For the first time, Styx grinned, showing rotten teeth. ‘Much as I’d be curious to see if you would make that sacrifice,’ he said, ‘I’m not as much of a tyrant as some of your leaders. No, we claim one syndie as a resident of the Beneath.’
‘To do what?’
‘That’s my business.’
Whatever it involved, it would be a life of darkness. A life in the filth of the underground tunnels. One person condemned to that.
One life to save many.
‘Agreed,’ I said, softly. ‘You have one of mine, and you let all of my voyants into the Beneath, until the streets are safe again.’
The toshers’ king took a long knife from his pocket and held out a hand. Slowly, I offered mine. He sliced open my palm, then lowered both our hands into the brownish water. The cut stung ferociously. Rough skin pressed mine, squeezing my blood into the Fleet.
‘The river witnesses this settlement,’ Styx said. ‘This day, after many days, our communities are reunited. Should you go back on your word, or should your people do any injury to mine during their time here, we will drive you out, whether the anchor will hurt you or not.’
‘Understood.’
‘Good.’ We rose, and he let go of my hand. ‘The Beneath has many doors, doors to which Scion no longer has keys. You will be safe with us, so long as you obey our orders.’
‘Just tell us what to do,’ I said.
We met up with Maria and Eliza at the Old Spitalfields Market. Hundreds of amaurotics milled around the stalls, trying to get provisions before ScionIDE could send them all inside. For all they knew, it could be days before they were permitted on the streets again. Eliza was carrying an enormous rucksack, while Maria was handing out waterproof clothes and torches to the voyants who would be coming with us, people who worked in her section.
‘The toshers’ king has allowed our entrance,’ I said to her. ‘We’re good to go.’
‘Fabulous.’ Maria tossed me an oilskin. ‘Let’s get the hell out of here. Where’s the entrance?’
‘I-4,’ Wynn said.
A few rickshaws were still offering rides, albeit for sky-high prices. We hailed a pair and clambered into one with half of the group. The PA system was repeating Weaver’s announcement on a loop between periods of droning from the sirens, adding that all denizens should clear the roads for military vehicles. The shops that hadn’t closed already were full to bursting, their automated doors pried open by those waiting outside. White Scion cabs were thick on the streets, ferrying people to their homes, but our driver wove a path between them.
The soldiers’ marching dreamscapes were on my radar now. Too close for comfort. They might not fire at will in the capital, but we couldn’t take chances.
The rickshaw dropped us off close to the Holborn Viaduct, a flyover bridge that crossed a main road, where our group would enter the Beneath. Cars were jammed bumper-to-bumper. Pedestrians scampered around them, fleeing from the mourning of the sirens. Wynn gathered us beneath the bridge and took a strange sort of key from her belt.
‘The entrance is that manhole over there.’ She pointed out a stretch of pavement. ‘We can’t let anyone see us go underground. Eliza, you come with me to help lift the cover. When I signal, Paige and Nick, you follow.’
‘No. Jos and Ivy first,’ I said.
She paused before saying, ‘Very well.’
I checked for cameras or obvious scanners, but there were none. Wynn and Eliza dashed across the street. Their heads dipped out of sight as they crouched beside the right manhole. When Wynn stood again and beckoned, Maria nudged Ivy and Jos forward.
Jos was swamped by his oilskin and mittens. He put on a brave face as Ivy pulled his hood over his brow and hurried him across the road. Those two had been on Scion’s radar for as long as I had. Wynn waited for them to climb into the shaft, then followed.
My sixth sense was trembling. While Wynn vanished into the pavement, cars began to reverse and swing into frantic U-turns, their wheels mounting the kerb. Others veered away from the centre of the road, the way they did when an ambulance or fire engine needed to get through. I didn’t need to feel their dreamscapes to work out what was coming.
‘Go, go, we need to move,’ Nick barked. I found myself running into the snarl of traffic, just missing a Scion cab as it smashed into the front of a lorry. Horns screamed in protest. Our boots pounded. I saw the manhole, its open lid, the ladder inside it. I tried to push Nick in front of me, but somehow my legs were in the shaft, and my shoulders were following. My hands collided with the ladder. My boots slipped, then found purchase. I clambered down, rung after rung, foot after foot, until I hit solid ground.
