The words were going in, but I couldn’t make sense of them. I had known that most of the country was under Scion rule, except for pockets of rebel-held land, but I hadn’t thought it would be much different from how it was here. Anti-unnatural propaganda. No safer place.
‘Took me far too long to escape. I reached the coast and stowed on board a ship carrying lumber to Liverpool. Then I made a living for myself here. For a time.’
He kept eating. The room was tilting on its head. They were using forced labour in Ireland, my homeland – bleeding it dry to fuel Nashira’s vision of a world ruled by Scion.
‘I don’t understand,’ I managed. ‘On ScionEye, they’ve always talked about “the Pale”. I thought—’
‘You thought that was the only area Scion had full control over. It’s a nice lie they tell their denizens, so they can convince everyone that we brogues are violent. There is no Pale. Scion controls Ireland.’
The next question was one I shouldn’t ask. He was right; I shouldn’t taint my memories. I shouldn’t know. I should keep my childhood in a glass box, where nothing could stain it.
‘Did you—’ I stopped, then: ‘Did you ever hear of Feirm na mBeach Meala?’
‘I didn’t.’
Of course he hadn’t. ‘It was a dairy farm in Tipperary. Family-owned,’ I said, already knowing that he would shake his head. ‘The owners’ names were Éamonn Ó Mathúna and Gráinne Uí Mhathúna.’
‘They would have lost it. Most family farms were merged into larger ones. Factory farms.’
My grandfather had always been opposed to factory farming. His animals had been treated gently. Quality over quantity, he’d told me once while he bottled milk. Rush the cow, spoil the cream. That farm had been their life; all they had worked for since they married in their teens.
‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘For telling me.’
‘Not a bother.’ The man patted my hand. ‘I wish you all the best of luck with what you’re trying to do, Paige Ní Mhathúna, but it’s best you don’t think about Ireland any more. There’s a reason this cookshop is called by the name it is.’ He turned away. ‘All of us left loved ones in the shadow.’
Manchester spun past the window, a mural of grey shapes against the sky. I sat in silence on the monorail.
The birthplace of my memory was gone. I should have known that Scion, traders in human flesh, would have no mercy on the children of Ireland. I pictured soldiers marching through the Glen of Aherlow, setting fire to everything they touched.
The wind scourged my face as I got off the train. My ribs felt broken, as if they could no longer hold my shape. I had left, and my grandparents had stayed. And it couldn’t be undone. Even if they weren’t dead, losing the farm would have killed them inside. I forced myself not to think of them dying in a camp, or trying desperately to live off the land.
I would become stone. For the people here, for my grandparents, for myself. I would shatter Scion, as they had shattered the country I loved, even if it took me every day of the rest of my life.
And I would begin here. No matter what the cost.
Darkness had fallen by the time I got back to Essex Street. The Red Rose was stifling and crammed with people, most of whom were engrossed in another icecrosse game and sporting waistcoats stamped with MANCHESTER ANCHORS or MANCHESTER CONQUERORS. When I’d forged a path through the elbows and backs, Hari beckoned me to the counter. I took the polystyrene cup of tea he handed me, along with the key to the safe house, and trudged up the stairs, leaving flecks of snow in my wake. Tom was waiting for me in the living room.
‘Any luck, Underqueen?’
‘Yes.’ I took off my respirator. Beneath it, my hair was pasted to my forehead and nape. ‘Looks like we need to get into SciPLO Establishment B.’
I relayed to him what I had learned. He stroked his beard, eyes slightly narrowed.
‘They’re going to great lengths to keep what happens in there a secret,’ he said when I finished. ‘Why?’
‘Senshield is Vance’s key weapon. She has to protect it,’ I said. ‘A portable Senshield, especially, has to be kept secret – if the Vigiles had more than a suspicion that they were about to become obsolete, then Scion would be dealing with more than a few small-scale revolts. I think she wants to arm all the soldiers with the scanners, then axe the Vigiles.’
