Susannah nodded, turning back to Nathaniel Glaucon. ‘That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? When Chester was arrested in Hamelin, he gave you his full name. You looked into the official birth records, and found out that he grew up in Thrace.’
The Songshaper didn’t speak.
‘So you came here,’ Susannah said, ‘and you figured you’d find some of this … residue … in his old hometown, perhaps? His old workplace?’ She glanced around the shop. ‘You found traces of his music here, to make the locator globe work. And then, of course, the damn thing told you that Chester was heading towards Thrace anyway. You could just sit here until he strolled right into your clutches.’
Nathaniel let out a low chuckle. The sound was somewhere between glee and fury, distorted by the curl of Sam’s fingers. ‘I knew he’d come back here. That’s what criminals do, my dear. They run back to their little nests, their old hidey-holes. Like a rat’s nest in a gutter.’
Susannah fought back the disgust that was welling in her throat. She knew the man was trying to provoke her but she couldn’t stop her mind from ticking over with a cavalcade of memories. She thought of Chester, trying so hard to help out on the Cavatina. She thought of their shared meals, of their work together on the logbook. She thought of the way he’d held his nerves together on his first burglary job.
She thought of the way he smiled at her.
And all that time, this worm of a man had been holed up in a Thrace hotel. He’d been watching the locator globe … watching Chester travel closer and closer to Thrace … waiting to put a bullet in his head.
Susannah drew a deep breath. Calm down, she told herself. Take it slow.
‘All right,’ she said. ‘You’re working alone?’
There was a long pause.
‘No,’ Nathaniel said. ‘I’m working with the Conservatorium. I’m an undercover agent in the Hamelin region. I’ve got a backup team nearby, and they’ll be on the way if they don’t hear from me in –’
‘You’re lying.’
‘I’m not lying! You’ve got about thirty seconds before they burst through the door, and then –’
‘I know you’re lying,’ Susannah said, ‘because if that were the truth, you would have just thrown away your only advantage. And you don’t strike me as the sort who would throw away advantages lightly, Mr Glaucon.’
She bent a little closer, studying his face. His pendant glinted in the light. ‘I don’t think you’re working for the Conservatorium. I think you’re doing this job on your own.’
Nathaniel’s expression briefly shifted but he quickly schooled it back into fury. ‘You’ll be sorry,’ he spat. ‘When they burst through that door with pistols firing, you’ll –’
‘There won’t be any pistols,’ Susannah said, hoping like hell that she was right. ‘Because you don’t have a backup team. You’re not working on orders from the Conservatorium. I think you’re just a little no-name rural Songshaper who couldn’t make it in the big city. You were good enough to graduate but not good enough to make a name for yourself. A small fish in a big pond. So you moved out to Hamelin – a tiny little town, where you could be the biggest fish around.’
She leant in closer. She was right in front of his face now. ‘Somewhere you’d be the only Songshaper around for miles. Somewhere you could feel special.’
Nathaniel’s face curled. He tried to spit at her but the effect was ruined somewhat by the intervention of Sam’s fingers. Sam let out a curse as the spittle sprayed across his skin, but didn’t remove his hand.
‘And then you had a lucky break,’ Susannah said, moving a bit further away. ‘An unlicensed Songshaper waltzed right into your town and got himself arrested, and you were the only person for hundreds of miles who could use Music to help retrieve him.
‘This was your moment to shine, wasn’t it? Killing Chester … this was your chance to win some respect from the bigwigs at the Conservatorium. Maybe they’d even bring you back to Weser City, give you a position. A medal. A reward for your bravery.’
Nathaniel began to writhe again, the hatred evident in his eyes. ‘Someone else will kill him!’ He spat the words between Sam’s fingers. ‘You can’t hide him from the Conservatorium forever; as soon as he touches the Song again, they’ll sense the boy on their radars and send someone to get him. You can do what you like to me, but you’ve already lost, you stupid little –’
‘I know the Conservatorium can send someone,’ Susannah said. ‘They’ve already done it. We met a Songshaper in Bremen who was using a radar to track Chester down. But she didn’t know Chester’s name – just that someone was connecting to the Song without a licence. It was safe for us to let her go.’
