There was only one thing for it.
Chester pressed his bow to the strings. He couldn’t afford to lose himself in the music, or fall into the trap that had ensnared him last time. He couldn’t afford to show them the truth: that he could already connect to the Song. Because if they found out what he could do – without any legal training – he’d be lucky to live until the end of the chorus.
He cleared his throat again. ‘“The Nightfall Duet.”’
And he began. The notes fell away, rolling from his strings into the air. He moved his bow like an extension of his fingers – long and lithe, with all the subtle flexibility of human flesh. One note then the next. With every note, Chester forced his eyes to stay open. He forced reality to stick in his head.
He found himself speeding up, racing ahead from the opening to the verse, from the verse to the chorus … Then he heard the Song. It was halfway into the chorus when it happened: the faintest wisp of another tune. Something more, something deeper, awoken in his mind by the frenzy of his own music. He felt it in his fiddle first, then in his fingers, his breath, his limbs. In the curve of the floor and the dust of the air …
No!
He forced the sound away and refocused on the music in his fingers. He couldn’t let it happen again. He knew the lure of the Song but as he played, Susannah’s final whisper echoed in the back of his mind.
You should have more faith in you.
This wasn’t a moment to bluff. It wasn’t a moment for false confidence, for lies and bluster, for the clickety-clack of bravado on his tongue. He knew he was nervous. He knew he was afraid. His stomach felt ready to revolt, with the thundering cavalcade of notes and nerves all writhing deep within his belly.
But this tune was part of him. It was his tune. His music. His fingers on the bow.
He ignored the lure of the Song and tightened his focus, pulling in his mind to lasso the music in his fingertips. It felt surreal, as though he was half-awake, half-dreaming. The audition room seemed to vanish around him, as dark as the Hush. All he knew was the fiddle, and the bow, and the melody. The Song was a trespasser. It was the tune of the external world and Chester didn’t have to heed its call.
The final verse rang true and he pulled his bow from the strings. The last note lingered, long and mellow. Chester realised suddenly that he’d closed his eyes without even meaning to. He blinked, startled at how deeply he had lost himself. But there was no taste of honey on the air and no one was shouting for a pistol, so –
‘Thank you,’ said a man, in the darkness above his head. ‘That will be all.’
Chester took a long, deep breath. He bent to open his fiddle case and laid Goldenleaf down in the velvet folds. He did it gently, as if he was laying a child down to sleep.
Somehow, he had done it. He had kept the Song at bay. He had kept himself alive, and kept the plan in action.
CHAPTER THIRTY
A red-bearded servant waited outside the audition room. ‘This way, sir.’
‘When do I find out?’ Chester said, slightly perturbed at being addressed as ‘sir’. ‘If I got in, I mean?’
‘In a moment, sir,’ the servant said. ‘I’m here to lead you to the results room. If you’ll step this way …’
Chester followed the man down the corridor. Shadows moved in the lamplight around him, tinged by the cold surrealism that had settled on Chester when he had played the duet. He felt as though part of him was still tainted by his near connection to the Song, as though the very air was thrumming at his touch, waiting for him to reach out and seize it. To listen for it and hear its melody.
He shook his head, struggling to clear it.
The results room was small and plush. Leather sofas curved into its corners and a gold-framed painting of an orchestra covered an entire wall. A man sat behind a marble bench, fingers resting on the edges of an enormous wooden tray.
The tray was compartmentalised into two dozen open segments, each containing a small glass bauble. Most of the baubles glowed red while about a third of them glowed green. Chester noticed with a lurch that the last few baubles remained unlit, cold and lifeless in their little nests of wood.
The man glanced up at Chester then picked the first unlit bauble from its tray. ‘This one is you,’ he said. ‘The result hasn’t come through yet. They’re taking a while to deliberate.’
Chester felt his throat tighten. ‘How will I know if –’
As he spoke, there was a flash of light from the bauble. In the man’s fingers, it shone with a strange little spark of gold. Then it faded into a quiet green, the colour of leaves in the cornfields.
