The Hush

by Skye Melki-Wegner

  He glanced down at the student ring on his finger, shining silver. Had the judges at his audition worn silver rings, too, or had theirs been made of a different metal? Gold, perhaps? He couldn’t remember.

  ‘I hope not,’ Travis said, ‘or we’ll be stuck here for a very long time.’

  Chester realised that he was right. Retreat was no longer an option. The only way to pass back through the stone door was in the Hush – and the security systems prevented them from entering the Hush inside this room. They were trapped. Either they completed the gang’s plan, or they waited here for capture.

  ‘There’s got to be something we’re missing,’ Chester said. ‘Something to keep out intruders who don’t know the secret.’

  He scanned the blank walls, the white tiles. His eyes roamed up to the copper domed ceiling then down to the glint of metal instruments beside the beds.

  And then he noticed the mirrors. Circular sheets of glass and metal barely a foot in diameter adorned the walls above each bed. ‘What are those for?’

  Travis shook his head. ‘No idea, I’m afraid. I wish Dot was here – she’d spot a mechanical trap in a jiffy.’

  Chester risked a hesitant step to the side, a little closer to the nearest bed. He studied the mirror with suspicious eyes. There was nothing outwardly dangerous about it. It was a circle of glass, no more deadly than a painting or tapestry. But every mirror pointed to the centre of the room, as though their reflections might meet in some invisible point.

  Chester laid Goldenleaf at his feet and wriggled out of his vest.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Travis said.

  ‘Testing something.’

  Chester pulled off a boot and draped the vest over its end, allowing him to hold out the vest without touching it. Cautiously, he edged a little closer to the bed – and extended the dangling vest in front of the mirror.

  It happened so fast that Chester almost dropped the boot. With a screech of sound and scorching heat, beams of light shot from every mirror in the room, blasting into the centre where they met in a blazing point.

  Chester gaped at the boot in his hand. A trail of smoking fabric hung from it, half-disintegrated by the force and heat of the blast.

  ‘Well,’ he said weakly, ‘good thing we checked before we stepped onto the marble.’

  Travis stared at the smoking vest. ‘Good thing I didn’t lend you one of my quality waistcoats.’

  Chester shook the charred remains of the vest onto the floor. He waited a moment for his boot to cool then shoved his foot back into its folds. The leather was warm against his toes, but it didn’t seem to be at risk of catching fire.

  ‘Look!’ Travis said.

  Chester looked up and his stomach sank. The light beams that crossed the room had not faded or retracted into the mirrors.

  They had begun to move.

  The beams roamed up and down, moving and crossing each other at odd angles. Each beam shone out from its mirror in a dead straight line, but each line moved its destination point from up to down and side to side in a slow-spinning dance of danger. The lines of light swerved and crisscrossed, like ever-changing partners in a silent ballroom.

  Beautiful and deadly.

  Chester stared. They seemed to be safe on the ring of stone tiles, but they couldn’t cross the room. There was no way to predict the path the light beams would take; there was no way to dodge or weave. Beneath the heat of the dancing beams, they would be fried to cinders.

  ‘There has to be a way to turn them off!’

  Travis didn’t respond. Chester waited a moment, still staring at the lights. ‘Travis?’

  Still nothing.

  Chester turned to look at the older boy, confused by his silence. Travis had backed up against the wall, his eyes as wide and white as the marble flooring. His hands were pressed against the wall and he didn’t seem to be breathing.

  ‘Travis?’ Chester placed a hesitant hand on his shoulder. ‘Are you all right?’

  The older boy nodded but his gaze did not leave the light beams. Inch by inch, his back slid down the wall until he was almost crouching. He watched the beams like a mouse watching a cat, as though he didn’t know whether to freeze or run.

  ‘Penelope,’ he whispered.

  Chester stared at him, confused. ‘What …?’

  Travis wet his lips. ‘My sister, Penelope. The one who vanished – the one they took. I told you she was an inventor.’

