The Hush (18 page)

Chester swallowed. What lay below the shining floor? There was no way to see from this angle. Perhaps metal spikes, or a chamber of sorcery gases, or just a long dark fall onto stone …

‘This must have cost a fortune,' he breathed.

‘All the Linus sugar barons have got fortunes,' Susannah said. ‘And Yant's the richest of the lot.' She took a cautious step forwards, to the edge of the solid floor.

Chester fought an urge to grab her arm and haul her back to safety. ‘Don't step on the glass!'

‘I wasn't planning to. I was trying to figure out the trick.'

‘Trick?'

Susannah nodded. ‘There's got to be a secret way to reach the platform, so Yant himself can access it. If we can figure out how he does it …'

‘Maybe he flies across on a pegasus,' Chester said, only half-joking.

Susannah shook her head, looking distracted. ‘Have you ever seen their wings up close? They're two yards long each, at least. No room to fly around in here.'

‘Well,' Chester said, ‘maybe he climbs along the ceiling and drops down onto the platform.'

They both peered upwards. It was a plain wooden ceiling without the slightest sign of a handhold. There weren't even brackets in place for sorcery lamps. It was bare.

‘Yant's pretty old,' Susannah said, ‘and he's getting fat nowadays, from what I've heard. I doubt he's doing spider walks across the ceiling every time he wants to open his vault.'

They both stared into the room. The glass floor winked at them and Chester fought down a surge of frustration. Had they come this far – and risked this much – only to be thwarted by a sparkly floor? This job was his ticket
to information about his father, and he'd be damned if he gave up on account of Yant's flooring materials.

‘Does Yant know anything about Songshaping?' he said. ‘Maybe you have to cross the room in the Hush.'

Susannah glanced at him. ‘I don't think so. Our background research said he inherited his sugar fields from his father, and he grew up here in Linus – except for a few years he spent in Weser City as a young man, to visit his uncle …'

There was a pause.

‘Weser City?' Chester said. ‘The Conservatorium's in Weser City …'

‘He wasn't there for seven years, though,' Susannah said. ‘Not long enough to graduate from the Conservatorium. Anyway, we keep a list of licensed Songshapers and his name wasn't on it – I check that sort of thing before we start a job …'

‘So he's not a Songshaper,' Chester said. ‘Maybe it's his uncle who's a Songshaper; maybe his uncle set up this vault for him.'

‘Maybe,' Susannah said. ‘But I don't want to go into the Hush in this room. There's too much Music around here – in the door locks, for a start, and I bet there are other sorcery traps around, too.'

‘But can you think of a way Yant could use the Hush as his trick to cross the glass floor?'

Susannah hesitated. ‘I suppose it would be possible …'

‘Yeah?'

‘Well, you can build things in the Hush that don't exist in the real world. Things like echoships, for instance.'

Chester sucked down a deep breath. ‘You think whoever designed this vault could have built a solid floor in the Hush?'

‘Maybe,' Susannah said. ‘Or a ladder, or handholds on the ceiling, or a bridge across to the platform. Something that doesn't exist in the real world.'

‘Good way to keep out thieves,' Chester said, nodding. ‘If hardly anyone knows the Hush exists –'

‘– and if most of those people are listed on the licence register –' Susannah added.

‘– then your chances of being robbed have gone down to a tiny, tiny pool of potential suspects. Right?'

There was a pause.

‘Then it's Yant's bad luck,' Susannah said slowly, ‘that two of those potential suspects are standing at the edge of his vault. You know, I almost feel sorry for the man.'

‘Almost?' Chester said.

‘Not enough to quit this job.' She smiled at him, eyes alive with nervous energy. ‘Ready to pull off your first burglary?'

Chester pressed his hands to the floor. ‘Ready when you are, Captain.'

As the last note rolled off her lips, Susannah plunged into the Hush. Darkness swelled around her, cool and thick and bitter on her skin.

