The Bone Season

  Move. I had to move. She wouldn’t stop. She would never stop hunting my spirit. I pushed myself back on my elbows, trying to find the knife. Her outline came into focus, moving toward me.

  “You look tired, Paige. Give into it. The æther calls you.”

  “Must have missed that call,” I forced out.

  I wasn’t prepared for what happened next. All five of her angels spooled together and flew at me.

  Like a black wave they smashed through my defenses. Outside my dreamscape, my head smacked into the floorboards. Inside it, the spirits tore a path through everything, scattering red petals. Images flashed past my eyes. Every thought, every memory was broken. Blood, fire, blood. A moribund field. A giant hand seemed to press down on my chest, pinning me in one place. In a box, in a coffin. I couldn’t move or breathe or think. The five spirits cut through me like a sword, snatching pieces of my mind, my soul. I rolled onto my side, twitching like a crushed insect.

  Small muscles spasmed in my arms and legs. I opened my eyes. The light burned them. All I could see was Nashira, her hand outstretched, the blade bright under the candles. Then she was gone.

  With an effort that forced moisture from my eyes, I raised my head from the boards. Michael had thrown himself onto her back, distracting her. There was a knife in his hand. He stabbed at her neck, missing by inches. With a flick of her arm, Nashira threw him off the stage. He landed on a harlie, sending them both crashing to the ground.

  She would turn back in a moment. This time she would finish me off. Her face appeared above me, and her eyes turned red. Her features softened to a haze. She was weakening me, making sure I couldn’t use my spirit again. Disrupting my link to the æther. I was dead. She knelt beside me and lifted my head into the crook of her arm.

  “Thank you, Paige Mahoney.” The tip of the knife pressed into my throat. “I will not waste this gift.”

  This was it. I didn’t even have a final thought. I managed, with my last scrap of energy, to look into her eyes.

  Then Warden was there. He was driving her back, using immense spools, whirling them into shields, like a fire-eater with torches. If I were sighted, I thought vaguely, it would probably look magnificent. Terebell and Alsafi were with him; and others, too—was that Pleione? Their outlines ran together. My dreamscape sent strange mirages across my line of sight. Then someone was scooping me into their arms, taking me from the stage.

  The world came in flashes. There was a storm in my dreamscape: memories pouring through lightning-like cracks, flowers torn apart by a high wind. My mind had been pillaged.

  I was only half-aware of the outside world. Warden was there. I recognized his dreamscape, a familiar presence against mine. He was carrying me up to the gallery, away from whatever had happened in the few minutes I’d been unconscious. As he lowered me to the floor, I could feel the blood drying on my face. I could barely remember where I was.

  “Paige, fight it. You must fight it.”

  His hand stroked over my hair. I watched his face, trying to make the lines stop blurring.

  Another pair of eyes appeared. I thought it was Terebell again. I checked out for a while, only to wake with a hollow roaring in my ears. The noise pressed at my temples. When the pain forced me back to meatspace, Warden was looking down at me. We were in the gallery, above the clamor in the hall. “Paige,” he said. “Can you hear me?”

  It sounded like a question. I nodded.

  “Nashira.” I couldn’t raise my voice above a whisper.

  “She lives. But so do you.”

  Still alive. Nashira was still here. I felt the faint stirrings of panic, but my body was too weak to respond. This wasn’t over yet.

  The sound of a gunshot rang out from below. Save his eyes, everything was dark. “There was—” Warden leaned closer to my lips to hear me. “There was a poltergeist. She has a . . . poltergeist.”

  “Yes. But you came prepared.” His finger traced my neckline. “Did I not say this could save your life?”

  The pendant caught the light from his eyes, the sublimed object, designed to repel poltergeists. The one he’d given me. The one I’d tried to refuse, and might not have worn. Warden lifted me against his chest, keeping one hand at the back of my head. “Help is coming,” he said, very softly. “They came for you, Paige. The Seals came for you.”

  There was another blind spot, during which the noise intensified. My dreamscape struggled to heal. The damage had been severe; it wouldn’t start to repair itself for days. It might not start at all. Either way, I couldn’t move, but time was running out—I had to reach the meadow, to find the exit. I was going home. I had to go home.

