The Bone Season

10 The Message

The sirens were still howling when I got back to the residence. XIX-49-33 only opened the door when I’d knocked for the umpteenth time and shouted my number over the noise. Once she’d established I was human, she hauled me through the door and slammed it behind me, swearing she’d never let me in again if I was that bloody slow to follow basic orders. I left her drawing bolts across the door in agitation, her fingers trembling.

The sirens stopped as I reached the cloisters. The Emim had not breached the city this time. I scraped back my hair, trying to slow my breathing. After a minute, I made myself look at the doorway, at the winding stone steps. I had to do it. I took another moment to compose myself, then walked up those steps to the tower, his tower. My skin crawled at the thought of sleeping in the same room as him; of sharing his space, his heat, his air.

The key was in the door when I arrived. I turned it and stepped quietly onto the flagstones.

Not quietly enough. The second I crossed the threshold, my keeper was on his feet. His eyes blazed.

“Where have you been?”

I kept a tenuous mental guard up. “Outside.”

“You were told to return here if the siren sounded.”

“I thought you meant to Magdalen, not this exact room. You should be more specific.”

I could hear the insolence in my voice. His eyes darkened, and his lips pressed into a hard line.

“You will speak to me with the proper respect,” he said, “or you will not be allowed outside this room at all.”

“You’ve done nothing to earn my respect.” I stared him down. He stared right back at me. When I didn’t move or break his gaze, he stalked past me and slammed the door. I didn’t flinch.

“When you hear that siren,” he said, “you stop what you are doing and return to this room. Do you understand me?”

I just looked at him. He leaned down so his face was at my level.

“Do I need to repeat myself?”

“I’d rather you didn’t,” I said.

I was sure he’d hit me. Nobody, nobody could speak to a Reph like that. All he did was straighten to his full height.

“We begin your instruction tomorrow,” he said. “I expect you to be ready when the night-bell rings.”

“Instruction for what?”

“For your next jacket.”

“I don’t want it,” I said.

“Then you will have to become a performer. You will have to spend the rest of your life being mocked and spat upon by the red-jackets.” He looked me over. “Do you wish to be a jester? A fool?”

“No.”

“Then you had better do as I say.”

My throat closed up. Much as I hated this creature, I had good reason to fear him. I recalled his merciless face in the dark chapel, when he’d stood over me and drawn on my aura. Auras were as vital to voyants as blood or water. Without one, I would go into spirit shock and end up dead or insane, wandering around with no connection to the æther.

He approached the drapes and pulled them back, revealing the little door beyond them was ajar. “The amaurotics have cleared the upper floor for you. Unless I say otherwise, you are to keep to it at all times.” He paused. “You should also know it is forbidden for the two of us to make direct physical contact, except in training. Even with gloves.”

“So if you were to come into this room injured,” I said, “I would leave you to die?”

“Yes.”

Liar. I didn’t bite the next words off my tongue quite fast enough: “That’s one order I’m happy to obey.”

Warden just looked at me. It almost made me angry, how little notice he took of my disrespect. He had to have a pressure point. All he did was reach into the drawer and hold out my pills.

“Take them.”

I knew there was no point in arguing. I took the pills.

“Drink this.” He handed me a glass. “Go to your quarters. You will need to be well rested for tomorrow.”

My right hand drew into a fist. I was sick of his orders. I should have left him to bleed out. Why the hell had I bandaged his wound? What kind of criminal was I, patching up my enemies? Jax would have laughed himself stupid if he’d seen me. Honeybee, he would have said, you just don’t have the sting in you. And maybe I didn’t. Yet.

I was careful to avoid any contact with Warden when I passed him. I caught his gaze before I stepped into the dark passage. He locked the door behind me.

Another winding staircase took me to the upper floor of the tower. I looked at my new abode: a large, bare room. It reminded me of the Detainment Facility, with a damp floor and barred windows. A paraffin lamp burned on the windowsill, giving little light and even less heat. Beside it was a bed, the type with rails and a lumpy mattress. The sheets were prudish in comparison to the luscious velvet mantles of Warden’s four-poster; in fact, the whole room smacked of human inferiority—but anything was better than sharing.

I checked every corner and crevice of the room, as I had with the lower floor. No way out, of course, but there was a bathroom. In it was a toilet, a sink, and a few hygiene supplies.

I thought of Julian in his dark cellar and thought of Liss, shivering in her shack. She didn’t have a bed. She didn’t have anything. It wasn’t nice in here, but it was far warmer and cleaner than the Rookery. And safer. I had stone walls to protect me from the Emim. All she had were tattered curtains.

