Chapter 31
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Thus, every sort of confusion is revealed within us; and this is that weakness of the human mind on which the art of conjuring and deceiving by light and shadow and other ingenious devices imposes, having an effect upon us like magic.
—Plato, Republic: Book X
Church, Lady, Cassius, Chuey, and I passed through the ward barrier at the end of Tin Pan Alley. Flames licked up the brick buildings on both sides of the street. In front of us, Swan and his Shiguan crew began to fall into a battle formation.
“Get behind us,” Cassius reminded me. “Set the strategy. Cut the bindings.” I shuffled back a pace as eight of Swan’s vestiges formed a staggered line ahead of him.
We were outnumbered two to one. Didn’t matter.
I couldn’t let him continue to weaken the ward, any more than I could let him destroy Tin Pan and the musicians who called it home.
Swan played bracing strokes and his vestiges started toward us with swords and staves and long knives. The thanatist stared over the main line at me, a look of amusement on his face. “You have no catalysts, Mr. Solomon. That could be a problem for you.”
The two vestige lines crashed together. My friends were overwhelmed and immediately gave ground, stepping back just inside the safety of the ward to regroup.
Swan smiled and motioned again for Baring to be brought forward. I screamed “no,” but Swan stroked his lantern and shot Baring’s semblance light into the ward. It erupted in a spray of golden sparks and drove the barrier back another few feet.
Swan then called for Marianne Faithfull.
As he set to strike his lantern again, a figure emerged from the far end of Tin Pan Alley behind him.
She wore a flowing robe, an ornately painted red-and-yellow mask, and a headdress of flowers.
The outfit reminded me of Bian Lian, the Chinese face-changing dance.
The masquerader carried a lantern and bow.
“Form a second line,” Swan called. Four of his vestiges dashed to create a line between him and the masked thanatist.
I had no idea why this woman seemed to be helping us, but it gave me an idea. “It’s one-on-one now. Cassius, can you beat your man and get to the guy who’s holding the semblance?”
“I can,” he said.
“Good. Church, Lady, try to disable the other vestiges so I can cut their bindings. Chuey, if you can get some stank with that thing, try to take your guy’s hands off above the wrists.”
Chuey grinned. “I’ll show you stank.”
My friends stepped through the ward again and rushed the first Shiguan line, as near the awning of Andy’s Guitar Centre, beams of light crossed in the evening darkness—one from Sir Swan and the other from the masked woman.
Streaks of amber and blue lit the French-terraced fronts up and down Tin Pan Alley.
Cassius parried a Shiguan woman, grabbed her by the coat, and shoved her back to me. I slashed her bindings with my khopesh before she knew what hit her. The centurion then rushed ahead and steamrolled the Shiguan holding Marianne.
Church flung a cudgel-bearing Shiguan to the road, and Lady pushed a man in a top hat over him.
I hurried in and cut their bindings, too.
Chuey almost took a sword to the chest, but danced around it and swung his macuahuitl down on the guy’s forearm, taking it clean off—the guy’s brass shield clattered to the cobblestones.
I dashed in and snipped the bindings off his other wrist.
Cassius had begun leading Marianne back to the safety of the ward when Swan caught sight of him. He scraped his bow across the corner of his lantern, and a shrill rush of light hit Cassius in the back, throwing him against the hard stone of Hank’s Guitars.
The Bian Lian woman raised her bow and raked it savagely across her lantern’s darkwood frame rods.
A flare of violet light pulsed out over the remaining vestiges, slamming them to the ground, thrusting my friends back inside the ward, and breaking against the barrier in shards of purple and black.
The light sizzled in sparks across the cobblestone and up into the night sky.
The acrid smell of burning stone wafted down the alley.
Swan’s vestiges writhed and howled as their semblances tore free from their bodies.
Marianne stood alone and trembling amidst the wreckage.
Swan stepped forward and grabbed her arm. “Let her go!” I screamed.
“Take the deal,” Swan replied. “Or else watch her burn, and realize the dimming of her memory topside, too.”
I stared into her pleading eyes. All I could think about was her breakout hit “As Tears Go By,” and the way Mama used to hum it around the house.
I didn’t want to see Marianne’s semblance burned up, her music and memory fade.
And there’d be no moving on for her once her spirit was gone.
But for all that, Brach’s war still threatened all of London.
“I’m not ready,” Marianne pleaded, clasping her hands. “Please.”
I stood frozen, remembering this woman’s music filling my childhood home, as my friends waited on a command. Then, feeling shame for it, I mouthed the words “I’m sorry.”
Swan smirked, cut her bindings himself, and released her. Then he spun his lantern’s cylinder and played a haunting note. Marianne’s semblance dissolved, flowed like luminescent wind in and out of his lantern, and shot straight for the ward.
Chuey swooped up the shiny brass shield from the street, braced it against his shoulder, and stepped into the stream of light.
The shield reflected the lamplight up into the dark sky above like a searchlight at a Hollywood premiere.
When the light stream ended, Chuey tumbled forward to the cobblestone street, and all went quiet.
In the midst of the carnage, the Bian Lian thanatist lowered her lantern and bow, and Swan sauntered over to me, smiling like he’d just enjoyed a sumptuous meal.
“Pity about Life for Death,” said Swan. “They’ll continue on, making this music you so adore, living their dream. But you never will, will you? You’ve taken up someone else’s cause, and at the end of it, you’ll wind up as fragile and marginal as the world you failed to defend.”
Roaring flames continued to consume Tin Pan Alley and its precious history.
“Maybe,” I said, “but I’ll find a way to hold you accountable for what you’ve done here.”
