by Bella James
Yes. It's – reversed. She nestled far down inside herself the knowledge of who she was.
I'll hold your secret safe, as I hold safe Julia Bane's.
It still seemed strange to hear Julia called a Bane. Strange, but not bad.
There is plague. There is war. The dream you truly have speaks of your fears, but also is a true dream.
Livy froze. It was all she could do to show no emotion as she hovered on the Plutarch's arm.
There are deaths, the Oracle continued. But the count of fatalities is greatly exaggerated by the Ruler's men. It is meant to make you weak and afraid.
It does one and not the other, Livy thought furiously.
Know that your marriage, moved up, will do what the rebels intend – it will force the hand of the Plutarch to take action or to shut up and stand down. His reasoning will be that he needs to keep his new bride safe. He will begin to persecute in earnest the villages and villagers, meaning to stamp out any rebellion.
Why is that a good thing? Olivia wondered to herself but the Oracle caught the thought and answered it.
It will push the undecided serfs to rally on the side of the revolution. It will push the villagers to act. It will set a timeline in motion.
It will give you time to step forward and lead your own people.
Livy choked. There was no time for her to voice the questions that flooded into her mind.
Aloud, the Oracle now declaimed: "The time of war is upon you, Ruler. Marry sooner than you intended, out of the great love you feel for your bride, and you will have the people behind you. The villagers will join your cause if you bring medicines for the plague and safety for their peoples. The time of war is upon you, Ruler; as well, the opportunity for peace. At a cost. Will you bear that cost?"
CHAPTER 5
J ohn Malvin was quiet when they moved down the twisting stairs together. The Centurion, even Selene, stayed farther away from them than they had on the way up the stairs Two of their number went ahead, to make certain the Plutarch didn't walk into any traps. Those two were far enough ahead that Livy and her intended had privacy.
Livy stopped every quarter turn of the tower staircase, to rest her feet in their idiotic shoes and to look out the high tower windows at the view. Arcadia fell away from the Plutarch's palace like ripples spreading from a rock thrown into still water. Everything came from here, life, death, the possibilities of either.
Arcadia was beautiful and terrible. Vehicles dotted the paved roads. Vehicles moved in the utopian rebel city of Dawn where Livy was called the Gan Ddechrau, which meant The Beginning, the one who would bring change. The Chosen One. But there the vehicles seemed purposeful. In Arcadia they seemed wasteful. Men who could easily walk the distances they needed to cover and whose status as Aristocracy meant no one waited to beat them if they arrived late, would drive. Men who desperately needed to walk, in order to wear off some of the excess food they consumed, food hard won by serfs working in the fields in the commonwealth, drove.
She paused in another window, looking out at the golden summer spreading across the land. Fertile green, gentle hills rolling and falling, the stands of orchards where Betas worked, gardening and tending.
The Plutarch stood behind her, speaking at length about nothing. He had not yet processed what the Oracle had said, not yet decided whether or not to take offense at some of it. He had not yet decided whether he would heed her warnings or her advice.
Why ask, then? Livy wondered. But there would always be those who asked for advice when all they really wanted was approval.
Livy licked her lips. Was she about to test her luck? Or test how well she'd played her hand?
"Hard to believe, isn't it?" She nodded out the window.
"What is that, my dear?"
He called her that, she thought absently, no matter what. The endearment was meant to look good for the media, for the communications that went out to all the provinces: the benevolent leader, caring for his fiancée.
He called her that when he hurt her.
He called his whores that, she supposed, when he visited the pleasure palaces, and her heart rate sped. Soon she'd need to ask him about Pippa no matter how much she assumed that would anger him. To not ask would look strange. Besides, Pip was still there, so Livy was still worried.
Livy nodded now, out the window at the beauty. Arcadia was beautiful, excess aside. The buildings were of natural stone, anything wooden was built of the best, knot-free woods. The gardeners were all masters, making everything grow, until the land rioted with greenery and color.
