Shadowcry

by Jenna Burtenshaw

  “Artemis is here,” said Kate, as soon as she was free. “I saw him.”

  “I know. I saw him too, but there isn’t time to . . . Hang on. Trouble.”

  Kate followed Edgar’s eyes. Silas was crossing the platform, heading right for their carriage.

  “Quick! Climb up!” said Edgar, holding her cage as still as he could.

  Kate jumped on to the bars and climbed them right up to the roof beams. She looked down once she had reached the top, but Edgar was gone.

  Silas’s shadow spread across the carriage, and Kate leaned back, trying to stay quiet. It took only a moment for Silas to realize she was gone, and the cages crashed together as he began searching for her.

  She had to move. She had to get away from him.

  The place Kate was sitting was only two carriages away from the Night Train’s engine. She skirted the roof quickly and found the top rung of a ladder taking her right down to the tracks.

  “You!” Kate heard Silas’s shout in between two more screeching bangs.

  He had found Edgar.

  There was nothing she could do. If she went back, she would be caught—and what good would she be to anyone then? She forced herself to walk away from the shout, down a narrow worker’s path squashed between the train and the station wall. Soon she was right beside the hot black engine and there were only two choices from that position: down into the tunnel, or back onto the platform. There was no way to know where that tunnel came out. Edgar was in trouble, and every second she wasted carried Artemis farther away. She had to risk the platform.

  With fireworks still lighting up the air, no one noticed Kate climbing from the tracks and squeezing through a broken panel in the side of the wooden fence. Water dripped from the muddy ceiling like indoor rain and tickled her head as she slipped unnoticed into the crowd, most of whom had their arms over their heads for protection, pushing their way toward the arched exit behind them. She was just about to follow them, hoping to find Artemis somewhere on the other side, when Silas dragged one final prisoner onto the platform.

  Edgar limped awkwardly into the light, squinting through a bruised eye. As soon as some of the braver bidders saw him they started counting what was left in their coin pouches, weighing up Edgar’s value with eager eyes, but one look at Silas’s face showed that he was not for sale. His eyes scoured the crowd. Kate ducked behind a tall woman beside her, and when she looked out again Silas was marching Edgar off to the prisoners’ exit on foot. That must have meant something serious, because the crowd suddenly became angry, squeezing forward to glare and shout.

  “Traitor!” spat the woman closest to Kate. “You’ve earned what you’ll get, boy.”

  “Traitor.”

  “Traitor!”

  Edgar turned to look at the heckling crowd. He was trying to put on a brave face, but Kate could see right through it. She knew he was scared and she pushed her way forward, determined to do something, anything to let him know she was still there and that he was not alone. She dodged around the heaving bodies and found herself squashed against the wooden fence as Edgar walked by. There was only one safe way to get his attention, so she shouted out loudly with everyone else.

  “Traitor!”

  Edgar looked up, recognizing her voice, and she raised her eyebrows in a small way that no one else could see, trying to send everything she wanted to say to him in one desperate smile. His face brightened a little when he spotted her and sank again as Silas grabbed the back of his neck, forcing him away.

  Kate pushed back through the crowd and forced her way through to the exit leading to the city above. She climbed up a long twist of spiral steps, hoping that the two tunnels came out at the same place, but the narrow staircase was full of people. She tried to run, but the steep steps and heaving bodies made it difficult to move quickly.

  A burst of sunlight met her at the very top, and she found herself standing in the middle of a busy path framed by high stone walls. There was no sign of Edgar or Silas anywhere, so she followed a handful of people in front of her and tried to look like she knew where she was going.

  The thin path turned and split like a maze, with rusted hand-painted signs directing people to Narrow Way North, Traitor’s Gate, Sunken Lake, and more. Kate lost sight of her guides while reading one of those signs and decided to take a chance and follow the path marked Traitor’s Gate, hoping it would lead her to Edgar.

