The Master of Misrule (36 page)

Cat had no idea where the Triumph of Time had taken Blaine, Flora and Toby. She was not, however, alone.

“I d-don’t understand.” Alec Crawley was swaying on his feet. His voice was unsteady, too. “Who—? What—?”

Cat briefly closed her eyes. It wasn’t over, not yet. She supposed she should feel relieved.

“Toby tried to turn back the clock,” she said at last. “At least, I think that’s what he meant to do. To go back in time so everything could be put right … Only it didn’t quite work out. We’ve gone back in time, but not real time in the
real world. Instead, we’ve gone back in time in the Arcanum.”

“How do you know? How do you know this isn’t real?”

Cat looked at her parents’ murderer, sweating and twitching at her elbow, and realized she was no longer afraid of him. The golden curtain hung across the entrance to Temple House, just as it had on her first visit, though there was no concierge waiting to take her invitation, and no sounds of revelry behind the stiff brocade.

“This is only a dim copy of the night I joined the Game. If we’d really gone back in time,” she said flatly, “there’d be a party under way inside, with the High Priest guarding the entrance, and the old kings and queens calling the shots.” And Cat could make a different choice: not to give her invitation to the old man, not to enter the Arcanum—above all, not to release the Hanged Man. But she knew it was too late for that.

She drew back the curtain. The other end of the building was a near mirror image of their own. It was the same composition of black-and-white marble, golden drapes, open door. The doorway opposite, however, framed a different view of Mercury Square, lit by the flame of a blue wheel and seething with people. In the center of the doorway, a silver coin danced in the air.
Heads. Tails. Heads. Tails …

“There,” said Cat. “That’s the real and present world, on the other side of the coin.”

“What’s happening t-to it?”

“Misrule’s moving his own mad version of the Game across the thresholds, and soon everyone will be a player.
They won’t have any choice. They’ll all be enslaved to his Lottery.”

Alec wiped his damp forehead. “Very well, so maybe we’re not in the p-past. Maybe we’re in something better. Maybe this is an alternative present—one we can make our own.”

An alternate reality … another chance … If she turned and walked away, could she go back to some Arcanum equivalent of Greg’s flat and find Bel and her old life, just as it had always been? And if she stayed in it long enough, would she be able to forget there had ever been anything else? “Same world, different view” was how Toby had once described the Arcanum to her. But that wasn’t quite right. One view was smoke and mirrors. The mirrors might be real mirrors, the smoke real smoke, but what you saw in them was still illusion.

The graveyard smell intensified as Alec sidled closer. “You’re still a queen, aren’t you? You have the Game’s powers. You have your t-triumphs. And you can put them to good use, whether we’re in the Arcanum or a p-parallel universe or Hell itself. Together we can—”

Cat thrust her last card into his hand. “Here’s Justice, like you wanted. Do your worst with it.”

“Where are you g-going?”

“Back to reality—back to the present. If I hurry, there’s still time.”

“For what?”

“To find Bel, and make things right. To ask her to forgive me.”

“
Forgive
you?” Alec laughed shrilly. “She b-betrayed you just like she did me. You don’t owe her anything.”

“Fool.” The scent of her angel’s lilies had returned, blowing away the graveyard stench, the taste of bitterness. “I wanted justice, but not at any price. Yes, you murdered my parents; yes, Bel lied. But what does that matter now? Life as we know it is ending.”

“You can’t s-save the world,” he said, clutching at her arm, a whine in his voice. “You can’t stop Misrule. But here you’re a queen. You can r-rule this place. We both can.”

Cat barely heard him. She was thinking of how she had looked at Bel that last time, so hard and so cold, when she said she had no certainties,
nothing
, because Bel had taken all of them away.

But of course Cat had certainties. She had twelve years’ worth of them. Twelve years of a love that was lived in but not looked at, because it was so solid, so all-encompassing, that whatever happened outside of it couldn’t touch the sureness of what was within. There was no alternative to that truth.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered to Bel. Card or no card, she finally understood what her angel needed, if it was to be released. Temperance weighed and measured, but in search of balance, not judgment. The words came to her like those from a remembered dream:
Yet I shall temper justice with mercy.…

She stepped into the house.

