I couldn’t imagine ever sleeping again. My head was heavy, my thoughts mired in fatigue, but Vance’s face was engraved on my vision. It floated in the darkness, disembodied and all-seeing, like something a dose of flux would summon. I felt too watched to close my eyes.
Vance would know where we were heading, I was sure of it. She knew I was on Senshield’s trail. She would discover that the rifles had been taken – rifles marked for shipment to Edinburgh. That was more than enough to send her after us, but I saw no other choice but to chase the next lead.
Eliza drifted off first, followed by Tom, whose sleep was restless. I lay on my side with my head pillowed on my arm, trying not to think about how many crates had been in that loading bay. How many guns.
A rustle of movement came on my left, accompanied by the glare of a torch. Maria was unwrapping one of the scanner-guns.
‘I didn’t get a chance to examine this properly in the loading bay,’ she said, by way of explanation. Her fingers skimmed over the barrel. ‘SL-59. The “S” stands for Scion. As for the second letter, that’s usually the designer’s initial.’ She inspected different parts of the gun. ‘Ah, there it is . . . Lévesque.’
‘Someone you know?’
‘Only by reputation. Corentin Lévesque, a French engineer.’
‘And aside from the space for a Senshield . . . connector, there’s nothing unusual about the gun?’
‘Not that I can see.’
The next step had to solve the puzzle. It had to show us how the scanners were linked to the core. I lowered my head back on to my arm and, despite the fact that Vance’s face still hovered before mine like a portent, drifted into a fitful sleep.
The Scion Citadel of Edinburgh, regional capital of the Lowlands, was cloaked in coastal fog. After the effluvia of Manchester, the air tasted almost sweet – but it was also much colder, lashed by wind from the North Sea. The driver who had brought us here presented me with a key and told us where to find the safe house.
The streets were quiet in the small hours, which was fortunate, given what we were carrying. There were no skyscrapers here. It was an opium-dream of a time long past; a city of bridges and crumbling kirks. Mist laced around the old stone buildings, which had rooftops crowned with snow. Edinburgh was sometimes called the Grand Smoke, and now I knew why: there were chimneys everywhere, and it seemed as if we were walking through a cloud. The citadel was carved into the unruly Old Town, where the labourers and service workers dwelled, and the more modern and expensive New Town.
On a ledge of volcanic rock, a decaying fortress knelt on the skyline of the citadel.
‘Edinburgh Castle,’ Eliza said. ‘They say it’s haunted by the spirits of the Scottish monarchs.’
‘You read Jaxon’s history books, too?’
‘Every one. Jax taught me to read with those.’
Jaxon still eluded me. It was all too easy to think of him as the enemy, the traitor. Yet this was a man who had taught an orphaned artist to read. She hadn’t needed to know her letters to earn him money.
Our little party traversed the lantern-lit stairways that squeezed between the houses.
‘It’s good to see Scotland,’ Tom said hoarsely. His face was losing colour. ‘Just need . . . a lie-down.’
Maria rubbed his back. ‘You’re getting too old for this.’
His laugh was more of a wheeze.
We pressed on through the citadel: past a train station, across a bridge, and up a narrow street. Chandleries and apothecaries, cutlers and wigmakers, bakeries and bookshops nestled together on the stony incline.
The safe house was in an alleyway halfway up, blocked off by an iron gate. When she read the gold letters above it, Eliza tilted her head.
‘Anchor Close? Is this a joke?’
‘Best place for a safe house,’ Maria said. ‘Who’d dare put rebels in Anchor Close?’
The gate let out an agonised creak. The safe house was up the flight of steps beyond. Its windows were shrouded by curtains, their sills capped with moss, and a lantern sputtered beside the door. It took my shoulder to open it. The smell of mould snaked out from inside.
The décor was as melancholy as the exterior. Claret walls patterned with floriated designs, coated with decades of grime. Furniture that looked as if a pennyweight could break it. Some dusty numa were piled on a table, guarded by a ghost, which drifted sullenly away from us. As we shuffled into the hallway. As we shucked our coats, Tom began to wheeze. I reached for his hand. Cold as marble.
‘Tom,’ I said, ‘what’s wrong? Is it your leg?’
