Page 14 of The Bone Season

A light appeared. I blinked at the sight of an old paraffin lamp. Holding it was a statuesque woman, with polished bronze skin, impeccable posture, and black hair tumbling in loose curls to her waist.

I blinked again, harder. It might have been the lack of strong light, but her face seemed ageless. I was confident she was no younger than me; neither was she elderly. Otherwise I had no idea.

I noticed three odd things about her. First, her eyes were yellow. Not the kind of amber you might call yellow in certain lights – no, these wereyellow, tinged with green, and glowed like candle flames.

The second thing was her aura. She was voyant, but not a type I had encountered before.

And third was her dreamscape – exactly like the one I been chasing in Seven Dials. I already knew I couldn’t breach a dreamscape like this, certainly not in my current state.

‘Get up,’ she repeated.

Slowly, I stood, clutching my bedsheet like a shield. This had to be some aftermath of the phantasmagoria. How else could her eyes do that?

‘Take these,’ she said.

I looked at the two pills in her hand. She wore a tailored leather glove.

‘Must I give you every order twice?’

I wanted to refuse, to fight back, but the flux had drained me. Besides, I had no power here. With no other choice, I necked the pills dry.

‘Cover yourself,’ my jailer said. ‘If you resist, I will remove your fingernails.’ She threw a bundle of clothes at me. ‘Pick those up.’

Too unsteady to protest, I did. Black trousers, socks and underwear, including a thin shirt. Ankle boots with low, broad heels. A collared white tunic. Finally, a black gilet, stitched with a small white anchor.

This was a uniform. Wherever I was going, it clearly wasn’t to the gallows. Not yet. I dressed in rigid strokes, hair soaking my collar, fingers cramping on the buttons of the tunic.

It was even colder outside the room. The towering woman led me through a labyrinth of stone corridors, past torches burning in wall brackets, too bright after the cool blue streetlamps of London.

She unlocked a door and went inside. When she returned, a seer came after her. He was scrawny, with a mop of sandy hair and signs of flux poisoning: pallor, glazed eyes.

‘Move,’ the woman said.

He stumbled into step beside me. ‘Carl,’ he managed, clearly in pain.

I nodded. ‘Paige.’

No harm in giving my real name. Scion had got me now.

The woman collected more voyants, all in the same uniform. Three more soothsayers. A few augurs – the second order of clairvoyance, just as populous, who used the raw material of the natural world in their work, from fire and twigs to the human body.

Next came an oracle, who looked intrigued by our situation, and a whisperer with darting eyes. She must be listening to the chatter of the nearest spirits, unheard by the rest of us.

Soon there were twenty of us. Last to join was a palmist with short blue hair, shaking so hard her jaw rattled. Few of them looked older than thirty, or younger than fifteen. All were haggard from flux.

We were steered into a room with a wet floor, lit by a few candles, where several people were already imprisoned. Our jailer loomed in the doorway.

‘I am Pleione Sualocin,’ she said. ‘Tonight you will attend your welcome oration, which will take place in the Residence of the Suzerain.’

A number of wary looks were exchanged.

‘You will not look any Rephaite in the eye. You will keep your gazes on the floor, where they belong,’ Pleione said. ‘You will obey any commands you receive from the Rephaim you encounter.’

The whisperer raised a hand. ‘Sorry,’ she said, ‘but whatisa Rephaite?’

‘I am,’ Pleione said. ‘You will not speak again without my permission.’

‘Fuck that,’ said one of the augurs – a tasseographer, to be precise. They used tea leaves to foretell the future. ‘Where are we?’

---