Page 127 of The Mask Falling

Once everyone had emerged, Ivy slid back through the opening, hauling her supplies behind her. Léandre led the rest of us along the sandy passage to the left. I inched after him until we came to a dry space, just about high enough to sit up in, wide enough for us all to spread out. Léandre laid his jacket on the floor, and I realized he must have given Ivy his own sleeping bag.

“We will rest here,” he said. Now that Ivy was gone, he switched back to French. “You have five hours.”

Renelde lit a mining lamp, while I shed my gear and melted to the ground like heated wax, my head aching and stuffy, physically and mentally drained. I bundled my oilskin into the corner as a pillow.

Arcturus sat beside me while the others conferred among themselves. I dug out a can of barley soup, a sticky malt loaf wrapped in paper, and a bag of nuts and sundried berries.

“Are you holding up all right?” I said to Arcturus. “I’m surprised you haven’t whacked your head.”

“Fear not. My skull is strong.”

I drank the soup cold from the can. It was lumpy and tasteless, but it would wad my hollow stomach.

“We should consider what will greet us in the colony,” Arcturus said while I ate. “There may not be enough clairvoyants in the city for the next Bone Season to have begun. Usually, they are abducted over a decade.”

“So there shouldn’t be any red-jackets. Or harlies,” I said. “If no one has been tested yet.”

“No. For now, the human guards are likely to be well-paid Vigiles.”

“Hopefully we’ll have bypassed most of the main defenses. The traps and mines.” I found my box of medicine and slid out a blister pack. “There were no surveillance cameras in the first colony, were there?”

“No. The risk of exposure was too great.”

“Good.” I cracked a capsule from the pack. “Just the enraged Rephaim to deal with, then.”

Arcturus let me wash down the medicine and finish the loaf before he spoke again. “Can you feel any voyants?”

I hefted my attention to the æther. My tiredness rendered it woolly—a haze of distant spirits—but when I sensed the cluster of dreamscapes, gooseflesh sprung up on my arms.

“Yes,” I said, “but no one familiar yet.”

When everyone had wolfed down some food, the others joined us in our corner, forming a circle.

“We have a map of Versailles.” Léandre rolled it out and brought the lamp closer. “We will surface in the Cimetière Notre-Dame, northeast of the palace.” He signed as he spoke. “You say you have been to a penal colony like this before,” he said to me. “What can we expect there?”

“Guards,” I said. “Impossible to kill.”

Malperdy nodded to Arcturus. “Like him?”

“Yes, but armed. And murderous.”

Across from me, Ankou finished his mouthful and cleared his throat. “We stored some weapons in the cemetery,” Renelde translated for me. “A few guns and blades, but not many.”

“Stealth, then.” I tapped the map with one finger. “This place is a Type A Restricted Sector, so it will be heavily defended, but we do have the element of surprise. I’m hoping most of the defenses will be on the outskirts, like they were in the first colony. By traveling underground, we should avoid those and have a clear path to the château.”

“We should go to the front gates first, to assess its external fortifications,” Renelde said. “The best way in is through the gardens. They are very overgrown. Good cover. We have all explored them and know the routes. We also have a floor plan of the palace.”

Ankou spread it on the floor and smoothed the crinkles. I took in the names of each room in the vast palace. Seeing the section markedl’appartement du roi, I noted its location.

Renelde laid out her proposed approach. We would enter the gardens to the east of the palace, cutting across the long-neglected groves to reach the building itself.

“We used to get in through a broken window here,” she said, pointing it out. “Mal will climb up to it and let a rope down for the rest of us. Once inside, we should split into two groups to search for the prisoners. It will take us too long to cover the place otherwise. How many prisoners do you think there will be, Paige?”

“There could be up to forty,” I said, “not including amaurotics and unreadables.”

Renelde looked to Léandre, whose face remained stony.

“It goes without saying that getting the prisoners out will be difficult. Most of them will be weak and injured. As I said, we need to do this quietly.”

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