‘I feared she was lost,’ she murmured. ‘I read my own cards a few weeks ago. Four of Swords. I saw Liss in a pool of colours, drifting far away.’ She took a deck of tarot cards from inside her shirt. ‘I saw you, too, Paige. A great wave washed around your feet, and dark wings lifted you away. This card represents both a beginning and an end. Answering a call.’
She shuffled through her deck and passed me a card titled JUDGEMENT. It showed a fair-haired angel sounding a trumpet, surrounded by billows of smoke. The grey dead rose from their graves, lifting their hands, while high waves reared against a pale blue sky.
‘A powerful card,’ she said. ‘You’re going to make an important decision, Paige. Very soon.’
I held it for a long while. Readings always troubled me, but perhaps it was time I faced my future.
‘You must tell me what happened to Liss.’ The muscles in her neck stood out. ‘Tell me it was swift, at least.’
My throat seemed to grow smaller. ‘She died in September, in a prison camp just north of London, after ten years of imprisonment. I was with her.’ Each word strained. ‘I said the threnody.’
Elspeth bowed her head a little. I took a slug of the honeyed drink. It still hurt that Liss, who had given me the strength to bite my tongue and play the game when all I’d wanted was to kick and scream, had never set foot outside her prison. She should have been here.
‘I see.’ A heavy sigh lifted her chest. ‘We canna grieve for those who’ve gone. Not before we’ve fought to change the world that took them. If you were a friend to someone as sweet and goodhearted as Liss, that gives us all the more reason to help you.’
I handed back the Judgement card.
‘Liss did an ellipse reading for me before she died,’ I said. ‘Perhaps you can help me understand it.’
Elspeth presented me with her deck, and I took her numen from her hand with care. It was a sign of great trust and respect for a soothsayer to allow another voyant to handle the very thing that connected them to the æther. Delicately, I shuffled through the deck and laid out the six cards in order: Five of Cups, King of Wands inverted, the Devil, the Lovers, Death inverted, and Eight of Swords.
‘An ellipse spread uses seven cards,’ Elspeth said.
‘The last one was lost.’
‘Hm. Liss was always far better at the art than any of the other Lin women. She could see visions. No one else in the family had that power.’ She tapped her finger on each of the cards. ‘Do you know what any of them mean?’
‘The first two, I think.’
Five of Cups was my father in mourning, presumably for my mother. The King of Wands, I was sure, was Jaxon, and referred to the hold he had once had over my life.
‘That makes sense. Your past and your present. The third card would have indicated your future at the time of the reading.’ Elspeth plucked it from the deck. ‘The Devil.’
‘Liss said it represented hopelessness and fear, but that I’d chosen that path willingly,’ I said. ‘That it’s something I can escape, even if I don’t know it.’
Elspeth held the card up to the light.
‘You’re moving against Hildred Vance. She’s certainly a force of hopelessness and fear, and it seems she was in all our futures,’ she said darkly, ‘but nobody gives into her willingly – certainly not the Underqueen of the Mime Order. So it can’t refer to her.’ She studied the card as if, by the sheer force of her will, the Devil would peel off its face and reveal its true identity. ‘Notice the other figures in the image. The Devil looms over a man and a woman.’
She flipped it to face me. The painted, horned head was as sinister as its name insinuated, with its downturned mouth and staring white eyes. Two naked figures were on either side of the pedestal, bound to it, and by extension, to each other, by a silver chain.
‘The two figures in the Devil card closely resemble the couple in the Lovers card, which comes next. They could almost be the Lovers. Look closely. The Devil controls them. Manipulates them.’
The words left a fine sweat on my brow.
Controls them. Manipulates them. The Devil could be Terebell. Both Warden and I were chained to her: Warden by his loyalty, me by my need for her money. And we were also bound to each other by a chain, albeit a chain of gold.
‘Someone stands over the pair in the Lovers card, too, though there’s no chain.’ Elspeth pointed to a winged figure above the man and woman. ‘I’m not certain what this figure represents in this instance, but . . . someone is always watching this couple.’
