Chapter 51
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
Dispassion—strict adherence to Precedent Law and decisive movement against violations of the same—must rule the day. I will preserve our city’s peace with as much zeal now as I did when I fought Danelaw encroachment and Viking plunderers.
—Chancellor Lady Aethelflaed, Saxon Stratum, from a missive to Muster Brach
Brach genuinely seemed to want an answer. And though I would never have betrayed Henry or my friends, the man’s vision scared me, because it seemed almost reasonable.
I looked out from the portico at the plaza filled with thousands of Shiguan vestiges and mummers standing at attention. “You really think you can bend the world to your vision?”
“If we lead with music, of course.” Brach gestured toward his army. “ ‘For the modes of music are never disturbed without unsettling the most fundamental political and social conventions.’ ”
“Plato’s Republic,” I said.
Brach smiled. “You do know your classics, don’t you, Mr. Solomon.” “Nose for history,” I replied, “especially when it’s about music.”
“Well, then, you’ll remember the philosopher explains that music is part of the soul’s education, and so is a primary and indispensable part of the ideal city. His so-called polis.”
“That what you’re building?” I said. “An ideal city? With you its philosopher-king?”
Brach chuckled. “You know as well as I do that harmony and rhythm, once imparted to the soul, can stimulate the desired virtues.”
“Like obedience?” I asked.
Lady leaned in. “Jack, at the Horse we’ve all seen music get inside people, make them do things. And what he just played? Even I had violent thoughts.”
Brach laughed again. “Your friend is perceptive. You may also recall that Stravinsky incited riot between the upper class and restless bohemians with his atonal Rite of Spring.”
“I think we’ve probably all heard the story,” I said.
Brach folded his arms. “And yet, my young friend, you know nothing of true revolution through music. Long before your time, Jiang Qing’s eight model operas displaced all other music and elevated the heroism of the common man.”
I’d read about Jiang’s operas. “They also elevated one leader and his ideas to the exclusion of anything or anyone else. So, it sounds like you’re pushing an all-art-for-the-Shiguan cause, after all.”
“The Shiguan cause,” said Brach, “is the cause of London—the preservation of what she was and the establishment of what she should be. We’ve simply realized that we can only accomplish this by revolutionary means.
No different, say, than Wagner ordering grenades for the Dresden uprising against the king of Saxony, except that music will be our weapon. ”
I shook my head. “I don’t think you get what Wagner was fighting for.” “Enlighten me,” said Brach.
“He shows us in the Ring that there are two competing powers: one requires the renunciation of love—reducing free people to slaves; the other is freedom and love for people.”
“You leave out,” said Brach with a smile, “that his notion of love was sacrifice. By that measure, we are all of us in the Strata Wagnerian.”
“You won’t convince everyone,” Lady argued. “Some will resist.” “Well, of course they will,” said Brach, “ just as they do here in the
Strata. But in the world above, we’ll have the advantage of people not knowing what we are. And we will install ourselves so quickly that dealing with naysayers will become a simple matter of persuasion.”
“Camps?” I said.
“Let’s call it reeducation,” said Brach, “to bring the people around to the right way of thinking about London, her past and her future.”
This guy was truly nuts, but I didn’t really want to offend him in front of several thousand brainwashed Shiguan who were already riled up. “You’ve tried to kill me, abduct me, buy me off, and now again you’re trying to recruit me? So, yeah, I think I’ll pass.”
“Then your coming here was a ruse,” Brach observed.
“Sort of. The reason we’re here is to inform you that you’re under formal investigation for the assassination of Henry Wilkinson, the seizure of his soul, and the summoning of a mature wraith.”
“All Precedent crimes,” Lakshmi added.
Brach gawked at me for a moment. Then laughed. “Have you any proof of these allegations?”
“I know Henry’s soul hasn’t moved on,” I said. “And I know a bound, mature wraith has been hunting people topside. Drawing a soul from the Meadows or binding a mature wraith would require Cython arcana, wouldn’t it? And you have some of that, don’t you?”
“This is your evidence?” Brach asked. “Untenable accusations?”
I took a step closer. “This wraith seems only to be killing songwriters. An appetite you obviously share.” I tilted my head at Professor Byrd, who was still playing the same unearthly music Brach had just performed.
Brach shrugged.“Your ward is dying, Jack.When she does, I’ll have her song.” It hit me like a sucker punch. This was the ancient song he was after.
Brach already had music that could make thousands of vestiges stand to order. If he got hold of “The Lays of Resolve” . . .
