The Bone Season

  Nashira looked over the heads of her guard. A soft laugh escaped her. Hearing it, Warden turned around. His eyes grew very hot, very fast.

  Nashira beckoned me. I approached, handing my empty glass to an amaurotic.

  “Ladies, gentlemen,” she said to those assembled around her, “I would like to introduce XX-59-40. She is one of our most gifted clairvoyants.”

  There was a murmur from the delegates: intrigued, repulsed.

  “This is Aloys Mynatt, Grand Raconteur of France. And Birgitta Tjäder, Chief of Vigilance in the Scion Citadel of Stockholm.”

  Mynatt was a small man, stiff in posture, with no distinguishing features. He nodded.

  Tjäder just stared at me. She was in her mid-thirties, with thick blond hair and eyes like olive oil. Nick had always called this woman the Magpie—her reign of hell in Stockholm was notorious. I could tell she couldn’t stand to be near me: her pale lips were pulled tight over her teeth, as if she was about to bite. I wasn’t exactly relishing her presence, either.

  “I don’t want her near me,” Tjäder said, confirming my suspicions.

  “But would you not rather they were here, with us, than on your streets?” Nashira said. “They can do no harm here, Birgitta. We do not let them. Once Sheol III is established, you will never have to look at a clairvoyant again.”

  A third penal colony? Did they have plans for Stockholm, too? I didn’t want to think about a Sheol III with the Magpie as its procurer.

  Tjäder didn’t take her eyes off me. She had no aura, but I could read the loathing in every inch of her face.

  “I can’t wait,” she said.

  The pianist stopped playing, prompting a round of applause. The dancing couples separated. Nashira glanced up toward a large clock. “The hour draws near.”

  Her voice was very soft. “Excuse me,” Tjäder said. She turned and marched back to the Swedes, leaving an open space between Warden and me. I didn’t dare meet his eyes.

  “I must address the emissaries.” Nashira looked at the stage. “Arcturus, stay with 40. I will need her in due course.”

  So she did plan to kill me in public. I looked between the two of them. Warden inclined his head. “Yes, my sovereign.” He took me roughly by the arm. “Come, 40.”

  Before he could lead me away, Nashira’s head whipped around. She grabbed my wrist, pulling me back toward her.

  “Did you hurt yourself, 40?”

  The Steri-Strips on my cheek were long gone, but there was still a hairline scar from the broken glass. “I struck her.” Warden kept a tight grip on my arm. “She disobeyed me. I punished her.”

  I stood like a rag doll, one arm in each of their hands. They looked at each other over my head. “Good,” Nashira said. “After all these years, you are learning what it means to be my consort.”

  She turned her back on him and walked into the crowd, parting the emissaries.

  The musician, whoever it was, began to play some well-chosen piano chords, accompanied by ghostly vocals. I was sure I recognized the voice, but I couldn’t place it. Warden led me to the side of the hall, to the long space underneath the gallery, and leaned down to look at me. “Is everything ready?”

  I nodded.

  The musician really did have a beautiful voice, a kind of wispy falsetto. It brought on another vague surge of recognition. “My companions and I performed a séance last night,” Warden said, his voice barely audible. “There will be spirits to command. Human spirits, the victims of Bone Season XVIII. They will side with you before the Rephaim.”

  “What about the NVD? Are they here?”

  “They are not permitted in the Guildhall unless they are called. They are stationed by the bridge.”

  “How many?”

  “Thirty.”

  I nodded again. The emissaries all had at least one bodyguard, but they were SVD. They didn’t want unnaturals protecting them. Fortunately for us, the SVD couldn’t use spirit combat.

  Warden looked up to the ceiling, where Liss was climbing the silks. “Liss seems to have recovered.”

  “Yes.”

  “Then we are even. All is settled.”

  “All debts are paid,” I said. The threnody. It made me think of what was still to come. What if Nashira succeeded in killing me?

  “All will go to plan, Paige. You should not give up hope.” He looked at the stage. “Hope is the one thing that might still save us all.”

