The Dawn Chorus: A Bone Season novella (The Bone Season)

by Samantha Shannon

As a condition of your survival, Nick and Maria were to join the Domino Programme, along with someone to act as your auxiliary in Paris. I volunteered.’ ‘He was bluffing. Burnish must already have been told to save me.’ ‘We could not risk losing you.’ He said it as if it were the simplest thing in the world. All three of them had been willing to trade their freedom and power for my life. ‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘For not giving up on me.’ ‘Never.’ I wished he would hold me. I wished I could bear it.

Warden was right. Our alliance was not a friendship. He had too much power over me; I had too much power over him. We could never be at ease here, in this pressure cooker of fear and suspicion.

But since I had let him see that last memory, some of the tension between us had lifted. If I asked for help, he gave it. If not, he left me to my own devices, trusting me to manage the rebellion. While I was preoccupied with training, our allies had started to lay the groundwork.

His firefly eyes caught mine again. I wished I knew how to read his expressions.

‘Is it not ill-mannered to ask to read a private journal, Paige?’ ‘As we’ve long established, I don’t like you. I don’t care if you think I’m ill-mannered.’ ‘Hm. Now I think I will keep my journal to myself.’

Pouty warden 😭

A faceless woman opened a jar, pouring seven golden streams. The floor rotted beneath her feet before she disappeared. A disembodied mask drifted up to me and told me it looked forward to our meeting. A shadow bear lumbered over the threshold – its claws were ten swords, each tipped with blood – and ruffled my hair with its breath. When it roared, black moths and honeybees erupted from its mouth.

I wanted to hear his music again. In all my life, I had never heard such wrath and sorrow from an instrument as I had on that evening. Just the memory of it was chilling.

At this, he came to sit beside me on the daybed. He eased the mantle back over me. And there it was, so fleeting I almost missed it. The thrum of the golden cord. The bone-deep sensation caught me unawares from time to time. It was the quick, smooth pull of a bow across a heartstring, a note that never made a sound. A seventh sense. I hated that I could bear it.

I ached for the comfort of absence. I longed to exist less severely.

Straight after my rescue, I had realised how much I still craved his touch. Now, like water, it was something to fear.

Inside, the organ thundered. Its sound filled every vault and corner. I closed the doors behind me and leaned against them, eyes drifting shut as his music rang a thousand bells inside me. His last piece had evoked regret – it had been a call for death, for an ending – but this one was all mettle and beauty and defiance. Even though it was loud enough to make my ears ache and my chest vibrate, it calmed me. I remembered this melody from somewhere. Words, still unstrung from the notes, were honey-sweet on the tip of my tongue. For a long time, I let the warp and weft of the music knot itself around and through me. When I stirred from the trance, I made my way up to the organ loft, where Warden sat on the bench, as straight-backed as if it were a throne, playing by candlelight. He used no sheet music. All of this was from memory. Note after note soared from the pipes to the ceiling. I watched his hands gusting over the keys, his leather boots keeping time on the pedalboard. He played like a storm in the shape of a man. All too soon, he stopped. The echoes faded from the vaults.

I joined him on the bench. There was just enough room for us to sit together without touching, but his aura brushed mine.

That was when I heard music. I froze, listening. The song was unfamiliar, but I recognised the sad voice. With my heart in my throat, I reached for the æther. For his dreamscape.

I remembered this tone of voice, curt and reserved. He became more Reph-like when he wanted to protect himself. Or me.

‘I have made a meal for you. If you are hungry.’

‘Wow,’ I said, with feeling, ‘it’s … delicious. Thank you, Warden.’ Oh, no. His eyes were glowing. The soft glow I had come to associate with contentment. I had to tell him. That his stew was perfect in every way – the chicken tender, the vegetables cooked to perfection – except for the fact that it had no flavour at all.

it was sweet of him to have tried.

‘I am with you out of loyalty and fondness, not a sense of obligation. You said I was your friend, and no matter what else we are – or have been – to each other, you are also mine.’ Warden held my gaze. ‘I am here for as long as you want me with you, Paige Mahoney.’

‘Listen to the storm,’ he said. ‘It has the potential to destroy. It is neither quiet, nor gentle, nor soft. That does not make it unnatural.’ Lightning illuminated his features, the flash of blue making his orange eyes stand out. ‘Let the storm into you, Paige. Hold it inside. See yourself as a force of nature, vast enough to defeat a god, and carry that image for all of your days.’

He needed to comfort me, to keep me on side. That was what I told myself. And yet there was passion in his voice – quiet, restrained, but present.

I was right to keep the faith. When I saw you run across the rooftops on the night you were arrested – when I watched you leap over a precipice – I hoped it was you.’ I met his gaze.

‘Maybe I could have liked you. Maybe we could have been friends,’ I said. It flowed out of me as if I had already dreamed it. ‘Maybe, if I was just me and voyants had never been hunted, I could have overheard you playing this old music and realised it was the same music I loved … and maybe we could have got talking about it over coffee. If we’d met in another world.’

‘A world where I was not a Rephaite.’ Warden never broke my gaze. ‘Or you were not human.’ ‘Not even that. Just a world where we had nothing to fear. From each other,’ I said, ‘or anyone else.’

The darkness tempted me to trust it. It knew my weaknesses. Only Arcturus Mesarthim would have snuck a word like metaphysics (whatever that meant) into his attempt to calm me down.

‘You could have stopped me.’ My chest heaved. ‘Why the hell did you let me attack you?’ ‘Because I would have had to restrain you.’ He lit the candle on my nightstand. ‘I did not think that would be the wisest course of action.’ He was right. If his solid arms had come around me, it would have been like being chained. Instead of trying to hold me still, he had lifted me away from him, back into my own space. With a whimper, I tucked myself against the headboard and gave way to the shaking. Warden knelt beside the bed, so his gaze was about level with mine. I stayed exactly where I was. ‘Paige,’ he said, ‘I want you to come and sit with me. As we used to sit together in Magdalen.’ Hair clung to my wet face. ‘Why?’ ‘Because I want you to tell me what happened to you.’ I shook my head. ‘No.’

I'll literally cry, he's so gentle

‘The dawn chorus,’ Warden said. ‘I seldom heard it in Oxford. The Emim drove the birds away.’ I listened. It was faint, but somehow, it was there. ‘I’m surprised we can hear it in the middle of a citadel,’ I said. ‘This is the first time.’

‘Perhaps the dawn chorus speaks to me, as a creature of the in-between. The birds sing in the twilight that bridges night and day. For as long as we can hear it, we exist on the threshold between two states.’

‘You did not like the stew.’ I turned, wary. ‘What?’ ‘The stew I made you was not to your taste.’ He kept reading as my lips parted, a quick denial leaping to my tongue. ‘Fear not. I knew from the first bite.’ ‘Wait. You knew I didn’t like it?’ I abandoned the pan to stare at him. ‘And you still let me eat it?’ ‘I did.’ When I realised, my cheeks warmed. The glow in his eyes had been amusement, not delight at his culinary success. He had been amused. ‘You utter—’ For the first time in days, I laughed. ‘How did you know?’ ‘Perhaps I have gained some experience in reading your expressions,’ Warden said. ‘I suppose you were trying to spare my feelings. Kind of you, but I would prefer to know how I might improve.’

This is so funny

And foods are generally supposed to taste distinct from one another.’ ‘I see.’ Warden folded the newspaper. ‘You had better show me, then.’ I arched an eyebrow. ‘You want me to teach you to cook?’