The Hush (29 page)

The skin of the dome was cold and gritty. Susannah ran her fingers across its shell, searching for a join in the copper sheeting. She didn't dare risk a sorcery lamp up here on the roof – not when pegasus riders soared high above, riding their mounts through city skies. All she had to work with was moonlight.

The dome wasn't the Conservatorium's only rooftop feature. Pegasus stables looped around her in a circle. The scent of dung mixed with quiet nickering to paint the air with a decidedly equine flavour. Here they were, atop the Conservatorium itself, in Meloral's largest city – yet all Susannah could hear and smell was
horse
. She might as well be back in a country town.

Dot and Sam waited beside her, looking rather out of place on the rooftop. Dot wrapped her arms around her torso, looking almost defensive, while Sam stood as still as a mountain. Neither had enjoyed the climb up the fire escape; their talents lay in areas other than cat burglary. But Susannah needed them for this job and this was the only route inside.

Her fingers played across the copper and she strained her eyes to pierce the dark. She had expected the dome to feel smooth and cool, an arch of perfect metal. But it felt almost powdery beneath her fingers – a tactile echo of the greenish tinge it took during the daytime, stained by time.

‘The others are late,' Dot whispered. ‘They should have contacted us by now.'

Susannah nodded but didn't break her concentration. Her fingertips roamed to the right, searching, searching …

There!
The join was subtle: a textured line, trailing down the side of the dome. It was a sign of where two sheets of copper had been Musically melded together. A sign of weakness.

‘Got the charge?'

Dot nodded, her face barely visible in the dark. She pulled out a ball of something that looked like wire. It was long and thin but glinted in the moonlight. ‘I made this one longer,' she said. ‘To reach all the way along the join.'

‘Good thinking.'

Susannah took one end of the wire and unspooled it. She tied it to a bolt at the bottom of the dome's join then trailed it upwards, clambering onto the dome itself – wincing at the quiet little clangs of copper beneath her weight – until the wire ran all the way to the zenith.

‘Sam,' she said, struggling to keep her grip on the powdery metal slope, ‘can you run it down the other side?'

Sam hurried around to the other side of the dome. He reached up and, stretching his oversized limbs, grabbed the strand of wire she dangled down towards him. He trailed it down the copper slope, right along the
opposite join mark to the one Susannah had started with, before he knotted its end to another bolt at the base of the dome.

Susannah slipped back down to roof level and dusted off her hands. ‘Right,' she said. ‘We're all set, then?'

Dot nodded. ‘So long as I've calculated the angles right …'

‘Good,' Susannah said. ‘Well then, I guess we've got to wait for the signal.'

As she spoke, a throbbing heat sparked in the communication globe on her shoulder. She yanked it down and clutched it in her palm, swallowing in relief as the light and fog eddied into an image of Chester's face.

‘Chester! What's going on down there?'

He gave her an apologetic look. ‘We've hit a bit of a setback, Captain, but we're working on it. Can you give us a few minutes?'

Susannah glanced around the rooftop. The pegasi were getting nervous, now, confused by the presence of strangers near their stables. They nickered and pawed at the hay. The noise could bring someone out to investigate – and, of course, there was always the risk of an overhead rider glancing down at the roof …

‘What's the setback?' she said.

‘They've built a trap out of light beams – they fry anything that passes in front of them. But Travis says he knows how to switch it off; he's using some of the medical tools to adjust the angles of the mirrors …'

‘Travis?' Susannah said, startled. ‘But he doesn't know the first thing about –'

She cut herself off when she caught sight of Dot's face. The blonde girl was pale as the moon, her eyes wide and her lips slightly open. ‘Dot, what's wrong?'

‘Penny,' Dot whispered. ‘She invented a show with beams of light. That's how Travis knows how to deal with it.'

Susannah let out a low breath. ‘All right. Just tell him to hurry up, will you?'

‘Will do,' Chester said. ‘Look, Captain, I should be helping him – I'll signal when we've got our charge in place.'

Susannah nodded. ‘Go on, then. Just … be careful. Don't get fried.'

