‘It poses an interesting question, doesn’t it?’ she says.
I can read Lucien’s impatience clear from where I stand. But there is no sharp answer. I am surprised to see him incline his head in a half-bow. And then I see that he is scared of her. Not of her anger, but of what has caused it. He is afraid of the hurt he’s given her by leaving. The damage there not far from the surface still, not quite hidden. It lends her a strange power.
‘What question?’ says Lucien.
‘Why am I even here speaking to you, when you’re dead? You are dead, aren’t you? Dead, all these many years of — what was it? Riverfever? It was too risky for me to see your body. They are so afraid of contagion in the Citadel.’ She laughs. ‘Poor Lucien.’
Lucien regards her steadily. ‘But you are here. You got the ring out to me.’
‘Yes,’ she says, as if reminded of a past whim. ‘My mother’s ring.’
‘Our mother’s ring,’ he says.
‘I saw her before she died at least. Though it was you she was thinking of.’
Her laugh isn’t for humour, I realise then, but for giving herself pain.
‘Tell me what happened,’ says Lucien.
Sonja shrugs. ‘She died,’ she says. The words staccato in the cold crosshouse.
‘I know that much,’ says Lucien. ‘Tell me what happened.’
‘It was about a year after your mysterious death. They all assumed that she was mourning you, that that killed her. The magisters attributed such crass sentimentality to her low upbringing no doubt. They were wrong, though, as it turned out. Whatever she died of, it wasn’t sentiment.’ She pauses. ‘What else is there to tell? She gave me the ring when she was dying. It was her way of telling me you were still alive and that she’d lied all that time. She meant it for you.’
‘How do you know?’
Sonja sighs. ‘Because she sang it,’ she says. When Lucien says nothing, she continues. Like someone used to waiting for the other to catch up. ‘Do you remember the game we used to play?’
‘The singing game? In the Purcell Room?’
‘Yes. Do you remember the tune?’
‘Of course,’ says Lucien. ‘It wasn’t really fair, that game, you know. I could hear you without the melody. But you refused to change the rules. I sang Ray Me to signal you. Then you had to answer Ray Me Doh.’
Sonja ignores this. ‘When Mother died, she gave me the ring and she sang your name. Not in the official melody, but in that tune. Ray Me Doh.’
Lucien wrinkles his brow and subito I’m watching a whole world I do not know. The vast territory of secrets that has passed between them. A picture floats up of them walking in lockstep like the idling novices, their heads inclined. I feel for a moment apart, alone.
‘I didn’t know she had heard us.’
‘Neither did I. It took me a while to understand what she meant. Of course, it was obvious. She was telling me that you were still hiding, that if I listened hard enough, I would find you.’
‘And the magisters? How did they learn I was alive?’
For the first time since she started speaking, Sonja’s voice falters.
‘After I knew what she had meant, I studied the ring again. I found the hidden catch, and what was there in the space behind the stone.’
‘The guildmedal?’
‘No,’ says Sonja. ‘Not a guildmedal. It was a key.’
Lucien doesn’t show any surprise, just stands there waiting.
‘The small key to the broderie box in Mother’s room. I looked inside. Hidden at the bottom was a soundproofed bag. Inside the bag was a transverse flute. A novice’s flute. Made of palladium.’ Sonja looks hard at Lucien. ‘So I knew that I was right. You weren’t dead. If you were, they would have buried the flute with you.
‘But I made a mistake,’ she continues. ‘I didn’t lock the door.’ Her face changes. ‘They are never very far behind. Always listening. Two attendants were following me and they heard it too. They must have understood the flute’s meaning as clear as I did. There was nothing I could do about it.’
‘How did you get the ring out to me?’
‘As it happened, only one of the attendants alerted the magisters. The other came to my quarters that evening after Vespers.’
‘Martha.’
Sonja nods. ‘She didn’t say anything else that was useful, only that you had gone to London. It was she who insisted on putting the coin inside the ring for you. She said that you would understand. She seems to have forgotten a lot, but then she was never very disciplined.’
Lucien is looking at her. I see he is processing what she has told him. ‘Thank you,’ he says at last.
‘Don’t thank me,’ she says, sharp. ‘I didn’t do it to save you. I did it to bring you back. You need to stand before the magisters and learn what it is you have done.’
Lucien’s voice doesn’t shift in register. ‘Do you think the magisters want to hear why I left? What do you think they’ll do if they find me?’
‘I’m not in a position to speak on their behalf.’
Her voice is closed and tight, and it contains something I recognise. Something I know from experience: it is harder to be the one left behind.
I walk into the circle of light that binds brother and sister.
‘Lucien told me of you,’ I say. ‘He told me of your skill. He said that you were always smarter than him. So you must have seen yourself what is wrong with the Order. What the Carillon does.’ I say it presto and straight as if I’m speaking to Clare. It’s a mistake.
‘What did you say his name was?’ Sonja asks Lucien, not breaking her gaze to look at me.
‘Simon.’
‘Well, Simon,’ Sonja says, turning at last and fixing me with dark eyes, ‘don’t talk about what you don’t understand.’
Anger rushes into me. Like water into a vessel pushed under the surface. It floods my head and stomach and arms so fast it scares me. She might be Lucien’s sister, but her face in its cool blankness is that of every member of the Order, their privilege and cruelty.
‘I understand enough,’ I say. ‘I understand what it’s like to watch someone die of chimesickness, when they’re trying to hold your hand, but their muscles won’t even let them keep that last grip. And what it’s like to forget who you are and where you came from and the people you love. Every part of the place you live in is soundproofed to protect you. You have no idea about damage or pain.’
‘Chimesickness? A sickness given by the Carillon’s music? That’s not true. That’s a rumour started in the cities out of envy and ignorance.’
‘Believe what the hell you want,’ I say. ‘I saw my mother die from it.’
‘If they knew, they would not allow it,’ she says. She is speaking to herself. She taps the fingers of her right hand, bow hand, on the wood of the chair’s back. ‘It can’t be true.’
‘It’s true,’ says Lucien. His voice is somehow apologetic, which makes me angry. Why should she be protected? ‘I have heard it. And I’ve felt it myself. It attacks you in the joints. You can’t do anything to stop it.’
Sonja looks up abruptly.
Lucien continues. ‘Onestory teaches that the weapon was built out of dischord and turned dischord on itself. That the Order and Chimes saved us from the chaos after Allbreaking. But that isn’t true. The Order built the weapon to clear the way. To clear it for the Carillon, and for their harmonies. In London, under the river, parts of the old weapon remain.’