Warden stayed where he was, waiting.
It made the most sense for him to go. If he was shot, he would survive. He was strong enough to escape capture by humans. He had the element of surprise if someone saw him, giving him enough time to react, and he could move swiftly and silently through a heavily guarded building. In short, he was a Rephaite, and that made him better for this mission than any of the humans.
‘Permission granted.’
He didn’t hesitate. Almost in one movement, he was through the fence and over the edge of the wall. Maria crawled through the gap and looked down, holding her hood in place.
For the time he was gone, I stayed prone on the concrete, keeping close to Maria and Nick. Here on the coast, the wind was callous. I watched Tjäder and Vance disappear into the vast warehouse, watched the soldiers stop to salute the Grand Commander.
I didn’t want Warden in there. The thought of him near Vance was sickening. I cleaned the mist from my watch and saw the seconds click away, imagining the soldiers emptying their bullets into him, dragging him off.
He would come back. He must come back.
I would not consider what would happen if he didn’t.
A leather-clad hand appeared on the wall, making us all flinch. A moment later, Warden came into view, holding something in the crook of one arm.
I let out my breath. He joined us on the other side of the fence.
‘Did anyone see you?’
‘If they had,’ he said, ‘I presume that we would know of it.’
‘And the core?’ My breaths still wavered. ‘Is it there?’
His gaze met mine. ‘Not the core,’ he said, ‘but there is this.’
He presented me with a scanner-gun, like the ones we had stolen from the factory, but with one, crucial difference: the white stripe. This one was active.
Warden watched my face, as if measuring my reaction. ‘Perhaps this is best explained at the safe house.’
‘You saw something in there,’ I conjectured.
‘Yes.’
He handed me a holster. I removed my coat for long enough to buckle it on, shuddering when the cold hit my torso. Maria secured the scanner-gun inside it.
‘Come on.’ My coat was just about bulky enough to hide its shape. ‘Let’s take a look at this thing.’
The guard was still unconscious when we passed him. Getting out of the district was even easier than it had been to get in, but we broke into a run as soon as we were past the fence. Suddenly, the sheer stupidity and danger of what we had done was catching up with us. We parted ways with the Rephaim and took another tram back to the centre of the citadel, disembarking close to Waverley Bridge – one of the two bridges crossing the valley that ran through the middle of Edinburgh, dividing the Old Town from the New Town. Rain drenched us as we returned to Anchor Close.
Eliza was bolt upright on the couch. When she saw us, she let out a low groan of relief.
‘There you are.’
Nick leaned down and wrapped an arm around her. ‘We’re okay.’
‘Did you see the depot?’
‘Yes. Be glad you didn’t,’ Maria said. ‘Are the Rephs back?’
‘Upstairs. They said they were doing a séance.’
Maria cleared the table. ‘Right,’ she said. ‘Let’s see what a fully activated portable Senshield scanner looks like.’
I carefully set the scanner-gun down. Maria was the first to lay hands on it.
‘An activated SL-59,’ she said. ‘Our new worst enemy.’
She dragged a finger along the thread of light. Once she had detached the magazine and scrutinised the bullets, she handled the weapon with practised ease. Even knowing that it was empty, Eliza tensed when it pointed at her.
‘Sorry, sweet,’ Maria said. ‘I just want to know what we’re dealing with. The gun itself still seems unremarkable, so I assume it’s the scope that’s—’ She peered through it. ‘Ah. There.’
She let me look. Through the scope of the SL-59, the world lost all its colour. Eliza’s body was surrounded by a faint glow that had to be her aura. Nick, however, was dark.
‘May I?’
Warden had appeared in the doorway with Lucida, who always seemed to be just behind him now. Maria shrugged and handed him the scanner-gun, which he examined. I had never seen a Rephaite hold a firearm; the effect was unsettling. After a few moments of silent contemplation, he removed the scope and took a capsule from beneath it, snapping a tress of wire. The white light ebbed, and the gun was just a gun again.
‘I found no evidence of a single core inside,’ he said, ‘but these were being added to the guns inside the warehouse.’
