Page 6 of The Mask Falling

I’ll save thy body from the cold clay ground,

And thy neck from the gallows-tree.

– Child Ballad 95,

“The Maid Freed from the Gallows”

1

Beyond the Sea

SCION CITADEL OF PARIS

JANUARY 14, 2060

A blade flashed, kindled bright by moonshine. 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 gray 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 toward 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 white-knuckled hand that grasped it were both 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—12:23a.m.—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-trapped in the past.

The door to my room opened. “Paige.”

I wiped my brow with my cuff.

“I’m all right,” I said. “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 parlor,” 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. Curiosity kindled, I untangled myself from the sheets.

The safe house was on Rue Gît-le-Cœur, in the ancient heart of Paris, 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 neighbors. Past whatever legal shadows were in place, I suspected all the nearest buildings belonged to Scarlett Burnish, or the organization that secretly employed her.

The Domino Program. 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 parlor. 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 parlor 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 side by side on the roof of the safe house, beneath the stars.

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

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