The Dark Citadel (The Green Woman)

by Jane Dougherty

  Deborah’s imagination roared into top gear. “There was a guard sent with me, but when that terrible siren started he dashed off somewhere. I’ve been wandering around lost ever since.”

  Still frowning the guard weighed up the girl. She seemed harmless enough, with her gaze respectfully averted. And his heart was not exactly in this wild goose chase after an escaped prisoner. His nose told him this was a lucky break too good to pass up.

  “Hmm. Well, you’ve no business being in this sector at all. Look, it’s too complicated to explain. I’ll have to take you to the infirmary.”

  * * * *

  The double doors of the infirmary swung open and closed constantly as white-coated doctors hurried in and out, bustling past Deborah and her escort.

  “Here you are, miss. I just hope the poor bugger hasn’t bled to death.”

  “And I hope I have not brought you too far from your duties,” Deborah replied politely.

  “Ah, don’t worry about me.” The guard grinned, and Deborah guessed he was looking forward to a drink and the kind of job he could understand. “Since I’m here I may as well report to the guard post on the main entrance to the infirmary. They’ll be on duty now until nightfall. They might be glad of an extra pair of eyes till then.”

  “Won’t the guards be there all night?” Curiosity got the better of prudence and the question blurted out.

  “At the infirmary?” The guard snorted, not even noticing the impropriety of the question. “We don’t guard the infirmary at night. Those carcasses in there are so drugged up they wouldn’t stir if the Serpent Witch herself came in and stuck lighted fireworks up their arses!” With a guffaw of laughter, the guard clicked his heels, gave her a facetious salute, and sauntered off.

  Once the guard was out of sight, Deborah leant against the wall and heaved a great sigh of relief. The Providence Black Boys, of whatever rank and function, were notoriously brutal, callous, and cruel. Most of the time they behaved like automatons, following orders blindly, simple killing machines. The rest of the time they took a sadistic pleasure in their work. Deborah had had the good luck to stumble across a bumbling idiot destined for court martial and its unpleasant consequences.

  The siren was still wailing with teeth-grinding persistence as Deborah looked quickly down the corridor to the main staircase. She bit her lip, thinking hard. There had to be another way out, a back stair for the cleaning staff—Ignorants weren’t allowed to use the main staircases. Did she have the nerve to simply walk through the infirmary to look for it? Or would it be safer to find a better disguise than a tray of sticking plasters? She decided to do both, just in case.

  The infirmary doors were flanked by tall metal lockers. She opened one and found it full of white gowns and boxes of facemasks and rubber gloves. Voices from the infirmary grew louder, approaching the doors. Fighting back the rising panic, she pretended to be looking for something. She was pulling out gowns and rummaging in boxes when the doors burst open and two doctors appeared. They stopped short when they saw her.

  “What are you doing here?” The man’s voice was sharp and cold.

  Deborah leapt with fright sending the contents of a box of rubber gloves spraying over the floor. She crouched down, grabbing at the slippery things and trying unsuccessfully to stuff them back in the box.

  “I asked you a question.”

  She kept her eyes fixed on the mess on the floor. “Th-the extra bandages,” she stammered. “You sent for them, for the infirmary. I-I-I was sent to help.”

  The two doctors looked at one another with raised eyebrows.

  “Not here, you weren’t, these are the men’s wards. The women’s wards are through there.” He pointed to an identical set of doors at the end of a long corridor. Deborah stuffed the box and the rubber gloves, as well as her trembling fingers would allow, out of sight in the bottom of the cabinet. Then she grabbed her tray with its assortment of vaguely medical items that she was beginning to think looked about as useful as fairy lights at a funeral.

  “Excuse me,” she mumbled and bobbed a clumsy curtsey. “I must have taken a wrong turn.” Trying not to run, she hurried in the direction of the women’s ward.

  The two doctors had not moved. Deborah could hear them talking urgently, could feel their eyes on her back. The end of the corridor seemed hopelessly far away, but she daren’t go any faster.

  “Hey! You, girl!”

  Deborah’s heart pounded with fear, but she kept on walking, pretending she hadn’t heard, pretending they were calling somebody else.