  Chester nodded. ‘Just like Dot. That’s part of the reason they fell in love, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Penelope was an artist,’ Travis whispered. ‘She didn’t invent practical things, like Dot. She invented beautiful things. Musical wallpaper, and light displays, and enchanted dinnerware for the most fashionable Weser parties …’

  ‘What’s that got to do with –’

  Travis raised a shaky finger, pointing at the beams of light. ‘She invented those lights. You see the way they move? The way they dance? That was Penelope’s last invention – the last thing she showed to me before she vanished. She was so proud; her dancing lights were going to revolutionise ballrooms, she said …’

  Chester stared out at the light beams. His stomach twisted as he realised what Travis was telling him. ‘You mean, they stole her invention? Twisted it into some kind of killing machine?’

  ‘My sister’s lights were beautiful,’ Travis said. ‘They were designed to feel like cobwebs when they touched you; soft and fragile and shining.’

  His eyes hardened behind his spectacles, melting slowly from shock to fury. ‘But these people … It wasn’t enough for them just to take Penelope. They had to take her greatest triumph and poison it, and turn her lights into weapons that burn people’s flesh.’

  There was a long silence.

  Travis slid back up the wall, jerking up onto his feet. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘They didn’t predict one thing.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘My sister showed me how to work the light beams.’ Travis clenched his fists. ‘And I know how to shut them down.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  The skin of the dome was cold and gritty. Susannah ran her fingers across its shell, searching for a join in the copper sheeting. She didn’t dare risk a sorcery lamp up here on the roof – not when pegasus riders soared high above, riding their mounts through city skies. All she had to work with was moonlight.

  The dome wasn’t the Conservatorium’s only rooftop feature. Pegasus stables looped around her in a circle. The scent of dung mixed with quiet nickering to paint the air with a decidedly equine flavour. Here they were, atop the Conservatorium itself, in Meloral’s largest city – yet all Susannah could hear and smell was horse. She might as well be back in a country town.

  Dot and Sam waited beside her, looking rather out of place on the rooftop. Dot wrapped her arms around her torso, looking almost defensive, while Sam stood as still as a mountain. Neither had enjoyed the climb up the fire escape; their talents lay in areas other than cat burglary. But Susannah needed them for this job and this was the only route inside.

  Her fingers played across the copper and she strained her eyes to pierce the dark. She had expected the dome to feel smooth and cool, an arch of perfect metal. But it felt almost powdery beneath her fingers – a tactile echo of the greenish tinge it took during the daytime, stained by time.

  ‘The others are late,’ Dot whispered. ‘They should have contacted us by now.’

  Susannah nodded but didn’t break her concentration. Her fingertips roamed to the right, searching, searching …

  There! The join was subtle: a textured line, trailing down the side of the dome. It was a sign of where two sheets of copper had been Musically melded together. A sign of weakness.

  ‘Got the charge?’

  Dot nodded, her face barely visible in the dark. She pulled out a ball of something that looked like wire. It was long and thin but glinted in the moonlight. ‘I made this one longer,’ she said. ‘To reach all the way along the join.’


  ‘Good thinking.’

  Susannah took one end of the wire and unspooled it. She tied it to a bolt at the bottom of the dome’s join then trailed it upwards, clambering onto the dome itself – wincing at the quiet little clangs of copper beneath her weight – until the wire ran all the way to the zenith.

  ‘Sam,’ she said, struggling to keep her grip on the powdery metal slope, ‘can you run it down the other side?’

  Sam hurried around to the other side of the dome. He reached up and, stretching his oversized limbs, grabbed the strand of wire she dangled down towards him. He trailed it down the copper slope, right along the opposite join mark to the one Susannah had started with, before he knotted its end to another bolt at the base of the dome.

  Susannah slipped back down to roof level and dusted off her hands. ‘Right,’ she said. ‘We’re all set, then?’

  Dot nodded. ‘So long as I’ve calculated the angles right …’

  ‘Good,’ Susannah said. ‘Well then, I guess we’ve got to wait for the signal.’

  As she spoke, a throbbing heat sparked in the communication globe on her shoulder. She yanked it down and clutched it in her palm, swallowing in relief as the light and fog eddied into an image of Chester’s face.

