The Song Rising

  No. The water could be spiked. I crawled away from it and lay on my back, holding my aching stomach. They would not turn me into a mindless automaton.

  When I didn’t drink, they sent in a Vigile with a needle. Something that gave me temporary amnesia; I suspected, in lucid moments, that it was a potent mix of white aster and a tranquilliser.

  Step two: resist the drugs.

  After that needle punched into my muscle, I couldn’t remember how to dreamwalk; couldn’t even remember that I was able to do it. As if the drug had washed my knowledge of my gift away. When it was in my blood, all sense of identity and purpose collapsed, leaving my mind void. When the dose wore off, another Vigile arrived to top it up.

  And so a pattern began – a cycle of sedation.

  A near-constant thirst vied with my new fear of water. I would be taunted by thoughts of plunging, ice-cold pools, of crystal depths, of that stream I had glimpsed in Warden’s memory. I wasn’t sure if it was the drugs, or if I was hallucinating out of dehydration.

  The next day, they took me into another room and allowed a squadron of Vigiles to beat me in lieu of the waterboard. With each blow, they asked, ‘Where are your allies?’ ‘Who’s been helping you?’ ‘Who the fuck do you think you are, unnatural?’ If I didn’t answer, another kick came, along with a mouthful of spit and foul words. They wrenched my hair and broke my lip. One of them tried to make me lick his boots; I fought back viciously, and in the fray, another of them grabbed my weak wrist too hard. From the way the commandant hauled me away at once, the sprain hadn’t been intentional.

  No one used my name. I was only 40.

  After the beating, I lay for hours in my stupor, cradling my wrist. When I finally surfaced, a narrow face was hovering above me. I shrunk away from the torchlight and sheltered my eyes.

  ‘You’ve been asleep for a while, 40.’

  That voice, slightly nasal, with a note of self-satisfaction.

  ‘Carl,’ I rasped.

  ‘Not Carl. 1.’ Footsteps. ‘Do you know where you are, 40?’ Without waiting for my reply, the person I’d known as Carl Dempsey-Brown faced me boldly. ‘They keep political traitors in this room before they go to the Lychgate. The last person in it was your father.’

  I couldn’t think about my quiet, weary father being locked in here, kept in his own filth.

  Carl smiled at me. I took him in, the boy I’d last seen in the penal colony. Still in his tunic of raw red silk. He had the early flecks of a goatee, and his hair was longer, combed behind his ears. A few loaded syringes of blue and green flux were tucked into a pouch on his belt.

  ‘You’re lucky they haven’t killed you yet,’ he said. ‘It won’t be long.’

  I directed a blank look at the ceiling, hardly able to open my puffy eyes. ‘Did you get promoted?’

  ‘Rewarded, really. You know they caught the concubine, don’t you?’ he added. I grew very still. ‘A few days ago, while you were in the basement. Handed himself over, apparently, so you could live.’

  His presence had stopped the Vigile from injecting me. My spirit stirred.

  ‘He’s an idiot, of course. The blood-sovereign won’t let you get away a second time.’ Carl laughed. ‘You know, 40, you really ought to have stayed in the colony. It’s better in here than it is outside.’ He sniffed. ‘And it’s only going to get worse out there.’

  He dabbed his nose on his sleeve. When he found blood on the silk, he uttered a terrified little shriek.

  ‘No! Stop!’ His body jolted against the wall. ‘You’re not allowed to do that; it’s forbidden for you to—’

  In seconds I had him pinned, with a needle half an inch from his bare eye. His pupils gaped as he recognised it as his own syringe, plucked like a boiled sweet off his belt.

  ‘Commandant,’ he screeched.

  A set of keys clinked near his waist. I grasped them with a shaking hand.

  A Vigile came bursting through the door. I attacked her with my spirit, or tried to, setting off an explosion of pain behind my eyes. No effect. Knowing I had lost this round, I rammed the syringe deep into Carl’s arm, making him squeal, before a dart bit my neck. The floor slammed into me.

  They had Warden. I rocked on my haunches in the corner, damp with sweat, my fingers flexing in my greasy hair. How could he be so stupid? He couldn’t have thought that Nashira would agree to an exchange. She wanted both of us. Always had. Or was this another lie?