  “I said stop! We want a word with you.”

  Chapter 16

  The Lord High Protector looked down across the rooftops of the Holy City State. In the perpetual sandy dusk, even at midday, the grey tenements of the periphery remained foggy and indistinct. He looked down with eyes that had never seen a painting, never read a poem, never gazed down the nave of a cathedral. He looked down on the massed grey towers and heavy spires, the mirror glass and concrete blocks of Providence, and saw an impregnable seat of power and glory. So long—his brows drew together—so long as there was no enemy within.

  The Protector’s thoughts did not turn to Deborah who, as far as he knew, was safely locked away, and, he was certain, had no clue as to her power. Nor did they evoke Principal Anastasias who loathed him to the extent of wishing a mouldering heap of dog fur in his place. The Serpent Witch was always there, of course, but the Hemisphere would keep her and hers out. So long—he repeated to himself—so long as there was no traitor within.

  The door flew open, jolting the Protector out of his reverie. He swung round in a fury, just in time to see the startled look on his wife’s face disappear and her usual cat-who-got-the-cream expression appear in its place.

  “So this is where you’re hiding!”

  “These are the Protector’s official apartments, madam, where else would you have me work?” His voice was icy, suspicious. “Tell me your business, then leave.”

  Selene glided across the room and looked out across the city. “Tremendous view you have. What a shame there’s nothing worth looking at.”

  “You must have been expecting to find something of interest, my dear. And it wasn’t the view from the window.”

  Selene turned and let her fingers riffle through the papers on the Protector’s desk. She picked up a sheet covered with figures and glanced lazily around the room at the monitors showing street scenes, temples, and office interiors. Her fingers crumpled the edge of the paper, and her eyes flicked to the screen of the laptop left open on the desk. The dark eyes widened. The Protector’s hand slammed the laptop closed, and Selene let out a startled squeak.

  “Found what you were looking for, my dear?” the Protector hissed.

  “You could have trapped my fingers in that thing, whatever it is!” She waved her hand vigorously in front of her face, as if to stave off the vapours. The Protector would have laughed had he not been so outraged. Selene turned to face him, the vapours gone and a cajoling light in her eyes.

  “I only came to remind you the director of Providence Soy Processing is coming to dinner, so not to work too late.” She placed a hand on the Protector’s collar and ran it down his lapel. “You know you have a tendency to forget your social engagements.” Her mouth formed a rosebud pout. The cold glitter of the Protector’s eyes did not soften. The silence lingered; tension filled the stuffy air. Selene gave an almost inaudible sigh and let her hand drop to her side.

  “Well I at least intend to make myself presentable for this evening.” She turned, the silvery silk of her robe swirling after her. “I suggest you give yourself time to change out of that…parade ground costume too.” Her nostrils dilated in a disdainful sniff. “You know it makes you look like a medieval chef’s pièce de résistance. All that’s missing is the apple in your mouth.”

  With a flash of white teeth and a rustle of expensive silk, Selene departed. The Protector said nothing, his expression unchanged, waiting for the click of the doo
r as his wife closed it behind her.

  For a moment the tall, silver-robed figure of his wife filled his thoughts. He clenched his hands behind his back and tapped the swagger stick nervously against the back of his high boots. Why did she have to be so…complicated? Why was it not enough for her to be a statuesque beauty, the consort of the most powerful man in the Holy City? What more did she want?

  He knew the answer, of course—power of her own. She was not his wife for nothing.

  He flicked the swagger stick angrily back and forth. Damn the woman! She refused to fulfil the obligation of all High Caste women to produce a son to carry on his line, and she mocked him openly. The Protector was beginning to recognize his obsession with the cold, haughty heiress for what it was. He still thought about her night and day, but in annoyance during the day and tinged with fear in the loneliness of the night. Perhaps the enemy within was a hydra with more heads than he imagined.

  The problem of Selene could wait. The known enemy, he mused, the dreamers of traitorous dreams, must be eliminated. The Ignorants must not be allowed to rally to their Queen. It was time to call the Assembly of the Elders and put into action phase two of the population cull.

