The Dawn Chorus Read online

  His fingers gripped my throat. I felt nothing. He splintered into a swarm of flies.

  I drifted in the grey unknown between sleep and strange things. Jaxon skipped in and chanted a dirge about fire and candles, leaving me in fits of laughter. Eliza screamed in another room.

  Warden had warned me about the outbreak in the Rookery. A swarm of rats had got into the shantytown and brought the sickness with them. Among its possible symptoms were stomach cramps, hallucinations and severe vomiting. It could be fatal, especially in those who were already weak from malnutrition. Since my life was too important to risk, Warden had asked me to stay indoors. I had responded by wrapping up the meal he had given me, ransacking his dwindling supplies, and sneaking out while he was gone.

  A cacophony of retching had filled the Rookery. More than half of the harlies were stricken. The Rephaim, naturally, had barred themselves into their residences and done a whole lot of nothing to help.

  I had thought I could avoid infection. I had been sure that if I didn’t eat or drink anything, I would be fine. Clearly not. I must have touched something contaminated, or breathed the sickness in.

  Warden had limited supplies, but among them were a sizeable box of anti-nausea pills and some packets of rehydration salts. After tending to as many of the harlies as I could, I had gone to see my friends. Liss was well enough. Julian, however, had been heaving over a pot when I arrived. We had helped him to drink tiny sips of skilly.

  I needed them to be all right. I needed them both to make it out of here alive with me.

  The bell pealed for dusk. Even though I was weak as a lamb, thirst hauled me out of bed.

  A roaring fire lit the chamber below, and ‘In the Chapel in the Moonlight’ drifted from the gramophone. Warden was writing in a book with ruffled pages.

  ‘Good evening, Paige,’ he said.

  ‘I’m not well.’

  ‘I am sorry to hear it. What are your symptoms?’

  ‘I feel sick to my stomach, my head is about to explode, and I’m having visions,’ I said, ‘so unless I’ve turned into an oracle, I’m either ill or mad. Madness is a possibility, of course, since I’ve now been a prisoner for … what, five months?’

  ‘I think it more likely that you paid a visit to the Rookery.’ When I said nothing, he set down his pen. ‘Do you take pleasure in opposing me, even when what I ask is for your benefit?’

  ‘I do take a little pleasure in it,’ I confessed, ‘but on this occasion, I wasn’t thinking about you at all. I’m just not willing to skulk up here while my friends are in danger.’

  ‘So you chose to put yourself in danger, despite the fact that our plan hinges on your survival.’

  ‘And you’ve never put yourself at risk to help somebody else?’

  It was his turn not to reply.

  Of course he had. He had done all this before. Staked everything on a rebellion that had ultimately failed.

  ‘I would offer you some remedy,’ Warden said, ‘but my stores appear to have been emptied.’ He looked hard at me. ‘I know our understanding is by no means equal to a friendship, but I do not appreciate being stolen from. Not now we have a common purpose.’

  ‘Shouldn’t have brought a thief into your tower, then, should you?’ I steadied myself on the wing chair. ‘If I’d asked, you might have refused. Like you refused to bring Liss and Julian in here.’

  ‘A decision I have already explained.’

  ‘An explanation I’ve already decided is bullshit.’

  ‘You are entitled to your opinion.’

  ‘Well, thank you. I really needed you to remind me that I’m permitted an opinion.’

  Warden held my gaze for a moment, then returned his attention to whatever he was writing.

  He was trying. I knew what a risk he had already taken for Liss, and it was hard enough for him to keep me and Michael safe without arousing suspicion. Still, sometimes my bitterness about being here boiled over, and he was the one it tended to scald.

  I was bitter. Yet part of me was relieved that he had brought me back – because even if escape had been at my fingertips in London, I saw now that seizing it would have been the wrong choice. It would have meant abandoning Liss and Julian. Abandoning them all. This place would have haunted me, and I might never have been able to get back to it.

  No. I needed to finish this first, to destroy this horrific place from within. Then I would leave, and I would take everyone with me. All of us would escape to London.

