The crystalline fields soon gave way to the austere buildings of the Scion Citadel of Manchester. High-rise apartment blocks were dotted far apart, like blunted grey digits, stern and monolithic, each a hundred storeys high. The lower rungs of the citadel were suffocating under smog – you could hardly see the dingy blue of the streetlamps through it. Jerry-built houses cowered in the shadow of gargantuan factories, which vomited black smoke.
An industrial chimney had fallen on to a dwelling in a slum, crushing it. Every surface I could see was wallpapered with layer upon layer of soot. Most denizens wore a mask or respirator, as did the Vigiles, who had them built into their visors. That would work to our advantage.
‘Do you have Senshield scanners in this citadel?’
‘Not yet,’ Hari said. ‘You have the prototypes in the capital, don’t you? Are they as bad as they sound?’
‘Worse,’ I said. ‘And they’re not prototypes now.’ I glanced at him. ‘You don’t seem worried.’
‘Ah, I doubt they’ll bring them north for a while. It’s people in the capital who matter. Scion wants them to feel safe.’
A humourless smile touched my lips. ‘People don’t feel safe up here?’
‘Well, let’s see how you feel. If you end up believing there’s “no safer place” than Manchester.’
He stopped the car on a street of red-brick buildings, most of which housed shabby establishments selling food: hot-water-crust pies, bone broth and fresh bread, pickled tripe. The snow had been swept on to the pavement and trampled into slush. I could just make out a rusted sign reading ESSEX STREET. When I opened the car door, a thick miasma scratched the back of my throat and spread a foul taste over my tongue. With my sleeve over my mouth, I followed Hari into a cookshop on the corner, the Red Rose, which promised traditional food from Lancashire. He led us through a warm interior, up a flight of stairs in the back, and through an unmarked door to the apartment above.
We gathered in a dimly lit hallway. ‘Welcome to the safe house.’ Hari drew several chains across the door. ‘Don’t go back outside without a respirator. I’ve got a few spare.’
He showed us all to our rooms. While the others were placed on the second floor, with Maria and Eliza sharing the larger room, I was led up a flight of cramped stairs to the attic.
‘And here’s yours,’ he said. The floor creaked under our feet. ‘It’s not much, but it’s cosy. Bathroom’s down the hall if you want a wash. I’ll contact the Scuttling Queen for you.’
‘No need for that.’ I dropped my backpack onto the floor. ‘We might want local help at some point, but we should start searching for—’
‘You can’t do anything here without being introduced to her.’
‘What if I do?’
Hari blinked. ‘You can’t.’ When I raised my eyebrows, he shook his head, looking uneasy. ‘You just can’t. She needs to know what’s going on in her citadel. If she finds out a voyant leader from London is on her turf without her permission, there’ll be trouble.’
I supposed I would expect the same, were our situations reversed. ‘How quickly will she get back to you?’
‘When she chooses to.’
‘I can’t wait long, Hari.’
‘You can’t rush her.’ He grimaced at my barely concealed frustration. ‘I’ll get her to see you soon, don’t worry.’
He closed the door. The attic was small, furnished with nothing but a bed, a clock, and a lamp. I left my snow-encrusted outerwear to dry over the radiator and sat beside it, warming my fingers. Every joint in my body felt stiff and rusted.
We needed to be out searching for Jonathan Cassidy, or sizing up the factories, trying to locate the one that made scanners. Anything might be happening in London while I waited for this Scuttling Queen to contemplate her schedule. This felt like trying to get an audience with Haymarket Hector again. I had grown too accustomed to the Underqueen’s power, to being able to walk where I chose without announcing myself. Here in Manchester, I had no such privilege.
Something made me focus on the golden cord. For the first time in months, I couldn’t feel Warden at all – not even his silence. Usually, I was aware of him in the same way I was aware of my own breathing, not noticing it unless something was wrong. Now he was gone.
Eliza appeared in a loose-fitting sweater with two mugs of tea, steering my thoughts away from him.
‘Mind if I join you?’
I patted the floor in invitation. In our more carefree days in Seven Dials, I had always liked to sit and talk with Eliza in the evening.