‘Maybe you’re right. Well, nice work. I didna have any luck on my end,’ he said. ‘I dressed like a beggar and waited outside Establishment D. I couldna get many of the workhands to talk, but those that did said nothing out of the ordinary happened in there. Gillies drove me off after a while, so I went to Establishment A. Same result.’
‘That’s because there’s nothing to know,’ I said, ‘unless you work in Establishment B.’
He smiled grimly. ‘And nobody comes out of there to tell the tale.’
Eliza and Maria returned as he spoke. They had visited the voyant publishing house in Withy Grove, trying to find out what they could about Catrin, to no avail. While the Querent’s writers were sympathetic to the Mime Order’s cause, they had the same ethos as Grub Street: strictly revolution through words. I updated them on what I had uncovered, then told them to get warm and have something to eat. I needed space to think.
In the attic, I sat alone and marked two locations on a map. The first was that of SciPLO Establishment B, which was in the adjacent section of the citadel. The second was that of Spinningfields Prison, quarter of a mile from here, the current abode of Catrin Attard.
For a long time, I sat in the dark, considering my options.
Leaving aside the botched raid on the warehouse, this would be the Mime Order’s first heist. There was information in that factory, and I meant to steal it.
First, I needed to get inside. I was a dreamwalker, capable of moving through walls and locked doors, but my weakness – my need for oxygen – put me on a time limit. My life-support masks weren’t designed to sustain me for more than a few minutes; I needed longer to investigate the factory, and if it was there, to destroy the core – and I didn’t yet have the mastery of my spirit to stay in someone else’s body for that long without causing damage to my own.
I would have to go to the factory in person. And to do that, especially without alerting Roberta, I would need help.
Catrin Attard was eager to oppose Scion, if her short-lived union with the Vigiles was anything to go by. She would have the level of local knowledge and support, as an Attard, to get me into SciPLO Establishment B. There were a lot of good reasons to approach her. She was about to get acquainted with the end of a rope.
Catrin and Roberta Attard. These sisters were like two halves of Hector: one with his bloodlust, the other with his unwillingness to change.
Terebell would want me to do whatever it took to find Senshield’s core. Something in that factory would lead us there. I felt it.
I got up and restlessly paced the room. As I passed the window, a glint of colour caught my attention. A Scuttler was opposite the safe house, watching. Her lavender neckerchief was vivid even in the smog.
Roberta. She had sent her people to keep an eye on me, and she didn’t care if I knew it.
A burst of resolve had me tipping the contents of my backpack on to the floor, searching out my oxygen mask. Despite the injury it had suffered during the scrimmage, my gift had sharpened over the past few months. I might be stronger than I thought. There was one way to find out.
I had learned a hard lesson at the warehouse, going in without any evidence but what Danica had overheard. This time, I would make certain that we weren’t walking into a trap.
I knew the physical location of Establishment B, but it took a while to find it in the æther. When I was sure I had the right place – crammed with weakly flickering dreamscapes, enfeebled by fatigue – I took hold of the first person I encountered.
A warren of machinery surrounded me. Everything was washed in the inimical glow of a furnace. The smell was beyond atrocious: a hot, iron stench, as
strong as if the walls were bleeding. And the noise: a deafening cacophony of gears and mechanisms, a soulless heartbeat that vibrated through my teeth. I was a morsel in the mouth of hell. My host, who I had managed to keep on her feet, was soaked in sweat and hunched over a tray of metal sheets. Hands moved on either side of her, combing through them with quick fingers.
This was a real, working factory, at least – not another dummy facility set up by Vance. I cast my eyes around for any hint of Senshield, any trace of ethereal technology. It always took a while for my vision to clear after a jump, but I could just see an armed Vigile standing guard in the doorway.
‘Password.’
I flinched at the rough voice. A second Vigile, with a face concealed by a respirator, moved in front of the workstation. I was so taken aback, I could think of no more eloquent response than: ‘What?’
‘Password, now.’
The other workhands cowered. When I only stared, mute with shock, he said, ‘Come with me.’ The other Vigile’s head turned sharply. ‘Commandant, suspected unnatural infiltrator.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said faintly. ‘I just – I’ve forgotten it.’
