The Master of Misrule (10 page)

Flora bit her lip. How had everything got so hideously out of control? Her invitation to Blaine already seemed nonsensical. She and Blaine had never had anything to say to each other. In ordinary circumstances they would never have anything to do with each other. This was also true of her and Cat and, to a lesser extent, Toby, too, but the hostility between her and Blaine had been mutual and instinctive from the start. Of course, after everything they’d been through in the Arcanum—where, arguably, she owed him her life—their antagonism had been left behind. In some ways Blaine knew her better than Georgia or Tilly or Charlie ever could. They were partners of a sort, she supposed, but that didn’t make them friends.

It’s going to be a disaster, she thought. And what on earth will I tell Mina?

Mina, the Seatons’ housekeeper, was meant to be keeping an eye on Flora over the rest of the holiday. Her parents had left to catch their flight early that morning but she hadn’t got up to see them go. She hadn’t seen them the evening before, either. After she had dragged her battered and frozen body back from the Eight of Swords, she had managed to shut herself in her bedroom before they returned from the Avoncourts’. Flora got migraines occasionally, so her parents knew from experience to leave her alone in a darkened room. They had exchanged commiserations through the door, and left her to it.

But Mina had caught her on the way out that morning. She had responded to Flora’s appearance with dismay, looking only partially placated by her story of getting on the wrong side of a cat. Tonight Mina was staying with her daughter in Willesden, so that was all right. But what about tomorrow? The arrival of Blaine would be a lot more difficult to explain than a few scratch marks.

And of course, while all these worries were running through her mind, Flora knew that none of it really mattered, that it was all just padding against other, real, unbearable things. At the edge of every thought was Grace and the cage of briar-swords, and layered over this anguish was the new one of Misrule’s wheel of flame, the trials that must lie ahead. But she couldn’t think of any of that now, mustn’t think about it, or else it would be like sinking into the snow again, not into peaceful oblivion, but cold and pain, where the black bonds tightened and tightened.…

“Oh, there you are,” she said brightly when Blaine appeared at the corner. “Good to see you’re traveling light.”

“That’s kind of the point when you live on the streets.”

Yes, no doubt about it: this was going to be a disaster.

Only a few streets away, Cat was passing a corner store when her palm prickled, letting her know that a threshold had appeared close by. She didn’t think she would ever be able to wholly ignore the Arcanum’s call, to go past a threshold without feeling an itch to see what lay on the other side. This time, she wondered if some knight had already used it
to play their card, and what Misrule’s disorder might cost them in the Game.

But it wasn’t just the Game’s other players who were at terrible risk. It was everyone going about their business around her, unaware that all their hopes and fears and plans for the future were about to be gambled away.

On impulse, Cat veered off her way home and began walking in the direction of Trafalgar Square instead. Bel had been in training at Alliette’s today, and should be finishing around now. Though Bel wasn’t big on coddling, her self-assurance was the generous kind, and comforting in itself. She had a way of dismissing difficulties with a snap of her fingers and flounce of her hair; just by being with her, Cat felt the world’s rough edges smoothed out.

Alliette’s was a very different affair to the Palais Luxe, the distinctly unpalatial casino opposite their flat. It was a Georgian town house with awnings in black and green, and a concierge almost as stately as the High Priest. Bel had enjoyed describing its glories to Cat; apparently, the splendor of the décor was outshone only by that of the clientele. “Royalty, too!” she’d said gleefully. “Well, once or twice. And mostly the foreign sort.”

Cat went round to the staff entrance. Bel was just leaving, in the company of a muscular bartender. She was doing her special laugh and shaking out her hair in a way that would have been sure to make Greg, her most recent boyfriend, look even more doleful than usual. Cat quite liked Greg, with his kind, drooping face and disreputable store of local knowledge, but it was starting to look as if Bel
had moved on. Bel had a low boredom threshold—it was the same with men as with jobs and places. They had spent the last twelve years moving back and forth around the country, often for no reason other than Bel “getting the itches.”

“The sad fact is,” Bel was saying to her friend, “part of me still believes that round one of these corners, I’ll find a street paved with gold.”

He laughed. “Every immigrant’s dream.”

“And it’s high time I woke up from it. Specially since here and now’s my second attempt at surviving this city.”

“So what happened the first time around?”

“Trouble, that’s what.”

“Man trouble?”

Bel matched his flirtatious tone. “Is there any other kind?” Then, turning, she saw Cat. She looked startled. “Puss-cat! What are you doing here?”

“I was just, y’know, passing. Thought I’d walk you home.”

Brief introductions were made, goodbyes said. Cat and Bel sauntered along St. James’s and toward Trafalgar Square.

“You never told me you’d lived in London before.”

“Didn’t I? There’s nothing much to tell.”

“But you’ve never even mentioned it.”

“Yeah, well.” Bel cleared her throat self-consciously. “Attempt number one didn’t count for much. Ran out of money, options, mates. Trouble, like I said. So this time around I wanted a whole new start.” She aimed a playful kick at a pigeon. “And I’ve got one, haven’t I? Now that I’m
at Alliette’s, me and you are on the up. We play our cards right, and there’s no one and nothing to stop us. Gold pavements all the way!”

Cat was still frowning.

“Cheer up,” said Bel. “You look like one of those gamblers who’ve won a tenner and dropped a grand. And speaking of gamblers, you know anything about this triumph card gimmick?”

Cat’s body tensed. “The scratchcards?”

“That’s right.”

“Nope,” she answered, trying to keep her tone light. “You haven’t found one, have you?”

“Fat chance. Andy in accounts has a friend whose wife did, though. She got her hands on a heads card. Just lying in the back of a taxi, it was. Now, she was on her way to the hospital to have a mole taken off her back. It’d gone cancerous, you see. But when she took her clothing off in the surgery—what do you think happened?” Bel smacked her red lips in relish. “The sodding mole had only gone and vanished! Not so much as a freckle left, never mind a cancer cell.”

