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CHAPTER THIRTY

A Signal Through the Noise

‘Nocturne? Really? ’ Morrigan kicked listlessly at a bit of crumbled brick on the road. They’d alighted in a grubby industrial area in Swordsworth, one of Nevermoor’s outer boroughs. ‘What about Weaving? I’ve done heaps of Weaving lately, I reckon I could make the pilgrimage now.’

‘Has the seal begun to show?’ asked Squall.

‘Oh.’ She examined her fingertips, remembering how her Inferno imprint had appeared before she visited its Divinity, the Kindling in the Hearth. The tiny flame still flickered brightly on the end of her left middle finger – tattoo-like, but not a tattoo. ‘No.’

‘Then no, you’re not ready. I wouldn’t recommend trying for Weaving next, anyway.’

‘What about Masquerade, then?’ Morrigan had enjoyed their lesson inside the Skyfaced Clock. She hadn’t quite managed to transform into a mouse, but it was only her first try, and she thought she’d made some very respectable whiskers.

‘I’ve decided to set Masquerade aside for now,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t play to your natural strengths. Nocturne will be easier for you to acquire – the Nightingale in the Nest is far less capricious than most of the other Divinities. Certainly less traumatising than some.’

‘The Nightingale in the Nest,’ Morrigan repeated to herself. ‘Cute.’

‘I wouldn’t go that far.’

Squall stepped off the street and walked through a huge set of locked iron gates, leaving Morrigan to squeeze through a gap beneath the rusty chain that bound them. The place looked like an old mill or factory compound. Dilapidated brick towers loomed above a series of long, squat buildings beside a particularly murky stretch of the River Juro.

‘You take me to the nicest places.’ Morrigan scrunched her nose.

He stared at her with a flicker of irritation. ‘You recall the night you destroyed the Hollowpox? On the Deucalion rooftop, I told you to imagine a map of Nevermoor that showed the density of Wundrous energy as a concentration of light specks. Yes?’

She nodded. ‘You said places like Wunsoc and the Deucalion would be the brightest, because of how much Wunder they churn through.’

‘Mmm. Well, imagine the opposite of those places. The darkest spots on the map would be neighbourhoods like this one. Although there is Wunder almost everywhere in Nevermoor, it’s drawn much more powerfully to the places where Wundersmiths built structures to attract and harness it … and I’m afraid poor old Swordsworth was always overlooked when it came to investment in the public good. Which makes it an ideal place for today’s summoning lesson. You’ll soon understand why.’

He directed her through an archway, past huge bottle-shaped chimneys and a terrace of workers’ cottages in disrepair.

‘I can already summon Wunder, though,’ Morrigan reminded him. ‘I summon it constantly.’

Squall tutted impatiently. ‘Yes, but summoning Wunder is only one application of the art of Nocturne. The Wundersmith who fails to fully investigate it, fails to learn a powerful truth.’

‘Which is?’

‘That by summoning Wunder itself, you can summon anything that is Wundrous in nature … or in theory, anything that contains even a speck of Wunder. Which, in Nevermoor, includes most things and most people.’

‘You’re saying I could use Nocturne to summon people ? Like—’ She clicked her fingers, and the sound bounced off the empty buildings. ‘Instantly?’

Squall paused, seeming to have an argument with himself. ‘It certainly is possible, if you become a good enough Wundersmith. But as always, there are caveats and parameters. The distance between you and the person you wish to summon. Your target’s density of Wunder. Their strength of will, their resistance or cooperation, your own skill and energy … and probably half a dozen other variables.’

‘What about something bigger?’ Morrigan asked, her interest piqued. ‘Like … Cascade Towers is fully Wundrous. Are you saying I could summon a skyscraper made of waterfalls right here?’

‘That would be a ridiculously ill-advised application of the art, and no intelligent Wundersmith would attempt it … though I suppose in theory it’s possible.’ He tilted his head from side to side. ‘However, unless your instructions are extremely granular in their specificity, Wunder will generally read your intention, and take the path of least resistance to execute it. Wunder is intelligent enough to know the easiest way to achieve that is to move you , not the building.’

