The Hush

by Skye Melki-Wegner

  A long rope dangled in front of her with a metal contraption on its end. Susannah studied it for a moment. It was a handle to wind the rope, like the handle on a fishing line. She had seen plenty of fishing lines in her youth spent by the sea so it wasn’t hard to figure out how to work the contraption. She wriggled a little to make herself comfortable, then cranked the handle. The rope slipped around the winding device, the cogs creaked, and her basket jolted forwards.

  It wasn’t a smooth ride. Her basket jerked and bucked like a drunken horse, as her legs swung high above the glass. She stole a fleeting look behind her, just in time to see Chester vanish into the black.

  She was alone.

  All around her was the Hush, cold and black and swirling. It felt a little as though the world had vanished and there was nothing but this basket and its creaking attempt at flight …

  Then she saw the platform. It appeared at the edges of her vision, a pillar of white marble erupting out of the darkness. Susannah gave the handle a final crank and tipped herself out of the basket onto the platform.

  She knew she should probably stay as quiet as possible but couldn’t help her call. ‘Chester? You all right?’

  ‘Yeah.’ His voice was distorted in the Hush – almost as though it was dripping or dissolving, like a half-melted candle.

  Susannah held the basket for a moment before she realised the problem. ‘I don’t know how to send the basket back. Wait there and I’ll come back once I’m finished with the chest.’

  ‘All right.’

  Susannah suppressed a shiver at the melt of his voice. Then she told herself off for being silly. She spent half her life in the Hush nowadays, didn’t she? Nothing to be scared of, she told herself. But that was different. In the confines of the Cavatina, she could almost pretend she was in the real world. There was light, and she felt protected, and the rural Hush was mostly empty.

  But here, in the middle of Linus … Well, it was different. Here, the Hush was potent. It could twist a voice, a breath, a soul. It could –

  Stop it, Susannah told herself. Focus on the job.

  She released the basket. It hung limply in the shadows. Susannah crossed to the middle of the platform where the massive wooden chest sat on its pedestal.

  It wasn’t locked.

  She frowned, staring at it. Why would Yant go to all this expense – the Musically locked door, the vault, the glass floor, the basket seat that only existed in the Hush – and leave his chest unlocked at the end of it?

  Maybe he didn’t expect anyone to get this far. Maybe he considered the room to be amply guarded, since so few would know how to reach this plat form, and those who did wouldn’t take the risk. Arrogance. It was the flaw that had delivered countless treasures into Susannah’s hands. Why should Yant be any different?

  Still, something didn’t feel right.

  Susannah placed her hands on the chest. The wood felt normal and natural. A little cold, perhaps, but that was just the chill of the Hush. She hesitated for a moment, then shoved open the lid. It swung up in silence, like an opening jaw, and Susannah blinked at the darkness within.

  It took a long moment for her eyes to focus. She pulled out a fistful of papers. The deeds to Yant’s farmland. Some stock certificates. The deeds to a mansion in Weser. None of it was useful so she placed each paper back into the chest as she dismissed it.

  Once she’d moved through the business papers, she began to find more personal files. A birth certificate. A marriage licence. A family tree …

  ‘Got you,’ she whispered.

  Susannah slipped the pages into her pocket. With all the other forms and papers in the pile, it would be a long time before Yant noticed they were missing. All they had to do now was escape in silence and the man might take years to realise he had been burgled …

  Then her eyes fell on a beautifully decorated wooden box. It was carved from dark mahogany, with an imprint of the family crest on its top. It sat beneath the pile of papers, right at the heart of the chest.

  Susannah frowned, running her fingers across its bumpy surface. What was inside? It must be valuable, to be kept in a vault like this one. She knew she should leave it – after all, the identity papers were her goal tonight. But a peek couldn’t hurt, could it? What if it contained the rarest of jewels? Gold? Diamonds? They could feed an entire town of beggars with such a prize. Her fingers lingered on the wooden carving …

  She opened the box.

