Page 17 of The Dark Mirror (The Bone Season #5)

17

WHITE FLOWER

I had never expected to be left alone with Arcturus this soon. It gave me no time to armour myself. Before Italy, the last time we had seen each other had been when he was possessed. My skin warmed as if with a sudden fever. I felt my heart like a moth in my throat.

‘I am glad to see you alive, Paige.’

He spoke with his usual soft courtesy.

‘Same for you,’ I said. ‘You had us worried there.’

‘So I heard.’

In the silence that followed, my nerve almost failed me. In Paris, we had grown as close as a bird to its wing, but so much had happened to us since then, and I didn’t know how to start fixing it. His grip on the cord seemed firmer today, which only deepened my disquiet.

I hated feeling this way around him. He was my confidant, yet now he was back, I couldn’t find the words.

‘Lesath told me how I came to be here,’ Arcturus said. ‘It was you who realised where I was imprisoned. You who swam into the dark to find me. You who saved me from sequestration.’

‘I wasn’t alone,’ I said. ‘As for the last one, I really have no idea how I did it.’

‘You should not be surprised by your strength. I never am.’

Those words gave me pause and lifted my gaze. His eyes burned on the lowest flame.

‘I understand Eléonore Cordier took you to Wroc?aw,’ he said, ‘but you do not know why.’ I shook my head. ‘She was dosing you with white aster for six months.’

‘I hit whiteout,’ I said. ‘Ver?a broke it with blue aster. I’ve been taking the odd dose, but it’s only helping so much.’

‘Your spirit is no longer at ease. It is no way to live,’ he said. ‘As I told you in Paris, I believe it is possible to undo the amnesia caused by white aster, but I have never attempted it. You may find it taxing. If you would like to eat or rest before we begin, I am happy to wait.’

‘You don’t have to do this, Arcturus. Not if you’re not up to it.’

‘I have the means to alleviate your discomfort. It behoves me to use it,’ he said. ‘Terebell is right. You will not be able to hunt Fitzours in this state. And it would be useful to know if my separation from the ?ther has affected my gift as much as it has affected my body.’

I didn’t argue. We both knew I couldn’t go on like this, and he was the only one who could end it.

‘Lesath left a small amount of salvia.’ He reached for a pouch on the table. ‘I will prepare it.’

It took him a while to stand up. He was already in so much pain from the scars, and now this.

‘Arcturus.’ I started to rise. ‘I can do it.’

‘No need. Thank you.’

After a moment, I sank back into my seat, letting him go. He went into the kitchen and filled the kettle.

It had been months since he had last seen my memories. The last time had been in Edinburgh. Before that, he had ordered me to take salvia in Magdalen, so he could pry into my past.

Not his finest hour. He had needed to be sure that he could trust me to mount a rebellion. It had still been a violation, and I knew he regretted it.

I had come to understand his reasons. In the end, I had forgiven him. He and I were trespassers, with keys that no one should be granted. My gift compromised the body, and his, the secret vaults of the mind. There was no hidden truth an oneiromancer could not bring to light.

‘Paige,’ he said, ‘what do you last remember?’

‘The masquerade to celebrate the conquest,’ I said. ‘I went to see Ménard. To discuss a truce.’

Arcturus stopped for a moment. He must have wondered if I would remember that night in my bedroom. No doubt he had been worried he might have to remind me.

‘Your last clear memory.’ He poured from the kettle. ‘Had you left the masquerade?’

‘No. I’m with Ménard,’ I said. ‘Cade is outside the door.’

‘Is there a pallor in your dreamscape?’

‘Yes. It’s … taken a new form, but I don’t know if that’s related to the amnesia.’

‘Likely not.’ He brought the steaming cup, placing it on the table beside me. ‘Let it steep.’

He sat in the armchair beside me. I couldn’t stand to be this close to him and feel so distant. It reminded me of our time in Oxford, every moment thick with caution and uncertainty.

‘You never really explained how oneiromancy works,’ I said, to lift some of the tension. ‘You’re not walking in my dreamscape, so how do you experience the memories with me?’

‘While I am using my gift, my dreamscape reflects yours. Think of it as a mirror, and your memories as light. Salvia is like a polish on the mirror. It clarifies the memories for me.’

‘You can ... see dreamscapes?’

‘Not quite. Only a facet of what they protect,’ Arcturus said. ‘Perhaps a different metaphor is in order.’

