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CHAPTER SIX

Hush

They met on the Gossamer, as always, in the middle of a golden-bright bridge across the River Juro that existed for nobody but them. Morrigan dismounted smoothly from the shadow horse and watched it carry the hunter off into darkness with the disappearing sound of hooves on cobblestones.

Ezra Squall stood beneath a gaslight, looking out across the glittering black water below. He was impeccably dressed in a tailored coat over a dark grey suit, and a mood of quiet expectation simmered in the air around him.

‘Well?’ he said without looking at her, as if they were already mid-conversation.

‘Well, what?’

‘Shall I lift the Hush?’

Morrigan stepped cautiously into the pool of light, considering the question. It was the same one he’d asked her in their previous lesson, and the one before that; the memory emerged as effortlessly as a bit of driftwood floating to the surface of the river.

‘No,’ she said slowly. Turning the prospect over in her mind, she found it made her queasy. ‘Not yet.’

Squall sent a quick, calculating glance in her direction. He looked as if he wanted to argue, but changed his mind. ‘As you like.’

‘Will we start with mice?’

He gave a quizzical blink.

‘You said I could begin learning Masquerade tonight,’ she reminded him, as the events of last week returned to her. ‘You said you’d show me how to Masquerade as an unnimal, and that we should start small, with rodents or—’

‘I did say that, yes,’ he agreed, brushing an invisible speck of something from his lapel. ‘But that was before you made an absolute shambles of the Black Parade. We have a new agenda now.’

Ah. A splinter of a memory reappeared. He’d been there. Of course he’d been there. It was his familiar voice she’d heard, his pale face she’d spotted in the crowd.

DO SOMETHING, you fool!

‘Jupiter said what happened with the Unresting wasn’t my fault.’ She’d been quite ready to assign herself the blame earlier, but she certainly didn’t want to hear it from Ezra Squall, of all people.

‘That’s because he cares more about your feelings than the truth. It was quite obviously your fault. Did you hear anyone else scream?’ His gaze sharpened. ‘Would you rather I lie to spare your feelings, or help you fix the problem you’ve created?’

She didn’t need to answer that. ‘How?’

But Squall had already turned away and was striding over the Gossamer bridge, a jerk of his head the only indication that he wished her to follow.

‘Where are we going?’ Morrigan called after him, scowling.

‘To feed a monster.’

They might have travelled across town more efficiently by shadow horse – or even taken the Gossamer Line, which was specifically made for travelling across the invisible web of energy that connected everything in the realm – but Squall preferred walking. He said he always seized a chance to see the streets of Nevermoor at night when they were empty of people, but Morrigan strongly suspected he was, in fact, seizing the chance to deliver a lecture.

‘What’s this monster we’re feeding?’ she asked for the third time since they’d set off, and for the third time he ignored the question. Morrigan tried to suppress a flutter of nerves. She hated surprises. Especially monstrous ones.

Squall gave an impatient huff, and she huffed back at him, and they walked in seething silence for half a block before he spoke again.

‘This isn’t sustainable, Miss Crow. I told you that you could decide when to remove the Hush.’

Morrigan sighed. This again.

‘But I assumed the challenge would lie in persuading you not to remove it too soon,’ he continued, ‘not that you would want to keep it there forever.’

‘I don’t want to keep it forever . I’m not ready yet, but—’

‘When?’

‘ Soon .’

‘I forgot what a coward you can be.’

The accusation stung because it was true.

After she’d signed the apprenticeship agreement that night in the hospital, three days had passed before Squall arrived unannounced for their first lesson. Morrigan had spent two of those days recovering from the exertion of bringing the Wunimals back to themselves, and the third in a state of high panic over what she’d done.

How could she possibly tell Jupiter she’d willingly apprenticed herself to Ezra Squall – banished Wundersmith, enemy of all Nevermoorians, most-dangerous-person-in-the-Unnamed-Realm Ezra Squall ? After all Jupiter had done to prevent that exact scenario?

