Days I had been entombed in my cell, with only a bucket to relieve myself in.
A cloud now lived inside my brain, thickened every so often by a Vigile with a syringe. They were keeping me as little more than a corpse. There was a period of clarity when the dose wore off, during which I received my meal. I was expected to use that time to eat and drink before another needle made me lose the use of my fingers.
They had to bring me before Nashira. She would want to see me before my execution, to rub salt into the wound.
While I was with her, I doubted I would be sedated. In the absence of other options, I would have to try and end her with my spirit. It would be madness, but if I couldn’t find the place the spirit was kept and release it, all that was left to do was to destroy its master.
Sweat trickled down my face. Nashira feared my gift; that was why she wanted it so much. I could do it.
I must do it.
‘. . . just keeps going up. Martial law’s here to stay.’ Two Vigiles were passing my cell on their rounds. ‘Where are you tonight?’
‘Lord Alsafi has asked me to stand guard in the Inquisitorial Gallery. I’ll be with them this evening.’
I raised my head.
Alsafi.
I hadn’t counted on him being here. I might not need to face Nashira at all. If I could get my message to him – the knowledge I had of Senshield, gleaned from Vance’s memory –he might be able to act on it sooner than I could. He might be able to find and release the spirit.
Easier said than done when I didn’t even have a scrap of paper.
My meal clattered into the cell. I crawled to it and scooped up the slop with my fingers.
An attempt on Nashira’s life had to be a last resort. While I could still think, I tried to decode the image of Senshield that Warden had stolen from Vance: a clear globe with a light beneath it. A white light. It did have some kind of physical casing – something that must contain the spirit that powered every scanner. Destroying it, surely, would release that spirit.
I thought harder. Above the globe had been a second glass structure: a pyramid, reflecting the glow – and that pyramid led out to open sky, so it had to be somewhere high up. All I had seen, apart from that, were pale walls. I didn’t know what it was, and I didn’t know enough about the internal layout of the Archon to find it by sight.
Alsafi could be my eyes.
Except there was no time, and no way to get to him. At any moment, I could be taken to my execution. If I’d been stronger, I would have tried to speak to him in his dreamscape, but I was at my lowest ebb; Vance must have meant to weaken me so badly that I couldn’t use my gift. In a sense, she had succeeded: I couldn’t dreamwalk. Not even a foot out of my body.
But she had forgotten, or didn’t know, that I could use my gift in other ways. She didn’t know that I could return to my rawest form: a mind radar, able to detect ethereal activity without lifting a finger. And now, for the first time in days, I did.
Even shifting my focus to my sixth sense was agony. This should be second nature . . . I had survived physical weakness in the colony. I could do it here. Finally, I submerged myself, letting my other senses wind down.
My range had been damaged, but I could feel the ?ther. And it didn’t take long for me to pick up on the turbulence in the Westminster Archon.
The core was here. I had been right.
As I lay in the black hole of my cell, I kept track of the dreamscapes in the Archon. Vance’s often weaved from one side of the building to the other. Sometimes I fixated on her for hours, trying to work out where she stopped most. She spent a good portion of her day in one place; an office of some sort, most likely.
Footsteps sounded outside. The Vigiles were back from their rounds. I had absorbed as much information as I could about the shifts; these two were my most regular guards.
‘. . . going to be a long one on New Year’s Eve.’
‘Can’t say I mind. Extra pay. Speaking of which, I might put in a request for nights next year.’
‘Nights? You not telling me something?’
Their shadows moved beneath the door. Hushed tones.
‘These new scanners. As soon as they’re operational, the rumour is the unnatural lot will be obsolete. All Okonma has to do is sign the execution warrants, and they’ll swing.’
A rubber sole tapped on concrete. ‘I was thinking of handing in my notice,’ the man said. ‘Martial law’s going to be hell for us. Extra hours, seven-day weeks. In the barracks they’re saying they’re going to dock our pay so they can give more to the krigs. We’ll be drudges.’
‘Keep it down.’
They were silent for a long time. The drug was clouding my thoughts again, a siren song to oblivion. I pinched the delicate skin of my wrist, forcing my eyes open.
‘You seen all these foreigners in the building? Spaniards, I heard. Ambassadors from their king.’
‘Mm. They were with Weaver in his office all day.’ A light rap on the door. ‘Who do you reckon they’re keeping in there?’
‘Nobody told you? It’s Paige Mahoney.’
‘Right, nice try. She’s dead.’
‘You saw what they wanted you to see.’ I heard the view-slot open. ‘There.’
‘The unnatural who took on an empire,’ the woman said, after a pause. ‘Doesn’t look like much to me.’
Time passed. Meals came. Drugs came. And then, one unexpected day – if it was day, if day existed any longer – I was woken with a splash of water, dragged up from the subterranean vault by two Vigiles, and pushed into a cubicle.
‘Go on,’ one guard said.
I stumbled away from the shower. The taller Vigile slammed me into the tiles.
‘Clean yourself. Filth.’
After a moment, I did as I was told.
I was thinner. My skin had a grey undertone that could only have come from flux. Bruises, blue and purple and pear-green, marked the injection sites on my arms, and my legs were badly discoloured from the Vigiles’ boots and fists. A blackberry stain fanned out below my breasts, where a ring-shaped wound sat just under my sternum.
A rubber bullet. It must have been. I stood there like a mannequin, my legs shaking under my weight.
Moments after I had stepped into the shower, the Vigiles slotted my arms into a clean shift and took me out of the cubicle. Soon concrete gave way to bloodshot marble, painful on the soles of my feet. My head spun like a carousel as they steered me through the Archon, along sun-drenched corridors that hurt my tender eyes.
Slowly, I became more alert. My feet slewed on the floor. This was it. The last walk.
‘No,’ a Vigile said. ‘You’re not dying yet.’
Not yet. I still had time.
Somewhere in the Archon, music was booming. It grew louder as the Vigiles manhandled me up flights of stairs. Franz Schubert – ‘Death and the Maiden’.