Nick came down the stairs, looking as tired as I felt.
‘Where are you going, sötnos?’
‘To find the Edinburgh Vaults. Tom thinks – thought – they were a hideout for a group of voyants who have been active in this citadel for decades.’ My finger skated across the map, over the latticework of closes and wynds that branched off the Grand Mile and then south a little, until I found the Cowgate. It wasn’t far. ‘He said they were somewhere around here. Coming?’
‘Of course.’ He reached for his coat. ‘Vance could be here by now. Dare I ask if the depot is on the map, so we can avoid having to ask the local voyants for help finding it?’
‘That would be too easy.’
I zipped up my puffer jacket and buckled my boots. A clock was ticking somewhere in the house. There was no time – but there was something I had to say to him.
‘Nick,’ I said, ‘we . . . never spoke about the séance. What happened to your sister.’
He turned away from the firelight as he shrugged on his coat, obscuring his expression.
‘There’s not much to say.’ He saw my face and sighed. ‘The soldiers were on patrol in the forest in Småland, close to where we lived at the time. Lina had gone there without permission to camp with some of her friends for her birthday. They had bought some bottles of Danish wine on the black market. Our father sent me after them. Hours too late.’ He drew in a long breath. ‘Later, Tjäder justified it by saying they’d bought the wine to induce unnaturalness in themselves. Håkan, Lina’s boyfriend, was the eldest. He was fifteen.’
I lowered my gaze. Birgitta Tjäder’s reign of terror in Stockholm was common knowledge – she saw any infringement of Scion law as high treason – but I couldn’t imagine what sort of mind would perceive a group of children drinking wine as deserving of the death penalty.
‘I’m so sorry, Nick,’ I said softly.
‘I’m glad it was in the séance. It means that Lina is in everyone’s memories now,’ he said, his tone stiff. ‘Tjäder was under Vance’s command. Whatever we do to hurt her is worth the risk.’
I felt the golden cord and glanced up. Warden was in the doorway, his irises hot from a feed.
‘Do you know Edinburgh, Warden?’ I said, straightening.
‘Not as well as I know London,’ he said, ‘but I had cause to visit during my time as blood-consort.’
‘Have you heard of the Edinburgh Vaults?’
‘Yes.’ He looked between us. ‘Would you like me to take you there?’
16
The Vaults
Even in the situation we found ourselves in, I could appreciate the beauty of the Old Town. Its buildings were beautiful and motley, with spires and rooftops that clambered skyward – as if they longed to reach the same heights as the nearby hills, or to touch the sky the sun had warmed to a finger-painting of amber and coral. Warden led us up the flight of steps outside the safe house, past a smear of white graffiti. ALBA GU BRÀTH. A cry for a lost country.
‘Paige,’ Nick said, ‘what’s going on between you and Warden?’
Warden was a fair way ahead of us, too far to hear if we kept our voices down (unless Rephaim had uncannily good hearing, which had proven far from impossible). ‘Nothing.’
Nick looked like he wanted to ask more, but, seeing that his long strides had taken him too far from the humans, Warden had stopped to let us catch up.
I had thought I was acting as I always had around him in public, but something had betrayed me to Nick. As I walked at Warden’s side, I was conscious of my expression, my body language, my heartbeat.
‘When were you here last?’ I said to him.
‘Eight years ago.’
The steps led us up to the Grand Mile, where cast-iron streetlamps burned from the fog – clean, pale fog, the breath of the sea. Beneath our feet were broad, piebald cobblestones, sheened by rain. Restaurants and coffee houses were filling up with evening trade, their patrons gathered near outdoor heaters, hands clasped around steaming glasses, and close by, a young man played an air on a cláirseach. Farther down the street, a squadron of day Vigiles was on patrol. Warden could just about pass as human in fog as thick as this, although he was taller than everyone else on the street.
We shadowed him down an incline, into a slum that sprawled beneath a bridge, darkened by a canopy of laundry, where the smells of cooking and sewage basted the smoke-thickened air. Tattered Irish flags – green, white, and orange – were draped across the bridge; accents like mine flitted between windows. It was forbidden to display the old Irish tricolour under any circumstances – Vigiles must never come through this district. Families huddled around outdoor fires, warming their hands, while a wizened man lifted clothes from a barrel and wrung them through a hand-operated mangle. A sign above his head read COWGATE.
