Page 125 of The Bone Season

‘Who did you call?’

‘The fence. I hoped they could help me, but it was a long shot.’

‘Why does the oxygen bar pay you?’

‘I needed a cover to get a travel permit for that section. It’s where the best marks are,’ I said. ‘Bill cleans my record; I don’t pick on his customers. He doesn’t know I’m voyant. He just likes me.’

Warden looked at my clenched hand, then flicked his gaze up to catch mine.

‘I think not,’ he said.

I hitched up a smile. ‘What, you can’t imagine that anyone would like me?’

‘You are both too rare and too proud to be a pickpocket. Your gift would have drawn other eyes in the underworld.’ He nodded toOn the Merits. ‘You implied there is a hierarchy. The author of this pamphlet may have helped create it. He would clearly have an interest in a gift like yours. We believe he is known as the White Binder.’

Fuck.

Jaxon hadn’t written under that name. Warden connecting the two meant he knew a little more about the syndicate than I had anticipated.

‘The White Binder would skin a kitten just to shine his shoes with it,’ I said. ‘You think he would ever stoop to employing a brogue?’

Another lie. No one in the syndicate had ever cared that I was Irish, least of all Jaxon Hall – but if I could make Warden believe it was a hindrance even in the underworld, it might keep him off my scent.

Warden just looked at me. His face held less emotion than a washed dishplate, but I still had a strong notion that he didn’t believe a word.

A lie is harder to distinguish when it dances with the truth.

‘I did ask to work for him,’ I said. ‘He turned me down. I tried to nick his pocket watch to prove myself to him, but all I could get was that rag.’

I was building a wall of lies brick by brick, with no time to put mortar on it. Warden was clearly in the mood to give it a tremendous push.

‘I understand why you would spin this tale.’ His voice was soft. ‘What would your friends in the Rookery say, if you did work for a man like the White Binder?’

My body was already so tense, it took the lightest touch to spring it. I snapped out of my seat, my spirit rearing, the taste of blood in my throat.

Warden looked me right in the eyes, daring me.

Michael chose that moment to return with my coffee. Seeing our stances, he placed the tray between us and saw himself out, hands raised.

‘You may think I’m some opportunistic lowlife,’ I said softly, ‘or you might be goading me into becoming one. Either way, I will not turn nose. You can waterboard me, you can beat me senseless, but you will not pry one more word out of me about that pamphlet. Got it?’

Warden stood as well. For a cold moment, I thought he would actually call my bluff and hit me. Instead, he held upOn the Merits of Unnaturalness, forcing me to look at it, the cause of my downfall.

And then he threw it into the fire.

‘You have no evidence against me,’ he said. ‘Now I have none against you.’

I stared at it, then at him. ‘Why?’

‘An overture to mutual trust.’

I walked to the fire. The last of the pamphlet curled up and vanished.

‘We still know too much about each other,’ I said. ‘At this point, you’d be wiser to get rid of me.’

‘Perhaps I am not wise.’

Warden joined me by the flames. Our auras brushed, sending a brief shiver through me.

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