The Hush (28 page)

‘Remember what to hum?' Chester whispered.

‘Contrary to popular belief, I'm not a complete idiot,' Travis said. ‘Just because I'm not a musician doesn't mean I can't remember a simple tune.'

‘Sorry. Just making sure.' Chester retrieved his fiddle and stood towards the leftmost end of their line. Travis stepped in the opposite direction, standing at the rightmost edge. They stared at each other, spaced barely two yards apart. The silence stretched.

‘Three,' Chester said, ‘two, one.'

They hummed. It was a four-note bar, hummed only once: a simple quartet of tones. But Dot had enchanted the extinguishers well, and it was enough. There was a faint buzz in the air, a sudden snap of cold, and for a moment the shimmer in the air before them vanished …

Chester and Travis didn't hesitate. They threw themselves over the line of extinguishers, through the blank space of air where the shimmer had been. A moment later the cold was gone and the air was moving again, the extinguishers' energy spent.

They were through.

Chester stared back at the flame wall. It looked the same from this side: a haze of heat in the air, nothing deadly, nothing special. But now, for perhaps the first time in history, an unauthorised intruder stood on its inner side.

Chester felt a slow grin cross his lips. They had done it. He glanced up and down the flame wall, catching its glint in the corners of his eyes. It was all just Music, really, when it came down to it.

He let out a slow breath. ‘I guess any tune can be tinkered with, if you know what you're doing.'

‘Remind me to shake Dorothy's hand when we see her,' Travis said.

Chester turned to assess what lay before them: the shape of a vast doorway, hewn from a curving wall of stone. They were truly approaching the inner sanctum now.

Chester placed a hand on the stone door. It was cool beneath his fingertips, but there was no sign of a lock. ‘How do we …?'

Travis shook his head. ‘Don't look at me. I thought you were the one who was good at Musical lock-picking.'

‘But I need an actual lock to pick. I can't hear anything …'

Chester ran his fingers across the stone again, to be sure. Nothing. There was no sign of Music. No sign of sorcery. Just blank stone. His skin began to tingle.

‘No doorknob,' he whispered. ‘No handle. No lock.'

They both stared at the door. This wasn't good. They had devoted their planning to crossing the flame wall; it hadn't occurred to them that there might be something so mundane as a door in their way. If they couldn't break through quickly, their timing to meet the others would be thrown out of kilter …

‘Hurry,' Travis whispered, as though sensing his thoughts. ‘The longer we make the others wait, the more likely they are to be spotted …'

‘I know.'

Chester pressed a palm against the door. He sucked against the back of his teeth, throwing every inch of concentration into the touch of the doorway. Nothing. Just cold stone.

‘There has to be a way,' he said. ‘I mean, it's obviously a doorway. But if there's no physical lock, and there's no Musical lock …' They stared at each other. ‘We have to go in through the Hush, don't we?'

Travis gave a slow nod. ‘I don't see what other answer there could be. If the door doesn't work in the real world, then –'

‘– it's designed to work only in the Hush,' Chester finished.

He didn't need to speak his fears aloud; he saw the same anxiety written on Travis's face. Susannah had made it clear they were not to enter the Hush until the very last moment. There was too much Music in the Conservatorium. Too much sorcery, leaking through to poison the Hush. There could be Echoes, or sinking floors, or hidden drops into darkness …

They dropped to the floor. Chester heard a sharpness in Travis's breath, betraying his tension.

‘Three,' he whispered, ‘two, one.'

They hummed. The world melted into black.

Chester wrenched his head up, alert for signs of danger. He half-expected to see a hundred Echoes encircling them like a pack of translucent wolves, but he saw nothing but the dark swirl of Hush-rain, as dry as falling leaves.

He glanced up at the door and his body stiffened. The door was gone, replaced by an arch of empty air.

They crossed the threshold into a vast, black room. The inside was mostly invisible, tainted by the mist and rain. Chester strained his eyes through the little bubble of light that surrounded him, but, again, all he could make out was shadow.

He moved forwards but as soon as he was inside the room, there was a yank behind his belly button. Chester let out a cry and the room spun violently before colour and life flooded back into the world. He blinked and almost slipped backwards, slightly stunned by the sudden light.

