The Song Rising

  WE NEED EVERYONE, OR EVERYONE LOSES.

  NO SAFE PLACE. NO SURRENDER.

  The black moth flew beneath it.

  At that moment, Warden emerged from the shadows and came to stand beside me, towering above them all. Spring-heel’d Jack let out a nervous snicker.

  ‘Form a circle,’ Warden said, ‘and join hands.’

  Spluttered protests and hoots of laughter followed this command. ‘I’m not holding her hand,’ somebody said, making the nearest mime-queen look wounded.

  ‘By all means,’ he said, ‘stand beside a person whose hands offend you less.’

  Maria took a candle from her pocket. I attached my oxygen mask. Painfully, like children cajoled into playing together, the Unnatural Assembly shambled into what could arguably be described as a circle. Some grasped each other’s hands with casual ease; others were almost hysterical at the thought of touching their neighbour. As Nick and Eliza joined the ring, Warden reached for my hand.

  Our fingers interlocked. My pulse flickered through my hands, in my neck, at the crease of my elbow. Worn leather pressed against my palm, soft between my knuckles and beside my inner wrist. Nick took my other hand, while Tom took Warden’s. The ring was closed.

  The Unnatural Assembly stood in silence together, waiting for the æther to open around them.

  I had never thought to see this in my lifetime.

  Warden murmured in Gloss. The candle grew brighter. Spirits were drawn into the ring, where they basked in an unbroken chain of auras. Nick and Maria had already dosed themselves with salvia; both were swaying on their feet.

  ‘Tom,’ Warden said, ‘the message. Hold it in your mind.’

  Tom squinted at the graffiti, mouthing the words. Close by, Maria’s head rolled forward, but she kept hold of the hands on either side of her. Warden’s aura shifted.

  ‘Now, Paige.’

  My spirit jumped, into his dreamscape.

  I had been here before. The path was familiar, through the red velvet drapes and over the ashes to his sunlit zone, where I joined his dream-form beside the amaranth in the bell jar. He was already gazing at the smoke that was gathering, storm-like, in his mind.

  I had never been inside him while he was using his gift. His hand took mine, echoing our position outside the dreamscape. And now that no one else could hear, I gave him a message.

  ‘Meet me at midnight, on the lower deck.’

  His dream-form nodded.

  The golden cord vibrated with a force that was almost violent, pulled like a tightrope by our proximity in a single dreamscape. Gradually, the smoke began to twist and form shapes. Memories.

  He is searching for her in the forest, buried to his ankles in snow, holding up a lantern from their father’s storehouse. This was Nick’s memory. I couldn’t explain how I knew. I was seeing through his eyes, feeling as he must have felt, but still an observer. Eight sets of footprints snake between the trees, veering away from the path. The sound of his heart fills his ears like a drum.

  A new memory, someone else’s. The gun must have been heavy at first, but now it is as much a part of her arm as a muscle. She releases it only to ransack the other woman’s pockets. Blood cascades down her chin and soaks the neckline of her shirt. Her hands never shake when she searches a corpse, but this one is different. This one is Roza.

  ‘Stoyan!’

  Her hands sift through wet tissue and fabric and bone, picking out two precious, blood-slick bullets. One she must save for herself, one for Hristo.

  Survival first. Pain later.

  ‘It’s over,’ Hristo says. ‘All they need is a formal surrender. We’ll go to the border, to Turkey—’

  ‘You can try.’

  The district is ablaze around them. All she can hear is the rattle of gunfire. The English soldiers are almost upon them. ‘Sit with me, Hristo,’ she says. ‘Let’s go to hell with a little dignity.’

  ‘Stoyan—’

  ‘Yoana.’ She lights her last cigarette, her hands gloved in blood. ‘If we’re dying now, please, for once, call me by my name.’

  Hristo kneels in front of her. ‘If you won’t try, I must. My family—’ He squeezes her wrists. ‘I’ll pray for you. Good luck, Yoana.’

  She hardly notices him leave, knowing she will never see him again. Her gaze falls to the gun.

  Back to Nick. I was rooted in place, unable to stop watching.

