‘I am sorry,’ I said, ‘to see the White Binder reduced to nothing but a boundling, a pawn on someone else’s board . . . I really am disappointed.’
‘Oh, you may think me the pawn on this particular board, but I am playing on many others. And mark my words, we are nowhere close to endgame.’ The sun gilded his eyes. ‘Even so, it seems that, in my brief time as a pawn, I have taught you one very valuable lesson, O my lovely. Humans will always disappoint.’
22
Ultimatum
Jaxon had confirmed it. Scion was ready to expand its empire again, just as we’d thought.
The Vigile outside my cell had mentioned Spaniards.
Spain was their target. Spain, and possibly Portugal, if there were ambassadors from two countries here.
I didn’t know much about the free world, but I knew Scion had promoted the virtues of its system globally in the hope that other territories would join the fold of their own free will. It had worked on Sweden. Join us, they would say, and rid your country of the plague of unnaturalness. Join us, and you can keep your people safe. Some countries, like Ireland, had been taken forcibly – but it would be easier, and cleaner, if they could avoid costly invasions altogether.
Of course, Scion had many hurdles to overcome if it meant to convince the rest of the world to embrace the anchor. Every free-world government with sense would be wary of a rising, militarised empire. Some would have moral concerns about Scion’s methods, although they had always taken care to conceal the beheadings and hangings from the outside. Others might not believe clairvoyance existed, and even if they did, they might fear that innocent people would be mistakenly identified as unnaturals. Nadine and Zeke had mentioned that being one of many concerns about Scion in the free world.
Now, however, Scion had the perfect answer to it. They had Senshield, an accurate means of isolating criminals. Why shouldn’t they take control, they would ask, if they had a foolproof method for winnowing the unnaturals from the innocents – a way of removing dangerous individuals from society?
Senshield.
It always came back to that.
The ambassadors being here must be a final test of the water. The scanner-guns would be kept secret, but if they showed an ordinary Senshield scanner to the Spanish – if they proved to them how efficient Scion was about to become, and if they still refused to see the sense in being part of Scion’s empire . . . then, and only then, did they mean to invade.
The Vigiles herded me back to my cell and administered my drugs. In the precious seconds before clarity left me, I hid the roll of paper under the mattress of my cot.
If Nashira meant to see me today – and my meeting with Jaxon implied that she did – there was a good chance Alsafi could be with her. He had seldom been far from her side in the colony. And it might be my chance to tell him – somehow – what I knew.
When the drug wore off and my food arrived, I retrieved the paper and huddled close to the door, so I couldn’t be seen through the view-slot. When I was certain no Vigiles were about to come through, I turned my palm upward and tore the stitches from Styx’s cut with my teeth, then used the blood to scratch three words on to the paper.
COLCHICUM RHUBARB CHICKWEED
By the time the Vigile returned, the note was hidden. I was waterboarded for ignoring my meal.
Alsafi was fluent in the language of flowers.
Colchicum: my best days are gone.
Rhubarb: advice.
Chickweed: rendezvous.
It was evening by the time I was dragged out of the basement again.
Now it was dark, there was more activity in the Archon. We passed personalities I recognised from the news. Ministers in black suits, their crisp white shirts buttoned up high. Vigiles and their commandants. Soldiers. Scarlett Burnish’s little raconteurs in their red coats, tapping notes into their data pads, preparing to report their lies. Members of the Inquisitorial courts, gliding across the marble in steel-buckled shoes and hooded cloaks lined with white fur. Some stopped to stare and whisper.
Scarlett Burnish herself was at the end of one corridor, immaculately groomed as ever, holding a sheaf of documents. She wore a sculpted velvet dress with a complicated lace collar, and her hair rippled down to the small of her back, with the top layer braided like a net.
With her was a woman I vaguely remembered seeing on ScionEye. She was petite and sloe-eyed, possessed of a small, upturned nose and skin so pale it almost glowed. Deepest-brown hair was piled up on her head and threaded with rubies. Her gown, made of burgundy silk and ivory lace, fell in a series of tiers to the floor, leaving her collar bare for a necklace of rose gold and pear-shaped diamonds. The layers of the dress didn’t quite conceal the swell beneath.
‘You look very well, Luce. How many months is it now?’ Burnish was saying.
‘It will be four soon.’
The accent nudged my memory. Luce Ménard Frère, spouse and advisor to the Grand Inquisitor of France.
‘Oh, how lovely,’ Burnish said, all smiles. ‘Are your other children looking forward to it?’
‘The younger two are excited,’ Frère said, laughing, ‘but Onésime is very unhappy. He always thinks a new baby will take his maman away from him. Of course, when Mylène was born, he was the first person to be cooing over her like a little bird . . .’
They stopped talking as my guards marched me past. Frère placed a hand on her abdomen and spoke in French to her bodyguards, who formed a barrier in front of her. Burnish raked me up and down with her eyes, bid farewell to Frère, and strode from the corridor.
I was led into a final passageway. Above two double doors at the end was a plaque spelling out INQUISITORIAL GALLERY. Just before we went through it, I sneaked the roll of paper from my shift to my hand.
The sheer size of the place was what hit me first. The floor was red marble, as it was in most of the building. An ornate ceiling stretched high above my head, where three vast chandeliers were laden with white candles.
The walls at either end of the hall were hung with official portraits of Grand Inquisitors from decades past, while the side walls were covered by frescoes. To my left was a giant, Renaissance-style depiction of the establishment of Scion, with James Ramsay MacDonald holding up the flag on the banks of the river and shouting to a euphoric audience; to my right, the first day of the Molly Riots. I stared up at the images of the gape-mouthed Irish, with their blood-dusted flags, and Scion’s soldiers, painted in lighter tones, who held out their hands as friends. ERIN TURNS FROM THE ANCHOR read a plaque underneath.
A rosewood banqueting table was the centrepiece of this magnificent hall, and a grand piano stood in one corner. Nashira Sargas sat at one end of the table. Gomeisa, the other blood-sovereign, was on her right, in a high-collared black robe, staring at me with his sunken eyes. On her left was an empty chair, and beside that sat Alsafi Sualocin.