  The way became dirtier and quieter the farther she went, until she had the feeling that the only people who took that particular path were those who were forced to. Then the path turned sharply and Kate froze, face to face with a pair of wardens. They were just guards, standing on either side of a small door. There was no way they could have known of her escape, but her terrified face must have betrayed her guilt, because both of them drew their daggers as one. Fear overrode everything else, and Kate ran.

  The wardens gave chase, their bootsteps closing in upon her as she raced off down the pathway. She ran as fast as she could go, rejoining the main flow of people and pushing her way through them, and when the path turned sharply, she collided solidly with a small man in a tall hat.

  “You there!” the man said, grabbing hold of her wrist. “What is your business here?”

  “Let me go!” Kate struggled to free herself but the man held her tight, taking every kick and tug as he tried to get a good look at her face. Finally their eyes met and his face registered shock.

  “You!” he said. “You’re one of them.”

  Two wardens ran up the pathway in answer to the man’s call, their bootsteps closing in on Kate, gaining every moment.

  “Let me go!”

  Kate tore her hands from the man’s grip and raced off down the pathway with the wardens close behind. She ignored the signs, knowing they couldn’t help her, and chose turnings at random, until suddenly she found herself at a dead end, with a wooden door sunk into the wall, bolted tight shut.

  There was nowhere else to go. The wardens were almost upon her. She slammed the bolt to one side, heaved open the door, and ran through, not caring where her panic was taking her. And there, topped by a wide patch of perfect blue sky, Kate got her first true look at the grand graveyard city of Fume.

  Chapter 8

  Feathers & Bones

  Fume was a city of darkness. The buildings were tall and angular, built from black stone and dark wood, each one reaching up to six stories high, casting shadows across the winding streets. Kate was standing upon a wide balcony at the top of the northern wall, alongside a spiral staircase leading down into the city itself. From that vantage point she could see the rest of the city’s outer walls circling round like encompassing arms, reaching far beyond the horizon, and the pointed roofs of the towerlike buildings scratching at a layer of fog that balanced across them like a sickly blanket.

  Every building was an exaggeration of other buildings she had known. Where Morvane had ordinary houses, Fume had clusters of tall towers huddled together like whispering old men and streets of grand homes with black slate roofs all shimmering with frost. It was powerful, aggressive, and magnificent all at once, built upon the bones of Albion’s ancestors. Kate had expected to see riches, but nothing like this.

  She looked behind her. The wardens had to be close, so she grabbed the handrail of the curling staircase that wound in upon itself impossibly tightly and headed down.

  The metal steps creaked and wobbled beneath her, but she kept going, clinging on to the central post for balance and hitting the ground at a run, not daring to catch her breath as the staircase swayed with the weight of someone following behind her. The towers looked even taller now that she was underneath them: immovable monuments to the dead that not even the High Council had dared to strip away. She ran to the nearest street, past railings that circled the towers like iron skirts, and squeezed through the first gate she could find, ducking down behind a neatly trimmed hedge and trusting it to keep her hidden as she spied on the road.

  Carriages trundled pas
t her hiding place, but no wardens came. She was just about to creep out and risk checking the staircase when she heard a familiar voice close by.

  “One more sound out of you, and I will slice you ear to ear.”

  Kate peered through the hedge. Standing in the street, as ominous as the city around him, was Silas, with Edgar by his side, bound to him by a wrist chain.

  “I should have killed you when I had the chance,” said Silas, raising a hand to the sky and letting his crow flutter down to land proudly upon it. “You always were trouble.”

  “She won’t follow us, you know,” said Edgar, his nervous voice a little higher than usual. The crow glared at him, watching his every move. “Kate doesn’t know her way around the city. She won’t know where we are.”

  “She’ll know.” Silas stopped for a moment, making Kate retreat farther into her hiding place. “I would have stripped that station bare in search of her if it would not have attracted unwanted questions,” he said. “Perhaps this way is for the best. I have you now, Mr. Rill. The Winters family have always looked after each other, and you are as good as family to that girl from what I have seen. Wherever I take you, your friend will not be far behind.”