  I followed his gaze. The bell jar and the lifeless flower stood on a covered plinth. “Hope for what?”

  “Change.”

  The music drifted to a close, and applause rang out from the edges of the dance floor. I wanted to look, to find out who had been playing, but I couldn’t see over the heads of the emissaries.

  A red-jacket stepped onto the stage. 22. His lopsided gait said just how much of Duckett’s mix he’d had. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “the—the great Suzerain, Nashira Sargas, blood-sovereign of—the Race of Rephaim.”

  He staggered down. I bit back a smile. That was at least one less red-jacket less to deal with.

  Nashira stepped up to the podium, to continued applause from her audience. She looked at us. Warden looked back at her.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” she said, never breaking his gaze, “welcome to the Scion capital of Sheol I. I would like to extend our thanks for your attendance at our celebration tonight.

  “It has been two hundred years since our arrival to Britain. We have come a long, long way since 1859. As you can see, we have done our utmost to make our first control city into a place of beauty, respect, and above all, compassion. Our rehabilitation system allows young clairvoyants to enter our city and receive the best possible quality of life.” Like animals in a menagerie. “Clairvoyance, as we know, is not the fault of its victims. Like a disease, it preys on the innocent. It afflicts them with unnaturalness.

  “Sheol I celebrates two hundred years of good work today. As you can see, it has been a successful venture, the first of many seeds we wish to plant. In exchange for your understanding, we have not only provided a humane means of removing clairvoyants from ordinary society, but prevented hundreds of Emite attacks on the citadel. We are a beacon to which they are drawn—like moths to a flame, as the saying goes.” Her eyes were their own beacons in the gloom. “But the Emim’s number grows greater every day. This colony will no longer be a sufficient means of protection. Emim have been sighted in France, Ireland, and, more recently, Sweden.”

  Ireland. That was why Cathal Bell was here. That was why he looked so nervous, so frightened.

  “It is paramount that we establish Sheol II, that we light another flame,” Nashira said. “Our method has been tried and tested. With your help, and your cities, we hope that the flower of our alliance can finally bloom.”

  Applause. Warden’s jaw was set. His expression was terrible to see. Angry. Brutal. Murderous.

  I’d never seen him look that way.

  “There are a few minutes left until the play, written by our human Overseer. In the meantime, I would like to introduce my partner, the second blood-sovereign, who wishes to make a brief announcement. Ladies and gentlemen—Gomeisa Sargas.”

  She extended a hand. Before I could even register that anyone else was there, it was taken by a larger one.

  My breath caught.

  He was dressed in black robes, with a collar that reached the tops of his ears. He was tall and lean, golden-haired, with gaunt features. His lips pulled downward, as if weighed down by the rows of eys-sized gems around his neck. He seemed older than the other Rephaim. Something about his bearing, and the sheer mass of his dreamscape. I could feel that dreamscape like a wall against my skull. It was the most ancient and terrible thing I’d ever felt in the æther.

  “Good evening.”

  Gomeisa looked at us with the neutral Rephaite expression: that of the impassive observer. His aura was like a hand across the sun. No wonder Liss was so afraid of him. She was wrapped in her ribbons, silent
and still. After a moment, she dropped down to the gallery.

  “To those humans who reside in Sheol I, I apologize for my long periods of absence. I am the Rephaim’s primary emissary to the Westminster Archon. As such, I spend much of my time in the capital city with the Inquisitor, discussing how best to increase the efficacy of this penal colony.

  “As Nashira has said, it is a new beginning that we celebrate today. A new age is dawning: an age of perfect collaboration between human and Rephaim, two races that have been estranged for far too long. We celebrate the end of an old world, where ignorance and darkness reigned. We vow to share our wisdom with you, as you have shared your world with us. We vow to protect you, as you have sheltered us. And I promise you, friends: we will not allow our arrangement to falter. Here purity rules with an iron rod. And the flower of transgression will forever remain withered.”

  I glanced at the withered flower in the bell jar. He looked at it like he might look at a slug.