  I reached for the cord, but there was no answer. I couldn’t feel him anywhere.

  Rephaim couldn’t die, but they could be destroyed. Perhaps Nashira had no more use for him. Had given him a slow end.

  No. They didn’t have him, couldn’t have him – Carl was lying. This was Vance again, trying to derange me. She was going to use every weapon in her arsenal to ensure I was a shell.

  She must think Warden was my true weakness, then. Not Nick or Eliza.

  I clawed my way to the door and tried to see through the bars. My cell looked out on to a junction in the tunnels, where the Vigiles would sometimes stop to talk during their rounds. A transmission screen ran on the wall, showing my photograph above a scrolling ribbon of news. PAIGE MAHONEY SLAIN IN EDINBURGH. There was no more threat to security.

  Slowly, I sat back and leaned against the wall. With my eyes closed, I recalled the heart-pounding moments before the gunshot. The smell of the blue hand.

  And I wondered if Vance believed I was beaten. If she thought her strategy had worked.

  It had come to me in a flash: the horses, the smoke, the soldiers. People screaming. The cries of the innocent. All this had happened before. It was a stage set, all that chaos; a psychological trap, just like the one she had used against Rozaliya – only this time on a far grander scale.

  There, on the streets of Edinburgh, Vance had recreated the Dublin Incursion, just for me. All the elements had been there: an ordinary street thrown into disarray, the army, the protestors, a demonstration that became a massacre. All arranged by the Grand Commander.

  She had built a real-life flashback, with Edinburgh as the stage and many of its people as the unwilling actors, people who had been swept up in the deception. But one thing was necessary before she could guarantee my breakdown and surrender. She needed me to be unstable; in a state of rage and grief. That was why she had murdered my father on-screen.

  I was to be a child again, lost on the streets in a stampede.

  I was to believe that by sacrificing myself, I could prevent that day in my childhood from repeating itself.

  Clever. And extraordinarily cruel. She was willing to use innocents in her mind game, to let buildings burn, to endanger hundreds just to catch one. It might even have worked, had Warden not shown me that memory of Dublin. By doing so, he had unintentionally left it fresh in my mind. The cues which should have tipped me over the edge were too obvious; I had recognised Vance’s tableau for what it was. Props on a stage. An imitation.

  That was when I had realised.

  If Vance captured me, she would take me to the Archon and bring me before Nashira – Nashira, who, if Warden had been right, controlled the spirit that powered Senshield.

  All I had to do was stay alive for long enough to get to it.

  21

  Skins of Men

  The Westminster Archon wasn’t designed for sleep. Every hour, the five bells in the clock tower would ring across London, and the clash of their tongues would tremble through the walls.

  Days I had been entombed in my cell, with only a bucket to relieve myself in.

  A cloud now lived inside my brain, thickened every so often by a Vigile with a syringe. They were keeping me as little more than a corpse. There was a period of clarity when the dose wore off, during which I received my meal. I was expected to use that time to eat and drink before another needle made me lose the use of my fingers.

  They had to bring me before Nashira. She would want to see me before my execution, to rub salt into the wound.

  While I was with her, I
doubted I would be sedated. In the absence of other options, I would have to try and end her with my spirit. It would be madness, but if I couldn’t find the place the spirit was kept and release it, all that was left to do was to destroy its master.

  Sweat trickled down my face. Nashira feared my gift; that was why she wanted it so much. I could do it.

  I must do it.

  ‘. . . just keeps going up. Martial law’s here to stay.’ Two Vigiles were passing my cell on their rounds. ‘Where are you tonight?’

  ‘Lord Alsafi has asked me to stand guard in the Inquisitorial Gallery. I’ll be with them this evening.’

  I raised my head.

  Alsafi.

  I hadn’t counted on him being here. I might not need to face Nashira at all. If I could get my message to him – the knowledge I had of Senshield, gleaned from Vance’s memory –he might be able to act on it sooner than I could. He might be able to find and release the spirit.

  Easier said than done when I didn’t even have a scrap of paper.

  My meal clattered into the cell. I crawled to it and scooped up the slop with my fingers.