  Now there are more footprints than eight people could make. He runs. A patrol has come through this part of the forest.

  In the clearing, the tents have been torn down. A sign gives notice of their execution.

  She is curled on her side by the ashes of their campfire. Håkan is nearby, prostrate, his coat drenched in rust. Their hands reach across snow. Between them, the bottle is undamaged, the bottle they must have bought in secret, the bottle of wine with a Danish label. He gathers her body into his arms and screams like a dying thing.

  Warden’s dream-form released me, and the cord rang again. ‘Go, Paige,’ he said.

  My spirit fled.

  I woke gasping for air. Nick was on his knees, his hand crushing mine. I jumped again, tearing from my body.

  I glimpsed enough of Tom’s dreamscape to tell that it took the shape of a factory. Dust fell all around me as I launched myself into his sunlit zone, where his dream-form’s hand reached for mine. Contact between two dream-forms was deeply intimate, but there was no time for embarrassment. The moment we connected, I knew Warden had been right. The memories arced between us like lightning.

  Now all we had to do was hold on.

  As soon as I landed back in my body, Tom gritted his teeth and projected the memories as oracular images. They hit us first; then the rest of the Assembly drew in their breath as they succumbed. Instead of the dream-like way in which Warden experienced memory, I saw them like pages in a flick book. The forest and the burning street smothered my vision.

  ‘Hold the circle,’ Warden commanded. The memories repeated over and over, faster and faster, lifted away from us by the spirits, until all I could see was the moth and the message.

  It held for a while, long enough to be remembered. Then we all fell down.

  Night and day didn’t exist in the Beneath, but the séance had exhausted the Unnatural Assembly. The lights turned off, allowing them to sleep. I had already noticed the division in our ranks. Most of my supporters had clustered on the lower deck, while those who spoke against me were on the upper. All I could do was hope that Glym would be able to unite them.

  I sat on the vacant bunk beside Eliza’s, gazing into the blackness. The thought of leaving now, when I was just about holding on to their loyalty, was hard to stomach. Even harder to stomach was the knowledge that Nick, who was asleep or pretending to be, had spent the last few hours in his bunk, ignoring anyone who spoke to him.

  His private memory had been used as fuel. As propaganda. His little sister’s murder.

  ‘You’re going to give me to Styx.’

  The voice was hoarse. Light flickered from the end of a torch.

  ‘I overheard you talking to Wynn.’ Ivy was sitting cross-legged on her bunk. ‘I want to do it.’

  Wynn had covered the ‘T’ on her cheek with a square dressing. I didn’t say anything.

  ‘She doesn’t want to see it, but you know I won’t last long down here. Someone will cut my throat when I’m looking the wrong way. The only reason they haven’t killed me already is because you’ve been here,’ she said. ‘So it has to be me. For all our sakes.’

  I breathed in through my nose.

  ‘If you stay with us,’ I said, ‘then you’ll be killed. But if I send you, Wynn will betray us to Scion.’

  ‘There is another way.’

  The new voice had an Irish accent. Ivy aimed the torch. Róisín Jacob was awake, watching us from her bunk. Her lip had puffed up since the attack.

  ‘I know the toshers. Used to help them scavenge in our section of the Neckinger,’ she said. ‘I like Styx. And I’
m in better shape than Ivy. Send me.’

  ‘Ro,’ Ivy started.

  ‘You’re in no fit state to be crawling through tunnels. You’ll give me to Styx,’ she said to me, ‘and Wynn will accept it without question, because I’ll tell her I’m going of my own free will.’

  ‘They won’t let you. This is my responsibility. It was my crime.’ Ivy’s voice cracked. ‘Besides, Paige needs to punish me, or someone else will.’

  There was a pause before Róisín said slowly, ‘They will see you punished. You’ll be officially chosen, and then I’ll offer to go in your stead. But, Ivy, the one person here that Wynn won’t stand to lose again is you. She suffered enough the first time.’

  Ivy buried her head in her arms. ‘I don’t know,’ she said, her voice muffled.

