Green Jack

by Alyxandra Harvey

  Chapter 4

  Jane

  It was a great honour to visit the cella temple, even at three o’clock in the morning, but Jane would have preferred to be almost anywhere else. Even on watch on the parapets in the cold rain. The guard took her past clusters of administrative builds, squat and brown as toadstools. He didn’t stop at the Collegium temple which glowed, candlelight and lamplight shining through jeweled glass. Jane had only ever visited for her Naming Day omens. The Enclave citizens went to the outdoor porticos for readings and temple duties, it was rare to be allowed inside the private cella if you weren’t a Numina. Mostly it was reserved for Woodwives at their prayers. She could hear them chanting, even this late into the night.

  The soldier took her to the main garden dome, where condensation gleamed on the inside of the glass. The air was humid and thick between rows of scarlet peas, cucumber vines, and the leafy tops of beets. This dome grew most of the food grown for the citizens of the Enclave. It had an intricate watering system, and specialized glass that filtered the sun when it was too hot and regulated the temperature when it was too cold. It was impervious to hail, ice, and bullets.

  There was no earthly reason why Jane should be here.

  Paths radiated out from the centre, which was basically a cellar transformed into a prison. It had a four poster bed, a television, music system, even a bathroom with running hot water tucked into an alcove -- but it had no windows, no doors, and a ladder lowered down only when the Green Jack was needed elsewhere.

  It was one thing to learn about it in school and another thing entirely to see it in person. The weak light from a dangling lantern showed the whites of his eyes behind his mask of entwined leaves. He lay on his back on a plush mattress, ankles crossed as though he was bored, but his every muscle radiated tension. He was the reason the plants in the dome thrived, the reason Jane and everyone she knew had food to eat.

  And he was dying.

  All captive Green Jacks died. No amount of science or numen or green prayers were able to prevent it. Certainly not an Oracle with crushing and unexplained headaches.

  A door opened behind a cluster of orange trees, displacing the humid air. A woman joined them; her face was stern though tiny laugh lines bracketed her mouth. She wore a band embroidered with bright red flowers in her short black hair. “You must be Jane Highgate.” Something about the way she was smiling made Jane even more nervous. “I’m Tia,” she continued, oblivious or uncaring. Probably uncaring. Jane had never been particularly good at hiding her emotions.

  The Green Jack bared his teeth. “I’m going to eat your liver one day, Tia.”

  “Charming, Hudson.” Tia motioned to Jane. “This way.” She ducked under an arbour dipping with grapes and wide flat leaves like hands grasping at them as they passed by.

  Jane followed because she didn’t know what else to do. And the nudge from the soldier’s rifle in her back was rather persuasive. “I didn’t know Green Jacks were cannibals.”

  “Oh, they’re not. Hudson’s just Hudson. Keep up now, you’re late as it is.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “It’s not far,” Tia replied, which wasn’t an answer. She led them down a back stairwell stinking of antiseptic. Red security lights blinked in neat rows beside locked doors. There was a small auditorium at the end of the hall with ropes squaring off an area in the centre. Jane joined half a dozen other students waiting in an uncertain clump. She recognized a few; Blake and Lee looked as surprised as she felt. Well, Blake did. Lee didn’t look concerned, but then she never made any kind of expression, even the time she caught her thumb in the door and nearly broke her knuckle. “What’d you do?” Blake whispered. He was so tall he had to duck down slightly to talk to her. “You don’t seem the type to get into trouble. Despite the haircut.”

  Lee had shaved her head entirely. Her parents owned an entire block of houses they’d connected with elaborate covered arched bridges, like a koi garden. Jane’s mother envied their houses almost as much as she hated Jane’s ‘common’ hair. Which was, of course, the main reason she’d grown it out.

  “No talking,” one of the administrators snapped. Lee stared straight ahead like she was training to be in the Protectorate.

  Jane noticed a camera suspended from the ceiling, and rows of test tubes and vaguely scientific-looking equipment. None of which made the situation any clearer. Or less intimidating.

  Neither did Asher, strutting through the door. He saw Jane and snickered. “What the hell are you doing here, mouse?”

  Jane forced herself not to react. He only fed off of it.

  “Silence, please,” Tia called out. Three Directorate administrators with an imposing collection of embroidered leaves on their sleeves stood behind her. Their rank was enough to make Jane’s mother drool on herself. It became a tiny bit clearer why Jane was here.

  Especially when Cartimandua strode into the room, effectively holding every ounce of attention. Jane had only ever seen the Legata on feast days and in victory parades when a new Green Jack was brought into the City. She had the mark of the Protectorate tattooed at the base of her throat. Her eyes were very blue. She was in her early thirties but she’d already been Legata for the last seven years, trained by her father who had been one of the first Directors.

