The Hush (20 page)

Her tone told him that she believed him.

‘Are those stars all sorcery lamps now?' Chester said.

Dot shook her head. ‘The Music should fade in a couple of minutes. It's much harder to make permanent sorcery objects than to enchant something temporarily.'

They both stared back up at the stars.

Chester blinked again, still slightly startled at the thought that
his
music had breathed the light into those stars. No, not his music. His Music. His sorcery.

‘You started playing Music without permission, didn't you?' he said. ‘That's why they kicked you out?'

‘No, Chester,' Dot said quietly. ‘They kicked me out because of what I am. Who I am. Because of the person I loved.'

Chester blinked. ‘Huh?'

Dot leant back further, holding the piano rim with her fingers. ‘Her name was Penelope. Penny, I called her. We used to sneak up onto the Conservatorium roof, at night,' she whispered. ‘We used to watch the stars together.'

Chester didn't know what to say. He settled for silence and kept his own eyes fixed firmly on the ceiling.

‘She gave me this piano,' Dot said. ‘It was her parents who found out. Who had me expelled. They said we were blasphemers. Sinful. Unnatural. That it was against the Song itself for us to love each other.'

Chester wet his lips. His heart was hammering. This was why Dot had been expelled?

‘But it wasn't against the Song,' Dot whispered. ‘We loved the Song. We used to play Music together, up on the roof, under the stars.'

There was a pause.

‘She wanted to come with me,' Dot said. ‘To leave her parents, leave the city. But I made her stay. It was her dream, you see. She'd worked all her life to get into the Conservatorium. I couldn't let her throw it all away.'

Another pause.

‘I'm sorry,' Chester said.

Dot glanced at him. Her eyes shone a little, but Chester couldn't tell if it was from moisture or the light of the sorcery stars. She blinked, shook her head, and looked down at her fingers. ‘It was a long time ago,' she said. ‘Over a year.'

‘But it still hurts?'

‘Every day.'

There was a long silence. They both looked down at the keys. Then, slowly, Dot's fingers pressed down. A note rang out. For the first time, Chester noticed a tiny curl of faint brownish ink on each hand: a treble clef, but painted backwards, as though the symbol had been reflected in a mirror.

‘What are those?' he said. ‘Those … tattoos?'

Dot glanced down and her expression went dark. ‘They give you these when you're expelled from the Conservatorium,' she said. ‘They stop me from crossing Musical thresholds. I suppose they don't want failed students to sneak back in and sabotage other people's work.'

‘What? But you –'

‘Oh, I can still play Music,' she said. ‘I can still create my own sorcery – even the Shapers can't stop me doing that. I can make trinkets and play my tunes into lamps and ladders and engines. But I can't cross a Musical barrier – not
without someone else to pull me through. You've seen – I can't even move in and out of the Hush without help.' She looked down. ‘The captain has to help me.'

Chester stared at the tattoos, horrified. Crossing into the Hush was so simple that even Travis could do it, and he hadn't a musical bone in his body. It was just like switching on a lamp, or using a sorcery map: the Music was already active, so all you needed to do was to hum the right notes. The idea that Dot couldn't manage it, with all her wit and her flair for Songshaping …

He remembered their arrival in Linus. Just before they had burst into the real world, Susannah had placed a hand on Dot's shoulder. At the time, Chester had thought they had just been steadying each other – but now he realised the truth. Without that hand, that connection to Susannah, Dot would have been left in the Hush, trapped and alone.

‘Can't you get rid of them?' he said, gesturing at the tattoos.

‘Of course.' Dot gave an unexpected smile. ‘That's easy. If I chop off my hands, I'll be cured. But I won't be able to play piano anymore, so it'll be a pretty useless cure, won't it?'

She ran her fingers along the keys in a ripple, coaxing a wild roar of notes from the ivory. Then she looked up at the artificial stars, an unreadable distance in her eyes.

‘Chester,' she said, ‘strength isn't just about putting on a show. It's not about tugging on the strings, manipulating your audience.' She lifted her fingers from the keys. ‘And it's not about lying to your friends.'

‘I know,' he said.