‘Wasn't planning to,' Chester said, ‘but we'll keep it in mind.'

He threw her a nervous little grin before the light of the communication globe faded into nothing. Susannah kept her fingers wrapped around the glass for a good few seconds, clinging to the remnants of its warmth. Then she pinned it back to her shoulder and forced her face into a neutral expression.

‘Right,' she said. ‘We might be stuck up here for a little while.'

The minutes were long. The gang melted back into the shadows of the rooftop stables, trying to keep out of sight of any pegasus riders overhead – but their proximity to the stalls sent the horses into a fresh tizz. The closest beast, a gleaming black stallion, pawed nervously at the door of his stall.

‘He can tell we're stressing, I reckon,' Sam said. ‘Horses always figure out when something dodgy's going on – it's instinct.'

‘Shhh,' Dot whispered, reaching through the wooden bars to stroke the stallion's quivering side. ‘It's all right, baby. Aren't you beautiful? Don't be scared of us. Shhh …'

‘Stop hissing at him,' Sam said. ‘He'll think you're a blasted snake.'

‘I wasn't hissing! I was hushing him, like a baby. Isn't that how you calm babies down?'

Sam snorted. ‘Do I look like a nanny to you?'

‘Shut up, both of you,' Susannah whispered. ‘Forget the horse and keep your eyes on the sky. We'll have to do this quickly, as soon as –'

The globe on her shoulder shuddered. She saw the others jump, too, and knew that Chester had sent the signal to all three of them.

The others looked grim now: all hints of silly argument had fled from their eyes. They stared at each other for a long moment and Susannah had a sudden thought that this could be the last time she saw them alive. If anything went wrong with the charges …

‘You're sure about your maths, Dot?'

Dot nodded. ‘I'm sure, Captain. It should all be lined up properly – so long as Chester and Travis put their charge right underneath the middle of the dome.'

‘All right then,' Susannah said. ‘Let's go.'

They crept out from under the stables' eaves into the central round of the Conservatorium roof. The dome loomed before them, shadowed in the night. Their line of wire glinted along its joins, just waiting for the Music to begin …

‘Wish we all could've snuck in with Travis,' Dot said. ‘I could've pretended to be a servant, too.'

‘Too suspicious,' Susannah said. ‘Two servants skulking around together is one thing, but five of us?'

Dot nodded. ‘I know. And I guess Chester couldn't have pulled us all through the security spells at once with just one ring. Even if he took us one by one, it'd take forever – and just one little slip-up would trigger the alarm …' She sighed. ‘Still, it would've been nice to keep our feet on the ground.'

‘This job was never going to be
nice
,' Susannah said.

She positioned herself at one end of the wire while Sam hurried around to the opposite side. His face was strained, tense with the churn of nearby Music. Dot stood back a little, her arms outstretched, and she closed her eyes to concentrate. Her face strained, as though she was fighting to hear a distant sound, something on the very edges of her hearing that was delicate enough to be washed away by the slightest breeze.

Susannah knew what she was straining for. The Music of the charges. If they wanted enough power to snap the copper's joining magic, they needed a serious tune of interference. Dot was listening for the Musical pattern, to ensure they activated the charges at the strongest point in the melody.

Dot's expression changed and Susannah knew she had found it. She had heard the call of her own Music in the darkness and her mind had latched onto the rhythm of the tune.

‘Five,' Dot whispered, ‘four, three, two, one.'

Susannah hummed. She had no idea what she was doing, or how the enchantment worked. All she knew
was that Dot had taught her what to hum and she was damn well going to hum it. She heard the same notes resonate from Sam's lips on the far side of the dome, and from Dot's as she mentally activated the charges …

There was a groan in the metal. Light sizzled along the wire, like captured lightning, white and hot and thin as a fingertip. The copper groaned.

The join snapped.

It was more dramatic than Susannah had expected. The entire line of metal gave way, splitting one half of the dome from the other. It was like cracking an egg – a vicious smack of sound in her ears – and she winced: what if someone had heard?