  ‘You need to decide by tomorrow,’ I said. ‘The Glym Lord will announce that he’s stepping in as interim Underlord in my absence. He’ll also announce that Ivy Jacob has been sentenced to a life in the Beneath for her crimes against the syndicate. Róisín, if you’re going, you’ll need to come forward and insist that you take her punishment. And, Ivy, you will act as if seeing Róisín sent in your place is a far higher price to pay than going yourself.’

  I had never heard myself sound so callous. Ivy stared at Róisín, then flung me a bitter look.

  ‘I won’t have to act,’ she said, and turned over.

  I dropped my gaze, clenched my jaw. Róisín watched the lump beneath the blanket for a while.

  ‘She’ll understand,’ she said to me. ‘Wynn, I mean. All she’s ever wanted is for us vile augurs to be able to make our own choices. I’ve made mine.’

  She laid her head back on the pillow. I rose from the bunk and walked into the darkness, holding my jacket around myself.

  Relief warred against self-disgust. I had been ready to send Ivy. Barely a month of being Underqueen, and I was already becoming someone I didn’t recognise. Someone who would punish a person who was already broken. Someone who would do anything to achieve her aims.

  Only a tissue of morality now set me apart from Haymarket Hector.

  Warden was waiting for me in a deserted sleeping area. I sat on the opposite bunk and set my torch down on the mattress.

  ‘You leave for Manchester in four hours,’ he said.

  My fingers ran over the bandage on my hand.

  ‘Lucida will be here by morning. She will ensure the Glym Lord is accepted as your interim, and that no further violence occurs.’ He paused. ‘I make the crossing to the Netherworld at dawn.’

  I only nodded in response. The two bunks were so close that our knees almost touched.

  Sweat coated my nape. I had thought about these words all day, but couldn’t let them out. I couldn’t even look at him. I would only lose the will to do this.

  ‘The other night, I made a mistake,’ I said eventually. ‘I should have called the Unnatural Assembly right away, to tell them about Senshield being able to detect the fourth order. So they could hear it from me first. So I could frame it to our advantage.’

  My words were too clear in the silence of this place, a silence untouched by the music of the citadel.

  ‘I could have got there before Weaver. But I let myself be persuaded to wait until morning, because I wanted to see you. I wanted to be with you – to be selfish, just for a few hours. Those hours put Weaver ahead of me.’

  His gaze burned on my face.

  ‘I’m Underqueen, and you’re . . . a distraction I can’t afford.’ It took effort to say this, to believe this. ‘I swore to myself that I would sacrifice everything if it meant I could take down Scion. If it meant that voyants could be free. We can’t let the Mime Order fail, Warden, not after what we’ve been through to get here. We can’t put it in jeopardy.’

  It was some time before he said, ‘Say it.’

  My face had been hidden behind my hair. Now I lifted it.

  ‘You said change had a personal cost for all of us.’ I looked him in the eye. ‘You are what change will cost me.’

  We sat there for a long time. I wanted to take it back; with difficulty, I stopped myself. It seemed like a lifetime before he spoke again.

  ‘You need not justify your choices.’

  ‘I wouldn’t choose it. Not if it wasn’t necessary. If it were different—’ I looked away. ‘But . . . it isn’t.’

  He didn’t deny it.

  Jaxon had been right about words. They could grant wings, or they could tear them away.

  Words were useless now. No matter what I said, how hard I tried to articulate it in a way that he could understand, I would never be able to express to this Rephaite what it would do to me when I surrendered him to the war we had started, or how much I had wanted our stolen hours to continue. I had thought those hours would be my candles, as our days grew darker. Points of light, of fleeting warmth.

  ‘Perhaps this is for the best,’ Warden said. ‘You already dwell too deep in shadows.’

  ‘I would have gone into the shadows for you,’ I said. ‘But . . . I can’t allow myself to care about you this much, not when I’m Underqueen. I can’t afford to feel the way I do when I’m with you. We can fight on the same side, but you can’t be my secret. And I can’t be yours.’

  When he moved, I thought he was going to leave without saying anything. Then, gently, his hands clasped mine.

  If I ever touched him again, he would be wearing gloves. It would be in passing. By mistake.