As I hadn’t been given nightclothes, I stripped to my underwear. There was no mirror, but I could see I was losing weight. Stress, flux poisoning, and a lack of nutritious food were already taking their toll. I dimmed the lamp and slid between the sheets.

I hadn’t felt tired before, but I found myself dozing. And thinking. Thinking of the past, of the strange days that had led me to this place. I thought back to the very first time I met Nick. It was Nick who put Jaxon and me in contact. Nick, the man who saved my life.

When I was nine, shortly after I came to England, my father and I left London and went south for what he called a “business trip.” He had to put our names on a waiting list in order for us to leave the citadel. After months of waiting, we were finally allowed to visit my father’s old friend Giselle. She lived on a slanted, cobbled hill, in a sugar-pink house with a roof that hung over the windows. The surrounding land reminded me of Ireland: open, sumptuous beauty, wild and untamed nature, everything that Scion had destroyed. At sunset, when my father wasn’t looking, I would climb up to the roof and tuck myself against the tall brick chimney. I would stare out at the hills, at the reams of trees under the sky, and I would remember my cousin Finn and the other ghosts of Ireland, and I would miss my grandparents so terribly it hurt. I had never understood why they didn’t come with us.

But what I wanted was open water. The sea, the wondrous sea, the glittering road that stretched to the free lands. It was over the sea that Ireland waited to bring me home—back to the ashen meadow, to the cloven tree of the rebels’ song. My father promised we would see it, but he was too busy with Giselle. They always talked deep into the night.

I was too young to understand what the village was really like. Voyants might have been in danger in the citadel, but they couldn’t escape to these idylls in the countryside. Far from the Archon, small-town amaurotics grew nervous. Suspicions about unnaturalness pervaded those close-knit communities. They made a habit of watching one another, eyes peeled for a crystal ball or show stone, waiting to call the nearest Scion outpost—or take justice into their own hands. A real clairvoyant wouldn’t last a day. Even if they did, there was no work. The land needed tending, but not by many hands. They had machines to farm the fields. It was only in the citadel that voyants could make decent money.

I didn’t like to go far from the house, not without my father. The people talked too much, looked too much, and Giselle talked and looked straight back at them. She was a stern woman, thin and hard-faced, with a ring on every finger and long, string-like veins that bulged from her arms and neck. I didn’t like her. But one day, from the rooftop, I spotted a haven: a poppy field, a pool of red beneath the iron sky.

Every day, when my father thought I was playing upstairs, I would walk to that field and read on my new data pad for hours, watching the poppies nod their heads around me. It was in that field that I had my first true encounter with the spirit world. The æther. At the time I had no idea I was clairvoyant. Unnaturalness was still a story to a child of nine, a bogeyman with no clear features. I had yet to understand this place. I only knew what Finn had told me: that the bad people over the sea didn’t like little girls like me. I was no longer safe.

That day, I found out what he’d meant. When I walked onto the field, I sensed the angry presence of the woman. I didn’t see her. I felt her. I felt her in the poppies, in the wind. I felt her in the earth and in the air. I stretched my hand out, hoping somehow to work out what it was.

And then I was on the ground. And bleeding. It was my first encounter with a poltergeist, an angry spirit that could breach the corporeal world.

My savior soon came. A young man, tall and sturdy, with ice-blond hair and a face that seemed kind. He asked my name. I stammered it. When he saw my tattered arm, he wrapped me in his overcoat and took me to his car. SCIONAID was stitched on his shirt. My little body flooded with terror when he took out a needle. “My name’s Nick,” he said. “You’re safe, Paige.”

The needle went into my skin. It stung, but I didn’t cry. The world gradually turned too dark to see.

In the dark, I dreamed. I dreamed of poppies struggling from dust. I’d never seen colors when I slept, but now all I could see was the red flowers and the evening sun. They sheltered me, shedding their petals, blanketing my fevered body. When I woke, I was propped up in a bed with white sheets. My arm was bandaged. The pain was gone.

The blond man was beside me. I remember his smile; just a small smile—but it made me smile back. He looked like a prince.

“Hello, Paige,” he said.

I asked where I was.

“You’re in hospital. I’m your doctor.”

“You don’t look old enough to be a doctor,” I said. Or scary enough. “How old are you?”

“I’m eighteen. Still learning.”

“You didn’t sew my arm funny, did you?”

He laughed. “Well, I tried my best. You’ll have to let me know what you think.”

He’d told my father where I was, he said, and he was on his way to see me. I said I felt sick. He said that was normal, but I’d have to rest to make it go away. I couldn’t eat just yet, but he’d get me something nice for dinner. He sat with me for the rest of the day, only leaving me to bring sandwiches and a bottle of apple juice from the hospital canteen. My father had told me never to talk to strangers, but I wasn’t afraid of this kind, soft-spoken boy.