She paused. ‘But you, Nathaniel? You’re different. You know Chester’s name. You’ve got his Musical residue. You know how to track him down.’ Susannah drew back up to her full height, looming directly above his head. ‘It’s not safe to let you go.’
The Songshaper’s eyes widened. He began to squirm again, apparently convinced that she was about to stomp a heavy leather boot on his face. But in truth, she had no idea what to do with him. Here he was, entirely at her mercy, but she wasn’t a murderer. No matter what he’d tried to do, she couldn’t imagine killing this man in cold blood.
But she couldn’t let him leave, either. His silver pendant seemed to wink at her: a nautilus shell, the symbol of the Songshapers and a mocking reminder of where his allegiance lay. He would hunt them down and they wouldn’t be able to complete their job at the Conservatorium …
The job!
Her mind flashed back to the kitchen of the echoship. To their careful plan, and the blackboard full of notes for the job. To the words that read Recruit licensed Songshaper …
Susannah glanced at the others, who were all watching her in silence. They didn’t see it. They didn’t yet realise what an opportunity they had just stumbled into.
‘Mr Glaucon,’ she said quietly, ‘I want to offer you a deal.’
The others gasped but Susannah raised a hand to silence them. Nathaniel looked up at her, his eyes flickering with fear and fury.
Susannah drew a deep breath. ‘We have a very important job next week, but there’s one big hole in our plan. A hole that needs to be filled by someone who’s graduated from the Conservatorium.’ She paused. ‘A hole you’re going to fill for us.’
Nathaniel glared. ‘And what do I get out of it?’
‘Your life, for a start,’ Susannah said. ‘And if you play along nicely, you might even get a reward from the Conservatorium bosses. If we plan this right, we all get what we want.’ She gave him a falsely sweet little smile. ‘Now wouldn’t that be nice?’
‘I don’t work with –’
Susannah bent low, so that her face was barely inches from his. ‘Listen up, Mr Glaucon. You tried to kill my friend. Any other gang leader would have you strung up from the nearest lamppost. But I’m not a murderer, and I don’t plan to start being one right now. All I want is your help on one little job. What I’m offering you is a chance to live – and to improve your blasted life while you’re at it,’ she added.
There was a pause, as thick and textured as the dusty air. Nathaniel swallowed loudly, twitching a little under Sam’s weight.
Finally, he closed his eyes. He rested his head back against the floor, as though he hated himself for the words that were about to leave his lips.
‘What kind of job?’
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Weser was a harbour city, squatting in a south-western crook of the coastline, over a thousand miles from Thrace.
For six long days, the Cavatina rolled through the Hush. It was a lonely beacon in a sea of black, traversing an endless parade of cold and damp, of shadows and silence. Occasionally, the proximity bells would chime to warn of another vessel, but in the swirling darkness, the ships never came close enough to spot them.
On the third night, they left the Hush to set up camp beneath the stars. After days of inhaling the Musicall
y twisted darkness, Chester felt a strange prickle in his veins, as though every instinct in his body yearned for purer air. Sam settled the Cavatina near the railway line, which pointed like a gleaming finger towards Weser City. The gang dined on hard cheese, pickled eggs and ash cakes. They slept by the crackle of a campfire, wrapped up tight in blankets, dirt and bracken.
When morning came, they plunged back into the dark. As they sailed from open fields into the southern prairies, navigating the Hush became more dangerous. The gang lost a full day of travel when Sam insisted that they detour around the Sawgrass Marshes, a vast terrain of swampy fens down in the lowlands of the prairie.
‘Honestly, Sam, it hasn’t rained in weeks,’ Travis said. ‘The prairie should be drier than a –’
‘I ain’t taking risks with this ship.’ Sam wrenched the wheel aside. ‘Or do you want to get swallowed by an overgrown puddle?’
Travis frowned. ‘But –’
‘I grew up round here,’ Sam said. ‘My pa’s ranch was just north of here, up in cattle country. You saying you know these prairies better than me?’
