‘Thank you. I know.’ Conscious of the interest we were attracting, I turned away. ‘I’ll see you soon.’
I spent the rest of the day taking stock of our supplies. As I left the Mill at dusk, Nick and Eliza were on their way in, looking for me. They had taken an urgent report from a mime-queen in II Cohort, who was convinced there was a Vigile squadron watching a phone box in her section.
‘She says a few of her voyants have been to make calls. Half of them never come back,’ Nick told me as we trudged through the snow. ‘When she tried it herself, she was fine, but she wants hirelings posted around it.’
‘Didn’t we have something like this last week, with the medium who went into a pharmacy and was never seen again?’ I said tersely.
‘We did.’
‘Did you go to the phone box yourself?’
‘Yes. Nothing.’
I lowered my head against the wind. ‘Don’t waste any more time on it, then.’
‘Right. Back to the den?’
I nodded. We had been out for too long today, and we needed to assess our finances.
We caught a rickshaw to the Limehouse Causeway and went on foot from there, keeping our heads down and our scarves over our faces. Partygoers were already out in force, high on Floxy and excitement, weaving past dockworkers from the Isle of Dogs. Oxygen bars were always busy in the run-up to Novembertide, especially the cheap ones that dominated this part of the citadel. Eliza stopped at a cash machine and covertly took out a pickpocketed bank card.
Stolen cards were useful, even if they only lasted as long as it took for their owners to realise they were missing. Terebell often refused my requests for money, something I was convinced she took pleasure in. Nick glanced over his shoulder, checking for observant passers-by, as Eliza fed the card into the machine and tapped her foot.
An alarm shrilled.
Nick and I stiffened; Eliza flinched back with a sharp intake of breath. The ear-splitting wail drew the eyes of everyone in the vicinity. For a moment, we just stared at each other.
I knew that sound.
That was the sound a Senshield scanner made when it detected the presence of a clairvoyant, a sound that portended arrest – but it was coming from inside the cash machine.
And that wasn’t possible. Senshield scanners were cumbrous, full-body contraptions. You could see one from the other end of the street. If you stayed alert, you might never encounter one. They weren’t hidden.
Were they?
I thought all of this in the split second it took me to react.
‘Run,’ I barked at the others. As one, we fled from the machine.
‘Unnaturals,’ someone shouted.
A hand snatched at Nick’s coat. His fist swung up, striking the man away. I looked back to see a squadron of night Vigiles swarming from the bank, flux guns at the ready, bellowing ‘halt’ and ‘get down’, their voices gnarling into a roar that made people scatter in panic around them. The telltale click-hiss of a flux dart made me drop into a roll and veer into the next street, hauling Eliza along with me. Shock had already ramped up my heartbeat; now terror carved my body, cutting my breaths short. I hadn’t felt fear like this in a long time, not since the day I had been captured and taken to the colony by Scion. The three of us were the highest-ranking members of the Mime Order – we could not be detained.
We sprinted in the direction of the dockworkers’ shantytown, where we could vanish into the close-knit labyrinth of shacks. Just as it came into sight, a van screamed into our path. We turned, like cornered animals, only to find ourselves face-to-face with the squadron. Their uniforms were a blur of black and red.
‘Oh, shit,’ Eliza murmured.
Slowly, I raised my hands. The others echoed my position. As the Vigiles formed a half-moon in front of us, shock batons glowed to life and flux guns were levelled at our torsos, no doubt loaded with the newest version of the drug. I glanced at Nick. His aura was changing, reaching farther into the ?ther.
I couldn’t dreamwalk. After overusing my spirit in the scrimmage, I was too rusty. Too slow.
That didn’t mean I couldn’t kick some Gillies to the kerb.
Nick’s gift exploded out of him. He blinded them with a torrent of visions; Eliza chased them with a string of spools. Complex weaves of spirits twisted all around them, trapping them in a gyre of hallucinations. In the confusion that followed, I clubbed my knuckles into an unprotected chin and snatched a flux gun with my other hand. The ballistic syringe sprang free, hitting the commandant between the shoulder blades.
We were fluid, working as a team, as we had in the past when we’d fought rival gangs. Nick made a grab for one of their shock batons and snapped his elbow into a nose. With a sizzle of electricity, a Vigile dropped to the ground. Eliza rammed her shoulder into another and ran, tossing one of our precious smoke canisters over her shoulder. As it broke open, swathing us all in a dense grey cloud, I fired off one more dart and raced after her, keeping hold of the empty gun. Nick’s footfalls soon caught up with mine.
One leap took me over a low wall. We crawled under the graffiti-coated fence that marked the boundary of the shantytown, closed in on the first shack we came across and flung away the tarpaulin that served as a door. Even as we crashed through occupied dwellings, even as the dockworkers swore at us, we didn’t slow down. It was only when we emerged from the south-western end of the shantytown, on to an oily ribbon of sand beside the Thames, that we stopped. A stitch was biting into my side, but it was nothing in comparison to the abyss of dread that was opening inside me.
We had always been so careful, so sure of our ability to blend in. I had thought nothing could touch us. Yet we of all people had been taken by surprise – almost to fatal effect.
‘What the hell was that?’ Eliza said, between gasps. ‘A concealed Senshield scanner?’
I felt too shaken to speak. We had to move, but every bone and muscle protested my return to combat. Nick shook his head, panting. Finally, I gathered enough breath to say, ‘Come on. We have to warn the Mime Order. This could – this could end everything.’
2
Emergency
I called a meeting at once. By the time we reached a hideout north of the river, the Glym Lord, Tom the Rhymer and Ognena Maria were already seated, bickering over the rest of the ginger buns. Opposite them was Danica Pani?, the other member of the Seven Seals who had stayed with me after the scrimmage. I would usually have asked all six commanders to attend a gathering like this, but I didn’t want all of us under one roof.
When I entered, they stood. My ribs ached as I lowered myself into a chair beside Nick. The bitter cold wasn’t helping my injuries from the scrimmage.
‘What’s going on, Paige?’ Maria said. ‘Is this true? A hidden Senshield scanner?’
On the other side of the table, one seat was vacant.
‘Should we wait?’ Eliza asked, taking her place on my left.