Mark stared at this man, who said he was marching to war in Lily’s name, and he felt his anger cool into contempt.
“And until then, you’ll keep sending out Nick, with a cobblestone in his hand?” Mark said bitterly.
Crede’s smile vanished.
“I don’t have the time for your stubbornness, boy,” he said, coldly. “The revolution will not wait for those who can’t make up their minds.”
“You don’t get it, do you?” Mark replied, hotly. “I don’t care about revolution. I just want my friends back.”
“What friends?” Crede said, sharply. “In the end, the only people who’ll stand by us are those who share our dreams.” He fixed him with a stare. “I have many who share mine, Mark. And soon, we will awaken.” He leaned back and closed his eyes. “You’ll want to leave now.”
For the first time, Mark agreed.
* * *
By the time Mark returned to his safe house, he was deep in thought. It had been a long walk—the scuffle with the receivers was still going on, and had spread across several streets. Mark had needed to make a detour to avoid being swept up in it. But truthfully, he barely noticed where he was going. Crede’s words had rattled him more than he cared to admit. He was still pondering them as he opened his door, glad to have a moment to himself.
“Hello, Mark,” said a voice.
Mark stopped in the doorway. His father was sitting on the other side of the room. He had found Cherubina’s old chair, and was sitting facing the wall.
“Hi, Dad,” Mark said, finding his voice. “Did Benedicta…”
“She did everything you asked,” Pete said, without turning around. His voice trembled a little. “She didn’t admit that she was supposed to keep me talking. I worked that out myself.”
Mark nodded. He wasn’t going to apologize. He’d meant to spare his father the worry, but he’d been doing what needed to be done.
“I’ve been to see Crede,” he began to explain, “I know you said I should stay hidden, but…”
“You weren’t here.” Pete got up, and turned around. His eyes were red rimmed. “Can you imagine what I felt when I opened the door, and you weren’t here? That you’d vanished, again? Do you know what it’s felt like, these last years?” His voice grew louder, more desperate. “Don’t you understand that the Director himself is after you! Why couldn’t you tell me where you were going?”
“You can’t protect me just by trying to hide me away,” Mark said, gently putting a hand on his father’s shoulder. “I understand, I really do. But I’m part of this now. I’m the ‘Protagonist,’ whatever that means. I’m a foretold Judge, and you know that Snutworth’s going to keep looking until he finds me.”
Pete met his gaze, fiercely.
“I lost you twice, son,” he said. “The first time, it was my own fault—I know that. I traded you away like an old coat, like you meant nothing to me. And when I saw you rise in the world, I…” he faltered, his eyes dropping. “I was prepared to let you go, then. But you came back to me. We found each other. For twelve hours, we were a family again. And then you were gone, and I … I…”
Pete’s voice faded away. Mark took his father’s hands.
“All the time I was in Giseth, Dad, I tried to come back,” he said, looking his father in the eyes. “Every day, I wanted to. If we get through this, we can spend the rest of our lives making up for these few years. But right now, my friends need my help. Lily, Cherubina,…” He moved a little closer. “I haven’t been a little boy for a long time. But even a man needs his father.”
Pete nodded, relief flooding across his face.
“Then let me help,” he said, at last. “On your terms, this time.”
Mark took his father’s rough hand and shook it firmly. It made him feel older than he ever had before.
Pete smiled.
“Now,” he said, more cheerily. “We’ve got plans to hatch.”
Mark frowned, his good mood dampening.
“I wish I knew what to suggest, but visiting Crede was a mistake. Cherubina’s gone for now, and I still have no idea where Lily could be…”
Pete crossed his arms and sat down again, thoughtfully.
“The Director would know.”
Mark laughed, bitterly.
“And I’m sure he’d just love to tell us.”
Pete smiled.
“But what if we had someone on the inside? Someone in his office?”
Mark looked at his father. He hadn’t seen that expression on his father’s face for so long. It almost looked like excitement.
