The Song Rising

by Samantha Shannon

  Warden had watched our discussion in silence.

  ‘What did you want to say?’ I asked him quietly.

  He looked between my commanders.

  ‘The Mime Order is an alliance between our two factions,’ he said. ‘You have all contributed your skills and knowledge to its continuation. Now, we wish to give something in return.’

  ‘Oh, at last,’ Maria said.

  Warden gave her a sidelong glance before continuing. ‘With Senshield now able to detect four of seven orders, all clairvoyants in this country, whether they yet know it or not, are in an extremely precarious position. If ever the time was ripe to sway them to our cause, it is now. It would be advantageous to alert them to the situation in the capital and urge them to join the revolution.’

  ‘And how do you propose we do that,’ said Maria, ‘given Scion’s famous tolerance for freedom of information?’

  Tom snorted.

  ‘I suggest,’ Warden said, undeterred, ‘that we send a message through the æther – one that would reach many voyants at once – encouraging them to assist the Mime Order in its fight against Scion.’ There was silence from us all. ‘I take it you have all attended a séance at some point in your careers.’

  Nods. I had been part of a few séances during my time as Jaxon’s mollisher. They were group summonings of spirits, requiring the presence of at least three voyants.

  ‘Well-conducted séances can amplify clairvoyant gifts. I propose that we hold one here. First,’ Warden said, ‘I would draw memories from any willing ScionIDE survivors, which will illustrate the threat they pose. Paige will enter my dreamscape and experience them with me. Immediately after, she will jump into a willing oracle.’

  ‘Okay,’ Nick said, frowning.

  ‘This stage is theoretical, but I believe that Paige should be able to transfer the memories from my dreamscape to the oracle’s, allowing them to be projected into the æther. The longer we can sustain the séance, the farther the message will travel. We will need most, or preferably all, of the Unnatural Assembly for it to travel far and wide.’

  Maria folded her arms. ‘Sounds great. Why haven’t we been doing this all along?’

  ‘You did not have a Rephaite with you,’ Warden said. ‘Now, who here has had dealings with ScionIDE?’

  Maria chuckled. ‘I’ll share. My memories are nice and gruesome.’

  The room’s attention shifted towards Nick, who was hunched on a supply crate. He wet his lips. ‘My experience was . . . personal. I don’t know if I want it made public.’

  ‘Take mine,’ I said to Warden. ‘My memory of the Dublin Incursion.’

  ‘You were too young,’ Warden said. ‘Those memories may not be clear enough.’

  Nick circled his temples with his fingers. ‘Have it,’ he said. ‘If it will help the country understand, have it.’ His knee bounced. ‘I can’t project the emotions in the memory, you realise. Just images.’

  ‘The images may be all that is needed. Visions of a violent past – portending a violent future.’

  Nick nodded, resting his forehead on one hand.

  ‘Let me do the projection,’ Tom said gently, patting him on the back. ‘I’ve a wee bit more experience in the art.’

  Another nod.

  ‘It is settled, then. If you can persuade the Unnatural Assembly to perform the séance,’ Warden said, ‘I will help you strengthen it.’

  Tom grimaced. ‘You dinna think the Assembly will all hold hands together, do you?’

  ‘Oh, they will,’ I said.

  ‘They willna like it, Underqueen.’

  ‘I might be wrong,’ I said, ‘but I don’t think Scion will give a damn whether they like it or not.’

  9

  The Cost

  It took sixteen hours to gather enough of the Unnatural Assembly to perform the séance. They were scattered far and wide across the citadel, pinned down in various segments of the Beneath.

  While the toshers tried to bring them to the facility, the rest of us got to work on making our new home habitable. We laid bedding on the bunks. A team was set up to work on the pumps and the ventilation system. What food we had carried was stashed in the canteen area, ready to be distributed. Weapons were taken from their owners and locked away.

  The work kept me too busy to speak to Warden again. Sometimes we passed each other as we carried boxes of bedding between the sectors, and I would catch a glimpse of his face in the dim light, but I always avoided eye contact.

  All the while, more voyants trickled into the facility. Some came through a passage that connected to the Underground, others through the sewers, and others still through a building on the surface.