  ‘I was trying to protect you,’ I told Warden. He stopped. ‘The harlies saw you heal Liss. That might have put you in good standing, but you need to secure their loyalty, Warden.’

  ‘I offer them freedom. Surely that outplays whatever Nashira can use to tempt them.’

  ‘Right. As if the harlies would refuse food if she offered it. Or blankets. Or a cup of clean water.’ When he just looked at me, I shook my head. ‘You know, for this … ancient being of the eternal twilight, or whatever, you’re naïve to the point of being absurd.’

  ‘Educate me, then.’

  ‘Fine. You’re asking the harlies to choose life-threatening change over the status quo. The status quo – while terrible – is slightly easier to bear than death and torture.’

  ‘Arguably.’

  ‘If you want them to choose the hard option, and if you want them to resist the temptation to sell you out, then they need immediate, tangible incentives, not some vague hope of freedom. The medicine I distributed will help keep the harlies on side. I’m going to assume that last time you rebelled against your fiancée, you tried to pay your army with promises. I’ve spent long enough in the syndicate to know that never works.’

  ‘Bribery insinuates vulnerability,’ he stated. ‘Will this not leave you open to blackmail?’

  ‘I didn’t tell them why I gave them the medicine. They don’t know for sure that I’m bribing them, even if they suspect. What they know is that I’m helping them. Now.’

  Only the gramophone broke the silence for a while. Eventually, Warden said, ‘I trusted that you would apply your lessons from the syndicate. Do as you must.’

  Even as I nodded, a high-pitched whistle filled my ears. The wooden floor roiled under my feet.

  ‘How long do we have left?’ I asked him, even as darkness blotched my vision. ‘Before I face her.’

  ‘A month.’

  My skin tingled. In one sense, it would be the longest month of my life – the final stretch of my captivity – but it wasn’t enough time to turn a troupe of starving prisoners into rebels. And now, when I should be out there helping them remember their worth, I had no strength of my own.

  A jug stood at the end of the desk. As I made for it, my legs wobbled and my head doubled in weight. I glimpsed a forked rash across my neckline – like a bolt of lightning – before the rug came rushing towards me.

  When I woke, I was on the daybed, covered to the waist by a heavy mantle, and Warden was in a chair beside me. The muscles of my neck were firm as bone, my stomach tight.

  ‘Mm.’ I touched my throbbing head. ‘Did I pass out?’

  ‘Not for long.’ Warden dimmed the oil lamp. ‘No need to thank me for catching you.’

  ‘You don’t get a medal for being decent.’

  ‘I should think not.’

  I turned into a blade around him, always quick to cut. After months of mutual dislike, it was hard to shake that instinct.

  Warden had banked the fire, leaving us in near-darkness. Seeing me shiver, he tucked the mantle around my shoulders. He did it in a detached manner – I was cold, he was solving the problem – but he was gentle. Since healing Liss, he had never removed his gloves again.

  ‘I presume you can’t catch this,’ I said.

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘Still afraid to touch me, though.’

  I expected him to ignore the taunt. Instead, he looked me straight in the eye.

  ‘Do you desire for me to touch you, Paige?’

  An admission would s
ound like something it really wasn’t. It would just gratify me to know that he had the mettle to defy that Rephaite law. That he could stand the touch of a mortal. It would prove to me, once and for all, that he was prepared to fight for us.

  Before I could explain, Warden slid a cushion under my head, and the moment to retort had passed.

  ‘Have you experienced any more hallucinations?’ he asked. ‘Any headaches?’

  ‘Both. I’m fine.’

  ‘Those statements are contradictory.’

  ‘Everything about you is contradictory.’ I shifted on to my side. ‘Where were you while I was in the Rookery?’

  His firefly eyes caught mine again. I wished I knew how to read his expressions.

  ‘I was arranging another infiltration into the House,’ he said. I must have looked worried, because he added, ‘Fear not. Nashira and Gomeisa do not suspect you of destroying their blood-heir.’

  I tried not to remember the way Kraz Sargas had looked once I was finished with him. A fistful of poppy anemone and a bullet to the face had not exactly left him at his best.

  ‘Who’s going to replace him?’ I asked.