Liss had given little detail on the Lovers, except that it would show me what to do. There’s tension between spirit and flesh, she had told me. Too much. I hadn’t understood her at the time, but I had since collided with a lover – or someone who might have become one, at least.
As a Rephaite, Warden was the pivot between spirit and flesh. We had always felt watched, knowing the consequences of discovery. If he represented the path I should be taking, then by trying to distance myself from him, by telling him we had to part, I had gone astray; I had turned my back on the counsel of the cards.
And yet . . . he could so easily be the Devil himself . . . or a puppet-master in its service, keeping me chained to it, to Terebell.
Was he meant to be my lover or my downfall?
‘The way I see it,’ Elspeth said, ‘you must follow the path of the Lovers. Stay close to the person you think the card might represent, and make sure you’ve identified that person correctly. If you stray from whoever it is, I suspect you’ll be vulnerable to the Devil.’ She gathered the deck back together. ‘I hope the answers soon become clear to you, Paige.’
My brow was knitted. I had more questions now than I’d had before.
I shook myself. I couldn’t dwell on this, not when I was getting so close to solving the mystery of what might power Senshield. And not when another devil could be watching us, preparing to cast another net around me – a devil named Hildred Vance.
‘There’s a reason I came to find you,’ I said. I looked between the voyants. ‘I need to know exactly where the Edinburgh Central Depot is.’
Elspeth’s expression was guarded. ‘Why?’
‘I – I can’t explain now. But it’s important.’
She pursed her lips. ‘You’ll not find the depot on any map,’ she said, ‘but those of us who have lived here for years know fine well where it is. It’s in Leith – a military district beside the port, off-limits to denizens. Don’t try to get in. You’ll wind up dead or captured.’
Just going outside put me at risk of winding up dead or captured. If I let that daunt me, I’d never do anything.
17
Blood and Steel
Nick and Warden eventually found me, after making their way through a convoluted network of tunnels. We emerged from the Vaults into the light of a low sun, which had banished much of the fog and now glared off the snow. I was armed with a military-grade pistol from Elspeth, whose people had been able to build up a cache of weapons over the years, stolen from vehicles bound for the depot. She had promised that if we needed assistance, supplies, or somewhere to hide during our time in Edinburgh, we were welcome to come back.
As we made the return journey to the safe house, I pictured the faces of those who were suffering under Scion. The Mime Order, entombed in the Beneath. The factory hands, shorn and beaten. The Irish, ostracised. The night Vigiles, threatened by a technology that might destroy us all.
Yet now I thought of others, too: the living, the defiant. Elspeth Lin, the last of a family that Scion had torn apart, resolved to fight back. My commanders in London. The Ranthen. The people who were here with me now. I didn’t know if we could stop the machine, but a fire had started deep within it. Even the smallest flame could raze the strongest house.
Some had to suffer. And some had to stand.
Eliza and Maria were waiting for us in the parlour. From their frustrated expressions, their investigations in the citadel had been fruitless. When we entered, Eliza
stood.
‘Did you find the voyants?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘And they’ll help us.’
Relief crossed her face. ‘And the depot?’
‘It’s in Leith, on the coast. We go now.’
Maria was already entering the district’s name into the tracker. ‘Ah,’ she breathed. ‘Yes. Look at what happens when you try to zoom in on Leith.’ She showed me the screen. The district was a nebulous smear on the coast, not too far from the centre of Edinburgh. Blurred. ‘Scion doesn’t want any satellites to see what’s going on there.’
‘All the more reason for us to go. Eliza, you stay here,’ I said. ‘We need someone on the outside if we get into trouble.’
‘Be careful,’ she said.
We set off for Leith as soon as it was dark. Instead of an Underground or a monorail, Edinburgh had a system of automated trams that ran round the clock. While the Rephaim went their own way, preferring to move quickly through the shadows, the rest of us found a tram towards Leith and took seats at the back, away from the other passengers. We got off at the terminus, where Lucida and Warden were waiting.
A fence stood between us and Leith, covered with red signs. All I could see beyond it was more buildings. I spied a camera jutting from a wall and backed into the shelter of a doorway.
