The Bone Season

by Samantha Shannon

  “I am using your aura.”

  I stiffened. “What?”

  “You must know by now that Rephaim feed on aura. It is easier for me to feed when my host is unaware of it.”

  “You just fed on me?”

  “Yes.” He studied my face. “You seem angry.”

  “It’s not yours to take.” I moved away from him, disgusted. “You already took my freedom. You have no right to my aura.”

  “I did not take enough to damage your gift. I feed on humans in small doses, allowing time for regeneration. Others are not so courteous. And mark my words”—he pulled down his sleeve—“you do not want me to contract half-urge in your presence.”

  I looked at his face. He was still, accepting my scrutiny.

  “Your eyes.” I looked right into them, mesmerized and repelled at once. “That’s why they change.”

  He didn’t deny it. His eyes were no longer yellow, but a dark, softly glowing red. The color of my aura. “I meant no offense,” he said, “but it must be this way.”

  “Why? Because you said so?”

  Without responding, he walked on. I followed. It made me sick that he could feed on me.

  After several minutes of walking, Warden stopped. A thin, blue-tinged mist hung around us. I turned up my collar. “You feel it,” Warden said. “The cold. Have you ever wondered why there is frost here, in early spring?”

  “It’s England. It’s cold.”

  “Not this cold. Feel it.” He took my hand and peeled off one of my gloves. My fingers burned in the bitter air. “There is a cold spot nearby.”

  I took my glove back. “Cold spot?”

  “Yes. They form when a spirit has dwelled in one place for a long time, creating an opening between the æther and the corporeal world. Have you never noticed how cold it becomes when spirits are near?”

  “I suppose.” Spirits did chill, but I’d never given it much thought.

  “Spirits are not supposed to dwell between the worlds. They draw on heat energy to sustain themselves. Sheol I is surrounded by cold spots—ethereal activity here is much higher than it is in the citadel. That is why the Emim are attracted toward us, rather than the amaurotic population in London.” Warden indicated the stretch of hard earth in front of us. “How do you think you might find the epicenter of a cold spot?”

  “Most voyants could see the spirit,” I said. “They have the third eye.”

  “But you do not.”

  “No.”

  “There are ways for the unsighted to do it. Have you heard of rhabdomancy?”

  “I hear it’s useless,” I said. Jax had told me so, many times. “Rhabdomancers say they can find their way back from anywhere. They say they can make numa fall when they get lost, and that spirits will point them in the right direction. Doesn’t work.”

  “That may be true, but it is not ‘useless.’ No type of clairvoyance is useless.”

  Warmth rose in my cheeks. I didn’t really believe rhabdomancers were useless, but Jax had always told me that they were. You couldn’t work for Jaxon Hall and not share his opinions on such things.

  “Why is it useful, then?” I asked. Warden looked at me. “You’re supposed to be teaching me. Teach me.”

  “Very well. If you wish to learn.” Warden started to walk. “Most rhabdomancers think that when their numa fall, they are pointing toward home, toward buried treasure—toward whatever they seek to find. In the end it makes them mad. Because what their numa point toward is not gold, but the epicenter of the nearest cold spot. Sometimes they walk for miles, and they do not find what they seek. But they do find something: a secret door. What they do not know is how to open it.”

  He stopped. I was shivering. The air was thin and cold. I breathed deeper, harder. “It is hard for the living to bear a cold spot,” he said. “Here.”

  He handed me a silver canteen with a screw cap. I looked down at it.

  “It is only water, Paige.”

  I drank. I was too thirsty to refuse. He took the canteen back and tucked it away. The water cleared my head.

  The ground we stood beside was frozen solid, as if it were deep winter. I clenched my chattering teeth together. The spirit responsible for the cold spot was drifting nearby. When it didn’t approach us, Warden crouched at the edge of the ice, took out a knife and held it against his arm. I stepped forward. “What are you doing?”

  “Opening the door.”