“Wait. Come b-back.”

Cat walked past the curtain, her eyes fixed on the
dancing coin. It was the emblem of Misrule’s power, she was sure of it. His power, and that of the angels still imprisoned in his Game.

She walked back to her own time, back toward Bel, and forgiveness. She walked into the perfume of lilies and the sound of running water, the rush of wings.

“I’m w-warning you—”

But Alec’s warning came too late. The first of the cherubim was released.

The first evening Blaine came to Temple House was three days after he had arrived in London. At that point, he was sleeping on the floor of a friend’s brother’s flat. He wasn’t a good houseguest: brooding and jittery, ready to snap at the slightest thing. The brother’s girlfriend didn’t like him being there; she kept looking at his bandaged arm and pursing her lips. He could see he’d have to move on. That afternoon, he had phoned Helen and, for once, she’d actually come to the phone, her voice quavering with hope. “Hello?” she said. “Hello? Is that you?”

He had put the phone down before Helen could name whom she was hoping for. It would be Arthur, not him; that was for sure. For the rest of the afternoon, he trudged relentlessly through the streets, gripping the card in his pocket. Nobody he asked had ever heard of a Mercury Square. Yet he found it in the end.

Or it found him, he thought, looking at how the tree branches blurred into the bronze dusk, just as they had on his first visit. Somehow, the Triumph of Time’s chiming
clocks and running sand had taken him back to the start. The start of everything. This time, though, he must call his mother. Tell her that there was danger ahead, that bad things were happening, that he would look after her—

He must tell her he was coming.

Then he heard a gunshot from within the house.

The bullet grazed Cat’s arm; she felt the sting and shock of it, and the warmth of blood. Alec’s eyes bulged and his arm shook as he waved the gun. “No!” he cried. “You can’t go. You have to give me your t-triumphs—”

Cat didn’t even look at him. She was gazing at Misrule’s coin, whose spinning had begun to slow, to grow heavy and languid.

But when Blaine burst through the golden curtain, he only had eyes for the Knight of Wands, and the jagged black shadow beneath him.

Blaine slammed into Alec Crawley’s back.

They both went skidding across the floor, snarling and grappling. The gun fell, too, and was scrabbled for by Alec and snatched away by Blaine. He drove his fist into the man’s face and a flash of joy sparked through him. As the Knight of Wands flailed and writhed beneath him, Blaine gripped him by his hair and smashed his head against the floor.

“Don’t you dare hurt her,” he shouted. “Don’t you
dare
. You’re dead. You should be a ghost—just like the other monster I’ve been chasing. All this time—this
useless
time!”

He wanted to bury his fists and knees into every soft part of the man’s body, grinding him into bone dust, blood paste.

Something plucked at his shirt. He twitched his shoulders impatiently. Then he heard his name.

“It’s all right, Blaine,” said Cat. “You’ve saved me. You’ve won.”

She was standing there, drained but resolute, clutching her bloodied arm.

Blaine’s own arm ached. The Knight of Wands stirred and groaned as the shadow pooled around him, thick as oil. Blaine felt soiled by it. All that anger and hate, all that fear … Blaine took the gun from the waistband of his jeans and got to his feet. He motioned Alec to get up as well, his breath rasping harshly.

“I should have stayed, I know that now. I should have seen it through. When I abandoned my mother, I let Arthur win. I abandoned myself, too. I gave up everything. I let the Game take me over. I let it trick me and—”

A sob forced its way out of his throat. He shuddered all over. But when he was able to speak again, his voice was calm.

“Arthur White was a bad man, and you’re far worse. In fact, you belong to Hell itself. But I’m no killer. Here.”

He passed the gun to Cat.

“Blaine … no. This isn’t what I—” She paused. “We might not have our cards, but I think we’re in your move now. So whatever happens next, it’s got to be your call.” Cat had come to realize that whatever strange angels or demons needed to be released, they were as much a part of her, Blaine’s, Flora’s and Toby’s personal history as the Arcanum’s. To win these last moves, and unleash the powers the
cards represented, would depend on the choices they made for their lives outside the Game.

“I understand.” He glanced at Misrule’s slow-turning coin. “It’s all right. Just keep the gun pointed at his head and make sure he doesn’t pull any tricks.”