  “Now,” he said, “enough probity. Let the play begin.”

  28

  The Prohibition

  The Overseer swept out, dressed to dazzle. He wore a long red cloak, done up to the neck, that covered his entire body. He bowed.

  “Salutations, ladies and gentlemen, and a warm welcome to Sheol I! I am the Overseer, Beltrame. I look after the human population of the city. A particularly heartfelt welcome to those of you who have come from unconverted parts of the Continent. Fear not; after the show, you shall have the chance to alter your cities into Scion citadels, as many other cities have. Our program enables governments to root out and segregate clairvoyants while they are still young, without the expensive necessity of mass execution.”

  I tried not to listen. Not all countries used NiteKind to execute clairvoyants. Many used the lethal injection, or a firing squad, or worse.

  “We have already made plans for Sheol II to be established in association with Scion Citadels of Paris and Marseilles, which will become the first French satellite citadels.” Applause. Mynatt smiled. “Tonight, we hope to pin down potential locations of at least two more control cities on the Continent. But before all that, we have a little play to show you, to prove that many of our clairvoyants use their abilities to do good. Our play will remind us of the dark days before the Rephaim arrived, when the Bloody King still held power. The king who built his house on blood.”

  The clock chimed. I watched as the performers walked out in a line, twenty of them. They were going to perform the life story of Edward VII, from his purchase of a séance table and the five murders to the knife in his quarters and his flight from England with the rest of his family. The beginning of the so-called epidemic, and a testimony to why Scion needed to exist. Liss was up there, standing in the background. On either side of her were Nell—the girl who’d been her substitute when she was in spirit shock—and a seer who I thought was called Lotte. All three were dressed up as some of the Bloody King’s victims.

  In the center of the stage, the Overseer threw off his cloak to reveal a monarch’s regalia. The crowd jeered. He was playing Edward in his days as heir apparent to Queen Victoria, decked in furs and jewels.

  The first scene seemed to take place in his bedchamber, where a garish calliope piped out “Daisy Bell.” The harlie actor nearest the audience introduced himself as Frederick Ponsonby, 1st Baron Sysonby—Edward’s private secretary. It was through his eyes that the play would be seen. “Your Highness,” he said to the Overseer, “shall we take a turn outside?”

  “Do you have your short jacket, Ponsonby?”

  “Only a tailcoat, Your Highness.”

  “I thought everyone must know,” the Overseer boomed, with a risibly aristocratic English accent, “that a short jacket is always worn with a silk hat at a private view in the morning. And those trousers are quite the ugliest pair I have ever seen in my life!”

  Jeering. Hissing. That licentious beast had dared to call himself Victoria’s heir. Ponsonby turned back to the audience. “It was after a long awakening of afflictions—for example, with my tailcoat, and my poor trousers”—laughs—“that the prince grew tired of his finery. On that very afternoon, he asked me to accompany him on an excursion. Oh, my friends! Human suffering has never surpassed that of the queen, watching her son tread the path toward evil.” I glanced over my shoulder to see Warden’s reaction, but he wasn’t there.

  The repartee between Edward and Ponsonby went on for a while. Each scene was engineered to show Edward as a cruel, lustful idiot and a failure to his mother. I found myself watching, fascinated. They exaggerated his role in Prince Albert’s death to a ridiculous degree, even introducing a duel. The widowed Queen Victoria made an appearance, wearing her small diamond crown and veil. “I never can, or shall, look at him without a shudder,” she admitted to the audience. “He is as unnatural to me as a changeling.” They cheered. She was a bastion of goodness, the last unsullied monarch before the plague. As the emissaries were charmed by the actress, I kept a sharp eye on the clock. Nearly half an hour had elapsed, and I still didn’t know what time the train left.

