The Master of Misrule (24 page)

“Release them how? And from what?” Toby asked.

“From the Arcanum, maybe,” Cat said. “Mystic Meg seems to think that means playing the Game here, in our ‘other world.’ ”

“We can worry about that part when we come to it. At least we already know our next move.” Flora held up a card. It showed a hooded figure in a desolate, moonlit landscape. “The prophecy said a guide was waiting for us in the Eight of Cups. The guide might be able to tell us more about the angels, and what kind of ritual is required to summon them. Let’s hope we don’t actually have to slaughter anything.”

“There’s only one way to find out,” said Toby cheerily.

Cat prepared to raise a threshold with her die. She had her amulet ready as well, to use instead of Misrule’s treacherous silver coins. But to her surprise, she didn’t need it. This threshold coin was plain and dark, just as it should be. It looked as if Misrule’s powers over the Arcanum were not as widespread as they’d feared. Perhaps the disruption to the Tower’s threshold was a one-off.

Everyone’s spirits rose. As Cat tossed the coin, her thoughts, like the others’, were preoccupied with winning Eternity. How defeating Misrule might mean the recovery of their own rewards …

She was certainly not thinking of the Minotaur, or his role in the High Priestess’s first prophecy, and its hidden falsehood.

T
HE SETTING FOR THE
T
OWER
had shared a close resemblance to the city they knew, but the Eight of Cups’ location was unfamiliar. They were in a marshland of boggy pools, with rocky outcrops ahead and an overcast night sky above them. The other side of the threshold was apparent only in the remains of a garbage dump, for the wheel sign was in the spokes of a rusting bicycle propped against a waterlogged mattress and an old fridge. The reeds alongside sprouted lager bottles and syringes.

There was a stench of dirty water and rotting weeds. Ghostly lights flickered over the pools and within the chill mist that crept around them.

“Ugh,” said Flora. “What a wretched place.”

“It looked nicer on your card,” said Toby. “And where’s the moon got to?”

As if on cue, the ragged clouds melted away, and a mother-of-pearl moon sailed into view.

It was extraordinary the difference it made to the landscape. What had seemed murky and desolate was now flooded with eerie beauty. Opalescent light danced on the water and reeds, giving the mist that rose up from them a rainbow tint. Even the air smelled sweeter.

“We should stick close,” said Cat, “and wait for the guide the High Priestess told us about. All too easy to get lost in this mist.”

Everything had become too dreamlike for her to be truly anxious, but as the haze condensed into a billowing, creamy fog, and the others sank away into its depths, she felt a stirring of unease. Then she saw Flora emerge, her figure dim and gauzy, and farther away than Cat had thought.

Except it wasn’t Flora. The woman’s hair was darker and longer than Flora’s. Her face was Cat’s face, and Bel’s, too, but different from both: shockingly familiar, impossibly real.

“M-Mum?”

Her mother smiled, and reached out her arms.

From the cloudiness behind, someone called out, “Wait—” but Cat didn’t hear them. She was lurching into the mist and moonshine, their rainbow glisten flooding her with almost unbearable happiness. So her mum hadn’t really been shot by the stranger. She’d managed to escape into the Arcanum. All this time, she’d been waiting for Cat to find her and bring her home—

Cat flung herself forward, blindly. She was pulled into an
embrace of soft, yielding flesh, and felt warm breath and tickling hair against her cheek. Both their faces were wet with tears. Cat closed her eyes. Without knowing it, she had been waiting her whole life for this moment.

“Cat, thank God. I—I was so frightened—I—” It was Bel. Bel, dressed in her croupier’s uniform of tight black skirt and low-necked satin blouse. Her eyes were wide and startled, darting round at the fog. Mascara had smudged down one side of her face. She held on to Cat by both arms.

“I don’t understand. Where are we? What’s happened?”

“You!” Cat choked out. She twisted herself free and backed away. “Why is it
you
?”

“Cat, don’t look at me like that. I—”

“What have you done to my mother?”