How could she explain it to Cadence and Hawthorne? To Jack and Miss Cheery and the rest of Unit 919 and … and everyone else who’d ever believed in her and defended her, who’d welcomed her to Nevermoor and made it feel like home? She’d signed a contract with someone widely regarded as the evillest man who ever lived, and yes she’d done it to save the victims of the Hollowpox, but—

No, she thought . Not entirely true.

That was the deal they’d made initially – a cure for the Hollowpox in exchange for becoming his apprentice – but in the end, Squall had given her a choice. He’d nullified their bargain by saving the Wunimals before she signed the contract.

Morrigan could have walked away. But the moment Squall had used his own powers through her, shown her the scope of what a real Wundersmith could do, she’d known for certain that she would never become one without his help. Never master the Wundrous Arts, never be fully in control of the dangerous amount of magical energy that swarmed around her every second of every day. Ezra Squall had shown her that to truly be a Wundersmith was to have a universe inside.

That was what Morrigan dreaded explaining to Jupiter and her friends. How could she possibly expect them to understand that feeling?

When Squall sent the Hunt of Smoke and Shadow to fetch her for their first lesson, his solution to her panic had been surprising.

‘You don’t have to tell them.’

Morrigan had been aghast. ‘What? Of course I have to tell them! I can’t keep a secret like this! They’ll know . They’ll know I’m hiding something, and it will make everything horrible . I can’t just—’

‘Yes, all right, enough. I quite get the picture.’ He’d sighed a deep, put-upon sigh. ‘What I mean is, you don’t have to tell them yet .’

And so, with Morrigan’s agreement, Squall had put a Hush on her. Just a bit of Wundrous trickery to allow her some time to breathe.

That’s all she needed, Morrigan had told herself. A few days of forgetting, maybe a week. Just to get into the rhythm of her new lessons without being crushed by the guilt of this enormous secret, and the constant dread of having to confess it.

But one week had turned to two … and now it was three going into four.

Morrigan took a deep breath as they left Old Town via the East Gate, their faces briefly illuminated by pink flames from the torches outside the Temple of the Divine Thing.

He’s right, she thought miserably. You are a coward.

‘It wasn’t meant to be a long-term arrangement,’ Squall said waspishly. ‘The Hush is harmless now, even if this particular variety makes you seem a vacant fool at times. But if you let it sink its claws in, you’ll be even more useless to me than you are now.’

‘Just one more week,’ Morrigan insisted. ‘I’ll figure out how to tell Jupiter, then you can remove the Hush in our next lesson, I swear —’

‘Enough! Why am I wasting my time teaching you anything if you insist on returning to a blank slate again and again? If you cannot practise between our meetings, there’s little point having them at all.’

‘I’m not a blank—’ she began indignantly, but his voice steamrolled over hers.

‘Do you even remember what you learned last week? Or the week before that, or the week before that?’

‘I don’t think—’

‘Of course not.’ Squall threw a hand up and stormed onwards across the footbridge, coat billowing behind him. ‘Well, never mind. No need to practise. No need to learn the Wundrous Arts at all! You’re only the sole heir to a legacy of nine bloodlines spanning hundreds of years of tradition, power and craft. Whyever should you take such a trivial matter seriously? What could possibly— ’

He was silenced at the apex of the bridge when a great wave roared up from the Juro, curving into an arch directly above his head. It hovered there precariously, sheltering both Squall and the bridge beneath a dark umbrella of water that threatened to crash down at any moment.

He looked up, jaw clenching and unclenching, and turned slowly to face his pupil.

Morrigan stood at the threshold of the bridge, arms aloft and slightly shaking, holding up the enormous wave of dirty river water from afar, with all the strength she had.

‘I was going to say,’ she said, with only a slight tremble of exertion in her voice, ‘I don’t think … that I’ve … entirely forgotten.’

