The Hush (27 page)

The Conservatorium brimmed with Music.

The red-bearded servant left Chester at the top of the staircase. ‘Just along this corridor, sir, and take a turn right,' he said. ‘Your room should be the seventh door along. Will you require assistance in –'

‘No, thanks,' Chester said. ‘I'll be fine.'

The servant nodded, gave a little bow, and finally scuttled off to deal with the other auditionees.

Now that Chester was alone, he allowed himself to revel in the building's flush of Music. When he brushed a hand across the wallpaper, a whisper of warmth buzzed into his skin. When he stepped through an ornate crimson doorframe, he was hit by a scent of smoke, burned butter and honey. A drumbeat tingled at the back of his skull.

This was where the Songshapers trained. Where they practised, where they studied, and where – hour after hour, year after year – they carved their craft from their fingertips. After centuries, their Music had left a mark on this building and on every object inside it.

Around the corner, a dozen sorcery lamps dangled along a chain from one end of the corridor to the other. Each was a different colour: emerald green, bloody crimson, sea sapphire. As Chester stepped into the ambit of each coloured shine, a new lick of sorcery played itself into his veins. When he accidentally brushed a lamp of green, he heard a distant gust of wind in the trees and the scent of prairie grass. When he prodded the red, a shock of heat rushed through his limbs. When he touched a lamp of shining blue, his entire body flushed with a chill of water, as though he had plunged into the sea.

And when he retreated, his clothes were as dry as bone.

Chester's bedroom was small but luxurious. A crimson tapestry covered the wall, depicting the Song: a beautiful lady, woven of pure gold thread. She stood atop a mountain, her arms spread wide, as musical symbols tumbled down from her fingers and glinted with all the shine of sorcery.

After Chester gave his report to Susannah, he opened his suitcase on the bed. Inside lay an assortment of expensive clothes and reams of sheet music: perfectly innocent luggage for a new student to carry. But he brushed all that aside, turfing waistcoats and sonatas onto the bed until the bottom of the case was exposed. Chester ran his fingers along its edges, pressed a little dimpled button in the leather and whistled a quiet run of notes.

The hidden compartment clicked open.

He retrieved the folded servant uniform and began to change, as quickly as he could, from waistcoat to crimson vest, from silk shirt to cotton. Chester transferred the
contents of his pockets to the new outfit, but the only external sign he kept of his status as a student was the ring on his finger.

Servants wore rings, too, though they gave more limited access. Unfortunately, however, servants' rings were bronze, not silver. Hopefully no one would look too closely.

Chester relocked the hidden compartment, bundled his belongings back into the suitcase, and checked himself in the mirror. His dark hair was still slicked down with the oil that Travis had applied to make him look like a cultured aristocrat. Chester ruffled his fingers through his hair, breaking up the clumps and coaxing his hair back into its normal disarray. He was a servant now, not a nobleman. He shouldn't be able to afford such luxuries as hair oil.

When his hair was back to its usual dark rumple, Chester nodded to himself. He was ready. No more putting it off. Travis was waiting for him and for every second he wasted, his friend's risk of exposure increased.

Chester glanced one last time around the room and gave it a silent farewell. His experience of life as a student of the Conservatorium had been very brief.

He swept his fiddle case into his arms, took a deep breath, and slipped back out into the corridor.

He found Travis by the building's back door, down in the dark of an alleyway. It took ten minutes of skulking and sneaking to find the place – ducking down corridors,
creeping down stairs, and avoiding eye contact with passing servants.

At one point, he had grabbed a doorknob to pass between hallways and it flared beneath his skin with a whisper of forgotten Music. Chester felt a vivid flash of thousands of other hands, over hundreds of years, who had touched this lump of metal. He yanked his hand away, startled.

A couple of servants tried to talk to him but Chester waved them off with an explanation that he was taking his master's violin down to an expert in the city for polishing.

‘You working for a new student?' a maid said. ‘Been sent from home to look after him, eh?'

Chester nodded, trying to look casual. ‘My master wants to make a good first impression tomorrow, so …' He waved the fiddle case in the air to finish his sentence.

‘Oh,' she said. ‘Well, it's nice to see some new faces around here.'

She gave him a little wink and a giggle then slipped away down the corridor. Chester blinked, stared after her for a moment, then continued on his way, telling himself firmly that the brief flurry of his heart was just the twinge of nerves.

‘What took you so long?' Travis said, when Chester reached the doorway. ‘Honestly, I've been standing here for half an hour; I have to keep ducking behind those piles of rubbish when I see someone coming. And let me assure you, that rubbish isn't likely to win the Weser perfumery's Scent of the Year award anytime soon.'

‘Sorry,' Chester said. ‘I had to wait to get my result …'

Travis waved a hand. ‘Just let me inside, would you? Do you have any idea how hard it's been, watching through the windows as all those pretty maids flounce about – and here I am, dressed perfectly to woo them – while I'm stuck out here in the cold? Pure tragedy, I tell you.'

‘I'm sure,' Chester said.

‘Honestly,' Travis went on, ‘the captain should offer me extra compensation for pain and suffering. I was almost at the point of sneaking in myself, security spells be damned.'

Chester tucked his fiddle case securely under one arm. With the other, he grabbed Travis's wrist, pressing his flesh against the older boy's own. ‘Ready?'

‘Yes, yes, of course I'm ready. Haven't we already established –'

Chester closed his eyes and focused on the silver ring on his finger. Dot had explained how this ring worked. He knew about the security spells, about the invisible locks on the Conservatorium thresholds.

He just had to figure out the key.