But there were no shouts of alarm and no cries from the sky. The city was home to too much general racket: restaurant music, carriages on cobblestones, laughing diners and splashing fountains. In all that whirl and bluster of noise, the crack of the dome would sound like a hiccup in a storm.

Susannah reached out to touch the dome. ‘You're a genius, Dot.'

Dot smiled. ‘I know that, Captain. Isn't that why you hired me?'

The dome still sat in the same position, but for the enormous crack that had opened along its join. There wasn't enough room to slip through on the lower parts of the slope – the crack was barely as wide as Susannah's hand. But up on the peak of the dome, where the crack was at its widest, a human body could
just
squeeze through. Even Sam, if he held his breath.

‘I'll go first,' Susannah whispered, ‘and set up the pulley system for the rest of you.'

The others nodded.

Susannah clambered up the side of the dome, slipping and sliding a little on the copper. She kept as quiet as she could, but still winced at the occasional clank of metal as her boot nails hit the sides.

She reached the top and saw the massive hole open beneath her. Down in the room below, she saw sorcery lamps shining in the dark and – if she squinted hard enough – the shapes of two figures, waiting in the centre of a white marbled floor.

Susannah unfastened the rope from where it was tied to her belt and strapped a harness around her torso. She dropped one end of the rope through the hole and received a flash of light from a hideaway lamp to signal that Chester and Travis had hold of the end. She waited a few moments, knowing they were securing the rope to their own belts to counteract her weight.

She bent down, thrusting her upper body through the crack while her knees remained securely gripped to the outside of the dome. She retrieved a pulley ring from her pocket and pressed it against the inside lip of the dome, where an iron frame ran in lines beneath the copper. Her magnet gripped the iron like a kiss. It was strong enough to hold the pulley in place but she wouldn't yet trust it with her body weight.

Susannah wriggled back out into the open air and nodded at Dot. The blonde girl raised her hands and whistled a quiet little run of notes. The melody was tight
and fast; it reminded Susannah of a hammer thwacking in an obstinate nail. Three, four, five bars of melody and Dot's whistle faded away.

‘Done,' she said. ‘It should hold for a good hour, at least.'

Susannah reached back down under the dome and gave the pulley a tug. It held fast to the sturdy iron frame, secured by the power of Dot's melody.

Time to go.

She fed her end of the rope through the pulley, before securing it to the harness system around her torso. Then, with a deep breath, she slipped the rest of her body through the gap.

There was an almighty jolt. For a moment, Susannah was falling, plunging down towards the marble below. There was nothing but empty air and the terrible upwards kick in her stomach …

The rope caught.

And then she was swinging, hanging from the rope as it fed through the pulley above her head. She let out a deep breath and tugged on the rope. Then she waved down at Travis and Chester, who were digging in their heels against the marble below.

‘Go.' Her voice echoed through the empty chamber. ‘Let me down.'

They winched her down slowly, her body dropping a foot or so at a time, jolting down through the airspace of the chamber. Susannah threw out her arms and tightened her core muscles, trying to balance her body and minimise the swinging.

Finally, she reached the bottom. Her boots landed on solid marble and Chester grabbed her arm to steady her. ‘You all right?'

‘Yeah,' Susannah said. ‘I'm fine.'

But she wasn't fine. Now that she stood on solid ground, she could see the room around her much more clearly. White floors, pale walls, empty beds. Glinting silver tools and tilted mirrors. She had been here before.

‘Captain?' Chester said.

Susannah barely heard him. The air was sharp and hollow in her chest. She was younger. She was screaming, she was writhing and fighting, she was cursing as they buckled her down into that bed and forced those needles under her skin …

Chester tightened his grip on her arm. ‘Susannah?'

The sound of her name jolted her out of it. She was disorientated, her eyes fixed on the bed and the buckles. She took a deep, shuddering breath, and nodded. ‘Sorry. I'm all right.'

She didn't look at him. She didn't look at either of them. She didn't want to see the judgement in their faces – or worse, the pity. She was supposed to be their captain. She was supposed to be strong.