‘No,' Dot said gently. ‘I don't think you do. But you will.' She smiled at him, a quiet understanding in her eyes. ‘Sometimes,' she added, ‘I think true strength is admitting when you're vulnerable.'

Just as there was no sundown, there was no dawn in the Hush.

When morning arrived, only the chime of Chester's alarm clock split the shadows. He rolled out of his bed, pulled on his clothes and shuffled into the kitchen.

He poured himself a coffee from the pot on the stove then slipped into a spare seat at the table. Dot, Sam and Susannah already sat there, sipping coffee with bleary-eyed faces. Dot had cooked up a mess of beans with fried potatoes, but no one seemed particularly hungry. Five minutes later Travis arrived, his hair and clothing impeccably styled as always.

‘Look at you lot,' he said, with a touch of disdain in his voice. ‘Honestly, you'd think you'd just walked off a battlefield.'

‘Don't mind him,' Dot said, as Travis helped himself to the coffee pot. ‘He's sulking because we had to leave Linus before he visited his favourite tailor.'

‘I'm not sulking,' Travis said, ‘I'm indulging in a fit of righteous indignation. Do you have any idea what a rare opportunity –'

‘All right,' Susannah said. ‘Enough.'

The others fell silent. Chester closed his fingers tightly around his coffee cup.

Susannah stood and tugged the cloth covering the blackboard. Her wounded hands were already scabbing over, thanks to a series of Musical injections when they had returned to the
Cavatina
last night.

A list adorned the blackboard's surface:
money, enchanted charges, identity documents, escape route
…

‘Right,' she said. ‘This is our checklist for the Conservatorium job. But before we get to that, we need to debrief from last night.'

For the sake of Dot, Sam and Travis, she briefly outlined what had occurred inside the mansion. ‘We should've investigated Yant's time in Weser better,' she finished. ‘That was my fault. I assumed that because he hadn't attended the Conservatorium himself, he would have no knowledge of the Hush.'

‘You think it was his uncle, Captain?' Sam said. ‘Who set up the shattervault and the basket seat?'

Susannah nodded. ‘If only I'd dug a little deeper …'

‘Don't blame yourself, Captain,' Dot said. ‘None of the rest of us thought twice about it, either.'

‘What'd you end up stealing?' Sam said.

Susannah dropped a pile of papers onto the table. ‘Identity papers,' she said. ‘Birth certificate, a family tree … Travis, think you can craft a false identity for Chester out of this stuff?'

Travis picked up the papers and flicked through them slowly. His lips curled slowly upwards. ‘Oh yes,' he said.
‘That won't be a problem.' He pointed at the family tree then glanced up at Chester. ‘I can make you a son of Yant's cousin, here – he seems to have an overlarge brood as it is.'

‘How long will it take you to forge the papers?'

Travis waved a hand casually. ‘Oh, a couple of days. I'll need to work out a background story and train the boy in that, which might take a little longer.' He gave Chester a frank look. ‘How good is your memory?'

‘Good enough,' Chester said. ‘And I'm not a boy. No more than you are, anyway.'

‘Oh, don't be such a dullard,' Travis said. ‘You should be celebrating your youth, not denying it. In a few years' time, or so I've been assured, we'll all wake up with enough wrinkles to –'

‘That's enough,' Susannah interrupted. ‘So we've got Chester's identity under control.' She picked up a piece of chalk and ticked off
identity documents
on the blackboard. ‘But we need to work on our escape plan. It's one thing to get into the Conservatorium, but getting out won't be easy.'

‘I still favour the bait-and-switch,' Travis said. ‘Wait until we're ready to escape, then alert the Songshapers to the presence of intruders. That should make them activate their alarms and deactivate the inner shield long enough for us to sneak through.' He rubbed his hands together. ‘And it has a certain flair to it, doesn't it? It's delicious, the irony of their own security system –'

‘Yes, but we can't just
tell
them we're intruding,' Susannah said. ‘They'll realise they're being played.'

‘Anonymous note?' Dot suggested.

Susannah shook her head. ‘They're not stupid. We need
the information to come from a legitimate source, so they think someone's helping them by alerting them to the break-in.'

‘How about a servant?' Sam said.