‘Huh.’ A cavalcade of new possibilities tumbled into Morrigan’s head. ‘Can we try it now?’

‘Certainly. Then I’ll drop you off the Black Cliffs into the Harrow Strait for your first ever scuba diving lesson.’ Noticing her blank expression, he clarified, ‘That would be overambitious. We’ll begin on a smaller scale. Here we are.’

They’d reached the centre of the compound, where five buildings converged on a sloping cobbled square scattered with bits of broken ceramic tiles.

He instructed Morrigan to gather five hand-sized pieces of tile, weave a few threads of Wunder tightly around each of them, and toss one onto each of the surrounding rooftops. (It took her eight throws to hit all five targets, but she’d never claimed to be good at sports.)

‘Summoning Wunder itself is easy,’ said Squall, ‘but summoning a specific object – which is to say, summoning the specific collection of Wunder attached to an object, and hoping the object trots along with the Wunder when it’s summoned – is more difficult. You must listen to your senses and home in on the smallest of signals. Now, close your eyes and slow your breathing.’

They passed the next hour in what felt like meditation, only more frustrating.

To summon one of her tile pieces, Morrigan had to call the Wunder she’d woven around them back to her. It sounded simple. Yet it was the single most exasperating task she’d ever attempted.

Not because Wunder wouldn’t listen to her – it was the opposite. Wunder was the proverbial dog with its ears perked up, ready to rush to her at the first note of Morningtide’s Child . But the trouble was, Wunder was everywhere , not just wrapped around the tiles. So it was like being surrounded by a pack of overenthusiastic beagles every time she opened her mouth. She couldn’t control it. Couldn’t make it be quiet .

If the tiles were closer and in sight, she could have thrown her invisible reach out and taken them. But summoning something at a distance, something she couldn’t see , meant feeling her way blindfolded through layers of ambient noise and static and fizzing energy. Grasping for one tiny spark in a sky full of fireworks.

As Squall predicted, she quickly understood why this lesson would have been impossible in a place like Wunsoc or the Deucalion. If Swordsworth’s very low density of Wunder was already this fireworks-noisy, anywhere Wunder was abundant would have been marching-band-jackhammer-volcanic-eruption-screaming-toddler-noisy.

On approximately the one squillionth try, when Morrigan’s energy and enthusiasm were dangerously close to depletion, a familiar shard of terracotta finally found its way into her hand. She felt the Wunder she’d threaded around it singing at their reunion and literally jumped for joy, before collapsing to the ground, exhausted.

Squall didn’t join in the celebration, but he did at least refrain from reminding her that the task was to summon five pieces of tile, not one.

‘I think that will do for today,’ was all he said.

Morrigan asked Squall to send her back somewhere closer to Sapphire Square, where the march was set to end with the launching of the tribute.

‘Bet I missed the whole thing anyway,’ she grumbled. ‘Happy Season of the Manyhands to me.’

Squall stopped her before she could step onto the Gossamer bridge. ‘Tell me, what do you know about the Manyhands?’

‘Not much,’ she admitted. ‘Aunt Margot said in the olden days, when her great-grandmother was a little girl, the tribute would come to life and dance with them at the end-of-season feast, and … I don’t know. It left them gifts and stuff.’ She shrugged. ‘I assume it’s all made up.’

Then again, she supposed she might think Saint Nicholas and the Yule Queen’s Battle of Christmas Eve was made up too, if she hadn’t seen it with her own eyes.

‘Much of it is,’ Squall agreed. ‘The Manyhands themself is certainly real. I’ve met them. You will too, one day, when you make your Weaving pilgrimage.’

Morrigan had been itching for this conversation to end so she could cross the bridge, but that caught her attention. ‘The Manyhands is a Wundrous Divinity ?’

