Oracle's Fire

by Mary Victoria

  He waited again for a response, but Jedda still did not react, unable to summon up the right words in her fatigue. Wick cleared his throat and assumed an air of indifference. ‘I was annoyed with you too, at first,’ he said. ‘But I figure you have to make your own choices. I don’t believe in forcing people into anything.’

  Gowron snorted with disbelieving laughter at this, as if Wick had said something particularly funny; the older acolyte even threw a wink at Jedda from his post at the controls, though he said no more.

  Jedda remarked an involuntary spasm in Wick’s expression. For a second time, it was as though something rippled beneath his skin, an unspoken intention. Now it betrayed irritation at his companion, rather than a hateful gloating over herself. There was more here than met the eye, she thought. The acolytes might be plotting some more personal revenge against her, perhaps as a prelude to delivering her to the Envoy; she could imagine, given Gowron’s wink, what that revenge might entail.

  ‘I don’t think,’ Wick continued, his tone hardening as he glared at Gowron, ‘that it’s right to make people do things they’re not comfortable with.’

  In spite of everything she had endured, Jedda was able to distinguish the note of jealousy that had crept into his voice. Was it possible that the two acolytes were in some form of competition with each other? It looked as if they had different opinions regarding her, a fact she might use to her advantage.

  ‘That’s very generous,’ she said to Wick, carefully, when Gowron did not deign to make a reply, turning back to his controls. ‘I’m in your debt.’

  ‘I’m not someone,’ Wick said with airy condescension, ‘who imposes myself on other people. You should know that by now, Jedda.’

  She did not say a word in answer to this. The statement was untrue, of course, and there was a smoothness in Wick’s expression that she mistrusted instinctively. She had seen exactly how eager he had been to impose himself on Pallas. But she knew that salvation lay in diplomacy.

  ‘Thank you both,’ she said, deliberately including Gowron in the conversation. ‘Those accursed birds have been following me for days. Longer, actually — weeks. You’re very kind to risk the master’s wrath for me.’ There was nothing for it, she told herself, but to play the damsel in distress. ‘I wouldn’t have survived without you.’

  ‘I warned you about him, if you recall,’ sniggered Gowron. ‘Mild as milk when he’s happy, hard as nails when he’s not. You got on his bad side.’ He grinned over his shoulder at her again. ‘Not something I recommend, sweetheart.’

  ‘We’re on a mission out east,’ put in Wick. ‘Well, south first, then east. We’re travelling by the Fringes: the war’s going well in Lantria, there’s no danger from that point of view. You can come with us, if you like. We have no further quarrel with you.’

  He picked up a map from the floor by Gowron’s feet and busily perused it, as if he were the navigator on this expedition. But after a moment of squinting at the wriggling, concentric lines of Tree topography, he looked away, his expression queasy. He was air-sick, Jedda realised with faint amusement, through her own discomfort.

  ‘To be honest, you don’t have much choice,’ he resumed, thrusting the map away from him impatiently. ‘The curses will last another week, and they travel about as fast as we do. You won’t be able to keep them off on your own, not in your condition.’

  Jedda hunched her shoulders inside her torn clothes, feeling the pages of Samiha’s testament crackling in the lining, and conscious of Wick’s burning gaze. It had been the papers that had kept her alive in the cold, laid against her heart; they had also protected her against the birds when she lost consciousness, she was sure of it. Neither Wick nor Gowron appeared to have noticed the scraps stuffed into the lining of her undergarments. Or if they had, they thought them of no consequence, for none had been removed from her, as far as she could tell. Now the pages offered her protection of another sort, a private barrier against Wick’s ogling. She crossed her arms over her breasts. She had a hard time concealing the loathing she felt towards the smiling acolyte, and did not immediately respond.

  ‘Well, what do you say?’ he prompted, spreading his hands expansively, a gesture of forgiveness that reminded her unpleasantly of Lace. ‘I’m happy to let bygones be bygones, Jedda.’

  Reluctant as she was to admit it, his assessment was entirely correct. She had no choice. She nodded in mute agreement, willing herself not to hiss out her hatred, determined to hide just how much pain she was in.