  We cleaned up the medical wing as best we could, pooling our supplies, and Nick and Wynn were handed the keys. Wynn immediately called me in and sat me down on a crate. Her hair was back in its fishtail braid.

  ‘Let’s see that hand. And your face,’ she said. ‘We can’t have you dying of infection before you go.’

  The cut from Styx had long since stopped bleeding, but knowing me, I would tear it open if it wasn’t stitched. Wynn laid my hand in her lap, took a small bottle of alcohol from her skirts and tipped a little stream on to the cut on my palm, then dabbed some more on to my cheek.

  ‘Are you all right, Wynn?’

  ‘We’re used to poor treatment by now.’ My palm smarted. ‘Paige, you must choose someone for Styx, and do it soon. He won’t forget about your bargain.’

  ‘What will he do if I don’t send anyone?’

  ‘He’ll go to Scion. The toshers take vows very seriously,’ she said. ‘That’s why he cut you. Once the river has witnessed your oath, you’re bound to it. If you go back on it, there’s no reason for him to protect us.’

  ‘Would you be opposed to me sending a vile augur?’

  ‘Not if they were willing.’

  ‘And if they weren’t?’

  She slowed in her work. ‘That would depend.’

  I let her clean my wounds in peace for a while. Once she was satisfied, she plucked a needle from her cardigan and washed it in the alcohol.

  ‘Wynn,’ I said, ‘you’ve seen that the voyants still despise Ivy.’ Her face tightened. ‘It could cause a lot of trouble while you’re down here. They’re crying out for blood.’

  Wynn looked up sharply. ‘Don’t you dare.’

  ‘I won’t make her go.’ I lowered my voice. ‘I want to give her the option. She might be safer with the toshers than she is in here.’

  ‘It would be for a lifetime. That was what Styx demanded.’

  ‘I will get her out,’ I said.

  ‘How?’

  ‘However I can. She will not stay there for ever.’

  She returned her attention to my palm, her jaw stiff. The needle shoved into my skin.

  ‘You know how frail she is,’ Wynn said, with unusual softness. ‘She doesn’t sleep. Her stomach won’t take much food. And you ought to see the scars her keeper gave her. She has been punished more than enough for what she did.’ Her shoulders pulled back. ‘Ivy is like a daughter to me. All the Jacob girls are. Send her, and I’ll go to Scion with our whereabouts myself.’

  ‘Wynn.’ I grasped her wrist. ‘You wouldn’t. You’d kill all the vile augurs in here, as well as the rest of us.’

  Her lips pursed. She cut the thread and enfolded my hand in a clean bandage.

  ‘I don’t know what I’d do. You know I’ve no love for this syndicate, Paige. My loyalty was only ever to you.’ She secured the dressing. ‘Go on, now. I have another patient.’

  Her face had turned to stone. I left.

  The next patient was outside. Ivy. She was standing with Róisín, who seemed to have taken on the role of bodyguard.

  ‘Paige,’ Ivy said, but I ignored her. My footsteps matched my heartbeat as I walked away. ‘Paige?’

  It would sate their bloodlust to give Ivy to Styx, and it would keep her out of danger. Every minute, I expected to hear that someone had snapped and
taken justice into their own hands, and I feared it.

  Ivy was a survivor. While I was in Manchester, however, I wouldn’t be able to protect her. I wanted to see her settled in a safe place, somewhere where she could mend, where she would be surrounded by people who cared about her, and that place wasn’t here – but if she was ever going to reach it, she had to last for the next few weeks.

  For now, the decision would have to wait. It was time for the séance.

  I joined my mollishers in the cross-tunnel, all three of us silent and tense as we waited. Eliza worried a lock of her hair, while Nick, who stood with his arms folded, was statue-still. I knew that the thirty members of the Unnatural Assembly who had arrived had been summoned to an empty stretch of the upper deck, where there was enough room to form a circle. Their voices mingled in the darkened space. They must have come willingly, but even so, I had no idea what sort of reception awaited us.

  ‘Nick,’ I said, watching his closed face, ‘you don’t have to do this.’