The man nodded, and slipped the ball back into its compartment. ‘Congratulations.’
‘I got in?’
‘Yes, lad. You got in.’
Chester stared at him. The relief hit him with an almost physical blow. He hadn’t failed. He hadn’t let the gang down. He hadn’t let Susannah down.
He hadn’t let his father down.
But the relief was flirting with terror now, and Chester half-suspected terror was leading the dance. Passing his audition was only the first part of tonight’s plan. The only thing that counted as a triumph was to survive the night and to flee this city with his father by his side.
‘Well?’ the man said. ‘Are you going to take it?’
Chester blinked. He realised that the man was offering him a silver ring. He took it with a nod of thanks, expecting to feel just the lifeless cold of metal.
To his surprise, the metal wasn’t cold. As soon as he touched it, Chester felt the Music run up through his veins. It wasn’t just the lullaby of a sorcery lamp. It was fast and charged and aching, like a torturous song that would make you dance until your feet bled and your breath faltered. It shivered into his flesh, through the skin of his palm, and Chester fought a sudden urge to hurl it back onto the desk.
‘Put it on, lad,’ said the man.
Chester realised, too late, that the man was watching him closely. He took a quiet breath and forced a smile, trying to hide his reaction. He wasn’t supposed to be trained in Songshaping yet, and he wasn’t supposed to sense the Music in sorcery objects. If the man knew what a rush he’d felt from touching the ring …
He slipped the ring onto his finger. Its Music pulsed around him, brushing against the fingers on either side to send a trio of shivers through his body. Chester gritted his teeth and forced his smile to widen. ‘What an honour, sir.’
The man nodded, relaxing a little. ‘That’s your official student ring, lad. Don’t lose it – or sell it – or you’ll find yourself out on the streets. We don’t give them out lightly.’
‘Does it have any powers, sir?’ Chester said, trying to sound innocent.
The man shook his head. ‘It’s just ornamental. A symbol of what you’ve achieved – of earning your place in the Conservatorium.’
Liar, Chester thought. He felt the Music pulsing up through his skin, his veins. This ring was the entire reason he’d needed to audition for the Conservatorium. It was his ticket to bypass the intruder alarms, his route past the security spells, and his pass into the inner rooms.
It was his ticket to his father.
‘Any formal activities tonight, sir?’ he said.
The man shook his head. ‘You’re welcome to take refreshments in the hall if you fancy it but most new folks just head up to bed. You’ve earned a good rest, I’d say.’
Chester gave a silent snort. Rest? The only way tonight was likely to prove restful was if a Songshaper blew his head off and his resting was of the eternal variety.
‘So it’s okay to just go up to bed?’ he said.
The man nodded. ‘Fourth floor for new recruits. Davidson here will point you towards your room.’ He gestured towards the servant, who gave a neat little bow and beckoned for Chester to follow.
‘Thank you, sir.’
The man waved a dismissive hand. ‘Oh, don’t thank me, lad. You earned your place here.’ He gave a tight little s
mile. ‘Welcome to the Conservatorium.’
Susannah dangled from a balcony. Her fingers streamed with cold, her hands burned raw from the weight of her body, and the shadows sloshed a sea of eerie rain.
The balcony protruded from the side of the Conservatorium, stained black by the darkness of the Hush. Echoes congealed in the air around her, swarming in packs around Weser City. Their translucent bodies ebbed and flowed, a pack of ghostly monsters.
‘Damn this city,’ she whispered.
There was too much sorcery in the air. Too much Music, too much magic. Too much runoff and residue, leaking through into the Hush and staining the shadows with sorcery. Ten minutes earlier, she had almost slipped when a solid handhold had dissolved into a gritty, shining powder. Moments after that, a spectral creature had swooped at her face, a vicious rake of claws and molten bronze.
But Susannah had no choice. If she was going to lay these charges, she had to do it in the Hush. She couldn’t climb up the Conservatorium walls in the real world: even at night, there were shoppers, diners and shift workers who might spot her silhouette.