We huddled up to the radiator, sipping the tea. ‘Paige,’ she said, ‘the village – the Emim . . . is that going to keep happening now?’
‘Unless the Ranthen know a way to stop it. Or unless Scion builds another colony.’ I blew lightly on the tea. ‘We’re caught between being torn apart by monsters, or being ruled by them.’
‘The Ranthen will have a solution. They know more about the æther than we do.’ She pressed her sock-clad feet to the radiator. ‘I was thinking about the séance the whole way here. You never told me you saw ScionIDE, too.’
‘When I was six, in Dublin. I don’t remember much of it.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘I’d have shown you, in the séance,’ I said, ‘but you heard Warden. I was too young for the memory to be useful.’
‘I guess he knows what he’s talking about. Jax never wrote that much about oneiromancy.’
It occurred to me for the first time that Jaxon might have learned about oneiromancy from Warden, by observing him. It wasn’t mentioned in the original edition of On the Merits of Unnaturalness –but it had appeared in later ones. He must have done plenty of research on the new kinds of clairvoyance he encountered in the colony. Never a man to waste an opportunity.
‘Warden’s . . . interesting, isn’t he?’
‘That’s one word for him,’ I said.
‘You must have ended up getting quite close to him. Living with him for six months.’
I shrugged. ‘He’s a Rephaite. There’s only so close you can get.’
She was watching my face intently. When I didn’t elaborate, she said, ‘Paige, why did you choose Glym to be interim Underlord?’
‘I thought he was the right person for it.’
‘Okay, but shouldn’t it have been Nick? He’s mollisher supreme. Or . . . me, if not him.’
I had broken with another syndicate tradition, and I hadn’t even thought about it. Of course, the mollisher supreme always took over from the leader. Now I understood why Glym had been surprised. It must have seemed as if I didn’t trust the competence of my own mollishers.
‘I didn’t mean to snub you,’ I said. ‘Glym will be fair, but hard. It’s what they’ll need in the Beneath.’
‘You don’t know what my approach would have been. I started off in the pits of the syndicate; I know how hard it can be, how tough you have to be. Don’t underestimate me, Paige – and don’t underestimate my loyalty to you.’ I looked away. ‘You don’t know what it took me to leave Jaxon at the scrimmage. You and Nick were always together, from the moment you arrived. Jax was all I had.
‘I still left him. You made me see that he was just like the dealers who used me as their runner. I saw that you wanted justice for everyone with an aura, not just those you considered superior. So I chose you.’ Her eyes were full. ‘Don’t you dare take that for granted.’
She must have had to muster a lot of courage to say this. I tried to think of something, anything to say.
‘Eliza,’ I said, ‘I am sorry. I’ve just—’
‘It’s okay. Look, I know how much you have on your shoulders. I just want you to know that you can trust me. With anything.’
I could see from her face that she needed me to understand this, to acknowledge it, but I did trust her; I always had – I had just never thought of telling her so. Maybe I had spent too much time around Rephaim, forgotten how to show what I was feeling. Before I could say anything in an
swer, Hari appeared in the doorway.
‘The Scuttling Queen will see you tonight,’ he said. ‘Seems like she might just move at your pace, Underqueen.’
I needed to look presentable. Not polished, but presentable. I brushed past an automatiste as I made my way to the shower, but he didn’t seem to be interested in small talk, which suited me just fine.
The bathroom was an icebox. I washed in a hurry, stepping in dirty water, then dressed in grey trousers, a rib-knitted black jersey with a roll neck, and a body-warmer. My hair was a lost cause, a knotted brier after hours in the wind, and I knew from experience that brushing it would cause mayhem. As I reached the bottom of the stairs, Hari elbowed his way through the door with a paper bag in hand.
‘Ah, good.’ He shut the door with his heel. ‘Here’s something to eat. You must be starving after that walk.’
I followed him into the kitchen, which was small and dim, like all the rooms.
‘Sorry it’s so cramped. I’ve got one guy staying – you probably saw him – he’s wanted for painting a caricature of Weaver on the Guildhall.’ Hari snorted with laughter as he set down several cartons. ‘Rag pudding.’ He slid one across the table. ‘It’s not pretty, but it’s good.’
