Only one structure was built from stone. A grand manor adorned the hill that loomed over Hamelin. Dark bars crossed the windows: probably a recent addition, based on rumours of the Nightfall Gang. In the last year or so, as the gang of thieves had gained notoriety, aristocrats all across the country of Meloral had ramped up their security.
Even from here, Chester could see why the building might be a target for thieves. Compared to most of Hamelin, the manor seemed an extravagant palace. As he stared at it, a small curl of envy filled his belly. If he’d been born to a life of riches, Chester would have had a chance to study at the Conservatorium. Seven years of training. Seven years of schooling, of playing tunes, of memorising scales and chords.
For centuries, the Song had played. It held the world together. It sang the trees from their seeds, and the clouds into the sky. It was a quiet rhythm, a pulse in the earth, the seas, the wind. Scholars called it the heartbeat of the world.
Students of the Conservatorium were trained to hear the Song in everything, in the touch of a petal, in the fall of a raindrop. They didn’t dare to disrupt its beat, but by studying the Song, they learnt to play sorcerous melodies of their own, to enhance the beat of the bars around them.
To play magic.
Chester tramped back towards the bed. He sat down heavily and picked up his fiddle. He took a long, deep breath. Then he nestled the chinrest onto his shoulder and pressed his bow against the strings.
CHAPTER TWO
Forty miles away, in the town of Bremen, Susannah Kemp hung from a windowsill. Her fingers burned.
This wasn’t how the job was supposed to go. It was meant to be a quick supply run: sneak in, grab the loot, sneak out again. The plan certainly hadn’t involved a furious pair of guards, let alone hurling herself out the window.
She could hear the guards inside, rummaging through cupboards, searching under beds. Good grief, did they think she was stupid? Susannah hadn’t considered ‘under the bed’ to be a decent hiding place since she was five years old. The only real escape route was the window, yet these buffoons hadn’t even thought to check outside.
Unfortunately, there was a good reason for that. Susannah shifted her weight again, straining to ignore the burn in her fingertips. Three heavy sacks of silver dangled from her belt. Her gang had chosen to strike the mayor’s house, which had the distinct benefit of sitting on the outskirts of Bremen … and the distinct drawback of being four storeys high. If she fell, she would splat like a peach on the cobblestones.
But then again, no one could climb like Susannah. She’d taken the burglar role in this job for a reason.
She swore under her breath, shifting the weight between her fingers. The sun wasn’t helping. It was a hot day and the heat slapped her from two directions: reflective stone and glaring sky. Her trousers felt glued to her skin as she scrabbled for a foothold.
She was too exposed here: a human figure on grey stone, with a mane of flaming red curls. If anyone took a stroll outside and glanced up at the outer wall …
There were cracks in the stone. If she ditched her boots, perhaps her toes might fit into the lines.
Susannah gritted her teeth and began to kick at her left boot. It took three or four tries before it fell to the cobbles with a deflated thump. She winced at the sound, but the guards inside the room were making too much racket of their own to hear it.
She set to work on the other boot. It fell with another flump onto the cobblestones below. Susannah held her breath.
Silence.
She prodded around with her toes, searching for a foothold. Her fingertips burned and her muscles strained. But she sucked down a sharp breath, counted a silent rhythm, and tuned out the pain.
Down, down, down. Susannah moved like a crab across a rock: slow and scuttling, her limbs splayed to reach the best possible holds. Hopefully the others had escaped safely. Travis was a brilliant actor – he could bluff his way free from a bank vault. He was playing the role of an aristocratic visitor from Weser City: an honoured guest to distract Bremen’s mayor, while Susannah snuck into his silverware collection.
But that part of the plan would now be finished. By now, Travis should be at their rendezvous point by the back of the courtyard. Susannah craned her neck to peer across the yard. No sign of Travis. Her skin prickled.