WARNING
SCIONIDE MILITARY INSTALLATION
ACCESS TO THIS ZONE IS RESTRICTED BY THE
GRAND COMMANDER IN ACCORDANCE WITH
SCION LAW. USE OF DEADLY FORCE IS AUTHORISED.
‘We’re going in,’ I said.
‘How?’ Maria asked, looking mystified.
I lifted an eyebrow.
‘Ah,’ she said, with a smirk. ‘Of course.’
The guard behind the fence was alone. It took me more time than I wanted to worm into his dreamscape, and he made a hell of a fuss as I overcame his defences, but I managed to keep my claws in him for long enough to walk him to the gate and open it. As soon as she could fit through, Maria charged forward and knocked him out with the butt of his own gun. I returned to my body as Nick was carrying me into the facility. The gate closed with a hiss behind us, sealing itself with a throb of red light.
Nick set me on my feet. We were into the military district, edging through the darkened streets that must lead to the depot. Warden and Lucida stayed ahead of us, ready to silence any soldiers that appeared, while Nick kept an eye out for cameras and scanners. With every step, a feeling that we were being watched crept up on me. Had Vance predicted our arrival? Was she here already?
Despite the cold, my nape was damp. A wrong move here could get us all killed. I sensed people in the buildings, but no one was outside on the streets. This section of the military district must be solely administrative, a smokescreen hiding the real secret.
I was proven right when we came to a ten-foot concrete wall. A fence towered at the top, crowned with a corolla of metal spikes, adding another nine or ten feet to the height of the barrier. Yet more signs warned that deadly force was authorised.
We weren’t getting inside this place in a hurry.
‘Somebody give me a boost,’ I said.
‘Wait. I’ll go first.’ Maria tied her coat around her waist. ‘Warden, you’re the tallest. Mind giving a lady a leg-up?’
Warden glanced at Lucida, who was visibly scandalised by the idea. Maria, blissfully unaware of the Rephaite aversion to touching humans, gave him an expectant look.
‘I will,’ Nick said, and cupped his hands.
Nick was strong, but he couldn’t raise Maria quite high enough. She made one grab for the wall that almost unbalanced them both, causing Nick to swear through his teeth and lower her.
‘Sorry.’ When she was back on the ground, Maria grinned at Warden. ‘Has to be you, big man.’
A hysterical urge to laugh seized me. Lucida didn’t seem thrilled by this state of affairs, but we weren’t in a position to debate it. Warden lifted Maria easily, letting her stand on his shoulder. She caught the lip of the wall and scrambled up.
In the moments she was out of sight, I didn’t breathe. I half-expected to hear a gunshot, but her head soon popped over the edge.
‘Come on,’ she whispered.
Avoiding Warden’s gaze, I stepped on to his hand, then climbed on to his shoulder. He held my calf to steady me, sending a shiver right the way up to my back, as I stretched to grasp Maria’s hand and let her take some of my weight. My boots scraped on the smooth wall, seeking traction. When I was up, Maria patted me on the back.
‘Take a look down there, Underqueen,’ she said, a little hoarsely. ‘Just . . . try not to scream.’
I hunkered down on my stomach and crawled to the fence.
What I saw beyond it, I knew I would never forget.
Tanks. Hundreds of tanks. They formed perfect columns on the concrete in front of a jet-black warehouse. Heavily armed soldiers swarmed around them in gunmetal armour. Even in my darkest moments, I could never have imagined that a force of this magnitude really existed. Locked out of the district, the people of Edinburgh must have no idea that they shared their citadel with so many machines of war.
This was what the factories were generating in Manchester, what human blood had been shed to create.
Warden appeared on my right. His eyes torched as he took it in. Nick joined us and dug out his binoculars. I let him absorb it all for a minute before I reached for them and focused on the nearest unit. The soldiers’ armoured backs were stamped with SECOND INQUISITORIAL DIVISION, and I could see now that the rifles they carried had a thin strip of white light along the barrel.
Active. The scanner-guns had been brought here from Manchester as ordinary firearms; now they were pieces of ethereal technology.
Just visible in the darkness beyond the floodlights were the iron hulls of warships. Some spilled even more soldiers down a gangway, while others drank them back in.