  ‘Chester! What’s going on down there?’

  He gave her an apologetic look. ‘We’ve hit a bit of a setback, Captain, but we’re working on it. Can you give us a few minutes?’

  Susannah glanced around the rooftop. The pegasi were getting nervous, now, confused by the presence of strangers near their stables. They nickered and pawed at the hay. The noise could bring someone out to investigate – and, of course, there was always the risk of an overhead rider glancing down at the roof …

  ‘What’s the setback?’ she said.

  ‘They’ve built a trap out of light beams – they fry anything that passes in front of them. But Travis says he knows how to switch it off; he’s using some of the medical tools to adjust the angles of the mirrors …’

  ‘Travis?’ Susannah said, startled. ‘But he doesn’t know the first thing about –’

  She cut herself off when she caught sight of Dot’s face. The blonde girl was pale as the moon, her eyes wide and her lips slightly open. ‘Dot, what’s wrong?’

  ‘Penny,’ Dot whispered. ‘She invented a show with beams of light. That’s how Travis knows how to deal with it.’

  Susannah let out a low breath. ‘All right. Just tell him to hurry up, will you?’

  ‘Will do,’ Chester said. ‘Look, Captain, I should be helping him – I’ll signal when we’ve got our charge in place.’

  Susannah nodded. ‘Go on, then. Just … be careful. Don’t get fried.’

  ‘Wasn’t planning to,’ Chester said, ‘but we’ll keep it in mind.’

  He threw her a nervous little grin before the light of the communication globe faded into nothing. Susannah kept her fingers wrapped around the glass for a good few seconds, clinging to the remnants of its warmth. Then she pinned it back to her shoulder and forced her face into a neutral expression.

  ‘Right,’ she said. ‘We might be stuck up here for a little while.’

  The minutes were long. The gang melted back into the shadows of the rooftop stables, trying to keep out of sight of any pegasus riders overhead – but their proximity to the stalls sent the horses into a fresh tizz. The closest beast, a gleaming black stallion, pawed nervously at the door of his stall.

  ‘He can tell we’re stressing, I reckon,’ Sam said. ‘Horses always figure out when something dodgy’s going on – it’s instinct.’

  ‘Shhh,’ Dot whispered, reaching through the wooden bars to stroke the stallion’s quivering side. ‘It’s all right, baby. Aren’t you beautiful? Don’t be scared of us. Shhh …’

  ‘Stop hissing at him,’ Sam said. ‘He’ll think you’re a blasted snake.’

  ‘I wasn’t hissing! I was hushing him, like a baby. Isn’t that how you calm babies down?’

  Sam snorted. ‘Do I look like a nanny to you?’

  ‘Shut up, both of you,’ Susannah whispered. ‘Forget the horse and keep your eyes on the sky. We’ll have to do this quickly, as soon as –’

  The globe on her shoulder shuddered. She saw the others jump, too, and knew that Chester had sent the signal to all three of them.

  The others looked grim now: all hints of silly argument had fled from their eyes. They stared at each other for a long moment and Susannah had a sudden thought that this could be the last time she saw them alive. If anything went wrong with the charges …

  ‘You’re sure about your maths, Dot?’

  Dot nodded. ‘I’m sure, Captain. It should all be lined up properly – so long as Chester and Travis put their charge right underneath the middle of the dome.’

  ‘All right then,’ Susannah said. ‘Let’s go.’

  They crept out from under the stables’ eaves into the central round of the Conservatorium roof. The dome loomed before them, shadowed in the night. Their line of wire glinted along its joins, just waiting for the Music to begin …

  ‘Wish we all could’ve snuck in with Travis,’ Dot said. ‘I could’ve pretended to be a servant, too.’

  ‘Too suspicious,’ Susannah said. ‘Two servants skulking around together is one thing, but five of us?’

  Dot nodded. ‘I know. And I guess Chester couldn’t have pulled us all through the security spells at once with just one ring. Even if he took us one by one, it’d take forever – and just one little slip-up would trigger the alarm …’ She sighed. ‘Still, it would’ve been nice to keep our feet on the ground.’