  She had time to glimpse its contents – empty – before the music started. Deep inside the box, something mechanical plucked a quiet little tune …

  The Sundown Recital.

  It was playing the Sundown Recital in the Hush.

  Susannah’s skin turned cold. She shut the music box and shoved it back into place before slamming the entire chest shut with a bang. But she could still hear the music, tiny and tinkling, from deep inside the chest.

  ‘No,’ she whispered. ‘No, no, no …’

  She had been wrong. There had been a lock of sorts on the chest after all. Except it wasn’t a lock in the traditional sense. It was a booby trap. A honeypot. And like a greedy child, she had fallen for its lure.

  ‘Captain!’

  She whipped her head around, startled by Chester’s mangled shout. All she saw was blackness: the roil and ripple of the Hush. All she felt was the unnatural rain, dry as whispers on her skin.

  Chester shouted again, terror and the Hush distorting his voice into a strangled choke. ‘Echoes!’ he cried. ‘Captain, they’re coming out of the walls!’

  Susannah’s throat tightened. This vault was not an echoship. It wasn’t built with protective layers of Music, designed to shield against the rain or the monsters of the Hush. In only moments, the Echoes would be upon them.

  ‘Get out of the Hush!’ she shouted back. ‘Chester, get out of the Hush!’

  No response. Susannah didn’t know if he had heard her. The sound in here was already distorted, and with Echoes floating about … Well, her voice may well have simply dissolved into the slosh of magic.

  Susannah lunged for the basket. She had to get back to Chester. The Echoes couldn’t touch her – not since that terrible night at the Conservatorium – but she knew that they could kill Chester.

  She reached for the basket – but at that moment, it jerked away. Susannah swore, almost toppling off the platform onto the glass. She threw out her arms to steady herself and staggered backwards onto solid floor. The basket continued to move away, winching itself back across the ceiling in a jerky mechanical dance.

  So this was the rest of the trap. The final snare. To catch a would-be thief on the platform, while the Echoes crowded in around her. To leave her no choice but to plunge through the glass floor …

  No. Susannah couldn’t stay here. If she didn’t get to Chester fast she would be too late. He couldn’t fight a dozen Echoes alone – not when every creature had its own unique melody to counter. Chester only had one set of lungs and one flute. He could fight one Echo, perhaps, but the others would destroy him while he played.

  The thought of the Echoes reaching Chester, crowding over his body, touching him … it made her knees feel weak. And to her shock, she realised it wasn’t just the fear of losing a pawn, of losing her deal with Sam, or losing a piece in her plan.

  It was the fear of losing Chester.

  She stumbled backwards, giving herself space for a run-up. Then she dashed to the edge of the platform and jumped, straight upwards, like a cat launching itself from its haunches. She swiped up with a desperate hand to where she hoped the basket would be. Instead, one of her hands seized a greasy cog with coils of rope and chain around its belly. Desperately, she held on.

  Below her stretched the glass floor, as mysterious as ever. It shone, painted almost silver by her bubble of Hush-light. Susannah gritted her teeth and swiped out with her other hand, grabbing a line of the pulley that ran further along the ceiling. Then she swung again and again. Her feet dangled wildly above the glass flo
or and her hands felt raw as sunburn on the slip and grease of metal cogs.

  She was halfway across when she saw the first Echo. It faded into her circle of vision, pale and ethereal, a ghost in the dark of the Hush. It glided towards her. She knew that its melody – the tune that powered its supernatural existence – would be piping forth, but Susannah could not hear it.

  She swung again and the creature reached her, cold and slithering, a snake of silent gas. It slid through her like water through cloth. There was a freezing sensation as it melted through her flesh – a terrible sense of frost, of death, of violation – and Susannah almost lost her grip on the pulleys and ropes. But she clenched her eyes shut and dangled, determined to endure its touch.

  ‘You can’t hurt me,’ she whispered. ‘You can’t hurt me.’

  The words gave her strength. They were a distraction. They let her know she was alive. She clung to her words, and she clung to the machinery, and the moments passed like slow-moving treacle …

  And finally, defeated, the creature drifted away.

