Warden hitched his coat back over my shoulders. I pressed myself against him, letting him stroke my damp curls. Neither of us stopped the other. We stayed like that until the little flame in the tin went out, lashed by wind and shards of rain.
‘Whether or not I decided that,’ I said quietly, ‘it doesn’t change the fact that we’ve failed.’
‘You have risen from the ashes before. The only way to survive,’ he said, ‘is to believe you always will.’
The motion of his gloved hand on my hair steadied my breathing. I held him close to me, letting his warmth take away the pain of the past, just for one fragile moment. I wanted him all over again, wanted him with an intensity I had never known, but I couldn’t act on it. Nothing had changed. So I slid myself from his arms, feeling as if I was tearing a seam. I picked up the lighter and tried to ignite the alcohol a second time, but it stayed cold.
The silence between us was fraught with unspoken words. When I looked at him again, his eyes were afire.
‘Paige.’
‘Yes?’ I said softly.
A quake in the ?ther made me tense. I turned sharply to face Leith.
The disturbance was far away, too far for my spirit to fly, but stealing closer by the moment. The ?ther filled itself with the softest, fluttering tremors – like the ripples from a footstep near water, or birds unsettled by a gunshot.
Warden noticed my tension. ‘What is it?’
My heartbeat marched to a new drum. I could hear nothing but that call to arms behind my ribs.
Something was coming.
19
Offering
My burner phone rang in my pocket. I scrambled to pick it up, forcing my numb fingers into action.
‘They’re marching,’ Maria said. ‘The army. They’re marching on the citadel.’
‘What?’ I stood. ‘Did they see you?’
‘It had nothing to do with us – we never even made it to the depot—’ Her voice faded, then returned: ‘. . . get out of here.’
I clutched the phone tighter. ‘Where are you?’
‘We’ll meet you on Waverley Bridge.’
She hung up.
‘Shit.’ I shoved the phone into my pocket. ‘The army – it’s coming here, now. Marching on Edinburgh. What the hell is Vance doing? Why would she send soldiers to catch a few rebels?’
Warden touched my cheek, met my gaze. ‘Remember what Maria said. You must assume that whatever she is planning, however large the scale, however grand the aim – everything she does will be aimed at you.’
I stared back at him, swallowing my dread. For a decade I had buried ScionIDE and the Incursion beneath the flowers, locked them in a strongbox where I could never truly see. I had been a child, suffocated by fear. Every memory I thought I’d had was a mockery of the true violence I’d seen – violence that would never sleep if Senshield remained active.
We might yet stop it.
And I thought I might know how.
‘Warden,’ I said, ‘if I entered Vance’s dreamscape, and you used me as a conduit, would you be able to see her memories?’
‘You should not enter Vance’s dreamscape.’
I drew myself up. ‘If you want me to be a leader, I suggest you follow my orders, Arcturus.’
His face was still a mask, but a light came back into his eyes. I searched their burning depths.
‘We do not go any closer than we must,’ he said.
I should have known he would help me. I pressed his hand in mine, full of words I knew I wouldn’t say.
We made our way back down the hill and ran between the pine trees. Half a moon smiled down at us. As I sprinted beneath the branches, adrenalin crashed from crown to toe, erasing all the pain from my old wounds. I came to life in the arms of fear. Some would suffer. Some would stand. Either way, Hildred Vance would surrender information we could use against her, the information I had chased across the country. Hildred Vance, who had killed my father. Hildred Vance, who had overseen the fall of Ireland.
At the edge of the park, I skidded to a stop, unable to believe what I was seeing. A multitude of people had amassed before the gates of Haliruid House – hundreds of them, gathered around a fountain on the enormous driveway, all of them shouting at the Vigiles and brandishing signs: KEEP THE WAR MACHINES IN LONDON, NOT THE LOWLANDS. VICIOUS VANCE. DITCH THE DEPOT. NO MORE BOMBS IN BONNY SCOTLAND. Among them were black moths, splashed on to placards and held up high.
A protest.
Where the hell had this come from?
The roar of the crowd was extraordinary. Warden stayed close to me. I ducked my head, lifting my scarf over my features, and backed into the shadows beneath the pine trees. I had sensed Vance’s dreamscape at the depot; I could find it again. I dislocated and searched for her.
‘She’s close,’ I said.
‘Close enough?’
I opened my eyes. ‘Yes.’
NVD vehicles were screaming to a standstill outside Haliruid House. When a commandant got out, one of the protestors hurled a swollen balloon at him. It exploded like a blister, and the offal inside oozed down his riot shield.
‘Butchers,’ someone screamed.
A driver emerged. Without a word, she shot the offender in the abdomen. He doubled over like a jackknife, and the Vigiles raised their guns to fire – but now another throng was pouring around the side of the building. I had to focus, to tune out the noise. I leaned against Warden, pressed my oxygen mask to my face, and tore free of my body, vaulting first into the ?ther, then, like a stone skipping across water, into Vance’s dreamscape.
A chamber of white marble, with a high ceiling and a grand staircase. Clean, elegant lines. Monochrome.
Vance’s spirit stood at the very top of the stairs. She saw herself, it seemed, exactly as she appeared in the mirror, down to the last line on her face. No evidence of any self-hatred for her crimes, any hint of a conscience. Like any amaurotic, she had no way of seeing her own dreamscape, or consciously taking control of her dream-form. Her spirit was a grey, machine-like thing, programmed to respond to an invading threat as best it could without direction. I ran to meet it and wrestled it to the floor. Its hands gripped my arms.
‘You,’ it hissed.
Its jaw moved as if on a hinge. Horror almost made me let go. An amaurotic shouldn’t be able to make their dream-form speak.
‘Me,’ I whispered.
I was too far away from her physically to unseat her spirit from the centre of her dreamscape. All I could do was grasp it.
Vance’s dream-form trembled violently, setting off an earthquake in her dreamscape. Someone must have trained her to be able to defend herself, but I was used to overcoming voyant dream-forms. An amaurotic’s, even that of Hildred Vance, was easy to suppress. I took hold of its head, only to see that my dream-form’s hands were coated to the wrist in blood.