Bone Season 01: The Bone Season: A Novel (17 page)

I sipped. It tasted of mint.

My eyes were hot and my throat still ached, but I wouldn’t cry for Seb. It felt disrespectful to cry with Liss sitting next to me. Her face was swollen, her neck bruised by fingers, and her shoulder dislocated—yet she’d still put my welfare above hers. “You’re part of the Family now, sister,” she said, and treated my brand one-handed with a warm poultice. The raw burn in my skin was easing, but she said it would definitely scar. That was the point. To remind me, every day, to whom I belonged.

Julian was asleep under a discolored sheet. His keeper had gone to meet with her family, the Chertan. I’d given him some aspirin before he drifted off. His nose looked a bit better. He’d come looking for me after my no-show at dawn, and Liss had taken him in. The two of them had patched up the shack as best they could, but the place was like an icebox. Still, Liss had invited me to stay for the whole night, and I had every intention of doing just that. I needed to get away from Magdalen.

Liss cracked open the Sterno with an old tin opener.

“Thanks for getting this. Haven’t seen canned heat for a while.” She took out a match and lit the jellied alcohol. A clean blue flame appeared. “You got this from Duckett?”

“For a price.”

“What did you give him?”

“One of my pills.”

Liss raised an eyebrow. “Why would he want one of those?”

“Because I get a pill that no one else gets. No idea what it is.”

“If you can use them to bribe Duckett, they’re worth keeping. His tasks are risky. He makes people go into the residences and steal for him. More often than not, they get caught.”

She winced and reached for her shoulder. I took the Sterno from her hand and placed it between us. “Gomeisa did this,” I said.

“He gets bored of the cards after a while. Doesn’t always like what they show him.” She lay on her back, pulling the pillow under her neck. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t see him very much. I don’t think he’s even in the city most of the time.”

“Were you his only human?”

“Mm. That’s why he hates me. I was in exactly the same situation as you, taken in by a Reph that had never chosen a human before. He thought I had potential, thought I could be one of the best bone-grubbers in Sheol I.”

“Bone-grubbers?”

“It’s what we call the red-jackets. He thought I’d earn that color. But I disappointed him.”

“How?”

“He asked me to do a reading for one of the harlies. They thought he was a traitor, that he’d tried to run. I knew it was true. The reading would have incriminated him. I refused to do it.”

“I didn’t want to do it. She still saw what I was.” I rubbed my temple. “And now Seb’s dead, too.”

“Amaurotics die all the time here. He would have been bones whatever you did.” She sat up again. “Come on. Let’s eat.”

She reached over to her wooden chest. I stared at what was inside: a packet of coffee granules, cans of beans, four eggs. “How did you get those?”

“I found them.”

“Where?”

“One of the amaurotics hid them near his residence. Leftovers from the Bone Season supplies.” Liss took out an iron pot and filled it with water from a bottle. “We’ll eat like queens.” She pushed the pot over the Sterno. “How are you holding up, Jules?”

Our voices must have woken him. He pushed off the sheet and sat cross-legged. “Better.” He pressed his nose with his fingers. “Thanks for the meds, Paige.”

I nodded. “When do you take your test?”

“No idea. Aludra’s supposed to be teaching us about subliming, but she spends most of her time kicking us around.”

“Subliming?”

“Turning normal objects into numa. Those batons we were using the other night, when you came to see me—they were sublimed. Anyone can use them, not just soothsayers.”

“What do they do?”

“They exert some control over the nearest spirits, but they can’t be used to see the æther.”

“So they’re not really numa.”

“Still dangerous,” Liss said. “Rotties can use them. The last thing we need is an ethereal weapon Scion can use.”

Julian shook his head. “Scion would never use numa. They’re repulsed by clairvoyance.”

“Not by the Rephaim.”

“I doubt they like the Rephs,” I said. “They’re clairvoyant. They just don’t have a choice but to obey, with the Emim at their doorstep.”

The water boiled and steamed. Liss poured it into three paper cups and mixed it with coffee. I hadn’t smelled coffee in days, or weeks. How long had I been in this place?

“Here.” She handed one cup to me, one to Julian. “Where does Aludra keep you, Jules?”

“A room with no lights. I think it used to be a wine cellar. We sleep on the floor. Felix is claustrophobic, and Ella misses her family. They spend half the day crying, so I don’t sleep.”

“Just get evicted. It’s harsh out here, but not as harsh as it is to have a keeper. We only get fed on if we’re in the wrong place at the wrong time.” Liss sipped from her cup. “Some people can’t take it. I had a friend who stayed in here with me, but she begged her keeper for another chance. She’s a bone-grubber now.”

We drank our coffee in silence. Liss boiled the eggs, and we ate them straight out of the shell.

“I was thinking,” Julian said, “can the Rephs actually go back to wherever they came from?”

Liss shrugged. “I guess so.”

“I just don’t understand why they stay. I mean, they weren’t always here. What did they do for aura before they found us?”

“It might be about the Buzzers,” I said. “Nashira said they were a ‘parasitic race,’ didn’t she?”

Julian nodded. “Think the Buzzers took something from them?”