  When I opened my eyes again, a vicious light scalded them. Not candlelight. I tried to block it, my chest was heaving. “Paige.” Someone took my outstretched hand. Not Warden. Someone else. “Paige, sweetheart.”

  I knew that voice.

  He couldn’t be here. It must be an apparition, an image from my damaged dreamscape. But when he took my hand, I knew he was real. My head still lay on Warden’s lap. “Nick,” I managed to say. He was dressed in his black suit and red tie.

  “Yes, sötnos, it’s me.”

  I looked at my fingers. They were turning gray. My nails sat in beds of dark, bluish purple.

  “Paige,” Nick said, his voice low and urgent, “keep your eyes open. Stay with us, sweetheart. Come on.”

  “Y-you have to go.” I rasped it.

  “I am going. So are you.”

  “Get a move on, Vision. No time to lose.” Another voice. “We’ll treat our little lost Dreamer when we reach the citadel.”

  Jaxon.

  No, no. Why had they come? Nashira would see. “It’ll be too late by then.” The same harsh light gleamed into my eyes. “No pupil response. Cerebral hypoxia. She’ll die if we don’t do this.” A hand moved my hair back from my clammy face. “Where the hell is Danica?”

  I couldn’t work out why Warden wasn’t speaking. He was there, I could feel it.

  Another blackout. When my vision returned, there was something clamped over my nose and mouth. I recognized the plastic smell of it—PVS2, a portable cousin of Dani’s life-support system. There were more dreamscapes nearby, clustered around me. Nick cradled me in the crook of his arm, keeping the mask cupped over my mouth. I drank in the extra oxygen, heavy-eyed. I had never felt so completely spent in my life.

  “It’s not working. Her dreamscape’s fractured.”

  “That train will not wait for us, Vision.” Jaxon’s voice had an edge. “Carry her. We’re leaving.”

  The words crawled into my brain. For the first time in several minutes, Warden spoke: “I can help her.”

  “Don’t come near her.” Nick said.

  “There is no time to waste. The NVD will be on their way from the bridge. They will see your aura immediately, Dr. Nygård. Your reputation in Scion will be lost.” Warden looked at them. “Paige will die if you do nothing. Her damaged dreamscape can be repaired, but only if we are quick. Do you want to lose your dreamwalker, White Binder?”

  “How do you know my name?” Jaxon flipped like a coin. I couldn’t see him in the dark, but I sensed the sudden change in his dreamscape, the rising of defenses.

  “We have our ways.”

  Their words were like a sequence of patterns, impossible to unravel. I couldn’t make sense of them. Nick leaned down, exhaling warm air across my cheek. “Paige,” he said into my ear, “this man says he can heal you. Can I trust him?”

  Trust. I recognized that word. A sun-drenched flower on the edge of perception, beckoning me into a different world. A different life, before the poppy field.

  “Yes.”

  As soon as I said it, Warden moved toward me. Over his shoulder I could see Pleione. “Paige, I need you to drop all the mental defenses you can,” he said. “Can you do that?”

  Like I had a shred of defense left.

  Warden took a vial from Pleione’s gloved hand. A vial of amaranth, almost empty.
Scarred one. They must have been stockpiling them, saving every drop they could. He put a little under my nose, and a little more onto my lips. Heat seeped under my skin. It seemed as if the æther was calling to me, asking me to open my mind. A surge of warmth came in, stitching the rips in my dreamscape. Warden stroked his thumb across my cheek.

  “Paige?”

  I blinked.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I think so.”

  I sat up, then tried to stand. Nick helped me back to my feet. No pain. I rubbed my eyes and blinked, trying to adjust to the darkness. “How the hell did you get here?” I said, gripping his arms. I couldn’t take my eyes off him. He was real, he was here.

  “With the Scion party. I’ll explain later.” He wrapped his arms around me, crushing me to his chest. “Come on. We’re getting out of here.”

  Jaxon stood a few feet away, his cane grasped in both hands. On either side of him were Danica and Zeke. They were all dressed in Scion colors. On the other side of the gallery, Nadine was taking pot shots at the emissaries with her pistol. The two Rephaim watched me.

