The stadium fell silent. Bra?oveanu sailed around the stage to the tune of a piano, fluid yet erratic. Then another dancer ran out – the Bloody King – and snatched her hand, spinning her into his arms. I watched, mesmerised, as the Black Moth danced a pas de deux with him. She was the Bloody King’s heir; the herald of unnaturalness, of sin.
The dance became faster. Bra?oveanu whirled her leg out in front of her and tucked it behind her other knee, over and over, while the lights raced red around her and the music became ferocious, like a storm. The Bloody King lifted her above his head, then swung her into his arms again. She was seduced by evil. Actors held signs marking them as FREEDOM and JUSTICE and THE NATURAL ORDER. Then an army, who had been waiting in the shadows, stepped forward, and all of the actors fell down with their signs, murdered where they stood, while the Bloody King brought the Black Moth gently to a stop. She walked into the blaze of a spotlight, her arms raised high. This was the moment of my death in Edinburgh.
It was beautiful.
They had made my murder beautiful.
Slowly, Bra?oveanu took centre stage. A hush had fallen. When she spoke, she raised her head high, and I was sure I saw the dark fire of hatred in her eyes.
‘We need everyone,’ she said, and her microphone sent it all around the stadium, into the home of every viewer in the country, ‘or everyone loses.’
I froze. My own words, a call to revolution, spoken on a Scion stage – that couldn’t be right. The camera, which had just panned to the Grand Box, caught the complacent smiles of the ministers stiffening before it cut back to the stage. There was an apprehensive silence.
This had not been part of their plan for tonight.
Bra?oveanu took her bow; then she slipped a silver pin from her bun and peeled open her throat.
Screams erupted from the groundlings, the only ones close enough to see the red sheeting down her neck. I stared, thunderstruck, as she dropped the pin. That blood was as real as mine.
Bra?oveanu collapsed on the stage, as elegantly as she had moved in life. The orchestra played on. The male dancer, who was wearing an earpiece, lifted her wilted frame into his arms and raised her above his head. He pirouetted with a plastic smile before dancing off the stage. Though the groundlings were in disorder, most of the audience were still cheering.
Something kindled deep within me. Marilena Bra?oveanu was Romanian. She had witnessed an incursion, too – and now, tonight of all nights, she had used her own blood to spoil the beauty of the anchor’s lies.
A Vigile rattled the bars of my cell.
‘Come here, 40.’
One hand beckoned me. The other held a syringe. A top-up dose of the drug.
The drug.
Goosebumps covered my arms. Seeing that needle, I realised what I hadn’t before, entranced as I was by the Jubilee.
Mental clarity.
My mind was clear as ice. There was no cloud inside it. My vision was sharp, and my gift seethed inside me.
There hadn’t been a first dose.
‘Come here, girl,’ the Vigile said.
I stared at my hands. Steady.
Artifice.
Alsafi. He must have swapped the syringes. Hock had shot something into my veins, but it must have been water. And now the building was almost empty; there was only a skeleton staff in the Archon while everyone attended the Jubilee. Until the celebrations ended, only a handful of Vigiles stood between me and Senshield.
Perseverance.
The Vigile drew his gun and aimed it at my head. ‘Come here,’ he said. ‘Now.’
‘What are you going to do?’ I said softly. ‘Shoot me? Not without the Suzerain’s permission.’
The gun stayed where it was, but I had stared death in the face once before, looked down the barrel of a gun and lived. He swore and returned his weapon to its holster. Took his keys from his belt and sifted through them. That was his mistake. Rage was pounding through my body, bubbling in my blood. It had set me on fire, and like the moth I was, I burned.
When the Vigile opened my cell door, I was ready. I sprang at him and slammed my body into his. As we fell to the floor, I clapped a hand over his mouth and nose, squeezed hard, and wrested the gun from his grasp. My arms were shaking, and he was clawing at my neck and hair, breaking skin – but I hit him with the pistol, over and over, bludgeoning his skull with all my strength, until blood glinted and his head rolled to one side. I grabbed his set of keys, hauled his dead weight into the cell, and locked the door with trembling hands.
Footsteps were approaching from somewhere to my left. I ran the other way, keys in one hand, pistol in the other, my bare feet feather-light on the marble.
I would help Marilena Bra?oveanu ruin their night of glory. If I had to die tonight, I would release the Mime Order.
My head was throbbing as I rounded a corner, hoping against hope that nobody was paying attention to the cameras. I could feel the ?ther again, clearly enough to avoid the Vigiles patrolling the Archon and to know that Hildred Vance was nowhere near.
I felt for the room with the glass pyramid and found it instantly. Following the signal, I limped across the marble floor, trying to ignore the drumbeat in my bruises. I could sense two squadrons of Vigiles, spread over a vast building. In one corridor, I had to duck into the Minister for Finance’s office to avoid a lone one, who I hadn’t detected until it was almost too late. I stayed for several minutes behind a curtain, soused in icy sweat. A wrong move could get me hauled back to my cell, and I wouldn’t get out again. I might not be drugged, but I was physically weak – I couldn’t fight my way to the core.
When I was sure the Vigile wasn’t returning, I stumbled out of the office and back into the labyrinth, up the stairs to the next floor. Senshield was somewhere above me.
The central second-floor corridor was empty, dimly lit by sconces. The darkness calmed me, just a little. The signal above me wavered, and I paused briefly to think.
If the core was high up, it was most likely in a tower. The Archon had two, one on each end of the building. Inquisitor Tower was the one that housed the bells. The other one . . .
I sifted through the Vigile’s keys. Not one was labelled Victoria Tower. But then, only Vance and the blood-sovereigns were supposed to know where Senshield was; no one else would have access.
With fresh resolve, I set off again. Most of the doors I had seen in this building were electronic, but if the Vigiles carried keys, they must also have mechanical locks in case of a power failure – and those locks could be picked.
An alarm began to drill, raising my pulse. Either my empty cell had been discovered, or Bra?oveanu’s act of defiance had activated some kind of security alert. Metal blinds were scrolling over the windows, and blue-white emergency lighting had sprung up on either side of me. Adrenalin streaked through my muscles, keeping the ache at bay. I avoided a few more Vigiles before I finally staggered into a corridor with a thick ebony carpet, lined by windows on one side. At the end of this corridor was an arched, studded door, and set into this door was a small plaque reading VICTORIA TOWER. My breath came fast as I approached it. The core was now almost directly above me.
I tried the handle, not expecting it to work.