Page 73 of The Mask Falling

I dared not look at Cade.

“You are here, in our country,” Ménard said, “because Frank Weaver failed to execute you. I imagine he would like you back so he can remedy that mistake—urgently, if he is to placate his Rephaite masters.” His tone was almost clement. “You are a shrewd woman. You will have already grasped that this situation makes you a valuable bartering tool.”

“You’re no friend of Weaver,” I said. “A fool and a marionette, I think you called him. Why would you want to barter with him?”

“To rid us of the true unnaturals.” He moved the silver dish of sugar. “The Rephaim.”

I waited for some evidence of a joke. The Grand Inquisitor of France did not smile.

Ménard melted a cube of sugar into his coffee and stirred. The room waited for him to speak again.

“When Fitzours brought me news of those creatures, thosethings,” he said, “I was sickened to the core of my being. After all we have done to uphold this empire, to curb the threat of unnaturalness—” His lips peeled back for a flash as he spoke. “It is a betrayal of Scion.”

“The RephaimcreatedScion.” I shook my head. “How could their existence possibly betray it?”

“The Rephaim compel us to hunt and imprison your kind, yet they, too, are unnatural. Unnatural parasites.” He set down his spoon with a delicateclink. “The system they created is perfect. Necessary. They, however, are not. The hypocrisy, the deceit—the natural order revolts against it.”

“On that note, you have an unnatural working for you. Living in your attic.” I tilted my head toward Cade. “Would you not callthathypocrisy?”

“It serves a higher purpose.”

“The higher purpose of saving Scion from its own makers?” My mouth twitched. “I knew you must be soulless, but not delusional. Scion would be meaningless without the Rephaim.”

“Not meaningless. Liberated,” Ménard corrected. “Free to use its power to benefit humanity, unshackled from its Rephaite masters— and from sycophants like Weaver, who obey them.”

“Or to collapse.”

Not that I would mind. If Scion buckled under the weight of its own contradictions, it would save me a lot of time and effort. No, in poking holes through his logic, I had no intention of putting him off this line of thought. I just needed to understand how he had drawn it.

“Believe what you will,” Ménard said, his attention fixed on me. “I mean to rid us of this infestation. To purge every last Rephaite. To clean unnaturalness in all its forms from the face of the earth. And to make a human-controlled Scion the one and only power in this world.”

He made blood and destruction sound practical, reasonable. It unnerved me in a way few people ever had.

“Weaver made a mistake when he announced that you had been killed in Edinburgh. If your survival were to be exposed, it would end him, and someone else could take his place. Someone who knows the truth of the Suzerain, who sees her for exactly what she is. I am that someone. I mean to forge a new and purified Scion, unsullied byanyunnaturalness.” He raised one of his temperate smiles. “You were interested in Sheol II. I may have been forced to host it, but make no mistake—I will use it not to glorify the Rephaim, but to bring them to their knees.”

And there it was, in a nutshell. The secret Ducos needed, that Domino could use to sow discord between England and France.

Georges Benoît Ménard was plotting a coup. He wanted to seize control of England, the head of the anchor, so that he could get rid of Nashira Sargas and rule the empire himself.

And he wanted to use me to do it. To oust Frank Weaver by turning public opinion against him, or to blackmail him into quietly stepping down.

“Right,” I finally said. “Very impressive. You are mighty and righteous indeed.” Frère looked at me as if I were a fly that refused to be swatted. “Cade here said you had a proposal I might find interesting. Do enlighten me.”

At length, Ménard took a sip of his coffee.

“Fitzours will have told you that I offered him an extended stay of execution in exchange for his services,” he said. “You have connections to well-placed Rephaim who despise the Suzerain. You front a terrorist organization dedicated to her downfall. Cooperate with us. Help us carry out our goal of destroying the Rephaite scourge, and I will not hand you back to them. I will provide you with immunity from execution.”

“And then what?” I said. “You let me open a bookshop in a pretty Provençal village, live out the rest of my life in peace?”

“I can make you someone else.” His gaze drilled into mine. “So long as you are out of my sight.”

He sounded like Jaxon, offering me an illusion of freedom at the cost of my integrity. This tie-wearing murderer wanted me to loan him the Mime Order—my army of rebels, thieves, and misfits, which I had nearly given my life to protect—as if it were open to the highest bidder.

“You will have realized that I don’t seek the destruction of all Rephaim,” I said. “Only the Suzerain and those who follow her. I will not convince my Rephaite connections to work with anyone who means them harm. As for the Mime Order . . . you can’t seriously think I would ever compel my soldiers to serve the Butcher of Strasbourg’s cause.”

“Our cause is the same until we defeat this common enemy.”

“What if we do?”

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