The Hush (26 page)

The entrance hall was white.

White stone, white marble. White walls and ceiling, with a grand staircase winding up at the back of the hall. A massive chandelier made of platinum metal, with sorcery lamps on each limb, hung from the ceiling. Their light shone a spectral blue.

Chester's footsteps slapped echoes on the floor, sounding out of place and clumsy in this world of shining silence. He tried to step more regally – the way Travis moved, like an aristocrat – but he knew he wasn't cut out for it. With every step, he winced at the clunk.

At the top of the staircase, he ventured down a corridor. Its walls were a glorious emerald green, lit by lamps of gold. When Chester breathed, he tasted honey-smoke on the air. Faint music called him towards the ornately carved door at its end.

This was it. He had to stride in proudly, to look the part of a wealthy young gentleman. He placed a nervous hand on the door. The wooden carvings were sleek, a cold touch of reality beneath his fingertips. There was no point
wishing or regretting. Chester had to face the situation he was in and fight to make the best of it.

Frederick Yant
, he told himself.
You're Frederick Yant and you belong here
. He stepped inside.

The audition hall was not what he had expected. The circular room had the same aroma of honey-smoke, only more intense. He had entered at the ground level. Looking up he could see seats looped on a high platform, surrounding a shallow pit of gleaming wood. If he squinted, Chester could make out silhouetted figures through the smoke. His stomach knotted.
Songshapers
. They must be the Conservatorium's teachers, here to judge the auditions.

A round stage coiled in the centre of the pit. A young woman, perhaps four years older than Chester, stood on the stage. Her hair fell in silver-blonde ringlets, as pale as winter sky, and she held a flute to her lips. The tune that escaped was light and carefree, like a breath of wind among the fields.

Then suddenly, it changed. It was not the wind but a storm, a torrent of rain, a cry of crumpled roofs and screaming children. Chester heard the story in the music. The terror. The crack of lightning. The whip and the whistle of rain. The music grew louder, louder, whipping up into a frenzy of notes and fear and panic.

Chester's breath caught in his throat and he clutched his fiddle case to his chest. The woman was good. Too good. If this was the standard expected of those here to audition …

The smoke changed. Its scent of honey faded and a stink of coal and fumes and charcoal blasted into Chester's
mouth. The room turned dark and his skin felt as though a thousand tiny sparks were crawling across its surface. Was she even
allowed
to play Music like this? No one had tried to stop her; perhaps she came from a family of Songshapers. So long as she didn't touch the Song itself …

In the air above the stage, a bolt of lightning flashed. Chester jerked back. The room was bathed in sudden light and just for a moment, he saw the faces of the Songshapers sitting high up in the stands. Dark eyes and cold mouths, twisted into unreadable lines. Then the flash faded, and they were gone.

The young woman lowered her flute. The Music stopped. There was a long silence, and the smoke began to clear.

Chester exhaled. As the smoke faded, the rest of the room grew clearer and shapes materialised out of the grey. He wasn't the only spectator watching from ground level; a dozen or so other teenagers stood on the far side of the pit. Clutching their music books and instruments, they looked as pale and startled as Chester felt. These had to be his fellow applicants. One or two began to clap but shut up hastily when there was no sign that the Songshapers overhead would join their applause.

‘Thank you, Bethany,' said a voice from overhead. ‘You may leave.'

The young woman gave a neat little curtsey before turning away. On her way out she passed Chester and raised one perfectly plucked eyebrow at the sight of him. Chester felt his face burn but he didn't look away. He waited until Bethany had passed into the corridor before he scurried forwards to join the other applicants.

‘Well,' said the voice overhead. His voice was neat and crisp, every syllable like a bite of dry cracker. ‘I hope you all understand why we must be so selective. The power of a Songshaper can't be entrusted to just anybody.'

Chester sensed a few muscles clenching in the bodies around him. He felt his own throat go even drier and he licked his lips to moisten them.

‘Bethany is a third-year student of Music,' said the voice. ‘She is an example of what you might achieve here, should you have the talent and perseverance to succeed in your studies.'

