The Bone Season

by Samantha Shannon

  “They’re going to torture us again.” The whisperer was cradling her broken arm. “They want something. They wouldn’t have just let us out.”

  “Out of where?” I said.

  “The Tower, idiot. Where we’ve all been for the last two years.”

  “Two?” There was a half-hysterical laugh from the corner. “Try nine. Nine years.” Another laugh, a giggle.

  Nine years. Why nine? From what we knew, detainees were given two choices: join the NVD or be executed. There was no need to store people. “Why nine?” I said.

  There was no answer from the corner. After a minute, Julian spoke up.

  “Anyone else wondering why we’re not dead?”

  “They killed everyone else.” A new voice. “I was there for months. The other voyants in my wing all got the noose.” Pause. “We’ve been picked for something else.”

  “SciSORS,” somebody whispered. “We’re gonna be lab rats, aren’t we? The doctors want to cut us up.”

  “This isn’t SciSORS,” I said.

  There was a long silence, broken only by the bitter tears of the palmist. She couldn’t seem to stop. Finally, Carl addressed the whisperer. “You said they must want something, hisser. What could they want?”

  “Anything. Our sight.”

  “They can’t take our sight,” I said.

  “Please. You’re not even sighted. They won’t want disabled voyants.”

  I resisted the urge to break her other arm.

  “What did she do to the taser?” The palmist was shaking. “His eyes—she didn’t even move!”

  “Well, I thought we’d be killed for sure,” Carl said, as if he couldn’t imagine why the rest of us were so worried. His voice was less hoarse. “I’d take anything over the noose, wouldn’t you?”

  “We might still get the noose,” I said.

  He fell silent.

  Another boy, so pale it looked as if the flux had burned the blood out of his veins, was beginning to hyperventilate. Freckles dusted his nose. I hadn’t noticed him before; he had no trace of an aura. “What is this place?” He could hardly get the words out. “Who—who are you people?”

  Julian glanced at him. “You’re amaurotic,” he said. “Why have they taken you?”

  “Amaurotic?”

  “Probably a mistake.” The oracle seemed bored. “They’ll kill him all the same. Tough luck, kid.”

  The boy looked as though he might faint. He leaped to his feet and yanked at the bars.

  “I’m not meant to be here. I want to go home! I’m not unnatural, I’m not!” He was almost in tears. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry about the stone!”

  I clapped a hand over his mouth. “Stop it.” A few of the others swore at him. “You want her to reef you, too?”

  He was trembling. I guessed he was about fifteen, but a weak fifteen. I was forcefully reminded of a different time—a time when I was frightened and alone.

  “What’s your name?” I tried to sound gentle.

  “Seb. S-Seb Pearce.” He crossed his arms, trying to make himself smaller. “Are you—are you all—unnaturals?”

  “Yeah, and we’ll do unnatural things to your internal organs if you don’t shut your rotten trap,” a voice sneered. Seb cringed.

  “No, we won’t,” I said. “I’m Paige. This is Julian.”

  Julian just nodded. It looked like it was my job to make small talk with the amaurotic. “Where are you from, Seb?” I said.

  “III Cohort.”

  “The ring,” Julian said. “Nice.”

  Seb looked away. His lips shook with cold. No doubt he thought we’d chop him up and bathe in his blood in an occult frenzy.

  The ring was where I’d gone to secondary school, a street name for III Cohort. “Tell us what happened,” I said.

  He glanced at the others. I couldn’t find it in myself to blame him for his fear. He’d been told from the second he could talk that clairvoyants were the source of all the world’s evils, and here he was in a prison with them. “One of the sixth-formers planted contraband in my satchel,” he said. Probably a show stone, the most common numen on the black market. “The Schoolmaster saw me trying to give it back to them in class. He thought I’d got it from one of those beggar types. They called the school Vigiles to check me.”

  Definitely a Scion kid. If his school had its own Gillies, he must be from an astronomically rich family.

  “It took hours to convince them I’d been framed. I took a shortcut home.” Seb swallowed. “There were two men in red on the corner. I tried to walk past them, but they heard me. They wore masks. I don’t know why, but I ran. I was scared. Then I heard a gunshot, and—and then I think I must have fainted. And then I was sick.”