“You know someone in the Directory?” Mark said, amazed. “How? Who is he?”
Pete smiled.
“She is the person who sent me a letter when you disappeared, to tell me that you were alive. I suppose I should have been grateful for that, but at the time, all I could see was that this woman must know where you were. So I chased her down. It took me a long time, but I found her in the end.” He sat down, with a new confidence. “Her name is Miss Verity, and she’s the Director’s secretary.”
Mark gasped. He had met Verity; she had been the woman who had unlocked his cell door and led him out of Agora. But more than that, Verity was Lily’s aunt, the one who had brought her to Agora in the first place.
“If you can contact her—” Mark began, but Pete frowned.
“I promised I’d leave her alone, once you were back in Agora,” he said, doubtfully. Mark folded his arms.
“I didn’t promise her anything,” Mark said, with steely determination. “I’ll tell you what to write. She’s got a lot of explaining to do…”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Resonances
IT HAD BEEN such a relief to sleep in a bed again.
It was hardly a typical bed—a niche carved out of the stone wall and stuffed with cushions. But after days of sleeping on a rock floor, it was heavenly. And Lily was so tired that she did sleep, despite the aches and pains, and despite the fact that it was never quite dark in the Conductor’s rooms.
As she awoke, slowly and heavily, this was the main thing that occupied her sluggish thoughts—the people of Naru lived in constant half-light. Glowing lumps of crystal, like smaller versions of the Hub, were set in every wall, the light dancing in their smoky depths and rippling over their faces like watery reflections.
She had wanted to keep on sleeping. She had been dreaming that she was back in Agora, with her friends. And Mark had been embracing his father, and Ben and Theo were dancing, and Laud had smiled and taken her by the hand. She would never have thought that she would long for Agora’s crowded streets and corrupt, grasping people. But at least there, she understood how people behaved—what drove them, and made their lives complete.
Down here, it was like staying in a madhouse.
But the Choir had begun to sing again, a harsher melody this time, with loops and whirls, and sudden piercing top notes. She couldn’t sleep through that. So instead, she had risen, and put on her freshly washed dress and apron. She was glad that she had talked the Conductor out of giving her Naruvian robes to wear, although she was beginning to see why they might dress in this way—in a world of stone and dim light, only the brightest colors stood out at all.
Thoughtfully, she looked over to where she had dumped her pack, and then knelt down to open it. It was nearly empty—her food had been eaten long ago, and the hunting knife that she had taken from Wulfric, her Gisethi guide, was still sheathed and untouched. But among the few strips of cloth that would have served as bandages, she found what she was looking for—the letter from her father, rolled and tightly bound with ribbon, a tiny pair of brass scales, and a small, irregular crystal made of the same smoky material as the resonant crystals that dotted the walls. She stared at this last object for a moment.
“Maybe…” she murmured to herself. As an experiment, she held it close to her mouth and began to quietly attempt a tune. She hadn’t sung anything since her days as a tiny girl in the orphanage, and her vo
ice was still croaky from lack of sleep, but after a moment or two, she managed a passable few notes. But no hidden voices emerged—this crystal was definitely Naruvian, but it held no resonance.
“Well, that would have been far too easy,” she said to herself, slipping the crystal and letter into her apron pocket as she got up. She paused before putting the scales away, feeling the shapes of the two symbols carved onto the pans of the scales. One, a lily flower growing out of an open book, was a symbol she knew very well. It was also carved onto the brass ring that she wore on her finger—her signet ring, her personal sign. The one thing about her that still marked her out as an Agoran. The other, a starfish, was Mark’s symbol.
Mark …
Lily felt a stab of sadness. She hadn’t seen Mark for nearly a month now, ever since the Order of the Lost had spirited him away. She’d traveled a long way to get him back, but she was no closer now than she had been before.
