Bone Season 01: The Bone Season: A Novel (19 page)

Sunlight. I hadn’t seen it for a while. The sun was just setting, softening the edges of the buildings. Sheol I glowed in a dwindling haze. I’d thought we would be training indoors, but Warden led me north, past Amaurotic House and into unknown territory.

The buildings in the furthest reaches of the city had all been abandoned. They were dilapidated, with windows broken; some of the walls and roofs looked scorched. Maybe there really had been fires here once. We passed a tight-packed street of houses. It was a ghost town. No living people whatsoever. I could sense spirits nearby, bitter spirits that wanted their lost homes back. Some were weak poltergeists. I was wary, but Warden didn’t seem afraid. None of them came near him.

We reached the very edge of the city. My breath smoked from between my lips. A meadow stretched as far as I could see. The grass was long since dead, and the ground glistened with frost. Strange, for early spring. A fence had been put up around it. It was at least thirty feet high, topped with coils of barbed wire. Behind the fence were trees, needled with soft rime. They grew around the edges of the meadow, blocking my view of the world beyond. A rusted notice read
PORT MEADOW. FOR TRAINING PURPOSES ONLY. USE OF DEADLY FORCE IS AUTHORIZED
. Standing at the gate was the deadly force itself: a Reph male.

He wore his golden hair in a tight ponytail. Beside him stood a thin, dirty figure with a shaved head: Ivy, the palmist. She wore a yellow tunic, the mark of a coward. It was torn from the neck, exposing her bony shoulder to the cold. I caught sight of her brand.
XX
-59-24. Warden stepped forward, and I followed. Seeing us, Ivy’s keeper swept into a bow.

“Behold the royal concubine,” he said. “What brings you to Port Meadow?”

At first I thought he was talking to me. I’d never heard Rephs speak to each other with such disgust. Then I realized he was glaring at my keeper.

“I am here to instruct my human.” Warden was looking at the meadow. “Open the gate, Thuban.”

“Patience, concubine. Is it armed?”

He meant me. The human. “No,” Warden said. “She is not.”

“Number?”

“XX-59-40.”

“Age?”

He glanced at me. “Nineteen,” I said.

“Is it sighted?”

“These questions are irrelevant, Thuban. I do not appreciate being treated like a child—especially not
by
a child.”

Thuban just looked at him. He was in his late twenties, by my reckoning, certainly not a child. Neither of their faces showed any hint of anger; their words were enough.

“You have three hours before Pleione brings her herd.” He shoved the gate open. “If 40 tries to escape, it will be shot on sight.”

“And if you ever disrespect your elders in that manner again, you will be sequestered on sight.”

“The blood-sovereign would not allow it.”

“She would not have to know. Such an accident is not too hard to conceal.” Warden towered over him. “I do not fear your Sargas name. I am the blood-consort, and I will exercise the power that befits my station. Do I make myself clear, Thuban?”

Thuban looked up at him, his eyes roaring blue. “Yes,” he said, in a whisper, “blood-
consort
.”

Warden walked past him. I had no idea what to make of their exchange, but it was fairly satisfying to see a Sargas get a verbal slating. As I followed Warden through the gate, Thuban struck Ivy across the face. Her head snapped around. Her eyes were dry, but her face was swollen and discolored, and she was thinner than before. Blood and dirt streaked her arms. She was being kept in her own filth. I remembered Seb looking at me that way, like all the hope in the world had crumbled.

For Seb, for Ivy, for the ones who would follow, I would make this training session count.

Port Meadow was vast. Warden took long strides, too long for me to keep up. I trudged behind him, trying to work out the dimensions of the meadow. It was difficult in the waning light, but I could see the ugly fences on either side, dividing the beaten ground into several large arenas. They were strung with thin wires, lined with icicles. The posts were curved toward the top; some bore heavy brackets, each dripping a lantern. A watchtower stood on the western side, and I could just see a human—or Reph—inside it.

We walked past a shallow pool of water. Its frozen surface was smooth as a mirror, perfect for scrying. Come to think of it, everything about this meadow was perfect for spirit combat. The ground was solid, the air was clear and fresh—and there were spirits. I could sense them everywhere, all around me. I wondered what kind of fence enclosed this meadow. Could they have worked out a way to
trap
spirits?

No. Spirits might sometimes breach meatspace, but they were not subject to physical restrictions. Only binders could trap them. Their order—the fifth order—could bend the limits between meatspace and æther.

“The fences are not charged with electricity”—Warden saw where I was looking—“but with ethereal energy.”

“How is that possible?”

“Ethereal batteries. A fusion of Rephaite and human expertise, pioneered in 2045. Your scientists have been working on hybrid technology since the early twentieth century. We simply replace the chemical energy in a battery with a captive poltergeist, a spirit that can interact with the corporeal world. It creates a field of repulsion.”

“But poltergeists can escape their bindings,” I said. “How could you capture one?”

“Use a willing poltergeist, of course.”

I stared at his back. The words
willing
and
poltergeist
were as opposite as war and peace.

“Our counsel also led to the invention of Fluxion 14 and Radiesthesic Detection Technology,” he said, “the latter of which remains experimental. From our last reports, we hear Scion is close to perfecting it.”

I clenched my fist. Of course the Rephaim were responsible for RDT. Dani had always wondered how they’d managed it.

After a while, Warden stopped. We had come to a concrete oval, ten feet across. A gas lamp flared to life nearby.

“Let us begin,” he said.

I waited.

With no warning, he aimed a mock punch at my face. I ducked. When he jabbed his other fist, I blocked it with my arm.

“Again.”

He was faster this time. Trying to make me defend myself quickly, from all angles. I kept my hands open and blocked each hit.

“You learned to fight on the streets.”

“Maybe,” I said.