The real world. They had been yanked out of the Hush, back into the stark white shine of reality. ‘What …?'

‘This room,' Travis said, glancing around. ‘It must be the final protection, to stop people finding the prisoners. You mustn't be able to access the Hush in this room unless the security system's shut down.'

The room was a vast cylinder that reached all the way up to the top of the building. The space was massive. In Chester's estimate, an entire saloon could fit comfortably inside. It stretched up for four or five storeys and was capped by an enormous copper dome. Chester remembered seeing the dome atop the Conservatorium when he'd stood outside; it was odd to think that he was
here
, now, in the belly of the building, staring up at its underside.

There was no sign of life in the room, just vast white walls and a floor of polished marble. On the far side of the room, a round basin was carved into the floor: an artificial pond full of rippling water.

A row of trundle beds arced around the curve of the walls. The bedside tables were littered with strange implements: metal vices, strange knives and contraptions, silver needles, and bags of dripping fluid. And above each bed, a brass pipe extruded from the wall, feeding down into a pair of mechanical earpieces that lay upon the empty pillows.

‘So this is where they do it,' Chester whispered. ‘Where they turn people into Silencers.'

He thought of Susannah, strapped to one of these beds, screaming as they forced the Music into her ears and the toxins into her veins. He thought of Sam, writhing as the sorcery went wrong and tainted his mind …

And he thought of his father.

His father had been here, buckled to one of those beds. Chester tried to imagine how it would feel to be abducted from his home, deep in fever, and dragged through the Hush to this place. To this bed. To this torture.

His stomach churned. He doubled over, fighting the sudden urge to retch.

‘Are you all right?' Travis said, alarmed.

Chester clutched his fiddle case tightly, taking a deep breath. He forced himself back up. ‘Yeah. Sorry. It's just so …'

‘Awful? Bleak? Depressing?'

‘Yeah. That.'

‘Come on.' Travis sounded shaken. ‘The others are counting on us.'

Chester nodded, but it took all his effort to pull his gaze away. He glanced up at the ceiling once more, at the copper dome, so deceptively calm in its metallic gleam. There wasn't time to reflect on the horrors of this chamber. Susannah, Dot and Sam were waiting to break through but he and Travis still hadn't laid their charges underneath.

He wrenched his gaze down to the floor, where a ring of rough stone tiles hugged the wall. The rest of the floor was smooth marble. Did he dare step out onto the marble? It looked solid, unlike the glass in Yant's shattervault … But surely the Conservatorium would be better protected than a sugar baron's house …

‘There must be a trap,' he said. ‘It's too easy.'

They both stared at the empty floor.

‘Maybe there's a pattern in the marble tiles,' Chester added. ‘You know: you can only step on certain ones, or …'

Travis shook his head. ‘I doubt it. If Songshapers are bustling around doing experiments on the prisoners in those beds, wouldn't they want to know that they can trust their own feet?'

‘Well,' Chester said, ‘maybe you need special boots. Or a ring with higher level permission spells built in.'

He glanced down at the student ring on his finger, shining silver. Had the judges at his audition worn silver rings, too, or had theirs been made of a different metal? Gold, perhaps? He couldn't remember.

‘I hope not,' Travis said, ‘or we'll be stuck here for a very long time.'

Chester realised that he was right. Retreat was no longer an option. The only way to pass back through the stone door was in the Hush – and the security systems prevented them from entering the Hush inside this room. They were trapped. Either they completed the gang's plan, or they waited here for capture.

‘There's got to be something we're missing,' Chester said. ‘Something to keep out intruders who don't know the secret.'

He scanned the blank walls, the white tiles. His eyes roamed up to the copper domed ceiling then down to the glint of metal instruments beside the beds.

And then he noticed the mirrors. Circular sheets of glass and metal barely a foot in diameter adorned the walls above each bed. ‘What are those for?'

Travis shook his head. ‘No idea, I'm afraid. I wish Dot was here – she'd spot a mechanical trap in a jiffy.'