  “Warden, how much—” I took in a deep breath, “how much time do we have?”

  “Fifty minutes. You must go.”

  Less than an hour. The faster we reached the train, the faster I could send a flare up for the other voyants.

  “I trust you still know where your loyalties lie, Paige,” Jaxon said. He looked me up and down. “You almost made me doubt you, my mollisher, with that little act in London.”

  “Jaxon, there are people dying, voyants dying in this place. Can we just put that incident aside and concentrate on getting the hell out of here?”

  He never had a chance to reply. A group of Rephs burst into the gallery, wielding great spools. Warden and Pleione stepped in front of us.

  “Go,” Warden said.

  I was torn. Jaxon was already heading down the stairs, followed by the others. “Paige, come on,” Nick urged.

  Pleione blocked a spool. Warden turned to face me.

  “Run. Get to Port Meadow,” he said. “I will meet you there.”

  I had no choice; I couldn’t force him to come with me—I could only do as he said, and hope I was doing the right thing. Nick grabbed my arm, and we ran down the stairs, out into the foyer of the Guildhall. There was no time left to stop.

  The harlies and the Rephs had spilled onto the streets. Panicked emissaries and their NVD guards ran through the foyer. Nick was following them. I stopped when the æther trembled.

  I turned to face the hall. Something was wrong, I was sure of it. Before I knew what I was doing, I was running back to the flat stone steps. Jaxon called after me: “And you are going where?”

  “Just get to the train, Jaxon.”

  I didn’t hear his reply. Nick came after me, reached for my arm. “Where are you going?”

  “Just go with Jaxon.”

  “We have to leave. If the NVD see my aura—”

  He stopped talking when we reached the deserted hall.

  The darkness filled every corner of the room. Most of the candles had gone out, but three red lanterns still shone where they’d fallen. The drapes where Liss had been performing had fallen into two folded heaps. I stepped toward them, sensing the dim flicker of a dreamscape. I ran across the marble floor and threw myself on my knees.

  “Liss.” I grabbed her hand. “Liss, come on.”

  What had brought her back to the silks? Her hair was matted with blood. She couldn’t be dead, not after we’d saved her life. Not after all we’d worked for together. She couldn’t die. Seb had died; why did Liss need to follow?

  Liss cracked her eyes open, just a little. Still dressed as a victim of the king. Her lips formed a tiny smile when she saw me.

  “Hey.” Her breath rattled. “Sorry I was—late.”

  “No. Don’t you dare die, Liss. Come on.” I squeezed her hand. “Please. We thought we’d lost you before. Don’t make us lose you again.”

  “Glad somebody cares.” There were tears in my eyes: cold, trembling tears that didn’t fall. Blood ran from her mouth. I couldn’t tell where the stage blood ended and hers began. “G-get out,” she said, her voice faint. “Do what I c-couldn’t—I just couldn’t. Just wanted to—to see home.”

  Her head rolled to the side. Her fingers loosened in mine, and her spirit slipped away into the æther.

  For a minute I sat there, looking at the body. Nick bowed his head, pulled a drape over her face. Liss is gone. I made myself think it. Liss is gone, just like Seb. You didn’t save them. They’re gone.

  “You should say the threnody,” Nick murmured. “I don’t know her name, sötnos.”

  He was right. Liss wouldn’t want to stay here, in her prison.

  “Liss Rymore”—I hoped it was her full name—“be gone into the æther. All is settled. All debts are paid. You need not dwell among the living now.”

  Her spirit disappeared.

  I couldn’t look at the body. Not Liss—the body, the shell, the shadow on the world she’d left behind.

  The flare gun lay under the cold hand. It had been her job to fire it. I gently pulled it from her grasp. “She wouldn’t want you to give up.” Nick watched me check the gun for flares. “She wouldn’t have wanted you to die for her.”

  “Oh, I think she would.”

  I knew that voice. I couldn’t see Gomeisa Sargas, but his voice echoed all through the room. “Did you kill her, Gomeisa?” I stood. “Is she good enough for you, now she’s dead?”

  The silence was damning.

  A low voice came from behind me. “You should not hide in the shadow, Gomeisa.”