A third-year student.
The panic in Chester's stomach lessened a little. So it had been a demonstration, not an audition.

He squinted up at the balcony to see where the voice came from. The smoke of Bethany's Music had mostly cleared now and he could make out the faces of the Songshapers once more. The speaker was a middle-aged man with a beard the colour of straw. Dark-rimmed spectacles graced the arch of his nose and he peered down at the applicants through tinted lenses.

‘Someone start, then,' he said.

A few people shifted their weight. There were a couple of nervous coughs and whispers. No one stepped onto the stage.

‘Go on,' said the man. ‘Hurry up. Anybody.'

Chester glanced at the others. He had expected a running sheet, a list of names, and auditions in order. But instead, there was silence in a sea of anxious breaths that sloshed around him, hot and nervous.

A boy stepped forwards.

‘Token?'

Trembling a little, the boy held up his silver ticket. Up high on the balcony, a female Songshaper gave a melodic little whistle. The token quivered in the boy's hand. He gasped and released the paper as it twisted from his fingers and floated up and out of his grasp.

Above, the woman's whistle twisted into a quiet tune. A scale of notes danced upwards, coaxing the paper towards her. Craning his neck, Chester saw it float up like dust through the air, a twist of flittering silver, until it landed in her outstretched hand.

He realised he was holding his breath and released it. The Songshapers passed the ticket among themselves, taking note of the boy's name and family. Finally they nodded and gestured for him to begin.

And so began the auditions. One by one, Chester's companions stepped onto the stage. Some played violin, or flute, or harpsichord. One boy sang a perfect scale and Chester could see clearly that he'd had operatic training.

The Songshapers made requests occasionally: ‘Play a chromatic scale,' or ‘Transpose that into F'. Some students played perfectly; others blew off notes, or squeaked out a horrific mistake in their timing. Whenever this happened, Chester saw the attitudes change in the Songshapers above. Their mouths tightened. Their eyes hardened.

The minutes wore on. The group dwindled. When each audition drew to a close, Chester dug his fingernails into his palms. Finally, he knew he couldn't put it off any longer. This audition was only the start of tonight's plan
and he couldn't waste hours on the sidelines. He dropped his suitcase to the floor and stepped forwards, fingers wrapped around his fiddle case.

‘Token?' The woman sounded almost bored now, as though the night had dragged on long enough already.

Chester fished the silver scrap from his pocket and offered it up, trying to hide the tremble in his fingers. The Songshaper whistled her summoning melody and the token floated up into her outstretched palm.

‘Very well, Mr Yant,' she said, a moment later. ‘Play me a run of major scales.'

Chester took a shaky breath. He tucked his fiddle beneath his chin, raised his bow and began to play. The first note was hesitant, but as soon as it rang out – alive with music, rich with the sound of the instrument he'd helped to carve – he felt his fear leave him.
Just another performance
.

He ran his bow along the strings and carved out the scales. C, then G, then D, rising higher and higher as his breath grew tighter in his throat and suddenly there was nothing but the sound and his fingers and the dust-streaked yearning of the air, and –

‘Enough,' said the woman.

Chester fell silent, halfway through his F scale. He glanced up at her, uncertain. Had he made a mistake?

‘Play me something … difficult,' she said.

Chester blinked.
Difficult?
He cleared his throat. ‘Do you mean a song, ma'am?'

There was no response from up high, just the arch of staring faces, stern and silent. Their eyes bore down like
weights and Chester fought the urge to crumple under their pressure. He cast his mind around –
something difficult, something difficult
…

There was only one thing for it.

Chester pressed his bow to the strings. He couldn't afford to lose himself in the music, or fall into the trap that had ensnared him last time. He couldn't afford to show them the truth: that he could already connect to the Song. Because if they found out what he could do – without any legal training – he'd be lucky to live until the end of the chorus.

He cleared his throat again. ‘“The Nightfall Duet.”'

And he began. The notes fell away, rolling from his strings into the air. He moved his bow like an extension of his fingers – long and lithe, with all the subtle flexibility of human flesh. One note then the next. With every note, Chester forced his eyes to stay open. He forced reality to stick in his head.

