Page 136 of The Bone Season

‘Ah, but you are simply exceptional, my dear.’

‘Nadine could be exceptional, too. You won’t know unless you give her a chance.’

Eliza Renton was our trance medium, a specialist in mime-art. Born within striking distance of Bow Bells, she had worked in an underground theatre on the New Cut until she was nineteen, when she had readOn the Meritsand got in touch with its author, hoping for a new job.

Jaxon had seen her potential at once. Now, two years later, she was his most reliable source of income, standing among the highest earners on the black market. Her forgeries sold for thousands. On top of that, she designed and made all her own clothes by hand. She had clear olive skin, eyes as green as apples, and golden hair she kept in barley curls.

She was never short of admirers – people loved her as much as her muses did – but Jaxon strictly forbade us from relationships that lasted any longer than a night (and that was a grudging caveat), and Eliza respected his wishes. No one was more loyal to Jaxon than his Martyred Muse.

Jaxon narrowed his eyes in thought. Sensors were the fourth order of clairvoyance – less common than mediums. Many of them had left for other citadels during the street wars, making them even rarer.

‘Ezekiel Sáenz,’ he finally said. ‘Could you glean anything from him, Nick?’

‘I’ve never sensed an aura like his before,’ Nick said. ‘It was somewhere between orange and red, to my eye.’

‘A potential fury.’ Jaxon raised his eyebrows. ‘Now, thatisinteresting.’

The sixth order of clairvoyance, and perhaps the most arcane. None of us had ever met one, to our knowledge.

Nick shared a glance with Eliza. They had both worked with Jaxon for longer than me, and used a language of subtle looks I had yet to learn.

Still, they never left me out, even though Jaxon had passed them both over to choose me as mollisher. Nick went out of his way to make sure I was all right.

Jaxon lit a cigar. He had been scouring the streets for a fury for years, but this must be his first hopeful case. The White Binder didn’t just want any commonplace gang – he wanted a box of rare jewels, the cream of the crop, the very best and brightest of voyants. He wanted the Unnatural Assembly to envy him above all other mime-lords.

‘It’s high time I spoke to them myself,’ he said. ‘If Ezekielisa fury, I want him for the Seven Seals. I’ll take the whisperer as well, if I must.’

I dipped a chip in ketchup. ‘You really think you can get them to stay?’

‘Did I not persuade you, O my lovely?’

‘This is different, Jax. Nadine is at university. She won’t want to interrupt that. Besides, they must have families back home, career plans—’

‘You dropped your father like the millstone he is, without a second thought.’

‘It’s not the same. I didn’t have to upend my entire life to come and work for you. I just moved to a different part of the citadel. If I wanted to see my father, I could.’

‘Well, make sure you don’t. I don’t want his amaurotic dullness rubbing off on you.’

Jaxon often made jabs at my father. I resented him enough that I could live with it.

‘You’d be asking them to stay illegally in an empire that wants them dead,’ I said. ‘Why would they do it?’

Jaxon steepled his fingers. ‘How old would you say the whisperer was, Nick?’

‘About the same age as Paige.’

‘Then she knows something is amiss. The voices would have come in by now,’ Jaxon said. ‘She’s aware that she is a potential unnatural, but still chose to come here – and to put someone else at risk. Either they came to die, or they crave knowledge.’

‘There are only three days of the conference left,’ Eliza said, looking just as doubtful as me. ‘Won’t they need more time to consider it?’

‘Not if they have a spark of intelligence between them. What sort of bores would choose a decade of student debt over the underworld?’

‘They’re not going to stay,’ I said.

‘Faithless girl. Shall we have a wager?’ Jaxon extended a hand. ‘If you lose, you do two assignments with no pay. You will also polish my antique mirror.’

‘And if I win?’

---