‘One of the more terrifying ones, yes. Although you wouldn’t know it from the tribute’s flattering depiction.’

‘I haven’t seen it yet.’

‘Nor have I,’ he said. ‘But it’s the same every year: a sanitised, flower-strewn, beauty-pageant version of a profound, unfathomable ancient horror. A horror whose true likeness could never be recreated by a feeble human artist. Not even a Wundersmith – although Nakamura took a more respectable stab at it. The Guiltghast at least came slightly closer to reality.’

‘Hang on. Whoa. You’re saying the Guiltghast is …’ Morrigan rubbed her face, trying to keep her fuzzy brain on track. ‘Wait, what are you saying?’

‘I’m saying the Guiltghast was one of many Wundrous Acts that was created in tribute to a Divinity, and fashioned – somewhat – in their image. The Divinity in question being the Manyhands at the Loom: divine patron not of the Silver District, but of the Wundrous Art of Weaving. Supposedly Hani Nakamura took her first pilgrimage to the Loom and was so enamoured of the Manyhands she pledged her lifelong devotion. Never sought another seal.’

‘I thought the whole point was to collect them all,’ said Morrigan, looking thoughtfully at the tattoo-like imprint of a small, dancing flame on her finger. She was very fond of her Inferno seal, but there were nine Wundrous Arts altogether, and she still wanted the others.

Squall’s eyes flicked briefly upwards. ‘You make them sound like commemorative teaspoons. But yes, I suppose the whole point , for most Wundersmiths, was to acquire as broad an arsenal of skills as possible in a single lifetime. For Hani Nakamura, though – and others like her – committing their life to one Divinity was a spiritual choice.

‘Whereas for the Silver District, it was a political one. Hundreds of years ago, most people in Nevermoor paid tribute to one, or some, or all of the Wundrous Divinities. The Silver District’s founding families chose the Manyhands as one of four patron deities they paid tribute to throughout the seasons: the Manyhands in winter, the Nightingale in spring, the Sisters in summer and the Kindling in autumn. Of course it’s wildly unfashionable in the Free State to acknowledge the Divinities these days – their existence having been obscured along with Wundersmith history – but the Silver District is so belligerently insular, they never really let go of their old traditions.’

Morrigan glanced again at the Gossamer bridge, keenly aware that it was almost sunset. She’d surely missed the launch of the tribute, but perhaps she could still get back before her aunts declared her a missing person.

‘Not that I don’t enjoy a history lesson,’ she said, ‘but are you telling me this for a particular reason, or … ?’

‘I’m telling you this,’ Squall continued in a level voice, ‘so you understand that this warped idea they have – this image of the Manyhands as a divine mascot, a personal deity in service only to the Silverborn – is both false and grotesque. The Divinities couldn’t care less about the Silver District; they don’t care about any of us. The real patron this pretentious little festival was made to honour was, in truth, the Wundrous Society itself. The old Wundrous Society, who took a lot of money from the Silver Council in return for certain favours.’

Morrigan frowned. ‘Such as?’

‘Such as the creation and maintenance of valuable infrastructure, making their district one of the most densely Wundrous, beautiful and best-functioning neighbourhoods in the city, with Kokoro’s waterfall gate and Antares’s self-cleaning canal filtration system and Jemmity’s lintel chain and so on. The anti-Swordsworth, in a way.’

Morrigan was quiet for a moment, trying to process what he was telling her. Decima Kokoro made the waterfall gate – she felt like she ought to have known that.

Did the Darlings know how much of their district was made by Wundersmiths? For reasons she couldn’t quite discern and didn’t want to think too hard about, that idea made her feel uneasy.

‘Do you think … people in the Silver District know all this?’ she asked him. ‘Probably not, right? I mean, the Wundrous Society did a pretty thorough job of wiping out Wundersmith history everywhere else in Nevermoor.’