Eliza was next, panting with the effort of carrying the backpack. A moment later, I heard a grunt as Nick dropped from the ladder.
‘Maria,’ he called, ‘get down here!’
Her silhouette was above us, boots on the rungs. ‘Dobrev, hurry.’ She took one of her voyants’ hands and swung him on to the ladder below her. She said something to him in Bulgarian, and he choked an answer. Without hesitating, Maria reached up and closed the manhole cover.
There were six voyants out there, and the key was in here. The darkness was as good as a blindfold, but I could hear their footsteps, sense their dreamscapes clustering above. ‘Wait. No, wait for us,’ a voice cried, raw with terror. Another called out, ‘Underqueen! Maria, please!’
‘Just go, damn it,’ Maria shouted.
I grasped a rung. ‘Maria, what are you doing?’
‘They’re too close!’
She was right. The convoy was seconds away, certainly within sight of the manhole.
To do nothing would abandon them to the mercy of the soldiers. To lift the cover would compromise the only chance of survival we had.
‘Leave them.’
My words rang through the darkness. It took only seconds for the voyants’ footsteps to retreat.
The convoy ploughed over our heads. The thunderstorm of wheels and armour reverberated through the tunnel, so it seemed as if we stood in the stomach of a chthonic monster. My hands found a damp wall. I was a little girl again, cowering from the soldiers beneath a statue. All around the vehicles, single dreamscapes were moving at a slower rate. Foot-soldiers. One of them stopped a few feet from the manhole. In the shaft, Maria was motionless. I thought about ordering everyone to run, but one splash, one careless footstep, could give us all away. After almost a minute, the soldier gravitated back to the convoy.
It was a long time before anyone moved. Light flared from Nick’s torch, revealing the drawn faces of the group. Jos was tearful, Ivy looking at me strangely, and Eliza’s hands were over her mouth. When the rumble of the convoy had softened, the Bulgarian voyant tripped off the ladder. Maria jumped the last few feet and switched on a torch of her own. The two beams revealed a cramped brick passageway. The ripe smell of decay invaded my nose, laced with something more malodorous.
‘So,’ Maria said, ‘this is the Beneath. Home, sweet home.’
You would never have guessed from her face that several of her voyants had been left behind.
‘Why didn’t you let them in?’ Jos said to us. He sounded choked. ‘There was time.’
His confusion made my heart ache. Maria just handed her torch to the newcomer, Dobrev, and groped in the pocket of her oilskin.
‘I’m sorry, Jos. They weren’t fast enough,’ I said. ‘The soldiers would have chased us down here.’
‘You shouldn’t leave people behind just because they’re not fast enough.’
‘Well, we had to, kid,’ Maria bit out. ‘If we hadn’t, the rest of us would have been killed. Including the Underqueen.’ She took a cigarette out and stuck it between her teeth. Her hands were shaking. ‘They know I would never have left them unless there was no choice.’
I believed it. Maria was one of the few members of the Unnatural Assembly, who had gone out of her way to show her voyants that she cared about their welfare.
Jos’s cheeks we
re tear-stained. Wynn caught Maria’s wrist before she could light up.
‘Not here,’ she said. ‘Sewer gas.’
‘Oh, lovely.’ Maria chucked the cigarette away. ‘They’ll find another entrance.’
It was possible, if they could meet up with another cell. Jos perked up.
‘Here’s the river.’ Maria shone her torch on greenish water. ‘No sign of shit. Yet.’
‘We’re meeting Styx’s contact in the storm drain,’ Wynn said. ‘Follow me.’
We ventured into the darkness, carrying what few possessions we had brought. The River Fleet coursed between the walls, a cryptic cousin of the Thames. Wynn chalked marks on the walls along the way.
This was the beginning of the end. Nashira’s reprisal was finally here.
A suspicion that had been bubbling away for days came to the surface. ‘Senshield wasn’t developed in isolation,’ I said, thinking aloud. ‘It was always meant to enhance ScionIDE. The soldiers are spirit-blind, so they need mechanical eyes to detect us. The scanners’ spread must have always been timed to coincide with their arrival.’