Dr. Nicklas Nygård, a transfer from the Scion Citadel of Stockholm, kept me alive that night. He saw me through the shock of becoming fully clairvoyant. If not for him, it might have been too much for me to stand.

My father drove me home a few days later. He knew Nick from a medical conference. Nick was training in the town before he took a permanent position at SciSORS. He never said what he’d been doing in the poppy field. While my father waited for me in the car, Nick knelt in front of me and took my hands. I remember thinking how handsome he was, and how perfectly his eyebrows arched over his lovely winter-green eyes.

“Paige,” he said, very quietly, “listen to me. This is very important. I’ve told your father you were attacked by a dog.”

“But it was a lady.”

“Yes—but that lady was invisible, sötnos. Some grown-ups don’t know about invisible things.”

“But you do,” I said, confident in his wisdom.

“I do. But I don’t want other grown-ups to laugh at me, so I don’t tell them.” He touched my cheek. “You must never, ever tell anyone about her, Paige. Let’s make it our secret. Promise?”

I nodded. I would have promised him the world. He had saved my life. I watched him through the window as my father drove me back to the citadel. He raised a hand and waved at me. I watched until we turned a corner.

I still had scars from the attack. They formed a cluster in the middle of my left palm. The spirit left other cuts, all the way to my elbow—but the ones on my hand were the ones that stayed.

I made good on my promise. For seven years I never said a word. I kept his secret close to my heart, like a night-blooming flower, only thinking of it when I was alone. Nick knew the truth. Nick held the key. For all that time I wondered where the days had taken him, and if he ever thought of that little Irish girl he’d carried from the poppy field. And after seven long years, I had my reward: he found me again. If only he could find me now.

There was no sound from the lower floor. As the hours ticked away, I listened for a footstep, or the echoing melody of the gramophone. All I could hear was the same thick silence.

I fell into a light sleep for the rest of the daylight hours. Fever burned through me, a remnant of the latest flux attack. I jerked awake every so often, my eyes bursting with pictures of the past. Had I ever worn anything but these tunics, these boots? Had I ever known a world in which there were no spirits, no wandering dead? No Emim, no Rephaim?

A knock woke me. I barely had time to grab a sheet before Warden entered the room.

“There is not long before the bell.” He placed a fresh uniform on the end of the bed. “Get dressed.”

I looked at him in silence. His gaze lingered for a moment before he left, closing the door behind him. There was nothing for it. I got up, smoothed my curls into a knot, and washed myself with icy water. I pulled on my uniform and zipped the gilet to my chin. My leg seemed to have healed.

Warden was leafing through a dusty novel when I came into the chamber. Frankenstein. Scion didn’t allow that kind of fantastical literature. Nothing with monsters or ghosts. Nothing unnatural. My fingers twitched, aching to reach out and turn its pages. I’d seen it on Jaxon’s bookshelf, but never found time to read it. Warden put the book aside and stood.

“Are you ready?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Good.” He paused, then asked: “Tell me, Paige—what does your dreamscape look like?”

The directness of the question took me by surprise. It was considered rude among voyants to ask. “A field of red flowers.”

“What kind of flowers?”

“Poppies.”

No response. He reached for his gloves, pulled them on, and led me from the room. The day-bell hadn’t chimed, but the porter let us pass without question. Nobody questioned Arcturus Mesarthim.

Sunlight. I hadn’t seen it for a while. The sun was just setting, softening the edges of the buildings. Sheol I glowed in a dwindling haze. I’d thought we would be training indoors, but Warden led me north, past Amaurotic House and into unknown territory.

The buildings in the furthest reaches of the city had all been abandoned. They were dilapidated, with windows broken; some of the walls and roofs looked scorched. Maybe there really had been fires here once. We passed a tight-packed street of houses. It was a ghost town. No living people whatsoever. I could sense spirits nearby, bitter spirits that wanted their lost homes back. Some were weak poltergeists. I was wary, but Warden didn’t seem afraid. None of them came near him.

We reached the very edge of the city. My breath smoked from between my lips. A meadow stretched as far as I could see. The grass was long since dead, and the ground glistened with frost. Strange, for early spring. A fence had been put up around it. It was at least thirty feet high, topped with coils of barbed wire. Behind the fence were trees, needled with soft rime. They grew around the edges of the meadow, blocking my view of the world beyond. A rusted notice read PORT MEADOW. FOR TRAINING PURPOSES ONLY. USE OF DEADLY FORCE IS AUTHORIZED. Standing at the gate was the deadly force itself: a Reph male.