  His gaze was distant. ‘It’s time I faced it.’

  A few more mime-lords and mime-queens trailed into the chamber. I watched them out of their sight. No sign of the Pearl Queen.

  When the three of us stepped into the tunnel, their voices slammed into me like a wall: shouts for justice for their missing sensors, for explanations, for evidence of a plan to get rid of the army. Some of them bawled that I was a murderer and a turncoat. I watched as this ostensible Assembly collapsed into a snarl of cavilling, shrieking and fist-shaking while Eliza and Nick moved in front of me, calling for order. Spirits quavered nearby, ready to attack. When one of the new mime-queens punched Jimmy O’Goblin, I brought them all to heel with my spirit. A wave rolled through the æther and broke against their dreamscapes.

  They quietened, their expressions wary. They need to be afraid of you, or they will never respect you, Glym had told me. All you have to do is show them what you can do, if you choose.

  Several of them had souvenirs from the scrimmage: scarred faces, burns, missing fingers. Others had more recent wounds. I spotted Jack Hickathrift, who smiled at me with one side of his mouth.

  ‘The Underqueen,’ Nick called.

  I stepped forward. Eliza and Nick flanked me, both forming spools for my protection.

  ‘Members of the Unnatural Assembly,’ I said, ‘as you’re all aware, we are facing a crisis on an unprecedented scale. With the call for martial law and the increased presence of Senshield, I have had no choice but to order the syndicate into the Beneath.’ A few mutters, but I was holding their attention. ‘After years of threatening us with Senshield, Scion has not only installed hidden scanners across the citadel and recalibrated the technology, but combined the threat of it with the presence of ScionIDE – their army.’

  ‘Because of you!’

  ‘Go to hell, dreamwalker!’

  ‘We should have never let you have the crown. This wouldn’t have happened under Binder!’

  Others chimed in with their agreements. My commanders were at the back of the gathering, watching tensely, but I’d told them not to leap to my defence. I needed to handle this on my own.

  ‘Pipe down, the lot of you, and listen to me,’ I said sharply, speaking over the noise. ‘We have received reliable intelligence that a Senshield manufacturing hub is in Manchester. I intend to go there myself, along with Tom the Rhymer and Ognena Maria. We are hopeful that we will be able to gain crucial information with regard to the power source of Senshield. And when we find out what that power source is, I vow to you, we will destroy it.’

  The reaction was immediate and livid.

  ‘How do you expect to do that?’

  ‘Ah, so that’s how it is! Scarpering at the first sign of trouble!’

  ‘Craven!’

  ‘Putting other citadels in danger, too, are we, brogue? Going to expose more voyants to Scion?’

  And so on, until the Glass Duchess snapped, ‘Shut up and let the woman speak!’

  Gradually, the commotion died down.

  ‘This was always going to happen,’ I said, fighting to keep my voice cool. ‘Hector denied it, and so did every leader before him, but now we know that the only way out of this is to resist. Scion has just used me as their excuse. They’ve used us as their excuse, because they are afraid of us. They’ve been afraid of the power of the syndicate from the beginning, the potential for voyants to unite against them. That’s why Senshield exists. That’s why we’re here. If ScionIDE is allowed to remain, armed with the new, portable scanners, they will not rest until they have stamped out the voyant way of life. If we are to survive, we must fight.’ I pointed upward. ‘Up there, Scion is preparing to wage war against us. Let’s give them a taste of their own medicine.’

  Something I’d said had reached them. A smattering of applause went through their ranks.

  ‘You wish to declare war on Scion? In this weather?’ the Heathen Philosopher blustered, one eye magnified by his monocle. ‘The Unnatural Assembly is an administrative body that facilitates the felonious activity of worthy clairvoyants. Certainly not one with the capacity to declare war.’

  I was beginning to appreciate Hector’s restraint in not killing the whole lot of them.

  ‘They declared war on us,’ I said, my voice growing stronger, ‘the day they put their first voyant on the gallows. They declared war on us the day they spilled the first blood on the Lychgate!’ Cheers. ‘You are the clairvoyants of London, and I will not see you extinguished. We are going to reclaim our streets. We are going to seize our freedom. They made thieves of us – it is time to steal what’s ours!’