  An attempt on Nashira’s life had to be a last resort. While I could still think, I tried to decode the image of Senshield that Warden had stolen from Vance: a clear globe with a light beneath it. A white light. It did have some kind of physical casing – something that must contain the spirit that powered every scanner. Destroying it, surely, would release that spirit.

  I thought harder. Above the globe had been a second glass structure: a pyramid, reflecting the glow – and that pyramid led out to open sky, so it had to be somewhere high up. All I had seen, apart from that, were pale walls. I didn’t know what it was, and I didn’t know enough about the internal layout of the Archon to find it by sight.

  Alsafi could be my eyes.

  Except there was no time, and no way to get to him. At any moment, I could be taken to my execution. If I’d been stronger, I would have tried to speak to him in his dreamscape, but I was at my lowest ebb; Vance must have meant to weaken me so badly that I couldn’t use my gift. In a sense, she had succeeded: I couldn’t dreamwalk. Not even a foot out of my body.

  But she had forgotten, or didn’t know, that I could use my gift in other ways. She didn’t know that I could return to my rawest form: a mind radar, able to detect ethereal activity without lifting a finger. And now, for the first time in days, I did.

  Even shifting my focus to my sixth sense was agony. This should be second nature . . . I had survived physical weakness in the colony. I could do it here. Finally, I submerged myself, letting my other senses wind down.

  My range had been damaged, but I could feel the æther. And it didn’t take long for me to pick up on the turbulence in the Westminster Archon.

  The core was here. I had been right.

  As I lay in the black hole of my cell, I kept track of the dreamscapes in the Archon. Vance’s often weaved from one side of the building to the other. Sometimes I fixated on her for hours, trying to work out where she stopped most. She spent a good portion of her day in one place; an office of some sort, most likely.

  Footsteps sounded outside. The Vigiles were back from their rounds. I had absorbed as much information as I could about the shifts; these two were my most regular guards.

  ‘. . . going to be a long one on New Year’s Eve.’

  ‘Can’t say I mind. Extra pay. Speaking of which, I might put in a request for nights next year.’

  ‘Nights? You not telling me something?’

  Their shadows moved beneath the door. Hushed tones.

  ‘These new scanners. As soon as they’re operational, the rumour is the unnatural lot will be obsolete. All Okonma has to do is sign the execution warrants, and they’ll swing.’

  A rubber sole tapped on concrete. ‘I was thinking of handing in my notice,’ the man said. ‘Martial law’s going to be hell for us. Extra hours, seven-day weeks. In the barracks they’re saying they’re going to dock our pay so they can give more to the krigs. We’ll be drudges.’

  ‘Keep it down.’

  They were silent for a long time. The drug was clouding my thoughts again, a siren song to oblivion. I pinched the delicate skin of my wrist, forcing my eyes open.

  ‘You seen all these foreigners in the building? Spaniards, I heard. Ambassadors from their king.’

  ‘Mm. They were with Weaver in his office all day.’ A light rap on the door. ‘Who do you reckon they’re keeping in there?’

  ‘Nobody told you? It’s Paige Mahoney.’

  ‘Right, nice try. She’s dead.’

  ‘You saw what they wanted you to see.’ I heard the view-slot open. ‘There.’

  ‘The unnatural who took on an empire,’ the woman said, after a pause. ‘Doesn’t look like much to me.’

  Time passed. Meals came. Drugs came. And then, one unexpected day – if it was day, if day existed any longer – I was woken with a splash of water, dragged up from the subterranean vault by two Vigiles, and pushed into a cubicle.

  ‘Go on,’ one guard said.

  I stumbled away from the shower. The taller Vigile slammed me into the tiles.

  ‘Clean yourself. Filth.’

  After a moment, I did as I was told.

  I was thinner. My skin had a grey undertone that could only have come from flux. Bruises, blue and purple and pear-green, marked the injection sites on my arms, and my legs were badly discoloured from the Vigiles’ boots and fists. A blackberry stain fanned out below my breasts, where a ring-shaped wound sat just under my sternum.

  A rubber bullet. It must have been. I stood there like a mannequin, my legs shaking under my weight.

