The Hush (24 page)

Weser City was thick with humid air.

Its roads and bridges caressed the sea, like a fiddler's fingers on his strings. On the eastern side of the bay, shanties and hovels ran down almost to the waterline. Children ran through the streets, shrieks filled the air, and the world flapped with gulls' wings and the stink of rotting seaweed.

On the western side of the bay, the streets brimmed with mansions. They rose from the earth like crags on a cliff: tall, white, ornate. Lavish pillars propped up their balconies, and on each rooftop rose marble statues: dragons and pegasi, griffins and dancing ladies. Fountains danced with bubbling water in the squares. People rode in carriages along the streets, faces clean and clothing cut from the finest lace and leather.

The real showpiece was the Grand Square, rimmed by palatial buildings and expensive restaurants. Many patrons dined outside, where dozens of circular tables were adorned with cloths of silk and lace.

The Conservatorium loomed at the back of the square, vast, tall and breathtaking. Marble pillars curled with
carvings of musical notes, and the balcony railings shone white with sorcery lamps.

The Conservatorium.
After years of impossible daydreams, this was it.

When evening fell, Dot asked for a few hours to scope out their target. She and Chester sequestered themselves in a fancy restaurant, just across the street from the Conservatorium. Dot took notes on a scrap of paper, which she surreptitiously slid beneath her napkin whenever a waiter appeared to refill their water glasses.

Chester swirled a spoon slowly in his bowl. He wasn't hungry. He had only come to escape the chill of Susannah's stares – and to sneak a better look at the Conservatorium. He'd had a vague idea that it might calm his nerves, somehow, to get a good look at the place before tomorrow night.

So far, it wasn't helping.

‘Need any help?' he asked Dot, searching for a distraction.

Dot shook her head. She was jotting numbers onto her notepad, performing some kind of mathematical calculation. Chester knew it had something to do with her sorcery for tomorrow night, but the numbers were beyond him.

Just sitting in the restaurant, Chester felt distinctly out of place. He had grown up on simple foods, such as stew and cornbread, eggs and beans. The closest he'd come to a restaurant was a saloon, where the patrons slouched in grimy shirts and shouted for whiskey.

Here, however, the diners wore cravats and fancy hats, and the waiters served pale sherry and champagne.
The menu proclaimed such oddities as lamb tenderloin, baked trout with anchovy sauce and something called ‘purée of grouse'. When Chester had received his menu, he had stared at it, utterly dumbfounded, until he finally ordered the mushroom soup. At least he had a vague idea of how to eat it.

Now, he swirled the spoon in a slow rotation through his soup and glanced back up through the window. He no longer felt much like eating.

At its peak, the Conservatorium rounded upwards to a huge central dome, which curved like half a melon beneath the moon. A rooftop stable encircled the dome, providing a home for the city's finest pegasi. Chester could imagine the beasts up there, pawing their hooves as the stars streaked overhead and the rooftop breeze played a rhythm on the dome.

‘Beautiful, isn't it?' Dot said.

Chester realised that she had stopped writing and had shifted her attention to him.

‘Well, you know … it's the Conservatorium.' He took a sip of water. ‘Never thought I'd get the chance to see it.'

Dot didn't respond.

‘Is it hard for you?' Chester said, feeling a little awkward. ‘Being back here, I mean?'

‘Well, you know how it is,' Dot said. ‘It's always the worst parts you remember most.' She rolled the pencil between her fingers. ‘I have a theory, you see, that our memories are songs. It's the big dramatic chorus that gets stuck in your head, isn't it? Not the quiet rhythm beneath it all.'

There was a long pause.

Dot looked back down at her notebook. ‘On the bright side,' she added, ‘at least one good thing came of me being expelled.'

‘What?'

‘Well, it was a huge scandal. And Susannah and Sam were here in Weser, recruiting members for their gang.' She looked up at him with a smile. ‘They couldn't help but hear about it.'