“Nothing! It wasn’t me. It wasn’t my fault, I swear it.… Please, wait—don’t leave me here!” begged Bel.

Cat would have thought that if she was going to be terrorized by a phantom, it would have been the man with the stammer and the gun, yet somehow this was worse. She could feel wetness ooze around her ankles and mud suck at her feet. She didn’t care. She just wanted to get away. But the Arcanum-Bel still held out her arms imploringly.

“I’m so sorry, Cat. I didn’t mean for it to happen. I didn’t know what I was getting into. You have to believe me. Please—you have to forgive me. Please …”

The fog swallowed her up, and Cat was alone in the stinking, sinking bog.
“Toby? What are you doing here?” Mia asked, peering at him through a veil of mist.

“I’m searching for Eternity. So we can stop the Master of Misrule.” Toby looked round for the others, but they must have wandered off somewhere. It was odd how little this troubled him.

“Oh. Right. Of course you are.”

“So … what are
you
doing?”

She lowered her voice. “I’m looking for Mr. Marlow. Our fight isn’t finished, you see. Two knights playing for the same triumph at the same time; only one can win. Those are the rules.”

“But I thought you had to start a new round—”

“Shhh!” Mia held up a hand. “What was that?”

“What was what?”

She looked around nervously. “He’s hiding in the fog. I saw him just a minute ago.”

Toby drew nearer to where Mia was standing.

“Look! There—oh God—I saw something move.” Mia’s voice was taut with fear. She beckoned him farther into the gloom. “Follow me, this way.… We have to hide.”

Toby’s breaths came shallow and fast. The moonlight was playing tricks on his vision, so that everywhere he looked, he saw shape-shifting shadows loom out of the fog before falling back and dissolving into nothing. More worryingly, he could feel the ground beginning to soften.

“Mia, stop,” he hissed. “We’re in a swamp. It isn’t safe.”

“That’s why we have to get away. Then we can circle back and catch Marlow before he catches us. Come
on
.”

He stayed where he was.

“I’m not going any farther.”

Mud sucked and tugged at his feet.

“It’s our only chance.”

“No.”

“
Your
only chance.”

Grace looked different than she had in the Eight of Swords. Her hair was wet and straggling, and the red evening dress was stained with mud. “Come on!” Grace called out from the nothingness. “Quick, Flo-Flo. We have to hurry!”

“Wait,” Flora entreated.
“Wait.”

She hastened after her sister again, although this time there was no snow or briars, no drunken revelers, only pearly cloud, and cold waters seeping underfoot. Even as she strained for a glimpse of scarlet skirts and golden hair, she knew it was pointless. The apparition was as insubstantial as water vapor. Yet Flora stumbled on.

The fog rolled and rose around. Flora could barely see her own hand in front of her face. But it cleared a little, and she saw a tall, blond figure, standing—waiting—a few feet ahead.

“Grace!”

“Flo?” said Charlie’s voice.

Tall, blond Charlie. He looked just as he had when they had parted in the study, a shock of hair falling over his clear blue eyes, a disconcerted frown on his face. Flora cursed the Arcanum, her sister and most of all her gullible, useless self. You fool, she thought. Did you really think it would be as easy as that?

“Flo—what is this place? I’m dreaming, right?”

She laughed bitterly. “Ghosts don’t dream.”

“How do you mean?”

“I mean,” she said wearily, “that’s all you are. An illusion. Another phantom of the Game.”

“Funny,” mused Charlie. “It doesn’t feel like being asleep. So perhaps you’re right. Perhaps I
have
died without realizing it. This is pretty much how I imagine limbo to be.” He smiled at her. “Though I’m glad you’re here to keep me company.”

Flora turned away and looked for signs of the others, of real life, but there was nothing. It was just the two of them, alone in the fog blindness.

“Why did you think I was Grace?” Charlie asked.

“Because she was here.”

“Her ghost?”

“Sort of.” Then, forcefully, “But my sister’s not dead.”

“No. No, of course not.”

