The Hush

by Skye Melki-Wegner

  When his hair was back to its usual dark rumple, Chester nodded to himself. He was ready. No more putting it off. Travis was waiting for him and for every second he wasted, his friend’s risk of exposure increased.

  Chester glanced one last time around the room and gave it a silent farewell. His experience of life as a student of the Conservatorium had been very brief.

  He swept his fiddle case into his arms, took a deep breath, and slipped back out into the corridor.

  He found Travis by the building’s back door, down in the dark of an alleyway. It took ten minutes of skulking and sneaking to find the place – ducking down corridors, creeping down stairs, and avoiding eye contact with passing servants.

  At one point, he had grabbed a doorknob to pass between hallways and it flared beneath his skin with a whisper of forgotten Music. Chester felt a vivid flash of thousands of other hands, over hundreds of years, who had touched this lump of metal. He yanked his hand away, startled.

  A couple of servants tried to talk to him but Chester waved them off with an explanation that he was taking his master’s violin down to an expert in the city for polishing.

  ‘You working for a new student?’ a maid said. ‘Been sent from home to look after him, eh?’

  Chester nodded, trying to look casual. ‘My master wants to make a good first impression tomorrow, so …’ He waved the fiddle case in the air to finish his sentence.

  ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Well, it’s nice to see some new faces around here.’

  She gave him a little wink and a giggle then slipped away down the corridor. Chester blinked, stared after her for a moment, then continued on his way, telling himself firmly that the brief flurry of his heart was just the twinge of nerves.

  ‘What took you so long?’ Travis said, when Chester reached the doorway. ‘Honestly, I’ve been standing here for half an hour; I have to keep ducking behind those piles of rubbish when I see someone coming. And let me assure you, that rubbish isn’t likely to win the Weser perfumery’s Scent of the Year award anytime soon.’

  ‘Sorry,’ Chester said. ‘I had to wait to get my result …’

  Travis waved a hand. ‘Just let me inside, would you? Do you have any idea how hard it’s been, watching through the windows as all those pretty maids flounce about – and here I am, dressed perfectly to woo them – while I’m stuck out here in the cold? Pure tragedy, I tell you.’

  ‘I’m sure,’ Chester said.

  ‘Honestly,’ Travis went on, ‘the captain should offer me extra compensation for pain and suffering. I was almost at the point of sneaking in myself, security spells be damned.’

  Chester tucked his fiddle case securely under one arm. With the other, he grabbed Travis’s wrist, pressing his flesh against the older boy’s own. ‘Ready?’

  ‘Yes, yes, of course I’m ready. Haven’t we already established –’

  Chester closed his eyes and focused on the silver ring on his finger. Dot had explained how this ring worked. He knew about the security spells, about the invisible locks on the Conservatorium thresholds.

  He just had to figure out the key.

  Chester blocked out the night, the chill of the doorway, the smell of rubbish. He blocked out the distant clangs and clamours from the kitchen, and the gleam of lamplight on the cobblestones. He tuned out Travis’s babbling and let the Music of the metal trickle up his finger. It ran across his skin, into his veins, through the pores and creases of his flesh. He could hear it like a drumbeat, or like the amplification of his own pulse.

  Dum, de dum de de, dum, de dum de de …

  And for a moment – for the briefest of moments – he caught it. It was like trying to catch a butterfly with your fingers: too hesitant and it would flitter away, but too rough and it would be crushed in your palm. He felt his mind wrap around the tune and he let it run through his mind.

  He had it.

  Chester opened his eyes. ‘Now!’

  They crossed the threshold. As Travis passed from outside into the corridor, there was a faint little twang in the air, like the feeling of reins being pulled too tightly, yanking a horse into a backwards jerk.

  Chester knew the security spells were registering them, sensing his ring. He ran the tune through his mind, hummed it under his breath, and kept his hand gripped tightly on Travis’s skin. He could feel the Music in the ring, and he coaxed it up his arm, and used the tune to push it out through his skin into Travis’s …

  No alarm bells rang. No traps fell from the ceiling, and no guards came running. They were through.