‘I think the clever ones do – the ones in charge. Not that you’ll ever hear them admit to such an origin story. Much more polite to credit their beauty, bounty and blessings to some folksy, mythological tale about generous gods with a soft spot for the aristocracy, than the paid-for pet Wundersmiths who were once at their beck and call. But I imagine, deep down, they must long for those good old days.’

He raised one eyebrow, casting her a sidelong look.

‘Oh dear. Have I spoiled the magic of the season?’

With the magic of the season … not spoiled, perhaps, but certainly smudged, Morrigan slipped back into the crowd. The Manyhands tribute was already too far down the Splendid Canal for her to spot, but as it would float around the district for several weeks, she knew she’d see it eventually.

The rest of Sunday evening was a quiet one by Darling standards – supper at a waterfront restaurant with the Mahapatras and the Lowdermilks, followed by parlour games with the Carringtons and the Fortescues, and a midnight stroll home through the Pleasure Gardens. By the time she finally got to bed, Morrigan felt like she’d power-lifted a train carriage and run four marathons … and yet she found herself lying wide awake at two o’clock, feeling anxiety set in.

It had suddenly hit her: she was going back to school in the morning. Back to the real world. That came with a whole set of real-world worries, the most pressing one being that Cadence would expect her to have found the wedding photos.

Sitting up in bed, Morrigan leaned over and reached underneath the mattress, feeling around for where she’d hidden Cadence’s map after the last time she’d crossed a room off – a huge, empty parlour on the third floor, with dark patches on the walls where paintings used to be, and no furniture. That must have been … a week ago? Guilt gnawed at her. How had she so thoroughly put the murder from her mind all this time, when one of the people on their suspect list was inside this house ?

And, more importantly, what was she going to tell Detective Blackburn tomorrow? Sorry I didn’t do the one thing I said I was coming back here for! I was too busy with all the croquet and tea parties. She’d love that.

‘Where is it?’ Morrigan muttered, just about dislocating her shoulder as she twisted to reach further under the mattress, feeling for the little piece of paper. She finally had to climb out to kneel on the floor beside the bed. A new worry crept in: had someone found the map? One of the maids, perhaps, when they’d changed her bed linen? Would they have handed it over to the aunts as evidence of Morrigan’s espionage?

Before her imagination could spiral out of control, finally her fingers found the edge of the paper. Flooded with relief, she yanked it out a little too enthusiastically and tumbled backwards, grabbing the wooden bedpost to steady herself.

Morrigan instantly felt the sharp needle-like pain of a splinter embedding itself deep in her palm. She winced as she pulled out a tiny shard of wood and, wiping a drop of blood on her nightshirt, tried to see where it had come from.

There was something carved into the back of the polished oak bedpost. Morrigan nudged the heavy bed a tiny bit further away from the wall, throwing all her weight against it. Contorting herself at an awkward angle, she breathed a tiny flame into her cupped hand for light. There were four words carved vertically in deep, angry slashes:

I

H

A

T

E

L

A

D

Y

H

O

R

R

I

B

L

E

‘ I hate Lady Horrible ,’ Morrigan whispered, extinguishing the tiny flame with her breath.

Her mind raced. Had her mother carved those words? Or somebody else? And who was Lady Horrible – her grandmother, perhaps? Was this some clue as to why Meredith had run away?

Not for the first time since coming to Darling House, Morrigan was overwhelmed with a longing to speak to her mother, to ask the questions only Meredith Darling could answer. She reached out gingerly to touch the words on the bedpost, letter by letter. They felt like her mother was reaching out to her through time and space. A tiny spark in a sky full of fireworks.

It was perhaps the least opportune moment to hear a strange sound coming from the hallway outside her room.

THUMP.

Morrigan froze, peering into the darkness. The door creaked open, and her heart caught in her throat as a silhouette emerged in the gloom.

THUMP.

‘OW!’ came a cry, as the silhouette stumbled fully into the bedroom, and then, ‘Watch it, Louis, you klutz! These shoes are De Flimsé.’