And what about Dot? The tiny blonde girl was the team’s sole Songshaper, and her role in this job should also be complete by now. Dot had kept watch while Susannah snuck inside; if any guards proved too nosy, she was supposed to signal to Susannah, who had one of Dot’s sorcery lamps. When activated, the lamp would play the guards into a doze. Why hadn’t Dot spotted the guards and warned her?
Susannah let off a string of whispered curses. Where were they? Even if she made it to the ground, she couldn’t sneak back into the Hush with half her gang unaccounted for. This plan had been too reckless. She’d become over-confident. Too cocky, too arrogant. She’d heard the embellished tales of the Nightfall Gang and she’d let her pride swell too much. When you captained a gang of thieves, pride was a route to the chopping block.
‘Hey! Hey, down there!’
Susannah whipped her head up, just in time to see the guard. He thrust his upper body out the window and pointed down at her, calling for his comrade. A moment later, his pistol fired and a bullet shrieked down the side of the building.
Susannah flung herself to the side. Her fingers slipped and one foot jerked loose, but she rammed it into a nearby crack, ignoring the agony as her toes struck stone. Why had she tried to burgle this place in the middle of the day? She should have hit later, when the locals would be distracted by the Sundown Recital …
The pistol fired again, and Susannah jerked aside with a huff of wild breath. Her body smashed against the wall, but she swiped to grip a handhold. There were more shouts from inside the building now: guards calling for reinforcements. Susannah knew she had only moments to flee. With her mass of red hair against the dull stones, she might as well paint an enormous bullseye on her scalp.
There was only one option left.
Into the Hush.
Above her, the guard disappeared from the window. Just for a moment, he turned inside. Just for a moment, she was unwatched.
But that was all she needed.
Susannah clung to the stone bricks. She wanted a solid anchor to hold when the world melted around her. She closed her eyes and began to hum. It was the four notes of the Sundown Recital, hummed in reverse order. The tune sounded strange this way – unnatural, even – and if anyone heard, there would be cries of blasphemy. It was bad enough to eschew the recital each night, but to twist it backwards for another magical purpose …
Well, that was a capital offence if there ever was one.
As the notes rolled off Susannah’s tongue, the air around her stirred. There was a strange wrench inside her belly, in the deepest flesh around her spine, and the world spun like melting caramel. A whip, a blustering, a churn of wind and cold and darkness …
And she was in the Hush.
Susannah opened her eyes. She still clung to the wall. The same courtyard lay below her, she knew, and the streets and houses and fields of Bremen. But she couldn’t see them. She hung in a bubble of faint light; all that ebbed at its edges was blackness. All was shadow, rippling with strange rain. The liquid was silent. Unnatural. It curled and twisted, snaking black tendrils towards her, but it didn’t leave her wet. Just cold and in the dark. Alone.
The guards were gone, left behind in the real world. Susannah knew they couldn’t follow her. Only the highest ranked Songshapers knew about the Hush. Susannah herself certainly shouldn’t know of its existence, let alone how to access it. It was her secret weapon, and the only thing that had kept her gang alive. Of course, entering the Hush brought dangers of its own …
In the darkness, something screeched.
Susannah froze, clinging to the stone wall. She held her breath. There were creatures in the Hush. Creatures of twisted magic, for
med from the remnants of real-world sorcery. The Hush was a dumping ground for the leftovers, the residue, dregs of Music and broken tunes … they leaked into the Hush, and the Hush came alive with their poison. The air here tasted cold and bitter, with a faintly unnatural tang, as though Susannah had licked a rusty sheet of metal.
She waited five long seconds. Silence. Finally, she began to descend. One hand, then the next. Her crab walk was more gradual now. In the Hush, she couldn’t risk drawing attention to herself.
Susannah’s feet hit the cobblestones. Her bubble of light had shifted with her, so that now she could see the stones and air around her body. She retrieved her boots and yanked them on. When she stepped away, the wall faded into swirling black behind her. Soon there was nothing but rain and chill, and the touch of cobbles beneath her boots. Susannah liked the cobbles. They were a reminder for her to keep her feet, and to keep her wits.
