Page 101 of The Song Rising

“Can it be banished? We don’t know its name.”

“Perhaps. This is conjecture.”

“We need more than fucking conjecture!” I snapped. “Whatever the hell powers Senshield, it isn’t here. We thought we’d find the core in the depot, and we didn’t. All we have is guesswork and another fucking gun. I nearly killed us all in Manchester to get here—Ididkill Tom—and for what? For this?” I showed them the blood on my fingers. “Forconjecture?”

Nobody answered. I turned away from their eyes, feeling my own fill with heat.

“Paige,” Maria said, “this journey was always a shot in the dark, right from the start, but that doesn’t mean—”

“Wait.” Eliza held up a hand. “Do you hear that?”

We listened. A message was coming through the PA system. I pulled my hood up and went back outside.

Snow brushed my face. It was the middle of the night, not the usual time for Scion to be making public announcements. When we reached the top of the steps, we found ourselves at the edge of a small crowd of people. The vast transmission screen on the Grand Mile was full of Hildred Vance.

“. . .Grand Inquisitor has heard your calls for fair and equal treatment of all criminals who pledge allegiance to the Mime Order,” she was saying. “Tonight, as Grand Commander, I hope to demonstrate to you the benefits of martial law.”

Vance stared into the citadel, her voice made manifold by the speakers across Edinburgh. Usually she spoke with a white background behind her, like other Scion officials did when they addressed the public, but this time she seemed to be outside somewhere. I recognized the place at once; she was in front of the ruined Gothic monument on Inquisitors Street, just across Waverley Bridge. I had seen it on our way to and from the depot.

She was letting me know she was here, in the citadel.

“Two days ago, we received intelligence that Paige Mahoney, leader of the Mime Order, had escaped the capital and traveled to the North West to spread her violent message of contempt for the anchor. I have a message for Paige Mahoney. She cannot insult the anchor with impunity.”

The crescendo of voices around us drowned out her next words. The next thing I heard: “. . . execution will be carried out immediately, in accordance with martial law. So perish all the anchor’s enemies.”

Her face disappeared, replaced by a white screen. When the broadcast returned, the feeling drained from my face.

It wasn’t the sight of the executioner. It wasn’t the golden sword in his hands, poised high for the kill. It was the man whose neck was cradled by the block. No cloth over his face. Hands shackled behind his back. A man who seemed so much older than he had when I had last seen him, with his bloodshot eyes and unshaven jaw and threads of silver in his hair.

LIVE: EXECUTION OF COLIN MAHONEY, the screen informed the country.UNNATURAL PROGENITOR AND TRAITOR.

Don’t scream.

It came out of the ringing in my head—the survival instinct. Screaming would let everybody know that I was here. Nobody else cared about Cóilín Ó Mathúna. Nobody was left. Nick was speaking to me, grasping my shoulders, but I couldn’t tear my gaze from the taut, lined face on the screen. Every bead of sweat, every quiver of his lips, was so crystal-clear that I almost believed I was there with him on the Lychgate, waiting for the blow.

My most recent memories were of times when I had needed him and he had looked away. When I had held out my arms and he had turned his back. But now, in his final moments, I felt more like his daughter than I ever had. I remembered the night before he told me we were leaving our home—eleven years ago, a world away. He had carried me out into the fields and pointed to the sky, where meteors were weeping over Ireland. And his words came from a memory long buried, words I had forgotten until now.

Look, seillean.Look.He had sounded lost in a way I hadn’t understood.The sky is falling down on us.

When the sword came down, I didn’t close my eyes.

I owed him that much. To see what I had done.

I don’t remember how I got back to the safe house. I have a dim memory of my tongue prickling, and a sense that I was floating. As I drifted in and out of consciousness, my thoughts became a shattering of ruby and gold, a labyrinth of thorns with no escape. Somewhere in the twisting darkness, I heard my grandmother singing a lullaby in Irish. I tried to call to her, but my words stumbled out of my mouth and broke, their wings useless. When my eyes opened, I was underneath a blanket on the couch and the hearth was full of embers. I watched them glimmer for a long time, allowing them to entrance me.

I was an orphan now. My father and I hadn’t spoken properly in a long time, since before I was taken to the colony, but I realized now that he had always been at the back of my mind. He was the embodiment of a simpler world; someone I might have reconciled with after all this was over, when he understood that I had only ever been fighting to make life better. Whatever happened, I had always known I had a family to return to at the end.

I was dimly aware of Lucida’s glassy voice in the hallway: “We do not have time to delay. I do not understand why she has not moved.”

“Grief.” Nick. “He was her family. Don’t you have parents?”

“Rephaim are not offspring.”

He sighed. “If we’re going to do this, someone needs to make sure she doesn’t follow us. I know Paige. She won’t let us put ourselves in danger if she’s not doing the same.”

“I’m coming with you this time,” Eliza said. “I want to prove to her that I can hack this.”

They shushed each other as I shifted, making the couch rock on its brittle legs. My head was throbbing. I had almost drifted away again when a cool hand touched my forehead.

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