He wore his golden hair in a tight ponytail. Beside him stood a thin, dirty figure with a shaved head: Ivy, the palmist. She wore a yellow tunic, the mark of a coward. It was torn from the neck, exposing her bony shoulder to the cold. I caught sight of her brand. XX-59-24. Warden stepped forward, and I followed. Seeing us, Ivy’s keeper swept into a bow.

“Behold the royal concubine,” he said. “What brings you to Port Meadow?”

At first I thought he was talking to me. I’d never heard Rephs speak to each other with such disgust. Then I realized he was glaring at my keeper.

“I am here to instruct my human.” Warden was looking at the meadow. “Open the gate, Thuban.”

“Patience, concubine. Is it armed?”

He meant me. The human. “No,” Warden said. “She is not.”

“Number?”

“XX-59-40.”

“Age?”

He glanced at me. “Nineteen,” I said.

“Is it sighted?”

“These questions are irrelevant, Thuban. I do not appreciate being treated like a child—especially not by a child.”

Thuban just looked at him. He was in his late twenties, by my reckoning, certainly not a child. Neither of their faces showed any hint of anger; their words were enough.

“You have three hours before Pleione brings her herd.” He shoved the gate open. “If 40 tries to escape, it will be shot on sight.”

“And if you ever disrespect your elders in that manner again, you will be sequestered on sight.”

“The blood-sovereign would not allow it.”

“She would not have to know. Such an accident is not too hard to conceal.” Warden towered over him. “I do not fear your Sargas name. I am the blood-consort, and I will exercise the power that befits my station. Do I make myself clear, Thuban?”

Thuban looked up at him, his eyes roaring blue. “Yes,” he said, in a whisper, “blood-consort.”

Warden walked past him. I had no idea what to make of their exchange, but it was fairly satisfying to see a Sargas get a verbal slating. As I followed Warden through the gate, Thuban struck Ivy across the face. Her head snapped around. Her eyes were dry, but her face was swollen and discolored, and she was thinner than before. Blood and dirt streaked her arms. She was being kept in her own filth. I remembered Seb looking at me that way, like all the hope in the world had crumbled.

For Seb, for Ivy, for the ones who would follow, I would make this training session count.

Port Meadow was vast. Warden took long strides, too long for me to keep up. I trudged behind him, trying to work out the dimensions of the meadow. It was difficult in the waning light, but I could see the ugly fences on either side, dividing the beaten ground into several large arenas. They were strung with thin wires, lined with icicles. The posts were curved toward the top; some bore heavy brackets, each dripping a lantern. A watchtower stood on the western side, and I could just see a human—or Reph—inside it.

We walked past a shallow pool of water. Its frozen surface was smooth as a mirror, perfect for scrying. Come to think of it, everything about this meadow was perfect for spirit combat. The ground was solid, the air was clear and fresh—and there were spirits. I could sense them everywhere, all around me. I wondered what kind of fence enclosed this meadow. Could they have worked out a way to trap spirits?

No. Spirits might sometimes breach meatspace, but they were not subject to physical restrictions. Only binders could trap them. Their order—the fifth order—could bend the limits between meatspace and æther.

“The fences are not charged with electricity”—Warden saw where I was looking—“but with ethereal energy.”

“How is that possible?”

“Ethereal batteries. A fusion of Rephaite and human expertise, pioneered in 2045. Your scientists have been working on hybrid technology since the early twentieth century. We simply replace the chemical energy in a battery with a captive poltergeist, a spirit that can interact with the corporeal world. It creates a field of repulsion.”

“But poltergeists can escape their bindings,” I said. “How could you capture one?”

“Use a willing poltergeist, of course.”

I stared at his back. The words willing and poltergeist were as opposite as war and peace.

“Our counsel also led to the invention of Fluxion 14 and Radiesthesic Detection Technology,” he said, “the latter of which remains experimental. From our last reports, we hear Scion is close to perfecting it.”

I clenched my fist. Of course the Rephaim were responsible for RDT. Dani had always wondered how they’d managed it.

After a while, Warden stopped. We had come to a concrete oval, ten feet across. A gas lamp flared to life nearby.

“Let us begin,” he said.

I waited.

With no warning, he aimed a mock punch at my face. I ducked. When he jabbed his other fist, I blocked it with my arm.

“Again.”

He was faster this time. Trying to make me defend myself quickly, from all angles. I kept my hands open and blocked each hit.

“You learned to fight on the streets.”

“Maybe,” I said.

“Once more. Try and stop me.”