‘That's how you got recruited?'

‘Susannah said we were going to help people. We were going to change things.' Dot leant forwards, as though she was about to divulge a secret. ‘At first, I thought she'd gone mad. I told her that a flock of moths had flown in her ear and fluttered her brain into lunacy.'

‘Until …?'

‘Until two weeks later, when we sailed from Weser in an echoship we'd stolen from the Songshapers' fleet. My first trip on the
Cavatina
. That's when I knew we were onto something special.'

‘Well, yeah,' Chester said. ‘When you've pinched a ship worth a thousand times the average annual salary, you know you're onto a good thing.'

‘It's not about the money, Chester.' Dot set her pencil down on the table. ‘Being part of the Nightfall Gang … I'm part of something bigger. Something more important.'

‘I know, but –'

‘We've been to Bremen, to Oranmor, to Leucosia. We've been to the deserts and we've been to the sea. In winter, we went to the northern mountains, where it's cold
enough to snow. Can you even imagine it? Real snow, just fluttering down from the sky. I never thought I'd see such a thing.' Dot shook her head in wonder. ‘And everywhere we've gone, we've tried to help people.'

There was a long pause.

‘The job tomorrow … it's everything we've worked for,' she said. ‘It's what we've been practising for. What we've trained for.' Dot looked down at her tattooed hands. When she looked back up at him, her voice was a little shaky. ‘Tell me, Chester. Tell me honestly. Can you do it?'

Chester hesitated. He pictured himself inside the Conservatorium, his fingers sliding over the strings of the fiddle. He pictured the Songshapers, sharp with judgement, just waiting for him to slip up. He pictured himself floating into the melody, drifting note to note like a ship at sea, until the Song called him and he sank like a wreck into its embrace …

‘Yeah,' he said. ‘I can do it.'

Dot stared at him for a long moment. ‘You don't have to lie, you know.'

‘What?'

‘You're not the only performer in this gang,' Dot said. ‘Travis does the same thing, in a way. The winks, the vanity, the smarmy comments about his appearance …' She looked down at her plate. ‘It's all just an act, you know.'

‘So why don't you lecture him about it, then?'

‘Because it makes him happy,' Dot said simply. ‘To Travis, it's just a game. It gives rhythm to his life and gives
him something to focus on. He wears his bravado like a carnival mask.'

‘And me?'

‘You wear it like a pair of handcuffs.'

Chester looked down at his soup. He wanted to change the topic, to steer their chat away from these uncomfortable waters, but he had no idea what to say. Part of him wanted to argue, to deny it, but the polite atmosphere of the restaurant crawled like fingers down his neck and he felt so hopelessly out of his depth …

‘The audition,' Dot said. ‘Can you do it?'

Convince the world you're strong
, he thought for the hundredth time,
and you're halfway to being there.
But he was tired of lying and tired of performing. Dot was right. At this point, a lie would put them all at risk.

Chester released a faltering breath.

‘I don't know,' he said. ‘I just … I don't know.'

And he pictured the fury of the Songshapers, as they raised their guns and pulled the trigger to destroy a blasphemer.

The following day, Chester woke to a churn of nausea.

The gang had booked a suite of rooms in a nearby hotel. He sat by a window and clung to his fiddle case, struck by a vague idea that he should be practising. Right now, however, he felt more able to produce a pile of vomit than a melody.

The city was hot but his nerves were hotter. By nine
o'clock, the air in their hotel room was thick enough to slice and butter. By noon, his breath felt like a fistful of stuffy blankets in his throat.

‘You look nervous,' Susannah said.

Chester shrugged.

‘You should go for a walk,' she said. ‘Get some fresh air. Here,' she added, tossing him a pouch of coins. ‘Go and buy yourself lunch.'

Chester wondered if she simply wanted to be rid of him. Even now, a week after the debacle in Thrace, she seemed as stiff as a bow in his presence. But still, he laid Goldenleaf on the table and nodded. ‘Thanks.'