‘Aye, it’s . . . giving me trouble. I’ll live, Underqueen.’
The words winded him. I squeezed his arm.
‘I’m taking him upstairs,’ Maria said, her tone clipped. ‘Eliza, get the painkillers. In my pack.’
As Tom mounted the stairs, leaning heavily on the banister, I caught Maria by the sleeve and said quietly, ‘It’s not his leg. Something else is wrong.’
‘How do you know?’
‘He’s not getting enough oxygen. I know the signs.’
She stiffened. ‘Do you have your mask?’ I handed it over, and she followed him up the stairs.
Eliza brushed past with a warming pan. As I reached for the handle of another oak door, my sixth sense tingled. Three dreamscapes: one human, two Rephaite. How had I not noticed? Breathless, I pushed it open and found Nick and Lucida sitting on faded armchairs beside a fire – and in the corner, watching the flames dance in the hearth, was Warden.
Nick got to his feet and offered a weak smile. I wrapped my arms around him. ‘You’re freezing, sötnos,’ he said, holding me close.
‘I’m so happy to see you, but—’ I let go of him, realising what the presence of the Rephaim meant. ‘You and Lucida should be in the Beneath.’
‘It’s okay,’ Nick said. ‘Terebell sent some reinforcements. Pleione and Taygeta are there.’
I relaxed a little. Taygeta Chertan was Pleione’s mate – one of the Ranthen who had arrived to support me at the scrimmage. She was just as intimidating as Terebell, with a penetrating stare and a sharp tongue, which made her perfect for keeping the syndicate in line.
‘How do things stand in the Beneath?’ I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the answer.
What little gladness had come into Nick’s face when he saw me disappeared. ‘It’s . . . bad,’ he said. ‘We need to get them out of there. For all our sakes.’
If he didn’t want to give me specifics, it must be hell in the crisis facility.
‘Where’s Ivy?’ I said. ‘Did she go into the Fleet?’
Nick returned to his armchair. ‘Glym announced that you’d sentenced her to join the toshers to protect the syndicate, which renewed a certain degree of support for your rule. Not that they’ve forgiven you entirely,’ he added, ‘but they feel slightly warmer towards you now than they did a few days ago.’
They had been ready to eviscerate me a few days ago, so that wasn’t saying much.
‘Róisín came forward to take Ivy’s place out of concern for her health, which most of them grudgingly accepted. She was due to leave when we realised Ivy was gone.’ I raised my eyebrows. ‘One of the toshers said she’d asked him where she could find their king, then gone back into the sewers with food enough for a few days. She left this on her bunk.’
He passed me a rolled-up scrap of cigarette paper. The note was written in a spiky, quaking hand.
You can’t save us all, Paige.
‘It’s not a pleasant thought,’ Nick said, ‘but I don’t think there was another way.’
Unwillingly, I remembered those dark, oppressive tunnels, the silence broken only by the drip of water.
‘There wasn’t. Not if Ivy was going to live.’ I pocketed the note. ‘I’m going to get her out of there.’
‘Róisín went after her. For now, they have each other. Once you’re back and Senshield’s gone, you’ll have enough power to bargain for their lives.’
‘And hopefully
a few more supporters.’ I glanced at the two Rephaim. ‘I take it you found Adhara Sarin, and that’s why you’ve been allowed to return?’
‘Yes,’ Warden said. ‘Terebell is attempting to forge an alliance with her, assisted by Mira and Errai. She elected to send the rest of us back across the veil to support you.’
I looked at him for a beat too long, searching his face for injuries. He looked just the same as before he had left.
‘Which leaves us free to help you,’ Nick said. ‘So fill us in. What did you find in Manchester?’
I almost didn’t want to burden him with this, but I couldn’t lie to him. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘Dani was right. They are manufacturing portable scanners.’ I retrieved one of our prizes from the hallway and laid it on the table. ‘Only . . . I don’t think she realised how multi-purpose they’re intended to be.’
Nick slowly rose to his feet.
‘This is—’ He swallowed. ‘But this is a gun. You’re saying this is equipped with Senshield?’
‘It will be, once it’s activated.’
‘Nashira is preparing for war,’ Warden said.
