It took sixteen hours to gather enough of the Unnatural Assembly to perform the séance. They were scattered far and wide across the citadel, pinned down in various segments of the Beneath.
While the toshers tried to bring them to the facility, the rest of us got to work on making our new home habitable. We laid bedding on the bunks. A team was set up to work on the pumps and the ventilation system. What food we had carried was stashed in the canteen area, ready to be distributed. Weapons were taken from their owners and locked away.
The work kept me too busy to speak to Warden again. Sometimes we passed each other as we carried boxes of bedding between the sectors, and I would catch a glimpse of his face in the dim light, but I always avoided eye contact.
All the while, more voyants trickled into the facility. Some came through a passage that connected to the Underground, others through the sewers, and others still through a building on the surface.
We cleaned up the medical wing as best we could, pooling our supplies, and Nick and Wynn were handed the keys. Wynn immediately called me in and sat me down on a crate. Her hair was back in its fishtail braid.
“Let’s see that hand. And your face,” she said. “We can’t have you dying of infection before you go.”
The cut from Styx had long since stopped bleeding, but knowing me, I would tear it open if it wasn’t stitched. Wynn laid my hand in her lap, took a small bottle of alcohol from her skirts and tipped a little stream on to the cut on my palm, then dabbed some more on to my cheek.
“Are you all right, Wynn?”
“We’re used to poor treatment by now.” My palm smarted. “Paige, you must choose someone for Styx, and do it soon. He won’t forget about your bargain.”
“What will he do if I don’t send anyone?”
“He’ll go to Scion. The toshers take vows very seriously,” she said. “That’s why he cut you. Once the river has witnessed your oath, you’re bound to it. If you go back on it, there’s no reason for him to protect us.”
“Would you be opposed to me sending a vile augur?”
“Not if they were willing.”
“And if they weren’t?”
She slowed in her work. “That would depend.”
I let her clean my wounds in peace for a while. Once she was satisfied, she plucked a needle from her cardigan and washed it in the alcohol.
“Wynn,” I said, “you’ve seen that the voyants still despise Ivy.” Her face tightened. “It could cause a lot of trouble while you’re down here. They’re crying out for blood.”
Wynn looked up sharply. “Don’t you dare.”
“I won’t make her go.” I lowered my voice. “I want to give her the option. She might be safer with the toshers than she is in here.”
“It would be for a lifetime. That was what Styx demanded.”
“I will get her out,” I said.
“How?”
“However I can. She will not stay there forever.”
She returned her attention to my palm, her jaw stiff. The needle shoved into my skin.
“You know how frail she is,” Wynn said, with unusual softness. “She doesn’t sleep. Her stomach won’t take much food. And you ought to see the scars her keeper gave her. She has been punished more than enough for what she did.” Her shoulders pulled back. “Ivy is like a daughter to me. All the Jacob girls are. Send her, and I’ll go to Scion with our whereabouts myself.”
“Wynn.” I grasped her wrist. “You wouldn’t. You’d kill all the vile augurs in here, as well as the rest of us.”
Her lips pursed. She cut the thread and enfolded my hand in a clean bandage.
“I don’t know what I’d do. You know I’ve no love for this syndicate, Paige. My loyalty was only ever to you.” She secured the dressing. “Go on, now. I have another patient.”
Her face had turned to stone. I left.
The next patient was outside. Ivy. She was standing with Róisín, who seemed to have taken on the role of bodyguard.
“Paige,” Ivy said, but I ignored her. My footsteps matched my heartbeat as I walked away. “Paige?”
It would sate their bloodlust to give Ivy to Styx, and it would keep her out of danger. Every minute, I expected to hear that someone had snapped and taken justice into their own hands, and I feared it.
Ivy was a survivor. While I was in Manchester, however, I wouldn’t be able to protect her. I wanted to see her settled in a safe place, somewhere where she could mend, where she would be surrounded by people who cared about her, and that place wasn’t here—but if she was ever going to reach it, she had to last for the next few weeks.
For now, the decision would have to wait. It was time for the séance.