“That’s why I have to win Eternity: to bring her back. And to save the real you, along with everyone else.” She regarded him ruefully. “Though you don’t know it yet, I’ve put you in terrible danger. Misrule is my fault.”

“I’m not sure I understand.…”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It does if you’re upset about it. I was thinking about Grace earlier. Today was one of Will’s visits to the clinic, you see.”

“Nice that someone still bothers.”

“I suppose, even now, he feels a little guilty.”

“Guilty?” Flora repeated sharply. “Why?”

Charlie tilted his head back to look at the sky, where a sliver of moon had briefly appeared. “Is this where you go, Flora?” he murmured. “The secret place where none of your friends can follow … Is this your other world?”

She shivered. The air felt colder, and the smell of slime and weeds had returned. “Listen, whatever-you-are, you have to tell me. Tell me why Will would feel guilty.”

“Oh. It’s just one of those stupid things. You see, Grace had a bit of a crush on him. During his playboy phase, unfortunately.”

“That’s—that’s ridiculous.”

“A couple of their friends knew about it. It’s no big deal.”

“Shut up. You’re lying. Shut up. You’re just another Arcanum lie, another trick—”

But her protestations were hollow. Flora had always wondered what had driven Grace into the Game, and what prize it could offer that her sister didn’t already have. What, then, if this thing with Will had been more than an unrequited crush? Had Grace gambled on the Triumph of Love to make her dream come true? “Liar,” Flora spat, though it wasn’t any good. The phantom Charlie had spoken truths that the real person never would. Her sister had risked everything, lost herself, broken their family … and all because of a
boy
.

“Flo, don’t cry. Everything’s fine, you know: this is just a dream. And if it’s not real, nothing matters because there’s nothing to lose. I can say what I like. I can do what I want.…”

He leaned in, tenderly.

“It’s
your
fault,” she screamed. “You and your stupid brother. Your fault!” And she hit him across the face.

It made a satisfyingly loud smack. Her own hand tingled from the impact. Then Flora blundered away into the fog.

Blaine had been waiting for this moment for a long, long time. He’d dreamed of it, too—of being in a wasteland of cloud and shadows. Of knowing that Helen was lost and alone, crying for help, while Arthur stood over him and wouldn’t let him pass. Arthur’s eyes would gleam and he would moisten his prissy mouth in anticipation, the way he used to just before he’d hit him.
Boys will be boys
, he’d say as he pulled out the knife.

This was different. This was Arthur’s nightmare. Blaine was king, a master of the Game, and the Arcanum was his hunting ground. As he crept through the coiling haze, he couldn’t always see his stepfather, but he could sense his haphazard, halting movements, only a little way ahead. He could taste Arthur’s fear. He could hear his whimpering, panicked breath and smell his sweat.

Blaine wouldn’t need a knife. There were pools underfoot, shallow, but still deep enough to choke the life out of a man.… Stealthily, he pursued his prey farther into the marshes, along an increasingly tortuous trail. Each time he thought he had finally caught up with Arthur, his quarry would twist away, or the spectral fog-shapes would shift again, and Blaine would be left grasping a fistful of air. As
time went on, he grew more and more confused by what he was following, and why. It seemed endless, these loops through the mud, these spirals through the mist.

A woman was crying somewhere. The sound was muffled and rhythmic, an almost mechanical keening, and was as familiar to him as—

Blaine paused. The sobs were disorientating and made it even harder to concentrate. He moved on. But although the noise grew fainter, it seemed to him there was something he had forgotten, something he needed to do.

He found her lying beside a boggy pool. Her disheveled hair hung down over her face, and she was tearstained and exhausted. She looked at him blindly.

“I thought it was
her
. I followed her. I thought it was over, that everything was going to be all right. But it wasn’t her at all. It was just a trick.”

Blaine crouched beside her. Above them, the tattered clouds cleared to reveal the moon. It wasn’t the mother-of-pearl disc from before: its face was pockmarked and yellow. The pale billows and iridescent sheen had evaporated, leaving marsh slime and reeds, and a damp sky. Blaine took her hands in his.