  Chester let out a deep sigh, relief as sharp as the night air.

  ‘Thank the Song for that,’ Travis said, as Chester let go of his wrist. ‘To be perfectly honest, I was worried there for a moment. Glad to see that our investment in you wasn’t entirely a waste.’

  ‘Not entirely?’

  ‘Well, your taste in shirts still leaves rather a lot to be desired – but I suppose we can work on that when this job is over.’

  ‘More important things to worry about tonight?’

  ‘Or rather, more pressing things,’ Travis said, looking smug. ‘Aha! Do you get it? “Pressing” – like you press a shirt?’

  Chester rolled his eyes but couldn’t hold back a smile. ‘Come on. We’ve got to lay the inner charges.’

  Chester tried to shake the feeling that they were walking into a trap. He found it hard to concentrate with nothing to distract him from the Music of his ring. He wished he could yank it off – just slip it into his pocket, and make the melody stop churning. But the ring helped him sense when security thresholds were approaching – the rhythm of its Music increased in pace, and its metal burned hot against his skin – so he didn’t dare remove it. He gritted his teeth, blinked his eyes, and tried to refocus on the world beyond its tune.

  They hurried back along the corridors, mentally following the maps that Dot had drawn for them. Chester yanked Travis back a few times when he sensed a security threshold, and repeated his performance with the ring and its melody. These were terrifying moments: one little slip in the Music and they would be done for. But Chester kept his mind clear and his focus clean, and the melody flittered from his lips like the beating wings of a sparrow. Quiet, rhythmic, natural. His lips tingled at the tune.

  The corridors resembled a maze, layering inwards in a spiral. They constantly turned left, moving closer to the centre of the Conservatorium until the plushness of the corridors faded: the deeper into the building they ventured, the sparser the decor grew. No more carpets or tapestries. No scent of perfume on the air or sound of clanging in the kitchen. Just shadow and stone, cold and dark.

  And finally, they found what they were looking for.

  Travis spotted it first. He grabbed Chester’s sleeve and Chester froze, struck by a sudden fear that they were under attack. But the other boy pointed, his eyes narrowed through his spectacles. ‘Look.’

  Chester looked. It took him a moment to realise what Travis was pointing at, because the thrum of the ring’s melody was so strong in his head. He wrenched it off and pocketed it, breaking its contact with his skin. Then he stood, dizzy for a second, trying to readjust his senses to a silent world.

  A shimmer. It was a shimmer on the air, like the heat waves that rose from a hot road in summer.

  ‘The flame wall,’ Chester whispered.

  Dot had warned them about the wall: a barrier of invisible flame, woven from magic. There was a rumour bandied about between students – those with family high in the Songshapers’ ranks – that the wall was the ultimate protection, a shield of Music to keep the innermost core of the Conservatorium safe. There were whispers of strange experiments, of ancient secrets, of conspiracies and secret organisations beyond the flames …

  But Chester didn’t need to rely on rumours. Sam and Susannah knew what went on beyond the wall. It shielded the cylindrical core of the building, a vast chamber that reached up to the domed roof of the Conservatorium. Chester had no idea what it held in
the real world, but he knew what it held in the Hush: a great cage of screaming souls, hundreds of prisoners weeping into metal bars and shadow …

  Chester put down his fiddle, fished into his pocket and pulled out a dozen tiny metal strips. Dot had designed them herself. She called them ‘extinguishers’, but really they were Musical interference devices. When activated in a loop, they would break the chain of Musical heat that formed the flame wall. It would only last for a moment – just as long as the extinguishers were active – but in that moment they should be able to break through.

  At least, that was the theory.

  ‘Dorothy had better be right about this,’ Travis muttered, as they laid their metal strips in a line along the floor.

  Chester felt the buzz of Music as he handled each extinguisher, and he marvelled for a moment at Dot’s abilities. ‘They should work,’ he said, sounding more confident than he felt. ‘I can feel the Music in them. They should counteract the flames – like when you’re fighting an Echo, and you play back their song in reverse, or –’

  ‘I know how it’s supposed to work,’ Travis said. ‘I’m just hoping it actually works like that, instead of turning us all into tomato puddings or something.’