I joined my mollishers in the cross-tunnel, all three of us silent and tense as we waited. Eliza worried a lock of her hair, while Nick, who stood with his arms folded, was statue-still. I knew that the thirty members of the Unnatural Assembly who had arrived had been summoned to an empty stretch of the upper deck, where there was enough room to form a circle. Their voices mingled in the darkened space. They must have come willingly, but even so, I had no idea what sort of reception awaited us.
“Nick,” I said, watching his closed face, “you don’t have to do this.”
His gaze was distant. “It’s time I faced it.”
A few more mime-lords and mime-queens trailed into the chamber. I watched them out of their sight. No sign of the Pearl Queen.
When the three of us stepped into the tunnel, their voices slammed into me like a wall: shouts for justice for their missing sensors, for explanations, for evidence of a plan to get rid of the army. Some of them bawled that I was a murderer and a turncoat. I watched as this ostensible Assembly collapsed into a snarl of cavilling, shrieking, and fist-shaking while Eliza and Nick moved in front of me, calling for order. Spirits quavered nearby, ready to attack. When one of the new mime-queens punched Jimmy O’Goblin, I brought them all to heel with my spirit. A wave rolled through the æther and broke against their dreamscapes.
They quietened, their expressions wary. They need to be afraid of you, or they will never respect you, Glym had told me. All you have to do is show them what you can do, if you choose.
Several of them had souvenirs from the scrimmage: scarred faces, burns, missing fingers. Others had more recent wounds. I spotted Jack Hickathrift, who smiled at me with one side of his mouth.
“The Underqueen,” Nick called.
I stepped forward. Eliza and Nick flanked me, both forming spools for my protection.
“Members of the Unnatural Assembly,” I said, “as you’re all aware, we are facing a crisis on an unprecedented scale. With the call for martial law and the increased presence of Senshield, I have had no choice but to order the syndicate into the Beneath.” A few mutters, but I was holding their attention. “After years of threatening us with Senshield, Scion has not only installed hidden scanners across the citadel and recalibrated the technology, but combined the threat of it with the presence of ScionIDE—their army.”
“Because of you!”
“Go to hell, dreamwalker!”
“We should have never let you have the crown. This wouldn’t have happened under Binder!”
Others chimed in with their agreements. My commanders were at the back of the gathering, watching tensely, but I’d told them not to leap to my defense. I needed to handle this on my own.
“Pipe down, the lot of you, and listen to me,” I said sharply, speaking over the noise. “We have received reliable intelligence that a Senshield manufacturing hub is in Manchester. I intend to go there myself, along with Tom the Rhymer and Ognena Maria. We are hopeful that we will be able to gain crucial information with regard to the power source of Senshield. And when we find out what that power source is, I vow to you, we will destroy it.”
The reaction was immediate and livid.
“How do you expect to do that?”
“Ah, so that’s how it is! Scarpering at the first sign of trouble!”
“Craven!”
“Putting other citadels in danger, too, are we, brogue? Going to expose more voyants to Scion?”
And so on, until the Glass Duchess snapped, “Shut up and let the woman speak!”
Gradually, the commotion died down.
“This was always going to happen,” I said, fighting to keep my voice cool. “Hector denied it, and so did every leader before him, but now we know that the only way out of this is to resist. Scion has just used me as their excuse. They’ve used us as their excuse, because they are afraid of us. They’ve been afraid of the power of the syndicate from the beginning, the potential for voyants to unite against them. That’s why Senshield exists. That’s why we’re here. If ScionIDE is allowed to remain, armed with the new, portable scanners, they will not rest until they have stamped out the voyant way of life. If we are to survive, we must fight.” I pointed upward. “Up there, Scion is preparing to wage war against us. Let’s give them a taste of their own medicine.”
Something I’d said had reached them. A smattering of applause went through their ranks.
“You wish to declare war on Scion? In this weather?” the Heathen Philosopher blustered, one eye magnified by his monocle. “The Unnatural Assembly is an administrative body that facilitates the felonious activity of worthy clairvoyants. Certainly not one with the capacity to declare war.”
I was beginning to appreciate Hector’s restraint in not killing the whole lot of them.