  ‘When I return,’ he said, ‘we will be allies. Nothing more. It will be . . . as if the Guildhall never was.’

  It should have been a weight off my shoulders. My life was already too dangerous. Instead, I felt hollow, as if he had taken something from me that I had never known was there. I went to him and buried my face in his neck.

  We sat with our arms around each other, holding too tightly and not tightly enough. Once we left this place, there would be no more talks beside the fire. No more nights spent in his company, when I could forget the war and suffering that loomed on the horizon. No more dances in derelict halls. No more music.

  ‘Goodbye, little dreamer,’ he said.

  I almost voiced my answer. Instead, I pressed my forehead against his, and deep in his eyes, a flame was kindled. As his thumb grazed my jaw, I committed the way his hands felt on my skin to a hidden vault in my memory. I wasn’t sure which of us brought our lips to the other’s first.

  It lasted far too long for a farewell. A moment. A choice. A mirror of the first time we had touched this way, behind the red drapes in the nest of the enemy – when danger had been everywhere, but a song had still been rising in us both. A song I wasn’t sure that anything could silence.

  Our lips parted. I breathed him in, one more time.

  I stood up, turned my back, and walked away.

  PART II

  Engine of Empire

  10

  Manchester

  3 December, 2059

  The train glided across the snowbound English countryside. Not that we could see any of it – the four of us were hidden in a small baggage compartment – but Alsafi’s contact had given us a satellite tracker, a requirement for safe passage, allowing us to watch the progress of our journey.

  We had met the contact outside Euston Arch station, and she had sneaked us on to a non-stop service after pressing the tracker into my hand. Another member of Alsafi’s network would take us to a safe location in Manchester.

  I had decided, in the end, to take Eliza with us, too. She and Tom had long since fallen asleep, but Maria and I were alert.

  ‘So,’ Maria said, ‘the plan – such as it stands – is to locate this person Danica thinks can help us—’

  ‘Jonathan Cassidy,’ I said.

  ‘—locate the factory where the portable scanners are being made, and infiltrate Senshield’s manufacturing process. Find out how they build the scanners. That’s it? That’s the famous plan?’

  ‘Well, it’s a start. If you want to dismantle something, you s
hould know how it’s put together. There must be a point at which an ordinary piece of machinery is converted to an active Senshield scanner.’ I sighed. ‘Look, we don’t have any other leads. And you never know: we might unearth some information about Senshield’s core, and how it’s powered – and where it is.’

  ‘Hm.’ She peered at the tracker. ‘Let’s hope Danica got her facts straight this time, or we could find ourselves walking into another trap.’ The light from the screen tinged her face with blue. ‘There’s some information in here about “enclaves”, but I don’t understand it.’

  I took it from her and tapped a tiny symbol of a house on the screen. ENCLAVE, the tracker read. LOOK FOR BLACK HELLEBORE.

  ‘What’s black hellebore?’ Maria said.

  ‘He’s using the language of flowers,’ I realised, after a moment. ‘Black hellebore points to the relief of anxiety. We must be able to find shelter and supplies where it grows.’

  Alsafi must have been preparing for an emergency like this for a long time. Interesting that he spoke the language of flowers, the code the syndicate had used in its scrimmages for years. I had never liked him in the colony, but his work was turning out to be vital to our survival.

  While Maria dozed, I occupied myself by studying Scion Britain on the tracker. The territory covered the places that had once been called Scotland and Wales, which were no longer recognised as separate countries; England and Britain were used almost interchangeably by Scion. The island was divided into eight regions, each of which had one citadel, which acted as its regional ‘capital’ –though all bowed to the will of London. The surrounding areas were peppered with towns, villages and conurbations, all under the yoke of Scion outposts. We were headed into the North West region, to its citadel – Manchester, centre of industry.

  It had been ten years since I had last left London. It had kept hold of me for so long.

  I nodded off against the side of the compartment for a while, my hand still curled around the tracker. Everything that had happened over the last few days had left me hungry for sleep.

  At just past one in the morning, the train came to a halt, jolting me awake. Maria took the tracker from my unresisting hand. When she saw our location, she stiffened.