The Song Rising

  ‘Alsafi—’

  ‘And tell Arcturus—’ He paused. ‘Tell him I hope this . . . redeems me.’

  I had so many questions, and no time to ask them. Nashira had already swept into view. The hilt of a sword gleamed over her shoulder.

  When she saw me, her eyes turned to hot coals. She looked as if she had walked straight out of hell; as if she carried its flames inside her.

  ‘Alsafi.’

  ‘Blood-sovereign,’ he said evenly. ‘I have come from the tower. The Grand Commander is critically injured, and Senshield is destroyed.’ He must have been using English consciously, allowing me to follow the conversation.

  ‘I am more than aware of Senshield’s destruction.’ She didn’t raise her voice, but something in it terrified me. ‘The Archon’s medical staff will attend to Vance. Bring 40 to the basement at once.’

  I started to tremble. Alsafi remained where he was, and I felt, rather than heard, the deep breath he took. When Nashira turned back, he lifted his gaze to look her in the eye.

  ‘Is something wrong, Alsafi?’

  His muscles were tensing. Nashira took a step towards him.

  ‘I must confess,’ she said, ‘I did think it extraordinary that one human, especially one who is in Inquisitorial custody, should be able to cause so much destruction in such a short period of time. 40 has done many things she should not have been able to do. She was able to escape from London as martial law was being implemented. She was able to travel between citadels without detection. She was able to reach the core of Senshield.’ Another step. ‘She could not have done any of it without a contact.’

  Alsafi didn’t hesitate. He gathered me close and ran.

  Red carpet. Wood-panelled walls. Pain all over my body, tiny sunbursts of pain. His hand tore away a tapestry, turned a key, opened a panel; thrust me into the pitch-black tunnel beyond. My left side crashed against a wall, and a shard of glass penetrated deep into my arm, drawing a scream that seared my throat. Sobbing in agony, I pressed my hands against the door.

  ‘Alsafi, don’t!’

  A key card came spinning into the tunnel. ‘Run,’ Alsafi barked. I dragged myself back to my feet. There was a spy-grate in the door; through it, I saw him draw a sword from underneath his cloak. Nashira’s came to meet it. ‘Go, dreamwalker!’

  ‘Ranthen,’ Nashira whispered.

  Their swords clashed. Iridescent blades, like shards of opal. I leaned heavily against the wall, unable to take my eyes from the grate. Spirits were rushing to join the war-dance of the Rephaim. Immobilised by the fire in my arm, I watched Alsafi Sualocin fight Nashira Sargas.

  I could see at once that Nashira was faster. She moved like spindrift around Alsafi, as fluently as Brașoveanu had danced her death ballet. Alsafi used sharper swings, and stayed rooted to one spot, but he was no less elegant. The blades chimed like bells as they collided. Quick as she was, he parried each of her strokes, never changing his expression. I had seen Rephaim fight before, in the colony, though never with swords. I remembered the way their steps resonated through the æther; how the proximity of two rival Rephaim drank all the warmth from the air around them. As if the æther understood their hatred, intensified it, nurtured it.

  They circled each other like dancing partners. Alsafi let out a low growl, while Nashira was silent. She struck again, faster and faster, until I could hardly see her movements; just the glint of her hair, the flash of the sword. When it caught Alsafi’s cheek, and ectoplasm seeped from the cut, I flinched.

  She was toying with him.

  Alsafi’s next swipe was harder, and he broke from his position. His blade slashed down, across, up, but never touched her.

  Nashira raised her open hand. The rest of her fallen angels came to her from wherever they had been wandering, drawn back to her tarnished aura.

  Alsafi spat at her in Gloss. For a long time, neither of them moved.

  When the poltergeist attacked him, a tear streaked down my cheek. Slashes appeared across his face, the marks of an unseen knife. He lashed out with the sword, making the thing recoil, before all of the spirits converged on him. Alsafi let out an eldritch sound – a sound of pain – as they tore at his aura like a flock of birds. As his blade clattered to the flagstones, Nashira lifted her sword high. I caught sight of his eyes for a last time, afire with hatred, before she sliced straight through his neck.

  I turned away, one hand over my mouth. The heavy thud was all I needed to hear.

