“They have knives,” Julian said.
Liss pushed herself into the corner of the shack. She picked up her deck of cards, scooped an arm around her knees, and put her head down. “You have to go,” she said. “Now.”
“Come with us,” I said. “Just sneak into one of the residences. You’re not safe in—”
“Do you want to get a slating from Aludra? Or the Warden?” She glared up at us. “I’ve been doing this for ten years. Get out of here.”
We exchanged glances. We were already late. I didn’t know what Warden would do to me, but we both knew how violent Aludra Chertan was. She might just kill him this time. We ducked out of the shack and ran like hell.
10
The Message
The sirens were still howling when I got back to the residence. XIX-49-33 only opened the door when I’d knocked for the umpteenth time and shouted my number over the noise. Once she’d established I was human, she hauled me through the door and slammed it behind me, swearing she’d never let me in again if I was that bloody slow to follow basic orders. I left her drawing bolts across the door in agitation, her fingers trembling.
The sirens stopped as I reached the cloisters. The Emim had not breached the city this time. I scraped back my hair, trying to slow my breathing. After a minute, I made myself look at the doorway, at the winding stone steps. I had to do it. I took another moment to compose myself, then walked up those steps to the tower, his tower. My skin crawled at the thought of sleeping in the same room as him; of sharing his space, his heat, his air.
The key was in the door when I arrived. I turned it and stepped quietly onto the flagstones.
Not quietly enough. The second I crossed the threshold, my keeper was on his feet. His eyes blazed.
“Where have you been?”
I kept a tenuous mental guard up. “Outside.”
“You were told to return here if the siren sounded.”
“I thought you meant to Magdalen, not this exact room. You should be more specific.”
I could hear the insolence in my voice. His eyes darkened, and his lips pressed into a hard line.
“You will speak to me with the proper respect,” he said, “or you will not be allowed outside this room at all.”
“You’ve done nothing to earn my respect.” I stared him down. He stared right back at me. When I didn’t move or break his gaze, he stalked past me and slammed the door. I didn’t flinch.
“When you hear that siren,” he said, “you stop what you are doing and return to this room. Do you understand me?”
I just looked at him. He leaned down so his face was at my level.
“Do I need to repeat myself?”
“I’d rather you didn’t,” I said.
I was sure he’d hit me. Nobody, nobody could speak to a Reph like that. All he did was straighten to his full height.
“We begin your instruction tomorrow,” he said. “I expect you to be ready when the night-bell rings.”
“Instruction for what?”
“For your next jacket.”
“I don’t want it,” I said.
“Then you will have to become a performer. You will have to spend the rest of your life being mocked and spat upon by the red-jackets.” He looked me over. “Do you wish to be a jester? A fool?”
“No.”
“Then you had better do as I say.”
My throat closed up. Much as I hated this creature, I had good reason to fear him. I recalled his merciless face in the dark chapel, when he’d stood over me and drawn on my aura. Auras were as vital to voyants as blood or water. Without one, I would go into spirit shock and end up dead or insane, wandering around with no connection to the æther.
He approached the drapes and pulled them back, revealing the little door beyond them was ajar. “The amaurotics have cleared the upper floor for you. Unless I say otherwise, you are to keep to it at all times.” He paused. “You should also know it is forbidden for the two of us to make direct physical contact, except in training. Even with gloves.”
“So if you were to come into this room injured,” I said, “I would leave you to die?”
“Yes.”
Liar. I didn’t bite the next words off my tongue quite fast enough: “That’s one order I’m happy to obey.”
Warden just looked at me. It almost made me angry, how little notice he took of my disrespect. He had to have a pressure point. All he did was reach into the drawer and hold out my pills.
“Take them.”
I knew there was no point in arguing. I took the pills.
“Drink this.” He handed me a glass. “Go to your quarters. You will need to be well rested for tomorrow.”
My right hand drew into a fist. I was sick of his orders. I should have left him to bleed out. Why the hell had I bandaged his wound? What kind of criminal was I, patching up my enemies? Jax would have laughed himself stupid if he’d seen me. Honeybee, he would have said, you just don’t have the sting in you. And maybe I didn’t. Yet.
I was careful to avoid any contact with Warden when I passed him. I caught his gaze before I stepped into the dark passage. He locked the door behind me.