  I wondered about the effects of flux on amaurotics. It made sense that the physical symptoms would appear—vomiting, thirst, inexplicable terror—but not phantasmagoria. “That’s awful,” I said. “I’m sure this is all a terrible mistake.” And I was sure. There was no way a well-bred amaurotic kid like Seb should be here.

  Seb looked encouraged. “Then they’ll let me go home?”

  “No,” Julian said.

  My ears pricked. Footsteps. Pleione was back. She pulled open the door, grabbed the nearest prisoner, and hauled him to his feet with one hand. “Follow me. Remember the rules.”

  We left the building through a set of double doors, the palmist guided by the whisperer. The frigid air hit every inch of exposed skin. I started when we came to the gallows—maybe this was the Tower—but Pleione walked past it. I had no idea what she’d done to the tasser, or what the scream had been, but I wasn’t about to ask. Head down, eyes open. That would be my rule here, too.

  She led us through deserted streets, illuminated by gaslight and wet after a night of heavy rain. Julian fell into step beside me. As we walked, the buildings grew larger—but they weren’t skyscrapers. They were nowhere near that scale. No metal framework, no electric light. These buildings were old and unfamiliar, built when aesthetic tastes were different. Stone walls, wooden doors, leaded windows glazed with deep red and amethyst. When we rounded the last corner, we were greeted by a sight I would never forget.

  The street that stretched in front of us was oddly wide. There wasn’t a car in sight: just a long line of ramshackle dwellings, winding drunkenly from one end to the other. Plywood walls propped up slats of corrugated metal. On either side of this little town were larger buildings. They had heavy wooden doors, high windows, and crenellation, like the castles of Victoria’s days. They reminded me so much of the Tower that I had to look away.

  Several feet from the nearest hut, a group of svelte figures stood on an open-air stage. Candles had been placed all around them, illuminating their masked faces. A violin sang below the boards. Voyant music, the sort only a whisperer could perform. Looking up at them was a large audience. Every member of that audience wore a red tunic and a black gilet.

  As if they’d been awaiting our arrival, the figures began to dance. They were all clairvoyant; in fact, everyone here was clairvoyant—the dancers, the spectators, everyone. Never in my life had I seen so many voyants in one place, standing peacefully together. There must have been a hundred observers clustered around the stage.

  This was no secret meeting in an underground tunnel. This wasn’t Hector’s brutal syndicate. This was different. When Seb reached for my hand, I didn’t shake him off.

  The show went on for a few minutes. Not all of the spectators were paying attention. Some were talking among themselves, others jeering at the stage. I was sure I heard someone say “cowards.” After the dance, a girl in a black leotard stepped out onto a higher platform. Her dark hair was slicked back into a bun, and her mask was gold and winged. She stood there for a moment, still as glass—then she jumped from the platform and seized two long red drapes that had been dropped from the rigging. Weaving her legs and arms around them, she climbed up twenty feet before unraveling into a pose. She earned a smattering of applause from the audience.r />
  My brain was still drug-addled. Was this some kind of voyant cult? I’d heard of stranger things. I forced myself to study the street. One thing was certain: this wasn’t SciLo. There was no sign of Scion’s presence at all. Big old buildings, public performances, gas lamps, and a cobbled street—it was like we’d rewound time.

  I knew exactly where I was.

  Everyone had heard about the lost city of Oxford. It was part of the Scion school curriculum. Fires had destroyed the university in the autumn of 1859. What remained was classified as a Type A Restricted Sector. No one was allowed to set foot there for fear of some indefinable contamination. Scion had just wiped it from the maps. I’d read in Jaxon’s records that an intrepid journalist from the Roaring Boy had tried to drive there in 2036, threatening to write an exposé, but his car was driven off the road by snipers, never to be seen again. The Roaring Boy, a penny paper, disappeared just as quickly. It had tried far too often to uncover Scion’s secrets.

  Pleione turned to look at us. The darkness made it hard to see her face, but her eyes still burned.

