Page 117 of The Song Rising

I couldn’t think about my quiet, weary father being locked in here, kept in his own filth.

Carl smiled at me. I took him in, the boy I’d last seen in the penal colony. Still in his tunic of raw red silk. He had the early flecks of a goatee, and his hair was longer, combed behind his ears. A few loaded syringes of blue and green flux were tucked into a pouch on his belt.

“You’re lucky they haven’t killed you yet,” he said. “It won’t be long.”

I directed a blank look at the ceiling, hardly able to open my puffy eyes. “Did you get promoted?”

“Rewarded, really. You know they caught the concubine, don’t you?” he added. I grew very still. “A few days ago, while you were in the basement. Handed himself over, apparently, so you could live.”

His presence had stopped the Vigile from injecting me. My spirit stirred.

“He’s an idiot, of course. The blood-sovereign won’t let you get away a second time.” Carl laughed. “You know, 40, you really ought to have stayed in the colony. It’s better in here than it is outside.” He sniffed. “And it’s only going to get worse out there.”

He dabbed his nose on his sleeve. When he found blood on the silk, he uttered a terrified little shriek.

“No! Stop!” His body jolted against the wall. “You’re not allowed to do that; it’sforbiddenfor you to—”

In seconds I had him pinned, with a needle half an inch from his bare eye. His pupils gaped as he recognized it as his own syringe, plucked like a boiled sweet off his belt.

“Commandant,” he screeched.

A set of keys clinked near his waist. I grasped them with a shaking hand.

A Vigile came bursting through the door. I attacked her with my spirit, or tried to, setting off an explosion of pain behind my eyes. No effect. Knowing I had lost this round, I rammed the syringe deep into Carl’s arm, making him squeal, before a dart bit my neck. The floor slammed into me.

They had Warden. I rocked on my haunches in the corner, damp with sweat, my fingers flexing in my greasy hair. How could he be so stupid? He couldn’t have thought that Nashira would agree to an exchange. She wanted both of us. Always had. Or was this another lie?

I reached for the cord, but there was no answer. I couldn’t feel him anywhere.

Rephaim couldn’t die, but they could be destroyed. Perhaps Nashira had no more use for him. Had given him a slow end.

No. They didn’t have him, couldn’t have him—Carl was lying. This was Vance again, trying to derange me. She was going to use every weapon in her arsenal to ensure I was a shell.

She must think Warden was my true weakness, then. Not Nick or Eliza.

I clawed my way to the door and tried to see through the bars. My cell looked out on to a junction in the tunnels, where the Vigiles would sometimes stop to talk during their rounds. A transmission screen ran on the wall, showing my photograph above a scrolling ribbon of news.PAIGE MAHONEY SLAIN IN EDINBURGH. There was no more threat to security.

Slowly, I sat back and leaned against the wall. With my eyes closed, I recalled the heart-pounding moments before the gunshot. The smell of the blue hand.

And I wondered if Vance believed I was beaten. If she thought her strategy had worked.

It had come to me in a flash: the horses, the smoke, the soldiers. People screaming. The cries of the innocent. All this had happened before. It was a stage set, all that chaos; a psychological trap, just like the one she had used against Rozaliya—only this time on a far grander scale.

There, on the streets of Edinburgh, Vance had recreated the Dublin Incursion, just for me. All the elements had been there: an ordinary street thrown into disarray, the army, the protestors, a demonstration that became a massacre. All arranged by the Grand Commander.

She had built a real-life flashback, with Edinburgh as the stage and many of its people as the unwilling actors, people who had been swept up in the deception. But one thing was necessary before she could guarantee my breakdown and surrender. She needed me to be unstable; in a state of rage and grief. That was why she had murdered my father on-screen.

I was to be a child again, lost on the streets in a stampede.

I was to believe that by sacrificing myself, I could prevent that day in my childhood from repeating itself.

Clever. And extraordinarily cruel. She was willing to use innocents in her mind game, to let buildings burn, to endanger hundreds just to catch one. It might even have worked, had Warden not shown me that memory of Dublin. By doing so, he had unintentionally left it fresh in my mind. The cues which should have tipped me over the edge were too obvious; I had recognized Vance’s tableau for what it was. Props on a stage. An imitation.

That was when I had realized.

If Vance captured me, she would take me to the Archon and bring me before Nashira—Nashira, who, if Warden had been right, controlled the spirit that powered Senshield.

All I had to do was stay alive for long enough to get to it.

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