  ‘There is another blood-heir, but she is abroad. A new male will be elected in due course. There must be a male and a female, just as there must be a male and a female blood-sovereign.’

  ‘Right.’ I paused. ‘If not me, who are you sending to the House?’

  ‘Michael.’

  My chest tightened. ‘You shouldn’t have done that,’ I said. ‘Michael is worthless, in their view.’

  ‘Aside from you, Michael is the only human I trust. He has undertaken dangerous tasks for me before. This one,’ he said, ‘is to collect the cure for the performers.’

  He had been working behind the scenes. I was too quick to assume the worst of him.

  ‘There is a cure, then,’ I said.

  ‘Yes. There was an outbreak of the same infection once before.’

  ‘Surely Nashira will distribute it at some point. She won’t want all her voyants dead.’

  ‘The performers are sustenance to her. She will not care if some of them die. Death in the Rookery will sow fear, and it is fear that upholds her rule. She will then have the opportunity to appear benevolent by distributing medicine at a time she deems suitable.’

  ‘So we have to get there first. Before we lose half our soldiers.’

  ‘Indeed.’ He rose. ‘Fear not, Paige. You and your friends will soon be well.’

  As he turned away, I caught his sleeve.

  ‘We can’t stop training,’ I said. ‘I’m nowhere close to being able to win against her.’

  ‘We will continue to train. Tomorrow.’

  He poured a cup of water and placed it beside me. With nothing to distract me from the wildfire in my blood, I rested my head on a folded arm and watched him walk back to his desk.

  Something had changed since he had healed Liss. The same night Nashira had come to the tower and struck him, and I had followed him to the chapel to find him playing the organ. That night had rewritten my understanding of this place. When I looked at him now, curiosity outweighed mistrust.

  He was not what I had once thought him to be. Not my friend, but no longer a foe. All I knew was that he loathed Nashira as much as I did, which meant that, for now, we were on the same side.

  And he had said he trusted me.

  ‘I have to ask what you’re doing,’ I said. ‘Writing your last will in case this all goes wrong?’

  ‘Sagacious as that would be, I have nothing to bequeath to anyone. This tower – and everything in it – belongs to the blood-sovereign.’ He kept writing. ‘Just as I do.’

  Because he was her betrothed only in name. Because he was nothing but her war trophy.

  ‘Well,’ I said, softer, ‘what is it, then?’

  ‘A journal. A chronicle, more precisely. I record the daily events of the colony.’

  ‘That sounds like a laugh a minute.’ I managed a sip of water. ‘Do all Rephaim keep journals?’

  ‘We are not a monolith. I could not remark on what other Rephaim do to pass the time.’

  ‘Can I read it?’

  He dipped his pen in ink. ‘Is it not ill-mannered to ask to read a private journal, Paige?’

  ‘As we’ve long established, I don’t like you. I don’t care if you think I’m ill-mannered.’

  ‘Hm. Now I think I will keep my journal to myself.’

  ‘Like you would have shown me either way.’

  ‘You will have to live with the uncertainty.’

  I tutted. When he had finished whatever he was writing – I imagined a treatise on human ingratitude – he made a point of locking the leather-bound book and tucking the key into his doublet.

  ‘Remember I’m a thief.’ I dropped my head on to the cushion. ‘I’ll pickpocket that key.’

  ‘By all means, try.’ Warden glanced at the mantel clock. ‘Michael will have returned by midnight. You should rest until then. If our luck holds, he will have what you need.’

  ‘And if he can’t find the medicine?’

  ‘Then I bid you farewell, Paige, and thank you for our agreeable acquaintance.’

  ‘Oh, hilarious. You could get your own show at the penny gaff with red-hot quips like that.’

  I could have sworn the corner of his mouth lifted.

  Staying lucid was like treading water. Eventually, I slid back into a doze.

  A faceless woman opened a jar, and out poured seven golden streams. The floor rotted beneath her feet before the woman disappeared. A disembodied mask drifted up to me and told me it looked forward to our meeting. A shadow-bear lumbered over the threshold – its claws were like ten swords, each tipped with blood – and ruffled my hair with its breath. When it roared, black moths and honeybees erupted from its mouth.

