusted by the influence of the free world on Strasbourg—its architecture, its cuisine, its river that had the absolute gall to run from the mountains of Switzerland—Ménard had moved to Paris to study law. Not long after receiving his degree, he had secured his first job as a judicial clerk at the Inquisitorial Courts.

Ménard was a man on the rise. He had been a fixture in the Forteresse de Justice, praised for his intelligence and his meticulous approach to every task. It seemed odd, then, that at twenty-six he had suddenly departed for the Scion Citadel of Lyon, where he had served as “expert counsel” to the Ministry of the Interior. With a vague title and no further record of his movements at that time, I was certain he had been involved in the hidden cruelties of Scion. Interrogator, perhaps.

In 2049, he had returned to Paris as Minister for Justice. Within four years, his devotion to Scion was repaid in full when, upon the death of Jacquemine Lang, he became the youngest ever Grand Inquisitor of France at thirty-four. One of his first acts had been to almost wholly remodel the city of Strasbourg, and to increase the voltage of the electric fence on the border. Now that fence was lethal.

His official photograph showed a clean-shaven man with a high forehead and dark walnut hair, neatened with pomade. A crescent-shaped birthmark curved under one cheekbone. Small brown eyes stared out from beneath solid brows. His popularity seemed to be rooted in his impeccable manners, good looks, and a hard-line approach to unnaturalness.

He was forty now and had been Grand Inquisitor for almost seven years. In that time, he had given only a handful of interviews. I watched them all. They revealed a cool and self-possessed demeanor that gave me a chill. He would consider for a long time before he answered a question, knowing the journalist would wait on tenterhooks for as long as it took for him to speak. He was all mild courtesy. He never gesticulated, and his smiles were lukewarm at best.

Frank Weaver behaved like the dummy he was. You could almost see the hinge on his jaw. Ménard was entrancing. Without ever raising his voice, he commanded attention.

I asked Arcturus to test my knowledge. When I could answer each question off the cuff, I devoted myself to refining my French, seeking obscure and technical words that had eluded me before.

Sometimes the sheer audacity of the mission daunted me. All I knew of Frère was her public veneer. I was going to be dealing with people who lived with her, who knew her intimately. Then there was the security unit of eighty elite Vigiles, some of them former soldiers, who protected the Inquisitorial family and must know exactly how their employers behaved.

I had so little time to obtain the two pieces of information I needed. One of them—the source of the tension between Ménard and Weaver—I would pass to Domino. The other I would share only with Arcturus.

Everyone had a key. No matter how complex the lock, Benoît Ménard was no exception.

****

I sensed Isaure Ducos again on the last night of January, while I was perusing a thick French dictionary in bed, having spent the day with a fever, coughing myself to distraction. Arcturus had brewed me a mug of hot lemon water and honey to help. I finished it as I joined him in the parlor.

“Ducos is coming.” I sank into a heap beside him. “You may as well stay. She’ll want to meet you sooner or later.”

“Very well,” he said. “How is your fever?”

“Better, I think.”

He handed me a thermometer. I stuck it into my ear and held it there until it let out a tinybeepand turned red.

“It’s come down a bit. One hundred degrees.” I passed it back to him. “I’ll be fine by tomorrow.”

“I know you are finding it difficult to drink, but you must. You are likely dehydrated.”

“I drink all the time.”

“Yes. Coffee.” He took my mug. “I will brew you some more lemon water.”

“All right.” I nudged him with my foot. “You big hen, you.”

“Cluck,” he said, straight-faced.

My smile faded when I noticed the news. ScionEye was providing regular and enthusiastic updates on the invasion of Portugal. According to the report, the battle for Lisbon had now begun.

A map appeared on the screen. Lisbon sprawled beside a vast estuary of the River Tagus. Graham Harling, the Grand Admiral of Scion England, had sent a fleet of warships to blockade it. Meanwhile, soldiers marched on the capital from two sides and air strikes hammered the heavily populated cities of Coimbra and Porto. Weaver vowed the bombardment would stop the moment the President of Portugal, Daniela Gonçalves, issued her formal and unconditional surrender. Portugal needed the anchor. It must accept the inevitable.

At twenty-nine, Gonçalves was a young leader. ScionEye described her as inexperienced and weak. So far, she seemed to be holding her nerve.

“I urge President Gonçalves to accept the inevitable,” Weaver said from the screen. “You are infested with unnaturalness. Only Scion can cleanse it. Lay down your arms and embrace the anchor, and it will embrace you in return. Your people will be treated with dignity. Continue to fight, and we will treat you as we would a house tainted with plague. Only ashes will remain.”

He meant it. If Portugal fought to the end and still lost to the anchor, it would suffer the way Ireland and parts of the Balkans had. Its people would forever be marked as troublemakers, stained by their defiance. Still, I willed them to fight on. I willed Gonçalves not to bend.

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