Warden was silent after that.
When the vehicle stopped, a light switched on inside. Scarlett Burnish roused us all and handed me a bundle of clothes. With help from Nick, I eased a dark-blue sweater, an oilskin, and a pair of waterproof trousers over my dressings, flinching at the pain when the sweater covered my left arm. The oilskin was embroidered with Scion’s maritime symbol: the anchor wrapped in rope. The hard-wearing fabric felt coarse on my skin, but I could bear it – someone must have topped up my dose while I slept.
‘Where’s Eliza?’ I said.
Nick wouldn’t meet my gaze. ‘She’s not here.’
My heart quickened.
‘Don’t say it,’ I said. ‘Nick—’
‘No, no – she’s all right, sweetheart. She’s alive.’ He hitched up a reassuring smile. ‘She’s just . . . with the Mime Order.’
‘Why isn’t she with us?’ When he still didn’t look at me, I grabbed his chin. ‘Nick.’
It was only now I was this close that I noticed how raw his eyes were. ‘Burnish made her stay behind, to continue running the Mime Order with Glym. She has more knowledge of London than she does of anywhere else – it made no sense for her to leave,’ he said quietly. ‘We had no choice but to comply. Burnish’s sponsor wants the Mime Order intact in London and the three of us joining them somewhere – in Europe, I imagine, given that we’re going to Dover.’
‘To do what?’
‘To work for them. To continue what we’ve started.’ He pulled on his own sweater. ‘You’ve done what you set out to do here: united the syndicate and deactivated Senshield. You’ve given them a chance to survive – more than any other leader has. It’s not safe for you to be in the heartland now.’
‘Scion told the world I was dead,’ I said. ‘It should be safer than ever.’
‘The rumour that you never were will soon get out, and then tracking you down will become even more of a priority. You’ll be an embarrassment to them as well as a liability.’ He zipped up his oilskin. ‘The Ranthen agreed to send Warden with you, so he can report back to them on what we’re doing.’
‘So we’re being shipped off. Because it’s what the Ranthen and some . . . sponsor of Burnish’s want.’
Everything had changed so quickly. Eliza would be distraught at being separated from us. We were her family, and I hadn’t even been able to say goodbye. For the first time, I realised how much control I had lost when Scion had broadcast the news of my death.
‘Paige,’ Nick said softly, seeing the set of my jaw, ‘it might be the best way. Eliza’s going to rule jointly with Glym. They can handle things here now Senshield is gone.’
It was the end of my reign. I was no longer Underqueen. I had known it, but now it felt real. At least they would have strong leadership – Eliza and Glym were two of the few people I really trusted, and who I knew would keep the Mime Order together in the months to come. If I’d had a say in the matter, they would have been the replacements I chose.
The door lifted, and Burnish returned to the lorry, letting in a flurry of snowflakes. She stood and crossed her arms.
‘Congratulations.’ She smiled at us all. ‘You are now part of the Domino Programme, an espionage network acting within the Republic of Scion. Thanks to your newfound employment, you’re now on your way out of the heartland, into mainland Europe.’
Maria had an impressive bruise on one cheek. ‘Who exactly are you working for, Burnish?’
‘All I’m at liberty to say is that I’m sponsored by a free-world coalition – one that has a vested interest in preventing the expansion of the Republic of Scion.’ Burnish reached into a briefcase. ‘Either you do as I say, Hazurova, or I’ll just shoot you. You know too much already.’
She handed Maria a thin leather dossier.
‘There’s your new identity. You’re going home, to Bulgaria,’ she said. ‘You’ll receive instructions within the next few weeks.’
Maria leafed through the documents, her face tight. The next folder Burnish handed out was mine. ‘I hope your French is up to scratch, Mahoney,’ she said. ‘You and Arcturus are taking a merchant ship to Calais. A contact will meet you there and take you to a safe house in the Scion Citadel of Paris, where the army isn’t stationed.’ She handed me a phone. ‘Take this. Somebody will be in touch.’
