Warden stood in the doorway to the parlour. I took deep breaths.
‘I need to see the commanders, now. The syndicate won’t survive martial law for long.’ I towed the cold into my lungs, as if it could freeze the fear. Ice was spreading through my core, forking out to every limb. ‘You get the Ranthen. Find me as soon as you can.’
I strode past him, back into the parlour. As I searched for my phone, I didn’t make eye contact with him. I dug the burner out from behind the couch, where the shapes of our bodies were pressed, and buckled on my coat and boots while Warden prepared for the séance.
Neither of us spoke, even when I left.
In case of emergency, our meeting place was always Battersea Power Station, which was close enough to the safe house for me to go on foot. I didn’t allow myself to think as I ran, weaving past squadrons of Vigiles, urging my legs through freshly piled snow. Soon I was squirming under the fence that surrounded the derelict – the skeleton of a massive, coal-fired power station that had long since fallen out of use. Stars glistened above its four pale chimneys.
A few sets of footprints had already spoiled the snow. I found Glym, Eliza and the Pearl Queen waiting inside, all with grave expressions. Behind them, Maria was slumped over a control panel. Her hair flamed against her pallid brow, and she was strangling a bottle with one hand.
Memories gathered like crows in my mind. None of them were clear, but I had the sense of being surrounded. Suffocated.
Tom and Nick arrived. Next was Minty Wolfson, whose dress, hands and face were spattered with ink. ‘Where the hell is Wynn?’ Maria bit out.
‘She’s coming,’ I said.
When Wynn arrived, she stood apart from the others. For the first time since I had met her, she was armed. I could see the leather strap of a holster where her coat fell open.
‘Have all the cells been informed that everyone is to stay indoors, as agreed?’ I asked. Nods. ‘We need to act quickly to get our voyants to safety. ScionIDE is coming to crush the Mime Order. With Senshield, they’ll root us out in days, and they won’t be anywhere near as easy to avoid as the Vigiles.’
‘We might have a chance if we stay on the move. Or go to ground here as best we can.’ Maria drank from the bottle again. ‘The First Inquisitorial Division has spent years stationed on the Isle of Wight. We know these streets. They don’t.’ She wiped her mouth with a shaking hand. ‘This could be fine.’
She didn’t sound convinced.
‘It won’t work. We can’t hide in plain sight any more,’ I said quietly. Her face crumpled. ‘Senshield would have pushed us into hiding in the end. This just . . . forces us to take action earlier than we expected.’
The silence that followed was almost painful, heavy with shock and grief. Never, in all of syndicate history, had voyants been forced to leave their districts, their sections, the streets that were their homes. What I was proposing – what I was ordering – was an evacuation.
I was suddenly conscious of the ?ther; my sixth sense swamped the others. Nick touched my arm, jolting me back.
‘Paige?’
‘Wait,’ I said, and ran from the control room.
Scaffolding had been left to rot on one side of the power station where property developers had been defeated by its age. I clambered up it, ignoring their calls for me to wait. A mass of dreamscapes was approaching from the south, moving past us at a steady pace. Regimented.
Nick was in pursuit, navigating the vertical labyrinth. When I reached the top, I ran to the base of one of the four chimneys and grasped the rungs of a ladder. Behind me, Nick heaved himself off the scaffolding.
‘What are you doing?’
‘I need to see.’ I tested the ladder with my boot. ‘Something’s coming.’
‘Paige, that thing has to be three hundred feet.’
‘I know. Can I use your binoculars?’
His lips pressed together, but he handed them over. I slung them around my neck and climbed.
I moved like clockwork past concrete scabbed with paint. When I thought I was high enough, I turned to behold the starfield of blue streetlamps – London in the dead of night. I could see the illuminated skyscrapers of I Cohort in the distance and the bridges closest to the power station, two of many that reached over the river. The nearest was for trains, but the one beyond would normally be weighed down with traffic, even in the small hours. I took one hand off the ladder and lifted the binoculars.
A convoy of black, armoured vehicles was thundering across the bridge, coming from a main road close to here. I almost stopped breathing when I saw the tanks among them. Each vehicle was flanked by armed foot-soldiers. I couldn’t see the end or the beginning of the convoy; there must have been hundreds, thousands of them on their way into the heart of the capital.
My heart climbed into my throat. I pressed myself against the ladder when a helicopter rushed over. A helicopter emblazoned with SCIONIDE.
I descended as quickly as I could. When he saw my face, Nick didn’t need to ask. Wordlessly, we scrambled back down the scaffolding. The others were waiting for us at the bottom.
‘They’re here,’ I said. Minty lifted a hand to her mouth. ‘A massive convoy. We need all of our voyants from the first four orders evacuated now – into every available hideout – maybe some of the abandoned Underground stations—’
‘Jaxon knows those places.’ Eliza was holding her own arms. ‘We need somewhere he’s never been.’
‘Damn it, think,’ Maria barked. ‘Where can we go?’
‘There’s always the Beneath.’
It was Wynn who had spoken. She was standing by the window, her hands in the pockets of her coat. As one, we all turned to look at her.
‘The underground rivers. The deepest tunnels. The storm drains and the sewers,’ she said. ‘The lost parts of London.’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, Wynn, don’t be an idiot,’ Maria burst out. Wynn raised her eyebrows. ‘The Beneath is the mudlarks’ and the toshers’ territory. We all know the sewer-hunters have no interest in dealing with syndies. They protect their kingdom of shit like it’s a river of gold. Any time we’ve ever tried to push too far underground, they’ve driven us off with spears.’
‘Ruffians,’ the Pearl Queen said.
‘Can we not force our way in?’ Tom asked.
‘Fighting them would end in deaths. I’m not going to slaughter one community to protect another,’ I said sharply. Yet going deep underground could protect us from Senshield, and from Vance.