My ears were ringing now. Somehow, after months of defying Scion, I had never really expected to see this document. My father must have been presented with the same.
‘Shall I escort the prisoner to her cell, blood-sovereign?’ Alsafi said. I tensed.
‘Soon. I would speak to her alone.’
There was a pause before the other three stood and left, along with 22, who was marched out by Vigiles. His small defiance, unnoticed by everyone but me, was over. As he followed them, Jaxon gave me a pointed stare that urged me to reconsider.
When the doors closed, and it was just the two of us, there was silence for a long time.
‘Do you think human beings are good?’
The question rang, cool and clear, in the vastness of the gallery.
This had to be a trap. Nashira Sargas would never ask for a human’s opinion without an ulterior motive.
‘Answer me,’ she said.
‘Are Rephaim good, Nashira?’
Outside, the moon was waning. Her stance was almost placid, fingers interlocked.
‘You were reared, from the age of eight, in the empire I created,’ she said, as if I hadn’t spoken. ‘You see it as captivity – internment – but it has sheltered you from crueller truths.’
My flesh flinched from that cut-glass voice, the poisonous spill of her aura in the ?ther.
She went on: ‘I wonder if you have ever heard of a witch trial. In the past they were common; a matter of English law. Anyone could be accused of being a witch, and put on trial for sorcery. The guilty would be burned alive or drowned, and their accusers would consider themselves morally and spiritually cleansed. That justice had been done.
‘During those same times, executions were particularly . . . imaginative. For the crime of high treason, such as yours, a criminal would be hanged until almost dead, then taken down. His abdomen would be laid open, his entrails torn out, his privy parts cut off before his eyes. His body would then be quartered, and his head set upon a spike to rot. The spectators would cheer.’
I had thought myself inured to violence.
‘No Rephaite,’ she said, ‘has ever committed such a brutal act against another. And never would – not even now.’
I swallowed. ‘I seem to recall you threatening to skin another Rephaite.’
‘Words,’ she said dismissively. ‘I have hurt Arcturus for his own good, but I would never be so grotesque.’
‘Just grotesque enough to mutilate him.’
She didn’t seem to think this worthy of comment. His scars, his pain, meant nothing to her.
‘Before I was blood-sovereign, I dwelled in the great observatory in the swathe of the Sargas. As centuries passed in your world, I learned everything about the human race,’ she said. ‘I learned that humans have a mechanism inside them: a mechanism called hatred, which can be activated with the lightest pull of a string. I saw war and cruelty. I saw slaughter and slavery. I learned how humans control one another.
‘When we arrived in your realm, I used the stores of knowledge I had saved from the observatory – specifically, knowledge of how intensely humans can hate. It was easy to turn the tide of public odium towards “unnaturals”, and to promise control. That was how Scion was born.’ She looked through a window, into the citadel. ‘An empire founded on human hatred.’
There was so little feeling left in my body that I was almost unaware of it.
‘I have done nothing to you that you have not done to yourselves. I have only used humankind’s own methods to bring it to heel. And I mean to continue.’ Nashira rose elegantly and walked past the windows, towards the other end of the room. ‘You may think I am your enemy. The Ranthen may have told you so. They are blind.’
Her shadow moved across the floor. I couldn’t take my eyes from her silhouette.
‘When he endeavoured to help humans before, Arcturus was betrayed by your mentor. He should have learned then. I punished him, with the spirit of a certain human, to remind him of your true nature.’
Hearing his name gave me strength. ‘He doesn’t seem to have learned his lesson,’ I said.
‘He remains in thrall to Terebell Sheratan, unable to see the true nature of the humans he believes he can save.’
Something about her tone when she said that name – Terebell Sheratan – sent a trickle of unease through me.
‘Humans have conducted their own affairs for too long. You have failed to govern yourselves,’ she said. ‘If we did not rule, this opportunity to save you would be lost for ever.’
‘I’ve seen your disregard for life,’ I said. ‘You expect me to believe you want to save us?’
‘Killing you all would destabilise the ethereal threshold beyond repair. Some will live,’ she said, ‘to serve the empire. To maintain the natural order. The natural order does not place human beings at the top of the hierarchy; you only think it does. Now is the age of the Rephaim.’
I had been na?ve. I had thought of Nashira Sargas as purely evil, purely sadistic – but she knew more about us than we did. We had given her the tools to bring us to our knees.
But if we also gave her our freedom, there would be no getting it back.
‘This building we stand in,’ I said, ‘was designed by human minds and created by human hands. Through nothing but our ambition, and the freedom to create, we can turn a thought into a masterwork. We can make the intangible real.’
She was quiet. I had listened to her, and she was returning the courtesy.
‘That’s what humans do. We make. We remake. We build, and we rebuild. And yes, sometimes we paint with blood, and we tear down our own civilisations, and it might never stop. But if we’re ever to unlearn our darker instincts, we have to be free to learn better ones. Take away the chance for us to change, and I promise you, we never will.’ I looked her in the eye. ‘I’m willing to fight for that chance.’
Nashira appeared to digest this. She stood facing London, a metropolis created by centuries of humanity. London, with its secret, folded layers of history and beauty, as perfectly formed as the petals of a rose. The deeper you ventured into its heart, the more there was to peel away.
‘The Grand Overseer has petitioned me to stay your execution,’ the blood-sovereign said. ‘For a human, he is . . . insightful. He believes that if I do not allow your gift to continue burgeoning over the years, I may not inherit it at its fullest. I told the Archon’s staff to assess you. They agree that your talents have not matured – or that you are simply weak.’
The pain had been a test, then, and I had failed.
‘For now, you are all I have. Until I find another dreamwalker, I may consider this proposal. I may consider sending you to France, under a new identity, to live out the rest of your natural life in Sheol II.’
‘What do I have to do?’
Not even her eyes moved.
‘Tell me,’ she said, ‘where I can find the Mime Order.’
Two words now stood between me and my execution. All I needed to say was crisis facility.
I could lie my way to borrowed time. I could give her the name of a random street or an abandoned building.