Page 59 of The Bone Season

I waited, cold all over. Liss looked between us, her face hardening.

‘Are you sure you want this knowledge, Julian?’

After a moment, Julian nodded.

‘Duckett is the oldest human in this city. I’ll tell you why,’ Liss said. ‘Twenty years ago, the prisoners here planned to rise up against the Rephs. At that point, there were far more of us than you see now. When Nashira was informed, the humans were thrown out of the residences, the doors were locked, and the Emim were allowed into the city. Only Duckett escaped the slaughter.’

That was not what I had expected her to say.

‘That seems—’ Julian shook his head. ‘Surely not everyone was involved.’

‘She didn’t care. The first humans from my Bone Season arrived in a deserted city,’ Liss said. ‘Scion had to post Vigiles here to support them.’ The pain in her eyes aged her by decades. ‘I can tell you’re both fighters, but you need to accept what’s happened to you. Scion could have executed us, but instead, they sent us here. I promise you, death is the only way out.’

Her voice quaked on the last sentence. Julian rubbed a hand over his head.

‘Sorry.’ Liss dropped her gaze. ‘I didn’t want to scare you this soon.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m glad you did.’

It was true. Now I knew exactly how high the stakes were in this place.

‘Let’s talk about something else,’ Julian said. ‘Where did you used to live, Liss?’

She gave him a guarded look. ‘Inverness.’

‘I’ve always wanted to go there. Why did you come south?’

‘My parents were caught distributing seditious pamphlets. My father was arrested.’ She drew a sheet around her shoulders. ‘He escaped on his way to the New Tolbooth, but we had to go into hiding.’

Scotland no longer formally existed. Like Wales, it had been absorbed into Scion England. The Scots still found ways to resist.

‘We could have gone to my aunt in Edinburgh, but my father was too proud to ask for help,’ Liss said. ‘He spent all our savings to get us to London, hoping we could join the syndicate, but soon, none of the mime-lords or mime-queens wanted us.’

Jaxon might have been to blame. After all, he was the writer who had made soothsayers undesirable.

‘Because ofOn the Merits, I assume,’ Julian said, voicing the same thought.

‘Partly, but my mother was amaurotic. I don’t remember the specifics, but one of the mime-lords said he wouldn’t accept us with her in tow. When Dad argued with him, he put out word that we were Scion informants. After that, no one would touch us.’

That sort of petty blacklisting was common in the syndicate. It wasn’t always successful, but it hit new arrivals the hardest.

‘Once the money ran out, we had to earn a living without crossing the syndicate,’ Liss said. ‘Its couriers were everywhere. They would force my father to move on if they saw him, but they didn’t usually expect a child to be busking. I earned most of the money.’

I didn’t trust myself to speak.

‘When I was ten, my parents got lung fever. After that, I was on my own,’ Liss said. ‘One night, a woman approached me and asked for a reading.’ She took her cards out and ran her thumb over them. ‘I was only eleven. How was I to know it was a sting?’

Julian grimaced. ‘How long were you in the Tower?’

‘Two years. I was thirteen when I got here.’

I cleared my throat.

‘Where did you live, Julian?’

‘Morden,’ he said. ‘I’ve always tried to blend in with the amaurotics, so I never bothered with the syndicate. I had a couple of voyant friends, but we didn’t do proper mime-crime. Just séances.’

Liss looked ready to drop. She barely knew either of us, and the conversation had gone to dark places.

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