Inside was a gravy-soaked meat parcel, a spoonful of mushy peas, and thick-cut chips, cooked in beef dripping. It was only when I smelled it that I realised I was famished. As we ate, I noticed a pamphlet under his elbow.
‘The Rephaite Revelation.’ I brought it across the table, tracing the illustration on the front. The pamphlet I had written to warn the syndicate about the Rephaim and Emim, which the Rag and Bone Man had edited to work to the Sargas’s advantage. ‘I didn’t know it had made it up here.’
Hari gulped down his mouthful. ‘The voyant publishers in Withy Grove got hold of a copy and printed their own. People loved it. Then they reviewed it in the Querent, and since then—’
‘The what?’
He swept aside some unopened mail and presented me with a saddle-stitched booklet with a coffee ring on the cover. ‘It’s a voyant newsletter. Scion is trying to stop it spreading, but it keeps coming back.’
The headline was printed in the old black-letter script. SECOND VIGILE REVOLT ON THE HORIZON AFTER SHOCKING ORACULAR IMAGES FROM THE MIME ORDER, it blared. In smaller print: THE QUERENT SAYS NO TO KRIGS IN MANCHESTER! NO TO SENSHIELD IN OUR CITADEL!
‘Second Vigile revolt,’ I read out. My pulse sharpened. ‘There was a first one?’
‘It was only small, to be honest. A handful of our night Vigiles turned on the factory overseers a few days ago. Didn’t last long – they were easily brought down. But there are rumblings that there will be more.’
‘Why?’
‘They heard about the Senshield expansion in London and thought they were going to lose their jobs. They won’t be needed if Senshield spreads. And if they aren’t needed . . .’
He drew a line across his neck. I handed back the newsletter. Warden had been right; the Vigiles were ripe for revolution. Regardless of how long such a tense alliance would last, we might be able to call upon them while we were here without fear of betrayal –especially if we told them that Senshield was about to become portable. That would be the true death knell for their employment. And for them.
Tom came into the kitchen with Maria, who drew up a chair. Her hair was back in its usual pompadour style, and she had painted a ribbon of aquamarine across each eyelid.
‘Interesting.’ She gave the rag pudding a poke. ‘Hari, do tell us. Who is this mysterious Scuttling Queen?’
‘Aye. Last I heard, it was a Scuttling King.’ Tom cracked open a pudding box. In the grey light of morning, he looked his age, his face gaunt and speckled with liver spots. ‘Attard, wasn’t it?’
‘Yeah – Nerio Attard. It’s an old family,’ Hari said. ‘They’ve ruled the voyant community here for four generations. They tried to set up a Council of the North about thirty years ago, to bring more of us voyants together, but it didn’t last. Nerio got beheaded by Scion a couple of years back, but he had two daughters. Roberta is the one their father chose to take over in the event of his death – she gives me a bit of money to keep this place up and running. She’s the Scuttling Queen. Then there’s Catrin, the younger one, who’s sort of her muscle. She was detained a few days ago.’
‘For what?’ I said.
‘She helped the Vigiles stage their uprising.’
That meant that if she wasn’t already dead, she would be soon. ‘If I needed Roberta’s help,’ I said, ‘do you think she would be open to co-operating with me, even if it’s just by sharing information?’
Hari rubbed the back of his neck. ‘Really depends how you present yourself when you see her. She’s not keen on competition, but as long as you don’t show signs of wanting to take over as leader of the Scuttlers or anything, it’s a possibility.’ He eyed his watch before shovelling in a few more mouthfuls of food. ‘We’ll go to the Old Meadow now. Better to be early than late.’
I looked to Maria. ‘Where’s Eliza?’
She pulled a face. ‘I think something possessed her. I heard noises. No answer when I called her, and the door’s locked.’
Eliza wouldn’t want to miss this meeting, but she would be confined to bed for a good few hours after a trance. ‘Let me check on her,’ I said. ‘Do you have any cola, Hari? And the key to her door?’
‘Ah, yeah.’