I looked up at the sound of his voice. Nick turned to face him. ‘War with who, exactly?’
‘Clairvoyants.’ Warden cast a detached look over the rifle. ‘This version of the scanner gives Scion a means of slaying unnaturals without risk of collateral damage. If it came to physical combat with the Mime Order, they would be able to fight back without injury to amaurotics. It means they can safely carry out martial law with no danger to “natural” denizens.’
‘So they can keep saying “no safer place” to amaurotics,’ I said, ‘while leaving no safe place for us.’
‘Yes.’
Nick closed his eyes. ‘Do I want to know how you got this, Paige?’
I told them about our search for Senshield in Manchester: my attempt to negotiate with Roberta; my visit to Ancoats; the uneasy agreement with Catrin and Major Arcana; the break-in, and the murder of Emlyn Price. By the time I was finished, my throat hurt from talking.
‘I keep thinking you can’t do anything more dangerous.’ Nick pinched the bridge of his nose. ‘How you got out of that factory alive . . .’
‘Vance will turn her attention to Manchester now,’ Warden said.
‘No. She’ll punish Manchester, but she’ll come here in person,’ I said. ‘She’ll know by now where we’ve gone.’ I held my hands close to the fire. ‘Here’s what I suggest. We seek out the local voyant community, if it still exists, and ask them if they know the location of the depot where these rifles are activated. Even if they don’t, I think it’s a good idea for us to connect with them, so we have people to call on if we need help. Hopefully the séance reached them.’ Nick nodded. ‘Once we’ve found—’
‘Nick.’
Maria was in the doorway. There was none of the usual good humour in her expression.
‘A word,’ she said.
With a slight frown, he followed her. When I heard their footsteps upstairs, I faced the two Rephaim.
‘Be honest,’ I said. ‘Do you think Adhara is likely to join us?’
‘If she sees a reason to,’ Warden said.
His tone implied that she didn’t see one yet. That she wasn’t willing to throw her lot in with mine. I couldn’t really blame her; apart from leading the revolt in the colony, all I had done so far was take control of the syndicate and start its transformation into an army of disgruntled criminals. I could claim no significant victories against Scion. My shoulders dropping, I turned and went to find a room.
Upstairs, I deposited the scanner-guns on a bed. Their weight sent up a cloud of dust. Two burner phones and a charger waited on the windowsill, presumably donated by whoever owned the safe house.
‘Paige.’
Nick stepped into the doorway, wiping his hands on a cloth. As soon as I saw his face, I knew something was very wrong.
‘Tom,’ I said.
‘He’s dying, sweetheart.’
The cloth was bloody.
‘He can’t be,’ I murmured. ‘How?’
‘You couldn’t have known. Tom made sure of it,’ he said. ‘He took a bullet when you left the loading bay. He’s been bleeding internally for hours . . . I’m amazed he’s lasted this long.’
‘He was holding the door open for us. That must be when—’ I released an unsteady breath. ‘Can I see him?’
‘He asked for you.’
He led me across the landing to another door. The æther was gaping open beyond.
Inside the little room, Maria was hunched in a chair, her head cradled in her hands. Tom lay in a bed that was far too small for him, his hat on the nightstand, his shirt peeled open. He already had a corpse’s pallor. His broad chest was stained by plum-coloured bruising, the blood bundled beneath his left pectoral. His eyelids cracked open.
‘Underqueen.’
‘Tom.’ I sat on the edge of the bed. ‘Why didn’t you say anything?’
‘Because he’s a stubborn old fool,’ Maria said thickly.
‘Aye, and proud.’ His words tripped into a wheezing breath. Maria almost bowled over the jug as she rushed to pour him water. ‘I didna want to slow you down, Paige . . . and I wanted to see Scotland again, one last time.’
I stroked the back of his hand with my thumb. Perhaps I would have stayed quiet, too, if I’d thought I might see Ireland.
‘I worked as a mule scavenger in Glasgow in my younger days, before I went south. I saw what Scion would do for their metal.’ His chest rose and fell unevenly. ‘I just . . . couldna bear to see it still happening, all these decades later. It had to end. It all has to end.’
Maria tipped the water to his lips. Tom took a little and leaned back into the pillows.
