Page 100 of The Bone Season

The day porter stared as Suhail passed, his hand tight at the back of my head, my hair twisted around his fingers. My head was pounding, my cheeks streaked with blood. I was forced up the steps of the Founders Tower, tripping and banging my shins all the way.

When Suhail reached the parlour door, he knocked with his fist, rattling it on its hinges.

‘Arcturus!’

Warden came in moments. Suhail let go of my hair, taking a fair amount with him. Caught on the landing between them, I had never been so aware of my own mortality, my own brittleness.

‘Suhail,’ Warden said.

‘Your lost property.’ Suhail shoved me at him. ‘She will not say where she was hiding.’

Warden looked at us both in turn. The evidence was clear as glass: red eyes, bloody cheeks.

‘You fed on her,’ he said. ‘My tenant is a pink-jacket, Suhail.’

‘She forfeited her privileges when she chose to attack a Rephaite.’

‘I was defending myself,’ I said to Warden. ‘He was about to—’

‘No one allowed you to speak, 40.’ Suhail clamped a hand on my shoulder, right where he had branded me. I gritted my teeth. ‘Not only has she set the city in an uproar, but she dared to use her spirit against me, in plain sight of other humans. It felled me.’

‘Release her, Suhail,’ Warden said, very softly.

After a moment, Suhail let go, but I was confident I would have bruises where his fingers had been. Warden leaned down to my level.

‘Did you do this?’

His voice was as soft as before. I nodded, just the barest movement of my head.

‘You seek to corroborate my account,’ Suhail said, his face tightening. ‘You would trust this scrap of rotting meat over your own?’

‘I only wished to see if she would lie,’ Warden said. ‘It appears not.’

‘Even she cannot deny her disobedience.’

‘Neither will you be able to deny yours to Nashira.’

Suhail managed to wind his neck in. I allowed myself a stab of satisfaction.

Warden looked hard at me. His gaze touched on my face, the dust on my clothes, and my loose curls, awry where they had been yanked.

‘An eventful return to Magdalen,’ he said. ‘Is this also your doing, Suhail?’

‘She deserves a rough handling for her insolence,’ came the sour reply.

‘She is not yours to handle. You almost killed her in March. Nashira will not be pleased that you failed to control yourself a second time. Such displays of temper are beneath your dignity.’

‘Your approach to discipline has failed,’ Suhail shot back, flaring up again. ‘Over a month in this city, and she remains untamed. She is obstreperous, insolent, and sees fit to defy her betters in public. Will you allow a human to tarnish your name further?’

‘Remember who I am, Suhail.’

Warden never raised his voice, but he could make it dangerous. It sent goosebumps all over me.

‘Be assured,’ Suhail said, ‘that none of us have forgotten.’ I felt his red eyes on me. ‘I may be moved to mercy if you show remorse, 40. Kneel before your betters and beg for our forgiveness.’

In the silence that followed, as I turned around to face him, I did consider doing it.Just do your training and stop antagonising Rephs, Liss had said. All I had to do was stroke his ego.

As it happened, I didn’t feel like doing that.

---