  He cut into his wrist. Three drops of ectoplasm fell onto the ice. The cold spot cracked down the middle and the air turned white. Shapes gathered around me. Voices. Dreamer, dreamer. I put my hands over my ears, but it didn’t block them. Dreamer, do not go beyond. Turn back. Then I looked up, and the darkness surrounded me again.

  “Paige?”

  “What happened?” My head was light and sore.

  “I opened the cold spot.”

  “With your blood.”

  “Yes.”

  His wrist had stopped dripping already. Red lingered in his eyes. My aura was still working on his wounds. “So you can ‘open’ a cold spot?” I said.

  “You can’t. I can.”

  “Because cold spots lead to the æther.” I paused. “Can you use them to reach the Netherworld?”

  “Yes. That is how we got here. Imagine there are two veils standing between the æther and your world—the world of life. Between those veils is the Netherworld, a medial state between life and death. When rhabdomancers find a cold spot, they find the means to move between the veils. To enter my home, the realm of the Rephaim.”

  “Can humans go there?”

  “Try.”

  I looked up at him. When he nodded to the cold spot, I took a step onto the ice. Nothing happened.

  “No corporeal matter can survive beyond the veil,” Warden said. “Your body cannot pass beyond the gate.”

  “What about rhabdomancers?”

  “They are still flesh.”

  “Why open it now, then?”

  The sun had disappeared. “Because the time is right,” he said, “for you to face the Netherworld. You will not go in. But you will see.”

  Sweat began to bead across my forehead. I stepped off the ice. I was starting to sense spirits everywhere.

  “Night is the time of spirits.” Warden looked up at the moon. “The veils are at their thinnest now. Think of cold spots as rips in the fabric.”

  I watched the cold spot. Something about it rattled my spirit.

  “Paige, you will have two tasks tonight,” he said, turning to face me. “Both will test the limits of your sanity. Will you believe me if I tell you they will help you?”

  “Not likely,” I said, “but let’s get on with it.”

  16

  The Undertaking

  Warden didn’t tell me where we were going. He led me down another footpath, into the open grounds of Magdalen. I could feel spirits everywhere: in the air, in the water—spirits of the dead that had once walked here. I couldn’t hear them, but with a cold spot open within a mile radius, I could feel them as strongly as if they were living presences.

  I kept close to Warden in spite of myself. If any of these spirits were malevolent, I sensed he’d be able to repel them more efficiently than I could.

  The darkness grew deeper as we made our way through the grounds, away from the lanterns of Magdalen. Warden remained silent as we crossed a wet meadow where the lawns had been replaced by knee-deep weeds and grass. “Where are we going?” I asked. My boots and socks were already sodden.

  Warden didn’t reply.

  “You said I was your student, not your slave,” I said. “I want to know where we’re going.”

  “Into the grounds.”

  “Why?”

  No reply again.

  The night was getting colder, unnaturally cold. After what seemed like hours, Warden stopped and pointed.

  “There.”

  At first I didn’t see it. When my eyes adjusted, the outline of the animal appeared in the dim moonl
ight. The creature was four-legged, with a silken coat. Its throat was snow-white and its long face, narrow, with dark eyes and a small black nose. I wondered which of us looked more astonished.

  A deer. I hadn’t seen one since I’d lived in Ireland, when my grandparents had taken me to the Galtees. A wave of childish excitement swept over me.

  “She’s beautiful,” I said.

  Warden stepped toward the deer. She was tethered to a post. “Her name is Nuala.”

  “That’s an Irish name.”

  “Yes, short for Fionnuala. It means white shoulders, or fair shoulders.”

  I looked again. There were two large white spots on either side of her neck. “Who named her?” In Scion it was risky to give Irish names to pets or children. You might be suspected of sympathizing with the Molly rioters.

  “I did.”

  He released the collar from around her neck. Nuala butted him with her nose. I waited for her to run, but she just stood there, gazing up at Warden. He spoke to her in a strange language, stroking her white throat, and she seemed to really listen. She was mesmerized. “Would you like to feed her?” Warden slid a red apple from his sleeve. “She has quite a penchant for these.”