  Moments after I had stepped into the shower, the Vigiles slotted my arms into a clean shift and took me out of the cubicle. Soon concrete gave way to bloodshot marble, painful on the soles of my feet. My head spun like a carousel as they steered me through the Archon, along sun-drenched corridors that hurt my tender eyes.

  Slowly, I became more alert. My feet slewed on the floor. This was it. The last walk.

  ‘No,’ a Vigile said. ‘You’re not dying yet.’

  Not yet. I still had time.

  Somewhere in the Archon, music was booming. It grew louder as the Vigiles manhandled me up flights of stairs. Franz Schubert – ‘Death and the Maiden’.

  A plaque on a heavy door read RIVER ROOM. One of the Vigiles knocked and pushed it open. Inside, honeyed light poured through windows overlooking the Thames, slicing between blood-red damask curtains. It gleamed on marble busts and a glass vase of nasturtium.

  I stopped in my tracks. He wore a waistcoat the same red as those curtains, sewn with complex foliate patterns. He didn’t look up from his book when he spoke.

  ‘Hello, darling.’

  My legs wouldn’t move. The Vigiles took hold of my arms and bundled me into the opposite seat.

  ‘Would you like her restrained, Grand Overseer?’

  ‘Oh, no need for that sort of tomfoolery. My erstwhile mollisher would never be so foolish as to run.’ Jaxon still didn’t look up. ‘If you wished to be even modestly useful, however, you can remind your underlings to bring the breakfast I ordered twenty-six minutes ago.’

  The Vigiles’ visors concealed most of their faces, but I heard one of them mutter something about ‘bloody unnaturals’ as they exited the room.

  An unruly stack of paper sat on the table to my left. Between us was a silver teapot on a lace tablecloth. A surveillance camera was reflected in its side.

  Jaxon finally laid his book aside. Prometheus and Pandora was printed down the spine.

  ‘Well,’ he said. ‘Here we are, Paige. How things have changed since our last meeting. How far you have wandered.’

  I took a good look at him. His face was ashen and slightly pinched, and a hint of grey had crept into the roots of his hair. He had lost at least a stone since I had last seen him.

  ‘So,’ I said, ‘am I here so you can twist the knife? One last laugh before th
e end?’

  ‘I would never be so crass.’

  ‘Yes, you would.’

  Even his smirk was somewhat diminished. Whatever his title, he was a human among Rephaim. Even if he was their ally, he would never be their equal. And if there was one thing Jaxon despised, one thing that would eat away at him, it was being anyone’s inferior. This must be slowly killing him.

  ‘Before we have our heart-to-heart,’ he said, ‘I want to ask you something. Where did you move my syndicate?’

  Well, at least he had got straight to the point.

  ‘ScionIDE has noticed a conspicuous absence of voyants on the street. This give rise to the assumption that they have been relocated – but where?’ He reclined in his chair. ‘I confess to frustration. London is my obsession, a place I believed I knew in exhaustive detail – yet somehow, you have found them a way to elude the anchor. Enlighten me, Underqueen.’

  ‘You don’t really think I’d tell you.’

  I sounded calm, but tremors were shooting through my body. His gaze dipped back to me, taking in my wretched appearance.

  ‘Very well. If you mean to play coy,’ he said, ‘we will have to find another topic of conversation. Your turn.’ When I didn’t speak, he smiled in a way that jolted me back to Seven Dials. ‘Come, now, Paige. You were always insatiably curious. You must have questions . . . questions that are burning up your mind as you lie there in confinement.’

  ‘I don’t know where to begin.’ I paused. ‘Where are Nadine and Zeke?’

  It wasn’t my most burning question, but it was important.

  ‘Safe. They came to find me after you cast them out on to the streets.’

  ‘If they’re in Sheol II—’

  ‘Sheol II does not quite exist yet.’ He scratched his forearm idly. ‘You did sink your claws into the others, though, didn’t you? Danica, usually so pragmatic – although I hear she’s fled the citadel. Clever woman. Nick and Eliza – they proved themselves to be great admirers of yours.’

  I lifted an eyebrow. ‘Jealous?’

  ‘Not particularly. If the footage I saw from Edinburgh is anything to go by, they have received their just deserts.’