  I looked. Warden had entered the hall, and his eyes were fixed on the gallery. “Unless you fear Paige,” he continued. “The city burns outside. Your facade of power is already dissolved.”

  Laughter. I tensed.

  “I do not fear Scion. They handed their world over on a silver platter, Arcturus. Now we will dine.”

  “Go to hell,” I said.

  “I do not fear you either, 40. What have we to fear from death, when we are death? Besides, to be displaced from this decaying world—your little world of flower and flesh—well, that would almost be a blessing. If only there was not so much more to be done with it.” Footsteps. “You cannot kill death. What fire can scald the sun? Who can drown the ocean?”

  “I’m sure we can work something out,” I said.

  My voice was steady, but I was shaking. Whether it was anger or fear, I could no longer tell. Behind Warden, another male Reph had appeared. At his side was Terebell.

  “I would like you both to picture something. Especially you, Arcturus. Given what you have to lose.”

  Warden said nothing. I tried to pin down where the voice was coming from. Somewhere above me. The gallery.

  “I would like you to imagine a butterfly. Picture it: its colored, iridescent wings. It is beautiful. Beloved. And then look at the moth. It takes the same shape—but look at the differences! The moth is pale and weak and ugly. A pitiful, self-destructive thing. It cannot command itself, for when it sees a fire, it desires the heat. And as it finds the flame, it burns.” His voice echoed everywhere. In my ears, in my head. “That is how we see your world, Paige Mahoney. A box of moths, just waiting to be burned.”

  His dreamscape was so close. I readied my spirit. I didn’t care how much damage I did. He’d killed Liss; now I would kill him. Warden grasped my wrist. “Don’t,” he said. “We will deal with him.”

  “I want to deal with him.”

  “You cannot avenge her, dreamwalker.” Pleione didn’t take her eyes off the enemy. “Go to the meadow. Time is short.”

  “Yes, go to the meadow, 40. Take our train to our citadel.” Gomeisa emerged from behind the pillars. His eyes were fresh with aura—the last he’d ever take from Liss Rymore. “Was it so terrible here, 40? We offered you our sanctuary, our wisdom—a new home. You were not unnatural here; lower, yes, but you
had a place. To Scion you are a symptom of the plague. A rash upon their shallow skin.” He held out his gloved hand. “You have no home there, dreamwalker. Stay with us. See what lies beneath.”

  My muscles were stretched to breaking point. He looked straight at me—into my eyes, into my dreamscape, into the darkest parts of me. He knew his words made sense. He knew his twisted logic well; he’d relied on it for two centuries, using it to tempt the weak. Before I could answer him, Warden swept me back with his arm, right off my feet. A curved blade came singing over his shoulder, over my head. I hadn’t seen it in the darkness. As I hit the floor, he ran toward Gomeisa. Terebell and the male went after him, both gathering spools, chiming out horrific sounds. Nick pulled me back to my feet, but I couldn’t feel his hands. All I could feel was the æther, where the Rephaim were dancing.

  The air around me thinned to a silver gauze. I couldn’t see the four Rephs, but I felt their movements. Each flex of muscle, each turn and step sent a shockwave through the æther. They were dancing on the edge of life. A dance of giants, the danse macabre.

  The spirits of the Bone Season still lingered in the hall. Terebell’s spool flew through the pillars: thirty spirits, all weaving and rising together, converging on his dreamscape. No voyant could survive being hit by so many at once. I waited for the blow to fall. at once.

  Gomeisa’s laugh rose to the ceiling. With a wave of his hand, he shattered the spool. Like glass shards from a mirror, the spirits burst all over the hall. Terebell’s limp body was thrown into a pillar. The sound of bone on marble snapped through the chilled air. When the other Reph charged at him, Gomeisa simply cut his hand upward. The motion flung his attacker onto the stage. The boards splintered under his weight, sending him into the trap room.

  I pushed myself back, my boots sliding on blood. Was Gomeisa some kind of poltergeist? He could use apport—move things without touching them. The realization made my heart pound thick and fast against my ribs. He could smash me into the ceiling on a whim.

  Only Warden was left. He turned to face his enemy, terrible in the half-light. “Come, then, Arcturus,” Gomeisa said, spreading his arms wide. “Pay for your bounty.”