She blinked. Fog and rain slipped like lids across her pupils. The room looked sinister now, in the depth of the shadows. Raindrops swirled and danced through the air, teasing this way and that, as darkness danced a silent quadrille across the floor.

The floor.

The floor was still made of glass, glinting and deadly. Chester's guess had been wrong, then. There was no solid pathway built in the Hush.

‘Up there,' Chester whispered.

Susannah followed his gaze. It took a moment to make out the shape through the darkness. It was a basket seat, dangling from ropes and pulleys. Above it, a row of metal tracks ran like teeth along the roof, ready to winch the basket across to the platform.

Susannah let out a low whistle. ‘Whatever Yant's hiding in that chest,' she said, ‘he's going to some serious lengths to keep it safe. It's either very valuable, or very secret.'

‘All the better for us, right?'

She glanced at him, a little surprised. Chester grinned at her, his teeth shining white beneath his mop of black hair, and Susannah felt a strange little surge of pride. Here he was, on his first ever job and already talking like a member of the gang. If the boy was afraid, he wasn't showing it. In fact, he was the one coming up with good ideas. He was thinking on his feet, even in the heart of the wasp's nest.

Susannah returned his smile. ‘Right. All the better for us.'

She took a few steps towards the edge of the opaque floor then reached for the seat, swinging it down towards them, letting its ropes extend as a pulley clanked overhead.

‘Not enough room for both of us,' she said. ‘I'll go first and send it back for you.'

Chester nodded. ‘Be careful. If you fall onto the glass …'

Susannah felt a little clench in her gut. He sounded genuinely worried about her. She gave him a reassuring smile. ‘Don't worry. I'm our resident cat burglar, remember? If there's one thing I'm good at, it's keeping my balance.'

She leaped up into the basket seat. It swung wildly at the jolt of her weight, but Susannah grabbed the ropes to steady herself.

A long rope dangled in front of her with a metal contraption on its end. Susannah studied it for a moment. It was a handle to wind the rope, like the handle on a fishing line. She had seen plenty of fishing lines in her youth spent by the sea so it wasn't hard to figure out how to work the
contraption. She wriggled a little to make herself comfortable, then cranked the handle. The rope slipped around the winding device, the cogs creaked, and her basket jolted forwards.

It wasn't a smooth ride. Her basket jerked and bucked like a drunken horse, as her legs swung high above the glass. She stole a fleeting look behind her, just in time to see Chester vanish into the black.

She was alone.

All around her was the Hush, cold and black and swirling. It felt a little as though the world had vanished and there was nothing but this basket and its creaking attempt at flight …

Then she saw the platform. It appeared at the edges of her vision, a pillar of white marble erupting out of the darkness. Susannah gave the handle a final crank and tipped herself out of the basket onto the platform.

She knew she should probably stay as quiet as possible but couldn't help her call. ‘Chester? You all right?'

‘Yeah.' His voice was distorted in the Hush – almost as though it was dripping or dissolving, like a half-melted candle.

Susannah held the basket for a moment before she realised the problem. ‘I don't know how to send the basket back. Wait there and I'll come back once I'm finished with the chest.'

‘All right.'

Susannah suppressed a shiver at the melt of his voice. Then she told herself off for being silly. She spent half her life in the Hush nowadays, didn't she?
Nothing to be scared
of
, she told herself. But that was different. In the confines of the
Cavatina
, she could almost pretend she was in the real world. There was light, and she felt protected, and the rural Hush was mostly empty.

But here, in the middle of Linus … Well, it was different. Here, the Hush was potent. It could twist a voice, a breath, a soul. It could –

Stop it,
Susannah told herself.
Focus on the job
.

She released the basket. It hung limply in the shadows. Susannah crossed to the middle of the platform where the massive wooden chest sat on its pedestal.

It wasn't locked.

She frowned, staring at it. Why would Yant go to all this expense – the Musically locked door, the vault, the glass floor, the basket seat that only existed in the Hush – and leave his chest unlocked at the end of it?