‘Go on.’

‘Let us say that time is one great composition. I know the notes of each moment, the chords of the hours. When I play them, your spirit answers the vibrations by seeking the corresponding memories, which are conveyed, in turn, to me.’

‘Like an echo,’ I said. ‘The note you play, bounced off me. The moment through my eyes.’

‘Yes. It is a complex gift, like yours. A sort of puppetry.’

In all our months of talking, I couldn’t believe I had never asked him to describe his gift in detail. Jaxon could have written a whole pamphlet, but for all his eloquence, I doubted he would have explained it so beautifully.

‘No wonder you love music.’ I shifted in my seat. ‘Cordier was dosing me for a while. How do you even start combing through it all?’

‘I will start with the first memory that remains untouched by the aster, and move towards the present day.’

‘I assume we won’t live the memories in real time, or we’ll be here for six months.’

‘I will have control over how quickly they unfold. I can slow them if you wish to linger, but otherwise, I will hasten their passage.’ He held out the cup. ‘The salvia is ready, if you are.’

I took it from him, knowing it might show me something I didn’t want to see. After a moment, I drained the cup, grimacing at the bitter taste.

Arcturus waited for me to get comfortable. As the drink warmed my chest, I closed my eyes, feeling his influence steal over me.

‘If you wish for me to slow a memory, pull on the cord,’ he said. ‘Other than that, you know how it goes. All you need do is dream.’

Before, I had dreamed my way through the past without any awareness of him. Now I knew how his gift worked, I did feel his presence.

I sensed the music of the spheres, calling out to me.

Before, I had echoed him unconsciously. Now I moved with purpose. I found a white poppy, with a single red petal, and took hold of its root.

And then I was a passenger in my own past, carried along a river of memory, to the night the Devil had been hunting on the streets of Paris.

The shared dream began exactly where I had pointed him. The Grande Salle took shape around me, candlelight and stone and shadow. I was leaving the masquerade, filching a coat. Don’t go, you idiot , I willed myself, filled with sick foreboding. Don’t go without Léandre and Ignace. That version of me was crossing the threshold. Don’t leave alone …

Snow underfoot. I was walking with Cade on the riverbank, and I was seeing his dark lips, his fatigue. Terrible instinct reared in me – instinct that was finally rising in the memory, too. Just as I understood what he was, something hit me hard, and I fell into darkness.

So I had put the pieces together. I had seen, but too late.

Cade had used his gift on me. For the first time, I had known what it was like to be overcome by a dreamwalker. A taste of the same pain and fear I had inflicted on others.

He must have dragged me into a vehicle. Next I knew, I was stirring in the basement of the H?tel Garuche, and Kornephoros Sheratan was unlocking my chains.

A blur to another room. Beno?t Ménard slammed me to the ground, demanding to know where his spouse was. Now I was stumbling into the freezing cold, running through the streets of Paris, fire raining down. This was the airstrike I had survived. I wished I could forget again as I glimpsed chunks of bone and flesh, bloody confetti on the snow.

This was why I had run, when I heard the siren here, in Venice. I had run because part of me still remembered.

Tell us, Arcturus. Suddenly the memory wasn’t mine. I saw a shaking human, someone whose face I couldn’t see. Tell us, or he suffers. And your dreamwalker will suffer far worse…

Stained glass broke into nameless stars. His memory was wrenched away in a flurry of bloodstained snow and ashes. The next time I had woken, I had been a living corpse, staring at the ruins of the Sainte-Chapelle. Cordier had found me incoherent there, deranged by grief. I had been certain Arcturus was buried under all that stone.

Then Cordier had gripped my head and silenced me with the white flower. And I had breathed in.

I had breathed in, though I could have fought harder.

I had breathed in because I had wanted oblivion, because nothingness had been kinder than truth. The truth that I had sparked a war I could no longer control. That I had cut a man’s throat and felt nothing.

That Arcturus was gone.

That was the first dose. That moment was where the amnesia started. And on the walls of my dreamscape, the first hairline crack appeared in the pallor. The dust was lifting from the ground, like snow called back into the sky.

The next memory was important. I pulled the cord, and it slowed, the voices refining.

Where is this?

You’re safe, Paige . A soft French accent. We’re just outside of Paris.

Cordier. My eyes flickered open. I thought you’d been captured.

I nearly was. They came for me, but I escaped. I had to lie low . Those red lips pressed together. I tried to protect your safe house, but they took your auxiliary.