This time he made as if to grab my neck, placing both hands high on my décolletage. A flimp had tried this on me once. I twisted my body to the left and thrust my right arm in the same direction, cutting his hands away from my throat. I could feel the strength in those hands, but he let go. I brought my elbow against his cheek, a move that had knocked the flimp right into the gutter. He was letting me win.

“Excellent.” Warden stepped back. “Few humans come here prepared to be part of a penal battalion. You are several steps ahead of most, but you will not be able to engage in that sort of scrap with an Emite. Your most important asset is your ability to affect the æther.”

I spied the silver glint. There was a blade in his hand. My muscles tensed rigid. “From what I have seen, your gift is triggered by danger.” He leveled the blade at my chest. “Demonstrate.”

My heart pounded at the tip of his blade. “I don’t know how.”

“I see.”

With a flick of his wrist, he brought the blade against my throat. My body hummed with adrenaline. Warden leaned in very close to me.

“This blade has been used to draw human blood,” he said, very softly. “Blood like that of your friend Sebastian.”

I trembled.

“It calls for more.” The blade slid along my neck. “It has never tasted the blood of a dreamer.”

“I’m not afraid of you.” The tremor in my voice betrayed the lie. “Don’t touch me.”

But he did. The blade traced my throat, trailed up to my chin and touched my lips. I jerked my fist up, shoved his hand away. He dropped the blade, took my wrists in one hand, and pinned them to the concrete. His strength was incredible: I couldn’t move a muscle.

“I wonder.” He used the knife to tip my chin up. “If I cut your throat, how long will it take for you to die?”

“You wouldn’t,” I said, daring him.

“Oh, but I would.”

I tried to wrench my knee into his groin, but he grabbed my thigh, forcing my leg down. That leg was still weak; it was easy. He was making me look feeble. When I pulled a hand free. He twisted my arm behind my back. Not hard enough to hurt, but enough to immobilize me.

“You will always lose that way,” he said against my ear. “Play to your strengths.”

Was there no weak spot on this creature? I thought of all the vulnerable places on a human: eyes, kidneys, solar plexus, nose, groin—nothing within my reach. I would have to move and run. I pushed my weight backward, straight between his legs, and rolled back to my feet in one movement. In the instant he took to stand, I tore into a sprint across the meadow. If he wanted me, he could damn well come and get me.

There was nowhere to run. He was gaining on me. Thinking back to my training sessions with Nick, I changed direction. Then I was running again, into the darkness, away from the watchtower. There had to be a weak point in a fence like this, somewhere I could squeeze between the wires. Then I had to deal with Thuban. But I had my spirit. I could do it. I could do it.

For someone with excellent visual acuity, I could be incredibly short-sighted. Within a minute I was lost. Away from the concrete oval and the lamps, I was left to stumble through the vastness of the meadow. And Warden was out there, hunting me. I ran toward a gas lamp. My sixth sense quivered as I drew nearer to the fence. By the time I was six feet away I was nauseous, my limbs limp and heavy.

But I had to try. I grabbed the frozen wire.

I can’t fully describe the sensation that seized my body. My vision turned black, then white, then red. Goose bumps broke out all over me. A hundred memories flashed before my eyes, memories of a scream in a poppy field; and new memories, too—the ’geist’s memories. It was a murder victim. A deafening bang shook my every bone. My stomach gave an almighty heave. I hit the ground and retched.

I must have stayed there for a minute, racked by pictures of blood on a cream carpet. This person had been killed with a shotgun. His skull had burst open, spraying brain and shattered bone. My ears rang. When I came to my senses, my body felt uncoordinated. I dragged myself along the ground, blinking away bloody visions. A silver-white burn slashed across my palm. The mark of a poltergeist.

Something shot past my ear. I looked up to see another watchtower, and the guard standing inside it.

Flux dart.

A second dart fired in my direction. I scrambled to my feet, turned east, and ran—but soon enough I came to another watchtower, and another gun had me running south. It was only when I saw the oval that I realized I was being driven back to Warden.

The next dart hit me in the shoulder. The pain was instant and excruciating. I reached up and tore the thing out. Blood flowed from the wound, and a wave of disorienting nausea swept over me. I was fast enough to stop the drug—it took about five seconds to self-inject—but the message was clear: get back on the oval, or get shot. Warden was waiting for me.

“Welcome back.”

I swiped the sweat from my forehead. “So I’m not allowed to run.”

“No. Unless you would like me to present you with a yellow tunic, which we give only to cowards.”

I ran at him, blinded by anger, and drove my shoulder into his abdomen. Given his size, nothing happened. He just took me by the tunic and tossed me away. I landed hard on the same shoulder.

