Page 95 of The Bone Season

A terrible sound rose from deep in the woods. Julian and I both held still as it screamed on and on, splintering the air, then dwindled, leaving a faint echo. My whole body prickled with chills.

‘Time to go.’ Liss rose with her basket. ‘Come on. I’ll make us dandelion soup.’

As Julian trained harder with Aludra, he had less and less time to visit the Rookery. Liss was often on the stage. In their absence, I spoke to some of the performers from the previous Bone Season.

None of them knew a way out of the city, of course. According to Cyril, a cartomancer had once broken into a sewer in a desperate attempt to leave.

‘The Overseer made her use her owncardsin performances,’ he said in a hushed tone. ‘She did flourishes with them, that sort of thing.’

‘I remember her,’ Guy said gruffly. Other than Duckett, he was the oldest human in the city, a tailor from Leeds. ‘Beltrame would let other voyants bend and scratch her cards. That was her last straw.’

‘He’s vile,’ I said. ‘Does that sort of thing happen often?’

‘No, but she was at Corpus. Thuban always finds ways to torture his tenants, even if he evicts them.’

‘As soon as they realised where she’d gone, the Rephs sealed her in,’ Cyril said. ‘Her bones must still be down there now.’

‘Likely.’ Guy gave me a stern look. ‘Learn from this, Paige. Trying to escape leads to nothing but trouble.’

Guy was a dactylomancer, a voyant who used rings to reach the æther. In exchange for a whole pouch of them, he bulked up my gilet with bird feathers.

Most of the performers were resigned to their fates. This prison had stood for two centuries. In that time, to their knowledge, not one person had escaped.

Still, three years as a criminal had taught me to think I could get out of anything. Thanks to Jaxon, I also had a strong belief that I was exceptional.

So I started my own long search of the city. I climbed to several rooftops to consider it from above. I explored as many buildings as I could break and enter, finding most of them unfurnished or burned out. The amaurotics cleaned a few of the locked buildings, presumably so they would be ready for visiting Rephs.

It worried me that they were out in the world, doing who knew what.

I also ventured beyond the lamplight, eluding the guards. Gallows Wood shaped and surrounded the city; I wanted to see how.

To the south, the trees came up to a flood meadow behind the House. To the north, I could walk no farther than a marshy path called Trap Lane. To the west and east respectively, Scion had grown the forest up to the banks of two rivers, the Acheron and the narrow Cherwell. The Cherwell ran past Magdalen and coursed up to Divinity Gardens, a walled park reserved for the Rephs.

Most of Gallows Wood had high fencing around it, but there were gaping holes and weaknesses. I spotted two more sirens.

During those solitary excursions, I never set foot in the forest. Once I understood its boundaries, I stopped going to the outskirts and turned my attention back to the lamplight.

The Old Library was my greatest temptation. Fronted by the Townsend, it was a grim and ponderous building, waiting for an age of free thought to return. One entrance had no boards, but it was locked.

I did like a challenge.

Duckett had no screwdriver in his shop, so I traded my pills for a few lengths of scrap wire. Liss lent me a pair of tongs when I asked. With these makeshift tools, I returned to my room and began to make lockpicks.

I worked on those picks every day for a week. Once my set was ready, I waited.

My chance came on a night of heavy rain. I went alone to the Old Library. With the wind gusting around me, I broke the padlock with a brick. Next, I used my picks, working until my fingers hurt and I was drenched from head to toe. The lock was old enough that I soon got inside.

The Old Library had been stripped. In the early days of Scion, there had been thousands of biblioclasms, scouring all traces of unnaturalness or dissent from literature. Now these grand bookshelves stood empty. The dust in here was so thick it scratched at the back of my throat.

I carried a handheld lamp, one of my acquisitions from Duckett. A short way into the library, I put it down and dried my hands over its flame. This was the last item he had given me in exchange for the green pills. Apparently he was satisfied with his stockpile.

I refused to run pointless errands for anyone. If I needed any more of his items, I would find a way to steal them.

While the storm raged, I explored. Only a few books remained, packed tight on a shelf. I picked one up and traced its title:The Turn of the Screw. With care, I leafed to a random page, reading its small print.

The terrace and the whole place, the lawn and the garden beyond it, all I could see of the park, were empty with a great emptiness.

I closed the book. All that risk and finicking, all for a great emptiness. Still, I was clearly the first person to have set foot in the Old Library in a while. A place to hide, or store things, could be valuable.

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