He grasped my host body by the shoulder and shoved her away from her workstation. Panic had me scrambling for the æther – I threw off my borrowed flesh and soared back into my own body. My fingers clawed at the oxygen mask and I rolled on to my side, gasping.
Scion had found a way to stop me accessing their buildings. I should have expected this, after I had walked straight into the Archon in a stolen body, bold as brass, and threatened the Grand Inquisitor. Now they had patched that weakness in their armour. All they had to do was be vigilant. If anyone behaved strangely, they could ask for a password, which would have been agreed upon earlier. If the person couldn’t give it, they were identified as a possible victim of possession.
I felt naked. My gift was the one weapon I had known I could use to hurt them.
This had to be Vance, with Jaxon as her advisor. He knew I couldn’t access memories – that I wouldn’t know a password. He knew the signs to watch for: the vacant eyes, the nosebleeds, the jerky movements. I hadn’t yet learned how to act natural in a host.
I pulled off my sweater and breathed, letting the sweat cool on my skin. The workhand would have fainted when I left her; they might not guess it had been me. Her forgetting the password might be put down to the heat or exhaustion.
It still meant we had to act quickly, tonight.
I joined the others in the kitchen, where they were sitting around the table, making short work of one of Hari’s homemade butter pies. As soon as Eliza clapped eyes on me, she was by my side.
‘You’ve been dreamwalking.’
I nodded and took a seat, setting off a throb in my temple.
‘I want to release Catrin Attard. Hear me out,’ I added, when Tom grimaced. ‘We need help getting into Establishment B, and I’ve just discovered that I can’t dreamwalk inside.’
Eliza frowned. ‘Why?’
‘They almost caught me doing it just now.’
Maria hissed in a breath. ‘Shit.’
‘I don’t think they realised it was me,’ I said, ‘but they’ll be suspicious. We need to go ourselves, and fast.’
‘Right. I take it you have a plan.’
‘Establishment B is guarded by Vigiles. We know that Catrin Attard has friends among them. This is our moment to try for their support – if ever they were going to rebel or offer us assistance, now is the time. I’m going to make Catrin an offer: if she helps us get into the factory, I’ll let her out of prison.’
‘You’re lucky Glym’s not here,’ Tom muttered.
‘I never ruled out working with the Vigiles. I said that if we needed them, we’d reconsider. And we need them now.’ I sat back. ‘If anyone has any other ideas, let’s hear them.’
Tom and Eliza both stayed quiet, as I’d known they would. This was the only lead we had.
‘Burn it down?’ Maria said hopefully.
This was what I got for trying to build an army out of criminals.
Spinningfields Prison, like all places where death was common, was easy enough to find. While my spirit was still supple, I jumped into the guard in the watchtower, who was midway through his cup of tea when I occupied his dreamscape. The hot drink spilled over his thighs.
The interior of the prison was designed to resemble a clock, with the watchtower at its heart, surrounded on all sides by five storeys of cells. I heaved my new body from its chair, panting with the effort of doing this for a second time today, and descended from the watchtower, careful to avoid the guards on patrol.
The stairs to the gangways quaked as I stepped on to them. I walked past voyants and amaurotics: malnourished and silent, like the harlies in the Rookery, many with visible symptoms of flux poisoning. A whisperer was rocking on his haunches in the corner of one cell with his hands over his ears.
As I searched, I tried to make my stride more fluid, my expression more alive, but I could see just from my shadow that I was moving about as naturally as a reanimated corpse. Something to work on.
I stopped when I sensed a capnomancer. A woman lay on the floor with her feet up on the bed.
‘I thought I got a last meal,’ she rasped.
When there was no reply, the prisoner rolled her head to the side. Her skin was tinged with grey, and she had flux lips.
‘Ah, you’re probably right.’ Her laugh was sharp. ‘Wouldn’t want to throw it up on the gallows.’