‘No,' Susannah said. ‘It's an issue of timing. We need someone with enough authority to go straight to the top. A servant would waste time reporting to someone more senior, who could then pass on the report to the bosses …'

‘So we need a real Songshaper on our side,' Travis said. ‘Someone with a proper licence from the Conservatorium – someone who can make an urgent report without raising his colleagues' suspicions.'

Sam snorted. ‘What kind of Songshaper's gonna help us break into his own damn Conservatorium?'

‘Well,' Susannah said, ‘how about one with a grudge against his bosses?' She paused. ‘Dot, can you think of anyone at the Conservatorium who might help us? Someone with a full licence, preferably.'

Dot shook her head. ‘I mostly hung out with other students; I never knew the teachers well. And my old friends wouldn't trust me, anyway. Not since I got expelled.'

Susannah nodded. ‘Well, it's another thing to think about, anyway. We've still got time to iron out the details.' She added
Recruit licensed Songshaper
to the blackboard. ‘Now I was thinking –'

Chester gave a little cough.

Susannah paused mid-sentence, and looked at him. ‘Are you interrupting me?'

‘Yes, Captain.'

The others sucked in a trio of breaths. Chester felt a
little of his bravado dissipate, but he forced himself to go on. ‘We made a deal, Captain. You promised me information if I picked that lock for you.'

Susannah stared at him. ‘We're in the middle of a meeting. It can wait until later.'

Chester shook his head. ‘Last night made me realise how dangerous this job will be. If a rural sugar baron's vault was
that
well protected, how do I know what I'll be up against in the Conservatorium itself?'

Susannah didn't speak.

‘If I do this job,' Chester said, ‘I'll be taking a hell of a risk. I need to know what's in it for me.' He tightened his grip on his coffee cup. ‘I'm not going to pretend that I'm some tough guy giving you a grand ultimatum. I'm not going to stomp my feet and pretend I'm a brawler like Sam, or a leader like you.' He offered Dot a wry little smile. ‘I already tried that routine and I got put back in my place quick enough.'

He paused. ‘But I'm going to be honest with you, Captain. I can't do this anymore. Not without the truth. Not without knowing for sure that you know something about the vanishings.'

The silence stretched. It felt almost heavy, now, as though a fistful of awkwardness had pummelled the space between them.

It was Sam who finally spoke. ‘Tell him, Captain. He deserves to know.'

Chester turned to him, taken aback.

Sam gave him a level look from under the rim of his cowboy hat. His blue eyes glinted, pale and eerie. Just like
Susannah. What were the odds that two members of the gang would share such an unusual feature?

‘Last night, you proved yourself,' Sam said. ‘You won your place at this table.'

A strange look passed between Sam and Susannah. There was a long moment of silence, as tense as a fiddle string, and Chester had the distinct impression that he'd just missed something important.

Finally, Susannah dropped into her chair. ‘I did promise, didn't I?'

Chester nodded.

‘All right, Chester,' she said. ‘I keep my promises.'

Chester hesitated. He felt as though he should thank her, but really, she did owe him this information. He didn't want to imply that she was doing him a favour or that he was putting himself in her debt. So he closed his mouth, took a sip of half-cooled coffee, and forced himself to wait out the silence.

‘The vanishings started two years ago.'

Susannah's voice was shaky, with a little too much staccato in the syllables. Chester frowned. She spoke as though this was personal to her, as if it was more than just a rumour she'd heard. Had she lost someone too?

‘The process starts with a virus,' she said. ‘It's a sickness that comes from Music. They can play it into your skull, or your food, or even your clothing. The tune rubs off into your skin, so soft that you don't even notice it.

‘It works on your mind. It makes you weak. It makes you compliant. Then they come to you at night, through the Hush.'

Chester felt his heartbeat racing. ‘Who?'

‘The recruiters. The first thing you see is a shadow in the darkness and a hand to muffle your screams. They pull you in and out of the Hush, to test how well you endure it. If you try to struggle, they just tell you to hush.'