The rain fell on, tumbling and dancing, but the cobblestones did not grow slick. They remained dry beneath her, as parched as dust. This was the Hush. Its rain was not water, but shadow: a rain of leftover sorcery.
Susannah took a deep breath. She should find a hiding place and slip back into the real world. The sooner the better: it was safer to deal with guards than the perils of the Hush. She crept across the courtyard, heading for the rendezvous point …
Then she heard the scream.
Susannah jerked. That wasn’t the scream of an Echo, one of the howling creatures that prowled the Hush. That was the scream of a human.
Dot.
Susannah’s muscles flared with adrenaline as she charged towards the noise. No, no, no … What was Dot doing in the Hush? This wasn’t part of the plan; her gang was supposed to hide at the meeting point, back in the safety of the real world …
She burst from cobblestones onto the grass of the little garden at the edge of the courtyard. It looked eerie in the Hush. The trees were dark shadows and twisting limbs; the flowers curled black and faded, half-drowned in the crawl of the rain. The world streamed past like a trail of faded photographs.
Dot stood in the centre of the garden. Travis stood beside her, eyes wide and alarm written upon his dark face. His spectacles were askew, half-falling from his nose, and his usually impeccable clothing was torn and rumpled.
And before them stood a Songshaper. She was a woman in her thirties, thick with muscle, with brown hair in an intricately braided knot atop her scalp. She wore a silver pendant in the shape of a nautilus shell: the symbol of the Songshapers. She aimed her pistol at Dot’s head, and her lips curled upwards into a very human smirk.
Susannah froze.
How had this happened? How had this woman chased them into the Hush? Dot and Travis must have fled into the Hush to escape a pursuer, but this Songshaper had known how to follow them …
Susannah’s stomach churned. The woman hadn’t seen her yet, but she was too panicked to come up with a plan. All she could think was my fault, my fault, my fault.
She’d been so stupid, so arrogant. Thinking she could waltz in here and rob the mayor in the middle of the day. Thinking she could deal with any low-grade, small-town Songshapers that might live nearby …
Susannah charged.
She burst through the darkness and hit the woman’s side with an ‘Oomph!’, tackling her into the grass. Shadows tilted and roared around them in a rush of rain and fog and flailing limbs. A bullet screamed past just inches from her face. Susannah punched the Songshaper hard; the woman’s nose snapped, and she let out a cry of pain. Susannah kicked her hand and the pistol skittered free; Dot darted forwards to retrieve it, then aimed it at the Songshaper.
No one moved.
The Songshaper breathed in short, sharp gasps of pain. Susannah almost felt a burst of pity for her – until she realised what this woman was. This woman wasn’t just a local Songshaper. She knew too much – about the Hush, for a start. No, this woman was a high-ranking Songshaper from Weser City. When Susannah realised this, it took all her self-control not to punch her again.
‘Are you both all right?’ she said, her eyes still on their captive.
‘Yes, Captain,’ Dot said.
‘Travis?’
‘Oh yes,’ he said. ‘I’m just peachy. In fact, when I woke up this morning, getting chased through the Hush by a homicidal Songshaper was number one on my list of goals for today.’
Susannah let herself relax slightly. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘Dot, keep that pistol steady. We’ll just have to …’
Then she heard it: a faint whistling from the Songshaper’s pocket. Susannah bent, not taking her eyes from the woman’s face, and retrieved the object: a glass globe, sized to rest in the palm of the hand. Its whistle grew shriller as she held it, and the glass felt hot against her skin.
‘Show me,’ Susannah whispered.
The glass rippled with colour – red, then blue, then gold. Inside the globe, an image began to form. A bird’s-eye view of a town, streets awash in afternoon sunlight. For a moment, Susannah thought it was Bremen, but the streets were smaller, and the buildings were made of wood. No, this was a different town.
A word entered her mind. It seeped through the glass globe into her body; a whisper of knowledge, an answer to a question.
Hamelin.