Another winding staircase took me to the upper floor of the tower. I looked at my new abode: a large, bare room. It reminded me of the Detainment Facility, with a damp floor and barred windows. A paraffin lamp burned on the windowsill, giving little light and even less heat. Beside it was a bed, the type with rails and a lumpy mattress. The sheets were prudish in comparison to the luscious velvet mantles of Warden’s four-poster; in fact, the whole room smacked of human inferiority—but anything was better than sharing.
I checked every corner and crevice of the room, as I had with the lower floor. No way out, of course, but there was a bathroom. In it was a toilet, a sink, and a few hygiene supplies.
I thought of Julian in his dark cellar and thought of Liss, shivering in her shack. She didn’t have a bed. She didn’t have anything. It wasn’t nice in here, but it was far warmer and cleaner than the Rookery. And safer. I had stone walls to protect me from the Emim. All she had were tattered curtains.
As I hadn’t been given nightclothes, I stripped to my underwear. There was no mirror, but I could see I was losing weight. Stress, flux poisoning, and a lack of nutritious food were already taking their toll. I dimmed the lamp and slid between the sheets.
I hadn’t felt tired before, but I found myself dozing. And thinking. Thinking of the past, of the strange days that had led me to this place. I thought back to the very first time I met Nick. It was Nick who put Jaxon and me in contact. Nick, the man who saved my life.
When I was nine, shortly after I came to England, my father and I left London and went south for what he called a “business trip.” He had to put our names on a waiting list in order for us to leave the citadel. After months of waiting, we were finally allowed to visit my father’s old friend Giselle. She lived on a slanted, cobbled hill, in a sugar-pink house with a roof that hung over the windows. The surrounding land reminded me of Ireland: open, sumptuous beauty, wild and untamed nature, everything that Scion had destroyed. At sunset, when my father wasn’t looking, I would climb up to the roof and tuck myself against the tall brick chimney. I would stare out at the hills, at the reams of trees under the sky, and I would remember my cousin Finn and the other ghosts of Ireland, and I would miss my grandparents so terribly it hurt. I had never understood why they didn’t come with us.
But what I wanted was open water. The sea, the wondrous sea, the glittering road that stretched to the free lands. It was over the sea that Ireland waited to bring me home—back to the ashen meadow, to the cloven tree of the rebels’ song. My father promised we would see it, but he was too busy with Giselle. They always talked deep into the night.
I was too young to understand what the village was really like. Voyants might have been in danger in the citadel, but they couldn’t escape to these idylls in the countryside. Far from the Archon, small-town amaurotics grew nerv
ous. Suspicions about unnaturalness pervaded those close-knit communities. They made a habit of watching one another, eyes peeled for a crystal ball or show stone, waiting to call the nearest Scion outpost—or take justice into their own hands. A real clairvoyant wouldn’t last a day. Even if they did, there was no work. The land needed tending, but not by many hands. They had machines to farm the fields. It was only in the citadel that voyants could make decent money.
I didn’t like to go far from the house, not without my father. The people talked too much, looked too much, and Giselle talked and looked straight back at them. She was a stern woman, thin and hard-faced, with a ring on every finger and long, string-like veins that bulged from her arms and neck. I didn’t like her. But one day, from the rooftop, I spotted a haven: a poppy field, a pool of red beneath the iron sky.
Every day, when my father thought I was playing upstairs, I would walk to that field and read on my new data pad for hours, watching the poppies nod their heads around me. It was in that field that I had my first true encounter with the spirit world. The æther. At the time I had no idea I was clairvoyant. Unnaturalness was still a story to a child of nine, a bogeyman with no clear features. I had yet to understand this place. I only knew what Finn had told me: that the bad people over the sea didn’t like little girls like me. I was no longer safe.
That day, I found out what he’d meant. When I walked onto the field, I sensed the angry presence of the woman. I didn’t see her. I felt her. I felt her in the poppies, in the wind. I felt her in the earth and in the air. I stretched my hand out, hoping somehow to work out what it was.
And then I was on the ground. And bleeding. It was my first encounter with a poltergeist, an angry spirit that could breach the corporeal world.
My savior soon came. A young man, tall and sturdy, with ice-blond hair and a face that seemed kind. He asked my name. I stammered it. When he saw my tattered arm, he wrapped me in his overcoat and took me to his car. SCIONAID was stitched on his shirt. My little body flooded with terror when he took out a needle. “My name’s Nick,” he said. “You’re safe, Paige.”
The needle went into my skin. It stung, but I didn’t cry. The world gradually turned too dark to see.
