‘She said something about my . . . radiesthesic signature.’ My breath quickened. ‘If this is my fault, Terebell will—’ I could almost feel the colour draining from my face. ‘We can’t lose your support. Without it, the Mime Order will fall apart.’
‘Terebell is very unlikely to withdraw our financial support as a result of this. It is as much in her interest for the Mime Order to continue as it is in yours,’ he said. It didn’t comfort me. ‘She will reserve judgement until the consequences of your actions become apparent.’
‘They’re already apparent. I fell into a trap. I helped them improve Senshield. And I lost three people. I could have saved at least one of them if my gift had been stronger.’ I couldn’t keep the exhaustion from my voice. ‘I told you I was out of practice. I called you, before we left.’
‘I was engaged.’
‘With what?’
‘We were dealing with another Emite. In the suburbs.’
The rigour that went through me had nothing to do with my fall through the ice. While I was fixated on Senshield, the Ranthen were trying to stop us being eaten alive. Enemies were closing in on us from all sides.
‘War requires risk,’ Warden said. ‘This may yet prove to be a strategic error, but you took what precautions you could. No one knew that Hildred Vance had been recalled to the capital, or that she would lay a trap for you. Even Alsafi was unaware.’
‘Three voyants are still dead for nothing.’
‘They knew there was a chance of failure.’ His face was cast into shadow. ‘I asked Alsafi about Senshield’s core. He does not know its location, and as he works in the Archon, we may safely assume that it is not there.’
I looked into the fire. ‘I will find it.’
A log collapsed into the hearth.
‘You should not have gone to the warehouse yourself,’ Warden said. ‘You are Underqueen. If you fall, there will be no Mime Order.’
‘You could always find another human.’
‘Not one that the syndicate would accept. There is no time for another scrimmage.’ He paused. ‘And there is no other human that I trust as I trust you.’
I looked him in the face, trying to find the truth. He was offering me a chance to let him back in. Exposing a vulnerability, a break in all that Rephaite armour. This was a door I needed to open.
‘I need to speak to the others about Vance,’ I said. ‘I’ll . . . report to you with what we’ve decided. I’m sure you’d like to get back to Terebell.’
Warden held my gaze, then said, ‘As you wish.’ He stood. ‘Goodnight, Paige.’
5
Back in Time
The image of Vance’s face was too fresh for me to get any more sleep. I dressed and left the fire behind, taking a blanket with me. From what I remembered of the escape, most of the voyants in the team had been returned to their cells, but Maria and Nick had stayed, as had Tom and Glym, who had met us on the way to safety. I found them in the next room, where Maria was sitting up, ladling broth into her mouth. Nick got up and crushed me to his chest.
‘Paige,’ he said. ‘I tried to reach you, sweetheart. I tried. If Warden hadn’t been there—’
‘But he was.’ I patted his back. ‘I’m fine.’
‘You saved Driscoll’s skin, you know,’ Maria said. ‘He would have gone under if you hadn’t pushed him.’
I looked her over. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Bullet graze. I’ve had worse.’
Trepidation stirred in my stomach. I sat down beside Nick, keeping the blanket around my shoulders.
‘Warden told me about the report,’ I said. ‘That the fourth order can be detected.’
‘Let’s not worry too soon, Underqueen,’ Glym said. ‘The mime-lord who reported it is uncertain that the captured voyant was a polyglot. More likely she was from one of the lower three orders.’
‘We need to find out quickly if it’s true. If the fourth order can be detected—’
‘There’s no evidence of that yet,’ Tom soothed. ‘It would be . . . bad, I admit—’
‘Bad?’
‘All right, very bad, but it’s just like Glym says. It’ll be nothing but misinformation. Or scaremongering.’
‘I disagree,’ Maria said. I glanced at her. ‘I know Vance, and trust me, she wouldn’t lie unless she had to. She said to Paige that she was using her to change Senshield. That means she was.’ She paused to draw a breath. ‘Paige, if this is the case, which we must assume it is, the syndicate must never know.’
Silence followed her words. She was right: if they knew that my error had threatened the entire fourth order, the Unnatural Assembly would almost certainly move to depose me.
‘Tell me more about Vance,’ I said eventually.
She interlocked her fingers on her stomach. ‘I’ll tell you what I know of her,’ she said, ‘but she already knows everything about you.’
From the way that face had looked into my soul, even through a screen, I didn’t doubt it.
‘Let’s have a little history lesson,’ Maria said. ‘Hildred Diane Vance joined ScionIDE at the age of sixteen and served in the Highlands for five years. During that time, as Tom will remember, she helped crush several uprisings in what was then called Scotland.’
Tom, who had been watching her from beneath the brim of his hat, now came into the lamplight.
‘Believe it or not, I’m a wee bit younger than Vance,’ he said. ‘I remember how people whispered her name when I was a lad, even in Glasgow. Like they were scared she might be able to hear them.’
‘Sounds like she was very young to have so much power,’ I said.
‘So are you,’ Maria pointed out.
The thought of any similarity was unsettling.
‘Young Hildred’s superiors noticed her appetite for slaughtering unnaturals, and they rewarded her for it. Her rise through the ranks was meteoric. She’s now seventy-five, and the longest-serving member of Scion’s upper echelon.’
I had to wonder how close she was to the Sargas. She sounded like their sort of person.
‘When Vance moved against the rebels in the Balkans, she knew the names and backgrounds of all of our leaders. She’d planted double agents among us within days of her feet touching Bulgarian soil.’ A shadow winged over her face. ‘She soon learned that my unit’s commander, Rozaliya Yudina, was one of our best. She also learned that Rozaliya had once had a younger brother, who had died before the family left Russia. Somehow Vance knew that, amidst all her other suffering, this was Roza’s weak spot.
‘The surviving insurgents were thin on the ground when Vance set the trap. She knew that Rozaliya’s death would devastate the morale of the remaining militants. So Vance’s soldiers found a boy. But not just any boy. A boy who looked like Roza’s lost brother. During our final stand, this ten-year-old was thrown on to the street and told to scream at Roza for help. And Roza hesitated.’ Her fist clenched. ‘The boy had been given a toy bear to hold. Inside was a plastic explosive.’
The small amount of warmth in my body disappeared.