  He tossed me the apple. Nuala turned her gaze on me, nose twitching. “Gently,” Warden said. “She is easily startled. Especially with a cold spot open nearby.”

  I didn’t want to startle her—but if Warden didn’t, how could I? I held out my hand, presenting the apple. The doe sniffed at the fruit. Warden said something else, and she snatched it.

  “Forgive her. She’s very hungry.” He patted her neck and gave her another apple. “I rarely have the chance to see her.”

  “But she lives in Magdalen.”

  “Yes, but I must be careful. Animals are not permitted within the limits of the city.”

  “So why keep her?”

  “For company. And for you.”

  “For me,” I repeated.

  “She’s been waiting for you.” He sat down on a flat rock, letting Nuala wander off toward the trees. “You are a dreamwalker. What does that mean to you?”

  He hadn’t brought me out here to feed a baby deer.

  “I’m attuned to the æther,” I said.

  “Say more.”

  “I can sense other dreamscapes at a distance. And ethereal activity in general.”

  “Precisely. That is your nascent gift, the bottom line: a heightened sensitivity to the æther, an awareness that most other clairvoyants do not possess. It comes from your silver cord, which is flexible. It allows you to dislocate your spirit from the center of your dreamscape—to widen your perception of the world. It would drive most clairvoyants mad to do that. But when we trained on the meadow, I encouraged you to push your spirit against my dreamscape. To attack it.” His eyes smoldered in the gloom. “You have the potential to do more than merely sense the æther. You can affect it. You can affect other people.

  I didn’t answer.

  “Perhaps, when you were younger, you could hurt people. Perhaps you could put pressure on their dreamscapes. Perhaps they noticed things: nosebleeds, distorted vision—”

  “Yes.”

  He already knew. No point in denying it.

  “Something changed on the train,” he continued. “Your life was endangered. You feared detainment. And for the first time in your life, that power inside you—that power emerged.”

  “How did you find out?”

  “A report came through that an Underguard had been killed—killed without blood, without weapons, without a single mark on his body. Nashira knew at once that it was the work of a dreamwalker.”

  “It could have been a poltergeist.”

  “Poltergeists always leave a mark. You should know.”

  The scars on my hand seemed to drop a few degrees.

  “Nashira wanted you alive,” Warden said. “The NVD makes clumsy, violent arrests, as do many of our red-jackets. Around half of those arrests end in death. That could not happen with you. You had to be unspoiled. That was why Nashira sent the Overseer, her specialist procurer of clairvoyants.”

  “Why?”

  “Because she wants to learn your secret.”

  “There is no secret. It’s what I am.”

  “It is also what Nashira wants to be. She longs for rare gifts, including yours.”

  “Why doesn’t she take it, then? She could have killed me when she murdered Seb. Why the wait?”

  “Because she wants to understand the full extent of your abilities. But she will not wait forever.”

  “I won’t perform for you,” I said. “I’m not a harlie yet.”

  “I did not ask you to perform for me. Where is the need? I saw your ability in the chapel. You forced your spirit into Aludra’s mind. I saw it on the meadow, when you broke into mine. But tell me”—he leaned toward me, his red eyes hot in the dark—“could you have possessed either of us?”

  There was a tense silence, broken only by the reedy screech of an owl. The sound made me look up. I looked at the moon, cradled in a smoking cup of cloud. For a brief moment, I was taken back to Jax’s office, the first time we’d broached the subject of possession.

  “My dear girl,” he’d said, “you’ve been a star. Nay, a luminary. You are absolutely and indubitably a keeper, a Seal fit to burst—but now I would like to give you a new task. A task that will test you, but also fulfill you.” He’d asked me to force my mind into his, to see if I could take control of his body. The idea had shaken me. I’d given it a halfhearted try, but the complexity of his mind had been too much to fathom. “Ah well,” he’d said, with a puff of his cigar. “It was worth a try, O my lovely. Away with you, now. There are broads to spread, and games to play.”