‘Senshield detects, ScionIDE destroys.’ Nick caught a wall for support. ‘Warden was right about the Vigiles, then. They’re superfluous, or soon will be.’
‘Not until the scanners go portable, which I imagine is on the cards.’ Maria flicked her torch towards the wall, revealing the slime Nick had just put his hand in. He grimaced and removed it. ‘If that happens, though . . . yes, then the voyant Vigiles are doomed. Krigs don’t work with unnaturals, and they’ll have no further purpose.’
Above us, ScionIDE was on the march. How many of the thousands of voyants in the syndicate would get to the Beneath? How many would be killed trying to reach it on my orders?
And it could all be for nothing. If a single entrance was compromised, we would find ourselves smoked out like a plague of rats.
There were plenty of rats down here. They twitched under our torchlight.
We waded upstream against a gentle current. The water wasn’t too deep, but with the supplies weighing us down, it wasn’t easy work. Jaxon would pop a rib laughing if he ever got wind of this. The Underqueen’s glorious descent into the sewers.
Wynn led us down a ladder, into the storm drain, which was just about dry enough to sit in.
‘One of the toshers will collect us from here.’ She sat on the slope of the tunnel, so only her boots were in the water. ‘They’re moving us to one of Scion’s old crisis facilities. They were built by Scion in its early days in case of war or invasion, but it seems they were forgotten when better ones were constructed.’
We could only hope.
Ivy ran a hand over her bristly hair. ‘Are they dry?’
Wynn squeezed water from her skirts. ‘So they say.’
Beside me, Nick’s brow rested against his clasped hands. It wasn’t hard to guess who he was thinking about.
Eliza dug into her rucksack and handed out packets of biscuits. We shared a canteen of water to offset their dryness. Jos had been bright-eyed with distress, but he soon dozed off against Ivy, who curled an arm around him. Dobrev elected to sleep, too, and didn’t seem to care how filthy he got doing it. Parts of the tunnel were caked in what looked like used toilet paper, so I rested my head on my knees, which weren’t much cleaner, and tried to clear my head. Only hours ago I had been lying with Warden in the light of the fire. It felt like a lifetime had passed since then.
Time moves strangely underground. I had left my watch at the den, but it had to be past sunrise. One of the torches flickered out.
‘Reminds you of the Rookery, doesn’t it?’
Ivy was leaning against the bricks. The others had fallen asleep, leaving the torches on top of Eliza’s backpack.
‘I guess you weren’t in there much. I wasn’t, either. But we knew about it. The squalor.’ She was staring at the ceiling. ‘I’m trying to work you out, Paige. You were happy to leave those voyants just now, but you didn’t kill Binder at the scrimmage. Or in the Archon.’
‘I wasn’t happy to leave them.’ It came out hoarse. ‘I did it to protect us. I’m trying to protect all the people who are left. Who survived.’
She drew in a breath, deepening the hollows over her collarbones.
‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘I know.’
Now the adrenalin had worn off, I felt the burn in my hand where Styx’s knife had opened it. I didn’t sleep, but I pretended. I didn’t want to talk if anyone woke up. My mind was too full of thorns. ScionIDE. The bargain with Styx. Terebell, and how she might respond to this disaster. Senshield.
But most of all, Vance. That eerily calm face and the eyes that seemed to stare right through me. In a matter of hours, she had reduced me from an Underqueen to a sewer rat.
The net was closing in around me.
I allowed myself a few deep breaths. Not all of it was my fault. I had to be rational.
Not all of it, but some. And some was far too much.
Dobrev turned over in his sleep and knocked the second torch into the water, putting it out. The darkness was so thick that it seemed to seep inside me with every inhalation.
Hours must have passed before our rescuer arrived. A slender amaurotic with a lamp on her helmet, clad in the same sort of uniform Styx had worn. Auburn hair was visible in the lamplight, cut haphazardly around her face, which was splashed by a grape-stain birthmark.
Wynn said, ‘Styx sent you?’
The tosher nodded and beckoned for us to follow.