Maybe he didn't expect anyone to get this far. Maybe he considered the room to be amply guarded, since so few would know how to reach this plat form, and those who did wouldn't take the risk.
Arrogance
. It was the flaw that had delivered countless treasures into Susannah's hands. Why should Yant be any different?

Still, something didn't feel right.

Susannah placed her hands on the chest. The wood felt normal and natural. A little cold, perhaps, but that was just the chill of the Hush. She hesitated for a moment, then shoved open the lid. It swung up in silence, like an opening jaw, and Susannah blinked at the darkness within.

It took a long moment for her eyes to focus. She pulled out a fistful of papers. The deeds to Yant's farmland. Some
stock certificates. The deeds to a mansion in Weser. None of it was useful so she placed each paper back into the chest as she dismissed it.

Once she'd moved through the business papers, she began to find more personal files. A birth certificate. A marriage licence. A family tree …

‘Got you,' she whispered.

Susannah slipped the pages into her pocket. With all the other forms and papers in the pile, it would be a long time before Yant noticed they were missing. All they had to do now was escape in silence and the man might take years to realise he had been burgled …

Then her eyes fell on a beautifully decorated wooden box. It was carved from dark mahogany, with an imprint of the family crest on its top. It sat beneath the pile of papers, right at the heart of the chest.

Susannah frowned, running her fingers across its bumpy surface. What was inside? It must be valuable, to be kept in a vault like this one. She knew she should leave it – after all, the identity papers were her goal tonight. But a peek couldn't hurt, could it? What if it contained the rarest of jewels? Gold? Diamonds? They could feed an entire town of beggars with such a prize. Her fingers lingered on the wooden carving …

She opened the box.

She had time to glimpse its contents – empty – before the music started. Deep inside the box, something mechanical plucked a quiet little tune …

The Sundown Recital.

It was playing the Sundown Recital in the Hush.

Susannah's skin turned cold. She shut the music box and shoved it back into place before slamming the entire chest shut with a bang. But she could still hear the music, tiny and tinkling, from deep inside the chest.

‘No,' she whispered. ‘No, no, no …'

She had been wrong. There had been a lock of sorts on the chest after all. Except it wasn't a lock in the traditional sense. It was a booby trap. A honeypot. And like a greedy child, she had fallen for its lure.

‘Captain!'

She whipped her head around, startled by Chester's mangled shout. All she saw was blackness: the roil and ripple of the Hush. All she felt was the unnatural rain, dry as whispers on her skin.

Chester shouted again, terror and the Hush distorting his voice into a strangled choke. ‘Echoes!' he cried. ‘Captain, they're coming out of the walls!'

Susannah's throat tightened. This vault was not an echoship. It wasn't built with protective layers of Music, designed to shield against the rain or the monsters of the Hush. In only moments, the Echoes would be upon them.

‘Get out of the Hush!' she shouted back. ‘Chester, get out of the Hush!'

No response. Susannah didn't know if he had heard her. The sound in here was already distorted, and with Echoes floating about … Well, her voice may well have simply dissolved into the slosh of magic.

Susannah lunged for the basket. She had to get back to Chester. The Echoes couldn't touch her – not since that
terrible night at the Conservatorium – but she knew that they could kill Chester.

She reached for the basket – but at that moment, it jerked away. Susannah swore, almost toppling off the platform onto the glass. She threw out her arms to steady herself and staggered backwards onto solid floor. The basket continued to move away, winching itself back across the ceiling in a jerky mechanical dance.

So this was the rest of the trap. The final snare. To catch a would-be thief on the platform, while the Echoes crowded in around her. To leave her no choice but to plunge through the glass floor …

No. Susannah couldn't stay here. If she didn't get to Chester fast she would be too late. He couldn't fight a dozen Echoes alone – not when every creature had its own unique melody to counter. Chester only had one set of lungs and one flute. He could fight one Echo, perhaps, but the others would destroy him while he played.