  Nashira stared down at the corpse for a moment – it must have been a moment, but it lasted for ever – before her head whipped around, and hellfire flooded her eyes again. And I knew, I knew from that look on her face that she would dog my footsteps for the rest of my days, even if I could escape her tonight. A decade could pass from this moment; a lifetime – but she would not stop hunting me. She would not forget. I snatched the key card from the floor and ran.

  Dark stars erupted in the corners of my vision. Hot jolts came shooting through my feet as I hobbled across stone, breathing in bursts. I tasted salt and metal on my lips. The throbbing in my arm was making me retch. My legs gave way again, and I curled in the darkness, listening to my fitful heartbeat.

  ‘Rise from the ashes,’ I whispered to myself. ‘Come on, Underqueen.’

  When I rose, my hands left red prints on the walls. I couldn’t take much more of this. I would die before I reached the Inquisitorial Office.

  Then I saw it. Frank Weaver’s Inquisitorial maxim was printed above the doors: I SHALL CAST OUR BOUNDS TO THE EDGES OF THE EARTH. THIS HOUSE FOREVER GROWS.

  There was one dreamscape inside. Dewdrops of sweat were forming on my brow. Blood soaked my shift, I was light-headed, and black gossamer was spidering across my vision. I wouldn’t stay conscious for much longer. I fitted the card into the lock and shouldered the door open.

  The Inquisitorial Office was an ornate room, watched over by portraits of previous Grand Inquisitors. An oak desk, which housed a wooden globe, sat before a floor-to-ceiling bay window. Weaver himself was nowhere to be seen. Silently, I stepped across the carpet.

  Someone was standing beside the bookshelf. Red hair flowed down her back, red as the blood that plastered my skin. When she turned, I swung up the pistol. In the faint light from the citadel outside, her skin was waxen.

  ‘Mahoney.’

  I didn’t move.

  Scarlett Burnish stepped away from the bookshelf and raised a hand slightly. ‘Mahoney,’ she said, her cool blue eyes seeking mine, ‘put down the gun. We don’t have much time.’

  Those were the lips that told their lies.

  I had threatened the Grand Inquisitor once. Now it was the Grand Raconteur who stood before me, at the mercy of my bullet. Back then it had been about leverage, but I didn’t need that now. This was about self-preservation.

  Burnish lifted her other hand, as if to surrender, and said:

  ‘Winter cherry.’

  At first, I didn’t understand. It made no sense for her to be using the language of flowers. But then—

  Winter cherry.

  Deception.

  Alsafi’s contact.

  Scarlett Burnish, the face and voice of ScionEye, who had read the news since I was twelve years old. She was Alsafi’s contact in the Archon. Scarlett Burnish, a Ranthen associate. A professional liar. The perfect double agent.

  Scarlett Burnish, a traitor to the anchor.

  Golden light flared into the office. In a movement so fast I almost missed it, Burnish had the letter-opener from Weaver’s desk in her hand. It whistled past my head and punched through the Vigile’s visor, splintering red plastic. The handle jutted grotesquely from his forehead. Blood wept down the bridge of his nose. He teetered before his dead weight thumped to the floor.

  In the clock tower, the bells struck one. The æther heaved with the reverberations of another death.

  ‘Quickly, Mahoney,’ Burnish said. ‘Follow me.’

  More dreamscapes were already closing in. Something m
ade me look up at the surveillance cameras. Deactivated. Burnish pressed the back of the bust behind her, that of Inquisitor Mayfield, opening a gap in the wall. ‘Hurry,’ she said, and chivvied me into the space beyond it. She had barely closed the wall behind us before more Vigiles thundered into the Inquisitorial Office. Her hand clamped over my mouth.

  We waited. Muffled orders could be heard through the wall for some time before their footsteps retreated.

  Burnish uncovered my lips. A crack split the silence, and her face was illuminated by a tube of light, making her red hair shine like paint against her skin. Wordlessly, I followed her through a long, unlit passage, just wide enough for us to move in single file.

  She hurried me down a winding flight of steps. At the bottom, she held her light towards my face.

  ‘Who do you work for?’ I rasped. ‘The Ranthen? Which – which government, which organisation?’

  ‘Good grief, Mahoney, the state of you . . .’ She ignored my question, taking in the streams of blood, the glistening crystals lodged in my arms. ‘All right, stay calm. I can give you medical attention. Where’s Alsafi?’

