Page 109 of The Song Rising

Where the hell had this come from?

The roar of the crowd was extraordinary. Warden stayed close to me. I ducked my head, lifting my scarf over my features, and backed into the shadows beneath the pine trees. I had sensed Vance’s dreamscape at the depot; I could find it again. I dislocated and searched for her.

“She’s close,” I said.

“Close enough?”

I opened my eyes. “Yes.”

NVD vehicles were screaming to a standstill outside Haliruid House. When a commandant got out, one of the protestors hurled a swollen balloon at him. It exploded like a blister, and the offal inside oozed down his riot shield.

“Butchers,” someone screamed.

A driver emerged. Without a word, she shot the offender in the abdomen. He doubled over like a jackknife, and the Vigiles raised their guns to fire—but now another throng was pouring around the side of the building. I had to focus, to tune out the noise. I leaned against Warden, pressed my oxygen mask to my face, and tore free of my body, vaulting first into the æther, then, like a stone skipping across water, into Vance’s dreamscape.

A chamber of white marble, with a high ceiling and a grand staircase. Clean, elegant lines. Monochrome.

Vance’s spirit stood at the very top of the stairs. She saw herself, it seemed, exactly as she appeared in the mirror, down to the last line on her face. No evidence of any self-hatred for her crimes, any hint of a conscience. Like any amaurotic, she had no way of seeing her own dreamscape, or consciously taking control of her dream-form. Her spirit was a gray, machine-like thing, programmed to respond to an invading threat as best it could without direction. I ran to meet it and wrestled it to the floor. Its hands gripped my arms.

“You,” it hissed.

Its jaw moved as if on a hinge. Horror almost made me let go. An amaurotic shouldn’t be able to make their dream-form speak.

“Me,” I whispered.

I was too far away from her physically to unseat her spirit from the center of her dreamscape. All I could do was grasp it.

Vance’s dream-form trembled violently, setting off an earthquake in her dreamscape. Someone must have trained her to be able to defend herself, but I was used to overcoming voyant dream-forms. An amaurotic’s, even that of Hildred Vance, was easy to suppress. I took hold of its head, only to see that my dream-form’s hands were coated to the wrist in blood.

The golden cord drew tight, connecting Vance to Warden. I felt myself straining under the pressure as he used me to bridge the physical distance between himself and the Grand Commander. The ancient power of his gift surged through me, like electricity through a conductor, so strong that my dream-form began to shake. When it stopped, I shoved myself off her, sick to the depths of my spirit. I had touched the purest essence of the woman whose orders had slaughtered thousands.

My silver cord was lifting me away when Vance seized me. Black eyes gaped at me, glossy brooches in the dream-form’s head.

“I will kill them all,” it warned. “Give yourself up . . .”

I twisted away from her. As I fled, the threat resounded in my ears. She was capable of anything.

I darted into Warden’s dreamscape, just in time to see the memory for myself. And there it was, frozen in his mind: the power source, the core of Senshield, my own personal grail—the end of the road. Mechanical, yet beautiful. A light sealed beneath a pyramid of glass. A spirit, trammeled and harnessed. Ethereal technology in its most powerful form.

And I knew where it was being kept.

I tore off the oxygen mask. “Did you feel it?”

His eyes scorched. “Yes.”

A gasping laugh escaped me. “Warden, that was the core. It’s real.”

I had never quite believed that this hare-brained quest would be successful; that I would really discover where the core was. Now I had seen.

Now I knew.

The core was locked out of our reach in the most high-security building in the Republic of Scion. It was inside the Westminster Archon, the cradle of the empire and workplace to hundreds of its officials, back in the Scion Citadel of London. I had come all the way here, only to have to return to where we had started. I didn’t care. It had been worth it.

Because I knew something else, too. Something Vance’s memory had betrayed, like a fracture in her armor. It was a fear she couldn’t shake, and that no amount of money could repair.

Senshield was not indestructible. There was a vulnerability. I could feel that anxiety eating away at her, like rust through iron.

It was all I needed to know.

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