Chapter One
It is November; the air is already bitter, and I am waiting to kill a twelve-year-old boy.
The Bone Inn is heaving with the late-lunch crowd. Dark wood everywhere, sagging orange upholstery and an open fire that turns the room smoky and warm while frost webs the windowpanes.
Darts thud into the board to the left of the bar; balls crack across the pool table; dominoes slap against wood, and voices rise and fall.
My corner is ideal. Back to the wall, clear sightline to the door and a view through the grimy front window of the street where my target will appear.
The closest patrons keep throwing me sideways glances. I ignore them, wearing the same face I always do—blank, unreadable—as I spoon up the watery vegetable soup. The broth is flavourless, but when food is scarce, you finish what you are given.
Under the table, Mina rests her black nose on my knee. She is wedged beside me, one shoulder pressed against my shin, yet her eyes never still. She watches passing feet, men shifting at the bar, the man pretending not to stare from beside the dartboard, the two women whispering over their drinks. She notes them all.
If we were alone, she would sprawl before the fire, her fur fluffed and crackling with static. But Mina dislikes people, and people dislike me, so here she stays.
I mop the bowl with the last hunk of bread. My dog is not interested in the soup. She refuses anything from Elyrion’s food supply, which tells me enough. She only eats imported meat. When a Belgian Malinois who normally eats like an alligator shuns a juicy burger, you start to wonder—though never aloud.
In Elyrion, questions make people disappear.
Since finding Mina, I have gone mostly vegetarian. The dizziness after meals has vanished, and my thoughts have sharpened. I convince myself it is a placebo effect. Or food allergies.
I shake my head. A strand of dark-brown hair slips from my plait and tickles my cheek. Someone sliced off a chunk with a knife weeks ago, and the uneven section refuses to stay tucked away. Perhaps I need to find a hair grip to pin it down. I can’t afford to have the entire mess cut.
Long ago, I had pretty hair, expensive things and a future paved with gold. Then I did the first-ever ‘Elmo’, and an unflattering legend was born.
I sigh and nudge the empty bowl away. It catches the edge of the job chit. The government bounty card is soft at the corners from overhandling, yet I read it again.
Bruce Boneweather, aged twelve. Class-Four dangerous. Signs of uncontrolled, illegal magic.
His parents refused to register him for the Games. Now the child is marked, and I am waiting.
Even the hard-eyed hunters with government seals burnt into their collars hate child contracts. I take them all, and everyone loathes me for it.
A dart clacks off the wall.
“Oi!” the barman shouts. “Be careful. That was only just repaired.”
“Sorry, pal,” the thrower says without conviction.
He retrieves his dart, then brushes flakes of paint from the tip. I keep one eye on him. Darts are nasty weapons in the wrong hands, and there are a lot of wrong hands in the Bone District.
The pub phone rings. After a muttered exchange, the barman lifts his chin towards a freckled man whose light-brown curls brush his ears. “Oscar. Your wife wants you home.”
“Cheers.” Oscar grimaces, trades fist bumps with his mates and heads for the door.
We do not have modern communication devices down here in the dregs of the Districts, nothing like the technology hoarded in the Immortal Zone. I grew up with all of it, then returned to the dark ages with everyone else.
Most residents rely on public phones, runners and whispers traded across bars and counters. Licensed hunters get only a narrow slice of government information: paper bounty records, confirmation signals and equipment recalls. That suits me. I would rather they didn’t see everything I do.
The dart player strolls past the toilets, slows beside my table, then turns.
“I thought it was you,” he growls. His eyes are sunken with anger.
Oh, here we go.
Mina stiffens. My hand drops to my side, and I lift one finger. Stay. She merely vibrates with a muted growl.
He leans closer, his breath sour with beer. “Elenora Morris. Elmo.” He spits my name as though it is something rotten.
Conversations falter. A few heads turn.
“You destroyed our chance,” he says. “My son was up for a better position. A good life. A real one. All of that gone when you crashed and burned and ruined it for everyone.”
Ah. That.
I cannot escape the stigma even in the Bone District, and I have never once argued that I should.
I stare at him.
Looking away invites trouble. Holding his gaze at least gives me the advantage of knowing whether he is about to come at me.
Dart Guy makes a grinding noise at the back of his throat. A gobbet of spit lands just short of my boot. Ew.
