Page 1 of The Bone Season

THE CURSE

I like to imagine there were more of us in the beginning. Not many, I suppose. But more than there are now.

We look like everyone else. Sometimes we act like everyone else. In many ways, wearelike everyone else. We are everywhere, on every street. We live in a way you might consider normal, provided you don’t look too hard.

Not all of us know what we are. Some of us die without ever knowing. Some of us know, and we never get caught. Either way, we’re out there.

Trust me.

I had lived in London – Islington, officially – since I was eight years old. I attended a private school for girls, leaving at sixteen to work. That was in the year 2056. My father thought I would lead a simple life; that I was bright but unambitious, complacent with whatever work life threw at me.

My father, as usual, was wrong.

From the age of sixteen, I had worked in the criminal underworld of the Scion Citadel of London. I worked among ruthless gangs of clairvoyants, all fighting to live and thrive in a syndicate headed by the Underlord. Pushed to the edge of society, we were forced into crime to prosper.

And so we became more hated. We made their worst fears true.

I had my place in the chaos. I was a mollisher, no less – second in command to Jaxon Hall, better known as the White Binder, the mime-lord who ruled the district of I-4. There were six of us in his direct employ. We called ourselves the Seven Seals.

My father believed I was an assistant at an oxygen bar – an uninspired choice of occupation, but a legal one. The truth would probably have killed him.

I was nineteen years old the day my life changed. By that time, my syndicate name was notorious – the Pale Dreamer, heir of the White Binder, renowned for being the only known dreamwalker.

After a trying week among my fellow criminals, I had planned to spend a few days with my father. Jaxon could never understand why I bothered – for him, there was nothing worth our time outside the syndicate – but he didn’t have a living family, to my knowledge. London could have crafted him from candle wax and hair, for all I knew.

It was raining that day. The day my life changed – not for the first time, but for ever.

In the gloom of the den, I lay on a couch, wired up to life support. Physically, I was in Seven Dials. My perception was some way north, in Marylebone.

I said I was a dreamwalker. Let me clarify. Among the many strains of clairvoyance, mine was especially intricate. In its simplest form, it allowed me to reach farther into the æther than other voyants. I wasn’t a mindreader– more a mind radar, hypersensitive to the spirit world. My gift attuned me to it for about a mile outside myself.

When strangers arrived on our streets, I knew first. Nobody could hide from me. Consequently, Jaxon used me as a surveillance tool.

All clairvoyance was prohibited, but the kind that made money was downright depravity. For those caught dabbling in mime-crime (as we called it among ourselves), the official method of execution was nitrogen asphyxiation. There were still public hangings, naturally, and torture for certain sorts of high treason.

I committed high treason just by breathing.

But I digress.

Back to that day. I was tracking an elusive visitor to the area – a strange and remarkable dreamscape, which had appeared twice before. Jaxon had been stumped by my description of it. From the layering of defences, I would have said it was centuries old, but that couldn’t be right. This had to be a voyant of unprecedented strength.

Jaxon was suspicious. By rights, a newcomer to his section of the citadel should have announced themself by now, but there had been nothing.

I had sensed it again while I drifted that day. Jaxon would be furious if I lost it.

Find the one who treads so brazenly on our turf, darling. I will have this insult answered.

Thousands of dreamscapes thronged the nearby districts. I strained to keep tabs on the one that stood out. It drew my attention through the æther like a lantern – quickly, as if the stranger could sense me, as I sensed them.

It was slipping out of range. I should have pulled back a while ago, but this stranger had Jaxon unusually perturbed. If any of us mentioned it, he would sink into a sullen mood, often for days.

I forced my perception to its very limit, pulling against the constraints of my physical location, but it was too late. One moment the dreamscape was there; the next the æther seemed to swallow it, and it was gone.

Someone was shaking me. I let out a faint sound of protest, and they stopped.

My silver cord – the link between the body and the spirit – was unusually flexible, letting me sense dreamscapes at a distance. Now it snapped my awareness back into place. As soon as I opened my eyes, Danica shone a torch into them.

Danica Panic, our resident genius – an engineer and unclassified fury, second only to Jaxon in intellect. She was three years older than me and had all the charm and sensitivity of a punch to the nose.

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