He held the capsule out in the palm of his hand. It was silver and almond-shaped, about the size of your average painkiller.
‘What is it?’ I asked. ‘Is it an ethereal battery?’
‘No,’ Warden said. ‘There is no spirit inside it.’
‘Let’s see.’
Warden handed me the capsule. Its surface gave way just a little when squeezed. I pressed it between my finger and thumb until it ruptured, releasing a tiny amount of liquid – glowing yellow-green liquid, with an oily consistency. Lucida let out a hiss of Gloss.
‘What is that stuff?’ Eliza said.
‘Ectoplasm.’ I ran it between my fingers. ‘Rephaite blood.’
Handling it drank the warmth from my skin. The æther glittered around me, making me light-headed.
Warden’s face was taut in a way I had never seen it before. I felt the barest shadow of his reaction through the cord: disgust.
‘No ethereal battery makes use of Rephaite blood. This is a different sort of device. Notice that the ectoplasm is luminous,’ he said. ‘Usually, a certain amount of time outside a Rephaite’s body will darken and crystallise it, extinguishing its properties. This has been kept active.’
‘How?’ I asked.
‘I cannot say.’
Warden paced slowly around the gun. His eyes flamed brighter with every step.
I watched him. ‘What are you thinking?’
‘There are only two Rephaim who would have had the necessary security clearance, and sufficient knowledge of the æther, to help create this technology. Nashira and Gomeisa Sargas,’ he said.
He kept pacing. Nobody else spoke while he considered.
‘As I told you in the colony, Paige, Nashira’s gift is similar to that of a binder – though far more dangerous, as she can not only control a spirit, but steal the gift it had in life,’ he finally said. ‘Let us suppose that she found a spirit with a gift that allowed for particularly good detection of the æther. She could bind it to every Senshield scanner, and every gun, through this.’ He nodded to my fingers. ‘Through her own blood. By placing a drop into each scanner, she has been able to link every one to this spirit and imbue them with its gift. The spirit is the core. It powers all of Senshield and every scanner – all through the conduit of Nashira’s blood. That is my supposition.’
‘That’s . . . quite a supposition,’ Maria said.
I wiped the liquid off on my jacket, disturbed by the thought that it might have once flowed through Nashira.
‘A binder’s blood is like ethereal glue,’ Eliza murmured. ‘That’s what Jaxon used to say. He could smear a bit of his blood on to an object to compel a spirit to stay beside it.’
‘He couldn’t attach one spirit to many places,’ Nick said.
‘But Nashira isn’t a normal binder, is she? She must be a sort of . . . super-binder.’
Lucida, I noticed, had stiffened at the sound of Jaxon’s name.
‘Would Nashira ever do that?’ I wasn’t sure I believed it of her. ‘Would she really let humans take pints of her blood and put it into hundreds, thousands of scanners?’
Warden was still looking at the gun.
‘Perhaps,’ he said.
‘Does that mean—’ I couldn’t face this possibility. ‘Does that mean there is no physical “core” – that it’s just a spirit? On
e of her fallen angels?’
‘Where would it be kept?’ Maria said. ‘Here in Edinburgh?’
‘Not necessarily,’ Warden said. ‘The spirit could be anywhere.’ He paused. ‘But . . . it is most likely with Nashira. Wherever she is.’
My legs could no longer take my weight. I sank into a chair.
‘Are you saying we have to destroy Nashira?’ I said very softly. ‘That’s the answer?’
‘Or banish the spirit.’
‘Can it be banished? We don’t know its name.’
‘Perhaps. This is conjecture.’
‘We need more than fucking conjecture!’ I snapped. ‘Whatever the hell powers Senshield, it isn’t here. We thought we’d find the core in the depot, and we didn’t. All we have is guesswork and another fucking gun. I nearly killed us all in Manchester to get here – I did kill Tom – and for what? For this?’ I showed them the blood on my fingers. ‘For conjecture?’
Nobody answered. I turned away from their eyes, feeling my own fill with heat.