She didn't respond.

As Chester left the suite, he passed Nathaniel Glaucon. The man had fulfilled his end of their deal, meeting them in the hotel lobby. When he had arrived, Chester had fulfilled his promise and returned the flute, which Nathaniel had seized with greedy fingers, as if the weedy little instrument was made of gold. Now Nathaniel sat stiffly in a corner of the living area, fiddling with his flute, a scowl on his lips.

The street outside was hot and dusty. The only relief was the scent of the sea, a salty tang that Chester sucked into his lungs. It seemed to help a little with his nausea.

Chester paced the streets in silence, trying to distract himself with the sights and sounds of the city. A sweet scent wafted from around the corner, where a street vendor sold stewed fruits, spice cakes, plum pudding and fruit pies. Chester bought an apple from the man, although he still didn't feel like eating.

Step by step, Chester followed the curve of the bay. As he moved from the wealthy west into the poorer eastern district, he began to feel a little more at home. The city here was a network of streets and alleys, which looked as if they had grown organically from the earth itself. It was the sort of place that sprung up strand by strand, like the tangled knots of tumbleweed. Wagons and hay carts rumbled down the widest streets, with a clatter of wheels and the faintest whisper of a melody.

A sweaty cowboy rode past, one hand on the saddle, as he shouted prices for the cattle in his master's herd. ‘Over in the east market, folks! I got fifty head for a damn good price, rode 'em all the way from Molpeton …'

The locals in this part of town weren't aristocrats. They were sailors and carpenters, fishermen and dockworkers. A pair of barmaids strutted out of a saloon, long skirts swishing on the cobbles. A horde of washerwomen bustled down the street, enormous baskets in their arms, while a blacksmith grunted over the bellows in his workshop.

Back home in Thrace, only the affluent districts could afford sorcery. But in Weser, it seemed that even the poorest of folk could fill their lives with Music. Chester heard it in the rattle of the wagons. He tasted it on the breeze, as he stepped between a pair of jangling wind chimes. He touched a glinting street sign and a series of banjo chords twanged into his ears, tingling through his veins.

Even so, these were the cheapest of Musical objects, held together by a lick and a promise – the leftover dregs from the students' training, perhaps, or rubbish that was tossed into the alleyways behind the Conservatorium.
Some of their melodies were slightly off-beat, or badly tuned – and the effects of the Musical objects were therefore not always predictable.

One misshapen sorcery lamp hung above a doorframe, its globe looking more like a puddle than a sphere. When Chester's curiosity drew him close enough to touch it, it blasted out a screech of wild notes and a rush of pain shot through his fingertips.

‘Oi, you!' A man threw open the door from inside, a shotgun ready in his grip. His breath stank of corn liquor. ‘Get the hell off my stoop! You want your damn hand blown off?'

Too late, Chester realised that the man was using the broken lamp to warn him of trespassers on his property. Chester gave an apologetic shrug and stumbled back into the crowd. Although the pain in his fingers ebbed, the encounter left him shaken. He couldn't risk an injury – not today, of all days.

And so, as nervous as ever, Chester slunk back to the gang's suite in the hotel. He didn't speak as he sidled inside, but simply returned to his chair by the window. Nathaniel Glaucon was still in the corner, his expression surly. The rest of the gang was munching bread and cheese, taking turns to recite the plan – apart from a few choice details that weren't suitable for Nathaniel's ears.

After a while, Chester retreated to his room: if he had to hear the rundown one more time, he feared his nerves might physically shatter.

An hour after sundown, he changed into his audition outfit. Travis helped him to fold his cuffs, stiffen his
collar and slick back his hair. The suit was uncomfortable and itchy on his limbs. Chester tried to force a confident swagger – as though he was a rich man's heir – but he mostly felt like a child in his father's clothes.