“You cannot fight me with your bare hands.” He prowled the edge of the oval. “Nor can you run from an Emite. You are a dreamwalker, girl. You have the power to live and die as you decree. Lay waste to my dreamscape. Drive me mad!”

A part of me tore away. My spirit flew across the space between us. It slashed through the outer ring of his mind, like a knife through taut silk. I broke through the darkest part of his dreamscape, straining against impossibly powerful barriers, aiming for the distant patch of light that was his sunlit zone, but it wasn’t as easy as it had been on the train. The center of his dreamscape was so far away, and my spirit was already being driven out. Like an elastic band stretched too far, I snapped back into my own mind. The weight of my own spirit knocking me off my feet. My head rapped against the concrete.

The gas lamps swam back into focus. I pushed myself up on my elbows, my temples throbbing. Warden was still standing. I hadn’t brought him to his knees, as I had with Aludra, but I had tampered with his perception. He ran a hand over his face and shook his head.

“Good,” he said. “Very good.”

I stood. My legs shook.

“You’re trying to make me angry,” I said. “Why?”

“It seems to work.” He pointed the blade. “Again.”

I looked up at him, trying to catch my breath. “Again?”

“You can do better than that. You barely touched my defenses. I want you to make a dent.”

“I can’t do it again.” Black spotted my vision. “It doesn’t work like that.”

“Why not?”

“Because it stops me breathing.”

“Have you never gone swimming?”

“What?”

“The average human can hold their breath for at least thirty seconds without causing lasting damage. That is more than enough time for you to attack another mind and return to your body.”

I’d never thought of it like that. Nick had always ensured I used life support when I sensed the æther at a distance.

“Think of your spirit as a muscle, tearing from its natural place,” Warden said. “The more you use it, the stronger and faster it will become, and the better your body will cope with the repercussions. You will be able to jump quickly between dreamscapes—before your body hits the ground.”

“You don’t know anything,” I said.

“Nor do you. I suspect the incident on the train was the first time you ever walked in another dreamscape.” He didn’t move the blade. “Walk in mine. I challenge you.”

I searched his face. He was inviting me to come into his mind, to wound his sanity.

“You don’t really care. You’re just training me,” I said. We circled each other. “Nashira asked you to choose me. I know what she wants.”

“No. I chose you. I laid claim to your instruction. And the last thing I want”—he stepped toward me—“is for you to embarrass me with your incompetence.” His eyes were hard as flint. “Attack me again. And do it properly this time.”

“No.” I’d call his bluff. Let him be embarrassed. Let him be as mortified by me as my father. “I’m not going to kill myself just so you can get a gold star from Nashira.”

“You want to hurt me,” he said, softer now. “You loathe me. You resent me.” He lifted the knife. “Destroy me.”

At first I did nothing. Then I remembered the hours I’d spent cleaning his arm, and how he’d threatened me. I remembered how he’d stood aside and watched Seb die. I flung my spirit back at him.

In the time we spent on that meadow, I barely fractured his dreamscape. Even when he dropped most of his defenses, I couldn’t get any further than his hadal zone—his mind was just too strong. He goaded me the whole time. He told me I was weak, that I was pathetic, that I was a disgrace to all clairvoyants. That it was no wonder humans were good for nothing but slavery. Did I want to live in a cage, like an animal? He was happy to oblige. At first the provocation did its job, but the more the night wore on, the less his insults roused me. In the end they were just frustrating, not enough to force my spirit out.

That was when he threw a blade. He aimed well away from me, but the sight of the flying knife was enough to set my spirit loose. Each time I did it, my body fell. If my foot so much as slipped off the oval, a flux dart came whistling in my direction. I soon learned to premeditate the sound, and to duck before the needle could hit home.

I managed five or six jumps out of my body. Each time was like having my head ripped open. Finally I could take no more. My vision went double and a migraine swelled above my left eye. I bent at the waist, hungry for air. Don’t show weakness. Don’t show weakness. My knees were going to give.

Warden knelt in front of me and wrapped an arm around my waist. I tried to push him away, but my arms were like string.

“Stop,” he said. “Stop resisting.”

He lifted me into his arms. I’d never experienced this quick-fire jumping; I didn’t know if my brain would stand it. The backs of my eyes throbbed. I couldn’t look at the lantern.

“You did well.” Warden looked down at me. “But you could do much better.”

I couldn’t reply.

“Paige?”

“I’m fine.” My voice was slurred.

He seemed to take my word for it. Still holding me, he made his way toward the gate.

Warden set me on my feet again after a while. We walked in silence back to the entrance where Thuban had left his post. Ivy was sitting against the fence, her face in her hands, her shoulders shaking. When we approached the sally port, she stood and undid the bolt. Warden glanced at her as we passed. “Thank you, Ivy.”