“From what I’ve heard,” I finally managed, “the Ward’s song is an appeal to stand against guys like you.”
“Her song,” said Brach, “fortifies against that irrational part of the soul that pursues pleasure and flees pain, and does so from sheer narcissism. In other words, Mr. Solomon, we will turn each human’s propensity to make an irrational individual choice into the courage to belong to our collective choice. ”
“Compulsory, you mean.” I hated him more by the moment. “You’re going to weaponize her song to launch your war with the world above.” “Oh, Jack”—Brach shook his head—“the war has already begun. Your world is erasing our future and has left us no choice but to fight back.
The song will merely hasten our plans and give our musical techniques the lasting impact they require and deserve.”
Brach’s war would begin with music, but it would grow to influence the other arts, then education, then policy, then law.
“You’ll make people believe they’ve chosen their allegiance.” I shook my head. “I won’t let it happen.”
“Won’t?” said Brach.
Emaline turned from watching the vestiges on the plaza. “Are you saying, Mr. Solomon, that you intend to raise these accusations at your trial this evening?”
If I lived that long. “You can count on it.”
Brach’s smile returned. He took up his lantern and a bow from his hip and played a rich note. I immediately recognized the red and amber glow of his bowstrings—Orcus thread. He’d just called his mature wraith. I’d have bet anything on it.
As Brach’s lamp dimmed and his bowstrings darkened, the door behind us opened. Mick stepped onto the portico, with Cassius, Church, and Chuey in tow. They were escorted by several Shiguan guards.
“Good evening, Guv,” Mick said, bowing slightly to Brach.
“And who have we here?” Brach cocked his head. “It’s more of your friends, Mr. Solomon.”
“This lot,” Mick went on, “came into the Castle asking after the whereabouts of a certain prisoner. And the topper is when I told them to bugger off, this one”—he pointed at Chuey—“tried to nick my ledger.”
I looked at Chuey, who shrugged. “Guy wouldn’t deal.”
“That’s a Strata crime.” Brach tsked. “Your friend here is going to be extending his stay here below.”
I shot a look to Church, who shook his head. “I’m afraid he’s right, Jack. Of course, we could seek a trial—”
“Where a dozen witnesses will testify against your man here,” Mick said with a grin.
“Rats, you mean,” Cassius added.
Brach turned to me. “We can be reasonable, Mr. Solomon, if you can be reasonable.”
“Don’t do it, Jack.” Chuey took a step and was immediately restrained. “I can do time in a ghost prison like it’s nothing. He ain’t gonna use me to get to you. No way.”
Brach stepped closer to Chuey and bowed his lantern. Amber light cast my friend’s shadow down in crisp dark lines. Brach stroked his bow again, focusing the light on a scar near Chuey’s sternum. The occlusion began to throb with crimson light and memory . . .
. . . Chuey is fifteen. The cops come into his house with a warrant.
They flip the place and find his mom’s smack in a false-bottom drawer in the basement beneath the record player where we listen to metal bands.
Before they can cuff her, she tells them it’s Chuey’s smack.
She’s been to lockup twice. She goes in again, she’s in for good.
Her eyes plead with Chuey to eat this one.
It would only be his first booking . . .
He’d told me what happened. But now I was seeing it.
Now I could feel the betrayal Chuey carried inside himself from that day in his basement.
My friend began to shake his head, jerking against the Shiguan who held him. “Leave that alone, you son of a bitch.”
But Brach didn’t leave it alone. He stroked his lantern again, sawing back and forth three times, his lamplight pulsing and pushing into Chuey’s scar, which opened wider, spilling more crimson light . . .
. . . Chuey doesn’t speak, just stares at his mom. “He listens to that awful evil heavy metal music,” his mom tells the police. “It’s no wonder he’s hiding drugs.
Who knows what else he’s up to.” Chuey waits, as if hoping she’ ll take it back.
After all, she’s the one who put him in the at-risk program six years before.
She was supposed to protect him. But she just glares at him, like she’s willing him to admit to it.
After a few moments, Chuey nods and hangs his head . . .
Chuey broke free from the Shiguan guards and launched himself at Brach, his eyes narrowed and wet. Brach slipped back a step, and with a quick hand brought his khopesh up, burying it in Chuey’s gut.
Chuey grabbed Brach’s arm, his eyes now impossibly wide, his mouth stretched open. A sick sliding sound came as Brach drew back his knife, and Chuey slumped to the portico floor.
“Attacks on a thanatist may be defended with mortal force,” Brach said matter-of-factly, and stepped back.
“Unfortunately, he’s right,” Lakshmi said.