Page 7

Half a year, washed away in the blink of an eye. That alone would have been hard to stomach, but I had no sense of why or how it had happened. All the answers must be trapped in my locked memory.

I was getting a headache. Other than the chocolate, I might not have eaten for hours. I finally tried the soup, which Tobiasz had calledzurek– a hearty concoction of sausage, bacon and potato, with an appetising tang to it. It took the edge off, allowing me to collect my thoughts.

I had clearly been given white aster. I had little practical knowledge of it, except that it induced some degree of amnesia. Jaxon had occasionally smoked it. He cut it with tobacco, which softened the memory loss, allowing him to write off the day without forgetting it altogether.

Eliza had been hooked on it at one point. To break free of the addiction, she had eventually run away from the dealers who had raised her, never attempting to recover her memories.

She had made me promise I would never touch aster – not even the blue or pink sorts, which weren’t thought to be addictive. Surely I would never have taken it of my own free will.

A wolfish dog came to join me on the couch. Some animals were nervous around voyants, but she only looked curious.

‘Hello.’ I offered a hand. ‘You won’t stab me in the back, will you, girl?’

She licked my hand and lay beside me. I ruffled her fur, swallowing the lump in my throat.

Not since the torture chamber had I felt so weak, so violated or so alone. I had to find a way to undo my amnesia.

In theory, I could reverse the effects of white aster, though I have never attempted it, Arcturus had told me.Memory is complex. And fragile.

He couldn’t help me. He had used and deceived me for almost a year, then thrown me away.

Unless there was more to what I remembered.

Even as it happened, I had doubted his betrayal. Not until he made to strike me had I started to believe. It might be false hope, but perhaps there was a clue I could no longer remember. A piece that had been erased from the puzzle. Something that explained his actions.

If not, I would destroy him.

All day, my survival instinct had kept me on the move. Now a terrible weight filled my head. I pulled a blanket over myself and fell asleep, imagining a warm body shaped around mine, and a hand on my waist, holding me close.

‘Underqueen.’

I woke with a start, reaching for a weapon. It took several cold moments to remember where I was.

Amber sunlight shone between the blinds, on to Kazik. None of that had been a vivid hallucination, then.

‘Kazik,’ I said. ‘What time is it?’

‘Noon. You slept for a long time.’

‘Right.’ I sat up, wincing at the pain in my wrist. ‘Did you speak to whoever is looking for me?’

‘Yes. Someone is coming here to collect you, to take you to the Sestra. She is a voyant from inside Scion.’ He nudged the fridge shut. ‘I will keep to my usual routine, to avoid suspicion if these Americans come here. We’ll be at the coffeehouse if you need anything.’

‘Okay.’

For the rest of the day, I dozed on the couch. Even when I had been racked with pneumonia, I had never felt an exhaustion this deep and relentless. Had six months not passed, I would have thought it was an aftermath of the fever I had barely survived in Paris.

At dusk, a car with tinted windows pulled up, and Kazik came back to see me off. ‘This driver is working for the Sestra,’ he told me. ‘I hope that you can get in touch with the Mime Order.’

‘I appreciate your help. Will you thank Tobiasz?’

Kazik nodded. ‘Stop the anchor coming any farther, if you can. Do widzenia, Underqueen.’

The amaurotic driver opened one of the back doors. I got in and fastened my belt. Unless I was going to walk all the way to Paris, I would have to trust the spirit that had pointed me to Kazik and Tobiasz, and hope this Sestra had good intentions.

As night closed in, I was driven away from Legnica. Hard as I tried to stay awake, my eyelids weighed the world. By the time I pulled myself back to awareness, over an hour had passed, and it was too dark to see much of anything.

If the æther threw me a bone, the Sestra would get me back to Paris, so I could fortify my alliance with the French syndicate. As for the Mime Order, it had spent half a year without any word from its legitimate ruler. My subjects must think I had abandoned them, or that I was dead.