‘I felt certain that I would become a magister. I was very proud when I was selected from the Orkestrum to become a novice, but it wasn’t a surprise. I had been working towards it all my life. The week before we were to be ordained, all the novices spent time in solo meditation in their cells. We were each given a phrase from a Bach sonata to use as the theme for a new fugue. The best composition would be played at Vespers — a great honour.
‘It was autumn. When we weren’t working on the composition, we were meditating, practising. I remember the leaves changing and feeling as though my life was about to begin. Then somehow one night my mother managed to get in, past the attendants, and she woke me.
‘She told me that I was not going to be ordained after all, that I would leave the Citadel and travel to London. I was desperately angry. I didn’t understand. Then she told me she had learnt that the Carillon was harmful to people outside the Citadel. She told me that it was a weapon, like the one that caused Allbreaking. She gave me this.’
Lucien comes near to me again; he pulls something from his pocket and unfolds it. It is a square of cream linen.
A meandering blue line runs across the square in a rough downward slope from left to right. I look closer. It is made of tiny precise stitches that stand high enough above the cloth to be read by fingertip.
‘She came from the outside, you see,’ Lucien says. ‘She joined the Order young, through audition. Her family were broiderers in Oxford, employed by the Order to sew the magisters’ vestments. When she entered, she brought her attendant, Martha, with her.’
At both ends of the fine blue line, a bell is broidered in silvered mettle thread. The first bell is large, with cream lines radiating from it as if to show that it’s speaking. At the bottom of the tributary that connects them, the smaller bell is stitched through with black lines of breaking.
I close my eyes. Open them again. ‘The line.’ I point to it, careful not to touch the cloth. ‘That’s the river.’
Lucien nods.
‘The top bell is the Carillon, in the Citadel. The other is the weapon. Here.’
‘Yes. She made the memory for me to take. She said that only someone from within the Citadel would be able to find it, that it would take a combination of good hearing and memory.’
‘But how did she know about it?’
‘There must have been a rumour. My father was high in the Order. Not a magister but a scholar, someone who travelled for research and to conduct auditions for the Orkestrum. He could have known.’
I think about what Lucien’s mother did. Going against everything she knew, sending a son alone to the city with its dirt and its struggle and without protection from Chimes.
‘My mother’s attendant rode with me to London. It’s only when I left the Citadel that I learnt there was no proofing outside. I tried to understand how the Order could allow it. For a while I tried to find a reason. Maybe they believed memory was unimportant. I knew magisters in the Order who lived inside music alone, whose lives went by without any events worth remembering. Maybe they believed life without memory was better, simpler.
‘But then I saw the other cost, the shaking. The pain. Chimesickness. And I knew that there wasn’t any explanation. The Order saw the Carillon’s toll and did nothing to stop it.
‘Because of the weapon’s soundproofing, it’s very well hidden. I’ve been looking for it since I arrived. A very long while before I caught even a small glimpse. Then I had to start again and again, night after night, approaching always from the same angle. Working out the route that would take me closer.’
‘What about the pact?’ I ask.
‘I needed to eat and I couldn’t get a prentisship, looking like I did. So I started to trade palladium. I got into a fair few fights before I carved out some territory, but my hearing gave me an advantage. So, I began to trade and the pact grew up by itself. First Brennan, then Abel, then you, then Clare.’
I think about Clare joining the pact, but I still don’t have a memory of it. And then I try to fit together the two parts.
‘You recognised the song from what your mother told you?’ I ask.
‘Yes. She told me there was a group who opposed the Order. She thought I would be able to find others who could help me. But I didn’t have any other clues. And just the melody of the song at that, no words. When I heard you sing it whole on the strand, I knew that I needed you to join the pact. I needed your memories.’
I listen to the bare refusing silence of the walls, the breathless dark. Then to Lucien’s presence, his body bending forward in question. It feels like days since my last memory, the codebook and my mother’s explanation. I needed you, is what he said.
‘It’s a guildsong,’ I say. ‘For a guild that tried to keep memory.’
Lucien is still, unmoving, listening.
‘My mother told me about a time before Chimes.’ I feel the bite of the blasphony. The biggest one of them all. ‘Before Chimes they could write down words so that the ideas stayed in formation. That’s what code was. Everyone knew how to write and read in it. But when Chimes came, no one could keep the words still anymore. And at the same time as the words died, birds died too. And memory flew away.’
I look again at the shapes behind my eyes, trying to see if I have it correct.
‘The name of the group is Ravensguild. Gwillum, Huginn, Cedric, Thor, Odin, Hardy, Muninn, they’re all names of ravens. My mother said the guild had spread across the country.’ I think of the word. ‘Like a web, a network. All of them like my mother, people who could see others’ memories. They were trying to preserve memories and also put them together, so that people would understand what had happened. She chose the key ones and took them to someone else.
‘I think she meant they had to preserve memories that would tell the truth about the Order. Because the song isn’t just about time before and time now, is it? It’s about time hereafter. They had a plan for how to make things change. Never ravens in the tree till Muninn can fly home to me. The most important of the ravens is Muninn, which is another way of saying memory. When Muninn comes back, memory returns. In order for them to come back, Chimes must stop.’
The meaning of what I have just said strikes me in the stomach.
‘That’s why it’s not safe to sing in front of the Order,’ says Lucien, wry. I laugh. I have been holding my breath inside myself for who knows how long. The candles flicker.
‘So, they’re afraid of what you know,’ I say, and Lucien nods. ‘And they’re afraid of what you could do. But if you’re such a threat, why didn’t they look for you when you left the Citadel?’
‘According to them, I died. That is what my mother planned. They must have buried something.’
‘Then why are they looking for you now?’
‘I’m not sure. An eightnoch ago I got word that there was danger. We need to act presto. By now Wandle will have reported back — the Order will know our run.’
‘What do you mean, you got word? Your mother contacted you?’
‘Yes.’
‘How?’
‘You can answer that,’ he says.
I shake my head. ‘No.’
‘Go on,’ says Lucien. ‘You can.’
Though I want to refuse, the urge to remember is like a hand now at my back, pushing me. It comes smooth and it comes in a line. Yesternoch was the fight with the Wandle runner, Lucien chimesick on the race. Two days back was poliss in the under. Three days before there was the smell of burning incense on the morning air. Four days was a fight among the strandpickers. I cast back further. It begins to come harder. My brain dry like there’s not enough air for it. Our daily rhythms blend together. I look for detail, anything that will keep a day separate.