Chester risked a hesitant step to the side, a little closer to the nearest bed. He studied the mirror with suspicious eyes. There was nothing outwardly dangerous about it. It was a circle of glass, no more deadly than a painting or tapestry. But every mirror pointed to the centre of the room, as though their reflections might meet in some invisible point.

Chester laid Goldenleaf at his feet and wriggled out of his vest.

‘What are you doing?' Travis said.

‘Testing something.'

Chester pulled off a boot and draped the vest over its end, allowing him to hold out the vest without touching it. Cautiously, he edged a little closer to the bed – and extended the dangling vest in front of the mirror.

It happened so fast that Chester almost dropped the boot. With a screech of sound and scorching heat, beams of light shot from every mirror in the room, blasting into the centre where they met in a blazing point.

Chester gaped at the boot in his hand. A trail of smoking fabric hung from it, half-disintegrated by the force and heat of the blast.

‘Well,' he said weakly, ‘good thing we checked before we stepped onto the marble.'

Travis stared at the smoking vest. ‘Good thing I didn't lend you one of my quality waistcoats.'

Chester shook the charred remains of the vest onto the floor. He waited a moment for his boot to cool then shoved
his foot back into its folds. The leather was warm against his toes, but it didn't seem to be at risk of catching fire.

‘Look!' Travis said.

Chester looked up and his stomach sank. The light beams that crossed the room had not faded or retracted into the mirrors.

They had begun to move.

The beams roamed up and down, moving and crossing each other at odd angles. Each beam shone out from its mirror in a dead straight line, but each line moved its destination point from up to down and side to side in a slow-spinning dance of danger. The lines of light swerved and crisscrossed, like ever-changing partners in a silent ballroom.

Beautiful and deadly.

Chester stared. They seemed to be safe on the ring of stone tiles, but they couldn't cross the room. There was no way to predict the path the light beams would take; there was no way to dodge or weave. Beneath the heat of the dancing beams, they would be fried to cinders.

‘There has to be a way to turn them off!'

Travis didn't respond. Chester waited a moment, still staring at the lights. ‘Travis?'

Still nothing.

Chester turned to look at the older boy, confused by his silence. Travis had backed up against the wall, his eyes as wide and white as the marble flooring. His hands were pressed against the wall and he didn't seem to be breathing.

‘Travis?' Chester placed a hesitant hand on his shoulder. ‘Are you all right?'

The older boy nodded but his gaze did not leave the light beams. Inch by inch, his back slid down the wall until he was almost crouching. He watched the beams like a mouse watching a cat, as though he didn't know whether to freeze or run.

‘Penelope,' he whispered.

Chester stared at him, confused. ‘What …?'

Travis wet his lips. ‘My sister, Penelope. The one who vanished – the one they took. I told you she was an inventor.'

Chester nodded. ‘Just like Dot. That's part of the reason they fell in love, wasn't it?'

‘Penelope was an artist,' Travis whispered. ‘She didn't invent practical things, like Dot. She invented beautiful things. Musical wallpaper, and light displays, and enchanted dinnerware for the most fashionable Weser parties …'

‘What's that got to do with –'

Travis raised a shaky finger, pointing at the beams of light. ‘She invented those lights. You see the way they move? The way they dance? That was Penelope's last invention – the last thing she showed to me before she vanished. She was so proud; her dancing lights were going to revolutionise ballrooms, she said …'

Chester stared out at the light beams. His stomach twisted as he realised what Travis was telling him. ‘You mean, they stole her invention? Twisted it into some kind of killing machine?'

‘My sister's lights were beautiful,' Travis said. ‘They were designed to feel like cobwebs when they touched you; soft and fragile and shining.'

His eyes hardened behind his spectacles, melting slowly from shock to fury. ‘But these
people
… It wasn't enough for them just to take Penelope. They had to take her greatest triumph and poison it, and turn her lights into weapons that burn people's flesh.'

There was a long silence.

Travis slid back up the wall, jerking up onto his feet. ‘Well,' he said. ‘They didn't predict one thing.'

‘What?'

‘My sister showed me how to work the light beams.' Travis clenched his fists. ‘And I know how to shut them down.'