She took a deep breath, pulled another charge from her pocket, and pressed it into a crack in the mortar.
‘Is that right?’ she said, bending her mouth down towards her shoulder.
Two glass communication globes adorned her collar, one transmitting her voice to Dot. She could just glimpse Dot’s face from the corner of her eye: a shine of distorted blonde in the glass.
‘Move it a brick left,’ Dot said. ‘The charges have to be spaced as evenly as possible around the building. If my calculations are right, you’re about a foot off target.’
‘Got it.’
Susannah shifted her weight onto her right arm, ignoring the strain in skin and muscles. She sucked back the pain and dug her left fingers into the gap in the mortar, fishing around in the crack until she located the little metal strip and yanked it out. It almost slipped from her grasp, but she swiped with a desperate grab and snatched it between two fingers.
She swore aloud. That was one good thing about working in the Hush. You could make as much noise as you liked, and mostly it was only the Echoes that could hear you.
‘Left, you said?’
‘Yeah,’ Dot said. ‘About the same height, if you can.’
Susannah gritted her teeth and edged along the balcony railing, ignoring the burn in her fingertips. She prodded around until she found a slightly crumbling section of mortar around the requisite brick, then shoved the metal charge into the gap. ‘Better?’
There was a pause, and Susannah guessed that Dot was comparing her blueprint against her sorcery map of Susannah’s location.
‘Yeah,’ she said eventually. ‘That’ll have to do, I think. Right, now the next one goes twenty bricks to your right …’
As Susannah clambered along the wall, she fought back a surge of envy for Dot: sequestered in the hotel room, warm and safe with her maps and cocoa. Better than throbbing fingers, dark and rain.
But if she was honest with herself, Susannah’s main discomfort wasn’t the climbing. Despite the pain and the fear and the darkness, it made her feel useful. It made her feel alive. No, it wasn’t the climb that worried her. It was her own brain, and the countless disasters it was dreaming up. It was the fact that a gaping hole remained at the heart of her plan …
Chester.
Her brain seized upon the distraction. Would he have completed his audition yet? Or was he playing right now, pressing his bow to the strings in front of the judges? Was he hitting an off note and receiving his rejection?
Something buzzed against her shoulder. It took her a moment to register that it wasn’t Dot’s communication globe. It was Chester’s.
Susannah stopped swinging and her fingers jolted painfully at this jerk against momentum. She reached up for the next balcony and clambered onto it, releasing her fingers with a litany of hissed curses. This release from her bodyweight made the sting even worse, erasing the numbness to leave only pain.
‘Chester?’ She unbuttoned the globe from her shoulder and cradled it in her palm, allowing herself a proper view of its contents. ‘Chester, are you all right?’
It took a few seconds for the image to form. There was a swell of light and a jerk of heat against her palm … and there he was. Tanned face, dark hair. Dark eyes staring up at her from the depths of the glass. For a moment, all she could do was stare at him.
‘Captain?’ he said. ‘I got in.’
Susannah leant her head back against the wall. Hush-rain fell around her, swirling and cold, its touch as insubstantial as a breath. She clutched the globe tighter and leant forwards again, showing Chester her smile of relief. ‘Where are you now?’
‘I’m in my room,’ Chester said. ‘I think I can sneak off without anyone noticing. I told them I was going to bed for an early night.’
Susannah nodded. ‘You remember where to let Travis inside?’
‘Yeah. I remember.’
‘He’s there now,’ Susannah said. ‘You’d better hurry – I don’t want him lingering too long around the entrance. People might get suspicious.’
‘On my way, Captain.’ Chester hesitated. ‘Are you all right?’
Susannah couldn’t hold back her smile. Her fingers burned, her muscles ached, and Echoes swirled through the night like storm clouds. But their plan was on track, and they were all still alive.
‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘I’ll see you soon. Be careful.’
‘You too, Captain.’
