Page 170 of The Mask Falling

Evenfall

The Eiffel Tower gleamed before the late-afternoon sun. There were dreamscapes at its summit—as well as a tourist attraction, it was a transmission station for use in national emergencies—but I had evaded all notice as I climbed into its northern leg, where I had spent most of the day. Concealed in the snow-lined latticework, I watched the Scion Citadel of Paris.

A night and almost a full day had passed since the arrest. My gaze darted across the frozen citadel, to the stone-built tower that was the Bastille. Bleak and windowless, the prison cast a long shadow over the nearest district.

Though my eyes were dry, grief vised my throat. I was tired to the point of numbness, but not in my bones, not in my limbs. It was the same desolation I had felt after I had watched my father die. The detached sense that nothing really mattered. Loss was not a sharp pain, but a formless gray that rounded off the edges of the world.

I pinched myself to stop it from taking me. Arcturus was not lost yet. He was imprisoned—badly hurt, no doubt—but I could save him. Unless I saw his head on a spike, I would not give up on him.

Le Vieux Orphelin had advised me against this vigil, but I needed to see as much of the citadel as possible. Arcturus was usually a guiding star in the æther, even at a distance. Now darkness had stolen between us. My internal compass was broken, the needle spinning. He might be anywhere.

Scion knew my abilities. They must have force-fed him a drop of Emite blood to conceal his location.

Sooner or later, it would start to wear off. In the small window of time between one dose and another, I had to be able to determine his precise location in the citadel. This viewpoint would help me do that.

Hold on. I willed him to hear me.I’m here. I’m with you.

A heavily disguised Léandre waited a long way below me, electing not to venture any higher than his perch. His moto waited in the Champ de la Tour. The moment I felt a shiver from the golden cord, he would drive me in the right direction. Le Vieux Orphelin had reluctantly given him permission to help me, but regretted that he could not send any more of the perdues to my aid, with the Man in the Iron Mask still at large. It was already a great risk to send Léandre. Nadine and Zeke had offered to help, as had Ivy. I had a burner phone to contact them.

A shift in the æther made me stiffen. My gaze snapped eastward, straight toward the Île de la Citadelle.

This was it. The compass had trembled, pointing me to him. Breath clouding, I started to climb down.

I’m coming. I repeated the words like a prayer.Hold on.

Mindful of the ice, I returned to Léandre, who was crouched at a juncture between iron girders, breathing into his hands. Seeing me, he raised his eyebrows and pulled his climbing gloves back on. My dissimulator had unsettled him at first, but he seemed to have got used to it.

The stairs took us most of the way down. Close to the bottom, we ducked into the latticework again to avoid two maintenance workers, who were speaking in voices thickened by colds. We dropped unseen to the ground, and then we were back into the dirty snow, running south.

Léandre unlocked his moto and tossed me a helmet. I climbed onto the back and wrapped my arms around his waist, and we were off.

With more Vigiles than usual on the south bank, Léandre crossed a bridge over the Seine and drove on the other side. The cord flickered. I followed it—my seventh sense—as I had once in London, when the Rag and Bone Man had buried Arcturus, thinking nobody would find him. The golden cord was a living tie between our spirits, and it was making itself known to me. A light glinting in murky water.

I stopped Léandre with a gesture. He pulled over, and we found ourselves staring once more at the Île de la Citadelle, this time at the splendid complex that occupied its western side. Cone-shaped roofs topped the crenellated towers.

“There?” Léandre said.

“Yes,” I said. “Somewhere in there.”

He tightened his grip on the throttle. “La Forteresse de Justice. That would make sense.”

There would be no justice done in that place. “We need to see its defenses.”

With a nod, he drove on. As I slung my arms around him again, I tried not to look at the towers.

The sun was leaving bloodstains on the sky. Léandre went as far as the Pont au Change, where we had to dismount and walk the moto between us. It was hard to tell it was a bridge, so tall were the houses and shops that towered on either side of it. Jewelers and pawnbrokers and goldsmiths plied their trade here, peddling the riches of Scion. People shouldered around us, breath feathering, hunting for bargains or trying to forge a way home through the concourse of wrapped-up bodies. People who had no idea that a fugitive now walked among them.

At the end of the bridge, we both climbed back onto the moto. Careful not to slow down, Léandre took us along the main boulevard of the Île de la Citadelle, past the elaborate gates of the Forteresse de Justice, home of the Inquisitorial Courts. A dozen soldiers, armed and armored, were posted both in front and beyond them, on the steps, as well as two Punishers, the elite Vigiles.

Nashira. Only she would have brought those bodyguards. I sensed her now. Even though the cord was somehow blocked again, I could sense Arcturus, too. His dreamscape was so close.

Hold on.

Léandre left his moto locked beside a tree. We strode down the nearest steps to the river path and walked until we were in the darkness under a bridge, where we both took off our helmets.

“You can’t go in there.” He made it fact. “Le Vieux Orphelin would say the same if he were here.”

“There’s an entrance to the left of the gates. A passageway. I saw it as we passed,” I said under my breath. “That place is not the Bastille or the Archon. There are windows, multiple exits—”

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