She looked up. There were tears in her eyes. When was the last time she’d been called by her real name?

Warden kept his silence as we walked through the ghost town. I was only half-awake. Nick would have made me rest in bed for hours if I’d been with him, and scolded me for good measure.

It was only when we walked past Amaurotic House that Warden spoke again: “Do you often try to sense the æther at a distance?”

“None of your business,” I said.

“Your eyes hold death. Death and ice.” He turned to face me. “Strange, when they burn so hot in your anger.”

I met his gaze. “Your eyes change, too.”

“Why do you think that might be?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know anything about you.”

“That is true enough.” Warden looked me up and down. “Show me your hand.”

After a moment, I showed him my right hand. The burn had taken on an ugly, nacreous appearance. He took out a tiny vial of liquid from his pockets, tipped it against his gloved finger, and spread its contents over the mark. Before my eyes, it melted away, leaving no trace. I pulled my hand back.

“How did you do that?”

“It is called amaranth.” He put the vial back, then looked at me. “Tell me, Paige—are you afraid of the æther?”

“No,” I said. My palm tingled.

“Why not?”

It was a lie. I was afraid of the æther. When I pushed my sixth sense too far, I ran the risk of death, or at least brain injury. Jax had told me from the beginning that if I worked for him, I was likely to cut my lifespan by about thirty years, maybe more. It all rested on luck.

“Because the æther is perfect,” I said. “There’s no war. There’s no death, because everything there is already dead. And there’s no sound. Just silence. And safety.”

“Nothing is safe in the æther. And even the æther is not exempt from war and death.”

I studied his profile as he looked at the black sky. His breath didn’t cloud in the cold, not like mine. But for a moment—just the briefest moment—there was something human in his face. Something pensive, almost bitter. Then he turned to face me again, and it was gone.

Something was amiss outside the Rookery. A group of red-jackets were crouched on the cobblestones, watched by silent harlies, talking in quick, hushed voices. I glanced up at Warden to see if he was concerned. If he was, he didn’t show it. He walked toward the group, causing most of the harlies to shrink back into their shacks.

“What is it?”

One of the red-jackets looked up, saw who had spoken, and flicked his gaze back down. His tunic was caked in mud. “We were in the woods,” he said, his voice hoarse. “We got lost. The Emim—they—”

Warden’s hand strayed to his forearm.

The red-jackets were gathered around a boy of perhaps sixteen. His entire right hand was missing, and it wasn’t just his tunic that was red. My mouth clenched up. His hand had been ripped and twisted from his arm, as if it had been caught in a machine. Warden analyzed the scene with no hint of emotion.

“You say you were lost,” he said. “Which keeper was with you?”

“The blood-heir.”

Warden leveled his gaze on the street. “I should have known.”

My eyes burned on his back. He was just standing there. The red-jacket was trembling uncontrollably, his face shining with sweat. He was going to die if someone didn’t bandage the stump, or at least get a blanket over him.

“Take him to Oriel.” Warden turned away from the group. “Terebell will deal with him. The rest of you, get back to your residences. The amaurotics will tend to your wounds.”

I looked at his hard-bitten features, searching for a hint of something warm. I found nothing. He didn’t care. I didn’t know why I kept looking.

The red-jackets lifted their friend and staggered toward an alleyway, leaving spots of blood in their wake. “He needs a hospital.” I made myself say it. “You’ve got no idea how to—”

“He will be dealt with.”

He was silent then, and his eyes grew hard. I guessed that meant I’d overstepped the line.

But I was starting to wonder where exactly the line had been drawn. Warden never beat me. He let me sleep. He used my real name when we were alone. He had even let me attack his mind, made himself vulnerable to my spirit—a spirit that could break his very sanity apart. I couldn’t understand why he would take the risk. Even Nick was wary of my gift. (“Call it a healthy respect, sötnos.”)

As we headed toward the residence, I let my hair down from its knot. I almost jumped out of my body again when someone else’s hands took over, pulling my damp curls around my shoulders.

“Ah, XX-40. A pleasure to see you again.” The voice was tinged with amusement. High-pitched for a man. “I must congratulate you, Warden. She looks even more ravishing in a tunic.”

I turned to face the man behind me. It took effort not to recoil.

It was the medium, the one that had chased me across the rooftops of I-5—but he wasn’t carrying a flux gun tonight. He wore a strange uniform in the colors of Scion. Even his face matched the color code: red mouth, black eyebrows, face dusted with zinc oxide. He was probably in his late thirties, and he carried a heavy leather whip. I was sure I could see blood on it. This must be the Overseer, the man who kept the harlies in check. Behind him was the oracle from the first night. He looked at me with disconcerting eyes: one dark and piercing, one a clear hazel. His tunic was the same color as mine.

