Page 187 of The Mask Falling

Didion came up the steps to accept it. In the silence that followed, not a single breath was drawn.

“Oh, yes.” He snapped it closed. “Pantaléon published several works of his own in London,” he added, with a sly look at Le Latronpuche. “I took the liberty of bringing some of his manyrejectedmanuscripts with me, written in his own hand. Perhaps you would like to compare them.”

“You truly have thought of everything,” I said. “Thank you kindly, Mister Waite.”

He bowed to me with a flourish and stepped back. Le Latronpuche gritted his gray teeth.

“Have you anything to say?” I asked him.

“I do not, Underqueen. I am going,” he said, lip curled, “but I will not brook this miscarriage of justice. You shall hear from me again in due course. Mark my words, there will be—”

“Yes. You are going, Latronpuche,” I said, toneless. I fitted the mask back over my features. “Into a cell. A very small one. For quite some time.”

I gave no order. And yet thirty-odd voyants moved, half of them blocking the door and the others coming up behind him. Le Latronpuche shouted in incoherent rage while his own voyants towed and shoved him toward another room, there to await a stronger prison. La Reine des Thunes hovered in nervous silence.

“Douceline,” Le Vieux Orphelin said. She flinched. “I know you were a part of this, but since I have no evidence against you, I cannot banish you. Join us, and you may find a path to forgiveness.”

La Reine des Thunes barely hesitated before she removed the diamonds from her ears and the pearls from her neck.

“You gave these to me, mon frère.” She pressed them on him with trembling hands. “Sell them. For the revolution. Everything I have, I offer to the revolution.”

Le Vieux Orphelin beheld the diamonds. They were priceless contraband, representing more provisions and weapons than I could imagine.

“As do we,” he said. “The Underqueen and myself.”

All eyes turned to me again. I remembered standing in front of another syndicate, soaked in blood, with a crown twisted from numa on my head.

“I was no one,” I said. “Just a child in Ireland when Scion came. When I almost lost my life to their violence. When I saw hundreds die.” I spoke louder: “I was nineteen when they came again. When they took my name. When they tried to warp me into their weapon. That day, I resolved that I would not rest until no one in this world lives in the shadow of the anchor. Until clairvoyants can live wherever they choose, without fear and without shame.”

Watched by them all, I walked to Le Vieux Orphelin. At the back of the room, I glimpsed Ducos.

“I have found a like-minded leader here in Paris. Together, we pose a far greater threat to Scion, and to their benefactors, the Rephaim. It is time to choose a side,” I stated, “because war is coming. And there can be no middle ground against enemies like these.”

“From this day forth, if you stand with us, Le Nouveau Régime and the Mime Order will be one army,” Le Vieux Orphelin called. “By your grace, my friends, we will unite our two syndicates. Let us bridge the sea. At the dawn of this new decade, let us teach the anchor what it is to be afraid.”

For a long time, there was silence. I took in their faces, waiting, my nerves tuned to every subtle change in their expressions.

Then someone took a step forward. Katell, the woman who had opened this syndicate for me, her baby in a sling. She crossed her thumbs, pressed her fingers together, and fanned them outward, so they looked for all the world like wings.

Then came a muster of raised voices, and hands lifted, and then there were fifty of them, a hundred, more. An eclipse of moths—a storm, an army, soaring from the depths of night.

****

In the end, after everything, the coup had been bloodless. A far quieter victory than the scrimmage in London. I had never expected Didion Waite to be the key—but if there was one thing I had learned in the last year, it was that in a puppet empire, everyone had their role to play.

Le Latronpuche might swing from the old gibbet at Île Louviers, or be handed over to the Vigiles, or granted a second chance. I would have no part in that decision. I had not come here to rule. Le Vieux Orphelin would see to his people, and I would see to mine. But we would lead them with a common goal.

The gray market was gone. So was Sheol II. Domino would collaborate with the Mime Order. It was more than I could ever have asked from my time in this citadel, where my father had promised we would go one day.

Never had victory felt so cold.

The patrones disappeared back into the citadel. Soon, only a few of us remained on the island. Still wearing her dissimulator, Ducos stood at the riverbank, where I joined her, and together we drank in the immensity of the tower that speared high above us, into a hood of cloud.

“There is a transmission station at the top of it,” she said. “For emergency broadcasts.” Fog unfurled from her lips. “There have been rumblings from my contacts in the network.”

“What kind of rumblings?”

“Something to do with the fall of Spain.” Her gaze was distant. “They never tell us very much. Not even supervisors. But the execution of a royal family, thinly concealed though it was . . . it has caused ripples. Scion may have gone too far this time.”

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