"That there are those out there who would upset the natural order."
She felt his hand on the back of her neck and willed herself not to flinch. Too far? Too much? Not enough?
"Did they harm you?" he asked. The question was crazy. She'd fallen to far more harm at his hands than at the hands of the rebels. Even now she found herself missing Arash, his brash manner, his demands of come on, one hand extended to take Livy's and lead her on to things she never thought she could do.
There was a difference. Arash expected something from her. He thought she had talents and should use them. He thought she could change the things that were wrong.
The Plutarch expected her to give birth to the people, the mother of the world, and die, most likely at his hands. Along the way? She should shut up and remain silent.
Dreamily, she said, "They took me from my place and told me it wasn't. They kept me in a place where the land is violent and dangerous. That was harm enough." She sounded like a silly, simpering idiot.
"Did they question you?"
There hadn't been a day since her return he hadn't asked her this. As if he meant to find her out in a lie.
"Yes. But what do I know? You have an army. You have the Centurion guard. You have a city and a government. And I know what I learned in the institute, and any one of them could have gone there." She shrugged. "There is very little danger for one who knows nothing to expose anything of value."
She started when he laughed. The sound was warm and honest, nothing like the bitter laugher she usually heard from him.
"That is very wise, little one. I think the whole of the leadership should know that one."
Livy frowned at the city and open space below her. "But you can't have a leadership that knows nothing."
He turned her then, his hands on her shoulders, his eyes still smiling, and leaned down to kiss her lips. "That's where you're wrong, little one. Come, let's go get you changed and enjoy the evening at a play."
But they'd gotten no farther down the stairs before the Oracle came round the curved wall. Livy jolted to a stop, rocking on her heels, clutching at the smooth wall and then at the Plutarch for support.
Malvin, for his part, stood stock still, staring up at the woman. There were no guards anywhere and she had to have passed four of them before reaching the ruler and his bride.
"How in all the hells – "
"What you didn't ask, John Malvin, Plutarch." The woman's voice was breathy, pale but certain. The reek of burning herbs and drugs hung around her. Even through the blind, white clouded eyes Livy could see the way the Oracle's gaze moved. She remembered hearing that Oracles worked through hallucinogenic drugs like she'd been given back at the Institute, and the woman hadn't been drugged before. She must have taken whatever it was directly after Livy and Malvin had left.
"What didn't we ask?" Livy asked her. The time for cowering had passed. She needed to know.
The voice that filled the stairwell was strange, reedy and disconsolate, dissonant, a-harmonic. It sounded as if a dozen voices quarreled in the silence, ringing from the marble all around them.
“I see fire. I see death. I see waste. I see destruction. I see villages and villagers torn apart, lives wasted, promises violated. I see the lands of the provinces in war, in chaos, I see Arcadia.”
"Arcadia!" Malvin's voice was harsh. "Will it stand?"
The Oracle swayed where she stood and Livy blin
ked, not certain the woman's feet were touching the stairs. Her bare white feet appeared under her diaphanous robes and seemed to hover just far enough off the stone to cast a shadow.
"Will it survive?" the Plutarch barked.
The stench of burning drug grew stronger. The Oracle locked what should be sightless eyes on Livy.
Livy wasn't convinced the Oracle was in any way blind. She held the blue white gaze.
"The Chosen One is coming." But her tonal voice sounded on different notes and the words were the Chosen one comes / the Chosen One is coming / the Chosen has come / the City stands / the City falls / the City is the heart of the world / the City is beneath us all.
Malvin looked dazed. He reached a hand out and it slid on the concave outer wall. He would have fallen had one of the Centurion not stepped forward to grab and steady him.
I should have done that, Livy thought dimly, her actual thoughts so far away the missed opportunity barely registered. That, or pushed.
She wondered if the Centurion would have done anything at all if she had pushed the Plutarch down the stairs. And now it was too late. The ruler was back on his feet, spitting questions at the girl, demanding whether his city lived or died, what happened to his people, what happened to him.