‘I suppose not.’
‘Good,’ Sam said. ‘Then go play with your mirror and let me do my job.’
Chester spent countless hours in the driver’s cabin, gazing out through the windows. As they drew closer to Weser City, he began to spot occasional signs of life in the darkness. A glimmer on the edge of a hill. A flash of unnatural movement in a gully. A flicker of silent lightning in the distant sky.
‘Getting close to the city,’ Sam said. ‘The Hush’s even worse round here.’
On the sixth day, Chester began to spot signs of other echoships. These weren’t just dings on a proximity bell; they were huge and glinting. Every few hours, a ship would loom out of the darkness – a streak of light, the flutter of sails, the groan of old wood in the breeze – and then vanish again into the black.
Finally, it was time.
Chester sat alone in his cabin, legs curled beneath him. Weser City. They were finally here, floating through the fields on the outskirts of the city itself. His audition was tomorrow night and though his fingers should have felt light, they felt like lead on the strings. He wasn’t ready. He was going to fail, or make a terrible mistake and the entire plan would fall to pieces …
His fingers rested on the neck of his fiddle, where the gold leaf bumped like pimples at his touch. Chester longed to rip away the decoration and return to the instrument to its original form but Susannah had forbidden it.
‘You’re playing the role of a spoiled little brat,’ she reminded him. ‘A bit of gold on your fiddle will help convince them you’re Yant’s nephew.’
Chester hadn’t argued. He didn’t want to push his luck, especially after his mistake in Thrace. It had been his choice to disobey his captain and stray into Ashworth’s Emporium. His greed had put the entire plan in jeopardy. He hadn’t just risked his own life, but also Dot’s – and the lives of all the vanished prisoners the gang hoped to rescue.
Chester pressed his bow to the fiddle. He didn’t want to dwell on Susannah’s fury. On the way her spine now stiffened when he entered the room, or how she avoided his eyes, and gave him orders in short, snappy tones.
He had made a mistake. He knew it now. He had disobeyed an order from his captain, and betrayed the trust of a friend. Any fragile web of unity between them had been shattered when he had stepped into Ashworth’s Emporium.
Afterwards, he had insisted on taking the blame. He had told Susannah that he had tricked Dot into visiting the Emporium – not that she had been his co-conspirator. After all that Dot had risked for him, it seemed the least he could do.
But his choice had come with a price. When Susannah looked at him now, she didn’t see a friend or an ally. She only saw the fool who almost ruined their entire plan. Before, Chester hadn’t been able to bring himself to tell Susannah about his connections to the Song. He certainly couldn’t now.
And it had all been for nothing.
During their week of travel, Chester had practised playing fiddle. Each time, his veins still thrummed with the rhythm of the Song. He felt it call to him, luring him through the deep, reeling his emotions out until his entire body tingled. Deep down, he had always known he was fooling himself. Goldenleaf was no better than the flute. He still felt the Song behind every note and, if anything, it was getting worse. Its notes were fast and frantic, like the final gasps of a dying man.
At least one good thing had come of his mistake. Nathaniel Glaucon.
Chester didn’t trust the Songshaper for a moment: if Nathaniel thought it was in his best interests to betray them, he would do it. But Susannah had convinced the man it was in his best interests to help the gang and he had agreed to meet them in Weser City. Chester had even sweetened the deal by telling him he’d return the stolen flute if he played his part right.
‘All you have to do is raise the alarm, at the right time,’ Susannah had told him. ‘When we give the signal, just tell your bosses in the Conservatorium that someone’s broken into their inner sanctum. We get the alarms tripped, you get to be a hero. Win-win.’
‘What makes you think I won’t sell you out beforehand?’ Nathaniel said. ‘Tell them that you want to trip the alarms and I’m part of your plan?’
‘Because if you do it our way, the other Songshapers are going to be responsible for a serious failure. Those are the Songshapers who ostracised you, Mr Glaucon. The ones who made you feel like you were never good enough. The ones who made you run off to Hamelin, just so you could stop feeling like a failure.’