And then he was gone and Susannah was left with an empty glass bauble in her fingers. She stared at the globe and her mind floated back to what her thoughts had been before the interruption – to the gaping hole in the centre of her plan, one that all her tossing and turning and nightmares had proven unable to fill. It was a gap that had originally been filled with Chester’s sacrifice, but that option was no longer on the table. She could barely even think of it – the cold, calculated horror of her original plan – without a bitter sting of self-loathing.
Yet even with the plan incomplete, they had no choice but to proceed. If they had missed tonight’s auditions, they’d have been forced to wait an entire year for the next intake. It was too late to back out now, too late to delay. The prisoners in the cage wouldn’t last another year.
She would think of something. She still had time. When she was down there, in the dark of the Hush, faced with the cage itself … then she would find the answer. She would spot a loophole, or find another angle, another way to break the Music.
She still had time.
Susannah pinned the globe back to her shoulder, giving it a rough little jerk to ensure it was safely secured. Then she rubbed her hands together, winced at the pain, and launched herself back over the balcony. There was no time to soothe her aches.
She had a pocketful of charges to lay.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
The Conservatorium brimmed with Music.
The red-bearded servant left Chester at the top of the staircase. ‘Just along this corridor, sir, and take a turn right,’ he said. ‘Your room should be the seventh door along. Will you require assistance in –’
‘No, thanks,’ Chester said. ‘I’ll be fine.’
The servant nodded, gave a little bow, and finally scuttled off to deal with the other auditionees.
Now that Chester was alone, he allowed himself to revel in the building’s flush of Music. When he brushed a hand across the wallpaper, a whisper of warmth buzzed into his skin. When he stepped through an ornate crimson doorframe, he was hit by a scent of smoke, burned butter and honey. A drumbeat tingled at the back of his skull.
This was where the Songshapers trained. Where they practised, where they studied, and where – hour after hour, year after year – they carved their craft from their fingertips. After centuries, their Music had left a mark on this building and on every object inside it.
Around the corner, a dozen sorcery lamps dangled along a chain from one end of t
he corridor to the other. Each was a different colour: emerald green, bloody crimson, sea sapphire. As Chester stepped into the ambit of each coloured shine, a new lick of sorcery played itself into his veins. When he accidentally brushed a lamp of green, he heard a distant gust of wind in the trees and the scent of prairie grass. When he prodded the red, a shock of heat rushed through his limbs. When he touched a lamp of shining blue, his entire body flushed with a chill of water, as though he had plunged into the sea.
And when he retreated, his clothes were as dry as bone.
Chester’s bedroom was small but luxurious. A crimson tapestry covered the wall, depicting the Song: a beautiful lady, woven of pure gold thread. She stood atop a mountain, her arms spread wide, as musical symbols tumbled down from her fingers and glinted with all the shine of sorcery.
After Chester gave his report to Susannah, he opened his suitcase on the bed. Inside lay an assortment of expensive clothes and reams of sheet music: perfectly innocent luggage for a new student to carry. But he brushed all that aside, turfing waistcoats and sonatas onto the bed until the bottom of the case was exposed. Chester ran his fingers along its edges, pressed a little dimpled button in the leather and whistled a quiet run of notes.
The hidden compartment clicked open.
He retrieved the folded servant uniform and began to change, as quickly as he could, from waistcoat to crimson vest, from silk shirt to cotton. Chester transferred the contents of his pockets to the new outfit, but the only external sign he kept of his status as a student was the ring on his finger.
Servants wore rings, too, though they gave more limited access. Unfortunately, however, servants’ rings were bronze, not silver. Hopefully no one would look too closely.
Chester relocked the hidden compartment, bundled his belongings back into the suitcase, and checked himself in the mirror. His dark hair was still slicked down with the oil that Travis had applied to make him look like a cultured aristocrat. Chester ruffled his fingers through his hair, breaking up the clumps and coaxing his hair back into its normal disarray. He was a servant now, not a nobleman. He shouldn’t be able to afford such luxuries as hair oil.
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