  All the while, Warden wrote. At some point, he switched off the gramophone.

  Beware, the mask said. The lord of hindsight is purblind. Look to the all-gifted for the key. Knowledge has a terrible price. Come and see, pale rider, come and see.

  ‘Shh.’ I turned on to my back. ‘No more riddles, now. I’m busy.’

  Busy doing what, pray tell?

  ‘Dying.’

  Warden glanced towards me. The mask dissolved into thin air, leaving only him.

  I wanted to hear his music again. In all my life, I had never heard such wrath and sorrow from an instrument as I had on that evening. Just the memory of it was chilling.

  It seemed like an eternity before I got free of my drowse. My insides felt twisted, my stomach tight. Warden stood by the bay window.

  ‘Warden.’ My skin was clammy. ‘Michael isn’t back, is he?’

  ‘No.’

  I tried to look for him in the æther. Too weak. ‘Someone has to go after him.’ With some effort, I managed to sit up. ‘He might be holed up with the harlies. I’ll find him.’

  ‘The fact that you think you are in any fit state to go anywhere is a testament to the fact that you should not.’

  ‘Well, you don’t exactly have humans lining up to be your allies, so I’m your only choice.’

  ‘If he is not back by one of the clock, I will go myself.’

  ‘It could be a trap,’ I said. ‘The Sargas might expect you to come looking for him.’

  ‘Perhaps.’ He glanced at me. ‘How do you feel?’

  ‘Awful.’

  At this, Warden returned to sit beside me on the daybed. He eased the mantle back over me.

  And there it was, so fleeting I almost missed it. The thrum of the golden cord.

  The bone-deep sensation caught me unawares from time to time. It was the quick, smooth pull of a bow across a heartstring, a note that never made a sound. A seventh sense. I hated that I could bear it.

  At quarter to one, the vomiting started. Warden wordlessly handed me a vase – a priceless antique, by the look of it – and I coughed bile into it. I was going to die of this before I ever started a revolt. The secret behind Scion would
never be revealed.

  Warden stayed with me. To my surprise, he held my hair away from my face while I heaved and shuddered. When the wrenching finally stopped, I wiped my mouth, exhausted.

  ‘Thank you,’ I rasped. ‘Sorry. About the vase.’

  ‘It was serving no other purpose.’

  He released my hair, letting it fall back around my shoulders. It had grown too long for my liking.

  ‘Warden,’ I said as he rose.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘If I die of this, p-plant wild oat on my grave. The flowers are my favourite.’

  ‘You are not going to die, Paige Mahoney.’

  ‘You said this could be fatal.’

  ‘I did not think it would depress you this deeply, since mortals are familiar with the concept of impending death.’

  ‘I can’t even tell if you’re joking.’

  ‘I will leave you to wonder.’ He looked towards the window. ‘If I do not return, seek Terebell. She will guide you in the days ahead.’

  He took his cloak from the back of the armchair. At that moment, someone knocked on the door.

  I tensed. It might be one of the Rephaim, come to tell Warden that his courier had been caught. As soon as the door opened, however, Michael stumbled in, out of breath.

  ‘Michael.’ Warden shut the door. ‘Are you all right?’

  Michael nodded. His cheeks were even pinker than usual. Seeing me on the daybed, he came straight to my side, his brow furrowed.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Slowly dying.’

  Michael immediately slid his satchel from his shoulder and handed it to Warden, who emptied it on to the bed. Several boxes of medicine fell out.

  ‘Scared the hell out of us, Mike,’ I said. Michael pulled a face. ‘You’re not a fan of nicknames. Noted.’

  ‘Well done, Michael. This is enough to cure most of those who have been stricken.’ Warden placed the boxes in his cabinet. ‘You have returned later than we agreed. Were you seen?’

  Still breathless, Michael shed his black coat and signed an answer. Warden watched.

  ‘There was a meeting in the House,’ he related to me. ‘When Michael attempted to eavesdrop, a red-jacket almost found him. He hid until there was an opportunity to escape.’