Page 97 of The Song Rising

I lifted an eyebrow.

“Ah,” she said, with a smirk. “Of course.”

The guard behind the fence was alone. It took me more time than I wanted to worm into his dreamscape, and he made a hell of a fuss as I overcame his defenses, but I managed to keep my claws in him for long enough to walk him to the gate and open it. As soon as she could fit through, Maria charged forward and knocked him out with the butt of his own gun. I returned to my body as Nick was carrying me into the facility. The gate closed with a hiss behind us, sealing itself with a throb of red light.

Nick set me on my feet. We were into the military district, edging through the darkened streets that must lead to the depot. Warden and Lucida stayed ahead of us, ready to silence any soldiers that appeared, while Nick kept an eye out for cameras and scanners. With every step, a feeling that we were being watched crept up on me. Had Vance predicted our arrival? Was she here already?

Despite the cold, my nape was damp. A wrong move here could get us all killed. I sensed people in the buildings, but no one was outside on the streets. This section of the military district must be solely administrative, a smokescreen hiding the real secret.

I was proven right when we came to a ten-foot concrete wall. A fence towered at the top, crowned with a corolla of metal spikes, adding another nine or ten feet to the height of the barrier. Yet more signs warned that deadly force was authorized.

We weren’t getting inside this place in a hurry.

“Somebody give me a boost,” I said.

“Wait. I’ll go first.” Maria tied her coat around her waist. “Warden, you’re the tallest. Mind giving a lady a leg-up?”

Warden glanced at Lucida, who was visibly scandalized by the idea. Maria, blissfully unaware of the Rephaite aversion to touching humans, gave him an expectant look.

“I will,” Nick said, and cupped his hands.

Nick was strong, but he couldn’t raise Maria quite high enough. She made one grab for the wall that almost unbalanced them both, causing Nick to swear through his teeth and lower her.

“Sorry.” When she was back on the ground, Maria grinned at Warden. “Has to be you, big man.”

A hysterical urge to laugh seized me. Lucida didn’t seem thrilled by this state of affairs, but we weren’t in a position to debate it. Warden lifted Maria easily, letting her stand on his shoulder. She caught the lip of the wall and scrambled up.

In the moments she was out of sight, I didn’t breathe. I half-expected to hear a gunshot, but her head soon popped over the edge.

“Come on,” she whispered.

Avoiding Warden’s gaze, I stepped on to his hand, then climbed on to his shoulder. He held my calf to steady me, sending a shiver right the way up to my back, as I stretched to grasp Maria’s hand and let her take some of my weight. My boots scraped on the smooth wall, seeking traction. When I was up, Maria patted me on the back.

“Take a look down there, Underqueen,” she said, a little hoarsely. “Just . . . try not to scream.”

I hunkered down on my stomach and crawled to the fence.

What I saw beyond it, I knew I would never forget.

Tanks. Hundreds of tanks. They formed perfect columns on the concrete in front of a jet-black warehouse. Heavily armed soldiers swarmed around them in gunmetal armor. Even in my darkest moments, I could never have imagined that a force of this magnitude really existed. Locked out of the district, the people of Edinburgh must have no idea that they shared their citadel with so many machines of war.

This was what the factories were generating in Manchester, what human blood had been shed to create.

Warden appeared on my right. His eyes torched as he took it in. Nick joined us and dug out his binoculars. I let him absorb it all for a minute before I reached for them and focused on the nearest unit. The soldiers’ armored backs were stamped withSECOND INQUISITORIAL DIVISION, and I could see now that the rifles they carried had a thin strip of white light along the barrel.

Active. The scanner-guns had been brought here from Manchester as ordinary firearms; now they were pieces of ethereal technology.

Just visible in the darkness beyond the floodlights were the iron hulls of warships. Some spilled even more soldiers down a gangway, while others drank them back in.

“Second Inquisitorial Division,” I said quietly, reading the soldiers’ armor again. “That’s the overseas invasion force, not homeland security.”

Images knifed their way to the front of my mind. Sunlight on the river. Placards held against blue sky. A blaze of copper hair as my cousin turned to meet his doom.

“Scion’s last incursion was in 2046,” Maria said. “They’re overdue another.” Her face was bloodless. “This is how Vance means to commemorate the New Year. Some free-world country has fallen into the shadow of the anchor, and now they mean to crush it.”

I looked to Warden. “Did the Sargas ever talk about any more invasions?”

“Their aim is the total domination of the human world,” he said. “They mentioned no specific targets in my presence, but no place is safe from their ambition.”

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