  “It is unseemly to stare,” she said. “You do not want to be late for the oration.”

  Yet we couldn’t help but stare at the dance. We followed her, but she couldn’t stop us looking.

  We trooped after Pleione until we reached a pair of enormous wroughtiron gates. They were unlocked by two men, both of whom resembled our guide: same eyes, same satin skin, same auras. Pleione sailed right past them. Seb was starting to go green. I kept hold of his hand as we walked through the grounds of the building. This amaurotic should have meant nothing to me, but he seemed too vulnerable to be left alone. The palmist was in tears. Only the oracle, picking at his knuckles, seemed fearless. As we walked, we were joined by several other groups of white-clad newcomers. Most of them looked frightened, but a few seemed exhilarated. My group drew closer together as we joined the ranks.

  We were being herded.

  We spilled into a long and lofty room. Olive-green shelves stretched from the floor to the ceiling, packed with beautiful old books. Eleven stained glass windows lined one wall. The decor was classical, with a dressed stone floor inlaid in a diagonal pattern. The captives jostled into lines. I stood between Julian and Seb, my senses on red alert. Julian was tense, too. His eyes moved from one white-clad captive to another, sizing them up. It was a real melting pot: a cross section of voyants, from augurs and soothsayers to mediums and sensors.

  Pleione had left us. Now she stood on a plinth with what I guessed were eight of her fellow Rephaite creatures. My sixth sense quaked.

  Once we were assembled, a deathly hush swept over the room. A single woman stepped forward. And then she began to speak.

  4

  A Lecture upon the Shadow

  “Welcome to Sheol I.”

  The speaker was about six and a half feet tall. Her features were perfectly symmetrical: a long, straight nose, high cheekbones, deep-set eyes fixed in her face. The candlelight ran through her hair and across her burnished skin. She wore black, like the others, but her sleeves and sides were slashed with gold.

  “I am Nashira Sargas.” Her voice was cool and low-pitched. “I am the blood-sovereign of the Race of Rephaim.”

  “Is this a joke?” someone whispered.

  “Shh,” hissed another.

  “First of all, I must apologize for the harrowing start to your time here, especially if you were housed first in the Tower. The vast majority of clairvoyants are under the impression that they are going to be executed when they are summoned to our fold. We use Fluxion 14 to ensure their transmission to Sheol I is safe and straightforward. After being sedated, you were placed on a train and taken to a detainment facility, where you were monitored. Your clothing and belongings have been confiscated.”

  As I listened, I examined the woman, looking into the æther. Her aura was unlike anything I’d ever sensed before. I wished I could see it. It was as if she’d taken several different types of aura and forged them all into one strange field of energy.

  There was something else, too. A cold edge. Most auras gave off a soft, warm signal, like I’d walked past a space heater, but this one gave me deep chills.

  “I understand that you are surprised to see this city. You may know it as Oxford. Its existence was disavowed by your government two centuries ago, before any of you were born. It was supposedly quarantined after an outbreak of fire. This was a lie. It was closed off so we, the Rephaim, could make it our home.

  “We arrived two centuries ago, in 1859. Your world had reached what we call the ‘ethereal threshold.’” She assessed our faces. “The majority of you are clairvoyant. You understand that sentient spirits exist all around us, too cowardly or stubborn to meet their final death in the heart of the æther. You can commune with them, and in return they will guide and protect you. But that connection has a price. When the corporeal world becomes overpopulated with drifting spirits, they cause deep rifts in the æther. When these rifts become too wide, the ethereal threshold breaks.

  “When Earth broke its threshold, it became exposed to a higher dimension called Netherworld, where we reside. Now we have come here.” Nashira leveled her gaze on my line of prisoners. “You humans have made many mistakes. You packed your fertile earth with corpses, burdened it with drifting spirits. Now it belongs to the Rephaim.”

  I looked at Julian and saw my exact fear mirrored in his eyes. This woman had to be insane.

  Silence filled the room. Nashira Sargas had our attention.

