Page 225 of The Bone Season

crying ‘cockles and mussels, alive, alive, oh’

The audience was stricken into panicked silence. Even the Vigiles seemed to have no idea what to do with this outburst of forbidden song. I glanced around the hall, but Jos was hiding, wisely. Crina launched into the next verse:

She was a fishmonger, and that was no wonder

Her father and mother were fishmongers, too

And they drove wheelbarrows thro’ streets broad and narrow,

crying ‘cockles and mussels, alive, alive, oh’

Crina was Romanian, from occupied Bucharest. Some of the other humans had joined in with her and Jos. Last to sing was Liss, defiant in her cradle of silks, dark fire in her eyes as she glared at Nashira.

She died of a fever, and nothing could save her

and that should have ended sweet Molly Malone –

but her ghost wheels a barrow thro’ streets broad and narrow

crying ‘cockles and mussels, alive, alive, oh’

And I knew this must be a Scottish take on that old anthem of Dublin, blown across the Irish Sea to Inverness.

Liss had thought my mouth would be sealed. She had reminded them for me.

Nashira looked with chilling emptiness at Liss, and then at me. The Vigiles tightened their grips on their rifles, but they couldn’t shoot in here. Not without running the risk of hitting their own employers.

‘Thirteen years ago,’ I said, ‘I was six years old. I was in Dublin on the first of February, when Scion murdered thousands of unarmed people – all to send a message. A warning to anyone who thought they could defy the anchor.’

‘You will be silent,’ Nashira said.

‘I will not.’

One of the Vigiles aimed his rifle straight at my heart, the red light hovering on my chest. Nashira raised a hand to stop him.

‘Cathal the Sasanach,’ I called. ‘Thirteen years ago, you left me alive – one child on Grafton Street. You let me live to bear witness to a day of reckoning, as you saw it. Now you will bear witness to this one. You will bear witness to the beginning of the end of Scion.’ My voice was rising, my teeth bared. ‘Go dtuitfeadh an tigh ort.’

Even from here, I could see him staring back at me, surrounded by hostile eyes.

He still knew his Gaeilge, all right.

Nashira flung one of her fallen angels at me – the poltergeist. I stiffened, but the pendant on my collarbone deflected it, with such force that it sent me lurching, almost off my heels.

One of the Rephs spoke in resonant Gloss, and spirits came surging back to the Guildhall. I took flight with them, abandoning my body.

They joined me at the edges of her dreamscape, helping me break down her armour. The fallen angels were moving to defend her, but now twenty, now fifty – now over a hundred spirits – were descending on their killer, and those ancient walls were starting to give.

I tumbled into the first ring, the darkest circle of her dreamscape.

Like other Rephs, she had a mind as large as a cathedral. I paid no mind to anything but the light at its heart, far away. Launching into a dead sprint, I pictured myself with a massive dream-form, growing myself into a giant, taking longer and longer strides. Outside, the spirits were still distracting her. Otherwise she would have stopped me.

There she was, in that pool of light – another giant, regal and glowing, not looking at me. I braced myself just before I slammed into it.

When her eyes opened, I saw.

The Guildhall appeared, afire with colour. Auras flared and spirits danced, the latter appearing as hairlines and zigzags of light. For the first time, I was grateful I didn’t have the sight – it was sickening in its intensity, making it impossible to focus. Her sixth sense threatened to sweep me away.

A moment later, I was struck blind. Nashira must be trying to shut her own body down. I forced her eyes to work again and looked down at her gloved hand, clenching it.

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