He found himself speeding up, racing ahead from the opening to the verse, from the verse to the chorus … Then he heard the Song. It was halfway into the chorus when it happened: the faintest wisp of another tune. Something more, something deeper, awoken in his mind by the frenzy of his own music. He felt it in his fiddle first, then in his fingers, his breath, his limbs. In the curve of the floor and the dust of the air …

No!

He forced the sound away and refocused on the music in his fingers. He couldn't let it happen again. He knew the lure of the Song but as he played, Susannah's final whisper echoed in the back of his mind.

You should have more faith in you.

This wasn't a moment to bluff. It wasn't a moment for false confidence, for lies and bluster, for the clickety-clack of bravado on his tongue. He knew he was nervous. He knew he was afraid. His stomach felt ready to revolt, with the thundering cavalcade of notes and nerves all writhing deep within his belly.

But this tune was part of him. It was
his
tune. His music. His fingers on the bow.

He ignored the lure of the Song and tightened his focus, pulling in his mind to lasso the music in his fingertips. It felt surreal, as though he was half-awake, half-dreaming. The audition room seemed to vanish around him, as dark as the Hush. All he knew was the fiddle, and the bow, and the melody. The Song was a trespasser. It was the tune of the external world and Chester didn't have to heed its call.

The final verse rang true and he pulled his bow from the strings. The last note lingered, long and mellow. Chester realised suddenly that he'd closed his eyes without even meaning to. He blinked, startled at how deeply he had lost himself. But there was no taste of honey on the air and no one was shouting for a pistol, so –

‘Thank you,' said a man, in the darkness above his head. ‘That will be all.'

Chester took a long, deep breath. He bent to open his fiddle case and laid Goldenleaf down in the velvet folds. He did it gently, as if he was laying a child down to sleep.

Somehow, he had done it. He had kept the Song at bay. He had kept himself alive, and kept the plan in action.

A red-bearded servant waited outside the audition room. ‘This way, sir.'

‘When do I find out?' Chester said, slightly perturbed at being addressed as ‘sir'. ‘If I got in, I mean?'

‘In a moment, sir,' the servant said. ‘I'm here to lead you to the results room. If you'll step this way …'

Chester followed the man down the corridor. Shadows moved in the lamplight around him, tinged by the cold surrealism that had settled on Chester when he had played the duet. He felt as though part of him was still tainted by his near connection to the Song, as though the very air was thrumming at his touch, waiting for him to reach out and seize it. To listen for it and hear its melody.

He shook his head, struggling to clear it.

The results room was small and plush. Leather sofas curved into its corners and a gold-framed painting of an orchestra covered an entire wall. A man sat behind a marble bench, fingers resting on the edges of an enormous wooden tray.

The tray was compartmentalised into two dozen open segments, each containing a small glass bauble. Most of the baubles glowed red while about a third of them glowed green. Chester noticed with a lurch that the last few baubles remained unlit, cold and lifeless in their little nests of wood.

The man glanced up at Chester then picked the first unlit bauble from its tray. ‘This one is you,' he said. ‘The result hasn't come through yet. They're taking a while to deliberate.'

Chester felt his throat tighten. ‘How will I know if –'

As he spoke, there was a flash of light from the bauble. In the man's fingers, it shone with a strange little spark of gold. Then it faded into a quiet green, the colour of leaves in the cornfields.

The man nodded, and slipped the ball back into its compartment. ‘Congratulations.'

‘I got in?'

‘Yes, lad. You got in.'

Chester stared at him. The relief hit him with an almost physical blow. He hadn't failed. He hadn't let the gang down. He hadn't let Susannah down.

He hadn't let his father down.

But the relief was flirting with terror now, and Chester half-suspected terror was leading the dance. Passing his audition was only the first part of tonight's plan. The only thing that counted as a triumph was to survive the night and to flee this city with his father by his side.

‘Well?' the man said. ‘Are you going to take it?'

Chester blinked. He realised that the man was offering
him a silver ring. He took it with a nod of thanks, expecting to feel just the lifeless cold of metal.

