Page 2 of The Song Rising

I have decided to return to my roots.

“No,” I breathed. “No, not you. Not you . . .”

He had been standing so comfortably alongside the Sargas. Not like someone who had only laid eyes on them for the first time a few hours ago. And there were other things I had brushed off, that I hadn’t seen from behind the blindfold. He had always been wealthier than other mime-lords. Absinthe alone cost a fortune on the black market, and he drank it almost nightly. How had he leaped from pauper to prince? Surely not just from his writing; there was no money in pamphlets. Then there was the fact that he had spearheaded my rescue from the colony with no exit plan—senseless. It wasn’t in his nature to go blindly into anything. But if he had left the colony once before . . . if he hadknownthere was a way out—or if the Sargas hadallowedhim to take me away . . .

An old ally. Twenty long years. Those were the only words I needed to work out who Jaxon Hall had once been, and who he was. I had no absolute proof, but I knew—I knew, in my heart—that my instinct was right.

He wasn’t just a traitor.

He wasthetraitor.

The man who had betrayed the Ranthen twenty years ago to buy his freedom from the Rephaim.

The man who was responsible for the scars on Warden’s back.

The man who had left his fellow prisoners to die in the colony.

And I had been his mollisher. His right hand.

The crunch of footsteps broke through the white noise in my ears. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Warden sink into a crouch beside me.

I had to tell him. I couldn’t carry this knowledge alone.

“I know who betrayed you twenty years ago,” I said. “I know who gave you the scars.”

Silence. I realized I was shivering.

“It is not safe out here,” Warden finally said. “We can discuss this at the music hall.”

The thoughts tangled like barbed wire in my head. I was everybody’s puppet, caught in a thousand strings.

Nick ran to the railings above us. “Vigiles,” he shouted. “Warden, bring her up here!”

Warden stayed where he was. I was afraid he would lack the ability to read my expression—that I might have to say the name myself—but as the moments ticked past, I watched it dawn on him, just as it had on me. A fire rose in his eyes.

“Jaxon.”

PART I

God in a Machine

1

Underqueen

War has often been called a game, with good reason. Both have combatants. Both have sides. Both carry the risk of losing.

There is just one difference.

Every game is a gamble. Certainty is the last thing you want when you begin. If you are guaranteed to win, there is no game at all.

In war, however, we crave certainty. No fool ever went to war without the cast-iron belief that they could win, that theywouldwin; or at least, that the likelihood of losing was so small as to make the bloody price of every move worthwhile. You don’t go to war just for the thrill, but for the gain.

The question is whether any gain, any outcome, can justify the way you play.

November 27, 2059

In the heart of its financial district, London was burning. On Cheapside, Didion Waite, poet of the underworld and bitter rival of Jaxon Hall, was howling over the remains of a derelict church. Once a fixture of the capital, it was now a mass of charred and smoking rubble.

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