It was him. He betrayed me.

I know. I’m sorry. Cordier leaned closer. Paige, I don’t want to scare you, but there was an attack, an explosion. You were badly concussed in the blast – I suspect you have post-traumatic amnesia. I blinked to clear my swimming mind, my welling eyes. What’s the last thing you remember?

The masquerade …

I was starting to shake, both inside and outside the memory.

It’s all right. That’s where it happened , Cordier said. Can you remember a specific time?

Not sure. About half nine, I think.

You’re going to feel confused, with some emotional lability . Sometimes it will seem like time is muddled, or you’re under threat. You’ll feel angry and afraid. You have to stay calm. She had been clever to manipulate the facts that way. All the while, she had looked so genuine, so caring. Scion is on our trail. I’m going to get you to the free world, where I can protect you.

No. I have to go back to Paris , I heard myself say in a faint voice. I can’t leave them now. I can’t.

It’s all right, Paige. We’ll go back as soon as the danger has passed , she said. My coughs filled the darkness in the vehicle. We’ve still got to clear up that pneumonia, haven’t we?

There was how she had convinced me – compassion, and the white flower. I had forgotten the realisation that Cade was a dreamwalker. It didn’t help that I really had been injured from the blast.

In the present, I released the cord. The memories poured again, carrying me with them. I trusted Cordier as we slipped under a weak point in the Fluke, as I left the Republic of Scion for the first time in twelve years. I had trusted her when we reached the relative safety of Switzerland.

Then I had started asking questions.

What’s happening?

You’re safe, Paige. It’s all right. Cordier was stroking my hair, like a mother. What’s the last thing you remember?

The masquerade …

Good. She released a long breath. Paige, I don’t want to scare you, but there was an attack, an explosion. I suspect you have post-traumatic amnesia.

And on it went. She had trapped me in a time loop, giving me white aster each time I grew suspicious, so I never realised how many days had slipped through my fingers.

It had been easy, because she had the knowledge to work out my doses and marry them to sedatives, disguised as drinks or treatment for the lingering pneumonia – and because my subconscious had wanted to forget. Arcturus was gone, and the more aster Cordier gave me, the deeper that knowledge lay buried. So I welcomed oblivion, over and over.

A sudden change. The next time you refuse to answer a question, your pet dies . Thuban Sargas, his one remaining eye ablaze. You have one more night to decide. Tell us where Eliza Renton and Laurence Adomako are hiding. Tell us where Terebell has gathered the remaining Ranthen. Tell us where Paige Mahoney fled. Do you miss her, concubine?

I should not be seeing this. It was private. I knew it in the present, but I couldn’t stop his memories flowing into me. This had happened in Edinburgh, too. I tried to close my eyes to it, and it must have helped him stem the bleed, because now I was rushing forward again.

Y ou need to take her off my hands.

Arcturus hit the brakes on the memory. A hotel room, the curtains shut. Cordier was on the phone on a balcony, while I feigned sleep, listening.

You’re not the only one who wants her , she was saying. I could just hear her through the door. I can’t keep them off my back for much longer.

I slid up the hem of my oversized shirt. On my upper thigh, in faded marker, was a smudged message.

WHITE ASTER

DON’T EAT DON’T DRINK

DON’T TRUST CORDIER

I had seen it in the bathroom earlier that day. A desperate warning, left by my past self, in the precious moments before she had succumbed to the amnesia. It might be my only chance to escape.

You say you care about her. Show it. Her voice was calm and cold. The package and the money, or I’ll let my employer take her, and once she’s gone, there’s no going back.

When she hung up and came back inside, I waited until she was in bed, then threw out my spirit, making her shout in pain. I was too drained and weak to keep hold of her dreamscape. Instead, I dived on her and pinned her to the bed, my arm pressed across her throat.

You’ve been lying , I hissed. Who are you, and who the hell were you talking to?

Paige, I told you that you’d feel unsafe. Her nose was bleeding. Listen to me. It’s your brain injury—

Only one of us is going to have a brain injury in a minute, and it’s not me. I have had it up to here with people telling me I’m safe. I spoke between set teeth. I am going back to Paris. Stop me and we’ll have a problem, Eléonore.

Fine. Go on , she forced out. See how far you get.

Except I had no idea where I was. I slammed out of the room, running through corridors and past endless identical doors, taking the elevator to the ground floor, like I had in Wroc?aw. Two streets away from the hotel, a pair of muscular arms locked around me.