She would have liked to raise an eyebrow at that moment, but unfortunately couldn’t spare the concentration. Her focus was already wavering and her arms were burning with the effort of keeping a kilolitre of water in the air. Weaving wasn’t Morrigan’s strongest Wundrous Art by any means, but she felt indescribably smug at having remembered the mechanics of it. Blank slate, indeed.

Squall said nothing. He shoved his hands into his coat pockets and watched her for ten seconds … fifteen seconds … twenty. His face was impassive, while Morrigan’s twisted with increasing strain until at last, her muscles and mind gave out simultaneously and the wave descended in a grand, dramatic CRASH.

He didn’t even flinch. The water couldn’t touch him through the Gossamer, of course. It went straight through his body and poured down the curved footbridge in both directions and over the sides. Morrigan jumped out of the way as it splashed the toes of her boots.

Squall gave an unimpressed sigh. He tilted his chin back to eye her appraisingly, and said, ‘Waterwhip.’

Right , Morrigan thought as she pushed up her sleeves. A test, is it? Fine.

She took a deep breath and hummed a little more Wunder to her fingertips, casting her mind back to the Weaving trick he’d taught her in their first official lesson. She coaxed a fine column of water from the Juro, whispering a quiet ‘ yes ’ as it rapidly built speed and energy, coiling upwards into the air, round and round like a snake, stretching and narrowing. She held out her hand and the waterwhip came to it effortlessly, the two fitting together as if moulded that way.

Morrigan raised her arm high and cracked the swirling whip in the air like a lion tamer. The resounding SNAP! was a shock to the system, bouncing sharply off the surrounding buildings. Grinning with satisfaction, she flung the whip over the side of the bridge and it broke apart mid-descent, rejoining the river as a shower of droplets. She looked to Squall for a reaction, but his face was mask-like.

‘Shadowcloak.’

Easy. She reached out as if to pluck a bit of shadow from beneath the bridge. Wunder – ever watchful, ever eager to do her bidding – gathered around her fingers and stretched out far beyond them to execute the task. It was like an extension of herself – two ghostly arms that didn’t obey the laws of physics, only her intention.

Weaving had always made Morrigan feel a bit that way; as if she had an extra set of arms, an extra pair of Wundrous hands that were bigger, more terrible, more wonderful and monstrous than her physical body. Squall had told her in their first proper lesson that this was exactly how Weaving was supposed to feel. He’d shown her how to create a physical embodiment of that feeling – to throw her power beyond herself, like a potter throwing clay on a wheel. He called it her ‘reach’, and was constantly telling her to use her reach, remember her reach, extend her reach, sense with her reach. Sometimes she felt like whacking him over the head with her reach.

Morrigan draped the cool, soft shadow across her shoulders and over her head, covering herself in darkness like a shawl. It wasn’t perfect; more a subtle camouflage than an impenetrable hiding spot, and she had neither the skill nor stamina to make it stick longer than a minute or two. But someone walking by would probably look straight past her.

He beckoned her onwards and the quiz continued, with Morrigan scrambling to remember all she’d learned. She gathered up a small stretch of footpath and shook it out like a rug (her new favourite trick). She threw her voice so that it bounced around the buildings like a chorus of birds. She took a puff of steam from a passing Wunderground train and a film of condensation from a window and wove them into a little raincloud that hovered in the palm of her hand.

Together they made their way through the boroughs, using the occasional Swindleroad – dangerously magical alleyways that swallowed you up in one part of the city and spat you out somewhere else altogether – to quicken the journey. Squall’s knowledge of Nevermoor’s geographical tricks and secrets was virtuosic.

The city wasn’t nearly as dead as Morrigan thought it would be at this time of night. Occasionally they encountered a stray costumed reveller stumbling home from a Hallowmas party, or heard snatches of music and laughter from a basement flat, or window high above. Every time they passed someone on the street, Morrigan snatched up a bit of shadow to cover herself, just in case. What with her face and name having very recently been splashed all over the newspapers with the incendiary headline wundersmith!, she didn’t want to risk being recognised. Not after what had happened at the Black Parade. And especially not when she was walking the streets with what amounted to an invisible man, looking very much like she was talking to herself.

