“He’s neither one thing nor the other,” old Mrs. Scragg had muttered to one of her friends on the street, as Carl had passed them by. “Shouldn’t be allowed.”

  Now, he stared at himself in the rust-splotched mirror.

  It’s not fair.

  Tonight had been terrible. He was a dreamer, never the brightest in class, but he’d wanted Sister Stef to say something nice to Dad tomorrow, during Parents’ Evening. Somehow, thoughts of the Tri-Millennial essay had become mixed up with the heaviness of hatred he felt on the air, the increasing hostility of ordinary citizens to freewraiths and boundwraiths, and even to those who were almost human.

  Even in the schoolyard, things were changing. He’d been bullied because of his slight size before, but now it was worse.

  I’ve had enough.

  He wanted to be different, to have some kind of strength, even if it manifested in a way no ordinary human could appreciate. And he wanted to write an essay to prove Sister Stef’s intuition—that he knew she had—that Carl Thargulis had a spark of originality in him, that he was a dreamer with ability.

  Because I can do it.

  Never the cleverest, never the strongest . . . but this was in his power.

  I know I can.

  And he was twelve years old, after all. It was time for him to try.

  Now.

  Was that it? At the inner corner of his left eye?

  Right now.

  Was there a twitch of scarlet movement?

  Yes! Try . . .

  A slender red, hair-thin articulated limb extended—for sure—from inside his lower eyelid. It waved, it really waved—

  Yes!

  —then withdrew inside his eye socket.

  Oh no.

  He strained, but knew he’d lost it.

  Hades.

  It was too much. He was too weak, or just not good enough.

  Try again.

  But Dad called from the landing outside: “Go to bed, son.”

  “All right, Dad.”

  Then Carl undressed, folded his clothes, and climbed into bed, beneath the old, comfortable-smelling blankets. The iron frame creaked. He closed his eyes.

  Happy Birthday, me.

  Sleep curled up maternally around him.

  In the early morning, after prayers she didn’t believe in, Sister Stephanie-Charon Mors straightened her dark-burgundy habit before going out into the schoolyard. There, she stared up at the featureless indigo sky, wondering whether it would ever seem natural to her.

  She had been born a Lightsider (as only Reverend Mother knew) in TalonClaw Port, where everything was bright, and heating (along with motive power) came from lava conduits in which fire-daemons controlled the magma flow. Tristopolis had seemed so different when she arrived here, and in many ways it remained strange.

  The dark sky allowed her to think of her childhood bedroom with the heavy drapes drawn, while she waited wide-eyed in shadows, knowing Mam was down in the kitchen while Pop was inside the corner bar. Soon, he would be home, drunk, and that was when it would start—the awfulness, the smack of knuckles on flesh, and then the yelling.

  She had such a fine understanding of the troubled lives of the poorer kids here in school, the ones who lived in Shadebourne Depths. It was why Reverend Mother had said, during her last appraisal: “You’re the worst nun in the Order of Thanatos, and probably the finest teacher.”

  In reply, she’d apologized, not knowing what else to say.

  Here in the yard, on her first day, she’d stood during morning break while the kids played snatchball and tag, filling the place with chaos. A small group, holding hands, had danced in a ring chanting a traditional rhyme that she, as a new immigrant, had never heard.

  Verdigris butterfly,

  Spider so cute.

  Snip out their tongues,

  And then they are mute.

  The children had released hands and twirled on the spot, then continued:

  Worms in their eyeballs,

  No one can see

  Beetles devour

  My true love and me.

  And they had crouched down in a gesture that Stef had recognized immediately as symbolic of death. So easy to remember the way that Pop had—

  Sister Zarly Umbra was ringing the bell.

  —unlocked the front door, and taken the steps—

  It was time for lessons.

  —nearly always seven steps, before he—

  No.