With a resolute sniff, Lily dropped the scales into her apron pocket and pushed aside the heavy velvet curtain at the mouth of the cave that acted as the Conductor’s home. There was no more time for dithering. She still had no idea where Mark could be, but if this Oracle really did know as much as Septima and Tertius seemed to think, then she must be the best person to start asking.
Although she couldn’t help but wonder what someone who impressed the inhabitants of a realm like Naru would be like.
* * *
The last notes of the Choir’s song were fading away as Lily emerged. Already the choristers were wandering down from their platforms, chatting in groups of two or three. As they all kept their distance from each other, this hubbub was loud, each conversation trying to drown out the next, without any thought for privacy.
More surprising, though, was their reaction to her. These Naruvians were supposed to be obsessed with knowledge, with new things, and she must have been the most extraordinary person to walk among them for years. Yet they seemed determined to ignore her, scattering if she attempted to get their attention. Their shimmering clothes—simple robes and tunics, glimmered in the undulating light from the Hub. As Lily walked among them, fragments of their conversations emerged out of the noise.
“It can’t be true, can it? No, not possible…”
“You’d better believe it. This is top-quality knowledge! So what will you give me for it?”
“… So she thought no one else would turn up, just wasn’t her lucky day!”
“Everything I know about the village is worthless! I’ve nothing but old news … this is the worst day of my life! Why did they have to go and get a new Speaker?”
“Well, he had been dead for several days…”
“… that’s no excuse!”
Every time she caught a hint of something familiar, it dissolved into a sea of nonsense. The Choir began to move faster around her, rushing over to greet new people and spurn others. It was like no crowd she had ever been in, so loud and yet so separate, as though each person wanted to be everywhere and nowhere at once. Lily began to feel quite disoriented, stumbling from one group to another, trying to pick out the Conductor. She was so absorbed in this that she hardly noticed Tertius and Septima until they were almost face-to-face.
The pair stopped in front of her. For a second, they glanced at each other, and back at Lily, in a slightly puzzled way, as though she had been someone they had met once, a few years ago. And then, Septima turned back to Tertius, and resumed their conversation.
“You’ll never believe it,” she continued, her eyes wide and excited, her hands fluttering. “She’s going to stay with Crede! What do you think he’ll do now?”
“Who cares?” Tertius grunted, stepping around Lily as though she were invisible. “Why are you always listening to the Agoran echoes anyway? I heard something really good from Giseth last night. One of the monks is missing. His Speaker is frantic.”
“Really? That’s amazing!” Septima gasped in delight as she trailed after him. “Um … what’s a monk, again?”
And then Septima and Tertius were gone, vanished into the chatter. Lily stared after them, mouth agape. Had it really been only yesterday they had been screaming at each other as they betrayed her to their “enemy”? And had they really been talking about Agora? For a moment, she thought about running after them, to ask what they had heard—did they have any news of her far-off home? But then, all they would be able to offer her were meaningless fragments, bald facts without understanding or experience. They’d probably been listening to voices from Giseth for years, and yet Septima still had no clear idea of what a monk was. Just like she had known a hundred details about Agora, but could not picture a city.
Then again, Lily thought, as she continued on her way, was it that surprising? No one in Giseth needed to explain the monks to each other because they saw them every day. Lily shook her head, trying to imagine what it would have been like to be brought up a Naruvian, to know so much, and understand so little. It seemed like only the Conductor talked sense around here.
At least, he had yesterday. With a shiver, Lily wondered if the Conductor would remember her when she found him. He had seemed more sensible, but age was no indication of stability here. A pair of old men had already passed her, squabbling like schoolboys over whether sheep or goats would make the best pets. Lily wondered if they had ever seen either.
To her relief, when she did see the Conductor, lingering near his podium, he returned her gaze, and even raised one chubby hand to give a little wave. It wasn’t a particularly friendly greeting; he looked more nervous than anything else as she approached. But here, that was more than enough.
