Page 59 of The Song Rising

“Hm.” She peered at the tracker. “Let’s hope Danica got her facts straight this time, or we could find ourselves walking into another trap.” The light from the screen tinged her face with blue. “There’s some information in here about ‘enclaves,’ but I don’t understand it.”

I took it from her and tapped a tiny symbol of a house on the screen.ENCLAVE, the tracker read.LOOK FOR BLACK HELLEBORE.

“What’s black hellebore?” Maria said.

“He’s using the language of flowers,” I realized, after a moment. “Black hellebore points to the relief of anxiety. We must be able to find shelter and supplies where it grows.”

Alsafi must have been preparing for an emergency like this for a long time. Interesting that he spoke the language of flowers, the code the syndicate had used in its scrimmages for years. I had never liked him in the colony, but his work was turning out to be vital to our survival.

While Maria dozed, I occupied myself by studying Scion Britain on the tracker. The territory covered the places that had once been called Scotland and Wales, which were no longer recognized as separate countries;EnglandandBritainwere used almost interchangeably by Scion. The island was divided into eight regions, each of which had one citadel, which acted as its regional “capital”—though all bowed to the will of London. The surrounding areas were peppered with towns, villages, and conurbations, all under the yoke of Scion outposts. We were headed into the North West region, to its citadel—Manchester, center of industry.

It had been ten years since I had last left London. It had kept hold of me for so long.

I nodded off against the side of the compartment for a while, my hand still curled around the tracker. Everything that had happened over the last few days had left me hungry for sleep.

At just past one in the morning, the train came to a halt, jolting me awake. Maria took the tracker from my unresisting hand. When she saw our location, she stiffened.

“Something’s wrong. We’re still forty miles away.”

“Ladies and gentlemen, we apologize for the delay in your journey to Manchester. This is Stoke-on-Trent.” I pressed my ear to the wall, straining to hear the muffled voice. “Under new regulations imposed by the Grand Commander, all Sciorail trains from London are now subject to regular checks by Underguards. Please accommodate their needs as they move through the train.”

My heart pounded. Had Vance snared us again already? She was always one step ahead—always waiting for us, somehow.

Maria shook the others awake. We gathered our belongings and crept toward a sliding door, which would allow us to steal away without the Underguards seeing. I reached for a lever markedEMERGENCY DOOR RELEASE. As it pushed outward and glided aside, letting in an icy gust of wind, I glanced out of the compartment, searching for oncoming trains. Mercifully, there was no one on the other platform.

“Now,” I whispered.

The Underguards were getting close—I sensed them. Eliza carefully turned and swung her legs on to a short ladder, which took her down to the ballast between the tracks.

Footsteps slapped along the platform, and I caught a snatch of voices. “. . . why Vance thinks they’re going to be here . . .”

“Waste of time.”

I went next, followed by Tom. As Maria got out, she grabbed at the door for support, causing it to slide shut.

“As soon as they leave,” I breathed, “we get back on.”

We edged a little farther down the track, shivering in the frigid air. When the Underguards entered the baggage compartment, we all pressed ourselves against the train and grew still, waiting for one of them to look out and see us. Finding nothing of interest, they soon retreated, muttering about paranoid krigs and pointless work. I motioned to Maria, who reached up to grasp the door—only to find that there was no handle. The only thing there was a fingerprint scanner. We were shut out of the train.

As the Underguards left the platform, a whistle sounded in the station.

Too late. The train was moving. We didn’t have long before we were exposed on both sides. I beckoned frantically to the others; Tom pulled Maria away from the door. We sprinted back the same way the train had come, into billows of snow, while our ride left Stoke-on-Trent without us.

We kept running, our boots crunching through ballast. Only when we were a fair distance from the station did we slow down to catch our breath. We helped each other over the fence, on to the street, and clustered beneath a bus shelter, heads bent to see the tracker. I brought up a map of our location, which offered up morsels of data about Stoke-on-Trent. Status: conurbation. Region: Midlands. Nearest citadel: Scion Citadel of Birmingham.

“We can’t stay here for long,” I said. “Outlying communities are too dangerous. They’re much more observant than people in the citadels.”

Maria nodded. “We’ll have to walk.”

Eliza was already shivering. “In this snow?”

“I walked across countries to get to Britain, sweet. We can make it. And let’s face it: it wouldn’t be the most insane thing we’ve done this week.” Maria peered over my shoulder at the tracker. “Looks like twelve hours on foot to the center of Manchester. Probably a little longer, in this weather.”

I clenched my jaw. Every hour left the Mime Order in more danger. “There’s an enclave farther north.” I tapped the tracker. “We’ll walk from now until sunrise, stop there, and press on when it gets dark again. The contact we’re due to meet will guess that something went wrong.”

Maria patted Tom on the back. “Can you make it that far?”

Tom had a slight limp from an old injury to his knee. “There’s no other choice,” he said, “unless we mean to stay here and wait for the Gillies to find us in the morning.”

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