  ‘Do you happen to have any healing ointment on board?’ she asked after a moment, with as much nonchalance as she could muster.

  They made their camp that night inside a shallow crater they found at the summit of a vertical branch, dead and lopped off at the crown. Jedda helped Wick clear the floor of the hollow and light a fire of bark shards, then crouched beside the two acolytes as evening fell, holding her hands close over the crackling flames. Warmth was a luxury she had not known since she left Varana’s band. During the journey she had accepted food, medicine and a fresh set of outer clothing from Wick, who treated her with scrupulous if condescending courtesy. He had also offered her a new set of winter underclothes which she refused, reluctant to give up the ones lined with the testament. He had taken her reluctance to disrobe for modesty, and laughed. She made no effort to disabuse him, and kept the precious pages out of sight, next to her skin. They felt almost one with her now, a secret double hide.

  Though she trembled with weariness, she knew she must not sleep that evening before scoring whatever advantage she could from Wick. She had not yet pinpointed the unease she sensed when speaking to him, nor the vulnerability she felt in him as he maintained their patter of conversation, but she knew that her survival depended on winning him to her side. She remained seated with him at the fire after they had eaten their meal, eyeing Gowron warily. The older man, she knew from unhappy experience, would not be so amenable to her. But to her relief, the ex-priest left her in peace that night, ignoring both of his fellow travellers in favour of a gourd of Nurian kush. It was not long before he was nodding in front of the fire.

  ‘You say you’re going east,’ Jedda whispered to Wick, when Gowron rose to relieve himself a short way off, humming drunkenly. ‘I wanted to know if you’re crossing the Gap. I realise now that I don’t belong here, in Argos. There’s no point in pretending. I can’t go back to the Freeholds, but I could start a new life somewhere else — a garrison town, maybe.’

  Wick gazed at her fixedly in the firelight, smiling his infuriating smile. It was almost a perfect half-moon, she thought, obnoxious in its symmetry. ‘Oh, we’re not crossing the Gap, Jedda,’ he said. ‘We’re going into it.’

  ‘What?’ she blurted, taken aback.

  ‘Into it, under it, what you will.’ He still smiled.

  ‘You’re going to the World Below?’ asked Jedda in astonishment. ‘In this machine? Why?’

  ‘I can’t tell you that. You’re not an acolyte any more,’ he answered with abominable smugness.

  She scowled at her chapped knuckles, covered in the seminary’s healing balm. The Envoy’s willingness to engage in heretical activity ought not to surprise her, she thought. She had learned during her tenure at the seminary that the defunct Council had already sent Explorers to investigate the World Below, bringing back artefacts like the orah-clock that served the Dean so well. Their findings had been kept secret, ostensibly to protect the ordinary population.

  She tried to remember what the Envoy had told her about the ancient civilisation that had once flourished beneath the Storm. Contrary to the seminary’s more widely accepted teachings, it was loam, not the fiery Maelstrom of Hell, that lay at the foot of the Tree. There, the Old Ones, both human and Born, had long ago built great cities, all supported by loam. Jedda found the thought intriguing. What held up the loam? In any case, the cities had been destroyed millennia ago, razed by a war that shook the foundations of the world. In her imagination there was nothing left about t
he roots of the Tree but a pile of broken and blasted shards. There was only one reason to go to such a place.

  ‘So,’ she said to Wick, ‘are there other artefacts of the Old Ones Lace wants to get his hands on, then?’

  Wick did not answer, but simply gazed at her. Even when he pursed his lips with that knowing expression, she thought, he was still damnably smiling.

  ‘Fine, don’t tell me,’ she muttered. ‘I guess I’ll see for myself.’

  Gowron had not yet returned after completing his bodily functions. Jedda saw Wick’s eyes flicker towards his fellow acolyte, staggering uncertainly with his legs apart on the far side of the hollow. The night sky was clear and the waning moon filtered feebly through the ice-bound leaves, casting strange geometrical shadows about them. As light and darkness passed across his face, the younger man appeared to come to some personal decision. He leaned close to Jedda, speaking with syrupy familiarity in her ear.