  “As you know, The Directorate was formed to keep order during the Lake Wars and the Cataclysm. We work tirelessly to safeguard the Green Jacks, and grow the food that keeps you and your families alive. But even with our system, there are more people than plants. The weather, regrettably, resists any attempts at dependable regulation, even with the Numinas and the Order. The City is plagued with rebels and rats, with Elysians who would always rather take than give. But the Protectorates keeps us safe and the Directorate keeps us well. We owe them our loyalty and our allegiance.”

  Jane had heard versions of this speech since before she could walk; in public announcements on the train, on the screens in the Rings before movies, and between shows on the vidscreens in the Enclave. From her mother before every meal. Pamphlets were handed out on feast days. Oaths were required when you entered the Collegium and again when you graduated. Jane shifted, her mind racing and skittering. There was a pressure in the room, the kind that builds and builds until it shatters into a storm that sweeps through streets and sewers.

  “We must never be seen to be weak.” Cartimandua added, her voice reaching every corner of the auditorium, even though her tone was soft as water. Jane shivered, imagining monsoons, floods, tsunamis. “We must make the hard decisions, for if not us, then who?” She looked at the huddle of confused students, taking the time to meet each of their eyes. “And you will help us.”

  A young man with a scar on his face entered the auditorium. He wore leather straps across his chest prickling with knives. The woman who followed had a shaved head tattooed with oak leaves, two short swords and small round shield painted with a Green Jack’s face, sharp leaves exploding out of his mouth. They stepped over the ropes and bowed to Cartimandua.

  “Begin.”

  They erupted into violence. He was strong and flexible, she was fast and vicious. He got the first hit, slashing across her arm with his dagger. The leather of her bracer split but she was already moving. Instead of whirling away as Jane expected, she closed in, ducking under his arm. She smashed her palm into his sternum, then his throat. He punched her in the kidney and she fell to one knee, using her new vantage point to slice her sword across his Achilles’ tendon. His scream turned into a gurgle of blood when her second sword severed his trachea. He died coughing and twitching while the administrators watched him dispassionately and Jane tried not to throw up. Someone gasped. Jane wasn’t sure if the sound had come from her own mouth.

  It happened so quickly she barely had time to wonder if she should do something, never mind try to figure out what that might be. An hour ago she’d been complaining about strawberries and now there was a boy dead on the floor at her feet. The students st
ood frozen together, except for Asher staring at the girl with a sick, interested smile.

  She bowed to Cartimandua again before marching away without a backward glance at the audience or the dead boy. When the soldiers dragged the body away, smearing blood over the tiles, Jane had to clench her teeth against the bile burning in her throat.

  “We all have different gifts,” Cartimandua said. “This man gave up his life to test his strength for the good of us all. What will you give up?” At her gesture, two students were pushed into the roped off area. “Only one of you walks away.”

  They looked as confused as Jane felt. Cartimandua just looked impatient. A soldier tasered one of the students dropped, gasping. Cartimandua gave her a moment to recover. “I said, only one of you walks away. Fight.”

  Jane’s heart was racing. What had her mother gotten her into to? Portia was the one who wanted intrigue and power. Jane just wanted to run. She didn’t know anything about fighting. She was good at running on the tracks, good enough with a crossbow but everyone was. It was mandatory training to help guard the parapet. She drank star anise tea for the omens, read books, tried to avoid her mother----

  And she was next.

  “But I’m not a---.”

  Asher had already punched her. She staggered back, tasting blood. Only the fact that she’d been fighting numen headaches for the last few weeks helped her stay on her feet. Asher smirked, enjoying himself. When she tried to punch him back he easily avoided her, stepping aside and then ramming his elbow into her spine. She landed hard, her knees cracking on the floor.

  She concentrated on ducking and dodging. She slipped on someone else’s blood and that time, she didn’t get up again. Asher fisted his hand in her hair, lifting her head back. When Cartimandua snapped her fingers, he let go so fast Jane couldn’t catch herself. She had to crawl to the sidelines to get out of the way of the next match.

  When it was over, they were battered and bloody but no better informed.

  “Disappointing.” Cartimandua marched along the line of students, blood under her boots. “This is the problem,” she continued as someone behind Jane began to weep. “No matter what we do, it isn’t enough. Not with rebels taking out Taggers and Greencoats stealing Green Jacks and too many ungrateful people to feed.”

  She stopped, pointing at a student. “Amphitheatre.” A clerk behind her began to take notes. “Garden, garden, second trials. Amphitheatre.” She flicked a glance over Jane’s bruised face. “Garden. Really, I expected more from the children of the Enclave. You’ll have to do better.”

  “I’m sure it goes without saying that we demand your utmost discretion. Should you speak to anyone about this, anyone at all without clearance, the consequences will be swift and brutal.”

  There was nothing left to say.

  Jane knew exactly what a fly felt like, wrapped in a spider’s invisible threads impossible to cut.

  “You are dismissed.”