There was a pause. Something hungry seemed to stir in Nathaniel’s eyes.
‘And you’ll humiliate them?’ he said.
Susannah nodded. ‘We’ll waltz out of there with some very valuable loot, and it will be their own security system that lets us get away. And when the bosses are looking for heads to roll the next day …’ She paused. ‘Well, they’ll need to promote someone to replace those failures. Who better to lead than the hero of the hour?’
‘Me?’ Nathaniel said.
‘Yes, Mr Glaucon.’ Susannah gave him a satisfied smile. ‘You.’
Chester remembered the look on Nathaniel’s face. The dawning realisation. The knowledge that if this plan worked, helping the gang would solve all his problems.
And Susannah standing over him, tall and triumphant, red hair flowing over her shoulders …
There was a knock at the door.
Chester dropped his bow and the memory shattered. He blinked a couple of times then jolted his mind back into the present. ‘Come in.’
It was Dot. She looked very small in the shine of the sorcery lamp, almost elfin, with her sharp nose and dark eyes. She had slicked back her hair into a blonde smear, keeping it away from her eyes, and she wore a woollen peacoat over her blouse.
‘Time to go,’ she said. ‘We can’t risk sailing any closer to the city.’
Chester nodded. He laid Goldenleaf carefully in its case, the bow alongside it. Then he pulled on his own coat, gathered the fiddle case under one arm and reached for his suitcase. He took a deep breath.
And he followed her up to the deck.
Chester slipped down a rope ladder, his boots thudding in the dirt. The Cavatina – which Sam had settled by a sloping hill – loomed above him: a spectral bulk of wood and sails.
‘How far to the city centre?’ Chester said.
‘Five miles,’ Susannah said. Her tone was as cold as the air.
Chester nodded, although his insides had shrivelled at her words. The world swirled, raw and bitter. Just five miles away, the Conservatorium brimmed with students and Songshapers. They might be jostling for dinner, or finishing up their lessons for the day. A riot of chatter, of music, of crowds and corridors.
Tomorrow, if all went to plan, he would be joining them there.
‘I still say we should have sailed closer,’ Travis said. He was dressed even more impeccably than usual, in a silk waistcoat with a si
lver pocket watch pinned to the front, his black hair slicked with oil and a polish to his spectacles. ‘I hardly think it fitting to waste our strength trekking into the city, especially when the job is –’
‘Too risky,’ Susannah said. ‘There are other ships around here. And there are too many Songshapers. And …’ She trailed off, then gestured at the blackness beyond their bubble of light. ‘And I don’t trust the Hush around here.’
Dot nodded. ‘Too much sorcery in the air.’
Chester peered out into the darkness. The rain was almost gelatinous. It fell in cold sheets, a quagmire of blackish custard. In the distance, something glimmered. It was just the briefest flash – a curl of flame, like the flicker of an old-fashioned candle. Chester watched the darkness where it had vanished, waiting. And there it was again, so sharp but so soft. His skin began to prickle …
Without thinking, he stepped forwards.
‘No!’
Someone grabbed his arm, their fingers tight and violent. Chester whipped his head around to see Susannah, her face so pale in the Hush-light that she looked almost sickly.
‘Don’t move,’ she hissed.
Chester blinked down at the dirt around his boots. Now that he focused, he noticed that the dusty earth was curling and swaying up into unnatural tendrils around his ankles, like a pit of swaying vipers carved from sand …
‘How …’ Chester swallowed, his throat dry. ‘How much Music is leaking through here, exactly?’
Susannah released her grip on his arm. ‘A hell of a lot more than I’d like.’
As one, they bent to their knees. Chester tucked his suitcase and fiddle case up under his armpits, ensuring they would be carried into the real world alongside him. He had to force himself to touch the dirt. It felt strange as it rippled, softly swelling beneath his palms. He fought down a shudder. In his peripheral vision, he saw Susannah place a hand on Dot’s shoulder.
‘Three,’ Susannah said, ‘two, one …’
In reverse, they hummed the notes of the Sundown Recital.
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