  “Don’t count on it,” said Edgar. “Kate’s a lot smarter than you think.”

  “We shall see.” Silas reached his hand into the street and a horse-drawn carriage with a blue crest on its door pulled up to the pathside. “The Museum of History,” he said to the driver. “And don’t spare the whip.” Silas carried his crow inside and tugged Edgar in behind him like a disobedient dog. The carriage reins snapped hard and the gray horse trotted forward.

  Kate didn’t have to think about what to do next. If she lost Edgar now, she could lose him for good. She darted out from her hiding place, ran straight for the carriage, and grabbed hold of the luggage rack hooked on the back. She managed to jump up and push her left foot into a twisted loop of ornamental metal that caged the carriage’s rear axle. The whip cracked, the horse gathered speed, and the carriage wheels spun at a racing pace until it was cutting through the streets faster than a wolf could run.

  Kate’s right leg hung down as she clung to the rack’s cold metal, and she forced most of her weight into her left leg, trying to keep her balance. No one paid her any attention. There were dozens of carriages on the streets, many of them with people tucked into the luggage racks or riding on the roof—servants, she guessed from their bedraggled states—but none of them were traveling as fast as the one under Silas’s command.

  The carriage raced along streets decorated with stone statues, past low buildings topped with staring gargoyles that spat meltwater down on to the paths below. The driver was definitely taking Silas at his word. The whip cracked hard every few seconds, and the horse sped on, forcing well-dressed men and women to move aside to let it speed through. Most of the streets were built to match perfectly the architecture in the oldest parts of Fume. Kate was starting to think they were going around in circles when one of the wheels hit a stone on a tight turn and the carriage lurched sharply, almost sending her catapulting out on to the road. She clung on as it bounced along into a wide street lined with huge gray buildings, where, with a snort of relief, the horse finally slowed to a stop.

  They were at the bottom of a high curve of shallow steps, looking up at the once-grand face of what had to be the Museum of History. Its windows were tall and thin, tinted with green glass, and every one of them was still intact. A strange deserted feeling hung around that building. The same quiet stillness that settled over cemeteries, as if the dead were standing on those steps, still watching the living.

  The carriage door swung open before Kate had a chance to move. Silas stepped out and pushed Edgar up the steps, heading for a door at the top while Kate unhooked her foot and dropped down from the luggage rack. Her left leg stung as the carriage rolled away, and she carefully ducked into the museum through an unlocked side door once Silas and Edgar had walked in through the front.

  The door led to a short corridor and through to a narrow room lined with glass cases. There was no one around. From the look of the cobwebs hanging thickly from the ceiling, the museum had been abandoned for a very long time. Every case was empty, each one lined with faded fabric that bore the dark shadows of necklaces, rings, and gemstones that had once been held inside.

  There were six doors leading out of the room, not including the one she had come in through, and all of them were shut tight. The first one she tried opened to an odd chemical smell. It was dark and there was no sign of Edgar, so she tried the second, which opened to a staircase leading down to a lower floor. Kate thought she heard noises echoing below: sharp footsteps heading the opposite way, but her experiences with cellars were bad enough to make her hesitate on the top step.

  “Silas.” A woman’s voice carried from behind a door to Kate’s right, taking her by surprise.

  The voice was strong and commanding, and Kate matched a face to it at once. It was the woman she had seen in her vision at the boardinghouse. The one Silas had gone to meet there. The woman called Da’ru.

  Kate risked opening the third door as silently as she could. She peered through the gap, hearing Silas’s voice on the other side. “Be careful, my lady. Remember where you are. Your voice is loud enough to call the dead.”

  Da’ru was standing beneath enormous skeletons of long-dead creatures that were hanging down from the ceiling. Silas walked toward her, his expression caught somewhere between obedience and hate. Kate could see most of the hall from where she stood, but Edgar was not there. The chain was no longer in Silas’s hand. There was no sign of him anywhere.