  ‘I can’t tell you about our mission, but I can do something else,’ he said. ‘Once we’re done, I can drop you off in the Eastern Domains. Where exactly do you need to go?’

  Jedda searched Wick’s face, wondering if she could trust that smooth, bland expression. His eyes were rimmed with shifting dark in the firelight. ‘Anywhere within a half-day’s journey of the Central Canopy,’ she said.

  ‘No problem,’ he replied. ‘But you have to do something for me, first.’

  ‘What?’ she muttered, the many things he could ask her to do for him flitting in an unpleasant sequence through her head.

  Wick did not answer that question at once, his smile disappearing into shadow. Instead, he reached out and almost dreamily traced the hollow at the base of her neck with his finger, just above the tunic collar. ‘You’ve lost it,’ he remarked.

  It was a moment before she realised he was referring to the orah-pendant. ‘Yes,’ she said, too rapidly perhaps. But Gowron had turned back towards them now, reeling. ‘It’s gone. What do you want me to do?’

  Wick sighed and withdrew his hand. ‘The master didn’t only send the birds after you, Jedda,’ he admitted. ‘Tymon’s life is in danger, too. I regret that.’ His smile had grown bitter as he surveyed Jedda, but there was an eagerness in his tone. ‘You’re still twined with him, right? From before?’

  She was beginning to guess what he would ask her to do. A shiver of combined hope and fear passed through her. She nodded.

  ‘In that case,’ Wick breathed as Gowron stumbled nearer, ‘I want you to tell me if you feel him. Tymon was sent to one of those big southern plantations where they use pilgrim labour. We’ll be close enough for you to sense him. The curses won’t take much longer to reach him: he’ll be doomed, as you were. Together, we can help him.’

  His words were urgent, hurried, their conversation brought to an abrupt end by Gowron slumping heavily down by the fire. Wick froze into silence as the other man gave a loud and unapologetic belch; he evidently did not wish to elaborate on his plans in his fellow acolyte’s hearing. A short while later, he bid the others goodnight and withdrew discreetly to the sleeping tent. Jedda took the opportunity to excuse herself at the same time, fleeing Gowron’s company to pass the night wrapped in blankets on the floor of the machine.

  Although she surreptitiously barricaded the hatch from the inside with one of the provision packs, no one troubled her. Instead, her own preoccupations kept her awake for some time afterwards. Her heart quickened at the thought of finally finding and helping Tymon, even in these unlikely circumstances. But would she simply succeed in bringing down further troubles on his head? And were the acolytes actually going to Lacuna? How odd it was, she thought, that the place should come back to haunt her, now, after all these years.

  For it was not only the Argosian priests who retained knowledge of a destination beneath the Storm. The mention of Wick’s mission brought back painful memories for Jedda. Her father had often spoken of the second canopy beneath the clouds; it had been one of his favourite fantastical stories, the ones he told in the old days, before disaster struck their family. She remembered well the stories of the abjat philosophers, divine mathematicians who knew the true coordinates of Heaven and Hell and calculated significant dates from the prophetic verses. According to that system, each letter of scripture possessed its own associated number and significance. It was possible in this way to calculate the exact time of the end of the world, as well as other ritually important events. Alas for her father, Jedda thought bleakly. No abjat had foretold the utter annihilation of his own universe.

  The next day, the party embarked on their journey early and travelled south again, flying high over the upper leaf-forests. It would take them between four and five days, Gowron announced, to make a half-circuit of the Central Canopy, and reach their destination near the southern marches of the Gap. Jedda sat silent in the air-chariot, ruminating over what Wick had told her the night before. Did he truly regret the Envoy’s actions and wish to help Tymon? Or was he so pathetically involved in his own fantasies that he still dreamed of winning the young man over, after all he had done? She rather suspected the latter. She also suspected Wick was not above attempting to seduce her, too, with the promise of safety. He was assiduous in his attentions to her that day, so much so that Gowron took to glowering at them both and spitting in the wind. He laughed heartily when it flew back into their faces, snorting with derision whenever Wick offered Jedda some meaningless civility. ‘Watch out he doesn’t vomit in your lap,’ he once growled.