  This was time for lessons and the children came first, as they always would. Yet Parents’ Evening was scheduled for tonight, meaning that Bone Listener Jamie Thargulis would be here, with those dark-brown eyes that held intelligence, and implied insight with an overlay of sorrow it was hard for Stef to resist, though she had never revealed her feelings. The Order of Thanatos demanded chastity. While she might not hold to the order’s beliefs, still it formed her only sanctuary,

  The kids were entering the yard, and it was time for her to do what she was good at.

  But she wondered, as she saw the smirk on burly Ralen O’Dowd’s face, and the way that young Carl Thargulis followed him, rubbing at the dirt on his own shirt—Ralen’s footprint?—whether she would ever make the kind of difference that could erase the memory of the sacrifice it took to come here, halfway around the world, just a daydream away from the past.

  Carl’s stomach ached from Ralen’s kick, but he tried to follow the lesson. If he concentrated, he could forget the anticipation of more beatings to follow—every day this week, Ralen had promised, for no reason except that he could.

  “Starting with the inner planets,” said Sister Stef from beside the blueboard. “Does anyone remember, which is closest to the sun?”

  Carl could name them all, and in the right order—but Ralen was watching. Carl said nothing.

  “All right. I’ll start.” Sister Stef picked up a stick of yellow chalk. “Prometheus, Venus, then Earth.”

  Rubbing at his stomach, Carl felt despair. He stared at the steel punishment ruler that hung on the wall, the ruler that Sister Stef so rarely used. He wished he could see Ralen suffer.

  “And the next planet? Anyone?”

  Angela, her skin pale-blue, held up her hand.

  “Is it Mars, Sister?”

  “Very good, Angela.” Sister Stef wrote it up. “Next?”

  “Please, Sister,” said Roger, thin and nervous. “Is it Hel?”

  “Good answer, Roger. That is a planet, just not the next one.”

  Ralen guffawed.

  “And do you know the correct answer, Master O’Dowd? No? Anyone?”

  She looked around the room. Carl stared at his desktop, defaced by the pens and penknives of previous generations.

  “Oberon, then.” Sister Stef wrote. “Followed by Jupiter, Saturn, Poseidon and Roger’s favourite, Hel.”

  Roger blushed.

  “As it happens,” added Sister Stef, pointing to the board, “Earth and Mars are close enough to have mixed up dust in space, swapping little particles of life, just as Oberon swapped dust with Mars.”

  Carl wished Sister Stef would talk more about this kind of thing, but he knew this diversion would be short-lived.

  “You have things called mitochondria in your body, Ralen O’Dowd, that used to be germs with their own genetic material.”

  Some of the other children sniggered.

  “And the zodules of sages and witches are particularly rich in thaumacules derived from Oberon’s—Well, never mind. Let’s carry on with what we’re supposed to be learning, shall we?”

  In her notebook, Angela was writing the word ‘sages’. Carl knew it was a Lightsider’s slip of the tongue: the name of a profession that did not exist in the Federation. Dad had told him so.

  And he’d also told Carl not to share his speculation, because Lightsiders were so rarely believers, and that held implications for Sister Stef’s position here. Carl had agreed without understanding.

  He spent the midmorning break and lunchtime staying out of Ralen’s sight. But just as the afternoon session was about to start, two burgundy-clad nuns swept down on Ralen—Sister Zarly Umbra and an older, dour Sister whose name Carl didn’t know—and led him into the building.

  When the lesson began in Sister Stef’s classroom, Ralen’s desk was unoccupied.

  Part of Carl hoped that Ralen was in Reverend Mother’s study, experiencing the hook-and-whip that some pupils whispered about. But when Sister Stef announced that she had some dreadful news, her words poured sickness into him.

  “Poor Ralen’s father passed away at work today. An accident.”

  From next door, through the thick classroom wall, came the sound of children chanting the Final Litany of St Magnus the Slayer. Sister Stef scowled, before rubbing her face and instructing everyone to open their history books.

  That evening, the walk home was devoid of the fear of ambush by Ralen, of threatened pain or taunting humiliation.

  It was a disappointing kind of freedom.

  Two hours later, Parents’ Evening was in progress, and Jamie Thargulis was sitting on a small chair—designed for kids—trying to keep calm, staring at Sister Stephanie-Charon.