Stop right there, a voyant said against my ear. I kicked and clawed, but my strength was gone. Somehow it had vanished overnight. You have nowhere to go, Paige. We can find you anywhere. I tried to possess him, and realised, with dread, that he was unreadable. He could resist the only weapon I had left. Now, take a nice deep breath of this. I’ll make it all go away.

Get your hands off me. He clamped the cloth over my face, smothering my scream. No—

I gasped awake, soaked in cold sweat, thrashing against the stranger. The cloth was plastered over my nose and mouth, and I could smell the cloying sweetness of the white aster inside. For a horrific moment, I was blind and screaming on the waterboard again.

‘Paige.’

The voice brought me back to the present. When I remembered where I was, I sat up, hair tumbling around my face. Arcturus had moved away, almost to the other side of the room.

‘That wasn’t the end,’ I said. ‘Why did you stop?’

His palm was braced against the wall. It was so unlike him to look this weary. Before I could think better of it, I stood up shakily and stepped towards him.

‘Stay back, Paige.’

I flinched to a stop. He spoke as softly as ever, but the order was firm.

Get back, Paige, for pity’s sake. A different voice drifted from my past. Why do you never give me room?

‘Okay,’ I said, breaking a painful silence. Arcturus looked away. ‘You pushed yourself too hard.’

‘No.’

‘You lie to me now, do you?’

He winched his gaze back to mine.

‘You have been dreaming for hours,’ he said. ‘If we do not stop, you may begin to lose your ability to distinguish your past from your present.’ He removed his hand from the wall. ‘And I saw no need for you to relive someone touching you that way.’

He was still trying to protect me, even from the past.

‘Sit down, at least,’ I said.

It took him a fair while to move. He returned to the armchair and clasped his hands between his knees.

I should never have approached him suddenly like that, knowing my own fear of touch after my torture.

I went to the window seat. It was too dark to see the water, but I could hear it. After the sea, it should have been nothing.

‘We’ve learned some things about the night of the airstrikes,’ I said, recovering my composure. ‘Cade knocked me out with his spirit and took me to the H?tel Garuche. He presumably freed Kornephoros, who then – for some reason – freed me. Why would he do that?’

‘In Carcassonne, Kornephoros was tasked with forcing information from me,’ Arcturus said, his face wooden. ‘During one interrogation, he alluded to a favour he had done me, at significant risk to himself, to atone for his betrayal during the civil war. If he had not, Fitzours would have given you to Nashira.’

I thought all of this over.

‘Cade must have captured me to prove his loyalty to Nashira,’ I said. ‘He meant to bring me and Frère to her. It would have shown his willingness to turn on his own kind.’

‘Yes. He knew the fate Nashira had planned for the first dreamwalker she met,’ Arcturus said. ‘To continue to lower his risk of being executed, he sought to offer her a worthy substitute.’

‘Kornephoros threw a spanner in the works, then. Cade must be on thin ice now,’ I said. ‘He’s at the helm of Operation Ventriloquist, flaunting a gift he knows Nashira wants. It’s like putting your head in a noose and expecting it not to tighten at some point.’

Cade was turning into even more of a riddle than Jaxon, and that was saying something.

‘So Kornephoros let me go,’ I said, ‘just as the airstrikes hit Paris.’ If I kept talking, the awful silence couldn’t return. ‘I was close to the Sainte-Chapelle when it exploded, which knocked me out, and Cordier found me by the rubble.’

‘I sensed you both,’ Arcturus said. ‘By then, I was inside the crypt. I believed Cordier had saved you.’

‘She’d already put a tracking unit in me. And faked her own arrest to throw Ducos off the scent.’

‘We can assume that she was the one who betrayed the safe house,’ he said. I nodded. ‘She waited for an opportunity to separate you from your bodyguard, then contacted Scion, ensuring I would not interfere with her plan. From her conversation, she was ordered to bring you to an unknown employer, but entered a negotiation with a third party.’

‘Right. She was trying to exchange me for … a package. The other party is someone who claims to care about me, so I probably know them.’

You’re not the only one who wants her. I went over those words again. I can’t keep them off my back for much longer.

‘Domino has a theory that Cordier was secretly working for an espionage network called the Atlantic Intelligence Bureau,’ I said. ‘A group of strangers tried to intercept me after I woke up. Chances are they’re either the employer or the third party.’