“You’re early,” he observed, nervously twirling his baton. “I hope you were not unsettled as you approached—I have told the Choir not to bother you with questions, but I fear they were not terribly subtle.”
Lily nodded, thoughtfully, as the choristers filed out of the Hub chamber, until only the two of them were left beneath the eerie glow of the crystal spire.
There was an uncomfortable pause. Lily wondered what passed for small talk down here.
“Um…” she glanced around. “The Hub is very bright today,” she ventured. The Conductor nodded, distractedly.
“A lot of knowledge was brought to it, and has yet to be taken by the Oracle,” he mused. “Many have called knowledge a light in the darkness—in Naru, this is the literal truth.” He paused. “But I am not the one to explain such things to you. Do you want to see the Oracle now? We can wait; she is very patient…”
“I’d like to see her now, if that’s all right.” Lily said, eagerly. After traveling for so long, she didn’t want to delay a second longer. The Conductor nodded, still oddly reluctant.
“It’s not far.”
The Conductor shuffled toward the Hub, and Lily followed. As they drew nearer, Lily began to hear something. It felt like a low buzzing in her ears, but the closer she got to the Hub, the more pronounced it became, vibrating through her whole body. Not painful exactly, though uncomfortable. But the strangest thing about it was that it was oddly familiar; it seemed to peak and flow just like the song the Choir had been singing as she awoke.
She turned to ask the Conductor about this, but he was already disappearing down a set of stone steps, hidden behind one of the choir platforms. Lily hurried after him.
The light of the Hub was soon replaced by a blue-tinted gleam, cast by smaller crystals set into the walls of a descending tunnel.
“Watch your step,” the Conductor warned her, turning back, his dark eyes like mirrors in the strange light. “I can guide you part of the way, but you must approach the Oracle alone.”
“You won’t be coming with me?” Lily asked, surprised. The Conductor shook his head.
“It is not right to visit the Oracle without being summoned.” He tucked the baton behind his ear. “And I do not care to visit the Resonant Throne. It is not a comfortable place.”
“But, if the Oracle is your leader, why does she stay there?”
/> The Conductor sighed.
“She does not sit there out of choice. It is the only place that she can hear all of the echoes—beneath the Hub, where every secret it absorbs is released.”
They walked on a little, in silence. Something was nagging at the back of Lily’s mind.
“So, the Oracle hears everything said in the world above?” she repeated, slowly. “Millions of voices, all at once? Wouldn’t that make it just a meaningless babble?”
“For most, yes,” the Conductor said. “I am sure you have seen that for the choristers, the sense of the whole truth is less important than the fragments they can call their own. But the Oracle is the most gifted of us all—she truly listens. She remembers. She can bring our secrets together into sense. That is why she rules. And of course, the Oracle does not just hear simple echoes.” The Conductor grew somber again. “There are more secrets in the world than those that are spoken aloud.”
The stone steps came to an end, to be replaced by a rough-hewn corridor. The glowing crystals were becoming more sparse, and the Conductor walked ahead into the gloom. Lily wanted to reply, but she found all her attention was required to feel her way, and not trip.
“That is why we sing,” the Conductor continued, half to himself now, so Lily had to strain to hear him. “We spend our days in search of trivia, disjointed pieces of information, and we bargain with them among ourselves. But in the end, their true purpose is to make the Song. We take the secrets we have discovered and weave them into a harmony, as an offering to our ruler. The Hub then focuses everything down to the Resonant Throne, where the Oracle directs its flow. She banishes worthless babble to the Cacophony in the Outer Caverns, and absorbs our songs, rich in true knowledge and wisdom. Nothing is hidden from her. Nothing.”
Lily was silent. The more she heard about the Oracle, the less she liked the thought of meeting her. How many times had she shouted in frustration through her short life? How many words of bitterness and rage, how few words of love and friendship? She hoped that the scales balanced in her favor, but to meet someone who would know every word she had ever uttered was an unsettling prospect.
The Canticle of Whispers Page 8