In the dark, I dreamed. I dreamed of poppies struggling from dust. I’d never seen colors when I slept, but now all I could see was the red flowers and the evening sun. They sheltered me, shedding their petals, blanketing my fevered body. When I woke, I was propped up in a bed with white sheets. My arm was bandaged. The pain was gone.
The blond man was beside me. I remember his smile; just a small smile—but it made me smile back. He looked like a prince.
“Hello, Paige,” he said.
I asked where I was.
“You’re in hospital. I’m your doctor.”
“You don’t look old enough to be a doctor,” I said. Or scary enough. “How old are you?”
“I’m eighteen. Still learning.”
“You didn’t sew my arm funny, did you?”
He laughed. “Well, I tried my best. You’ll have to let me know what you think.”
He’d told my father where I was, he said, and he was on his way to see me. I said I felt sick. He said that was normal, but I’d have to rest to make it go away. I couldn’t eat just yet, but he’d get me something nice for dinner. He sat with me for the rest of the day, only leaving me to bring sandwiches and a bottle of apple juice from the hospital canteen. My father had told me never to talk to strangers, but I wasn’t afraid of this kind, soft-spoken boy.
Dr. Nicklas Nygård, a transfer from the Scion Citadel of Stockholm, kept me alive that night. He saw me through the shock of becoming fully clairvoyant. If not for him, it might have been too much for me to stand.
My father drove me home a few days later. He knew Nick from a medical conference. Nick was training in the town before he took a permanent position at SciSORS. He never said what he’d been doing in the poppy field. While my father waited for me in the car, Nick knelt in front of me and took my hands. I remember thinking how handsome he was, and how perfectly his eyebrows arched over his lovely winter-green eyes.
“Paige,” he said, very quietly, “listen to me. This is very important. I’ve told your father you were attacked by a dog.”
“But it was a lady.”
“Yes—but that lady was invisible, sötnos. Some grown-ups don’t know about invisible things.”
“But you do,” I said, confident in his wisdom.
“I do. But I don’t want other grown-ups to laugh at me, so I don’t tell them.” He touched my cheek. “You must never, ever tell anyone about her, Paige. Let’s make it our secret. Promise?”
I nodded. I would have promised him the world. He had saved my life. I watched him through the window as my father drove me back to the citadel. He raised a hand and waved at me. I watched until we turned a corner.
I still had scars from the attack. They formed a cluster in the middle of my left palm. The spirit left other cuts, all the way to my elbow—but the ones on my hand were the ones that stayed.
I made good on my promise. For seven years I never said a word. I kept his secret close to my heart, like a night-blooming flower, only thinking of it when I was alone. Nick knew the truth. Nick held the key. For all that time I wondered where the days had taken him, and if he ever thought of that little Irish girl he’d carried from the poppy field. And after seven long years, I had my reward: he found me again. If only he could find me now.
There was no sound from the lower floor. As the hours ticked away, I listened for a footstep, or the echoing melody of the gramophone. All I could hear was the same thick silence.
I fell into a light sleep for the rest of the daylight hours. Fever burned through me, a remnant of the latest flux attack. I jerked awake every so often, my eyes bursting with pictures of the past. Had I ever worn anything but these tunics, these boots? Had I ever known a world in which there were no spirits, no wandering dead? No Emim, no Rephaim?
A knock woke me. I barely had time to grab a sheet before Warden entered the room.
“There is not long before the bell.” He placed a fresh uniform on the end of the bed. “Get dressed.”
I looked at him in silence. His gaze lingered for a moment before he left, closing the door behind him. There was nothing for it. I got up, smoothed my curls into a knot, and washed myself with icy water. I pulled on my uniform and zipped the gilet to my chin. My leg seemed to have healed.
Warden was leafing through a dusty novel when I came into the chamber. Frankenstein. Scion didn’t allow that kind of fantastical literature. Nothing with monsters or ghosts. Nothing unnatural. My fingers twitched, aching to reach out and turn its pages. I’d seen it on Jaxon’s bookshelf, but never found time to read it. Warden put the book aside and stood.
“Are you ready?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Good.” He paused, then asked: “Tell me, Paige—what does your dreamscape look like?”
The directness of the question took me by surprise. It was considered rude among voyants to ask. “A field of red flowers.”
“What kind of flowers?”
“Poppies.”
No response. He reached for his gloves, pulled them on, and led me from the room. The day-bell hadn’t chimed, but the porter let us pass without question. Nobody questioned Arcturus Mesarthim.
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 wa
s 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.”