The thought of the Echoes reaching Chester, crowding over his body, touching him … it made her knees feel weak. And to her shock, she realised it wasn't just the fear of losing a pawn, of losing her deal with Sam, or losing a piece in her plan.

It was the fear of losing Chester.

She stumbled backwards, giving herself space for a run-up. Then she dashed to the edge of the platform and jumped, straight upwards, like a cat launching itself from its haunches. She swiped up with a desperate hand to where she hoped the basket would be. Instead, one of
her hands seized a greasy cog with coils of rope and chain around its belly. Desperately, she held on.

Below her stretched the glass floor, as mysterious as ever. It shone, painted almost silver by her bubble of Hush-light. Susannah gritted her teeth and swiped out with her other hand, grabbing a line of the pulley that ran further along the ceiling. Then she swung again and again. Her feet dangled wildly above the glass floor and her hands felt raw as sunburn on the slip and grease of metal cogs.

She was halfway across when she saw the first Echo. It faded into her circle of vision, pale and ethereal, a ghost in the dark of the Hush. It glided towards her. She knew that its melody – the tune that powered its supernatural existence – would be piping forth, but Susannah could not hear it.

She swung again and the creature reached her, cold and slithering, a snake of silent gas. It slid through her like water through cloth. There was a freezing sensation as it melted through her flesh – a terrible sense of frost, of death, of
violation
– and Susannah almost lost her grip on the pulleys and ropes. But she clenched her eyes shut and dangled, determined to endure its touch.

‘You can't hurt me,' she whispered. ‘You can't hurt me.'

The words gave her strength. They were a distraction. They let her know she was alive. She clung to her words, and she clung to the machinery, and the moments passed like slow-moving treacle …

And finally, defeated, the creature drifted away.

Susannah didn't give herself a chance to feel relief. She took another wild swing then another. She had to keep moving, to relieve the throb of her fingers and to return
to solid ground. One of her hands slipped and she caught a fistful of sharp metal. The pain was hot and the blood made her fingers more slippery. Susannah cursed, dangling from the other hand for a moment as she paused to wipe the blood across her shirt.

Ahead of her – at the very edge of her vision – something melted from darkness into her circle of light. Susannah took another swing, jolting her bubble of Hush-light forwards. She grunted, hands slick with blood, and felt her stomach drop as the scene came into view.

Chester stood in the doorway, feet on solid ground.

And before him floated the nebulous shapes of three Echoes.

Three
. Susannah was hit by a stab of panic. No one could fight three Echoes at once. They would be upon him in a moment. They would lunge forwards and kill him with a touch, melting his flesh with their Musical toxins …

But they weren't moving. They floated as though hypnotised – they weren't dissolving, but they weren't at their full strength either. Chester's flute was at his lips, piping out a melody, and his elbow was smacking out another rhythm on the doorframe. At the same time, his feet stomped and kicked a raucous beat on the floor.

Startled, Susannah realised what he was doing. To destroy an Echo, Chester would have to play its tune backwards on his flute. But he had only one flute, and no other way to make Music. So he had gone one level less deep; a level more basic. Instead of playing Music back at them, he was playing the rhythm – the beat and the bars behind their tunes. His elbow thumped out a three-beat
loop, while his feet stamped down the beat for a fast little ditty …

And before him, the Echoes remained frozen. They seemed confused, as though they'd never confronted such a thing before. The rhythm wasn't their melody, so it couldn't destroy them, but it was just enough to paralyse them …

‘Chester!' Susannah cried. ‘Get out of the Hush!'

He looked up at her, eyes wild with terror. But when he met her gaze, his expression shifted into something like relief. Susannah froze, struck by an unsettling thought. Was this why he had remained in the Hush – to wait and ensure that she was safe? No, surely he wouldn't …

She realised with a lurch that Chester's arm was bleeding: the thumping of his elbow was too much for the recently healed wound. But understanding flashed in his eyes and he gave her a nod. He dropped to his knees and hummed the tune.