  “I’m sorry if Carl’s a dreamer.”

  “That’s not a criticism.” Sister Stef’s smile was nice. “He’s not ready to flourish just yet.”

  “In the kind of school I went to, dreaming wasn’t exactly encouraged.”

  “That would be a Bone Listener academy?”

  “Yes. Thank Fate that Carl isn’t eligible to—You know.”

  “Hmm.” Sister Stef looked at the blank blueboard. “Reverend Mother sent some UP supporters packing. They were on the street corner handing out leaflets.”

  “Things are getting worse.”

  In Fortinium, the now-discredited Senator Blanz had tried to push his Vital Renewal Bill through the Senate, to pass a bill removing the civil rights of freewraiths and near-humans. It had failed, yet the Tristopolitan city council had power to pass their own regulations, and public mood had turned in a dark direction.

  “So long as Mayor Dancy remains in office,” said Sister Stef, “we’re all right.”

  Jamie appreciated the solidarity. Sister Stef was standard human.

  “I suppose I can’t comment. As an Archivist.”

  “Oh. You must have access to all sorts of fascinating Lattice information.”

  To Jamie, information was inscribed with pain and stored in bones, yet Sister Stef’s words were true. His vocation remained fascinating.

  The classroom door swung inwards.

  “Hello,” said a nun. She glanced at the iron wall-mounted skull-clock. Steel cogs moved within its eye sockets. “Just checking you were still with Mr. Thargulis.”

  “Finishing up. Thank you, Sister Zarly.”

  Jamie struggled to get out of the too-small chair, wondering whether he’d embarrassed Sister Stef by taking up too much time. Her face was perhaps the tiniest bit pink.

  “Um,” said Jamie. “Carl’s pretty taken with your essay theme.”

  “The Tri-Millennial? He’s got a whole week to do it in.”

  The iron skull-clock ticked. Its pendulum was a swinging scythe; its housing was a long-preserved cranium; the slow-rotating hands were carved knucklebones of long-dead nuns.

  “Yes,” said Jamie. “He’ll enjoy it.”

  “Good.”

  They were standing very close.

  “Um . . . Goodnight, Sister.”

  “Goodnight, Mr. Thargulis.”

  Alone in his room, Carl strained and squeezed.

  “Ugh—”

  Squeezed harder.

  Come on.

  Being at home by himself, this late, was unusual. It meant he could try it without Dad sensing he was—

  Yes.

  A faint hair-width of red struggled from the inside corner of his right eye. It wriggled and hurt, but it was growing bigger.

  For the first time, he knew he could do it.

  Yes.

  Another slender arachnid leg extruded itself, then another. In seconds a tiny red spider was dragging itself out from Carl’s eyeball, scrabbling an inch down his cheekbone, then stopping to rest.

  Another.

  He focused, and squeezed again. It was still hard, but he continued, and in only a few seconds a second scarlet spider clambered from the slickness of his eye.

  Again.

  This time, tiny legs appeared from beneath his left lower eyelid. It took longer, but finally the third spider hauled itself free. Carl knew now that he could manifest with either eye, however much it burned.

  “I knew I could,” he said to the rust-flecked mirror.

  He was no Bone Listener; but Dad was an Archivist, and in that much at least, Carl carried his father’s blood.

  “I knew it.”

  By the time Dad got home, Carl had squeezed a total of eight spiders into existence, and hidden them inside his shirt drawer, and commanded them to sleep.

  In the washroom, Sister Stef wiped her face, still feeling sick. It was a reaction to the fear she’d sensed in Angela Haxten’s parents, for while Angela’s skin was just faintly blue, her parents’ colouring was more pronounced. Mr. Haxten had moved with the kind of difficulty Stef associated with a bad beating.

  This she knew from childhood memory, of Mam and Pop and the sound of—

  No. The past is behind me.