  Chapter 17

  “By the pimply arse of the Wise God, this is a heavy fucker!” Ezra spat on his hands, hitched up his dirty grey trousers, and took a firmer grip on the sack of laundry.

  “Shhhh! Ez,” hissed Diarmuid, his teammate. “You’re not at home here. They chop your tongue out for blasphemy you know.”

  “Ah, go on with you. Who’s listening? Just you, me, and this pile of filthy washing. Unless they’ve got the laundry bugged, of course,” Ezra added with a grin and nudged Dairmuid in the ribs. “Bugged, bugs, get it?”

  Diarmuid looked round uneasily, not in the mood for jokes, and lowered his voice. “That might not be such a daft idea. There’s been a lot of parties busted up lately, and Mother Freyja’s been warned. She’ll only tell the stories when she’s in…You know…” He jerked his thumb downwards.

  “Underworld?” Ezra asked innocently.

  “Ssssh!”

  “Ah, don’t be so soft.” Ezra spat on his hands again and frowned. “Bleedin’ hell though, I meant what I said about this sack. What’ve they put in it, rocks? Does some ape think this is Colditz?”

  “Where?”

  “Or maybe he thinks he’s the Count of Monte-Cristo,” Ezra mused.

  “Who?”

  “Or it could just be what’s left of last week’s soya bread ration. Let’s have a look anyway.”

  After all, even stale soya bread could be made into a soup. Ezra undid the drawstring of the sack and the two laundry workers peered inside. A pair of frightened, dark eyes blinked back at them.

  The two men looked at one another, then back at the laundry bag. Diarmuid grinned. “Nothin’,” he pronounced in a loud theatrical voice for the benefit of the bug. “Just the usual filth. Let’s heave it on the cart with the rest.”

  The two men picked up the sack and laid it carefully at the front of the cart. Taking care not to pile anything on top of it, they finished their job, and each settled one of the shafts on his shoulder and advanced the cart to the door. Ezra gave it a hefty kick and shouted to the guards on the other side, “Sanitation department, open up!”

  To the sound of a key turning in a lock and a heavy bar being pulled back, the doors swung open onto a side street behind the House of Correction. A detachment of Black Boys watched with bored indifference as Ezra and Diarmuid pulled the heavy cart into the street. Black-clad from cap to boots, the guards slouched against the prison wall, black riot batons swinging from their belts. Heads turned to watch, eyes hidden behind dark glasses.

  “The teams to empty the rest of the wheelie bins will be along before noon, General, er, Captain, sir,” Ezra called out to the patrol leader, biting his lip at the guard’s black look. They were about to brace themselves for the long haul to the laundry when one of the Black Boys, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, stepped in front of them.

  “Not so fast, yah pair of stinking smart arses! We’ve been on duty outside this dunghill for three weeks now with no leave, except to go to the effin’ temple to effin’ pray. An’ it’s time we had a bit of fun.” He looked around with bleary, belligerent eyes and grinned drunkenly. “I think we should tip this cart over and search it. Then, I think we should cut up these Ignorant subhumans a bit for being uncooperative. What say you, lads?”

  Diarmuid and Ezra stared at the ground, clutching the cart shafts hard. The guard lunged forward and grabbed the shaft on Ezra’s side, at the same time drawing a long knife from his belt. The Black Boys were too stupid to be trusted with firearms, but they possessed a fine array of less complicated weaponry. Fear gripped the two laundry workers. A mutilated Ignorant corpse lying in the gutter was a common enough sight for them to know the guard meant every word he said. Two more guards stirred, hefting their short batons. But before they had lurched to their feet, the officer knocked them both to the ground again with a boot in the chest.

  “You want to catch the plague from that stuff? Use your brain will you, Saul, if you can find it.”

  “Try looking up his arse,” somebody sniggered.

  Guard Saul twisted his knife threateningly and glared at the officer with mutiny in his eyes. Some of the others muttered curses, and their hands also went to their belts.

