‘You can’t access my memories.’
‘No, but I can see things.’ I clasped my fingers and leaned across the table. ‘Let me demonstrate.’ I pushed my spirit against him again, dipping into his dreamscape. A vein bulged between his eyebrows. ‘You feel safest in a garden, where you can escape from the pollution. There are foxgloves and roses, and a winding path, and at the centre of it all is a marble bird-bath, sheltered by oak trees. You often see it in your dreams. Is that your home in Altrincham?’
His breathing was shallower. ‘Impressive,’ he said, ‘but we all know what you can do, dreamwalker.’ He dropped his voice to the softest whisper. ‘The Suzerain has told us all in detail.’
‘Your family feels safe there, too, I imagine,’ I said, hoping he hadn’t seen my shiver. ‘You must miss them when you’re here. Are they waiting for you to come home?’
The tiniest flicker of apprehension crossed his face. His pupils were constricted.
‘I want the code. If you don’t give it to me, I promise you this: when I leave here, I will go straight to that beautiful garden in your mind, and I will kill your wife and children. You will come home and find them dead, and you’ll wonder why you didn’t just hand over the code. A few little numbers. Vance will never even have to know.’
Somehow, I kept my voice under control. Price’s attention twitched to his unconscious bodyguards.
‘I don’t think you would, Mahoney,’ he said. ‘You’re not a born killer.’
‘Killers can be made.’
All the amusement fled from him. Slowly, Price extended his uninjured hand towards a control panel. His spousal ring glinted as he pressed one finger into a button.
‘That was the door release. The code to the internal door of the loading bay is 18010102.’
‘And the external?’ He gave it. ‘Thank you. Catrin, with me.’
‘You’re just going to leave him?’ she said. ‘He’ll alert Vance.’
‘She already knows.’ I stood.
Price’s silence was all I needed to confirm it. I took a pistol from the nearest bodyguard and checked it for bullets before turning my back on the Minister for Industry.
I didn’t breathe again until I had rounded the corner. Price had believed me, looked at me and seen someone who could murder innocents. Darker still was the realisation that I had almost believed my own words, believed in my ability to carry them out if he denied me what I wanted. I could not allow myself to become a monster. I could not allow anyone else to look at me and see Hildred Vance in nascent form.
I was halfway back to the freight lift when his dreamscape guttered and vanished from my radar.
By the time I reached the overseers’ office, Price was dead.
Blood was everywhere, sprayed across the table and the carpet, pooling darkly around the Ironmaster’s neck. Catrin Attard stood over him, holding the knife that had opened his throat.
‘You—’ I gripped the door frame, white-knuckled. ‘You fool. What the hell have you done?’
‘He had nothing else to offer.’
Her calm demeanour was unsettling. This wasn’t a hot-blooded killing.
‘This was your aim all along,’ I realised, cold all over.
Catrin nodded. ‘Killing Price? That has always been my goal – mine and Arcana’s. But this was the first time we saw an opportunity – and a scapegoat if it all went wrong.’ She smiled, and I knew who that scapegoat would be. ‘Big risk, assassinating an Archon official.’ She wiped her knife on her uniform. ‘If the response on the streets is fear and anger, I can blame you. No one has to know I was even here. But if it’s deemed heroic, I’ll make sure everyone knows that I’m the Attard sister who ridded Manchester of the Ironmaster at last. Finished him with her own knife.’
She smiled again at my stunned face.
‘You wait and see, Mahoney. The Scuttlers will rally behind me. I’m the true heir. I’m the one who’s willing to do what’s necessary for this citadel. In a few days’ time, I’ll be Scuttling Queen.’
‘You’ve lost your mind,’ I said. ‘Vance will have revenge on this entire citadel for what you’ve done.’
‘She would have come here in the end. And the good thing is that the Scuttlers will be ready.’ Her smile widened, showing teeth. ‘Who did you kill to get your crown, Mahoney?’
I shook my head, disgusted with myself for not seeing this, and left her with the corpse. As I broke into a run, I tried to smooth out my breathing. Price had been wrong about me. I was still na?ve, still the woman who had walked into that trap in the warehouse. I should have trusted my gut, used Attard to get us into the factory and then forced her to wait outside.
I had to make this worth it. We didn’t have long now until someone found the body and reinstated the security protocol.
The freight lift took me back to the lower floor. When I emerged, I could see there would be enough confusion to cover our escape. I slipped through the moving line of workhands and into another passageway, the one Tom had taken when we’d separated.
I found the others hiding near the vast door to the loading bay. Without pausing for breath, I tapped in the eight-digit code.
‘Where’s Catrin?’ Eliza said.
I ducked beneath the door as soon as it began to open. ‘Leave her. We don’t have much time.’
On the other side, I keyed in the same code. The others just got under before we were sealed in.
Maria threw a switch. A flicker crossed the length and breadth of the ceiling before stark lights thrummed to life. The loading bay, which was large enough to accommodate several heavy goods vehicles, was piled with crates, stacked in units so high they almost touched the ceiling. Several amaurotic workers lifted their hands when I pointed my stolen gun at them.
‘Underqueen,’ Maria said.
She sounded strange. Handing the pistol to Eliza, I joined her beside a crate, the lid of which was slightly ajar. We hefted it aside and made our way through layers of packaging before we got to the final container.
Inside it was a rifle.
For a heartbeat, I just stared at it, uncomprehending.
‘Guns.’ My mouth was sandpaper-dry. ‘But the scanners must be here, they must—’
‘They are.’ Maria passed me a sheet of laminated paper. ‘You’re looking at one.’
I took it with icy fingers.
She had handed me a diagram of a weapon called the SL-59. Each of its components was sparsely labelled, as if the designer had been reluctant to go into too much detail. It clearly showed a compartment under the scope of the rifle, which ought to have some kind of capsule inside it. A capsule labelled RDT SENSHIELD CONNECTOR.
It took me a while to understand, then to accept, what I was seeing.
Maria lifted the rifle carefully. ‘It seems like a normal gun,’ she said, ‘except for this.’ She tapped the empty compartment. ‘Once the connector is in place, you have an inbuilt Senshield scanner.’ Her brow creased. ‘I just . . . don’t understand this.’