‘I’ll lead the team.’
Glances were exchanged. ‘Paige,’ Nick said, ‘remember what we agreed. About your staying behind the frontlines.’
‘Dani said I could possess one of the engineers to see inside the facility. I’m better up close.’
‘You haven’t used your gift that way since the scrimmage. If you insist on going, you should ask Warden to train with you today.’
‘He can’t.’
‘Why not?’
I gave him a look that said we would talk about it later. His mouth thinned, but he didn’t push it.
‘I need to show that I’m not just using the syndicate as cannon fodder,’ I said. ‘That I’m happy to put my neck on the line, too. I’m not going to do this like Hector did, from a safe distance. I can’t.’
He didn’t argue any more.
Next up was the matter of who should come with me. Maria volunteered first. Three summoners, so we could call for help from powerful spirits if we needed them, and three other voyants who had taken Warden’s advanced training. A local seer, sent by Jimmy, would help us get in and out.
‘I’m coming, too,’ Nick said.
Eliza nodded. ‘And me. We’re your mollishers.’
‘I can’t risk both of you being captured.’ I considered them. ‘Eliza, I think an oracle would be more useful for this mission. I’m taking Nick. You can coordinate our exit.’
She folded her arms tightly.
‘Right,’ she said.
She had been waiting weeks for a chance to shine, but I couldn’t put her in the team for the sake of it.
‘I will ask Tom to check for portents, Underqueen,’ Glym said. ‘The æther may be able to offer us guidance.’
‘And I’ll try to source some explosives in the meantime,’ Maria said. ‘I owe Vance a little pain.’
Morning came, swathed in mist. The sun shone like a silver coin behind its gauze of cloud, and all over London, people were singing parlour songs around their pianos and wishing each other Happy Novembertide. Images of the first Grand Inquisitor, James Ramsay MacDonald, were draped from every building. The Grand Inquisitor of France had been expected for the celebrations, but according to ScionEye he had been taken ill. I would have expected Ménard to be on his deathbed before he missed such an event, especially as his visit had been so heavily publicised, but there was no time to dwell on it.
As the day passed, we prepared for our assignment. Glym, as the commander in charge of recruitment, assembled and briefed an infiltration team. A backup group would be ready to cause a distraction if anything went wrong. I worked out the route across the ice, based on what Jimmy had told us.
Nick was right about my gift. I might need it, and I was badly out of form. I swallowed my pride and tried the golden cord – no answer.
If that was how Warden wanted to play, so be it. Even if he had come, he might have gone straight to Terebell with our plans. I spent a while practising alone, trying to push my spirit into birds. It was late in the day when I successfully possessed a magpie and amused Nick by having the bird perch on his head. Less amusing was the headache that followed.
We set off as dusk fell. The team gathered in the district of Vauxhall, in a closed-down oxygen bar built into the railway arches. Nick handed out second-hand Scion boiler suits.
‘Everything washes up in Old Spitalfields,’ he said, when I shot him a quizzical look. As I zipped mine up, Maria strode in.
‘The bastard trader had sold out of explosives,’ she groused. ‘Because ScionIDE has never been stationed in London, there’s not much military-grade weaponry around.’
I tucked the legs of my suit into my boots. ‘Is that how it works?’
‘It’s the one advantage. If you have krigs nearby, you can steal their equipment. That, in turn, allows rebels to become militarised. You cannibalise one army to create another.’
‘Krigs?’
She waved a hand. ‘Soldiers. It’s from the Swedish word for war, krig. As Nick will know, there are a lot of them in Sweden.’ She grabbed a boiler suit. ‘We’ll just have to use fire.’
Fire was her numen. It would do. We had one other pyromancer with us – the redhead from the Mill cell – along with two capnomancers. They might be able to use smoke to mask us if we needed a quick escape. Jimmy had sent us two augurs, who refused to show their faces, and a waifish seer with the violet-tinged lips of an aster user. Three summoners had also volunteered; the tallest introduced himself as Driscoll. As agreed, none of them said which cells they were from.