She gave a bitter laugh. ‘They inject you with more Music until you stop fighting. Until you stop caring. After a few nights, the whole world is a blur of shadow and fear and pain and you can't even tell what's real anymore. And then …' Susannah looked down at the table. ‘And then they take you.' There was a long pause. Susannah glanced up at Sam, as though seeking his opinion on whether to continue. They stared at each other for five long seconds before Sam gave an almost imperceptible nod.

‘They drag you into the Hush with them, when you're in the depths of your fever. They take you back to their headquarters, and they turn you into …'

She swallowed. ‘They turn you into a Silencer.'

‘What's a Silencer?'

‘Someone the Echoes can't hurt,' Sam cut in, his tone abrupt. ‘The Echoes can't even touch them, see, 'cause a Silencer's own damn body's like a ripple of Music reflecting back at them.'

Chester froze. A memory came back to him. He thought of his first night in the Hush, in the echoboat with Sam. The Echoes had passed right through Sam without harming him …

‘Like you,' he said, mouth dry. Then he turned to Susannah. Susannah, who had those same pale blue eerie eyes. Eyes that were almost like mirrors …

‘Yes,' Susannah said quietly. ‘Like us.' She took a deep breath. ‘Sam was one of the first to vanish. An early test subject.'

‘They used me for experimenting,' Sam said. ‘But it didn't go quite right.'

‘What do you mean?'

Sam just looked down at the table.

‘They made a mistake in their Musical dosages,' Dot said, ‘so Sam's transformation didn't work properly. Most Silencers lose their ability to connect with Music. Even if they're trained Songshapers, they can't sense the tune in a lamp or make a sorcery map anymore. But with Sam, they made him emotionally sensitive to Music. When he goes near Musical objects, they yank his emotions around like crazy.'

There was a long pause.

Chester breathed out slowly and turned to Dot. ‘That's why you wrote your own melodies to replace all the lamps …'

Dot nodded. ‘I would've used the normal tunes for sorcery lamps if I could, but those tunes turned Sam into a stomping ball of fury whenever he heard them. Not that it's your fault, Sam,' she added, glancing at him. ‘But I used calming tunes instead, so they help to keep him more peaceful.'

‘Creating a Silencer is painful,' Susannah said. ‘Long and painful. And tricky. They tie you down for weeks, keep you wrapped in your fever, and pump your body with Music. They paint a melody into your flesh, your skin, your bones, your muscles.'

Chester stared at her, horrified. ‘But why? What do they want you for?'

Susannah shook her head. ‘Once they've turned you, they lock you in a prison in the Hush. They've been recruiting for two years now, perfecting their techniques. They've got hundreds of Silencers locked away, ready to deploy.'

‘But you don't know what for?'

‘No idea. Must be something to do with the Hush, though. Why else would they need an army of people resistant to Echoes?'

‘They've got my little sister,' Travis said unexpectedly. He was looking down at the table, his expression grim. ‘Penelope. She was a student at the Conservatorium, and she used to invent things. Beautiful things. Sorcery decorations, and Musical light beams, and doors that played melodies when you walked into a room …' He shook his head. ‘She vanished from her bed one night, just like all the others. They must have seen her potential and they snatched her away.'

Penelope.
The name was vaguely familiar; it stirred something in Chester's memory. He turned to Dot. ‘Hang on – wasn't Penelope the name of your girlfriend? Is it the same person?'

Dot nodded, looking bleak. ‘That's how I met Travis in the first place – through Penny.' She paused. ‘I'm the one who made her stay at the Conservatorium. I'm the one who left her there, alone. And now they've got her.'

It hit Chester so suddenly that his gut seemed to snap with the impact. ‘And they've got my dad. They've got my dad, and they're going to turn him into one of those Silencers.'

No one denied it. No one offered false reassurances. His father had been snatched into the Hush. He had been taken to these recruiters' headquarters and tortured. He was probably a blue-eyed Silencer by now.

‘But you got away.' Chester wrenched his gaze up to Sam and Susannah. ‘You escaped, didn't you?'

Sam shook his head. ‘They dumped me. I was too damaged and no good to 'em. They figured my mind was gone, so it was easiest to chuck me in with a bunch of regular prisoners for Execution Day. But normal prisons ain't built to hold Silencers, so I snuck out through the Hush.'

‘But how did you know how to do it?'