The suggestion was met with sounds of approval. If I had to face the music, I might as well do it clean.
Stained curtains divided the bathroom into eight shower cubicles, each of which contained an equally stained towel. I would have recoiled on any other day, but I was already coated in all manner of dirt, so I steeled myself and undressed. As promised, the showers just about functioned. I excavated a bar of soap, which looked about a century old, and scrubbed myself raw, scouring under my nails and soaking my hair until the water I wrung from it was clear. I patted myself dry with the corner of a towel and pulled on some spare clothes from Eliza’s backpack.
There was a water-spotted mirror by the door. With no greasepaint to hand to mask the shadows under my eyes, I would have to appear before my subjects with a naked face. I turned away from the reflection.
After hours of limbo, it was time to see the syndicate.
We took the stairs to the upper deck. Distorted sounds echoed through the tunnel. Lanterns had been set on the floor, showing me that at least eighty voyants had found their way into the facility so far – more than I had expected.
The relief curdled when I saw what was happening. Wynn was shielding Ivy, who looked lifeless, while Vern was locked in a brutal fight with a sensor, bloody at the mouth.
‘Stop it,’ Róisín was screaming. ‘Leave him alone!’
They were surrounded. I flung pressure through the ?ther, scattering the knot of attackers. The sensor let Vern go and clapped a hand to her bleeding nose.
When they found the source of the disturbance, hatred filled their faces. I had almost allowed myself to believe that the discovery of this refuge would soften their fury, but I could see now that I had underestimated it.
Nick placed a hand on my shoulder. ‘Paige,’ he said, ‘let’s go to the supervisor’s post.’
I brushed him off and crouched beside the bunk. Ivy was conscious, just, her fingers pressed into Wynn’s shoulder. Her other hand was against her cheek, but I could see the blood flowing from beneath it, leaving runnels down her neck. When I guided it away, I drew in a breath. A rough ‘T’ had been sliced into her face. Jos was hiding behind her, shaking.
‘Eliza,’ I said, too quietly for the crowd to hear, ‘get them to the medical wing. Bar the door.’
I rose and brazened out my subjects. Under those bloodthirsty stares, I wanted nothing more than to leave – but if I walked away now, if I showed them that I was afraid, I would lose all my power.
‘Who,’ I said, keeping my voice soft, ‘is responsible for this?’
Wynn cradled Ivy closer and wrapped her other arm around Róisín. Eliza coaxed them out.
‘I’ll ask once more. Who cut Ivy?’
‘She’s a traitor,’ a voice said from the back. ‘Let everyone remember it. Let her remember it.’
‘We don’t want her down here. Let the soldiers take her.’ The sensor spat at Vern and wiped angrily at her nose. ‘Whose side are you on, Underqueen? First you don’t punish the Jacobite when she was helping sell us on the grey market – then you bring the army down on us – and it turns out you’ve helped them change Senshield. You’re worse than Hector ever was, and that’s saying something!’ Shouts of agreement filled the tunnel. ‘Every sensor who’s detained from now on – that’s on you, Mahoney. Their blood is all over your dirty Irish hands.’
‘Traitor,’ someone bellowed.
‘Traitor!’
‘You showed them how to sense us,’ a whisperer shouted. ‘It’s all right for you, dreamwalker! You’re seventh-order! So much higher than the rest of us, aren’t you?’
‘You’re helping Scion!’
‘Vile augur-lover!’
More of them piled in, delighting in my downfall. Somebody hurled a shard of rubble, catching my cheek. I restrained my spirit from flying at the perpetrator. I had to rise above. To be strong. Nick shouted at them to get back, but nobody was listening. They screamed their wrath straight into my ears, so close that my face was freckled with spit, but I didn’t flinch. Tyrant. Murderer. Warmonger. Brogue. Traitor. Traitor. Traitor. Their voices became Jaxon’s voice; their many-headed rage, his vengeance. I would be damned if I took one step away, if I gave an inch. The syndicate had never bowed to cowardice.
‘Nick,’ I said, ‘take Jos back to the lower deck.’
‘If you think I’m leaving you—’
‘Do it.’ Before he could argue, I raised my voice to the mob: ‘I don’t have time for this. The only traitors here are those who threaten the peace. If you’ll excuse me, I need to prepare this facility for the rest of the Mime Order. And thanks to this incident, it seems I’ll need to cordon off a holding cell. The next person to spill blood in here will spend a month in it.’
I strode straight through the sea of bodies. When the first hand grabbed my arm, I threw out my spirit.
Nobody tried to touch me again.
I marched between the bunks with my torch, through multiple sleeping areas, past another empty medical room and signs reading KITCHEN and CANTEEN and STORAGE. When I reached the supervisor’s post, I crashed through its door and closed it behind me. Inside was a dead transmission screen, a desk without a chair, and a bunk that folded down from the wall. I lowered the bunk and sank on to it, aching from the four-mile trek.
In the tunnel, the shouting continued for a while before dying down. My nails bit into the skin of my palms.
I couldn’t be taken by surprise like that again. Law and order would be critical down here. I needed to rally my commanders and work out what to do next, but my confidence was running between my fingers. In a confined, pitch-black space, where nobody could blow off steam, a flicker of resentment could ignite a riot.
They were right to resent me. I had brought down the might of the Archon on our heads. These voyants had lived without many things in their lives, but by trying to fight Scion head-on, as no syndicate leader had before, I had taken away the one thing that had sustained them. I had taken away the streets.
My cheek was throbbing where the rubble had struck me. I had to think, and quickly. We had somewhere to hide, but we couldn’t last down here for ever.
The only way to free the Mime Order was for a group of us to get back out there and use every available resource to find Senshield’s core and destroy it. The soldiers would still be there if we succeeded, but if they had no way to detect us, we could risk a return to the surface.
Where was it? I let my backpack slip on to the floor and wrenched it open, rifling through it for my map of London. Maybe there was a pattern in the scanners’ locations, or some abandoned place where they might be keeping the core – something, anything . . .
I stopped when I saw it. An envelope, nestled among my clothes, addressed to me. Danica’s handwriting.
Inside it was a note, hastily written.