‘Paige,’ Maria said, ‘this journey was always a shot in the dark, right from the start, but that doesn’t mean—’
‘Wait.’ Eliza held up a hand. ‘Do you hear that?’
We listened. A message was coming through the PA system. I pulled my hood up and went back outside.
Snow brushed my face. It was the middle of the night, not the usual time for Scion to be making public announcements. When we reached the top of the steps, we found ourselves at the edge of a small crowd of people. The vast transmission screen on the Grand Mile was full of Hildred Vance.
‘. . . Grand Inquisitor has heard your calls for fair and equal treatment of all criminals who pledge allegiance to the Mime Order,’ she was saying. ‘Tonight, as Grand Commander, I hope to demonstrate to you the benefits of martial law.’
Vance stared into the citadel, her voice made manifold by the speakers across Edinburgh. Usually she spoke with a white background behind her, like other Scion officials did when they addressed the public, but this time she seemed to be outside somewhere. I recognised the place at once; she was in front of the ruined Gothic monument on Inquisitors Street, just across Waverley Bridge. I had seen it on our way to and from the depot.
She was letting me know she was here, in the citadel.
‘Two days ago, we received intelligence that Paige Mahoney, leader of the Mime Order, had escaped the capital and travelled to the North West to spread her violent message of contempt for the anchor. I have a message for Paige Mahoney. She cannot insult the anchor with impunity.’
The crescendo of voices around us drowned out her next words. The next thing I heard: ‘. . . execution will be carried out immediately, in accordance with martial law. So perish all the anchor’s enemies.’
Her face disappeared, replaced by a white screen. When the broadcast returned, the feeling drained from my face.
It wasn’t the sight of the executioner. It wasn’t the golden sword in his hands, poised high for the kill. It was the man whose neck was cradled by the block. No cloth over his face. Hands shackled behind his back. A man who seemed so much older than he had when I had last seen him, with his bloodshot eyes and unshaven jaw and threads of silver in his hair.
LIVE: EXECUTION OF COLIN MAHONEY, the screen informed the country. UNNATURAL PROGENITOR AND TRAITOR.
Don’t scream.
It came out of the ringing in my head – the survival instinct. Screaming would let everybody know that I was here. Nobody else cared about Cóilín Ó Mathúna. Nobody was left. Nick was speaking to me, grasping my shoulders, but I couldn’t tear my gaze from the taut, lined face on the screen. Every bead of sweat, every quiver of his lips, was so crystal-clear that I almost believed I was there with him on the Lychgate, waiting for the blow.
My most recent memories were of times when I had needed him and he had looked away. When I had held out my arms and he had turned his back. But now, in his final moments, I felt more like his daughter than I ever had. I remembered the night before he told me we were leaving our home – eleven years ago, a world away. He had carried me out into the fields and pointed to the sky, where meteors were weeping over Ireland. And his words came from a memory long buried, words I had forgotten until now.
Look, seillean. Look. He had sounded lost in a way I hadn’t understood. The sky is falling down on us.
When the sword came down, I didn’t close my eyes.
I owed him that much. To see what I had done.
I don’t remember how I got back to the safe house. I have a dim memory of my tongue prickling, and a sense that I was floating. As I drifted in and out of consciousness, my thoughts became a shattering of ruby and gold, a labyrinth of thorns with no escape. Somewhere in the twisting darkness, I heard my grandmother singing a lullaby in Irish. I tried to call to her, but my words stumbled out of my mouth and broke, their wings useless. When my eyes opened, I was underneath a blanket on the couch and the hearth was full of embers. I watched them glimmer for a long time, allowing them to entrance me.
I was an orphan now. My father and I hadn’t spoken properly in a long time, since before I was taken to the colony, but I realised now that he had always been at the back of my mind. He was the embodiment of a simpler world; someone I might have reconciled with after all this was over, when he understood that I had only ever been fighting to make life better. Whatever happened, I had always known I had a family to return to at the end.