To his surprise, the metal wasn't cold. As soon as he touched it, Chester felt the Music run up through his veins. It wasn't just the lullaby of a sorcery lamp. It was fast and charged and aching, like a torturous song that would make you dance until your feet bled and your breath faltered. It shivered into his flesh, through the skin of his palm, and Chester fought a sudden urge to hurl it back onto the desk.

‘Put it on, lad,' said the man.

Chester realised, too late, that the man was watching him closely. He took a quiet breath and forced a smile, trying to hide his reaction. He wasn't supposed to be trained in Songshaping yet, and he wasn't supposed to sense the Music in sorcery objects. If the man knew what a rush he'd felt from touching the ring …

He slipped the ring onto his finger. Its Music pulsed around him, brushing against the fingers on either side to send a trio of shivers through his body. Chester gritted his teeth and forced his smile to widen. ‘What an honour, sir.'

The man nodded, relaxing a little. ‘That's your official student ring, lad. Don't lose it – or sell it – or you'll find yourself out on the streets. We don't give them out lightly.'

‘Does it have any powers, sir?' Chester said, trying to sound innocent.

The man shook his head. ‘It's just ornamental. A symbol of what you've achieved – of earning your place in the Conservatorium.'

Liar
, Chester thought. He felt the Music pulsing up through his skin, his veins. This ring was the entire reason he'd needed to audition for the Conservatorium. It was his ticket to bypass the intruder alarms, his route past the security spells, and his pass into the inner rooms.

It was his ticket to his father.

‘Any formal activities tonight, sir?' he said.

The man shook his head. ‘You're welcome to take refreshments in the hall if you fancy it but most new folks just head up to bed. You've earned a good rest, I'd say.'

Chester gave a silent snort. Rest? The only way tonight was likely to prove restful was if a Songshaper blew his head off and his resting was of the eternal variety.

‘So it's okay to just go up to bed?' he said.

The man nodded. ‘Fourth floor for new recruits. Davidson here will point you towards your room.' He gestured towards the servant, who gave a neat little bow and beckoned for Chester to follow.

‘Thank you, sir.'

The man waved a dismissive hand. ‘Oh, don't thank me, lad. You earned your place here.' He gave a tight little smile. ‘Welcome to the Conservatorium.'

Susannah dangled from a balcony. Her fingers streamed with cold, her hands burned raw from the weight of her body, and the shadows sloshed a sea of eerie rain.

The balcony protruded from the side of the Conservatorium, stained black by the darkness of the Hush. Echoes
congealed in the air around her, swarming in packs around Weser City. Their translucent bodies ebbed and flowed, a pack of ghostly monsters.

‘Damn this city,' she whispered.

There was too much sorcery in the air. Too much Music, too much magic. Too much runoff and residue, leaking through into the Hush and staining the shadows with sorcery. Ten minutes earlier, she had almost slipped when a solid handhold had dissolved into a gritty, shining powder. Moments after that, a spectral creature had swooped at her face, a vicious rake of claws and molten bronze.

But Susannah had no choice. If she was going to lay these charges, she had to do it in the Hush. She couldn't climb up the Conservatorium walls in the real world: even at night, there were shoppers, diners and shift workers who might spot her silhouette.

She took a deep breath, pulled another charge from her pocket, and pressed it into a crack in the mortar.

‘Is that right?' she said, bending her mouth down towards her shoulder.

Two glass communication globes adorned her collar, one transmitting her voice to Dot. She could just glimpse Dot's face from the corner of her eye: a shine of distorted blonde in the glass.

‘Move it a brick left,' Dot said. ‘The charges have to be spaced as evenly as possible around the building. If my calculations are right, you're about a foot off target.'

‘Got it.'

Susannah shifted her weight onto her right arm, ignoring the strain in skin and muscles. She sucked back
the pain and dug her left fingers into the gap in the mortar, fishing around in the crack until she located the little metal strip and yanked it out. It almost slipped from her grasp, but she swiped with a desperate grab and snatched it between two fingers.

She swore aloud. That was one good thing about working in the Hush. You could make as much noise as you liked, and mostly it was only the Echoes that could hear you.