Another corner of hell for the brogues. Scion had let a handful of them flee from the terror of the occupation, only to watch them drain into the gutters and leave them there to rot.
My father must have known that it was only the mercy of Scion, and his ability to hold on to a job in their ranks, that kept us from a life like this one. Even before we had left Tipperary, he had drummed it into me that I should never speak my mother tongue, not even in private; nor should I remember the stories my grandmother had told me, nor sing Irish melodies. I should be an English rose. I should forget.
In his own way, he had been trying to protect me. I might learn to forgive him, one day, but it didn’t mean I agreed with what he had done. There was no reason we couldn’t have remembered our past, and our dead, in the privacy of our home.
Nick touched my shoulder, lifting me from the churn of thoughts.
Warden awaited us in a street that splintered off the Cowgate. I felt his eyes on my face, but I made myself a mask.
‘The South Bridge Vaults,’ he said. ‘Sometimes known as the Edinburgh Vaults.’
The entrance was a slender archway. Unmarked. It looked just like the entrance to an alleyway; no one would think it was anything else – but I suspected we would never have found it on the map. The mingled stench of fish and smoke came rushing out. We reeled back, coughing.
‘Fish oil. The tenants burn it for light,’ Warden said.
The passageway was so dark; it was as if a hole had been cut out of my vision. ‘Here goes, then.’ I bent my head a little and stepped in.
Inside, it was worse than I could have imagined. No daylight pierced these corridors of stone.
The ceiling was curved and low. I kept one hand on the wall, my boots scrunching through oyster shells and rat droppings. Stale draughts raised gooseflesh on my arms, but they weren’t what made this place so oppressive. Every pore of the æther here was choked with old, vindictive spirits.
Water dripped from the ceiling, forming pools in the corners. Every so often, a fish-oil lamp would bring a sickly light to the gloom, giving us a glimpse of the dwellers of the Vaults. The amaurotic homeless, asleep inside cramped alcoves in the wall, curled around their few possessions. Children huddled around a tallow candle, playing games with bottle tops and making cat’s cradles with string.
The ceiling squatted lower with every step. Nick’s breathing was uneven.
‘I don’t see any auras,’ he said.
The last lamp had long since disappeared. I felt the brick outline of another archway and eased my hand into the blackness. A draught scuttled up my arm, lifting every fine hair.
‘Wait.’ I moved into it. ‘There are dreamscapes somewhere below. I think there’s—’
The wall gave way beneath my hand, and my boot plunged into nothing.
Some merciful reflex made me twist instead of toppling forward, sparing my head as I crashed on to a slope. I was slithering into an abyss, heels and hands tearing at smooth walls, gasping the air that rushed up to meet me. Rough stone nicked my cheek. More grazed my hip and thigh before my left side smashed through wooden boards. I fell with them, slammed into a rock-hard floor, and rolled to a painful halt
among the fragments.
For a long time, I didn’t move for fear that I had broken something – then the golden cord vibrated, shocking me enough to make me breathe again. I gritted my teeth and pushed myself on to my elbows.
‘Dreamer!’
Nick’s voice was somewhere above me, echoing in the pitch-black. Dust shot into my nostrils, and I sneezed. As soon as I got to my feet, my head cracked against stone, buckling me again.
‘Bloody shitting fuck—’
‘It sounds as if she is alive,’ Warden said.
I directed a dark look towards the ceiling. ‘I’m fine,’ I called. My hand scraped against a wall. ‘But I can’t see a thing.’
A shard of torchlight flashed past, giving me a glimpse of the boards I had come through. A sign reading TYPE E RESTRICTED SECTOR lay among them.
‘Perfect.’ I leaned against the wall. ‘I always wanted to die alone in a Type E Restricted Sector.’
‘What?’ Nick shouted.
