Page 25 of The Song Rising

“I need to show that I’m not just using the syndicate as cannon fodder,” I said. “That I’m happy to put my neck on the line, too. I’m not going to do this like Hector did, from a safe distance. I can’t.”

He didn’t argue anymore.

Next up was the matter of who should come with me. Maria volunteered first. Three summoners, so we could call for help from powerful spirits if we needed them, and three other voyants who had taken Warden’s advanced training. A local seer, sent by Jimmy, would help us get in and out.

“I’m coming, too,” Nick said.

Eliza nodded. “And me. We’re your mollishers.”

“I can’t risk both of you being captured.” I considered them. “Eliza, I think an oracle would be more useful for this mission. I’m taking Nick. You can coordinate our exit.”

She folded her arms tightly.

“Right,” she said.

She had been waiting weeks for a chance to shine, but I couldn’t put her in the team for the sake of it.

“I will ask Tom to check for portents, Underqueen,” Glym said. “The æther may be able to offer us guidance.”

“And I’ll try to source some explosives in the meantime,” Maria said. “I owe Vance a little pain.”

Morning came, swathed in mist. The sun shone like a silver coin behind its gauze of cloud, and all over London, people were singing parlor songs around their pianos and wishing each other Happy Novembertide. Images of the first Grand Inquisitor, James Ramsay MacDonald, were draped from every building. The Grand Inquisitor of France had been expected for the celebrations, but according to ScionEye he had been taken ill. I would have expected Ménard to be on his deathbed before he missed such an event, especially as his visit had been so heavily publicized, but there was no time to dwell on it.

As the day passed, we prepared for our assignment. Glym, as the commander in charge of recruitment, assembled and briefed an infiltration team. A backup group would be ready to cause a distraction if anything went wrong. I worked out the route across the ice, based on what Jimmy had told us.

Nick was right about my gift. I might need it, and I was badly out of form. I swallowed my pride and tried the golden cord—no answer.

If that was how Warden wanted to play, so be it. Even if he had come, he might have gone straight to Terebell with our plans. I spent a while practicing alone, trying to push my spirit into birds. It was late in the day when I successfully possessed a magpie and amused Nick by having the bird perch on his head. Less amusing was the headache that followed.

We set off as dusk fell. The team gathered in the district of Vauxhall, in a closed-down oxygen bar built into the railway arches. Nick handed out second-hand Scion boiler suits.

“Everything washes up in Old Spitalfields,” he said, when I shot him a quizzical look. As I zipped mine up, Maria strode in.

“The bastard trader had sold out of explosives,” she groused. “Because ScionIDE has never been stationed in London, there’s not much military-grade weaponry around.”

I tucked the legs of my suit into my boots. “Is that how it works?”

“It’s the one advantage. If you have krigs nearby, you can steal their equipment. That, in turn, allows rebels to become militarized. You cannibalize one army to create another.”

“Krigs?”

She waved a hand. “Soldiers. It’s from the Swedish word for war,krig. As Nick will know, there are a lot of them in Sweden.” She grabbed a boiler suit. “We’ll just have to use fire.”

Fire was her numen. It would do. We had one other pyromancer with us—the redhead from the Mill cell—along with two capnomancers. They might be able to use smoke to mask us if we needed a quick escape. Jimmy had sent us two augurs, who refused to show their faces, and a waifish seer with the violet-tinged lips of an aster user. Three summoners had also volunteered; the tallest introduced himself as Driscoll. As agreed, none of them said which cells they were from.

We waited to hear from Tom, who had checked with our scrying squad that there were no ill omens in the æther, but after an hour, we decided we couldn’t delay any longer. I gathered the infiltration team around me.

“This is the Mime Order’s first move against Scion,” I told them. “We’re basing this plan on intelligence stolen from them, which appears to be reliable, but I can’t guarantee that the mission will be successful. Or that something won’t go wrong.” I looked at each face in turn. “None of you are under any obligation to do this. Just say now, and you can return to your cells.”

The silence stretched on for some time. The seer gnawed her nails, but said nothing.

“We’re all with you, Underqueen,” one of the capnomancers said.

The rest of the team agreed.

It was utterly dark by the time Nick led the way from the safe house. Eliza sat down on a dusty barstool and watched us go. “We’ll be back soon,” I said.

She smiled. “Go get ’em.”

---