The night porter signed me out of the residence. I headed into the Rookery and bought a bowl of porridge. It tasted as bad as it looked—like cement—but I forced myself to eat it. The performer whispered that Suhail was on the prowl; I couldn’t sit down to eat. Instead I asked her whether she knew where I might find Julian, describing him in as much detail as I could. She told me to check at the central residences, giving me their names and locations before she returned to her paraffin stove.

I stood in a dark corner. As I ate, I watched the people milling around me. They all had the same dead eyes. Their bright clothes were almost offensive, like graffiti on a headstone.

“Makes you sick, doesn’t it?”

I looked up. It was the whisperer who was detained with me that first night. She wore a filthy bandage on her arm. Looking ahead, she sat down beside me.

“Tilda.”

“Paige,” I said.

“I know. I hear you ended up at Magdalen.” She had a roll of paper in her hand. Smoke wafted thickly from the end, smelling of spice and perfume. I recognized the bouquet of purple aster. “Here.”

“I don’t, thanks.”

“Come on, it’s just a bit of regal. Better than tincto.”

Tincto—laudanum—was the favored vice for those amaurotics willing to risk altering their mental state. Not all of them liked Floxy. Occasionally an amaurotic would be arrested on suspicion of unnaturalness, only for the NVD to discover they’d been poisoning themselves with tincto. It didn’t do much for voyants; it wasn’t strong enough to dent our dreamscapes. Tilda must use for the sake of it.

“Where did you get it?” I said. I couldn’t imagine the Rephs allowing the use of ethereal drugs.

“There’s a gallipot in here who sells it by the donop. Says he’s been here since Bone Season XVI.”

“He’s been here forty years?”

“Since he was twenty-one. I got talking to him earlier. He seems all right.” She offered her roll. “Sure you don’t want a smolder?”

“I’ll pass.” I paused to watch her smoke. Tilda had the dab hand of an aster junkie, or courtier, as they called themselves; only they would call a pound a donop. She might be able to help me. “Why aren’t you training?”

“Keeper’s gone somewhere. Why aren’t you training?”

“Same reason. Who’s your keeper?”

“Terebell Sheratan. She seems like a bit of a bitch, but she hasn’t tried to slate me yet.”

“Right.” I watched her smoke. “Do you know what’s in the pills they give us?”

Tilda nodded. “The little white one is a standard contraceptive. Surprised you haven’t seen it before.”

“Contraceptive? What for?”

“To stop us breeding, obviously. And bleeding. I mean, would you want to punch out a sprog in this place?”

She had a point. “The red one?”

“Iron supplement.”

“And the green one?”

“What?”

“The third pill.”

“There’s no third pill.”

“It’s a capsule,” I pressed. “Sort of olive green. Tastes bitter.”