“Their sanity?”

He snorted. “Yeah. Or maybe they used to be nice until the Buzzers sucked it all out of them.”

Liss didn’t laugh. “It could be the ethereal threshold,” I said. “Nashira did say they appeared when it broke.”

“I don’t think we’ll ever know.” Liss sounded tense. “It’s not like they’re going to broadcast it.”

“Why not? If they’re so powerful and we’re so feeble, where’s the need for secrecy?”

“Knowledge is power,” Julian said. “They have it. We don’t.”

“You’re wrong, brother. Knowledge is dangerous.” Liss pulled her knees up to her chin. It was just what Duckett had implied. “Once you know something, you can’t get rid of it. You have to carry it. Always.”

Julian and I exchanged a glance. Liss had been here for a long time; maybe we should just take her advice. Or maybe we shouldn’t. Maybe her advice would kill us.

“Liss,” I said, “do you ever think about fighting back?”

“Every day.”

“But you don’t do it.”

“I think about gouging out Suhail’s eyes with my bare hands.” She said it through gritted teeth. “I think about shooting Nashira a hundred times, in every part of her body. I think about stabbing Gomeisa in the gullet, but I know they’d kill me first, so I don’t do it.”

“But if you think like that, you’ll be stuck here forever,” Julian said gently. “Do you want that?”

“Of course
I don’t want that. I want to go home. Whatever that means.” Liss turned her away. “I know what you must think of me. You think I’ve got no backbone.”

“Liss,” I said, “we didn’t mean—”

“Yes, you did. I don’t blame you. But let me tell you something, if you want knowledge so much. There was a rebellion here during Bone Season XVIII, back in 2039. The whole human population of Sheol I rose up against the Rephs.” The pain in her eyes aged her by decades. “They all died—amaurotics, voyants, the whole lot. Without the red-jackets to fight them, the Emim got in and killed them all. And the Rephs just let them do it.”

I looked at Julian. He didn’t take his eyes off Liss.

“They said they deserved it. For their disobedience. It was the first thing they told us when we arrived.” She ran her cards between her fingers. “I know you’re both fighters, but I don’t want to see you die here. Not like that.”

Her words silenced me. Julian rubbed a hand over his head, looking at the stove.

We didn’t go back to the subject of rebellion. We ate the beans, scraping the cans clean. Liss kept her deck on her lap. After a minute, Julian cleared his throat.

“Where did you live, Liss? Before this.”

“Cradlehall. It’s near Inverness.”

“What’s Scion like up there?”

“Same as down here, really. The big cities are all under the same system, but with a smaller security force than London. They’re still bound by Inquisitorial legislation, like the citadel.”

“Why did you come south?” I said. “Surely the Highlands were safer for voyants.”

“Why does anyone go to SciLo? Work. Money. We need to eat just as much as amaurotics.” Liss drew a sheet around her shoulders. “My parents were too afraid to live in central Inverness. Voyants aren’t organized there, not like the syndicate. Dad thought we should try our luck in the citadel. We spent our savings to get to London. We approached some mime-lords, but none of them needed soothsayers. Once the money ran out, we had to busk just to get a doss at night.”

“And you were caught.”

“Dad got too ill to go out. He was in his sixties, giving himself all sorts of bugs on the streets. I took his usual stake. A woman approached me and asked for a reading.” She ran her thumb over the tops of her cards. “I was nine. I didn’t realize she was NVD.”

Julian shook his head. “How long were you in the Tower?”

“Four years. They put me on the waterboard a few times, tried to make me tell them where my parents were. I said I didn’t know.”

This couldn’t be making her feel better. “What about you, Julian?” I said.

“Morden. IV-6.”

“That’s the smallest section, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, that’s why the syndicate doesn’t bother with it. I had a little group, but we didn’t do mime-crime. Just the odd séance.”

I felt a bitter pang of loss. I wanted
my
group.

Julian soon succumbed to his exhaustion. The fuel ran lower and lower on the Sterno. Liss watched it to the end. I pretended to sleep, but all I could think about was Bone Season XVIII. So many people must have died. Their families would never have been told. There would have been no trials, no appeals. The injustice of it made me sick. No wonder Liss was so afraid to fight.

That was when the siren sounded.

Julian jerked awake. The noise cranked and creaked, working itself up like heaving bellows, before it let out a scream. My body reacted at once: a prickling at my legs, a thumping heart.

Footsteps thundered through the passages. Julian peeled back the rag door. Three red-jackets ran past, one carrying a powerful torch. Liss opened her eyes, perfectly still.

“They have knives,” Julian said.

Liss pushed herself into the corner of the shack. She picked up her deck of cards, scooped an arm around her knees, and put her head down. “You have to go,” she said. “Now.”

“Come with us,” I said. “Just sneak into one of the residences. You’re not safe in—”

“Do you
want
to get a slating from Aludra? Or the Warden?” She glared up at us. “I’ve been doing this for ten years. Get out of here.”

We exchanged glances. We were already late. I didn’t know what Warden would do to me, but we both knew how violent Aludra Chertan was. She might just kill him this time. We ducked out of the shack and ran like hell.

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.”