I was dimly aware of Lucida’s glassy voice in the hallway: ‘We do not have time to delay. I do not understand why she has not moved.’
‘Grief.’ Nick. ‘He was her family. Don’t you have parents?’
‘Rephaim are not offspring.’
He sighed. ‘If we’re going to do this, someone needs to make sure she doesn’t follow us. I know Paige. She won’t let us put ourselves in danger if she’s not doing the same.’
‘I’m coming with you this time,’ Eliza said. ‘I want to prove to her that I can hack this.’
They shushed each other as I shifted, making the couch rock on its brittle legs. My head was throbbing. I had almost drifted away again when a cool hand touched my forehead.
‘Paige?’
Nick was crouched beside me, his brow furrowed. With a heavy-eyed nod, I pushed myself on to my elbows and into a sitting position. I drank from the mug of tea he handed me.
‘I’m so sorry, sweetheart.’
‘It was always going to happen. He was dead the moment I left the colony.’ My throat was raw, softening my voice. ‘I should feel worse than this.’
‘You’re in shock.’
That must be why my hands were steady. That must be why I felt burned through.
Maria and Eliza sidled into the parlour. Eliza sat beside me and squeezed my hand, while Maria dropped into the armchair. At first, I wanted to shrink away from their sympathetic expressions; I couldn’t stand them. I was the one who had killed my father, not Vance. I was his murderer, the reason he was dead, not worthy of compassion.
My eyes closed. I couldn’t allow myself to think like this. Scion had started to demolish my family long before they had known my name, starting with Finn in Dublin. There might have been things I could have done better – I could have tried harder to reach my father, to rescue him from their clutches – but it wasn’t my hand that had wielded the blade.
‘I’m going to kill her,’ I murmured. ‘Vance.’
‘No. That’s exactly what you mustn’t try and do.’ Maria held down my arm. ‘This is another move in Vance’s psychological war against you, the war that started when she used you to change Senshield. You’ve come too close to her secret. Now she wants you gone.’
I tried to make myself listen. All I could see was the blood on the sword.
‘You’ve impressed her. She wasn’t expecting a nineteen-year-old woman without any military training to evade capture for as long as you have. Now she’s going to try and draw you out for the last time.’
Nick pl
aced a hand on my shoulder. ‘How?’
‘That broadcast was clearly pre-recorded,’ Maria said. ‘You can tell – the sky was lighter than it is now. She was standing right next to a landmark. That was intentional. She wants Paige to go straight there, hungry for vengeance. That’s where she’ll have set up the next trap.’
It took effort to hold my body still.
‘Why kill him?’ My eyes felt parched. ‘Why not keep him alive to blackmail me?’
‘One: because she deemed that he was less useful to her alive than dead. Two: because there’s a next move to come. This is just what she did to Rozaliya,’ she said. ‘First, she clouds your judgement. Then, knowing you’re vulnerable, she’ll strike. You need to stay calm, Paige. You need to defy what she expects of you.’
My fist closed, blanching my knuckles.
‘We’re not going back to London with nothing to show for it,’ I said. ‘I want to destroy those scanners.’
‘That’s exactly what we were thinking. We can set fire to the warehouse,’ Maria said hungrily.
I shot her a weary look. ‘Are you a pyromancer or a pyromaniac?’
‘Come on, this isn’t central Manchester we’re talking about,’ she wheedled. ‘Fire is efficient and leaves no evidence. Fire is our friend.’
It would certainly send Vance a message, even if it failed; even if it was an insane, desperate plan, one I would never have sanctioned under ordinary circumstances.
‘Fine,’ I said, after a moment. I wasn’t in the frame of mind to argue. ‘Burn it down.’
Maria gave a little crow of triumph.
‘How will we get close enough to the warehouse to cause this great inferno?’ asked Nick, who had been listening, amused. ‘It’s guarded, if you remember correctly.’
‘We’ll manage,’ Maria said, looking positively optimistic.
‘We can call on Elspeth’s voyant community for backup,’ I said. When I made to get up, Maria’s face changed; she reached out and grasped my shoulder firmly.