‘But you escaped.’

‘I stabbed Cordier, but she’d already dosed me. When I came round, she wasn’t there to tell me lies. She must have gone for help. I gave the suits the slip and found Maria.’

‘And then you came here.’

‘Yes. We’ve agreed I’ll keep working for Domino until January.’

‘It seems you are in more danger than ever. And that we underestimated Eléonore Cordier.’

‘You warned me.’ I gazed out of the window. ‘When we played chess in Paris, you told me that I only had eyes for the king and queen. That I shouldn’t overlook the other pieces.’

‘I overlooked her, too.’

‘Does that make us the pawns?’

‘It means we made a sacrifice. In return, we gained intelligence we did not have before.’

‘At what cost?’

He didn’t answer.

‘All the people who wanted me are still out there,’ I said. ‘So are Cade and Nashira.’ My breath misted the window. ‘I feel like all of this is suddenly spinning out of our control.’

‘It was inevitable,’ Arcturus said. ‘You are right. We should reveal ourselves, before we are revealed.’

It was starting to rain, on top of the flooding. I turned away from the window.

‘While I was gone,’ I said, ‘did you ever try the golden cord?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘I hoped you would believe me gone, so you would not come looking for me.’

That explained why I had never felt the cord while I was with Cordier. It didn’t explain why he was blocking it now. I risked a glance at him, meeting his eyes, trying to find the courage to ask.

Just talk. I wrestled with myself. Tell him you’re sorry, he’s safe, you’re here.

‘We should get some rest,’ I said. ‘No doubt you think I can’t see how tired you are, but I didn’t come down in the last shower, you know.’

‘Hm.’

That sound warmed me to the core. I had missed it.

Arcturus started to get up, moving as if he was bearing the weight of the world on his shoulders.

‘We must do this again,’ he said. ‘There are memories still buried.’

‘I don’t want you to push yourself too hard.’

‘You overcame your limits to swim to me in that cave, in the dark. Let me do this for you, Paige.’

After a moment, I nodded, defeated. I couldn’t refuse him.

Not when he said my name that way.

Arcturus went to bed after that, while I stayed in the parlour. His influence had cut through the white aster like a cloth through dust. I went into my dreamscape to see if it had changed. Clearing the remaining aster would take at least one more dream, but even after torture and severance from the ?ther, Arcturus had full control of his gift, mastered over centuries.

My flowers were growing over the floorboards. Some of them still had creamy petals, but others had flushed back to crimson, and now that there was less ash, a purer light shone on the bed. I wondered if the field would return, or if this was my haven now – this skeletal remnant of Paris, for ever mingled with the poppies of Arthyen.

I wondered if Arcturus feared me now, as he must have feared Cade, the architect behind his suffering.

At midnight, I returned to the couch and slept, deeper than I had in weeks. When I woke at four in the morning, a duvet had been tucked around me, keeping me warm. As I gathered it close, I tried to summon the memories Arcturus had brought to the surface. They had flown past so quickly, I would have to pinpoint each one and sift it for detail.

When I remembered, I sat up, heart pounding. The realisation hit me as hard as it had the first time.

There is one way that you might see proof that I am on your side. Something that would betray me, if anyone but you could see.

It had taken me so long to solve that puzzle. The red drapes in his dreamscape had been the answer all along. The safe place in his mind looked exactly like the trap room in the Guildhall, where he had kissed me like I had never been kissed, never dreamed of being kissed.

How many times had he told me the truth, even if he never said the words?

No amount of artifice could make a dreamscape lie. The place where I had first embraced him was the place he felt safest – so safe it had reshaped his inner sanctuary, gathering it wholly around that memory of us. Only a formative experience could do that. I didn’t understand it – I couldn’t believe it could mean what it did – but it had still been like that when I pulled him from the brink.

Did that mean he forgave me, or just that he had nowhere else to feel safe any more?

I had to ask him. He had experienced the memory with me; he knew as well as I did that I had worked it out that night. He knew that I had run across a burning citadel to find him.

I found a door ajar upstairs. Arcturus was asleep, lying the way he had in the wine cellar. I stopped, knowing I couldn’t wake him. Not when he had overstretched himself for my sake.

Standing on the threshold, feeling more powerless than I ever had, I recalled an Irish word: beochaoineadh , a lament for the living. To weep for someone not yet dead, but out of reach, and missed.