‘It’s a Type E—’
‘Paige, you know that means the structure is unstable! Why aren’t you panicking?’
‘You’re panicking enough for both of us,’ I sang.
‘Stay there. Don’t move a muscle.’
Silence descended as they retreated. The utter lack of light was disorienting. Like a tomb.
Well, I wasn’t just going to sit here, whatever Nick said. I rose with caution, navigating with my hands.
From what I could tell by touch, I was in a tunnel about five feet wide. A short distance from where I had fallen through, what felt like wooden barrels formed a line along one wall. I might be able to scramble back up the slope, but it was steep and damp, and the darkness deep enough to drown in.
As I searched blindly for another way out, my sixth sense demanded my attention. I felt the voyants’ dreamscapes before I heard their footsteps. There was just enough time for me to conceal my features with my scarf before they came into the tunnel.
The walls ran wild with tongues of firelight, deepening the shadows. When the torch swung towards my face, I shielded my eyes against the heat.
‘Dè tha sibh a’ dèanamh an seo?’ Finding myself at knifepoint, I stood and raised my hands. The man was a vile augur, skinny and bare-faced. There must be little need to hide your identity down here. I listened carefully to what he said next: ‘A bheil Gàidhlig agaibh?’
I lowered my hands slightly. The language sounded very much like Irish, but the words weren’t quite what they should be. I thought he was asking me what I was doing here, and whether or not I spoke . . . wait, of course – it was Gàidhlig, the old language of Scotland, long since banned by Scion. It had the same roots as Irish, but that didn’t make me fluent.
‘Táim anseo chun teacht ar dhuine éigin,’ I said, speaking slowly. I’m here to find someone.
The knife lowered by degrees. ‘Spaewife,’ the man called, ‘we’ve found a brogue. Think she might be wanting to join us.’
Spaewife – Tom had mentioned that title. The leader of Edinburgh’s voyant community.
At the other end of the passageway, five hooded voyants stood in silence, each carrying an iron lantern. The woman at the front, who was wrapped in a twilled shawl, had the aura of a cartomancer. Her salted black hair was hewn into a bob, and her dark, close-set eyes were narrowed.
‘How did you get in here?’ she said to me in English. ‘Who told you about the false wall?’
‘No one. I just . . . found it.’
She eyed the shattered planks. ‘A painful discovery, no doubt.’
‘I need to speak to the leader of the Edinburgh voyants,’ I said. ‘Are you the Spaewife?’
She looked me up and down without comment, then spoke softly to one of her companions and walked into the gloom. Two other voyants grasped my arms and escorted me through the passageways.
When a hand came to the back of my head and pressed, I ducked under another archway. Oil lamps sputtered in every nook and cranny in the small chamber beyond. A group of vile augurs sat, hand-in-hand, around a rough triangle of bone; spirits danced between them. Other voyants were sitting or lying in deep alcoves – laid with minimal bedding – or eating from cans. Most of them were deep in conversation, their voices raised to fever pitch. I caught the name ‘Attard’ and stopped dead.
‘What’s that about Attard?’
The nearest voyants stopped talking. The Spaewife placed a hand on my back.
‘We’ve just had news from Manchester,’ she said. ‘I suppose you haven’t heard.’
‘Roberta Attard, the Scuttling Queen, is dead,’ a medium told me. ‘And you’ll never guess how.’
‘Dinna make her guess.’ One of the osteomancers chuckled.
‘She was murdered,’ the medium finished. ‘By her sister.’
I must have been taken into another vault, but I didn’t remember moving my feet. Next thing I knew I was sitting down, and someone was offering me a hot ochre drink that smelled faintly of honey and clove.
‘You’re all right, now.’
My hands were like ice. I wrapped them, finger by finger, around the glass.
‘You’re very pale all of a sudden. I hope Roberta wasn’t a friend of yours,’ the black-haired cartomancer said.
‘Catrin—’ I cleared my throat. ‘How do you know that Catrin killed her?’
She let go of my shoulder and sat on a cushion opposite me. Her hooded attendants stayed close.