Chester blocked out the night, the chill of the doorway, the smell of rubbish. He blocked out the distant clangs and clamours from the kitchen, and the gleam of lamplight on the cobblestones. He tuned out Travis's babbling and let the Music of the metal trickle up his finger. It ran across his skin, into his veins, through the pores and creases of his flesh. He could hear it like a drumbeat, or like the amplification of his own pulse.

Dum, de dum de de, dum, de dum de de
…

And for a moment – for the briefest of moments – he caught it. It was like trying to catch a butterfly with your
fingers: too hesitant and it would flitter away, but too rough and it would be crushed in your palm. He felt his mind wrap around the tune and he let it run through his mind.

He had it.

Chester opened his eyes. ‘Now!'

They crossed the threshold. As Travis passed from outside into the corridor, there was a faint little twang in the air, like the feeling of reins being pulled too tightly, yanking a horse into a backwards jerk.

Chester knew the security spells were registering them, sensing his ring. He ran the tune through his mind, hummed it under his breath, and kept his hand gripped tightly on Travis's skin. He could feel the Music in the ring, and he coaxed it up his arm, and used the tune to push it out through his skin into Travis's …

No alarm bells rang. No traps fell from the ceiling, and no guards came running. They were through.

Chester let out a deep sigh, relief as sharp as the night air.

‘Thank the Song for that,' Travis said, as Chester let go of his wrist. ‘To be perfectly honest, I was worried there for a moment. Glad to see that our investment in you wasn't entirely a waste.'

‘Not entirely?'

‘Well, your taste in shirts still leaves rather a lot to be desired – but I suppose we can work on that when this job is over.'

‘More important things to worry about tonight?'

‘Or rather, more
pressing
things,' Travis said, looking smug. ‘Aha! Do you get it? “Pressing” – like you press a shirt?'

Chester rolled his eyes but couldn't hold back a smile. ‘Come on. We've got to lay the inner charges.'

Chester tried to shake the feeling that they were walking into a trap. He found it hard to concentrate with nothing to distract him from the Music of his ring. He wished he could yank it off – just slip it into his pocket, and make the melody stop churning. But the ring helped him sense when security thresholds were approaching – the rhythm of its Music increased in pace, and its metal burned hot against his skin – so he didn't dare remove it. He gritted his teeth, blinked his eyes, and tried to refocus on the world beyond its tune.

They hurried back along the corridors, mentally following the maps that Dot had drawn for them. Chester yanked Travis back a few times when he sensed a security threshold, and repeated his performance with the ring and its melody. These were terrifying moments: one little slip in the Music and they would be done for. But Chester kept his mind clear and his focus clean, and the melody flittered from his lips like the beating wings of a sparrow. Quiet, rhythmic, natural. His lips tingled at the tune.

The corridors resembled a maze, layering inwards in a spiral. They constantly turned left, moving closer to the centre of the Conservatorium until the plushness of the corridors faded: the deeper into the building they ventured, the sparser the decor grew. No more carpets or tapestries. No scent of perfume on the air or sound of clanging in the kitchen. Just shadow and stone, cold and dark.

And finally, they found what they were looking for.

Travis spotted it first. He grabbed Chester's sleeve and Chester froze, struck by a sudden fear that they were under attack. But the other boy pointed, his eyes narrowed through his spectacles. ‘Look.'

Chester looked. It took him a moment to realise what Travis was pointing at, because the thrum of the ring's melody was so strong in his head. He wrenched it off and pocketed it, breaking its contact with his skin. Then he stood, dizzy for a second, trying to readjust his senses to a silent world.

A shimmer. It was a shimmer on the air, like the heat waves that rose from a hot road in summer.

‘The flame wall,' Chester whispered.

Dot had warned them about the wall: a barrier of invisible flame, woven from magic. There was a rumour bandied about between students – those with family high in the Songshapers' ranks – that the wall was the ultimate protection, a shield of Music to keep the innermost core of the Conservatorium safe. There were whispers of strange experiments, of ancient secrets, of conspiracies and secret organisations beyond the flames …

But Chester didn't need to rely on rumours. Sam and Susannah
knew
what went on beyond the wall. It shielded the cylindrical core of the building, a vast chamber that reached up to the domed roof of the Conservatorium. Chester had no idea what it held in the real world, but he knew what it held in the Hush: a great cage of screaming souls, hundreds of prisoners weeping into metal bars and shadow …

Chester put down his fiddle, fished into his pocket and
pulled out a dozen tiny metal strips. Dot had designed them herself. She called them ‘extinguishers', but really they were Musical interference devices. When activated in a loop, they would break the chain of Musical heat that formed the flame wall. It would only last for a moment – just as long as the extinguishers were active – but in that moment they should be able to break through.

At least, that was the theory.

‘Dorothy had better be right about this,' Travis muttered, as they laid their metal strips in a line along the floor.

Chester felt the buzz of Music as he handled each extinguisher, and he marvelled for a moment at Dot's abilities. ‘They should work,' he said, sounding more confident than he felt. ‘I can feel the Music in them. They should counteract the flames – like when you're fighting an Echo, and you play back their song in reverse, or –'

‘I know how it's supposed to work,' Travis said. ‘I'm just hoping it actually works like that, instead of turning us all into tomato puddings or something.'

‘Tomato puddings?'

‘You should see what Dorothy dreams up when she's not in the mood for kitchen duty.'

They stepped back to inspect the line of extinguishers. Two bodies were needed to jump-start the mechanism, which was why Chester had been forced to sneak Travis inside with him for this part of the plan. He lined up his hands to measure, stepping sideways to check that the metal strips were properly aligned.