Paris. I didn’t know what Burnish’s sponsor wanted from me, but if there was one place in Scion I could have chosen to go next, it was there. Jaxon had told me that was where Sheol II would be constructed, and that meant a new grey market.
I could stop both.
I opened the folder, which was embossed with the seal of the Republic of Scion England. My alias was Flora Blake. I was an English student who had taken a year out for research. My subject of interest was Scion History, specifically the establishment and development of the Scion Citadel of Paris.
At my side, Nick drew his knees closer to his chest. ‘I’m not going with Paige?’
‘I’m afraid not. I’m sending you back to Sweden, where you’ll be of most use to us. You have the language, the local knowledge – and personal experience of how Tjäder runs things there.’
He looked through his dossier with a knitted brow. I gripped his hand.
Warden said, ‘I suppose I am to keep out of sight.’
‘Correct. And you’ll have to think of your own cover story.’ She checked her watch. ‘Right on time.’
One by one, we emerged from the lorry. I looked out at the English Channel, not quite believing that I was heading towards it.
The five of us walked to the seafront, where ships were docking and vehicles were being unloaded. The majority of the ships were ScionIDE property, boasting names like the INS Inquisitor’s Victory and Mary Zettler III. Some of them must have brought the soldiers here from the Isle of Wight. There were merchant vessels, too, freighters that carried heavy cargo between Scion countries and to a small number of neutral free-world states.
‘Burnish.’ I walked alongside her, holding my jacket as close as I could without setting fire to my skin. ‘Will you do me one favour?’
‘Name it.’
‘One of the Bone Season survivors, Ivy Jacob, is somewhere in the system of sewers that the River Fleet runs through. She’s with a woman named Róisín. Can you get them out – subtly, if at all possible?’
After a pause, she said, ‘If she’s a Bone Season witness, I’ll make it my priority.’
It was all I could do for them now.
After eleven years, I was leaving the Republic of Scion England. I had visualised this as a child, when I was in school or trying to sleep; wished on stars that one day, I would climb aboard a ship and sail into a future ripe with possibility. I just hadn’t thought it would happen like this.
Burnish led us into the shadow of a colossal container ship. Letters spelling FLOTTE MARCHANDE – RÉPUBLIQUE DE SCION loomed above us.
‘This is yours, Mahoney,’ she said. ‘And yours leaves first.’
I looked up at it with a pounding heart. It was time. Maria gave me a small smile and held out her arms.
‘So this is goodbye, kid.’
‘Yoana,’ I said, embracing her, ‘thank you. For everything.’
‘Don’t thank me, Underqueen. Just tell me something.’ She pulled away slightly and grasped my shoulder. ‘Did you see Vance in there?’
I nodded. ‘If she’s not dead by now, she won’t be getting up for a while, at least.’
Maria’s smile widened. ‘Good. Now go and cause some havoc in Paris, and don’t let all this have been in vain. And if you possibly can,’ she added, ‘try not to get killed before I can see you again.’
‘Likewise.’
She kissed my cheek and went to join Burnish at the next ship. Nick looked at me, and I looked at him.
I felt as if the ground was slanting. As if my centre of gravity was changing.
‘I remember when I first saw you.’ His voice was steady. ‘In a vision of the poppy field. A little girl
with blonde curls. That’s how I knew how to find you that day, all those years ago. I remember stitching up your arm after that poltergeist tore it open. How you said you hoped I hadn’t sewn it funny.’
A weak laugh escaped me.
‘I remember,’ I said, ‘missing you every day. Wondering where you’d gone. If you remembered the little girl from the poppy field.’
‘I remember finding you.’
My eyes were misting over. ‘I remember when you told me you loved Zeke, and I thought I would die, because I didn’t think it was possible that anyone could love you more than I did.’ I squeezed his fingers. ‘And I remember realising I couldn’t possibly die, because you were the happiest I’d ever seen you. And I wanted to see you that happy for the rest of my life.’
We had never acknowledged that night out loud. Nick laid his palm against my cheek.
‘I remember you being crowned in the Rose Ring,’ he whispered, and tears spilled on to my cheeks. ‘And I remember realising what a wonderful, courageous woman you’d become. And I felt privileged to have been at your side. And to be your friend. And to have you in my life.’