  The tension between the acolytes only increased after a second night encamped on the crest of a deserted limb. There was a battle of wills taking place between the two men, as Jedda had surmised, and she was certain now, with a sinking heart, that it had to do with her. Gowron, judging by his savage observations and increasingly snide comments, could not understand Wick’s decision to treat her like any other member of the expedition. The older man’s behaviour had not changed from the first moment he had addressed her on the floor of the air-chariot: she was ‘doll’, ‘sweetheart’ and ‘Tree-pussy’. But while his intentions towards her were blatant, Wick stubbornly refused to allow him to abuse his power over their hostage. The young acolyte pursued his own agenda, and clearly had personal plans for Jedda that did not include Gowron at all. By the third day of travel, the two priests were barely speaking to each other, and the girl had to be careful to avoid being pulled apart between them. The hours dragged by wearily, surrounded by the thudding cacophony of the propellers.

  They were now passing over regions entirely free from snow and frost, their circumnavigation of the Tree taking them ever lower, to warmer latitudes and milder climes. By the time they had, by Gowron’s calculations, encircled half the circumference of the trunk beneath the Central Canopy, the great plantations that occupied the southern marches of Argos stretched out below them. Snake-like terraces wound along almost every horizontal limb; Jedda could see the wriggling parallel lines of vineyards and loam fields through the partial screen of leaves. This was where her countrymen toiled, she thought numbly. This was where the gangs of patient pilgrims worked off their contract with the seminary, enclosed in the paddy fields until they were the manure they were spreading, producing the staple foods they themselves were denied. And this was where the prisoners of Argos were sentenced to hard labour.

  Perhaps it was such thoughts as these that distracted her; in any case, she was unable to feel Tymon close by. According to Wick’s information, they must have been somewhere near the farm where the young Grafter served out his prison term. But the familiar twinge in Jedda’s belly was gone. In vain did she search for any vestige of the connection with her twining partner: there was nothing. It was unclear whether this was because she had somehow lost her abilities, or because Tymon was further away than they thought, in a place Wick did not expect him to be. She began to fear that the loss of the orah had cost her even the powers she possessed before becoming the Envoy’s apprentice. She was careful not to divulge her failure, however, s
ensing that Tymon was her best means of leverage with Wick, the only barrier that stood between her and Gowron’s savagery. She remained vague in her reports, whispering in Wick’s ear when the other acolyte’s back was turned that it was difficult, in the confined space of the air-chariot and with Gowron’s antagonism so close, to be sure of the Grafting connection.

  On the third evening, their haven was a lonely, flat-topped stump surrounded by a lake of shifting cloud. They had brought the air-chariot down at the edge of the stretch of wilderness that preceded the Gap, where the plantations gave way to a tangle of untamed leaf-forests. The limbs about them were widely spaced, vertical clumps of leaves and twigs separated from the rest of the canopy by yawning holes; mist swirled unnervingly in the gaps. It was a gloomy place, threatening not only because of the palpable proximity of the Storm but also because Jedda faced the prospect of sharing her berth with her fellow travellers that night. For the first time since they had set out together, it was raining. The priests’ tent was prone to flooding in harsh weather, and the men were better off inside the machine.

  Jedda enjoyed no such guarantee, however. She lay bundled in blankets beneath one of the benches, as far from the others as possible and miserably sleepless, listening to the drops drumming on the ceiling of the machine. Wick, too, seemed to wish to be left alone that night: he lay at the cockpit end of the craft, his face turned to the wall, entirely cocooned in blankets. Only Gowron sat awake on the bench opposite Jedda, steadily consuming his gourd of kush. The drink put him in a foul temper, or perhaps he was furious to begin with; he would not relax, but shifted and muttered to himself on the bench, starting up from time to time with an oath before sitting down again, so that the Nurian girl froze with terror beneath her blankets. His eyes gleamed in the dim light seeping through the window-holes. More than once, she saw them dart towards her. She kept as still as she could in a pretence of sleep, tense and wary of every sound, deploring her helplessness. For she had thrown away the orah, her one means of defence, and become again the girl in the garrison town, the girl without power.