  The officer turned to face them. “Don’t even think about it,” he said in a low, menacing voice. “As for you” —with a rapid movement he brought down his baton on Ezra’s back, knocking him into the dust—“you can get out of it! Go on, get your stinking rags out of here, before I let these hyaenas loose on you.”

  Ezra and Diarmuid set off at a run, the cart rattling along the pitted asphalt, and only slowed down when they reached the intersection with the main road to the Ignorant sector. Diarmuid shot worried glances at his friend. Ezra’s face was drawn and white but he grinned.

  “By Good Queen Medb, but that was a close shave,” he panted. “Me an’ my big mouth! Bunch of bleedin’ savages, though. It’s just a flesh-wound, Der,” Ezra reassured his friend. “He wasn’t really trying. But if they’d found our dark-eyed beauty, we’d have been dead meat, if not worse.”

  “Too right,” Diarmuid agreed, breathing heavily. “The Black Boys take their massacring bloody seriously. But we had to do it. It’s only a kid, did you see?”

  Ezra nodded. “Whatever he did, fair play to him, I say. Now, let’s get our backs into it before they send another squad out looking for him.”

  * * * *

  The main streets of Providence were paved with smooth granite, but the war had taken everyone unawares, and the outer steel Hemisphere had been lowered before the building work was finished. The back streets, especially in the poorer quarters, were left mostly unmade, at best surfaced in asphalt that had become broken and pot-holed over the years. From his position in the back of the laundry cart, Zachariah was able to appreciate fully the lamentable state of the roads in the Ignorant quarter. In a frantic effort to reach the laundry before a roadblock was set up, Ezra and Diarmuid worked up the kind of lather Victorian cab horses used to roll over and die in. They pulled and strained, the sweat sticking to their torn and dirty work clothes, the shafts of the cart rubbing their shoulders raw.

  At last the cart rattled off the road onto a smoother surface, and the jolting stopped. From the hollow echoes, Zachariah judged they were in a large hall. The human smells of blood, sweat, and urine that had filled his nostrils since he hid in the laundry room were joined by pungent chemical smells, sharp and acrid, that irritated his throat. There were urgent mutterings as strong hands picked up his sack and carried him swiftly. But where?

  He could not help but remember the stories he had heard about the Ignorants. He remembered too, with chilling clarity, the unchained fury of the crowd on the day of the trial. It had been the last big Ignorant trial when twenty of them were accused of the ritual murder
of a child and of drinking the child’s blood. Until now he had never really believed the stories, but what if they were true?

  Zachariah could hear the panting breath of his carriers and found himself panting in unison as he was bounced up and down in their arms. He was aware of being in a large room, bustling with activity, and full of voices and mechanical noises. The air was hot and steamy and he could hardly breathe through the thick canvas of the sack.

  After many minutes the bouncing stopped, and he was manoeuvred, lowered down, lower, lower, then dropped. His stomach rose into his throat with a sickening feeling as he fell, slid, down, down. A sharp cry escaped from him, but almost before it was audible his fall was stopped, the breath knocked out of him, and once again he had the sensation of being caught up in a strong pair of arms.

  “Gotcha!”

  This time he resisted and began to struggle. He had fallen into a strange place, cool and silent, far beneath the ground. It was too much, the silence, the darkness, the fear of being trapped. Why had he not brought at least a knife? Hands turned him the right way up and set him roughly on his feet.

  This is how they do it, he thought, they’ve got me miles from help, deep in one of their secret places. This is where they cut my throat.

  Clenching his fists as he gathered up all his courage and his strength, Zachariah gritted his teeth and prepared to fight his way out.

  Chapter 18

  Deborah’s blood froze. If she ran, she could perhaps reach the women’s wards before anyone else understood what the two doctors were shouting about. But she couldn’t hurtle through the entire infirmary like a mad bull without being stopped. The imperious voice lashed at her again. Her brisk walk slowed and dragged to a halt.

  “Hey, will you turn round and look at me when I’m speaking to you?”

  Deborah turned and walked slowly back. The doctor who had called her glared angrily, his hands on his hips.

  “Since you’re here, there’s a job you can do first. Come on then, girl, get a move on, or the secure ward will be awash in blood.”