When Squall stopped giving instructions, Morrigan couldn’t hide a satisfied smile. ‘I remembered everything,’ she pointed out.

‘Yes,’ Squall conceded, ‘but you haven’t shown the slightest bit of improvement, much less mastery.’ The smile dropped from Morrigan’s face. ‘Miss Crow, I’ve scarcely set the bar above ankle height. These tricks are the things we Wundersmiths used to play at in our morning warm-ups. Silly little artifices we’d mastered by the age of ten.’

Morrigan felt her little bubble of pride deflate as rapidly as if he’d popped it with a needle.

‘Oh, sorry ,’ she snapped. ‘Just trying to think … what was I doing at age ten? Oh yeah, I was pretty busy that year having no idea what a Wundersmith was . Can’t believe I forgot to teach myself how to make a whip out of water. How embarrassing.’

Squall looked poised to argue again, so she turned and stomped off in the direction they were headed.

‘Your shadowcloak is too slow to gather, and nowhere near dark enough,’ he said bluntly, catching up to her in three long strides. ‘If someone was actively looking for you, you’d have been spotted within seconds. We need to work on your eye for value.’

Morrigan was almost too annoyed to respond, but curiosity won. ‘Value of what?’

‘ Value in this case refers to the relative depth of lightness and darkness in any given context. We’ll discuss it in another lesson. Likewise your stamina,’ he continued before she could get a word in, ‘which remains abysmal . You should be able to keep yourself shadowed for hours. You should be able to conceal entire buildings under darkness! This is a weakness that can only be addressed with consistency and PRACTICE. Which brings us back to the removal of – yes? What have you found?’

Morrigan, who’d been glaring furiously at the cobblestones, looked up to find they were surrounded by black-smoke hunters on horseback. The Hunt towered above her, blocking out most of the ambient light. She shivered as the horses whinnied and stamped their hooves.

One of the hunters raised a hand, trailing smoke and shadow through the air to form a strange series of images Morrigan couldn’t decipher, but which apparently made perfect sense to Squall.

‘I suppose that ought to have been predictable,’ he said with a quiet sigh. ‘Keep looking. Is the harbour clear?’

Morrigan tried to track the snatches of imagery that followed: a sailboat, a broken window, a chain.

‘And has it stirred?’

A dolefully blinking eye. A ripple of water.

‘Good. Go on ahead, but keep to the shadows and await our arrival,’ Squall instructed the hunter as he took the reins of two shadow horses and handed one to Morrigan. She had to tilt her head all the way up to look at the beast, startling as it breathed two jets of velvety black smoke from huge, flaring nostrils.

The pack of hunters disappeared again into the night, one amorphous body of darkness trailing hundreds of fiery red embers.

Following Squall’s lead – though with more difficulty and less grace – Morrigan mounted her horse. She adjusted her seat in the saddle, feeling a sense of dread settle into her bones. She almost didn’t want to ask again.

‘Where are we going?’

Squall was barely paying attention to her; he was instead looking to the horizon, brow furrowed. A thin line of inky blue light had already begun to rise into the black sky. ‘Hmm? Oh – to feed the Guiltghast. Like I said.’

‘The what?’

Squall stared back at her for some time before he spoke. ‘Good grief … You’re not serious? They told you about the Unresting, but not about the Guiltghast ?’

When Morrigan didn’t answer, he gave a chuckle that managed to sound disbelieving and bitter and slightly hysterical, all at once.

‘Oh, that’s precious,’ he said lightly, rubbing his eyes with one hand. ‘That is priceless. Absolute vintage Wundrous Society. Layer upon layer of secrets and lies, always doling out crumbs of knowledge on a strictly need-to-know basis. Aren’t they tired of it yet? Aren’t they bored ?’

‘I’m bored,’ muttered Morrigan. ‘Are you going to tell me or not?’

‘No.’ Squall dug his heels into the side of his steed and turned it to face the creeping dawn. ‘I’m going to show you.’