We waited to hear from Tom, who had checked with our scrying squad that there were no ill omens in the æther, but after an hour, we decided we couldn’t delay any longer. I gathered the infiltration team around me.
‘This is the Mime Order’s first move against Scion,’ I told them. ‘We’re basing this plan on intelligence stolen from them, which appears to be reliable, but I can’t guarantee that the mission will be successful. Or that something won’t go wrong.’ I looked at each face in turn. ‘None of you are under any obligation to do this. Just say now, and you can return to your cells.’
The silence stretched on for some time. The seer gnawed her nails, but said nothing.
‘We’re all with you, Underqueen,’ one of the capnomancers said.
The rest of the team agreed.
It was utterly dark by the time Nick led the way from the safe house. Eliza sat down on a dusty barstool and watched us go. ‘We’ll be back soon,’ I said.
She smiled. ‘Go get ’em.’
A perishing wind howled by the river. There was no moonlight to betray us as we approached the ice, taking care to erase the footprints we left in the snow.
The silhouette of the warehouse loomed over the Thames. It was exceptionally rare for the river to freeze to this extent – according to the records, it hadn’t happened in over a century. Most of the surface was clearly too brittle to stand on, and the middle was as swift-flowing as ever, but a vein of thicker ice jutted into the water and ran right past the warehouse, providing us with our entrance. When I tested it, a tissue of silver threads surrounded my boot. Nick hovered nearby as I risked the other foot.
‘On a scale of one to lethal,’ I said, so only he could hear, ‘how dangerous is this?’
‘I think we’ve done more dangerous things. Maybe.’ He joined me on the ice and rocked his weight. ‘It’s a plan, Paige. That’s more than any of your predecessors have had.’
I turned to the rest of the party. ‘Here we go,’ I said. ‘Spread out as much as possible.’
We set off. Every step ratcheted up my pulse. The cold alone could finish us off if the ice were to give way, and if it didn’t, the current certainly would. This was an ancient artery of London that we walked on, one that had never been known for its mercy.
The crossing took time. Nobody dared walk too quickly. The seer, who knew the area best, led the way, delicately stepping around the thinnest patches. After what felt like days, I spotted the rusted ladder, almost hanging off the wall and missing several rungs. As we inched closer to it, Driscoll hit a weak spot in the ice. One booted foot splashed through it, into the river, before one of the others grabbed him. The impact quivered right the way along the ice shelf and turned us into statues. When it became clear that we weren’t about to meet a watery end, the other summoners hurried to get Driscoll to his feet.
When we were in the shadow of the warehouse, Nick gave the seer a boost onto the ladder, causing a web of cracks to materialise. I went next. The relief at being off the ice was almost enough to tame my nerves.
At the top, the seer squatted beside the fence. When she found the shallow ditch that had been dug beneath it, which was well-hidden by a sheet of corrugated metal, she clawed her way under.
Save for a pair of security guards at the main gate, which was chained shut, the place was deserted. I scanned our surroundings. The warehouse was bordered by a desolate expanse of concrete, where a SciORE vehicle, presumably containing
whatever was needed to repair the core, was parked and empty. Footprints littered the snow around it. I reached for the æther, letting my sixth sense wash everything else away.
‘There’s nothing below us,’ I said to Nick. ‘No dreamscapes. No activity.’
‘If you can’t sense anything below ground, maybe it’s because there’s nothing here to sense.’ He swallowed. ‘This might be a dud lead.’
‘Warden and Mira both said the core was probably some kind of ethereal technology,’ I said. ‘Scion could have concealed the facility in the æther. Stopped voyants being able to sense it.’
‘Right.’
Beneath my boiler suit, my skin was clammy. The seer beckoned from the other side of the fence. One by one, we scrambled into the gap and burrowed through the snow on the other side, soaking our hands and knees. The redhead and the capnomancers would stand guard outside while the rest of us went in to investigate.
We broke into a run, keeping low. When we got within spitting distance of the warehouse, I motioned to the redhead to join us and told her to wait for Nick to flash his torch from the doorway. One flash, and she could send in the other team members. Two flashes meant that they should get back on to the ice and out of the district.