  “My people, the Rephaim, are all clairvoyant. There are no amaurotics among us. Since the rip between our worlds occurred, we have been forced to share the Netherworld with a parasitic race called the Emim. They are mindless, bestial creatures with a taste for human flesh. If not for us, they would have come here from beyond the threshold. They would have come for you.”

  Mad. She was mad.

  “You were all detained by humans in our employ. They are called red-jackets.” Nashira indicated a line of men and women, all clad in scarlet, at the back of the library. “Since our arrival, we have taken many clairvoyant humans under our wing. In exchange for protection, we train you to destroy the Emim—to protect the ‘natural’ population—as part of a penal battalion. This city acts as a beacon to the creatures, drawing them away from the rest of the corporeal world. When they breach its walls, red-jackets are summoned to destroy them. Such breaches are announced by a siren. There is a high risk of mutilation.”

  There is also, I thought, a high risk that this is all in my head.

  “We offer you this fate as an alternative to what Scion would offer: death by hanging, or asphyxiation. Or, as some of you have already experienced, a long, dark sentence in the Tower.”

  In the row behind me, one girl began to whimper. She was shushed by the people on either side of her.

  “Of course, we do not have to work together.” Nashira paced along the front row. “When we came to this world, we found it vulnerable. Only a fraction of you are clairvoyant, and still less have marginally useful abilities. We might have let the Emim turn on you. We would have been justified in doing so, given what you have done to this world.”

  Seb was crushing my hand. I was aware of a faint ringing in my ears.

  This was ridiculous. A bad joke. Or brain plague. Yes, it must be brain plague. Scion was trying to make us think we’d gone insane. Maybe we had.

  “But we had mercy. We took pity. We negotiated with your rulers, starting on this small island. They gave us this city, which we named Sheol I, and sent us a certain number of clairvoyants each decade. Our primary source was, and remains, the capital city of London. It was this city that worked for seven decades to develop the Scion security system. Scion has greatly increased the chance of clairvoyants being recognized, relocated, and rehabilitated into a new society, away from so-called amaurotics. In exchange for that service, we have vowed not to destroy your world. Instead, we plan to take control of it.”

 
; I wasn’t certain that I understood what she was saying, but one thing was clear: if she was telling the truth, Scion was no more than a puppet government. Subordinate. And it had sold us out.

  It didn’t really come as a surprise.

  The girl in the row behind couldn’t stand it any longer. With a choked scream, she made a break for the door.

  She didn’t stand a chance against the bullet.

  Screams erupted everywhere. So did the blood. Seb’s nails dug into my hand. In the chaos, one of the Rephaim stepped forward.

  “SILENCE.”

  The noise stopped at once.

  Blood flowered under the girl’s hair. Her eyes were open. Her expression lingered: distraught, terrified.

  The killer was human, wearing red. He holstered his revolver and put his hands behind his back. Two of his companions, both girls, took the body by the arms and dragged it outside. “Always one yellow-jacket,” one said, loud enough for everyone to hear.

  The marble floor was stained. Nashira looked at us with no hint of emotion.

  “If any more of you would like to run, now is the time to do so. Be assured, we can make room in the grave.”

  Nobody moved.

  In the silence that followed, I risked a glance at the plinths. I did a double take. One of the Rephaim was looking at me.

  He must have been examining me for some time. His gaze cleaved straight to mine, as if he’d been waiting for me to look, watching for a flicker of dissent. His skin was a dark honey gold, setting off two heavy-lidded yellow eyes. He was the tallest of the five males, with coarse brown hair, clothed in embroided black. Wrapped around him was a strange, soft aura, overshadowed by the others in the room. He was the single most beautiful and terrible thing I’d ever laid eyes on.

  A spasm tore through my insides. I snapped my gaze back to the floor. Would they shoot me just for looking?

  Nashira was still speaking, pacing up and down the rows. “Clairvoyants have developed great strength over the years. You are used to survival. The mere fact that you are standing here, having evaded capture for so long, is a testimony to your collective ability to adapt. Your gifts have proven invaluable in keeping the Emim at bay. This is why, over ten years, we collect as many of you as possible, keeping you in the Tower to await your transition from Scion. We call these decadal harvests Bone Seasons. This is Bone Season XX.