Page 76 of The Song Rising

I joined the others in the kitchen, where they were sitting around the table, making short work of one of Hari’s homemade butter pies. As soon as Eliza clapped eyes on me, she was by my side.

“You’ve been dreamwalking.”

I nodded and took a seat, setting off a throb in my temple.

“I want to release Catrin Attard. Hear me out,” I added, when Tom grimaced. “We need help getting into Establishment B, and I’ve just discovered that I can’t dreamwalk inside.”

Eliza frowned. “Why?”

“They almost caught me doing it just now.”

Maria hissed in a breath. “Shit.”

“I don’t think they realized it was me,” I said, “but they’ll be suspicious. We need to go ourselves, and fast.”

“Right. I take it you have a plan.”

“Establishment B is guarded by Vigiles. We know that Catrin Attard has friends among them. This is our moment to try for their support—if ever they were going to rebel or offer us assistance, now is the time. I’m going to make Catrin an offer: if she helps us get into the factory, I’ll let her out of prison.”

“You’re lucky Glym’s not here,” Tom muttered.

“I never ruled out working with the Vigiles. I said that if we needed them, we’d reconsider. And we need them now.” I sat back. “If anyone has any other ideas, let’s hear them.”

Tom and Eliza both stayed quiet, as I’d known they would. This was the only lead we had.

“Burn it down?” Maria said hopefully.

This was what I got for trying to build an army out of criminals.

Spinningfields Prison, like all places where death was common, was easy enough to find. While my spirit was still supple, I jumped into the guard in the watchtower, who was midway through his cup of tea when I occupied his dreamscape. The hot drink spilled over his thighs.

The interior of the prison was designed to resemble a clock, with the watchtower at its heart, surrounded on all sides by five stories of cells. I heaved my new body from its chair, panting with the effort of doing this for a second time today, and descended from the watchtower, careful to avoid the guards on patrol.

The stairs to the gangways quaked as I stepped on to them. I walked past voyants and amaurotics: malnourished and silent, like the harlies in the Rookery, many with visible symptoms of flux poisoning. A whisperer was rocking on his haunches in the corner of one cell with his hands over his ears.

As I searched, I tried to make my stride more fluid, my expression more alive, but I could see just from my shadow that I was moving about as naturally as a reanimated corpse. Something to work on.

I stopped when I sensed a capnomancer. A woman lay on the floor with her feet up on the bed.

“I thought I got a last meal,” she rasped.

When there was no reply, the prisoner rolled her head to the side. Her skin was tinged with gray, and she had flux lips.

“Ah, you’re probably right.” Her laugh was sharp. “Wouldn’t want to throw it up on the gallows.”

A down of dark brown hair covered her scalp, short enough to expose a small tattoo of an eye on her nape. When she pushed herself on to her elbow, the light from the corridor reached her face. That face was all I needed to confirm her identity. A tress of scar tissue stretched from her hairline almost to her jaw, obliterating her left eye and hardening what I imagined had once been delicate features. The remaining eye narrowed.

“What’s the matter with you, you daft ’apeth?” She cocked her head. “Ah, I see. Come to stare at the mutilated wonder.”

“You know that ScionIDE is coming. No matter what.” My host’s tongue felt thick in his mouth. “I hear you’re the best chance of getting Manchester to do something about it.”

“What is this?”

“An opportunity.”

She gave a shout of laughter. Someone bawled from another cell: “Keep your mouth shut, Attard. Some of us want to sleep.”

“You’ll have plenty of time for that when you’re dead,” she sang back, making laughter echo through the prison. The smile faded, and she lowered her voice. “An opportunity, you say.”

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