The seer led us towards the warehouse. As she slipped inside, snowflakes drifted from above.
Our footfalls echoed as we stole into the building. As far as I could tell, it was unguarded. A draught wafted across my face, carrying the stale odour of cigarettes and purple aster. Beside me, Nick switched on his torch. As we walked down the length of the warehouse, Maria’s boot snagged on a glass bottle marked LAUDANUM, making us all start. It rolled through threads of dried aster and unsettled several plastic bags.
The seer stopped at the end of the hall. The wall in front of her was taken up by a vast transmission screen.
‘Look,’ I said.
Nick dipped the beam of his torch. There, sunk into the floor in front of the screen, was the trapdoor.
‘Paige, be careful,’ he said, but I was already crouching beside it. Finding no evidence of a lock or bolt, I grasped the handle and heaved it up.
Beneath it, there was nothing but concrete.
Nothing.
I stared at the place where a ladder should have been. It took moments for panic to engulf me. Not a trapdoor. Just a trap. I turned to warn the team, to tell them to run – but before I could get out a single word, I found myself wrenched upside-down, high above the others’ heads, pinioned in a net. Blood surged through my body. My heartbeat rustled in my ears and throbbed behind my eyes, drowning out the shouts from below. The mesh around me was so tight that my elbows dug into my waist and my knees were jammed together. Gritting my teeth, I pushed my fingers towards the knife inside my jacket, but moving my limbs was close to agony.
As I struggled, the transmission screen switched on, and a white background cast light into the hall, stretching out our shadows with it. When my eyes adjusted to the glare, I found myself looking at the face of a woman.
She had to be seventy, at the least. Lines branched through her sun-beaten skin. A pinched nose, a seam of a mouth, and a head of white hair, combed back from a raw-boned face. The eyes in that face chilled me to the heart of my being. They were black as pits.
‘Welcome,’ she said. ‘Paige Mahoney.’
Her voice was calm, crisp as pressed linen. The feeling it induced in me was like nothing I had ever experienced. Detachment, numbness, followed by a rush of dread through my bones. The way she said my name was oddly thorough, each syllable sharply enunciated, as if she was determined not to let a single part of it escape her tongue.
Maria seemed hypnotised by the screen. I could see the whites of her eyes around the iris.
‘I am Hildred Vance, Grand Commander of the Republic of Scion England. As you are no doubt coming to realise, this is not where Senshield’s core is located.’ She didn’t blink once. ‘Such information would never be allowed to fall into the wrong hands. There is no . . . underground facility.’ Nick stepped back, knocking a piece of rubble across the floor. ‘This building is derelict. Tonight, however, it has been prepared for your arrival.’
She had trapped me. Lured me here like an animal for the abattoir. I thrashed wildly inside the net.
‘As we speak, your unique radiesthesic signature is being used to recalibrate Senshield. Thank you for assisting us.’
A white light beamed down from above, blinding me.
The æther trembled violently, pushing shudder after shudder through my body. Something skirted the edge of my dreamscape. Sweat seeped into my boiler suit as I hung there, powerless, feeling my pulse twang in my fingers and the backs of my knees and my aura flexing like a fist, reaching out and recoiling by turns. I curled around myself as if my clothes had been stripped away, suddenly certain that something was looking at me.
A soft beep sounded in the building. Warmth ran from my nose and over my forehead.
‘Shoot it, Nick,’ Maria barked. ‘Paige, don’t move!’
‘You have already made a grave error by coming here. Do not make the mistake of resisting detainment.’ Vance seemed to watch us, soullessly, from the screen. ‘Your allies may be shown clemency if you allow my soldiers to take you peacefully into Inquisitorial custody.’
My mouth rang with the taste of blood. The air was too thin, weak, and spidery in my lungs. I was going to black out.
Danica. Vance must know about her, somehow. Jaxon must have told her without Alsafi’s knowledge.
A bullet snapped the hook that held the net, and the pressure on my head abruptly released. I barely had time to gasp before I plummeted – only to have my fall broken by Nick. He let out a faint ‘oof’ before his knees buckled and we both slammed into the concrete, hard enough to knock the breath from my lungs and awaken all my old hurts from the scrimmage. Maria was already dragging me up by the back of my jacket.