Not once did he ask anything of his bride.
Just as well, Livy thought. No way of knowing if the woman would have kept her secrets after whatever she'd taken.
The Oracle answered none of their questions. She fell, heavily, to the stone, and lay unmoving even as her attendants came, chattering in a language none present could understand. They waved away Livy, the Plutarch and the Centurion, unconcerned about any of them, and picked up their fallen mistress, covering her with see through veils and carrying her back the way she'd come.
The party on the stairs stood unmoving until at last John Malvin took Olivia's arm in a tight, bruising grip and began dragging her down the stairs. She stopped midway, forced her arm out of his, glared at him until he relented, and pulled off the six inch heels. Able to walk again, she stared at him, her eyes full of fury, barely able to contain the fear he'd realize what she thought she knew.
She, Olivia Bane, was the Chosen One.
The rebels had said as much, but she'd thought they meant the Chosen of the Plutarch, the bride-to-be, mother of the race.
But she had called the mutated animals to her. She'd killed one of the world serpents and taken its fang.
She wasn't the bride of the Plutarch. She was the bride of the revolution.
He couldn't know that. But he might attribute her running to nothing more than nerves. Beautiful, flighty Livy, weeks away from her wedding, waiting for her sister to be found, receiving word from an Oracle that her chosen home would burn.
It had to be enough to cover her running.
Livy ran.
SELENE COULD HAVE CAUGHT her easily. One of the two Centurion who had gone on before the Plutarch, she'd been at the foot of the stairs when Livy burst through the crowd there and ran for her rooms. The duenna, left at the bottom of the stairs for the whole of the event had no chance of catching her. The woman was huge and bulky and slow.
And Livy, despite being inside the Plutarch's palace, in spite of her family at risk and her sister in a brothel and her own impending nuptials, felt as free as she had felt in the desert.
Running.
SELENE CAUGHT up to Livy in the hallway outside her room. There was no one else near them, the whole of the guard following the Plutarch or something equally absurd. Nothing was going to get to the Plutarch in his own palace. Nothing except Livy and she didn't have the guts. She'd bolted.
Still, the run had felt like freedom for the few minutes she'd forgotten what she knew.
She was the Chosen One. She was the one the rebellion hung on. The one the fate of the world may well rest on.
She'd felt freedom, Livy thought again.
Her father had said bullets were freedom.
Maybe there wasn't any other way for change to come but through a revolution that would spell death.
"What was that about?" Selene asked. In the Plutarch's palace, unlike in the rebel's cave, she never used red ribbons to tie her stave to her leg, peace-tying it in a pact of nonaggression.
"It's me," Livy said, and when Selene cocked her head, "It is me, isn't it? That's the reason the rebels kidnapped me. I'm the one everyone is waiting for."
Now Selene did look around to make certain they truly were alone. "Let's discuss it in your room." She motioned toward the door.
Livy didn't budge. "Aren't I?"
The Centurion said, "How is it you're just figuring this out?"
Horrified, Livy found tears pricking the back of her eyes. It was one thing to be the chosen of the dictator who ruled the world. Maybe she couldn't do anything to sway him, but she could try.
But chosen of the world?
"Come on," Selene said surprisingly gently. "Let's get you inside."
The instant she stepped into the room Livy forgot everything in shock. "Pippa!"
Her little sister rushed her, already in tears, her thick blond hair sticking to her flushed face. She wrapped her arms around Livy and held on, sobbing.
"Hold on, hold on," Livy said, catching her balance, tightening her grip on her sister. "Are you hurt? Pip? Answer me. Did anyone hurt you?"
Pip shook her head wildly and buried her face in Livy's shoulder. Olivia turned to look back at Selene, ready to ask for some privacy, but the guard shook her head and seated herself in one of the deep, plush chairs by the door.