Swan stepped right up to me and narrowed his eyes.
“You really don’t understand anything, do you?
Tin Pan, once the flames are gone, will return to what it was—a fabrication of the Strata—because of the memories of those who reside here.
Except . . . not so bright, I think, what with a handful of its dearest souls burned as fuel for my lamp. ”
I tightened my grip on my khopesh. “Doesn’t that hurt everyone?
Why kill them?”
“They were resistors,” he said, “making entirely the wrong kind of music.”
“Resistance music, you mean?” I shook my head. “Or just not Shiguan music?”
“Doesn’t really matter,” said Swan. “Thanks to you, all their music will now dim. That is quite obviously what you fail to grasp about the relationship between your world and ours.”
He smiled and started to turn away. I slammed my fist down on the lantern in his hand, driving it to the ground, then stomped it with my boot, shattering the glass and flattening its cylinder.
“You daft twit,” Swan shouted, “typifying with one act of stupidity your entire world’s shabby treatment of the Strata.” He picked up the broken lantern. “And I, myself, am now so lost in the margins that I may never be able to repair such a glorious lamp.”
“Maybe that’s something Tom Edison could help you with,” I said. “It’s a shame, though. I could have written a song about you, help take you out of the margins. But instead, I’ll write songs about the ones you’ve burned up—Bolan, Baring, Faithfull, and all the rest. I’ll make sure—”
“You go ahead and write them,” said Swan, “and enjoy playing them alone to your wardrobe flat in a stinking backstreet alley. Or did you forget the second side of the Shiguan offer you so blithely turned down?” He smirked.
“That is, if you survive the chancery at all. I think, rather, I shall enjoy the demise of you and all your riffraff at trial.”
I glared at him. “Aren’t the Shiguan supposed to protect the people of the Strata?”
“Mr. Chad Varah thought so,” said Swan. I shook my head.
Swan smirked again. “Varah was Shiguan. In life, he founded the Samaritans, the first suicide hotline for troubled young people like yourself. But he wasn’t important enough for your world to remember, so his semblance faded to nothing not a fortnight ago, even as he was trying to help his fellow Strata-folk. ”
There wasn’t any defense, so I kept my mouth shut. Swan wagged a finger at me, then strolled back down Denmark Street, sniffing once at the Bian Lian woman on his way.
My hands began to shake. I looked down at my knife, and up at the flames licking the grey bricks.
Then I heard someone moan. Then another. And another.
All around me vestiges were writhing on the ground.
Three were blurring badly, a dull blue glow above their bodies.
I rushed to them, dropped to my knees, and began refreshing their bindings.
More memories rose to mind and disappeared—Dad fixing my bike chain, my acceptance letter from Berklee College of Music—leaving more hollows inside me.
It got hard to breathe and sharp pains shot through my chest. When I got to the third body, before I could place my hand on her
wrist, her semblance floated up into the air between us.
I stared into her eyes as the light of self-awareness receded, her face went slack, and her spirit faded into the stone beneath us.
I’d have saved her if I hadn’t wasted time with Swan.
This thanatist stuff was starting to feel like maybe more than I could handle.
The two vestiges I’d rebound looked up at me silently. I sat back and motioned to Lady. She walked over and went to work on their wounds. When she’d finished, they struggled to their feet.
“Thank you. I am forever in your debt,” said the man in the top hat. His shadow, cast by the flickering flames still shooting from Andy’s Guitar Centre, pulsed with an unmistakable primal moment—the birth of his little girl. His love for her seemed depthless.
“What are your names?” I asked. “Loch,” said the top hat guy.
“Darnell,” said the other, who wore a crimson pleated skirt and carried the cudgel. His pulsing primal moment was his father’s military funeral. This man wanted to die in service like his pa.
I gestured back down Tin Pan Alley. “For now, Lady can take you back to the Iron Horse to rest. If you will, talk to Sherzer and Delain, and between you set up regular patrols around the perimeter of the ward. You see anything, report it fast.”
Loch raised a finger. “I’m also Path-Ka. So, if need be, I can travel to other strata and conduct patrols there. Even take along others, so long as they’re bound to you.”
I’d read about Path-Ka—adepts of the Path—who had learned a degree of strata travel. “Good to know,” I said. Then Lady led them all back toward the Horse.
Church patted my shoulder. “I was chuffed when you turned down their offer, Jack.” Then he hurried after Lady.
Chuey came up beside me. “That was a dicey move with the shield,” I said. “Yeah, probably.” He ran a hand over his buzz cut. “But I figured it was essentially light, you know. Law of reflection says I could change the angle of incidence. Anyway, it worked.”
“Hell of a light show.” I tapped his chest. “Thanks.”
“De nada, man. I just can’t believe they killed Bolan and Faithfull.” Chuey shook his head. “It ain’t right.”
Cassius came up beside Chuey and took his hand in a forearm grip. “Best use of a shield I have ever seen.”
The Bian Lian woman was standing at a distance, watching us. I’d almost forgotten about her. She started our way.
Semblances began returning to the alley, wandering through the debris and ash. Fire still licked up the brick walls on both sides of us, but with each returning semblance the flames receded and the solidity of the buildings was restored—though somewhat less bright than before.
The Bian Lian woman drew closer, weaving through the bodies, her catalysts put away.
A few semblances made their way toward us to shake our hands and say thank you, but I was too numbed to say anything coherent in return. The Bian Lian woman, her face now a kaleidoscope of blue and gold, finally stopped in front of me. “Let’s find someplace to speak in private.”
It was Emaline’s voice. “I have information for you.”