‘Second Inquisitorial Division,’ I said quietly, reading the soldiers’ armour again. ‘That’s the overseas invasion force, not homeland security.’
Images knifed their way to the front of my mind. Sunlight on the river. Placards held against blue sky. A blaze of copper hair as my cousin turned to meet his doom.
‘Scion’s last incursion was in 2046,’ Maria said. ‘They’re overdue another.’ Her face was bloodless. ‘This is how Vance means to commemorate the New Year. Some free-world country has fallen into the shadow of the anchor, and now they mean to crush it.’
I looked to Warden. ‘Did the Sargas ever talk about any more invasions?’
‘Their aim is the total domination of the human world,’ he said. ‘They mentioned no specific targets in my presence, but no place is safe from their ambition.’
We stayed there for a long time, taking in the immensity of our enemy. The tanks, the artillery, and the soldiers moving around it all, like clockwork.
‘Wait.’ Nick was peering through the binoculars again, at two figures in the distance. When he lowered them, I watched the emotions wrestle on his features. ‘Helvete. It’s Tjäder.’
Maria snatched the binoculars before I could. A moment later, she lowered them.
‘And someone else.’ She glanced at me. ‘Someone you’ll be delighted to see.’
I took the binoculars from her unresisting hands.
They were walking away from one of the warships, flanked by soldiers. I remembered Birgitta Tjäder’s face from the colony; pale and with high cheekbones. Her thick hair was braided and wound at the back of her head, and she was garbed in light armour, carrying a helmet under her arm. Tjäder was best-known as Chief of Vigilance in Stockholm, but she was also the commandant of the Second Inquisitorial Division – the one whose orders had murdered Nick’s sister.
The feeling evaporated from my limbs when the lights threw the second person into sharp relief. The Scion official beside Tjäder was an arrow of a woman, who barely came up to her shoulder. Even from a distance, I knew her. That high, pallid hair; the Rephaite-like
lack of expression; those abyssal black eyes, almost devoid of whites, framed by fine-cut brows – eyes that swallowed information, letting nothing escape. The last time I had seen this face, it had been on the screen in the warehouse, and I had been helpless in a net.
Hildred Vance, the woman destined to conquer the world for the Rephaim. Finally, I was seeing her in the flesh.
This time, she wasn’t just going to trap me from afar. This time, I knew, she had come to collect me herself.
She was clad in a tailored suit and a high-collared cape, the sort with crimson lining that all of Scion’s most senior officials wore. As I watched her, her eyes flicked upward, and it seemed for all the world as if she was looking straight at me. Nausea unfurled in the pit of my stomach.
‘We have to go,’ I murmured.
Nick tensed. ‘What’s wrong?’
Vance had already looked away, but I was shaken. ‘She knows we’re up here.’ I swallowed, hard. ‘She was looking right at me.’
Maria chuckled softly. ‘Everyone thinks that when they look at her.’
‘Well, this has made our decision for us,’ Nick said. ‘We’re not going in now.’
‘Senshield’s core could be in there,’ I said, thinking aloud. ‘The scanners might be activated in that warehouse. Right under our noses.’ Now Vance had given her attention back to Tjäder, I returned to the fence. ‘I’ll be damned if all this was for nothing. I have to go in.’
‘No. I will go,’ Warden said.
The rest of us stared at him incredulously.
‘Don’t be insane,’ I said. ‘Even if you could get through the barrier—’ He took hold of two of the bars that made up the fence and strained them apart, creating a breach just large enough for him to get through. The rest of that sentence died on my tongue, but my mouth turned dry as stone. He was serious. ‘Warden, you are not going in there. As Underqueen, I order you not to go in there.’
He didn’t take his eyes off the depot. ‘Permission to disregard your orders, Underqueen.’
‘Permission not granted. Permission categorically denied.’
‘Paige, we don’t have a choice,’ Maria cut in. ‘If we leave now, we lose our chance of finding out what powers Senshield. It’s what you’ve wanted to do from the beginning. The only way to help the Mime Order.’ She grasped my arm. ‘We’re all in this with you. We’re all willing to stand.’
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