  ‘Nashira.’ I couldn’t control my breathing. ‘I told him to leave me, I told him . . .’

  ‘No.’ She started back up the stairs, then seemed to think better of it. Her fist struck the wall, and her face contorted in frustration. ‘That son-of-a-bitch—’ The rest of her thought was lost as she seized me by the shoulders. ‘Did he mention me? Did he implicate me?’

  Her grip was like iron. ‘No,’ I said. ‘No. He didn’t even tell me.’

  ‘Did she capture him, or destroy him?’

  ‘He’s gone.’

  Her eyes closed briefly. ‘Damn it.’ One long breath, and she was back to business. ‘We have to be quick.’ She whipped off her silk scarf and used it to staunch the flow of blood from my arm, careful not to push the shard in any farther. ‘Weaver’s bloody whiskers, you’re freezing,’ she bit out, but pulled my other arm around her neck. ‘You had better be worth all this, Underqueen.’

  A few hours ago, I wouldn’t have followed Scion’s sweetheart anywhere, but if Alsafi had trusted her, I would have to do the same. It was her or whatever brutal death awaited me in the basement.

  We set off into a concrete passageway, me leaning on her as little as I could, but my strength was leaving me. ‘Stay awake, Mahoney,’ she said. ‘Stay awake.’ As we walked, she took what I thought was a handkerchief from her pocket. As she stretched the thing over her face, it moulded to her features, recasting them into those of a woman twice her age. She tapped two drops from a bottle into her eyes and hid her hair inside a woollen beret. I couldn’t process this. She was clearly a spy, but who had planted her, and when?

  After what felt like years of staggering, Burnish stopped and entered a code into a keypad, and a pair of doors opened. We stepped into a coffin-like elevator that stank of mould and made an anguished death-rattle as it trundled to the surface. When we reached what it told us was street level, Burnish went to a wooden door and unlocked it.

  We emerged into thick snow in a dead end just off Whitehall. I wouldn’t have given the door a second glance if I’d passed it.

  I was out of the Archon.

  I had made it out alive.

  A lorry was parked just outside the cul-de-sac. Burnish opened its back door and helped me climb inside. I registered hands taking hold of my elbows just before I passed out.

  ‘. . . was right. She was alive, all that time. I just can’t . . .’

  The floor shivered beneath me. There was pain at the top of my arm, but it was nothing compared to the sick, steady throb above my left eye.

  ‘Nick,’ the voice whispered. ‘Nick, I think she’s waking up.’

  A hand brushed my cheek. As if he were swimming up through deep water, Nick Nygård came into focus.

  My senses were still drowsy; it took me a moment to realise, to see him. A cut vaulted above his eye, and his face was greased with sweat, but he was alive. I reached out to touch him, to convince myself that he was real.

  ‘Nick.’

  ‘Shh, sötnos. We’ve got you.’

  He pressed me gently against him, resting his chin on the top of my head. The awareness of everything that had happened hit me like a punch to the gut. I tried to speak, but a gate had given way. All I could do was weep. Hardly any sound came out; just broken, straining rasps, punctured with frail sobs. With each shock, my ribs ached and my head pounded and the water beat my lungs apart again. I could feel Nick shaking. Maria rubbed my back, shushing me, speaking to me like you would to a child: ‘It’s going to be okay, sweet. It’s going to be okay.’ I cried until I could no longer feel the pain.

  My eyelids lifted again. Now I was on a threadbare blanket, and I couldn’t see a thing. My ears felt stuffed with cotton wool, but I could just hear the low hum of nervous conversation.

  My arms and legs were a collage of dressings. Someone must have removed the glass. I drifted off again, riding the last wave of whatever sedative I had been given, which soon broke. When my eyes flickered open, I felt more clear-headed, but at the cost of the anaesthesia. Most of the left side of my body was smarting.

  Arcturus Mesarthim sat beside me, like a sentry.

  ‘You are a fool, Paige Mahoney.’ His voice was darkest velvet. ‘A headstrong fool.’

  ‘Aren’t you used to it by now?’

  ‘You exceeded my expectations.’

  I sighed. ‘I exceeded Vance’s, too, I think.’

  He had made questionable choices of his own. It was he who had said that war required risk, and I had chosen to risk my own life.

  ‘Sorry for pointing a gun at you,’ I rasped.

  ‘Hm.’