  ‘Tomato puddings?’

  ‘You should see what Dorothy dreams up when she’s not in the mood for kitchen duty.’

  They stepped back to inspect the line of extinguishers. Two bodies were needed to jump-start the mechanism, which was why Chester had been forced to sneak Travis inside with him for this part of the plan. He lined up his hands to measure, stepping sideways to check that the metal strips were properly aligned.

  ‘Remember what to hum?’ Chester whispered.

  ‘Contrary to popular belief, I’m not a complete idiot,’ Travis said. ‘Just because I’m not a musician doesn’t mean I can’t remember a simple tune.’

  ‘Sorry. Just making sure.’ Chester retrieved his fiddle and stood towards the leftmost end of their line. Travis stepped in the opposite direction, standing at the rightmost edge. They stared at each other, spaced barely two yards apart. The silence stretched.

  ‘Three,’ Chester said, ‘two, one.’

  They hummed. It was a four-note bar, hummed only once: a simple quartet of tones. But Dot had enchanted the extinguishers well, and it was enough. There was a faint buzz in the air, a sudden snap of cold, and for a moment the shimmer in the air before them vanished …

  Chester and Travis didn’t hesitate. They threw themselves over the line of extinguishers, through the blank space of air where the shimmer had been. A moment later the cold was gone and the air was moving again, the extinguishers’ energy spent.

  They were through.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Chester stared back at the flame wall. It looked the same from this side: a haze of heat in the air, nothing deadly, nothing special. But now, for perhaps the first time in history, an unauthorised intruder stood on its inner side.

  Chester felt a slow grin cross his lips. They had done it. He glanced up and down the flame wall, catching its glint in the corners of his eyes. It was all just Music, really, when it came down to it.

  He let out a slow breath. ‘I guess any tune can be tinkered with, if you know what you’re doing.’

  ‘Remind me to shake Dorothy’s hand when we see her,’ Travis said.

  Chester turned to assess what lay before them: the shape of a vast doorway, hewn from a curving wall of stone. They were truly approaching the inner sanctum now.

  Chester placed a hand on the stone door. It was cool beneath his fingertips, but there was no sign of a lock. ‘How do we …?’

  Travis shook his head. ‘Don’t look at me. I thought you were the one who was good at Musical lock-picking.’

  ‘But I need an actual lock to pick. I can’t hear anything …’

  Chester ran his fingers across the stone again, to be sure. Nothing. There was no sign of Music. No sign of sorcery. Just blank stone. His skin began to tingle.

  ‘No doorknob,’ he whispered. ‘No handle. No lock.’

  They both stared at the door. This wasn’t good. They had devoted their planning to crossing the flame wall; it hadn’t occurred to them that there might be something so mundane as a door in their way. If they couldn’t break through quickly, their timing to meet the others would be thrown out of kilter …

  ‘Hurry,’ Travis whispered, as though sensing his thoughts. ‘The longer we make the others wait, the more likely they are to be spotted …’

  ‘I know.’

  Chester pressed a palm against the door. He sucked against the back of his teeth, throwing every inch of concentration into the touch of the doorway. Nothing. Just cold stone.

  ‘There has to be a way,’ he said. ‘I mean, it’s obviously a doorway. But if there’s no physical lock, and there’s no Musical lock …’ They stared at each other. ‘We have to go in through the Hush, don’t we?’

  Travis gave a slow nod. ‘I don’t see what other answer there could be. If the door doesn’t work in the real world, then –’

  ‘– it’s designed to work only in the Hush,’ Chester finished.

  He didn’t need to speak his fears aloud; he saw the same anxiety written on Travis’s face. Susannah had made it clear they were not to enter the Hush until the very last moment. There was too much Music in the Conservatorium. Too much sorcery, leaking through to poison the Hush. There could be Echoes, or sinking floors, or hidden drops into darkness …

  They dropped to the floor. Chester heard a sharpness in Travis’s breath, betraying his tension.

