‘Oh, they will,’ I said.
‘They willna like it, Underqueen.’
‘I might be wrong,’ I said, ‘but I don’t think Scion will give a damn whether they like it or not.’
9
The Cost
It took sixteen hours to gather enough of the Unnatural Assembly to perform the séance. They were scattered far and wide across the citadel, pinned down in various segments of the Beneath.
While the toshers tried to bring them to the facility, the rest of us got to work on making our new home habitable. We laid bedding on the bunks. A team was set up to work on the pumps and the ventilation system. What food we had carried was stashed in the canteen area, ready to be distributed. Weapons were taken from their owners and locked away.
The work kept me too busy to speak to Warden again. Sometimes we passed each other as we carried boxes of bedding between the sectors, and I would catch a glimpse of his face in the dim light, but I always avoided eye contact.
All the while, more voyants trickled into the facility. Some came through a passage that connected to the Underground, others through the sewers, and others still through a building on the surface.
We cleaned up the medical wing as best we could, pooling our supplies, and Nick and Wynn were handed the keys. Wynn immediately called me in and sat me down on a crate. Her hair was back in its fishtail braid.
‘Let’s see that hand. And your face,’ she said. ‘We can’t have you dying of infection before you go.’
The cut from Styx had long since stopped bleeding, but knowing me, I would tear it open if it wasn’t stitched. Wynn laid my hand in her lap, took a small bottle of alcohol from her skirts and tipped a little stream on to the cut on my palm, then dabbed some more on to my cheek.
‘Are you all right, Wynn?’
‘We’re used to poor treatment by now.’ My palm smarted. ‘Paige, you must choose someone for Styx, and do it soon. He won’t forget about your bargain.’
‘What will he do if I don’t send anyone?’
‘He’ll go to Scion. The toshers take vows very seriously,’ she said. ‘That’s why he cut you. Once the river has witnessed your oath, you’re bound to it. If you go back on it, there’s no reason for him to protect us.’
‘Would you be opposed to me sending a vile augur?’
‘Not if they were willing.’
‘And if they weren’t?’
She slowed in her work. ‘That would depend.’
I let her clean my wounds in peace for a while. Once she was satisfied, she plucked a needle from her cardigan and washed it in the alcohol.
‘Wynn,’ I said, ‘you’ve seen that the voyants still despise Ivy.’ Her face tightened. ‘It could cause a lot of trouble while you’re down here. They’re crying out for blood.’
Wynn looked up sharply. ‘Don’t you dare.’
‘I won’t make her go.’ I lowered my voice. ‘I want to give her the option. She might be safer with the toshers than she is in here.’
‘It would be for a lifetime. That was what Styx demanded.’
‘I will get her out,’ I said.
‘How?’
‘However I can. She will not stay there for ever.’
She returned her attention to my palm, her jaw stiff. The needle shoved into my skin.
‘You know how frail she is,’ Wynn said, with unusual softness. ‘She doesn’t sleep. Her stomach won’t take much food. And you ought to see the scars her keeper gave her. She has been punished more than enough for what she did.’ Her shoulders pulled back. ‘Ivy is like a daughter to me. All the Jacob girls are. Send her, and I’ll go to Scion with our whereabouts myself.’
‘Wynn.’ I grasped her wrist. ‘You wouldn’t. You’d kill all the vile augurs in here, as well as the rest of us.’
Her lips pursed. She cut the thread and enfolded my hand in a clean bandage.
‘I don’t know what I’d do. You know I’ve no love for this syndicate, Paige. My loyalty was only ever to you.’ She secured the dressing. ‘Go on, now. I have another patient.’
Her face had turned to stone. I left.
The next patient was outside. Ivy. She was standing with Róisín, who seemed to have taken on the role of bodyguard.
‘Paige,’ Ivy said, but I ignored her. My footsteps matched my heartbeat as I walked away. ‘Paige?’
It would sate their bloodlust to give Ivy to Styx, and it would keep her out of danger. Every minute, I expected to hear that someone had snapped and taken justice into their own hands, and I feared it.
Ivy was a survivor. While I was in Manchester, however, I wouldn’t be able to protect her. I wanted to see her settled in a safe place, somewhere where she could mend, where she would be surrounded by people who cared about her, and that place wasn’t here – but if she was ever going to reach it, she had to last for the next few weeks.
For now, the decision would have to wait. It was time for the séance.
I joined my mollishers in the cross-tunnel, all three of us silent and tense as we waited. Eliza worried a lock of her hair, while Nick, who stood with his arms folded, was statue-still. I knew that the thirty members of the Unnatural Assembly who had arrived had been summoned to an empty stretch of the upper deck, where there was enough room to form a circle. Their voices mingled in the darkened space. They must have come willingly, but even so, I had no idea what sort of reception awaited us.
‘Nick,’ I said, watching his closed face, ‘you don’t have to do this.’
His gaze was distant. ‘It’s time I faced it.’
A few more mime-lords and mime-queens trailed into the chamber. I watched them out of their sight. No sign of the Pearl Queen.
When the three of us stepped into the tunnel, their voices slammed into me like a wall: shouts for justice for their missing sensors, for explanations, for evidence of a plan to get rid of the army. Some of them bawled that I was a murderer and a turncoat. I watched as this ostensible Assembly collapsed into a snarl of cavilling, shrieking and fist-shaking while Eliza and Nick moved in front of me, calling for order. Spirits quavered nearby, ready to attack. When one of the new mime-queens punched Jimmy O’Goblin, I brought them all to heel with my spirit. A wave rolled through the ?ther and broke against their dreamscapes.
They quietened, their expressions wary. They need to be afraid of you, or they will never respect you, Glym had told me. All you have to do is show them what you can do, if you choose.
Several of them had souvenirs from the scrimmage: scarred faces, burns, missing fingers. Others had more recent wounds. I spotted Jack Hickathrift, who smiled at me with one side of his mouth.
‘The Underqueen,’ Nick called.