Page 156 of The Bone Season

‘I’d have qualms about bringing anyone here,’ I said, keeping my tone neutral.

‘Then will you hinder the assignment?’

‘Will you punish me if I do?’

‘No.’

Even if he had once been a rebel, he might have changed his ways. All of this could still be trickery. The constant uncertainty was forming a knot behind my ribs, making it hard to breathe. My instincts were at war.

I shouldn’t trust him, even now, but something in me – my criminal intuition – recognised him as a fellow lawbreaker. All syndies knew their own.

‘Nashira may strip you of your tunic, or give you to a different keeper,’ Warden said. ‘If that happens, I will not be able to help you, Paige.’

‘Why do you want to help me?’

Warden looked at me with burning eyes.

‘Are you training me to die,’ I said, ‘or to fight back?’

We were teetering on the brink of a confession. I found myself holding my breath, my chest tight. One of us was going to have to crack.

And suddenly, I knew it needed to be me. I had to be the one to take the risk – to break the deadlock, so we could be honest with each other.

Because if Warden was a scarred one, he had good reason to mistrust me. Twenty years ago, he had tried to save us, and one selfish human – one weak link – had brought the rebellion crashing down.

Warden had no idea if I was cut from the same cloth. If he was going to try again, he had to make sure he was choosing the right allies.

He wanted to trust me. I believed that. But if he learned for sure that I was the Pale Dreamer, he never would. A woman who had served the White Binder by choice – he would be reluctant to rely on my integrity.

He had already guessed the truth, and this assignment would confirm it. I had no plans whatsoever to detain either Jaxon or Carter.

Yet he was still interested, even with his suspicions. Even knowing I was a criminal.

‘Say I did work at a higher level of the syndicate – if I was more than just a pickpocket,’ I eventually said. ‘What would you think about that?’

Warden looked into the fire.

‘The syndicate is a blade with two edges,’ he said. ‘It is rare for us to capture its voyants, which implies it offers a degree of protection. Those who arrive here are often loners, rejected either by the gangs or their own families, or both. That is why they are easy to indoctrinate. They have been mistreated by their own kind, as well as Scion.’

‘Because of people like the White Binder.’

‘As you say.’ He regarded me. ‘We treat our human prisoners as inferior, but we acknowledge their clairvoyance. We give them a place, and the opportunity to rise. For many, that is preferable to the streets.’

‘You seem to know a lot about this. How, if you don’t catch many syndies?’

‘Michael was once a polyglot,’ he said. ‘He knows Glossolalia, or Gloss – our language, the language of spirits.’

So that was its name.

‘Like you, he was untaught, alone. He could not always control his outbursts,’ Warden continued. ‘His parents were so appalled and afraid that they forced him to drink bleach, trying to burn the unnaturalness out. The trauma collapsed his dreamscape. After that, he could not speak.’

It was trauma that made an unreadable. The dreamscape would grow back with layer upon layer of armour, preventing all spiritual attack.

‘The Overseer found him,’ Warden said. ‘He was living rough on the streets of Southwark, having been rejected by the syndicate.’ I clenched my jaw. ‘Michael told me he prefers Magdalen to London. Though he is treated as an amaurotic here, he still has an aura. I taught him to sign. He may never sing in the way he once did, with the voices of the dead, but he is trying to speak again.’

This was far more than I had expected to hear from this conversation.

‘Michael does not mind me telling you this,’ Warden said, seeing my face. ‘He encouraged it.’

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