He passed me a glass bottle from the fridge. I took it up to the first floor and unlocked the room. Eliza was lying unconscious where the rogue spirit had dropped her, her lips tinged with the blue of spiritual contact. Finding no ink or paints to hand, the muse had made her scratch the beginning of a face into the wall with her nails, leaving them ragged and her fingertips bloody. I lifted her chin and checked her airways, as Nick had taught me to do if she experienced an unsolicited possession, before I cleaned up her hand and covered her with blankets. She murmured incoherently.
The æther takes as often as it gives, people said in the syndicate. It was true. My nosebleeds and bouts of fatigue; Nick’s migraines; Eliza’s loss of control over her body. We all paid a price for our connection to the spirit world.
‘She all right?’ Hari said when I returned.
‘She’s fine. Your wall, not so much.’
He frowned slightly before handing me a full-face respirator.
I saw the world through glass eyeholes. The mask was uncomfortable, but it would keep me anonymous. I laced my feet into snow boots and zipped myself into a hooded puffer jacket with a thick fleece lining.
We followed Hari from the cookshop at a distance. Not one star could be seen through the smog. When we reached a main road, we squeezed into an elevator labelled MONORAIL OF SCION MANCHESTER, which winched us up to a station platform.
It took less than a minute for a train to arrive. It must have been sleek once, but now it was worn and soiled, and it rattled on the track. I stepped over the gap and took a seat in the deserted carriage. Maria sat beside me and picked up a copy of the Daily Descendant.
The others removed their respirators. Taking advantage of the invisibility afforded by mine, I took a good look at the people around us. Despite the late hour, none wore everyday clothing. One man was clad in the crisp red of those who worked in essential services, but he stood out – most were in slate-grey or black boiler suits. Black was for skilled personnel, but I didn’t know what grey signified. Only two of the passengers wore the white shirts and red ties that filled the Underground every morning in London. Hari nudged me and tapped the window.
‘There.’
It took me a moment to see it in the darkness. Its walls were as black as the sky.
A factory.
It dwarfed the monorail track. Even in the train, the clangour from inside made my teeth vibrate. SCIPLO was painted in towering vertical letters down one side of the building, with a white anchor beside it. Its employees, whose grey uniforms almost blended with the smog, filed in and out throug
h titanic gates. Each pressed their finger to a scanner before entering or leaving. There were at least ten armed Vigiles at the gates, another six patrolling the street outside, and I had no doubt there would be more within those walls.
‘Terrible life they have in there.’ Hari shook his head. ‘The work kills you. They handle dangerous materials for long hours and not much money – plus, they get fined for the slightest thing. Most have to shave off their hair so it won’t get caught in the machinery.’
Tom’s brow was deeply furrowed. I remembered the factory in his dreamscape, the gloom and the dust.
‘They’ve started beatings since the quotas were introduced. If you don’t meet your target, you’ll know about it in the morning.’ Hari nodded to where a squadron of Vigiles was escorting several grey-clad workers. ‘Even the kids don’t escape it.’
I tensed. ‘They have children working in there?’
‘Kids are cheaper. And small enough to clean under the machines.’
Child labour. It wouldn’t be tolerated in London, though enough unwanted children washed up on the streets there and ended up working for kidsmen for no money.
‘Since you want to find out more about SciPLO, you could try and get one of the workhands to talk – if the Scuttling Queen gives you permission to do your investigating, that is – but it won’t be easy.’ Hari pushed his glasses up his nose. ‘Might be an idea to visit Ancoats. A lot of factory workhands live in that district. Mostly Irish settlers.’
I watched the factory until it was out of sight.
We crossed a bridge over the River Irwell. Below us, dead fish rolled like balloons on the water.
After a while, the factories and foundries gave way to warehouses. Soon enough, we were stepping off the train and down a stairway to the street below. As my boot hit a manhole, I thought again of the Mime Order, and the people who were relying on me. I needed to persuade Roberta Attard that we presented no threat to her; that she should let us conduct our investigations in peace; that she should help us, even. Didion Waite had once described me as an ‘ill-mannered, jumped-up little tongue-pad’ when I tried to sweet-talk him, which didn’t seem to bode well for our meeting, but Attard and I were both leaders of our respective communities. That had to count for something.