The Hush (35 page)

For several long minutes they stood there, gazing into the streets beyond. Chester did not let go. Neither did she.

‘Play me a song?' she whispered.

They retreated to the foot of the bed and Chester picked up his fiddle. He reluctantly released her hand, but Susannah just smiled at him and nodded towards Goldenleaf. The fiddle was scruffy – a mismatch of repairs and scratches – but Chester knew it was playable. He pressed the wood beneath his chin and pressed his bow to the strings.

Focus
, he told himself, suddenly nervous. It had been over a week since he'd played, and he'd never played a song for Susannah before. Not for personal reasons, at least, beyond the scope of his role in the gang. He hesitated. But his bow brushed the strings and suddenly he knew what to play.

‘The Nightfall Duet' soared up from the fiddle, and Susannah's smile curved up a little higher. Not entirely sad, but wistful.

‘They changed that song's name, you know,' she said. ‘Just for us. Just for our gang.'

‘I know.'

Chester teased out the first verse. His fingers tensed in preparation for the frenzy of the chorus, but Susannah spoke before his bow could make its slide across the strings.

‘We did a lot, didn't we? The Nightfall Gang. We made a name for ourselves. We helped people.'

Chester let his bow fall. He thought of the stories of the Nightfall Gang. The money they'd given to the poor. The Songshapers whose plans they'd ruined. The prisoners they'd freed.

‘Yeah,' he said. ‘You helped people.'

‘
We
,' she corrected.

Chester gave a quiet smile. ‘We helped people.'

Another breeze brushed the windowpane. Outside, the sun was rising higher into morning blue.

‘It seems a waste,' Susannah said slowly, ‘to throw away all that history. All that reputation. When we could still be using it to do some good.'

She looked up at him, eyes a little too bright. Chester knew what she was asking and what she was too afraid to say. Sam was gone. He was gone and he was never coming back. Would it be wrong to carry on without him?

‘Sam helped you start the gang, didn't he?' Chester said. ‘I mean, he was one of the original members?'

‘Yes.'

‘So he believed in it, then. He wanted it to achieve something.'

She nodded.

‘Well,' Chester said, ‘I didn't know him as well as you did. And I don't think it's my place to tell you what he would have thought. But …'

Susannah looked at him for a moment, then down at Goldenleaf. She gave a slow nod. ‘He gave everything he had to this gang. It was all he had left in the world.'

She kept her eyes low on the fiddle. ‘He would have wanted us to keep going.'

Another pause. Chester glanced at her, then at his father. The older man had shifted in his sleep a little and his mouth was slightly open. He wasn't yet awake but he looked … better. More like a man sleeping than a man
dead. And Chester knew, with a sudden certainty, that he was going to wake.

When
, he thought.
‘When', not ‘if'.

He looked back at Susannah. Her face was still red and puffy, but there was something new there too, a glint of the old determination behind her eyes. She nodded towards him and gave a pointed look at his bow.

‘I asked you for a song, Chester. You haven't finished it yet.'

Chester picked up the bow and pressed it against the strings. ‘From the chorus?'

‘No, I want to hear it again. From the top.'

He met her eyes and there was a moment of silence. He smiled. She returned it. The sunlight glinted through the window. Chester pressed the bow against the strings and it felt as warm as another hand inside his own.

‘Yes, Captain,' he said.

And with that, he began to play.

As always, thanks to my agent Rick Raftos for finding my manuscript a home.

Without the team at Random House,
The Hush
would still just be a Word document on my computer. I am especially grateful to Zoe Walton, for her passion, guidance and expertise; Pas Lazzaro, for his terrific insight into the manuscript; Bronwyn O'Reilly, for her awesome editing skills; and Sarana Emerton, Dot Tonkin and Zoe Bechara, who are marketing and publicity ninjas. Thanks also to Julie Burland, Nerrilee Weir, Angela Duke, Rebecca Diep, Jo Penney, Janine Nelson, Jeremy Vine and all the other lovely people at RHA – as well as to Sebastian Ciaffaglione, who illustrated the gorgeous cover.

Thanks to my beautiful grandparents for their love and support, and to my parents and sister, who read this book first (and who were exceptionally patient when I needed to babble to someone about plotting issues or fictional geography).

Above all, thanks to my readers. This book could not exist without you.

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