‘Paige, I dinna want you to watch me snuff it, but I have a last favour to ask of you,’ he said. His face creased into something like a smile. ‘Just a small one. Bring Scion down.’
‘I will,’ I said quietly. ‘I won’t stop. One day, they’ll call this country by its name again.’
He managed to lift a big hand to my cheek. ‘That’s brave talk, but I can see in your eyes that you’re doubting yourself. There’s a reason we accepted you as Underqueen, and there’s a reason the anchor’s been trying so hard to find you. They know they canna control someone with a flame like yours. Don’t ever let them put it out.’
I pressed his hand.
‘Never,’ I said.
With Tom’s death, I lost one of my most faithful commanders. One of the few truly honest people in the syndicate.
We had no time to mourn for him. No hours left to absorb his passing. I stood with Maria outside the safe house while she lit her first roll of aster in days. A ten-minute smoke was the only grace period I could allow her before we had to get back to the streets, to our task.
‘He was a good man. A gentle soul.’ Rain seeped down her face. ‘So it begins again. I lost so many friends during the Balkan Risings. At least Tom knew what we were really fighting. The Rephaim.’
I still knew so little of that invasion. Maria tilted her head into the rain.
‘In 2039,’ she said, ‘they marched through Greece. Then, in 2040, they came for us.’
‘How old were you?’
‘Fifteen. Along with my friend Hristo, I left my home town of Buhovo and joined the youth army in Sofia. That was where I met Rozaliya Yudina, the woman in the memory. She was . . . charismatic, free-thinking, single-minded in her search for justice – rather like you. Roza convinced us that we had to fight, even if we weren’t unnatural. She was adamant that any organisation that labelled one group of people as evil would eventually do the same to others. That to treat any one person as less than human was to cheapen the very substance of humanity.’ Sorrow tensed her features. ‘Training was rigorous, and we knew our chances were small, but for the first time in my life, I was free of my father, free to be who I truly was. Yoana Hazurova – not Stoyan Hazurov, the son he had never loved.
‘When ScionIDE approached, we made our own cannon. We stole the guns of dead police. We defended Sofia.’ She inhaled deeply. ‘We lasted ten days before our country issued a surrender. Hristo fled to the Turkish border . . . I highly doubt he got there.’
‘You picked up a gun in your memory.’ A drop of water iced my nose. ‘You weren’t going to use it on the soldiers.’
‘Ah, you noticed. Unfortunately, it jammed. The soldiers beat me almost to death, then threw me into prison.’ Her face twisted with bitterness. ‘Several years later, the new Grand Inquisitor of Bulgaria forced prisoners into heavy labour. I fled on a boat to Sevastopol and spent months travelling west, determined to find a large community of voyants. London’s underworld embraced me.’ Lilac smoke plumed from her roll. ‘We didn’t last long, I know. But with every friend lost and home burned, we fought harder.’
‘What kept you going?’
‘Rage. Rage is the fuel. And people need to see suffering, the blood of innocents shed. But they also need to see people standing, Paige.’
‘Who chooses who suffers and who stands?’
‘You have to stand. We must get rid of Senshield now, no matter what. If you return to the capital with a dead commander and no evidence that you’ve damaged the core—’
‘I know.’
Nothing would protect me then, Underqueen or not. Loyalty would sour to hatred. Even my allies among the Unnatural Assembly would abandon me. ScionIDE would steamroll us all.
Time was of the essence, now more than ever.
‘Did he – before he – did Tom say where the voyants were based?’ I asked.
‘Yes. The Edinburgh Vaults.’
‘Where are they?’
‘Off a street called the Cowgate, which lies beneath South Bridge,’ she said, ‘but the entrance is hidden, and he wasn’t sure where.’
‘I’ll go now. You . . . finish your aster.’
‘No. I’ll take Eliza and start scouting for information about the depot elsewhere.’ She dropped the roll and ground it out underfoot. ‘Vance will already be ahead of us, but let’s not let her get too far.’
Back in the house, I unearthed a map of Edinburgh and spread it out on a table. The Rephaim had gone out – presumably to find some unsuspecting voyants to feed on. I could feel fear building underneath my exhaustion. Eight hours had passed since we had left the factory. For all I knew, Vance was already here.