“As Nashira has said, it is a new beginning that we celebrate today. A new age is dawning: an age of perfect collaboration between human and Rephaim, two races that have been estranged for far too long. We celebrate the end of an old world, where ignorance and darkness reigned. We vow to share our wisdom with you, as you have shared your world with us. We vow to protect you, as you have sheltered us. And I promise you, friends: we will not allow our arrangement to falter. Here purity rules with an iron rod. And the flower of transgression will forever remain withered.”

I glanced at the withered flower in the bell jar. He looked at it like he might look at a slug.

“Now,” he said, “enough probity. Let the play begin.”

28 The Prohibition

28

The Prohibition

The Overseer swept out, dressed to dazzle. He wore a long red cloak, done up to the neck, that covered his entire body. He bowed.

“Salutations, ladies and gentlemen, and a warm welcome to Sheol I! I am the Overseer, Beltrame. I look after the human population of the city. A particularly heartfelt welcome to those of you who have come from unconverted parts of the Continent. Fear not; after the show, you shall have the chance to alter your cities into Scion citadels, as many other cities have. Our program enables governments to root out and segregate clairvoyants while they are still young, without the expensive necessity of mass execution.”

I tried not to listen. Not all countries used NiteKind to execute clairvoyants. Many used the lethal injection, or a firing squad, or worse.

“We have already made plans for Sheol II to be established in association with Scion Citadels of Paris and Marseilles, which will become the first French satellite citadels.” Applause. Mynatt smiled. “Tonight, we hope to pin down potential locations of at least two more control cities on the Continent. But before all that, we have a little play to show you, to prove that many of our clairvoyants use their abilities to do good. Our play will remind us of the dark days before the Rephaim arrived, when the Bloody King still held power. The king who built his house on blood.”

The clock chimed. I watched as the performers walked out in a line, twenty of them. They were going to perform the life story of Edward VII, from his purchase of a séance table and the five murders to the knife in his quarters and his flight from England with the rest of his family. The beginning of the so-called epidemic, and a testimony to why Scion needed to exist. Liss was up there, standing in the background. On either side of her were Nell—the girl who’d been her substitute when she was in spirit shock—and a seer who I thought was called Lotte. All three were dressed up as some of the Bloody King’s victims.