Anna Smaill - The Chimes

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.’

‘The weapon from Allbreaking?’ Sonja is pale and I think of myself in that dead room, my confusion. I almost feel sorry for her.

‘Yes.’

‘But how do you know the Order made it?’ Some emotion is fighting in her face.

‘Because the weapon is soundproofed in the same way as the Citadel. The Order omits an important fact from Onestory. The weapon was a Carillon.’

‘That is impossible.’ Sonja looks as though she is about to cry. She turns to face the cross-stretched man. Her hands tense and release on the wood. ‘They don’t lie,’ she says.

‘They lied from the beginning,’ says Lucien. ‘They think it’s for the greater good, but it is still a lie and the Order is built on it. Outside the Citadel, they can’t keep memory. Chimes brings sickness, and then it kills.’

Sonja’s thoughts have moved back inside, too deep for me to see, and she stands straight and unmoving. Somehow that stillness is a dark thing to watch and I feel that I should turn away. When you have kept your memories with you forever, I think, it might be harder to have their meaning destroyed. I turn away from her to the far wall of the crosshouse and I see a picture in my mind. A silver structure, an unsound platform held high in the air. The scaffold holding it sways, but it stays up as though by sheer force of will.

The silence lasts for a long while. Her voice has changed when she speaks again.

‘Father once showed me an object he had picked up in one of the cities as a souvenir. He said that citizens kept them to ward off memoryloss. He said that it was just superstition. That in the cities they had forgotten what was important, and they didn’t care for learning or contemplation.’ Her voice higher, strained. ‘He said they were ambitious, hungry for money. There was no discipline. No discipline, just ragged striving. He said that if people conducted solfege at Matins and Vespers, they would learn from the Carillon just as we did.’

Lucien and I wait. She speaks lento.

‘And I knew that he wasn’t telling the truth. Does that surprise you? I knew and I decided not to care. It was my decision.’

She tilts her head back and I see the tears she is fighting and will master. The fine blade of discrimination turned inward, cutting herself with it. And I see how her self-control is its own punishment. Close as she can come to remorse. She knows it also. I see Lucien in her then, his pride.

‘Why are you here?’ she asks at last, though I can see she already knows the answer.

‘We are here to broadcast what we know,’ says Lucien. ‘And then to destroy the Carillon.’