Susannah frowned. Hamelin was a farming town, about forty miles away. And this was a radar globe. It would be tuned into a particular magical frequency, built to detect connections to the Song itself. This woman must be here on a mission, scouring the towns for a certain individual, a fugitive …
Someone had been detected illegally connecting to the Song. That had to be it. This woman was on the hunt for an unlicensed Songshaper.
Susannah’s lips curled into a smile as her fingers curled around the globe. She would tie up this woman, and take her radar globe. She would return to the echoship with her gang, and then send someone out on a little trip to Hamelin. Someone to test this fugitive, and bring him back into her clutches.
An unlicensed Songshaper?
This was exactly what she needed.
CHAPTER THREE
At sundown, Chester peered out the window. The pegasi had vanished from the sky. Crimson light bathed the streets of Hamelin, painting the dirt a murky red.
Time to perform the recital.
Chester knelt in the centre of the room. The floorboards were hard beneath his shins, but it didn’t matter. This would only take a moment – just a single bar of music to reconnect his soul to the Song. All through the town, he knew, people would be doing the same. All over the region. All over Meloral. The recital brought the nation together. Wherever the sun was setting, people would be dropping to their knees, the notes of the Sundown Recital like honey on their lips. It was the nightly moment when every soul – no matter how rich or poor, how strong or weak or exhausted – shared a moment of music. A moment when all able-voiced folks sang that same run of notes, or sang it into the ears of those too sick or young to perform it themselves.
Chester hummed a low note. His lips tingled. As always, the tune stirred a quiet little twist in his gut. The run of notes spiralled upwards, higher and higher. Downstairs, he heard other voices humming. It had to be Annabel, and perhaps her bar staff for the evening shift. Their voices rose together: that same run of notes. As they hummed, the air came alive with the vibration of their music. One, two, three, four. The beats of the bar thrummed like a pulse beneath the tune.
Chester breathed out. The run ended.
The recital was complete.
At seven, Chester headed down to the bar.
He wore a clean shirt and trousers, and a freshly scrubbed face. His dark hair was clogged with dust, and he suspected that he stank of the railway car, but his audience would be farmers coming in from a hard day’s labour. Hopefully their stink would drown out his own.
‘There you are.’ Annabel had finished polishing glasses, and a hopeful scent of stew wafted out from the kitchen. She slid a plate across the bar towards him. ‘
Eat up, boy. Folks’ll be here soon, and you’ll have a whopper of a crowd to play for.’
Chester threw himself onto the nearest bar stool. The stew was hot and spicy, with a pleasant kick of pepper. He slurped it down fast and then – when Annabel had vanished into the back room – dared to lick the bowl clean with his tongue.
She returned to find him mid-lick, and let out a chortle. ‘By the Song, boy. Don’t they teach manners in the other towns no more?’
Chester wiped his mouth on his sleeve and offered his most charming smile. ‘Oh, certainly, ma’am. I just couldn’t resist the wonders of your stew. You could charge five bucks a plate for that.’
Annabel raised a grey eyebrow. ‘So you’ll be givin’ me a bigger cut of your profits tonight?’
‘Hey, hey – I said you could charge more for the stew. In the future. Can’t change a contract that’s already been shaken on.’
The old woman snorted and took his bowl. ‘Tune up your fiddle then, boy. Folks’ll be here in a jiffy.’
Chester dragged a stool into the corner of the room. He opened his fiddle case at his feet: a velvet-lined mouth, hungry for coins. He had barely placed his fiddle beneath his chin and picked up his bow before the bat-wing doors swung open.
A horde flooded into the room. Bodies collided as people elbowed each other, brimming with backslaps and curses. Farmers the size of tree trunks, dripping with sweat and stinking of cattle dung. Boys with cuts and grazes across their knuckles. Women massaging aching arms.
Some would be locals, but others likely hailed from smaller towns nearby and were here for Execution Day. They slopped like water through the bar, peeling off in different directions: stools, tables, the bathroom out the back. Men knocked each other aside, jostling for prime position at the bar.
The Hush Page 2