“You might remember from the oration, 40, that we like to test those humans we assemble during the Bone Seasons. You see, we send our red-jackets after humans with an aura, but we cannot always identify what abilities that aura carries. I confess we have made mistakes in the past. A promising case might turn out to be no more exciting than an errant cartomancer, but no doubt you will be far more entertaining than that. Your aura precedes you.” She beckoned. “Come, show us your talents.”

Warden and Alsafi stepped away from me. Nashira and I were now facing each other across the room.

My muscles tautened. Surely they didn’t want me to fight her? I would lose. She and her angels would shatter my dreamscape. I could sense them circling her, waiting to defend their host.

But then I remembered what Liss had told me: that Nashira wanted a dreamwalker. I thought fast. Maybe there was something I could do that she had no power to deter, some advantage I could use against her.

I thought of the train. Without a dreamwalker or an oracle in her entourage, Nashira couldn’t affect the æther. And unless she’d somehow consumed the spirit of an unreadable, I could still let my spirit loose in her mind.

I could kill her.

Plan A crumbled when Alsafi returned. He bore a frail figure in his arms, a figure with a black bag over its head. The prisoner was lowered into a chair and handcuffed there. My fingers turned numb. Was it one of the others? Had they found the Dials, found my gang?

But I sensed no aura. This was an amaurotic. I thought of my father and felt sick—but the figure was too small, too thin.

“I believe you two know one another,” Nashira said.

They ripped off the bag. My blood ran cold.

Seb. They’d got him. His eyes were swollen to the size of small plums, his hair hung in bloodied strings around his face and his lips were cracked and bleeding. The rest of his face was caked in dry blood. I’d seen serious beatings before, when Hector’s victims came crawling to the Dials for aid from Nick, but never anything like this. I’d never seen a victim so young.

The guard whacked another bruise onto his cheek. Seb was barely conscious, but he managed to look up at me.

“Paige.”

His broken voice made blood burn in my eyes. I rounded on Nashira. “What have you done to him?”

“Nothing,” she said, “but you will.”

“What?”

“It is time for you to earn your next tunic, XX-40.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

Alsafi gave me such a blow on the head it damn-near knocked me down. He grabbed me by the hair and yanked me around to face him. “You will not use vulgarities in the presence of the blood-sovereign. Hold your tongue or I will stitch your mouth.”