“They declared war on us,” I said, my voice growing stronger, “the day they put their first voyant on the gallows. They declared war on us the day they spilled the first blood on the Lychgate!” Cheers. “You are the clairvoyants of London, and I will not see you extinguished. We are going to reclaim our streets. We are going to seize our freedom. They made thieves of us—it is time to steal what’s ours!”
The words stemmed from a place in me I hadn’t known was there. More cheers, louder. Calls of support.
“You’ve got some cheek, brogue,” Slyboots sneered, and they died down. “None of us signed up to be soldiers.”
“I did,” Jimmy O’Goblin slurred.
“Jimmy, sober up or hush up,” I said. Jeers followed. Jimmy jeered along with them, then looked confused. “I know the odds are daunting, but we have the æther. We can fight our way back to the surface, because we have a means to do so. Clairvoyance—our gift. As the Ranthen have shown us, we can use it against amaurotics. It’s a matter of unlocking our potential. Of trusting the very source of knowledge that binds us together.
“If the White Binder had become Underlord, he would have made you into an army, too, but not one that fights for freedom. You would have been an army of messengers, spreading word of the anchor. You would have survived,” I said, “but at what cost?”
“Rubbish,” Slyboots shot back. “Binder would have found a way to make it work.”
“Mind your tongue, Slyboots,” I said curtly. “I know you helped the Silent Bell burn down the Juditheon—and if I remember correctly, your old mime-lord was one of those involved in the gray market. I hope you don’t share the same sentiments.”
He opened his mouth to argue, but Glym clipped his ear. “Speak to your Underqueen with respect,” he said, “or you will not have a tongue to mind.”
“You’ve got no right to give us orders,” the Ferryman said. He was a wiry, white-haired augur, someone I knew only by sight. “You’ve never known hardship, girl. You’re seventh-order; you don’t know what it is to be exposed to Senshield. You’re the daughter of a Scion doctor. You were chosen by a wealthy mime-lord, who you betrayed for power. Give me one reason I should go to war for you. You’re the one who brought this down on us.”
Dark muttering followed his statement. I tried to muster the words to counter it, but it was like trying to pour from an empty bottle.
“Leave her be,” Tom growled.
“Oh, she talks a good game, but I’d like to see her spend one day in the gutter. And she left Ireland quickly enough when—”
“Stop,” I cut in. “I’m not asking you to go to war for me. I’m asking you to wait for me. And once I return, I’ll be asking you to defend yourselves. To take back what’s ours.” I paced before them, looking many in the eye. “When I became the ruler of this syndicate, I expected some backbone. I expected to see that unquenchable desire for more—the desire that drives this underworld. It’s what I’ve seen in all our eyes—the eyes of gutterlings, pickpockets, mollishers, mime-lords—since I first took to these streets. Years of oppression never crushed it, that flame that has led each of us to resist an empire that strives to destroy our way of life. Even if we’ve acted on it in the shadows, everything we’ve done, in the century the syndicate has existed, has been a small act of rebellion, whether daring to sell our gifts for coin or merely continuing to exist, and to profit.” I stopped. “Where is that desire now?”
Silence answered me.
“You’ve always known your worth. You’ve always known that the world owes you something, and you meant to take it, no matter the risk. Take it now. Take more.” Applause. Jimmy punched the air. “I will not allow this to be our extinction. Today, we descend. Tomorrow, we rise!”
This time, there were roars of approval. Halfpenny, I noticed, was one of those who clapped, even if he didn’t speak. In the midst of it all, unheard by most of them, the Ferryman spat on the concrete floor.
“I’ll not follow a brogue to my death,” he said.
He offered a mocking bow before he left. My stomach flurried, but only his mollisher followed him. I pressed on.
“It’s time to tell other voyants in this country about the Mime Order’s cause. Here and now, we are going to conduct a séance and send a message to the voyants of Britain. It’s going to multiply and spread through the æther like the branches of a tree, as far as we can send it. At the end, they will see . . . this.”
I motioned to a section of wall, where Eliza had painted our call to arms.
THEY CAN DETECT FOUR ORDERS NOW.
HOW LONG BEFORE THEY SEE US ALL?
WE NEED EVERYONE, OR EVERYONE LOSES.
NO SAFE PLACE. NO SURRENDER.
The black moth flew beneath it.