“Impressive,” Cat managed to say. “All the same, if you found one of those scratchcards, you wouldn’t … play it, would you?”

“Depends how lucky I felt at the time. I’ve still got hopes of winning a head, and seeing the man of my dreams walk through the door.”

“Don’t joke. What if you got a snake’s tail instead? Something really bad might happen—like a road accident or a mugging. Even a heart attack.”

Bel came to an abrupt halt. “Hey,” she said. “What’s all this? You don’t actually believe this scratchcard crap, do you?”

“You’re the one who brought up the miracle mole.”

“I was only messing with you! You know how these stories get blown out of proportion. Like urban legends.” She took another look at Cat’s face. “All right. Doesn’t matter. If it’ll make you feel any better, I promise to stay away from the scratchcards.”

“You swear?”

“Cross my heart and hope to die.” Bel put on her special saintly expression, hands clasped in prayer. “Mind you,” she added, a little regretfully, “luck’s one of those things everyone wants and no one can buy. It’s a good notion for a lottery.”

Later in the evening, Bel announced she was going out dancing, with instructions to Cat to tell Greg, if he called, that she was working at Alliette’s. As soon as she was alone, Cat fetched the Triumph of Justice from its hiding place. She spent a long time watching how its pearly sheen glowed in the dark. In light of the others’ experiences, she had to tell herself that playing it could end only in disappointment or deceit. She would not risk throwing her die and bringing the card to life across the threshold. But she would carry it with her into the Arcanum tomorrow nonetheless. It was her stake in the Game, and she wasn’t ready to give it up.

Afterward, she watched a trashy cop show and went to bed early. She left the light on in the hall and the TV still on
in the kitchen, so that its babble would numb her mind. She was afraid of what she might dream.

When Toby returned home, he found his parents writing notes at either end of the dining room table. They could almost have been twins, with their crooked spectacles and short, rumpled hair, their identical frowns of concentration. As the only child of two writers, Toby had always known that his parents led other lives in worlds of their own making. Watching them now, however, he was conscious of his superiority. After all, no imaginary world could compete with the one
he
was a flesh-and-blood hero of.

And now he wasn’t just a champion of the Arcanum. He was a defender of humankind!

“I’ll be in my room,” he announced. “I’ve got stuff to do.”

His father grunted. His mother waved a vague hand.

They both went back to their footnotes.

Toby, meanwhile, went to stare once more at the Escher print above his bed. He looked at his wavering reflection and thought of the visions in the mirrors, and the Lottery of Luck, and a certain neat irony in the order of things. He thought of school.

The secret society had worked out even better than Toby had hoped. As the Chameleons’ dares increased in frequency and boldness, he waited for his membership invitation to arrive.

Two weeks passed. Very well, thought Toby. If the
Chameleons wouldn’t come to him, then he would go to the Chameleons. He would start with their leader, Seth. Seth was swarthy and sulky-looking, claimed to write poetry and was known to do drugs. But Toby told himself he wasn’t frightened of him.

So he tracked Seth down to the clock tower, late one Sunday evening. The place had been off-limits for years, and the school caretaker spent much of his time chasing people out of it. However, successive generations of students always found new ways in. In the candlelit gloom of the ground-floor room, various demigods of the upper school were lounging and smoking.

“It’s a squirt,” Seth drawled, glancing up from the joint he was rolling.
Squirts
was upper-school slang for the junior years. “Come to eavesdrop again. What do you want, squirt?”

Toby gulped. “I, uh, wanted to talk to you. About the Chameleons.”

Seth widened his eyes theatrically. “
Nobody
talks about the Chameleons. It’s the rules.”

“And what would you know about them anyway?” asked one of the demigods, to widespread sniggers.

“Look,” said Toby, trying to shut out the others and focus on Seth, “I don’t mind that the dares and stuff were my idea; in fact, I think it’s great you’re making such a success of it. I’m not here to ask for credit. I just wanted to, well, you know … help out. Participate.”

More laughter, and louder this time. Seth waved a hand for quiet.

“How could someone like
you
possibly help someone like me?” he asked. He sounded genuinely perplexed.

“Erm, I think that’s already been demonstrated, hasn’t it? Because my idea—”

“Listen, squirt,” Seth said in the patient tones used to address children or imbeciles. “It doesn’t matter how many ideas you had or have, or even how good they are. The fact is, you’re not the kind of person who will ever be able to make anything of them. Because other people won’t be interested, so long as the ideas come from you.”

“But I can—”

“No, squirt, you can’t. Now piss off.” Seth threw a beer bottle top at his head. Toby yelped, more from surprise than discomfort. Soon everyone in the room was throwing things and jeering, their grinning faces luridly distorted in the shadows. He fled.

Then came the second conversation that Toby shouldn’t have heard but acted on anyway: Mia’s whispered argument with Mr. Marlow—those tantalizing hints about midnight duels, and the Game, and playing fair.… Yet whenever Toby looked back to the moment he decided to follow Mia to the clock tower, he found he couldn’t remember what he’d actually planned to do. Was it simply to spy on the Chameleons’ secrets? Or was it a last-ditch attempt to redeem himself, this time appealing to Mia for support? It made little difference, of course, for in the tower his whole life was divided into before and after the Game, and everything beforehand became vague and insubstantial.

Yet the memory of Seth’s words still stung. It wasn’t so
much the humiliation that hurt, but the injustice. His powerlessness still astonished him.

Former
powerlessness, that is. Thanks to the Game of Triumphs, Toby reminded himself, he had a quest now. A quest and a destiny.