  Susannah didn’t give herself a chance to feel relief. She took another wild swing then another. She had to keep moving, to relieve the throb of her fingers and to return to solid ground. One of her hands slipped and she caught a fistful of sharp metal. The pain was hot and the blood made her fingers more slippery. Susannah cursed, dangling from the other hand for a moment as she paused to wipe the blood across her shirt.

  Ahead of her – at the very edge of her vision – something melted from darkness into her circle of light. Susannah took another swing, jolting her bubble of Hush-light forwards. She grunted, hands slick with blood, and felt her stomach drop as the scene came into view.

  Chester stood in the doorway, feet on solid ground.

  And before him floated the nebulous shapes of three Echoes.

  Three. Susannah was hit by a stab of panic. No one could fight three Echoes at once. They would be upon him in a moment. They would lunge forwards and kill him with a touch, melting his flesh with their Musical toxins …

  But they weren’t moving. They floated as though hypnotised – they weren’t dissolving, but they weren’t at their full strength either. Chester’s flute was at his lips, piping out a melody, and his elbow was smacking out another rhythm on the doorframe. At the same time, his feet stomped and kicked a raucous beat on the floor.

  Startled, Susannah realised what he was doing. To destroy an Echo, Chester would have to play its tune backwards on his flute. But he had only one flute, and no other way to make Music. So he had gone one level less deep; a level more basic. Instead of playing Music back at them, he was playing the rhythm – the beat and the bars behind their tunes. His elbow thumped out a three-beat loop, while his feet stamped down the beat for a fast little ditty …

  And before him, the Echoes remained frozen. They seemed confused, as though they’d never confronted such a thing before. The rhythm wasn’t their melody, so it couldn’t destroy them, but it was just enough to paralyse them …

  ‘Chester!’ Susannah cried. ‘Get out of the Hush!’

  He looked up at her, eyes wild with terror. But when he met her gaze, his expression shifted into something like relief. Susannah froze, struck by an unsettling thought. Was this why he had remained in the Hush – to wait and ensure that she was safe? No, surely he wouldn’t …

  She realised with a lurch that Chester’s arm was bleeding: the thumping of his elbow was too much for the recently healed wound. But understanding flashed in his eyes and he gave her a nod. He dropped to his knees and hummed the tune.

  And he was gone.

  Susannah dangled from the pulley system, high above the glass floor. Her hands slipped and slid, raw with blood and pain. The Echoes were turning on her: the only human left in the room. But she couldn’t leave yet. This ceiling contraption only existed in the Hush – if she slipped back into the real world now, she would be left clutching thin air …

  She sucked down a breath and swung forwards. The creatures converged, encircling her with translucent limbs. They began to pass through her, frozen splinters in her flesh, her veins, her eye sockets. She felt sick. Her hands shook and slipped. As the Echoes slid through her, her world turned to cold nausea and her fingers skittered until – in a disorientated panic – she was half-convinced that she was already falling …

  ‘No!’ she choked.

  She was almost there. Another swing, and another, and …

  Susannah reached the basket seat, which had swung back to its original position at the edge of the glass floor. She clambered into it and sat for a moment, sucking down desperate breaths. Then she hurled herself forwards onto the opaque flooring. Crouching there, hugging her knees, the notes fell like sweat from her lips and the world around her crunched. Darkness faded, the rain fell away, the Echoes vanished, the basket melted … all replaced by empty air. And there was Chester, offering a hand to help her to her feet.

  Susannah ignored the hand. She forced herself to stand, wincing in pain as she kept her bloody palms away from the floor. They couldn’t afford to leave any traces. Their entire plan depended on Yant taking a long time to figure out that he’d been burgled.

  ‘Think we set off any alarms?’ Chester said. ‘To alert Yant, I mean – not just to call the Echoes.’

  Susannah shook her head. ‘Automatic communicators can’t work between the real world and the Hush.’ She tried to steady her breath. ‘How did you hold off those Echoes by yourself? Didn’t the beats all run together and get messed up in your head?’