At that moment, Warden emerged from the shadows and came to stand beside me, towering above them all. Spring-heel’d Jack let out a nervous snicker.
“Form a circle,” Warden said, “and join hands.”
Spluttered protests and hoots of laughter followed this command. “I’m not holding her hand,” somebody said, making the nearest mime-queen look wounded.
“By all means,” he said, “stand beside a person whose hands offend you less.”
Maria took a candle from her pocket. I attached my oxygen mask. Painfully, like children cajoled into playing together, the Unnatural Assembly shambled into what could arguably be described as a circle. Some grasped each other’s hands with casual ease; others were almost hysterical at the thought of touching their neighbor. As Nick and Eliza joined the ring, Warden reached for my hand.
Our fingers interlocked. My pulse flickered through my hands, in my neck, at the crease of my elbow. Worn leather pressed against my palm, soft between my knuckles and beside my inner wrist. Nick took my other hand, while Tom took Warden’s. The ring was closed.
The Unnatural Assembly stood in silence together, waiting for the æther to open around them.
I had never thought to see this in my lifetime.
Warden murmured in Gloss. The candle grew brighter. Spirits were drawn into the ring, where they basked in an unbroken chain of auras. Nick and Maria had already dosed themselves with salvia; both were swaying on their feet.
“Tom,” Warden said, “the message. Hold it in your mind.”
Tom squinted at the graffiti, mouthing the words. Close by, Maria’s head rolled forward, but she kept hold of the hands on either side of her. Warden’s aura shifted.
“Now, Paige.”
My spirit jumped, into his dreamscape.
I had been here before. The path was familiar, through the red velvet drapes and over the ashes to his sunlit zone, where I joined his dream-form beside the amaranth in the bell jar. He was already gazing at the smoke that was gathering, storm-like, in his mind.
I had never been inside him while he was using his gift. His hand took mine, echoing our position outside the dreamscape. And now that no one else could hear, I gave him a message.
“Meet me at midnight, on the lower deck.”
His dream-form nodded.
The golden cord vibrated with a force that was almost violent, pulled like a tightrope by our proximity in a single dreamscape. Gradually, the smoke began to twist and form shapes. Memories.
He is searching for her in the forest, buried to his ankles in snow, holding up a lantern from their father’s storehouse. This was Nick’s memory. I couldn’t explain how I knew. I was seeing through his eyes, feeling as he must have felt, but still an observer. Eight sets of footprints snake between the trees, veering away from the path. The sound of his heart fills his ears like a drum.
A new memory, someone else’s. The gun must have been heavy at first, but now it is as much a part of her arm as a muscle. She releases it only to ransack the other woman’s pockets. Blood cascades down her chin and soaks the neckline of her shirt. Her hands never shake when she searches a corpse, but this one is different. This one is Roza.
Her hands sift through wet tissue and fabric and bone, picking out two precious, blood-slick bullets. One she must save for herself, one for Hristo.
Survival first. Pain later.
“It’s over,” Hristo says. “All they need is a formal surrender. We’ll go to the border, to Turkey—”
“You can try.”
The district is ablaze around them. All she can hear is the rattle of gunfire. The English soldiers are almost upon them. “Sit with me, Hristo,” she says. “Let’s go to hell with a little dignity.”
“Stoyan—”
“Yoana.” She lights her last cigarette, her hands gloved in blood. “If we’re dying now, please, for once, call me by my name.”
Hristo kneels in front of her. “If you won’t try, I must. My family—” He squeezes her wrists. “I’ll pray for you. Good luck, Yoana.”
She hardly notices him leave, knowing she will never see him again. Her gaze falls to the gun.
Back to Nick. I was rooted in place, unable to stop watching.
Now there are more footprints than eight people could make. He runs. A patrol has come through this part of the forest.
In the clearing, the tents have been torn down. A sign gives notice of their execution.
She is curled on her side by the ashes of their campfire. Håkan is nearby, prostrate, his coat drenched in rust. Their hands reach across snow. Between them, the bottle is undamaged, the bottle they must have bought in secret, the bottle of wine with a Danish label. He gathers her body into his arms and screams like a dying thing.
Warden’s dream-form released me, and the cord rang again. “Go, Paige,” he said.