  The words stemmed from a place in me I hadn’t known was there. More cheers, louder. Calls of support.

  ‘You’ve got some cheek, brogue,’ Slyboots sneered, and they died down. ‘None of us signed up to be soldiers.’

  ‘I did,’ Jimmy O’Goblin slurred.

  ‘Jimmy, sober up or hush up,’ I said. Jeers followed. Jimmy jeered along with them, then looked confused. ‘I know the odds are daunting, but we have the æther. We can fight our way back to the surface, because we have a means to do so. Clairvoyance – our gift. As the Ranthen have shown us, we can use it against amaurotics. It’s a matter of unlocking our potential. Of trusting the very source of knowledge that binds us together.

  ‘If the White Binder had become Underlord, he would have made you into an army, too, but not one that fights for freedom. You would have been an army of messengers, spreading word of the anchor. You would have survived,’ I said, ‘but at what cost?’

  ‘Rubbish,’ Slyboots shot back. ‘Binder would have found a way to make it work.’

  ‘Mind your tongue, Slyboots,’ I said curtly. ‘I know you helped the Silent Bell burn down the Juditheon – and if I remember correctly, your old mime-lord was one of those involved in the grey market. I hope you don’t share the same sentiments.’

  He opened his mouth to argue, but Glym clipped his ear. ‘Speak to your Underqueen with respect,’ he said, ‘or you will not have a tongue to mind.’

  ‘You’ve got no right to give us orders,’ the Ferryman said. He was a wiry, white-haired augur, someone I knew only by sight. ‘You’ve never known hardship, girl. You’re seventh-order; you don’t know what it is to be exposed to Senshield. You’re the daughter of a Scion doctor. You were chosen by a wealthy mime-lord, who you betrayed for power. Give me one reason I should go to war for you. You’re the one who brought this down on us.’

  Dark muttering followed his statement. I tried to muster the words to counter it, but it was like trying to pour from an empty bottle.

  ‘Leave her be,’ Tom growled.

  ‘Oh, she talks a good game, but I’d like to see her spend one day in the gutter. And she left Ireland quickly enough when—’

  ‘Stop,’ I cut in. ‘I’m not asking you to go to war for me. I’m asking you to wait for me. And once I return, I’ll be asking you to defend yourselves. To take back what’s ours.’ I paced before them, looki
ng many in the eye. ‘When I became the ruler of this syndicate, I expected some backbone. I expected to see that unquenchable desire for more – the desire that drives this underworld. It’s what I’ve seen in all our eyes – the eyes of gutterlings, pickpockets, mollishers, mime-lords – since I first took to these streets. Years of oppression never crushed it, that flame that has led each of us to resist an empire that strives to destroy our way of life. Even if we’ve acted on it in the shadows, everything we’ve done, in the century the syndicate has existed, has been a small act of rebellion, whether daring to sell our gifts for coin or merely continuing to exist, and to profit.’ I stopped. ‘Where is that desire now?’

  Silence answered me.

  ‘You’ve always known your worth. You’ve always known that the world owes you something, and you meant to take it, no matter the risk. Take it now. Take more.’ Applause. Jimmy punched the air. ‘I will not allow this to be our extinction. Today, we descend. Tomorrow, we rise!’

  This time, there were roars of approval. Halfpenny, I noticed, was one of those who clapped, even if he didn’t speak. In the midst of it all, unheard by most of them, the Ferryman spat on the concrete floor.

  ‘I’ll not follow a brogue to my death,’ he said.

  He offered a mocking bow before he left. My stomach flurried, but only his mollisher followed him. I pressed on.

  ‘It’s time to tell other voyants in this country about the Mime Order’s cause. Here and now, we are going to conduct a séance and send a message to the voyants of Britain. It’s going to multiply and spread through the æther like the branches of a tree, as far as we can send it. At the end, they will see . . . this.’

  I motioned to a section of wall, where Eliza had painted our call to arms.

  THEY CAN DETECT FOUR ORDERS NOW.

  HOW LONG BEFORE THEY SEE US ALL?