We would find each other. I would see him again.
London would always walk with me; it would live inside my blood. The place my cousin had told me never to go; the place that was my chrysalis, my damnation, and my redemption. Its streets had won my heart, had turned me from Paige Mahoney to the Pale Dreamer to Black Moth to Underqueen, and then unmade me again, leaving me irrevocably changed. One day, I would return to it. To see this land unchained from the anchor.
When we were some way from the port, Warden opened the door of the container, and together, we stepped on to the deck. Brutal wind hacked at my curls as we approached the railings at the stern.
The merchant ship crashed through the English Channel, churning the waves to lace. My hands came to rest on the railings. The ice-cold wind tore at my cheeks, as if it wanted to expose a second face beneath my own, as I looked back at the southern coast of Britain.
I had freed this country from Senshield; I had weakened Hildred Vance’s hand. For now, voyants were safer than they had been. They could disappear into the shadows again; they could walk the streets invisibly. But I could do more for them. I would cast off my crown and take up my sword, and I would go to battle. Soon, an unknown woman named Flora Blake would arrive on the streets of Paris, and the theatre of war would open again.
And we would meet our new allies. Whoever they were.
‘All this time, I thought we were the ones driving this revolution, but this is bigger than we could ever have imagined,’ I said. ‘Someone once told me I’d always be a puppet . . . never holding my own strings. Now I’m starting to think they might have been right.’
‘We all have our strings,’ Warden said. ‘A dreamwalker should know better than most that all strings can be cut.’
‘Then promise me this.’ I turned to face him. ‘Whatever orders Burnish or her sponsor sends us, we don’t follow them without question. We find out what kind of game we’re playing before we show them our own cards. And we stay together.’ I sought his gaze. ‘Promise me we’ll stay together.’
‘You have my word, Paige Mahoney.’
He stood by my side as we left England behind us. It was the first day of January. The beginning of another year, another life, another name. I looked back once more at the cliffs that loomed along the coast, at the white cliffs of Dover, limned by the promise of dawn.
And I waited for the sun to rise – as it always had, like a song from the night.
SCION: INTERNATIONAL DEFENCE EXECUTIVE CLASSIFIED INTERNAL COMMUNICATION
SENDER:
OKONMA, PATRICIA K.
SUBJECT:
AUTHORITY MAXIMUM
Urgent notice to all commandants. Grand Commander VANCE, HILDRED D. has been injured in the line of duty and is unfit for command. In my capacity as Deputy Grand Commander, authority maximum rests in me until further notice.
RDT SENSHIELD has been incapacitated. All units are to return immediately to conventional munitions.
Hostile individual MAHONEY, PAIGE E. has escaped Inquisitorial custody with assistance from at least one espionage agent. We are interrogating all members of the Archon’s personnel, up to and including those holding first-level security clearance, to uncover the identity of the collaborator.
Internal and international border authorities have been alerted that MAHONEY, PAIGE E. is at large. All measures must be taken to conceal from the public that this individual is alive. OPERATION ALBION’s revised priority is to eradicate her remaining supporters, known as the MIME ORDER, in the capital.
Finally:
Due to the failure of diplomacy with the relevant foreign powers, the need for immediate action in the IBERIAN PENINSULA is critical. OPERATION MADRIGAL will now proceed with immediate effect. All non-executive communication concerning this operation will be suspended from 6 January.
Let us look forward, as a new year dawns on our empire, to casting our bounds ever farther – and onward still, to the ends of the world. This house forever grows.
Glory to the Suzerain.
Glory to the anchor.
Author’s note
Although the language of flowers used in The Song Rising is based on real nineteenth-century floriography, I have sometimes tweaked the meanings of certain flowers, such as clematis, for the purposes of the story.
Glossary
The slang used by some clairvoyants in The Song Rising is loosely based on words used in the criminal underworld of London in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, with some amendments to meaning or usage. Other words have been invented by the author or taken from modern English or transliterated Hebrew or Greek.
?ther: [noun] The spirit realm, accessible by clairvoyants.
Amaranth: [noun] A flower that grows in the Netherworld. Its essence helps to heal spiritual injuries. Used as the symbol of the Ranthen.
Amaurotic: [noun or adjective] Non-clairvoyant. Also rotties.
Archon: [noun] The Westminster Archon, the seat of power in the Republic of Scion. It is the workplace of most of Scion’s key officials, including the Grand Inquisitor, and sometimes houses members of the Sargas family and their allies.
Binder: [noun] [a] A kind of human clairvoyant from the fifth order of clairvoyance. Binders can control a spirit (see boundling) by marking its name on their body, either permanently or temporarily, or attach a spirit to a particular location using a small amount of their own blood. [b] A name used for a Rephaite with similar abilities, though Rephaite ‘binders’ are also able to make use of the clairvoyant gift the spirit had in life.
Blood-consort: [noun] The mate of a blood-sovereign of the Rephaim. A title previously held by Arcturus Mesarthim when he was betrothed to Nashira Sargas.
Boundling: [noun] A spirit that obeys a binder.
Buck cab: [noun] A cab that accepts voyant clients. Many buck cabbies are employed by the syndicate.
Costermonger: [noun] A street vendor.
Dream-form: [noun] The form a spirit takes within the confines of a dreamscape.
Dreamscape: [noun] The interior of the mind, where memories are stored. Split into five zones or ‘rings’ of sanity: sunlight, twilight, midnight, lower midnight, and hadal. Clairvoyants can consciously access their own dreamscapes, while amaurotics may catch glimpses when they sleep.
Ectoplasm: [noun] Also ecto. Rephaite blood. Chartreuse yellow, luminous, and slightly gelatinous.
Emite, the: [noun] [singular Emite] Also Buzzers. The purported enemies of the Rephaim; ‘the dreaded ones’. They are known to feed on human flesh. Their blood can be used to mask the nature of a clairvoyant’s gift.
Fell tongue: [noun] A Rephaite term for any language spoken by humans.
Floxy: [noun] Scented oxygen, inhaled through a cannula. Scion’s alternative to alcohol. Served in the vast majority of entertainment venues, including oxygen bars.
Flux: [noun] Short for fluxion. A psychotic drug causing pain, hallucinations and disorientation in clairvoyants.