Warden looked down at them. “What do you want, Overseer?”

“Pardon my intrusion. I merely wanted to see the dreamer again. I have watched her progress with great interest.”

“Well, you have seen her now. She is not a performer. Her progress is not for watching.”

“Indeed. But what a charming sight she is.” He flashed me a smile. “Allow me to welcome you personally to Sheol I. I am Beltrane, the Overseer. I hope my flux dart didn’t scar your back.”

I reacted. I couldn’t help it. “If you hurt my father—”

“I did not give you permission to speak, XX-40.”

Warden stared me down. The Overseer laughed, patted my cheek. I jerked away from him. “There, now. Your father is safe and well.” He made a sign on his chest. “Cross my heart.”

I should have been relieved, but all I could feel was anger at his nerve. Warden looked at the younger man. “Who is this?”

“This is XX-59-12.” The Overseer placed a hand on his shoulder. “He is a very loyal servant to Pleione. He has done exceptionally well in his studies over the last few weeks.”

“I see.” Warden’s eyes flicked over him, assessing his aura. “You are an oracle, boy?”

“Yes, Warden.” 12 bowed.

“The blood-sovereign must be pleased with your progress. We have had no oracles since Bone Season XVI.”

“I hope to be among those in her service soon, Warden.” There were traces of the north in his accent.

“As you will be, 12. You’ll do very well against your Emite, I think. 12 is about to take his second test,” the Overseer said. “We were just on our way back to Merton to join the rest of his battalion. Pleione and Alsafi will lead them.”

“Are the Sualocin aware of the injured red-jacket?” Warden said.

“Yes. They hunt the same Emite that bit him.”

Warden’s expression flickered.

“The best of luck to you in that endeavor, 12,” he said.

12 bowed again.

“But I do have another reason to interrupt, before we leave,” the Overseer added. “I am here to extend an invitation to the dreamwalker. If I may.”

Warden turned to face him. The Overseer took his silence as permission to continue.

“We are putting on a very special celebration in honor of this Bone Season, XX-40. The twentieth Bone Season.” He swept a hand toward the Rookery. “Our finest performers. A feast for the senses. A saturnalia of music and dancing to show off all our boys and girls.”

“You refer to the Bicentenary,” Warden said.

It was the first time I’d heard the word.

“Precisely.” The Overseer smiled. “The ceremony during which the Great Territorial Act will be signed.”

That didn’t sound good. Before I could hear any more, I was blinded by a vision.

As an oracle, Nick could send soundless images through the æther. He called them khrēsmoi, a Greek word. I could never pronounce it, so I just called them his “snapshots.” 12 had the same gift. I saw a clock, both hands pointing toward twelve, followed by four pillars and a flight of steps. A moment later, I blinked, and the images were gone. I opened my eyes to see him looking at me.

It had all happened in a second. “I am aware of the Act,” Warden was saying. “Get to the point, Overseer. 40 is exhausted.”

The Overseer didn’t balk at Warden’s tone. He must be used to being despised. Instead he offered me a smile, soft as oil.

“I would like to invite 40 to perform with us on the day of the Bicentenary. I was impressed with her strength and agility on the night I captured her. It gives me great pleasure to invite her to be my principal performer, along with XIX-49-1 and XIX-49-8.”

I was about to refuse, in such a way as to earn myself a severe punishment, when Warden spoke.

“As her keeper,” he said, “I forbid it.”

I looked up at him.

“She is not a performer, and unless she fails her tests before the Bicentenary, she remains in my keeping.” Warden stared directly at the Overseer. “40 is a dreamwalker. The dreamwalker you were assigned to bring to this colony. I will not allow her to be paraded in front of the Scion emissaries like a common seer. That is an assignment for your humans. Not mine.”

The Overseer wasn’t smiling now.

“Very good.” He bowed, not looking at me. “Come, 12. Your challenge awaits.”

12 slid me a look, one eyebrow raised in question. I nodded. He turned and followed the Overseer back to the Rookery, walking with an easy stride. He didn’t seem afraid of what he was about to face.

Warden’s eyes scorched on my face. “Do you know the oracle?”

“No.”

“He never took his eyes off you.”

“Forgive me, master,” I said, “but am I not permitted to speak with other humans?”

He didn’t take his eyes off me. I wondered whether the Rephs understood sarcasm.

“Yes,” he said. “You are permitted.”

He swept past me without another word.