‘The news came to us this morning, by way of Glasgow,’ she said. ‘Catrin Attard had joined a Mime Order raid on a factory and killed the Minister for Industry, the man they call the Ironmaster. Roberta confronted her and the two of them ended up fighting for leadership of the Scuttlers.’ She shook her head. ‘Terrible thing to happen. Roberta was a good woman, by all accounts. She wanted the best for her people.’
I sat quietly.
An Underqueen should consider this purely in tactical terms. And maybe in those terms, this was good; this was progress. Catrin was a warmonger. With her sister gone, she could prepare the voyant community to take action against Scion. This was war, and war was ugly.
Yet the knowledge that my actions had resulted in Roberta’s death, even if it hadn’t been my intention, was stomach-turning. Catrin would have killed her brutally, publicly, to prove that she was the one their father should have chosen, the one who would do anything for the Scuttlers. She had warned me. She had said there would be trouble between them.
I had turned the Manchester underworld upside-down, and I had no idea what would happen to it now.
‘On you go.’ The Spaewife nodded to the glass in my hands. ‘Hot toddy. Always makes me feel better.’
I had to put Manchester behind me. Now was the time to reveal what I was really here for. When I raised my head to address the Spaewife, I caught sight of faces behind her.
Photographs clung to one wall of the vault, yellowed and faded by age. In one of them, a family of three stood in the mist, with verdant hills in the background. One was a thin woman with a wistful expression; the other, a man in an oilskin, smiling in a way that didn’t reach his eyes. They each held the hand of a small girl with the same black hair, coiled into ringlets and bound with ribbons on either side of her head. Even though I’d met her many years after this photograph had been taken, I knew her.
‘You knew Liss Rymore?’ I said.
‘Aye.’ The Spaewife studied me. ‘And who might you be?’
I hesitated before unwinding my scarf, revealing my face. The hooded voyants exchanged glances before looking back at me.
‘Goodness me,’ the Spaewife muttered. She clasped her shawl around her shoulders. ‘Paige Mahoney.’
I nodded.
‘You were in Manchester? You led the raid on the factory?’
‘I did. I wanted to steal a military secret from Scion. What I found there led me here, to Edinburgh,’ I said. ‘I’m close to uncovering the information I need – so close – but I need allies here, people who know we hav
e no choice but to fight. If you want to help the Mime Order, then help me find what I’m searching for.’
She raised her eyebrows. ‘You sent the visions?’
‘A friend of mine did that. An oracle.’
‘And you let Catrin kill the Minister for Industry.’
My lips pressed together. ‘Catrin Attard made her own choice,’ I said after a moment. ‘What she did to Price, and to Roberta – that was not on my orders.’
One of the other voyants grasped her arm suddenly. ‘Wait, Spaewife,’ he said.
He spoke to her too quickly for me to properly follow, but one word got my back up: fealltóir, an Irish word, used during the Molly Riots to refer to the handful of Irish people who had assisted Scion.
‘I’m no traitor,’ I said curtly.
The Spaewife’s eyebrows crept higher. ‘You have Gàidhlig, do you, Underqueen?’
‘Gàidhlig or no, she ought to prove her claim,’ the bearded man beside her said, looking askance at me. ‘You might be one of Vance’s spies, for all we know. Someone who only looks a great deal like Paige Mahoney, and who wants us all on the gallows for treason.’
‘Don’t be a fool. The Underqueen is a dreamwalker,’ the Spaewife said. ‘Have you ever seen that sort of red aura?’ Apparently the whole of Britain knew about my gift. ‘Besides,’ she went on, ‘she knows Liss.’
She went to stand beside the wall of photographs and gently touched the one that Liss was in. For the first time, I saw the resemblance.
‘Are you—’ my mouth was dry. ‘Are you Liss’s mother?’
‘Close enough. Her aunt. Elspeth Lin is my name.’ She returned to the cushion and poured herself a drink. ‘You ken my niece, then?’
The truth would hurt her, but I had to tell it. It wasn’t fair to leave her with false hope. ‘I’m sorry you have to hear this from a stranger, Elspeth,’ I said. ‘Liss is . . . in the æther.’
Elspeth’s smile receded.