  Maybe I could have done it. Maybe if I’d really wanted to, I could have seized Jax’s body and stubbed out that bloody cigar, but it was that very ability that frightened me. To control someone was a serious responsibility, too serious for me. Even with the promise of a pay raise. I would wander through the mind of London, but I would never seize control of it. Not for all the money in the world.

  “Paige?”

  I surfaced from my memories. “No,” I said. “I couldn’t have possessed Aludra. Or you.”

  “Why not?”

  “I can’t possess people. And I definitely can’t possess Rephs.”

  “Would you like to?”

  “No. You can’t make me do it.”

  “I do not intend to force you. I am merely presenting you with an opportunity to ‘broaden your horizons,’ as you say.”

  “By causing pain.”

  “If possession is performed well, it should not cause any pain. I do not expect you to possess a human. Certainly not tonight.”

  “Then what do you want?”

  He looked across the field. I followed his line of sight. The doe was scuffing her hoof against some flowers, watching them bob their heads. “Nuala,” I said.

  “Yes.”

  I watched the doe bend her head and snuffle at a patch of grass. I’d never considered practicing possession on animals. Animal minds were very different than human minds—less complex, less conscious—but that might make it harder. It might not even be possible for me to fit my human spirit into an animal body. Would I think like a human when I had an animal dreamscape? And then there were other concerns: Would it hurt the deer? Would she struggle against my infiltration, or let me straight in?

  “I don’t know,” I said. “She’s too big. I might not be able to control her.”

  “I will find something smaller.”

  “What exactly do you want out of this?” When he said nothing, I continued: “You’re pretty pushy for someone who claims to be giving me an opportunity.”

  “I want you to take this opportunity. I do not deny it.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I want you to survive.”

  I held his gaze for a moment, trying to read him. I couldn’t. There was something about Rephaite faces tha
t discouraged emotional guesswork. “Fine,” I said. “A smaller animal. An insect, a rodent, maybe a bird. Something with limited sentience.”

  “Very well.”

  He was about to turn away when he stopped. With a glance in my direction, he removed something from his pocket: a pendant on a thin chain. “Wear this,” he said.

  “Why?”

  But he was gone. I sat down on the edge of a small boulder, fighting a shiver of anticipation. Jax would be nodding his approval, but I wasn’t sure Nick would be doing the same.

  I looked down at the pendant. It was about as long as my thumb, woven into the shape of wings. As I brushed my finger over it, there was a tiny tremor in the æther. It must have been sublimed. I pulled the chain over my head.

  Nuala returned after a while, having grown bored of the grass. I was huddled against the boulder, my hands deep in the pockets of my jacket. It was extraordinarily cold now, and my breath came in white clouds. “Hello,” I said. Nuala sniffed at my hair, like she was trying to work out what it was, then bent her legs and huddled next to me. She laid her head in my lap and made a sort of contented huff. I pulled off my gloves and stroked her ears. Her coat smelled of musk. I could feel her heartbeat, thick and strong. I’d never been this close to a wild animal. I tried to imagine what it must be like to be this little doe: to stand on four legs, to live wild in the woods.

  But I wasn’t wild. I’d lived in a Scion citadel for over a decade. All the wildness had gone out of me. That was why I’d joined Jax, I supposed. To cling to what was left of my old self.

  After a moment, I decided to test the water. I closed my eyes and let my spirit drift. Nuala had a permeable dreamscape, thin and frail as a bubble. Humans built up layers of resistance over the years, but animals didn’t have all that emotional armor. In theory, I could control her. I gave her dreamscape the lightest of nudges.

  Nuala let out a snort of alarm. I stroked her ears, shushing her. “Sorry,” I said. “I won’t do it again.” After a moment, she laid her head back on my lap, but she was quivering. She didn’t know it was me that had hurt her. I ran my fingers under her chin, scratching gently.

  By the time Warden returned I was half-asleep. He roused me with a tap on the cheek. Nuala looked up, but Warden soothed her with a word, and she soon dozed off again.