  ‘Three,’ he whispered, ‘two, one.’

  They hummed. The world melted into black.

  Chester wrenched his head up, alert for signs of danger. He half-expected to see a hundred Echoes encircling them like a pack of translucent wolves, but he saw nothing but the dark swirl of Hush-rain, as dry as falling leaves.

  He glanced up at the door and his body stiffened. The door was gone, replaced by an arch of empty air.

  They crossed the threshold into a vast, black room. The inside was mostly invisible, tainted by the mist and rain. Chester strained his eyes through the little bubble of light that surrounded him, but, again, all he could make out was shadow.

  He moved forwards but as soon as he was inside the room, there was a yank behind his belly button. Chester let out a cry and the room spun violently before colour and life flooded back into the world. He blinked and almost slipped backwards, slightly stunned by the sudden light.

  The real world. They had been yanked out of the Hush, back into the stark white shine of reality. ‘What …?’

  ‘This room,’ Travis said, glancing around. ‘It must be the final protection, to stop people finding the prisoners. You mustn’t be able to access the Hush in this room unless the security system’s shut down.’

  The room was a vast cylinder that reached all the way up to the top of the building. The space was massive. In Chester’s estimate, an entire saloon could fit comfortably inside. It stretched up for four or five storeys and was capped by an enormous copper dome. Chester remembered seeing the dome atop the Conservatorium when he’d stood outside; it was odd to think that he was here, now, in the belly of the building, staring up at its underside.

  There was no sign of life in the room, just vast white walls and a floor of polished marble. On the far side of the room, a round basin was carved into the floor: an artificial pond full of rippling water.

  A row of trundle beds arced around the curve of the walls. The bedside tables were littered with strange implements: metal vices, strange knives and contraptions, silver needles, and bags of dripping fluid. And above each bed, a brass pipe extruded from the wall, feeding down into a pair of mechanical earpieces that lay upon the empty pillows.

  ‘So this is where they do it,’ Chester whispered. ‘Where they turn people into Silencers.’

  He thought of Susannah, strapped to one of these beds, screaming as they forced the Music into her
ears and the toxins into her veins. He thought of Sam, writhing as the sorcery went wrong and tainted his mind …

  And he thought of his father.

  His father had been here, buckled to one of those beds. Chester tried to imagine how it would feel to be abducted from his home, deep in fever, and dragged through the Hush to this place. To this bed. To this torture.

  His stomach churned. He doubled over, fighting the sudden urge to retch.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Travis said, alarmed.

  Chester clutched his fiddle case tightly, taking a deep breath. He forced himself back up. ‘Yeah. Sorry. It’s just so …’

  ‘Awful? Bleak? Depressing?’

  ‘Yeah. That.’

  ‘Come on.’ Travis sounded shaken. ‘The others are counting on us.’

  Chester nodded, but it took all his effort to pull his gaze away. He glanced up at the ceiling once more, at the copper dome, so deceptively calm in its metallic gleam. There wasn’t time to reflect on the horrors of this chamber. Susannah, Dot and Sam were waiting to break through but he and Travis still hadn’t laid their charges underneath.

  He wrenched his gaze down to the floor, where a ring of rough stone tiles hugged the wall. The rest of the floor was smooth marble. Did he dare step out onto the marble? It looked solid, unlike the glass in Yant’s shattervault … But surely the Conservatorium would be better protected than a sugar baron’s house …

  ‘There must be a trap,’ he said. ‘It’s too easy.’

  They both stared at the empty floor.

  ‘Maybe there’s a pattern in the marble tiles,’ Chester added. ‘You know: you can only step on certain ones, or …’

  Travis shook his head. ‘I doubt it. If Songshapers are bustling around doing experiments on the prisoners in those beds, wouldn’t they want to know that they can trust their own feet?’

  ‘Well,’ Chester said, ‘maybe you need special boots. Or a ring with higher level permission spells built in.’