My spirit fled.
I woke gasping for air. Nick was on his knees, his hand crushing mine. I jumped again, tearing from my body.
I glimpsed enough of Tom’s dreamscape to tell that it took the shape of a factory. Dust fell all around me as I launched myself into his sunlit zone, where his dream-form’s hand reached for mine. Contact between two dream-forms was deeply intimate, but there was no time for embarrassment. The moment we connected, I knew Warden had been right. The memories arced between us like lightning.
Now all we had to do was hold on.
As soon as I landed back in my body, Tom gritted his teeth and projected the memories as oracular images. They hit us first; then the rest of the Assembly drew in their breath as they succumbed. Instead of the dream-like way in which Warden experienced memory, I saw them like pages in a flick book. The forest and the burning street smothered my vision.
“Hold the circle,” Warden commanded. The memories repeated over and over, faster and faster, lifted away from us by the spirits, until all I could see was the moth and the message.
It held for a while, long enough to be remembered. Then we all fell down.
Night and day didn’t exist in the Beneath, but the séance had exhausted the Unnatural Assembly. The lights turned off, allowing them to sleep. I had already noticed the division in our ranks. Most of my supporters had clustered on the lower deck, while those who spoke against me were on the upper. All I could do was hope that Glym would be able to unite them.
I sat on the vacant bunk beside Eliza’s, gazing into the blackness. The thought of leaving now, when I was just about holding on to their loyalty, was hard to stomach. Even harder to stomach was the knowledge that Nick, who was asleep or pretending to be, had spent the last few hours in his bunk, ignoring anyone who spoke to him.
His private memory had been used as fuel. As propaganda. His little sister’s murder.
“You’re going to give me to Styx.”
The voice was hoarse. Light flickered from the end of a flashlight.
“I overheard you talking to Wynn.” Ivy was sitting cross-legged on her bunk. “I want to do it.”
Wynn had covered the “T” on her cheek with a square dressing. I didn’t say anything.
“She doesn’t want to see it, but you know I won’t last long down here. Someone will cut my throat when I’m looking the wrong way. The only reason they haven’t killed me already is because you’ve been here,” she said. “So it has to be me. For all our sakes.”
I breathed in through my nose.
“If you stay with us,” I said, “then you’ll be killed. But if I send you, Wynn will betray us to Scion.”
“There is another way.”
The new voice had an Irish accent. Ivy aimed the flashlight. Róisín Jacob was awake, watching us from her bunk. Her lip had puffed up since the attack.
“I know the toshers. Used to help them scavenge in our section of the Neckinger,” she said. “I like Styx. And I’m in better shape than Ivy. Send me.”
“Ro,” Ivy started.
“You’re in no fit state to be crawling through tunnels. You’ll give me to Styx,” she said to me, “and Wynn will accept it without question, because I’ll tell her I’m going of my own free will.”
“They won’t let you. This is my responsibility. It was my crime.” Ivy’s voice cracked. “Besides, Paige needs to punish me, or someone else will.”
There was a pause before Róisín said slowly, “They will see you punished. You’ll be officially chosen, and then I’ll offer to go in your stead. But, Ivy, the one person here that Wynn won’t stand to lose again is you. She suffered enough the first time.”
Ivy buried her head in her arms. “I don’t know,” she said, her voice muffled.
“You need to decide by tomorrow,” I said. “The Glym Lord will announce that he’s stepping in as interim Underlord in my absence. He’ll also announce that Ivy Jacob has been sentenced to a life in the Beneath for her crimes against the syndicate. Róisín, if you’re going, you’ll need to come forward and insist that you take her punishment. And, Ivy, you will act as if seeing Róisín sent in your place is a far higher price to pay than going yourself.”
I had never heard myself sound so callous. Ivy stared at Róisín, then flung me a bitter look.
“I won’t have to act,” she said, and turned over.
I dropped my gaze, clenched my jaw. Róisín watched the lump beneath the blanket for a while.
“She’ll understand,” she said to me. “Wynn, I mean. All she’s ever wanted is for us vile augurs to be able to make our own choices. I’ve made mine.”
She laid her head back on the pillow. I rose from the bunk and walked into the darkness, holding my jacket around myself.