“Oi!” the barman snaps. “Don’t spit in my bar, Leon. That’s disgusting. With the dart, that’s two for two. Any more and you’re permanently banned.”
Leon does not acknowledge him.
“You. Shouldn’t. Be. Here,” he says, each word blunt and ugly. “You took away the life we were supposed to have. If you’d not interfered with the Immortal Games…”
I roll my eyes towards the ceiling. This again.
It has been thirty-two years. Thirty-two years, and they still will not let it go. Being ostracised was not enough for them. Being stripped of privilege and thrown from the Immortal Zone. Exile, poverty and hatred were not punishment enough.
They wanted me dead.
I tap the chit against the table.
Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
And say nothing.
Silence enrages him. He plants red, work-scarred hands on the table. I lounge back, body loose, chin lifted, almost smiling.
Mina’s growl deepens.
Leon glances beneath the table. Sweat beads along his greasy hairline.
“That mutt shouldn’t be in here.”
Mina bares her teeth.
Leon retreats a step, then another. “You shouldn’t be here,” he repeats, but the menace has drained from his voice.
He turns and shuffles away.
It is convenient, I suppose, to blame someone else for every misfortune. I was sixteen. If I cared, I might feel sorry for him, yet I am not responsible for his choices.
Gradually, the pub drifts back to darts, pool and dominoes. To their drinks, all suddenly so terribly interesting.
A wet nose pushes against my hand. Mina looks up at me with big, innocent brown eyes, as though she has not just considered chewing through Leon’s leg.
I stroke her sleek head. “Good girl,” I murmur.
Her ears twitch.
The Bone District looks almost pretty beneath snow—a dishonest prettiness.
The flakes soften cracked paving stones, soot-stained brickwork, boarded-up windows and the queue outside the ration office, where people hunch into their collars against the cold. They hide too much.
Like this city: different districts, different bloodlines, long-dormant power beneath the skin. Ink, Bone, Salt, Iron and all the rest, each carved up, categorised and contained. People stay where they are told.
There are no official cages in the Districts: no razor-wired walls, no rifle-bearing guards at every corner. You simply know. You know which areas you may enter, where you may work and which roads you must never cross without dispensation.
If you are found where you should not be, you vanish.
Most never come back. The few who do are not the people who left, and nobody asks them where they have been.
I push the thought down before it bares its teeth.
I was once a naïve girl. Privileged, powerful, confident enough to make my present self want to drive my head through a wall. I never knew life could be this hard or that ordinary existence could feel like purgatory after magic, glitter and gold.
No.
Not purgatory.
Hell.
I glance at the job chit again: Bruce Boneweather, aged twelve. Class-Four dangerous.
The clock hand shifts, and I rise.
Chairs scrape as more people notice me. Voices drop. Someone whispers my name. From near the door, a girl barely old enough to drink mutters, “Killing someone.”
Her friend giggles.
Little psychos.
The barman glowers. I paid before the bowl reached the table. Trust is too expensive in places like this, and nobody wants to chase a bounty hunter over soup. I give him a brief nod. I have caused no trouble and said not a word, and I shall still give this place a few years before I show my face again.
Mina slips to heel. The door opens with a reluctant groan, and cold air slaps the warmth from my face.
The paw wax I rubbed into Mina’s pads before we left home should hold against the grit and ice. Boots would protect her better, but she moves like an offended goat in them, and I need her fast.
My coat flares as I step outside, and its silky red lining flashes as I move. The black fabric hugs my torso, then kicks out at the waist, sleek enough to make me appear almost respectable. Waterproof, fireproof and spell-resistant, it is my single indulgence, threaded with hidden pockets and charms for everything a job demands.
Knives.
Spell packets.
A torch.
I appreciate a good coat.
Cheap clinics with yellowed windows line the street: a shuttered prosthetics shop and an apothecary faced in cracked bone-white tiles. Its damaged sign offers pain draughts, splints and funeral charms.
I cross the road and lean against the mouth of an alley along the school route, the rough brickwork digging into my shoulder. Mina stands beside me, her weight solid and reassuring.
The street seethes with shift workers and schoolchildren. Lunch tins clank; school coats flap in the wind. Cars hiss along the main road. Somewhere close, a baby wails; farther away, a woman laughs too loudly.
The Bone District does what it always does.
I see him before he sees me.
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