It was a long walk. Styx had ordered the tosher to guide us to a crisis facility over four miles away from where we had entered the Beneath, where some voyants had already been taken via the Underground. Our noses quickly forgot the smell. the darkness wasn’t so easy to bear. Jos was a trouper, as usual, but he was soon exhausted, so Nick hitched him up on to his back. Every so often, water would rush from a nearby pipe and swell what was already around us, reminding us that there was no way out if it came higher. It rose past our knees, carrying waste I thought it best not to examine too closely. The tosher didn’t seem worried by the idea that we could be swept away. She guided us in silence, sometimes stopping to listen to the tunnels or pocket something from the water.
Wynn seemed just as comfortable. This had nothing on the squalor of Jacob’s Island.
We cut through a chamber, out of the storm-relief drain, and into the mainline. By the time we had scaled the ladder, we were all drenched to the bone. Maria braced herself against the wall and coughed up bile.
The tosher stopped a few feet ahead of us. ‘What now?’ Nick said. His cheek was smeared with dirt.
‘We can’t go any farther upstream,’ Wynn said.
Maria wiped her mouth on her sleeve. ‘You’re not telling me we have to go back out.’
‘No.’ She nodded to an opening in the wall. ‘We have to go through here. It will take us into the crisis facility.’
The tosher handed her a torch, which she shone on the passageway. The sight of it made my throat close up. It was barely wide enough for Jos, let alone the rest of us. And we would have to crawl through it, in near-total darkness, for as long as it took to reach the other side.
Wynn crouched beside the opening and followed the tosher. ‘Take this,’ she said to me, and passed me the torch. Beside me, Nick was still as stone, transfixed by the prospect.
‘It’s okay,’ I said. ‘I’ll go first.’
8
Counter Play
It felt like years that we were in that final tunnel, a pipe so cramped and black that it plagued me with persistent thoughts of being in a coffin. I could hear Eliza choking back sobs of disgust as we crawled, elbow-deep, through congealed filth, following the bluish light of the headlamp. It was hard to remember, through the aching and the stench and the sense that we were being suffocated, that daylight had ever existed. When the tosher opened a grate, the nine of us were poured into a pit, where murky, leaden water stagnated in a pool. Shaking with exertion, I towed myself
on to a set of winding steps and lifted a heavy-eyed Jos out with me. He was dead on his feet.
Another tosher, who carried a signal lantern, met us at the top of the steps and, without a word, led us down a passageway. The walls were grey and nondescript. We passed a door embossed with the word BATHROOM.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘this is civilised.’
‘Oh, yes.’ Maria picked a string of tissue from her hair. ‘Then again, everything seems civilised when you’ve just been getting friendly with other people’s excrement.’
Another bathroom was just around the corner. As far as I could see, everything inside was functional.
‘This is incredible,’ I said. ‘Why did we never know about this?’
‘Not many do,’ the tosher said.
He stopped and showed me a diagram on the wall, titled II COHORT DEEP-LEVEL CRISIS FACILITY, SCION CITADEL OF LONDON. Two cylindrical tunnels ran parallel to one another, each split into an upper and lower deck to provide extra room, and they were linked at several points by smaller passages. Not only were there bathrooms, but there were also side tunnels for use as medical wings, canteens, storage rooms, and so on.
‘Does anything work?’ I asked.
‘Showers, but don’t overdo it. The water collects down below, and it won’t go anywhere unless you get the pumps working. I reckon everything else would function if there was power.’
‘We were told that some of our voyants were already here,’ Wynn said.
‘Yeah. They were choosing their bunks, last I saw.’
‘Bunks?’
‘That’s right.’
The tosher headed back to the staircase, leaving us to take in our surroundings. After losing half our group in the descent and wading through the dark for hours, good news was a surprise.
I set Jos down and stripped off my stinking oilskin. Alsafi might be able to help us get the power back on if we could get word to him.
‘We should set up a meeting room for the commanders,’ I said.
‘And somewhere secure for you to stay, Paige,’ Nick said gently.
The brief exhilaration flickered out. I didn’t need him to spell it out for me; the syndicate would be baying for my blood.
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