  Just now she had told the Haxtens how strong and confident their daughter was growing. It was a form of lie that the nuns called a Benedictory Confabulation. Perhaps Angela would develop the strength she would need, just as Stef had finally left that world where she had listened so often for the key turning in the front-door lock, for the sound of drunken footsteps across the old linoleum floor, and the rattle of the glass door handle as Pop reached the—

  Behind me.

  —kitchen where Mam was waiting for the—

  Gone.

  —waiting for the—

  No.

  She stopped herself. Turning on the cold water tap, she rinsed her mouth. Then she went out to meet the next set of parents.

  “Mr. and Mrs. Blackhall? Lovely to see you again.”

  Later that night, Jamie lay in bed—in his own half of the bed, a decade after Mareela’s death—rolling first one way and then the other, trying not to think of the way Sister Stef might look without that formal burgundy habit, or how long her hair would be if it were hanging loose.

  “Go to sleep,” he told the darkness.

  And he would not think about the slenderness of her waist, or how her skin might feel if he pressed his hand against it . . . He would not think of it.

  Despite the tricks of meditation and prayer that the order had taught her, Stef lay with her eyes open, staring into the darkness of her private sleeping-cell beneath the school. The childhood memories of TalonClaw Port were behind her, but they would stay there only if she constantly forced them back.

  Meanwhile the thought of dark-brown eyes with such depth, such insight into arcane knowledge . . . that thought was forbidden.

  Jamie Thargulis.

  Totally forbidden.

  Carl slept deeply. At some point, he dreamed of entering the consciousness of his eight spiders, of the octet formed from his computational blood. The spiders climbed down from the drawer, across the floor, and beneath the door—the gap was a vast opening to his eight new viewpoints—and then began the great trek downstairs, before ascending the coatstand.

  There was something peaceful and secure about the way he, through his spiders, was able to nestle in the folds of Dad’s overcoat, to slip inside the small tears in the old thick fabric, to hide inside the lining, and grow quiescent once more.

  Inside his dream, the dream he knew was true, Carl smiled, and commanded his spiders to wait.

  The first part of the morning was tough. Carl tried to concentrate on Sister Stef’s words, fighting down the attraction of linking to his spiders, and managed to wait until first break. Then, he established contact, just long enough for the spiders to clamber out of Dad’s overcoat and find places to hide behind Dad’s adding-machine.

  The device was intricate, formed from interlocking bones and beetle wing cases. The rattling calculations did not disturb his hidden arachnid observers.

  During the longer lunch break, he ate his grilled cicadas too fast. Afterwards, crouched in a corner of the yard away from the other kids, he closed his eyes.

  “—to see you, Brixham.” This was Dad’s voice, as heard by Carl’s spiders. “Why is the OCML visiting this time?”

  “Just some queries. If you could pre-process and then pass back to us . . . ”

  “I’ll do it this afternoon.”

  One of the spiders (under Carl’s direction) crept from behind the adding-machine, stopped, then continued to the black shoe that looked like a pitted cliff face. The man—the Bone Listener—looked massive, like a geological feature more than a person.

  The spider moved quickly, climbing up the tangled grey fibres of the trouser leg, into the turn-up, then settling inside.

  “Thank you, Archivist Thargulis. I’ll—”

  “Carl?”

  It was Sister Zarly Umbra calling from across the yard.

  “Yes, Sister?”

  “Are you all right?”

  “Um. Yes, Sister.”

  “Then line up with the others, ready to go back inside.”

  “Yes, Sister.”

  During the afternoon’s algebra, Carl’s awareness slipped away to Dad’s office from time to time, just the lightest of touches. Tonight, late, he would link in fully to explore the Archives, manipulating computational blood, though deaf to the music of the bones.

  “. . . And I hope you’re doing good work on your essays at home, everyone,” said Sister Stef. “Not just because the Tri-Millennial celebration is important. We’re going to try something new in class next week. Now turn to—”

  Was it for the essay, to please Sister Stef, or for the joy of working with the power he’d always hoped he had? Either way, think of what he might learn! Such arcana . . . a word most of the other kids would not understand.