Cat stood between Alec Crawley and the curtain to the false past. Blaine stood before the doorway to the true present.

“Here’s your choice,” he announced. Blaine pointed to where the burning wheel whirled in the sky. Fireworks were flying from its spokes in a rainbow explosion of wands, cups, swords and pentacles as the reckless crowd cheered below.

“Either you’re going to go out into our city and face what’s coming, along with the rest of humanity, or you can take your chance in the Arcanum, starting with a card from my deck.”

“You’re d-dealing me a new move?”

“It’ll be a lucky dip. I have seven cards from my Suit of Wands and two triumphs for you to pick from. Here’s the threshold.”

He rolled his die along the checkered floor. The print of a silver wheel appeared on a black square.

Alec Crawley looked at Cat, and the curtain behind her. Her face was white, her arm bloody, but her aim was steady.

“I have a t-triumph of my own now. Justice.”

Blaine shrugged. “You think Justice will count for anything in Misrule’s world? Then stay here to find out.”

“All right.” Alec Crawley licked his cracked lips. “All
right.” He touched the blood on his face and laughed a little. “I’ll hazard another card.”

The King of Wands held out his deck. The illustrated sides were blank. Cards dealt by Game Masters to players always were, until they were taken into the Arcanum. The knight fumbled through them with shaking hands. Even so, his eyes gleamed with excitement at the moment of choice. He was a gambler, after all.

Alec Crawley bent to the threshold’s sign, and traced the pattern of its wheel. A coin appeared in his palm. He fingered it, and the card, with a final hesitancy. He grinned crookedly at Cat. “Time to t-take what’s due to me.”

In a flip and flash of metal, he was gone. With a feathery rustle, the thick shadow that followed him was gone, too. The second angel had been released.

Misrule’s coin faltered, and began to sink.

Cat and Blaine looked at each other.

“What—what card did he get?”

Blaine flicked through the remainder of his deck. He raised his brows.

“Death.”

As soon as Flora realized where she was, she was sure that everything was going to be all right. Misrule’s cataclysms faded into insignificance. Here and now was what mattered. Dirty traces of snow rimmed the grass within the railings, pavement and road alike were churned with icy black sludge and brown grit, but all Flora’s attention was fixed on the red thread she still held. The end of it was tied across the
threshold of Temple House, and Grace was on the other side, framed in the doorway. Beyond her was the garden: golden-green, luminous.

“It’s my first night,” said Flora, exultant. “The first night I came to Temple House and joined the Game. It means we can go back to how we were. I’ve brought you home.”

She waited for Grace to step out of the doorway, under the thread.

Grace, however, remained where she was. “This isn’t home.”

“It must be. Time’s gone into reverse. At last, the Game has given us our very own miracle. Come here. Come to me.”

But her sister shook her head. “I can’t, Flo,” she said very quietly. “I took a gamble and my gamble failed. The Arcanum has held me for five years. I am too much a part of it now to come home.”

“I can still save you—”

“You have already saved me. How else could I have escaped the Spinners and got here?” She indicated the garden behind her, with its roses and rainbows and shining leaves. “Only Love could bring me this far.”

“Yes,” said Flora, crying, “because Love conquers all.”

“No,” said Grace with a great and terrible tenderness, “it doesn’t.”

She reached out and stroked Flora’s hair, as she had before. “Listen to me. You must be the one to cut the thread. Not to banish me, but to set me free. From the Arcanum, from everything.”

Flora screwed up her face against the drowsy murmur of the bees, the warm scent of honeysuckle. “I won’t do it. I won’t.” Her voice cracked. “You said you’d be with me to the end.”

“This
is
the end. And you have to reverse it. For our mother and father, for Will and Charlie, for everyone you’ve ever known, and a world of strangers besides.”

“We already failed—”

“It’s not too late. The cherubim can still be released. There is still time for another sacrifice.” She held Flora’s hands across the thin red silk. “Please,” she said softly. “Let me go.”

The leaves whispered, the sunshine welled.

“I love you,” said Flora.

“I love you,” said Grace.

“Forever.” Flora wept as she snapped the thread that tied her to her sister, and the angel to the Arcanum.