  ‘This job was never going to be nice,’ Susannah said.

  She positioned herself at one end of the wire while Sam hurried around to the opposite side. His face was strained, tense with the churn of nearby Music. Dot stood back a little, her arms outstretched, and she closed her eyes to concentrate. Her face strained, as though she was fighting to hear a distant sound, something on the very edges of her hearing that was delicate enough to be washed away by the slightest breeze.

  Susannah knew what she was straining for. The Music of the charges. If they wanted enough power to snap the copper’s joining magic, they needed a serious tune of interference. Dot was listening for the Musical pattern, to ensure they activated the charges at the strongest point in the melody.

  Dot’s expression changed and Susannah knew she had found it. She had heard the call of her own Music in the darkness and her mind had latched onto the rhythm of the tune.

  ‘Five,’ Dot whispered, ‘four, three, two, one.’

  Susannah hummed. She had no idea what she was doing, or how the enchantment worked. All she knew was that Dot had taught her what to hum and she was damn well going to hum it. She heard the same notes resonate from Sam’s lips on the far side of the dome, and from Dot’s as she mentally activated the charges …

  There was a groan in the metal. Light sizzled along the wire, like captured lightning, white and hot and thin as a fingertip. The copper groaned.

  The join snapped.

  It was more dramatic than Susannah had expected. The entire line of metal gave way, splitting one half of the dome from the other. It was like cracking an egg – a vicious smack of sound in her ears – and she winced: what if someone had heard?

  But there were no shouts of alarm and no cries from the sky. The city was home to too much general racket: restaurant music, carriages on cobblestones, laughing diners and splashing fountains. In all that whirl and bluster of noise, the crack of the dome would sound like a hiccup in a storm.

  Susannah reached out to touch the dome. ‘You’re a genius, Dot.’

  Dot smiled. ‘I know that, Captain. Isn’t that why you hired me?’

  The dome still sat in the same position, but for the enormous crack that had opened along its join. There wasn’t enough room to slip through on the lower parts of the slope – the crack was barely as wide as Susannah’s hand. But up on the peak of the dome, where the crack was at its
widest, a human body could just squeeze through. Even Sam, if he held his breath.

  ‘I’ll go first,’ Susannah whispered, ‘and set up the pulley system for the rest of you.’

  The others nodded.

  Susannah clambered up the side of the dome, slipping and sliding a little on the copper. She kept as quiet as she could, but still winced at the occasional clank of metal as her boot nails hit the sides.

  She reached the top and saw the massive hole open beneath her. Down in the room below, she saw sorcery lamps shining in the dark and – if she squinted hard enough – the shapes of two figures, waiting in the centre of a white marbled floor.

  Susannah unfastened the rope from where it was tied to her belt and strapped a harness around her torso. She dropped one end of the rope through the hole and received a flash of light from a hideaway lamp to signal that Chester and Travis had hold of the end. She waited a few moments, knowing they were securing the rope to their own belts to counteract her weight.

  She bent down, thrusting her upper body through the crack while her knees remained securely gripped to the outside of the dome. She retrieved a pulley ring from her pocket and pressed it against the inside lip of the dome, where an iron frame ran in lines beneath the copper. Her magnet gripped the iron like a kiss. It was strong enough to hold the pulley in place but she wouldn’t yet trust it with her body weight.

  Susannah wriggled back out into the open air and nodded at Dot. The blonde girl raised her hands and whistled a quiet little run of notes. The melody was tight and fast; it reminded Susannah of a hammer thwacking in an obstinate nail. Three, four, five bars of melody and Dot’s whistle faded away.

  ‘Done,’ she said. ‘It should hold for a good hour, at least.’

  Susannah reached back down under the dome and gave the pulley a tug. It held fast to the sturdy iron frame, secured by the power of Dot’s melody.

  Time to go.

  She fed her end of the rope through the pulley, before securing it to the harness system around her torso. Then, with a deep breath, she slipped the rest of her body through the gap.