Relief warred against self-disgust. I had been ready to send Ivy. Barely a month of being Underqueen, and I was already becoming someone I didn’t recognize. Someone who would punish a person who was already broken. Someone who would do anything to achieve her aims.
Only a tissue of morality now set me apart from Haymarket Hector.
Warden was waiting for me in a deserted sleeping area. I sat on the opposite bunk and set my flashlight down on the mattress.
“You leave for Manchester in four hours,” he said.
My fingers ran over the bandage on my hand.
“Lucida will be here by morning. She will ensure the Glym Lord is accepted as your interim, and that no further violence occurs.” He paused. “I make the crossing to the Netherworld at dawn.”
I only nodded in response. The two bunks were so close that our knees almost touched.
Sweat coated my nape. I had thought about these words all day, but couldn’t let them out. I couldn’t even look at him. I would only lose the will to do this.
“The other night, I made a mistake,” I said eventually. “I should have called the Unnatural Assembly right away, to tell them about Senshield being able to detect the fourth order. So they could hear it from me first. So I could frame it to our advantage.”
My words were too clear in the silence of this place, a silence untouched by the music of the citadel.
“I could have got there before Weaver. But I let myself be persuaded to wait until morning, because I wanted to see you. I wanted to be with you—to be selfish, just for a few hours. Those hours put Weaver ahead of me.”
His gaze burned on my face.
“I’m Underqueen, and you’re . . . a distraction I can’t afford.” It took effort to say this, to believe this. “I swore to myself that I would sacrifice everything if it meant I could take down Scion. If it meant that voyants could be free. We can’t let the Mime Order fail, Warden, not after what we’ve been through to get here. We can’t put it in jeopardy.”
It was some time before he said, “Say it.”
My face had been hidden behind my hair. Now I lifted it.
“You said change had a personal cost for all of us.” I looked him in the eye. “You are what change will cost me.”
We sat there for a long time. I wanted to take it back; with difficulty, I stopped myself. It seemed like a lifetime before he spoke again.
“You need not justify your choices.”
“I wouldn’t choose it. Not if it wasn’t necessary. If it were different—” I looked away. “But . . . it isn’t.”
He didn’t deny it.
Jaxon had been right about words. They could grant wings, or they could tear them away.
Words were useless now. No matter what I said, how hard I tried to articulate it in a way that he could understand, I would never be able to express to this Rephaite what it would do to me when I surrendered him to the war we had started, or how much I had wanted our stolen hours to continue. I had thought those hours would be my candles, as our days grew darker. Points of light, of fleeting warmth.
“Perhaps this is for the best,” Warden said. “You already dwell too deep in shadows.”
“I would have gone into the shadows for you,” I said. “But . . . I can’t allow myself to care about you this much, not when I’m Underqueen. I can’t afford to feel the way I do when I’m with you. We can fight on the same side, but you can’t be my secret. And I can’t be yours.”
When he moved, I thought he was going to leave without saying anything. Then, gently, his hands clasped mine.
If I ever touched him again, he would be wearing gloves. It would be in passing. By mistake.
“When I return,” he said, “we will be allies. Nothing more. It will be . . . as if the Guildhall never was.”
It should have been a weight off my shoulders. My life was already too dangerous. Instead, I felt hollow, as if he had taken something from me that I had never known was there. I went to him and buried my face in his neck.
We sat with our arms around each other, holding too tightly and not tightly enough. Once we left this place, there would be no more talks beside the fire. No more nights spent in his company, when I could forget the war and suffering that loomed on the horizon. No more dances in derelict halls. No more music.
“Goodbye, little dreamer,” he said.
I almost voiced my answer. Instead, I pressed my forehead against his, and deep in his eyes, a flame was kindled. As his thumb grazed my jaw, I committed the way his hands felt on my skin to a hidden vault in my memory. I wasn’t sure which of us brought our lips to the other’s first.
It lasted far too long for a farewell. A moment. A choice. A mirror of the first time we had touched this way, behind the red drapes in the nest of the enemy—when danger had been everywhere, but a song had still been rising in us both. A song I wasn’t sure that anything could silence.
Our lips parted. I breathed him in, one more time.