  He glanced down at me, his eyes burning softly. With effort, I moved my arm and laced my fingers between his knuckles. His thumb lightly caressed my cheekbone, skirting around the cuts and bruises. In the darkness of the Archon, I had thought I would never see his face, feel his hands on me again. And I hadn’t truly realised, until now, that I treasured being touched by him.

  ‘What did they do to you?’

  His voice was a low rumble. I shook my head.

  ‘I don’t think I can—’ I breathed in. ‘I’m all right.’

  But I wasn’t all right. Anyone could see it. I was trembling like someone yearning for a fix of aster.

  His hand stroked across my hair, where it wouldn’t hurt my wounds. I leaned into it. ‘You will be pleased to know,’ he said, ‘that Adhara, the erstwhile Warden of the Sarin, has come to a decision. Seeing that our human associate had won such a significant victory against Scion, she concluded that human beings may have matured just enough to merit her renewed allegiance to the Ranthen. Consequently, she has decided that her loyalists will be ready to fight for us. We need only call.’

  I tried to still the heaving in my chest. At last, I had proven to Terebell that her investment in my leadership had been justified. It had all been worth it.

  ‘Where are we?’ I murmured.

  ‘We are on our way to Dover.’

  ‘Dover.’ My head felt so heavy. ‘The port.’

  ‘Yes.’ His hand kept moving over my curls. ‘Sleep, little dreamer.’

  I slipped away before I could ask anything more. When I woke again, it took a while to remember where I was. I was lying opposite a fast-asleep Maria, and my head was on Nick’s lap. We were close to the back door of the lorry. Pain swelled and ebbed in all my wounds with each shunt of the vehicle.

  ‘. . . orders at some point in the next few weeks. In the meantime, Mahoney needs to convalesce. Alsafi made a great sacrifice to get her out of there. I expect you to ensure it doesn’t go to waste.’ Burnish.

  ‘Alsafi was my Ranthen-kith.’ Warden. ‘I will always strive to honour his memory, but I suspect that Paige will not want to be absent from the war effort for long, even to convalesce.’

  I stayed still.

  ‘If she doesn’t rest, she’s going to be too
weak to contribute to that war effort.’ Burnish’s voice held a note of vexation. ‘That won’t please my sponsor. She was tortured in the Archon, God alone knows what she had to do to break Senshield, and on top of that, I doubt her injuries have fully healed from the scrimmage. Honestly, I’m surprised she’s able to stand up.’

  ‘She is possessed of extraordinary resilience. It was part of why we chose her to be our associate.’

  Burnish made a non-committal sound. ‘She’s human. Our sanity is a little more brittle than yours. As are our bones.’ Silence. ‘She won’t see her twentieth birthday if she doesn’t rest. She’s a vital player in this game, Arcturus. Leaving aside her gift, she has come to . . . stand for something. Hall and the Sargas won’t rest until they have her.’ The lorry skimmed over a bump. ‘My sponsor needs what they call “fire-setters” to generate waves of revolution in different parts of the empire. They’ve identified her as a key one. If she wants to keep fighting the Sargas, joining us is her best shot.’

  ‘And you think your . . . sponsor is a suitable alternative to Scion.’

  ‘Possibly. What matters is that they want Scion gone, and so do we.’

  ‘The Ranthen will need to meet them. Whoever they are.’

  ‘All in good time. They could be just as far round the twist as Scion, but I’m willing to gamble. I won’t watch us hand global power to Nashira Sargas.’

  Warden didn’t reply for a while. Then he said, ‘I will do my utmost to persuade Paige of the sense in resting for a month. But in the end, she must make her own choices, even when they hurt her. I am not her keeper.’

  ‘Of course not. But you can be her friend, if you know how. She’ll need plenty of those.’

  One side of my ribcage ached. I shifted my weight off it, hoping they wouldn’t notice.

  ‘What will you do next, Grand Raconteur?’

  She laughed slightly. ‘Come morning, I’ll be in the Archon’s medical room, being treated for shock, having hidden for several hours from the murderous Paige Mahoney.’

  ‘That seems a great risk. Someone will suspect you.’

  ‘The wonderful thing about living in a morally bankrupt world is that every human being can be bought in one way or another. Everyone accepts a currency. Money, mercy, the illusion of power –there are always ways to purchase loyalty. Trust me: no one will accuse me.’