“Once more. Try and stop me.”

This time he made as if to grab my neck, placing both hands high on my décolletage. A flimp had tried this on me once. I twisted my body to the left and thrust my right arm in the same direction, cutting his hands away from my throat. I could feel the strength in those hands, but he let go. I brought my elbow against his cheek, a move that had knocked the flimp right into the gutter. He was letting me win.

“Excellent.” Warden stepped back. “Few humans come here prepared to be part of a penal battalion. You are several steps ahead of most, but you will not be able to engage in that sort of scrap with an Emite. Your most important asset is your ability to affect the æther.”

I spied the silver glint. There was a blade in his hand. My muscles tensed rigid. “From what I have seen, your gift is triggered by danger.” He leveled the blade at my chest. “Demonstrate.”

My heart pounded at the tip of his blade. “I don’t know how.”

“I see.”

With a flick of his wrist, he brought the blade against my throat. My body hummed with adrenaline. Warden leaned in very close to me.

“This blade has been used to draw human blood,” he said, very softly. “Blood like that of your friend Sebastian.”

I trembled.

“It calls for more.” The blade slid along my neck. “It has never tasted the blood of a dreamer.”

“I’m not afraid of you.” The tremor in my voice betrayed the lie. “Don’t touch me.”

But he did. The blade traced my throat, trailed up to my chin and touched my lips. I jerked my fist up, shoved his hand away. He dropped the blade, took my wrists in one hand, and pinned them to the concrete. His strength was incredible: I couldn’t move a muscle.

“I wonder.” He used the knife to tip my chin up. “If I cut your throat, how long will it take for you to die?”

“You wouldn’t,” I said, daring him.

“Oh, but I would.”

I tried to wrench my knee into his groin, but he grabbed my thigh, forcing my leg down. That leg was still weak; it was easy. He was making me look feeble. When I pulled a hand free. He twisted my arm behind my back. Not hard enough to hurt, but enough to immobilize me.

“You will always lose that way,” he said against my ear. “Play to your strengths.”

Was there no weak spot on this creature? I thought of all the vulnerable places on a human: eyes, kidneys, solar plexus, nose, groin—nothing within my reach. I would have to move and run. I pushed my weight backward, straight between his legs, and rolled back to my feet in one movement. In the instant he took to stand, I tore into a sprint across the meadow. If he wanted me, he could damn well come and get me.

There was nowhere to run. He was gaining on me. Thinking back to my training sessions with Nick, I changed direction. Then I was running again, into the darkness, away from the watchtower. There had to be a weak point in a fence like this, somewhere I could squeeze between the wires. Then I had to deal with Thuban. But I had my spirit. I could do it. I
could
do it.

For someone with excellent visual acuity, I could be incredibly short-sighted. Within a minute I was lost. Away from the concrete oval and the lamps, I was left to stumble through the vastness of the meadow. And Warden was out there, hunting me. I ran toward a gas lamp. My sixth sense quivered as I drew nearer to the fence. By the time I was six feet away I was nauseous, my limbs limp and heavy.

But I had to try. I grabbed the frozen wire.

I can’t fully describe the sensation that seized my body. My vision turned black, then white, then red. Goose bumps broke out all over me. A hundred memories flashed before my eyes, memories of a scream in a poppy field; and new memories, too—the ’geist’s memories. It was a murder victim. A deafening
bang
shook my every bone. My stomach gave an almighty heave. I hit the ground and retched.

I must have stayed there for a minute, racked by pictures of blood on a cream carpet. This person had been killed with a shotgun. His skull had burst open, spraying brain and shattered bone. My ears rang. When I came to my senses, my body felt uncoordinated. I dragged myself along the ground, blinking away bloody visions. A silver-white burn slashed across my palm. The mark of a poltergeist.

Something shot past my ear. I looked up to see another watchtower, and the guard standing inside it.

Flux dart.

A second dart fired in my direction. I scrambled to my feet, turned east, and ran—but soon enough I came to another watchtower, and another gun had me running south. It was only when I saw the oval that I realized I was being driven back to Warden.

The next dart hit me in the shoulder. The pain was instant and excruciating. I reached up and tore the thing out. Blood flowed from the wound, and a wave of disorienting nausea swept over me. I was fast enough to stop the drug—it took about five seconds to self-inject—but the message was clear: get back on the oval, or get shot. Warden was waiting for me.

“Welcome back.”

I swiped the sweat from my forehead. “So I’m not allowed to run.”

“No. Unless you would like me to present you with a yellow tunic, which we give only to cowards.”

I ran at him, blinded by anger, and drove my shoulder into his abdomen. Given his size, nothing happened. He just took me by the tunic and tossed me away. I landed hard on the same shoulder.

“You cannot fight me with your bare hands.” He prowled the edge of the oval. “Nor can you run from an Emite. You are a
dreamwalker
, girl. You have the power to live and die as you decree. Lay waste to my dreamscape. Drive me mad!”

A part of me tore away. My spirit flew across the space between us. It slashed through the outer ring of his mind, like a knife through taut silk. I broke through the darkest part of his dreamscape, straining against impossibly powerful barriers, aiming for the distant patch of light that was his sunlit zone, but it wasn’t as easy as it had been on the train. The center of his dreamscape was so far away, and my spirit was already being driven out. Like an elastic band stretched too far, I snapped back into my own mind. The weight of my own spirit knocking me off my feet. My head rapped against the concrete.

The gas lamps swam back into focus. I pushed myself up on my elbows, my temples throbbing. Warden was still standing. I hadn’t brought him to his knees, as I had with Aludra, but I had tampered with his perception. He ran a hand over his face and shook his head.

“Good,” he said. “Very good.”

I stood. My legs shook.

“You’re trying to make me angry,” I said. “Why?”