  Next was the crux of the play. The séance. Red lanterns were brought onto the set. When I looked back at the stage, I had to stifle a laugh. The Overseer was really getting into his role. “Earthly power is not enough,” he said, almost panting with the sheer evil of his character. The séance table was out, and he was waving his arms in circles above it. “The Victorian era, they say? But what will Edward’s era be? What king can truly rise, encumbered by the shackles of mortality?” He leaned over the table, rocking it with his hands. “Yes, rise. Rise from the shadows. Rise through the gateway, spirits of the dead. Come into me, and into my followers! Breed in the very blood of England!”

  As he spoke, the red lanterns moved from the stage, carried by actors dressed in black. They represented the unnatural spirits. They scattered across the room, grabbing at people, making them shriek. They were the plague of unnaturalness.

  The music and the laughter of the actors was too loud. My head was spinning. The Overseer roared his incantations. In the darkness and confusion, Warden took my arm. “Quickly.” His voice was a thrum against my ear. “Come with me.”

  He led me to the trap room: the small, dark space below the stage, piled high with storage crates. The only light was what filtered through the boards. Red, like the lanterns. Dense velvet drapes hung down the length of one side of the room, hiding us from the hall above. It wasn’t easy, in this darkened space, to think of what I might soon face upstairs.

  It was quieter here. The actors danced above us, but the sound was muffled by the boards. Warden turned to face me.

  “You will be the play’s last scene. The final act.” His eyes were hot. “I heard her with Gomeisa.”

  My skin prickled. “We knew it was coming.”

  “Yes.”

  I’d known from the beginning that Nashira was going to kill me, but hearing it from him made it all the more real. A part of me had hoped she might wait—wait a few days, giving me a chance to get away with the others on the train—but Nashira was cruel. Of course she wanted to do it in public, before Scion. She wouldn’t risk keeping me alive.

  The light from his eyes made the shadows deeper. There was something different about them: something raw, something volatile.

  Cold tremors seized my legs and abdomen. I sank onto a crate. “I can’t fight her,” I said, “her angels—”

  “No, Paige. Think. For months she has waited, biding her time until you could possess another body. If you did not exhibit that skill, there was a danger that she might not gain it from you. She made you a yellow-jacket to ensure your life was never again endangered by the Emim. She placed you under the protection of her own consort. Why would she do so much to preserve you if you did not have a gift she not only wanted, but feared?”

  “You taught me how to do it all. All that training on the meadow. The butterfly and the deer. Exercising my spirit. You led me to my death.”

&
nbsp; “I was assigned by her to prepare you. That was why she allowed me to take you into Magdalen,” he said, “but I do not intend for her to have you. I have committed myself to developing your gift—but for you, Paige. Not for her.”

  I didn’t answer. There was nothing to say.

  Warden tore one of the drapes. With a soft touch, he started to remove my makeup. I let him. My lips were numb, my skin like ice. I could be dead in the next few minutes, drifting around Nashira in a state of mindless servitude. When he was finished, Warden stroked my hair back from my face. I let him do it. I couldn’t focus.

  “Don’t you dare,” he said. “Don’t you dare let her see it. You are more than that. You are more than what she wants to do to you.”

  “I’m not afraid.”

  His gaze ran across my face. “You should be,” he said. “But do not show it. Not for anything.”

  “I’ll show her what I like. You’re in no position to give me orders.” I disengaged my head from his hands. “You should have just let me go. You should have let Nick take me back to Dials. That was all you had to do. I could have been home by now.”

  He leaned down so our faces were level. “I brought you back,” he said, “because I could not find the strength to fight her without you. But for that same reason, I will do everything in my power to see you safely to the citadel.”

  Silence fell. I didn’t break his gaze.

  “Your hair must be tied.” His voice was different, quieter. He pressed an ornamental comb into my hand.

  The comb was cold. My fingers shook. “I don’t think I can.” I took a deep, slow breath. “Will you do it?”

  He said nothing. But he did take the comb. As if he were handling the very finest gossamer, he swept my hair to one side of my neck, then gathered it into a knot. Not a psyche knot, like I usually did: an elaborate, braided coiffure that drew together at my nape. His callused fingers ran over my scalp, arranging the comb. The softest tremor ran down my spine. Warden released my hair, and it held.