‘There can be no escape for those who defy the anchor,’ Vance said. ‘No mercy for those who pervert the natural order.’
Chased by her voice, we sprinted towards the open doors of the warehouse, back into the snow. Floodlights were blazing at us from beyond the fence, exposing our position, but there were still no dreamscapes closing in – at least, I thought there weren’t until my sixth sense vibrated, and I looked up sharply. Eight shadows bloomed in the sky above us.
It took me a moment to understand. Maria got there first.
‘Paratroopers.’ Her hands viced my arms. ‘Run. Back to the ice!’
The seer was already tearing back to the fence. The redhead was waiting on the other side, shouting ‘Underqueen’. As Driscoll and his summoners ran after her, the first of the paratroopers landed on the warehouse roof. Maria fired her pistol at the next one, nicking the parachute.
‘Paige,’ Nick roared, ‘come on!’
Gunfire hailed from above. I watched as one of the summoners went down. When the second was hit, a choke of ‘no’ escaped me. Maria pulled me down before shoving me towards Nick.
‘Go,’ she snarled.
She flattened herself against the warehouse and reloaded her gun. I ran like I never thought I could, keeping Nick in my sights. They were amaurotic soldiers, immune to spools, but I could cover Maria. My spirit wasn’t like those of the dead. I could access any mind.
Heat flared behind me. I threw a glance over my shoulder to see a string of burning spirits flying towards one of the paratroopers, who had landed on the snow close to Maria. Before the soldier could take aim, the parachute was consumed by fire. Maria ducked behind the warehouse door. Beside the two dead summoners, Driscoll stood his ground and joined in with the gunfire. The redhead scrambled back under the fence to help him. When I was near the end of the concrete field, Nick ran out to meet me and grabbed my hand.
Everything about the trap had been perfect. Vance had known, somehow, that I would sense deception if her people were waiting nearby to arrest us; that dropping assassins in would keep them off my ra
dar until it was too late.
The snow was misted with red where the summoners had fallen. ‘Maria,’ I shouted. ‘Get over here, now!’
She let off one more shot before she struck out across the snow. Nick fired at the soldier on the roof, but they had armour.
I squirmed through the gap beneath the fence, scraping my hip, and hauled myself out of the ditch on the other side. Somewhere behind me, Maria let out a cry. Instinctively, I threw my spirit towards the paratroopers. I was aware of tearing through a dreamscape and lashing one of them into the æther, of hearing a rifle clatter to the ground and seeing letters stamped on its side, but my silver cord whiplashed me back to my own body before I could take full control. Through tears of pain, I saw another soldier approaching from the left, his rifle aimed at the redhead, who was focused on driving off the one who had shot Maria. I tried to dreamwalk again, but it was as if two rusted gears were grinding in my skull. Locked in place.
A spray of bullets tore through her midriff.
Nick dragged Maria underneath the fence and swung her arm around his neck. Her face was white. Driscoll just about got through before the soldiers opened fire again, and we scrambled down the ladder.
A helicopter dropped from above us and shone its light across the river, on to the ice. A voice from inside told me to surrender immediately. I thought of the three dead voyants I had left behind, and with a surge of breathless fury, I turned to face it, throwing my arms wide. I motioned for Driscoll to move behind me and made sure I was shielding Nick and Maria. My hair whipped across my face as we gathered together.
‘Paige,’ Nick said, ‘what are you doing?’
‘They won’t shoot.’ I kept my eyes on the helicopter. ‘They can’t risk breaking the ice.’
‘Why would they care?’
‘Because they have to take me alive.’
Nashira wanted my spirit. If I was swept away by the river, she would never get it.
We were deadlocked. The helicopter hovered above the water. It might not shoot while we were here, but it would follow us until we had to leave the ice – and as soon as we were on solid ground, it would incapacitate me and kill the others. Sickening fear took hold as I pictured it. We might have eluded Vance for an instant, but she had us in a corner.