The Mime Order Read Free Page A

black construction with a latticed lunette, used as an entrance during the monarch days. We were low down here, too low to be seen from the guard towers. A flight of stone steps stretched beyond the gate, lichen-splotched, with a narrow ramp for stretchers.
    The moon illuminated what little I could see of the White Tower. A high wall stood between the keep and the gate—something we could hide behind. A powerful searchlight beamed from a turret. The sirens roared a single, unbroken note. In Scion, that signaled a major security breach.
    “That’s where the guards live.” Nell pointed to the keep. “They keep the voyants in the Bloody Tower.”
    “Where will the steps take us?” I said.
    “The innermost keep. We have to hurry.”
    As she spoke, a unit of Ravens came marching up the path, directly opposite the gate. We flattened ourselves against the walls. A bead of sweat trembled at Nick’s temple. If they saw that the gate was secure, they might not check it.
    Luck was on our side. The Ravens moved on. Once they were out of sight, I pushed myself from the wall with trembling arms. Nell slid to the ground, swearing under her breath.
    Above our hiding spot, several more sirens joined their voices to the warning. I tried opening the gate, to no avail. The chains were held together with a padlock. Seeing it, Nadine knocked me out of the way and took a tiny flathead screwdriver from her belt. She slid it into the lower half of the keyhole, then pulled out a silver pick.
    “This could take a while.” It was getting hard to hear over the noise. “The pins feel rusty.”
    “We don’t have a while.”
    “Just get the others.” Nadine didn’t take her eyes off the padlock. “We should stay together.”
    As she spoke, Nick held the phone to his ear and whispered, “Muse?” He spoke to Eliza in a low voice. “She’ll be here as soon as she can,” he said to me. “She’s sending Spring-heel’d Jack’s footpads to help us.”
    “How long?”
    “Ten minutes. The footpads should be here sooner.”
    Ten minutes was too long.
    The searchlight moved overhead, searching the innermost keep. Nell drew away from it, her eyes narrowed against the glare. She pushed herself into the corner and folded her arms, breathing through her nose.
    I paced between the walls, checking every brick. If the Ravens were circling the complex, it wouldn’t be long before they came back. We had to open the gate, get the prisoners out of the way, and return the padlock to its place before then. I dug my fingers into the groove between the elevator doors, trying to pry them apart, but they wouldn’t open an inch.
    A few feet away, Nadine took out another pick. She was working at an awkward angle, given that the padlock was on the other side of the gate, but her hands were steady. Zeke emerged from the stairwell with a flock of nervous prisoners at his back. I motioned for him to stay where he was, shaking my head.
    At the gate, Nadine sprang the padlock. We helped her pull the heavy chains from the bars, careful not to let the links make too much noise, and together we pushed open the Traitors’ Gate. It scraped against the gravel, its hinges groaning with disuse, but the sirens drowned out the noise. Nell ran up the steps and beckoned us.
    “They’ll have blocked all the exits,” she said when I was close. “That padlock was the only weak point in this place. We’ll have to climb over the south wall.”
    Climbing. My forte. “Vision, get the others,” I said. “Be ready to run.”
    I crept up the steps, keeping low, my revolver gripped in both hands. Another set of steps led up to one of the towers on either side of the archway. A quick jump would take us between two battlements in the adjacent wall, which was much lower than I’d expected. Clearly Scion didn’t expect voyants to get this far in the rare event that they escaped the Bloody Tower. I signaled to Nick to bring the others, then headed up the second set of steps,