  Chester shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Music just … works, for me. If I hear it, I can play it. It doesn’t get messed up in my head.’ He looked at his feet. ‘It would be like messing up the faces of my friends.’

  Susannah stared at him. ‘You’re a very interesting person, Chester Hays.’

  There was a long pause. Chester seemed unsure how to respond to that, so Susannah decided it was time to take charge again. She’d made a bit of a hash of it tonight and she needed to remind the boy why she was captain of this gang.

  The boy? a small voice inside her said. You’d barely be a year older than him, if that.

  She gave him her best commanding look. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

  Quietly, they locked the door behind them. As they crept back down the corridor, Susannah kept her eyes on Chester. He moved with a strange sort of grace – quick and nimble, like an arrow in the dark. He might not be good at climbing, but the boy could sure as hell move his feet on solid ground. His eyes glinted in the light of her hideaway lamp and he flashed her a smile.

  Susannah’s belly gave an odd little twinge. She found her gaze drawn inexorably towards Chester, even when she told herself to pay attention to the corridor. He was bright, she knew. He was talented. And again, there was something about the way he moved … She could tell he would be perfect for the Conservatorium job.

  Suddenly, Susannah wished she had been wrong. She wished that Chester had failed this job, that he was a hopeless thief and too inept for the role she had planned for him in the upcoming heist.

  Because Chester’s role was the key to her plan.

  And if all went to plan, he would die to complete it.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  An hour later, Chester lay on his bed in the Cavatina. He could feel the gentle hum of the machinery, down in the engine room below.

  His body still buzzed with adrenaline. With the thrill of sneaking back through the mansion, of clambering along the Musical ladder, of collecting Dot and Travis, of fleeing into the night and into the Hush, where Sam waited with their echoboat …

  In the last few months, Chester had committed his share of reckless deeds. He had left his home, he had begged on the streets and once, when a guard had caught him riding trains without a ticket, he had even been beaten and dumped on the roadside. He’d chased a trail of rumours from Jubaldon to Leucosia, played ‘The Nightfall Duet’ in the middle of a packed saloon and land
ed himself in a prison cell in Hamelin.

  But sneaking into a Musically protected vault owned by a wealthy sugar baron? Well, hopping trains and playing his fiddle seemed banal by comparison.

  And he had almost ruined everything. If he had fallen for the Song’s lure tonight, he’d have blasted a signal to the radar of every Songshaper in the region. He could have gotten the entire gang killed. If he couldn’t even pick a lock without connecting to the Song, how the hell was he supposed to audition for the Conservatorium without doing it?

  He had hinted it to Dot earlier in the night, but even she had no idea just how shaky his grip on his powers truly was. His connections to the Song were growing more frequent. Two months ago, it had taken the most complicated musical piece to engage the Song – but now, even a simple lock-picking tune could coax him into blasphemy.

  Chester couldn’t tell the gang the extent of the risk. They had promised him information in exchange for his Songshaping. What if they decided he was more trouble than he was worth? Then he would never find out about the vanishings.

  Chester stepped into the kitchen.

  It was dim and cosy, lit by a single dangling lamp and warmed by the scent of oatmeal. Dot sat at the table, her hands wrapped around a bowl, her expression downcast. She poked the lamp and sent it swinging, so that light danced across the tabletop.

  Dot glanced up as Chester entered the room. ‘Can’t sleep?’

  He shook his head.

  She pointed to the stovetop, where steam rose in tendrils from a copper saucepan. ‘More oats in there, if you want a snack.’

  Chester slid into the seat beside her. ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘Not really hungry, though.’

  Dot gave a slow nod. She didn’t look surprised. ‘I have a theory,’ she said, ‘that when we forget our hunger for food, it means we’re busy hungering for something else.’

  She reached up to touch the lantern, halting its swing.

  ‘It’s the Music,’ Chester said. ‘I can’t control it. Tonight, I got so distracted by the tune of that damn hideaway lamp …’