A down of dark brown hair covered her scalp, short enough to expose a small tattoo of an eye on her nape. When she pushed herself on to her elbow, the light from the corridor reached her face. That face was all I needed to confirm her identity. A tress of scar tissue stretched from her hairline almost to her jaw, obliterating her left eye and hardening what I imagined had once been delicate features. The remaining eye narrowed.
‘What’s the matter with you, you daft ’apeth?’ She cocked her head. ‘Ah, I see. Come to stare at the mutilated wonder.’
‘You know that ScionIDE is coming. No matter what.’ My host’s tongue felt thick in his mouth. ‘I hear you’re the best chance of getting Manchester to do something about it.’
‘What is this?’
‘An opportunity.’
She gave a shout of laughter. Someone bawled from another cell: ‘Keep your mouth shut, Attard. Some of us want to sleep.’
‘You’ll have plenty of time for that when you’re dead,’ she sang back, making laughter echo through the prison. The smile faded, and she lowered her voice. ‘An opportunity, you say.’
‘I want you to help me break into one of the factories and steal information,’ I said. ‘As a condition of your release, I also want you to stop intimidating the people of this citadel. In return, I’ll walk you out of this place. You can kiss goodbye to the gallows.’
Catrin pushed herself against the wall, looking as relaxed as anything, but her good eye was like an iron rivet. Somewhere beneath the scarring and the sneer, she must fear the noose.
‘I’d heard Paige Mahoney was a dreamwalker,’ she said. ‘And I doubt there’s more than one.’
‘There isn’t.’
‘Hm. You must really need a hand if you’ve come to me, and not my big, bad sister,’ she said. ‘On second thoughts, I bet you did ask for her help, and she turfed you out on your arse.’ She inspected her nails. ‘Even if I agree to your demands, you’ve no guarantee I’ll keep my word. You don’t know what I’ll do when I get out of this hellhole. Must be terrifying for you, dreamwalker. Not being able to control everyone, everywhere.’
‘You don’t know what I can control,’ I said. ‘You don’t know where or when I could reach you.’
Her chuckle sent a chill through me. She picked at the laces of her prison-issue boots.
‘This offer has a time limit, Attard,’ I said.
She lay on her back again. ‘Does it?’
‘Yes. So does your life.’
That gave her pause. All that awaited her here was the gallows.
‘I’ll help you get into a factory,’ she said finally. ‘And, seeing as you’ll be sparing me the noose, I might find it in my heart to cut my little protection tax and leave those brogues alone. But if there’s one thing we Scuttlers must have,’ she purred, ‘it’s vengeance. I warn you that if you release me, there will be some trouble between me and Roberta.’
‘Why?’
‘I saw her standing there when I was arrested, watching. I shouted for help and she turned her back, knowing what I’d get for treason. Maybe it’s time I showed this citadel that Daddy made the wrong choice.’
‘You have issues, Attard.’
‘And you don’t?’
I had to smile at that.
Catrin Attard stood. ‘So,’ she said silkily, ‘if I promise to be very, very good, how do you plan to get me out of here?’
‘Just do exactly what I say.’
13
The Ironmaster
Spinningfields Prison may have been cleverly designed, but it didn’t have half the staff it needed. I escorted Catrin out while the other guards’ backs were turned, delivering her into the custody of Maria and Tom, who were waiting near the entrance. They would ensure she didn’t seize her freedom without carrying out her side of the bargain. Catrin put on the coat Maria handed her and told them to take her to somewhere called the Barton Arcade. Eliza and I would follow in a different car.
I dropped my host outside the prison and returned to my own body.
I was getting better at this.
The Barton Arcade was a nineteenth-century structure on a main road, elegantly made from cast iron, white stone and glass, like an old-fashioned conservatory. At least, the stone might once have been white, and the glass might once have shone, had their beauty not been buried under decades of industrial filth. Several of the panes were cracked or defaced with graffiti, while dead wisteria climbed up one of its two domes, strangling its metal skeleton.
Catrin Attard was waiting for us beside the door, watched by Maria.