He was as much a part of me as my own bones, and now he would be gone. I cried as I hadn’t since I was a child. In the shadow of that merchant vessel, we clung to each other like we were ten years younger, the Pale Dreamer and the Red Vision, the last two Seals to break apart.
Warden and I were escorted into the ship by Burnish’s contact from Calais, who showed us into one of the freight containers and promised he would be back once we arrived in France. All too soon, a long blast from the ship’s horn announced that it was leaving Dover. I sat with Warden among the crates and boxes. Waiting. Trying not to think about Nick, and the ship that would carry him far away from me.
We would find each other. I would see him again.
London would always walk with me; it would live inside my blood. The place my cousin had told me never to go; the place that was my chrysalis, my damnation, and my redemption. Its streets had won my heart, had turned me from Paige Mahoney to the Pale Dreamer to Black Moth to Underqueen, and then unmade me again, leaving me irrevocably changed. One day, I would return to it. To see this land unchained from the anchor.
When we were some way from the port, Warden opened the door of the container, and together, we stepped on to the deck. Brutal wind hacked at my curls as we approached the railings at the stern.
The merchant ship crashed through the English Channel, churning the waves to lace. My hands came to rest on the railings. The ice-cold wind tore at my cheeks, as if it wanted to expose a second face beneath my own, as I looked back at the southern coast of Britain.
I had freed this country from Senshield; I had weakened Hildred Vance’s hand. For now, voyants were safer than they had been. They could disappear into the shadows again; they could walk the streets invisibly. But I could do more for them. I would cast off my crown and take up my sword, and I would go to battle. Soon, an unknown woman named Flora Blake would arrive on the streets of Paris, and the theatre of war would open again.
And we would meet our new allies. Whoever they were.
‘All this time, I thought we were the ones driving this revolution, but this is bigger than we could ever have imagined,’ I said. ‘Someone once told me I’d always be a puppet . . . never holding my own strings. Now I’m starting to think they might have been right.’
‘We all have our strings,’ Warden said. ‘A dreamwalker should know better than most that all strings can be cut.’
‘Then promise me this.’ I turned to face him. ‘Whatever orders Burnish or her sponsor sends us, we don’t follow them without question. We find out what kind of game we’re playing before we show them our own cards. And we stay together.’ I sought his gaze. ‘Promise me we’ll stay together.’
‘You have my word, Paige Mahoney.’
He stood by my side as we left England behind us. It was the first day of January. The beginning of another year, another life, another name. I looked back once more at the cliffs that loomed along the coast, at the white cliffs of Dover, limned by the promise of dawn.
And I waited for the sun to rise – as it always had, like a song from the night.
SCION: INTERNATIONAL DEFENCE EXECUTIVE CLASSIFIED INTERNAL COMMUNICATION
SENDER:
OKONMA, PATRICIA K.
SUBJECT:
AUTHORITY MAXIMUM
Urgent notice to all commandants. Grand Commander VANCE, HILDRED D. has been injured in the line of duty and is unfit for command. In my capacity as Deputy Grand Commander, authority maximum rests in me until further notice.
RDT SENSHIELD has been incapacitated. All units are to return immediately to conventional munitions.
Hostile individual MAHONEY, PAIGE E. has escaped Inquisitorial custody with assistance from at least one espionage agent. We are interrogating all members of the Archon’s personnel, up to and including those holding first-level security clearance, to uncover the identity of the collaborator.
Internal and international border authorities have been alerted that MAHONEY, PAIGE E. is at large. All measures must be taken to conceal from the public that this individual is alive. OPERATION ALBION’s revised priority is to eradicate her remaining supporters, known as the MIME ORDER, in the capital.
Finally:
Due to the failure of diplomacy with the relevant foreign powers, the need for immediate action in the IBERIAN PENINSULA is critical. OPERATION MADRIGAL will now proceed with immediate effect. All non-executive communication concerning this operation will be suspended from 6 January.