‘Left, you said?'

‘Yeah,' Dot said. ‘About the same height, if you can.'

Susannah gritted her teeth and edged along the balcony railing, ignoring the burn in her fingertips. She prodded around until she found a slightly crumbling section of mortar around the requisite brick, then shoved the metal charge into the gap. ‘Better?'

There was a pause, and Susannah guessed that Dot was comparing her blueprint against her sorcery map of Susannah's location.

‘Yeah,' she said eventually. ‘That'll have to do, I think. Right, now the next one goes twenty bricks to your right …'

As Susannah clambered along the wall, she fought back a surge of envy for Dot: sequestered in the hotel room, warm and safe with her maps and cocoa. Better than throbbing fingers, dark and rain.

But if she was honest with herself, Susannah's main discomfort wasn't the climbing. Despite the pain and the fear and the darkness, it made her feel useful. It made her feel alive. No, it wasn't the climb that worried her. It was
her own brain, and the countless disasters it was dreaming up. It was the fact that a gaping hole remained at the heart of her plan …

Chester.

Her brain seized upon the distraction. Would he have completed his audition yet? Or was he playing right now, pressing his bow to the strings in front of the judges? Was he hitting an off note and receiving his rejection?

Something buzzed against her shoulder. It took her a moment to register that it wasn't Dot's communication globe. It was Chester's.

Susannah stopped swinging and her fingers jolted painfully at this jerk against momentum. She reached up for the next balcony and clambered onto it, releasing her fingers with a litany of hissed curses. This release from her bodyweight made the sting even worse, erasing the numbness to leave only pain.

‘Chester?' She unbuttoned the globe from her shoulder and cradled it in her palm, allowing herself a proper view of its contents. ‘Chester, are you all right?'

It took a few seconds for the image to form. There was a swell of light and a jerk of heat against her palm … and there he was. Tanned face, dark hair. Dark eyes staring up at her from the depths of the glass. For a moment, all she could do was stare at him.

‘Captain?' he said. ‘I got in.'

Susannah leant her head back against the wall. Hush-rain fell around her, swirling and cold, its touch as insubstantial as a breath. She clutched the globe tighter
and leant forwards again, showing Chester her smile of relief. ‘Where are you now?'

‘I'm in my room,' Chester said. ‘I think I can sneak off without anyone noticing. I told them I was going to bed for an early night.'

Susannah nodded. ‘You remember where to let Travis inside?'

‘Yeah. I remember.'

‘He's there now,' Susannah said. ‘You'd better hurry – I don't want him lingering too long around the entrance. People might get suspicious.'

‘On my way, Captain.' Chester hesitated. ‘Are you all right?'

Susannah couldn't hold back her smile. Her fingers burned, her muscles ached, and Echoes swirled through the night like storm clouds. But their plan was on track, and they were all still alive.

‘Yeah,' she said. ‘I'll see you soon. Be careful.'

‘You too, Captain.'

And then he was gone and Susannah was left with an empty glass bauble in her fingers. She stared at the globe and her mind floated back to what her thoughts had been before the interruption – to the gaping hole in the centre of her plan, one that all her tossing and turning and nightmares had proven unable to fill. It was a gap that had originally been filled with Chester's sacrifice, but that option was no longer on the table. She could barely even
think
of it – the cold, calculated horror of her original plan – without a bitter sting of self-loathing.

Yet even with the plan incomplete, they had no choice
but to proceed. If they had missed tonight's auditions, they'd have been forced to wait an entire year for the next intake. It was too late to back out now, too late to delay. The prisoners in the cage wouldn't last another year.

She would think of something. She still had time. When she was down there, in the dark of the Hush, faced with the cage itself …
then
she would find the answer. She would spot a loophole, or find another angle, another way to break the Music.

She still had time.

Susannah pinned the globe back to her shoulder, giving it a rough little jerk to ensure it was safely secured. Then she rubbed her hands together, winced at the pain, and launched herself back over the balcony. There was no time to soothe her aches.

She had a pocketful of charges to lay.