Livy sighed, and led Pip into her bedchamber, letting the door close behind them. Seating them both on a low couch, she rose again to fetch water and urged her sister to drink.
"I'm sorry," Pip gasped. "I'm so sorry. I got caught in the raid."
"That's hardly your fault." She took a breath. "You said before no one had hurt you. No one had – touched you."
Pip sat up, shaking her hair out of her eyes. "Is that all you think about? You don't think that being taken from home, being cooped up, kept a prisoner – you don't think that was hell?"
To her surprise Livy found herself getting angry. She stood, pacing the hard stone floors where the rugs didn't reach. "You think I don't know anything about that? It's been better than a year since I've had a will of my own and pretty soon I'm going to be married to a – "
She broke off. Even in her own chamber she couldn't be certain she wouldn't be overhead. She didn't dare call the Plutarch a monster.
"I just wanted you safe. If you'd been hurt, or touched, and you'd run, they might have exiled you." She stopped, watching her sister, who looked at her with wide eyes. "Or executed."
When the next storm of tears passed, Livy asked, "The other girl in your room. The one who was there the night I came?"
Pip nodded.
"Who is she? Do you trust her? Because she heard every word we said."
Pip didn't look surprised. "The minute you left she asked who you were. I knew she wasn't asleep.
Livy waited. Pip hadn't been this upset when she'd still been a prisoner in the brothels. Something had happened. Of course this was the Plutarch's world: something was always happening.
Pippa swallowed. "She wanted to help. She wanted out. When you left me there, she ran."
Livy closed her eyes. She should have known, somehow. Just because she was no longer a student forced to witness such things for her own education didn't mean they weren't still happening.
The Plutarch was a great believer in setting examples.
"She was executed," Pippa said.
Livy did the only thing she could, and hugged her sister while Pippa's tears came again.
CHAPTER 6
Bright sunlight shone in the marketplace. Livy slipped between all the booths enjoying the feel of sunlight on her shoulders. Pippa was with her, unattended. No one cared what Pip did, Livy thought sourly. She herself was followed closely by both Selene and the duenna. Selene might as well t
ake the day off – nothing was getting near Livy with the formidable Earnestine Balk watching her. But Selene guarded Livy out of loyalty and respect. Balk guarded Livy because she'd been tasked by the Plutarch to make certain his bride to be was every bit as chaste on their wedding night as any of the workers in the pleasure palaces weren't. Too late, she thought, remembering Simon and thinking of Arash with a smile that turned lonely around the edges.
She hadn't had word from any of the freedom fighters in days. The last hummingbird had flown off before delivering its message when Balk came onto the balcony to demand what Livy was doing. The battle of wills with the woman was exhausting. Who the woman thought Livy would meet in secret assignation was beyond her. She was surrounded by women, guards, and the Plutarch's people.
Ahead of her Pip surged through the crowd. After her tears two nights earlier she'd woken with a new take on life and a delight in her older sister's clothes. Now every day the Plutarch brought Livy a new gown and every day Pip wore the gown from the previous day and so the clothes had two days before being taken and ritually destroyed.
Livy stopped at a booth held by the stationer's guild. Inside the tent out of the sun, wind and dirt, lay boxes of beautiful paper, delicate shards of tissue paper, curls of velum, thick sheets of heavy rag-content creamy paper. There were inks and pens and journals bound in leather. Her fingers itched to take hold of any of it but buying the tissue strips where she could write a message to the rebels – something along the lines of Are we ever getting started? Marriage looms – was foolish. She could only use the inks she already had at her disposal and the papers that came with the messenger birds, unless her only response was to swallow the missives.
"Can I show you anything, miss?" asked a burly man behind one of the cloth-covered tables where rested deep crimson and purple papers.
Livy shook her head, smiling demurely, hoping not to be recognized. So far many people in the streets and undoubtedly in the provinces didn't recognize her. She was still the Plutarch's intended and still treated as something of a precious secret.