  “You have had long enough,” said Da’ru. “Where is the girl? My officers informed me that you kept one prisoner separate from the rest on the Night Train, and yet she has not been delivered to the High Council. Why?”

  “There was a commotion at the station,” said Silas. “A boy was causing trouble and I had to deal with him.”

  “And the prisoner?” said Da’ru. “Where is she now?”

  Silas hesitated, his eyes narrowing as he chose whether to lie to her or not. “Secure,” he said at last.

  “Then you do have her?”

  Silas nodded firmly, but his jaw twitched with anger.

  “I should not have to come looking for you,” she said. “Your first duty is to me. The only reason you are not locked away beneath the council chambers is because you have proved yourself useful. My name is feared for good reason, Silas. And you above all others should fear me the most.”

  Silas took another step toward her. “I fear nothing,” he said.

  “Then I suggest you pay closer attention to your work, or that will soon change.” Da’ru locked eyes with Silas without a hint of fear, and Kate did not doubt the seriousness of her threat.

  “Boy!” Da’ru’s voice echoed around the hall.

  Footsteps rattled along the upper level of the building and a young boy’s face appeared on a gallery encircling the main hall. “I haven’t found anyone yet, my lady,” he said, bowing as he spoke. “I’ll keep looking.”

  Da’ru turned back to Silas. “Where is she?”

  Silas glared and said nothing.

  “You would not be here if the girl was not close by,” said Da’ru. “You will hand her over immediately, or I will have you thrown into a cell and charged with treachery.”

  “Your presence here threatens everything I have set in place,” said Silas. “Leave. Now.”

  Da’ru smiled, raising her chin to expose her bare neck, and Kate saw something cruel and terrifying behind the beauty of her face. “Do not test me,” she said. “You are nothing but a dog on a leash to me, Silas. The rest of the council may still trust you, but I know how much you would like to kill me if you could. You could take your revenge against me, right here and now, but you know what will happen if you do. Without me, the blood within your veins will slow and die. Your body will wither and what is left of your soul will be sealed inside
your rotting bones, unable to live and forbidden to die. Your world will be silent. Your name forgotten. My wardens will bury your worthless body where it will never be found, and the only battle left for you to fight will be against the worms as they slither upon your skull and feast upon your eyes.”

  Silas stood unflinchingly before her, neither of them willing to give the other an inch.

  “You already know that there are far worse punishments than a simple death,” said Da’ru. “The half-life of the veil is a torturous place, and immortality lasts a long, long time.”

  Silas glanced in Kate’s direction, just once, so quickly that she might not have noticed it. He relaxed his shoulders a little, and the tension in the room lifted as it looked like he was about to back down.

  “Return to the chambers,” he said to Da’ru. “I will deliver the girl. Assemble the council and tell them we shall perform the first procedure tonight.”

  “The council does not waste its time upon empty promises. She should be ours already.”

  “Leave her to me,” said Silas, bowing his head a little and taking a small step back. “Trust me, my lady. Everything is going according to plan.”

  Kate backed away from the door. Silas knew she was there! But she couldn’t leave. Not with Edgar still somewhere in the building. She ran as softly as she could back between the display cases. The boy was searching upstairs; he mustn’t have found Edgar up there. Then she remembered the footsteps in the cellar. The second door was still hanging open, waiting for her.

  The steps beyond were tight and cramped, leading down into a huge dark space broken only by pillars that held the main floors up. Sunlight crept in through flat windows squashed against the ceiling, but it was still too dark to see anything near the middle of the room. Kate followed the wall, staying close to the light, and walked past high tables stacked with specimen jars; some empty, but most sickeningly full. There were birds, frogs, fish, spiders, beetles, and flies, all dried and pinned to stands inside the green glass, or drowned in thick choking liquid that kept them preserved against time.