Let us look forward, as a new year dawns on our empire, to casting our bounds ever farther – and onward still, to the ends of the world. This house forever grows.
Glory to the Suzerain.
Glory to the anchor.
Author’s note
Although the language of flowers used in The Song Rising is based on real nineteenth-century floriography, I have sometimes tweaked the meanings of certain flowers, such as clematis, for the purposes of the story.
Glossary
The slang used by some clairvoyants in The Song Rising is loosely based on words used in the criminal underworld of London in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, with some amendments to meaning or usage. Other words have been invented by the author or taken from modern English or transliterated Hebrew or Greek.
Æther: [noun] The spirit realm, accessible by clairvoyants.
Amaranth: [noun] A flower that grows in the Netherworld. Its essence helps to heal spiritual injuries. Used as the symbol of the Ranthen.
Amaurotic: [noun or adjective] Non-clairvoyant. Also rotties.
Archon: [noun] The Westminster Archon, the seat of power in the Republic of Scion. It is the workplace of most of Scion’s key officials, including the Grand Inquisitor, and sometimes houses members of the Sargas family and their allies.
Binder: [noun] [a] A kind of human clairvoyant from the fifth order of clairvoyance. Binders can control a spirit (see boundling) by marking its name on their body, either permanently or temporarily, or attach a spirit to a particular location using a small amount of their own blood. [b] A name used for a Rephaite with similar abilities, though Rephaite ‘binders’ are also able to make use of the clairvoyant gift the spirit had in life.
Blood-consort: [noun] The mate of a blood-sovereign of the Rephaim. A title previously held by Arcturus Mesarthim when he was betrothed to Nashira Sargas.
Boundling: [noun] A spirit that obeys a binder.
Buck cab: [noun] A cab that accepts voyant clients. Many buck cabbies are employed by the syndicate.
Costermonger: [noun] A street vendor.
Dream-form: [noun] The form a spirit takes within the confines of a dreamscape.
Dreamscape: [noun] The interior of the mind, where memories are stored. Split into five zones or ‘rings’ of sanity: sunlight, twilight, midnight, lower midnight, and hadal. Clairvoyants can consciously access their own dr
eamscapes, while amaurotics may catch glimpses when they sleep.
Ectoplasm: [noun] Also ecto. Rephaite blood. Chartreuse yellow, luminous, and slightly gelatinous.
Emite, the: [noun] [singular Emite] Also Buzzers. The purported enemies of the Rephaim; ‘the dreaded ones’. They are known to feed on human flesh. Their blood can be used to mask the nature of a clairvoyant’s gift.
Fell tongue: [noun] A Rephaite term for any language spoken by humans.
Floxy: [noun] Scented oxygen, inhaled through a cannula. Scion’s alternative to alcohol. Served in the vast majority of entertainment venues, including oxygen bars.
Flux: [noun] Short for fluxion. A psychotic drug causing pain, hallucinations and disorientation in clairvoyants.
Glossolalia: [noun] Also Gloss. The language of spirits and Rephaim.
Golden cord: [noun] A link between two spirits. Can be used to call for aid and transmit emotions. Little else is known about it.
Gutterling: [noun] [a] A homeless person; [b] someone who lives with, and works for, a kidsman. Like buskers and beggars, they are not considered fully fledged members of the syndicate, but may go on to become hirelings when their kidsman releases them from service.
Kidsman: [noun] A class of syndicate voyant. They specialise in training young gutterlings in the arts of the syndicate.
Krig: [noun] A slang term for a ScionIDE soldier. From the Swedish word for war, krig.
Meatspace: [noun] The corporeal world; Earth.
Mime-lord or mime-queen: [noun] A gang leader in the clairvoyant syndicate. Under Paige Mahoney’s rule, they have become commanders of small ‘cells’ of clairvoyants.
Mime Order, the: [noun] An alliance between London’s clairvoyant syndicate and some members of the Ranthen, led by Paige Mahoney and Terebellum Sheratan. Its long-term aim is to overthrow the Sargas family and bring down the Republic of Scion.
The Song Rising Page 36