Bone Season 01: The Bone Season: A Novel by Samantha Shannon Read Free Book Online Page B

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