Green Jack

by Alyxandra Harvey

  Chapter 11

  Saffron

  When Saffron got back to the apartment, the chairs were overturned and there was a new hole in the wall. Ragged plaster slashed by a knife blistered the fox she’d painted with a tail made of fire. She’d liked that drawing, damn it.

  “Killian’s brothers must still be in a mood,” she said, pushing into her bedroom. Killian was sitting next to Oona who was propped against her bed, blood on her face and matted in her thin braided hair. Saffron skidded to a stop, feeing exactly the same way she’d felt the time she’d mouthed off to a Protectorate soldier and he’d punched her in the throat. Her breath stuttered and froze.

  “I’m all right,” Oona croaked, dabbing at her split lip with the hem of her skirt. “I just need the comfrey ointment.”

  “Why would Killian’s brothers do this to you?” Saffron asked, her voice strange and cold.

  Oona patted Killian’s hand, as though he didn’t know exactly what kind of brothers he had. “Wasn’t them.”

  Saffron’s hands were shaking as she struggled to open the tube of ointment. “Tell me who I need to kill, Oona.”

  Oona clicked her tongue. “Looks worse than it is, I reckon.”

  “I’ll be the judge of that,” Saffron said. To her, it looked worse than the bodies that gathered in the ditch around the Wall.

  “Won’t need stitches.”

  “You still haven’t told me who did this to you.” She crouched by the side of the bed, suspicion like prickly thorns in her mouth. “Let me see your arm.”

  “It’s fine.”

  “Then let me see it, old woman.”

  Under the sleeve of her knitted sweater, Oona’s arm was already wrapped in a length of flowered material she’d torn from her hem. Blood seeped through it as Saffron tugged the knot loose. Three slashes cut her forearm and they were deep enough to show the parted flesh underneath the hastily applied butterfly sutures. It was the same cuts Saffron had, the same number. A warning. “Argent.”

  She suddenly felt as though she was holding the entire Kill Zone inside her body, she was landmines and razor wire, bonechimes and warning signs.

  “This is my fault.” She yanked a pack out from behind the water barrels under her cot, stuffing more daggers into her boots, belt, and the wrist holster that sat over her own burning cuts.

  “You didn’t cut me, little girl.”

  “I’m the reason Argent even knows who you are. I did this. And it ends now.” She finally had vegetables now, enough to sell get Argent’s money. Killian touched her arm. She glared at him. “I’m not waiting another second.”

  He turned her towards the window, flashing red with the curfew lights. She wanted to argue but the black market wouldn’t run during the new curfew anyway, they’d wait until morning. She couldn’t do anything but wait. Frustration made her feel rabid. She punched the wall, cracking the plaster.

  “I need some of the whirligigs,” she said suddenly, pulling a jar of maple seedpods from the cabinet in the corner. The doors were painted with grotesque gargoyle faces, leering to discourage the casual observer.

  Oona lifted her head slightly. “What do you need those for? We have protein paste left. No need to resort to maple pods.”

  “I might not be able to get close enough to stab Argent in the spine like he deserves,” she said grimly, pouring a handful of the dried pods into a mortar and pestle and crushed them into a fine powder. “But I can make damn sure he leaves my witch-grandmother alone.”

  Saffron waited at the window until the curfew lights finally switched off and dawn glittered on the glass. When she left in search of the underground markets with her pockets full of radishes and potatoes, Killian was at her side. There were too many patrols, too many soldiers. Finding the new entrance to the markets wasted precious time. It was always deep in the Core, at the very heart of the worst the City had to offer. There were no solar panels, no generators, no batteries or sunsticks; only the stubs of old candles. Everything around her was the colour of Oona’s bruises: the sky, wet stone, dark stains on the pavement. Her boots were thick with mud and substances she’d rather not examine too closely by the time they found the mark over a broken door.

  The stairs had long since crumbled, or been hacked at with a sledgehammer. The entrance was basically a hole in the wall to a board of old rotten wood crossing over the runoff inside an old subway tunnel. Creaking alarmingly, it led her to another platform of slick tiles and then down a flight of steps into the lower tunnel.

  Torches and a few cracked lanterns dangled from the curved ceiling. Scavengers and vendors sold everything from Green Jack charms to the candied violets the Enclave families ate, to reclaimed iron weapons and anarchist flyers. It had a dark, cheerful unruliness; a dangerous secret just this side of suicide. If the Protectorate ever found them, they’d burn it all to the ground with everyone trapped inside. Luckily if the markets gave them no reason to be found, they didn’t bother searching too hard.

  She skirted the booths of the fortune tellers, the repurposed clothing, and piles of old gas masks left over from the Lake Wars. She usually came down here to sell Oona’s ointments. Her usual contacts wouldn’t be able to afford what she had to sell today. Alaia might, she had the kind of presence that let her get away with anything. She was dark and tall and elegant, with a shaved skull and long slinky dresses totally unfit for life underground. How she managed to keep the hem clean of dirt and water was a spell she could have made a fortune on, if she could find some Enclave kids to sell it to.

  “Saffron,” she said with a welcoming smile. There was a red glitter star on her Adam’s apple. “And Killian. Mmm, handsome, you just get yummier.” She blew him a kiss. “What have you got for me?”

  Saffron went around to the side of the table scattered with a strange collection of miniature tarot cards painted with all the known seasons, even the Toad Rain which had only happened once; cat teeth, painted rat bones, pigeon feathers made into earrings. Saffron showed her the potato, still hairy with dirt clinging to the roots.

  Alaia’s mouth dropped open for barely a second, and she murmured something in French, something half-awed, half-terrified. She glanced around, as though soldiers might be lurking in the shadows. Worse than soldiers, something as simple as a potato could cause a riot down here. One potato could grow a dozen more. She reached out to touch it, stopped herself. The white tattoo of leaves curled around her wrist and up her arm glowed in the uncertain light.

  “So, do you want it?” Saffron asked impatiently.

  “Of course, I want it.”

  “Can you afford it?”

  “That’s the real question, isn’t it?” She crossed her arms, drumming her fingers on her elbows. “Take a turn, petite. I’ll have something when you come back this way.”

  “Four credits worth.” Usually, Killian did the bartering. It unnerved people, the way he wouldn’t speak, would only hold up two fingers, or three. But it wouldn’t work on Alaia; she’d been trying to get him to go home with her for a year now. She might ask him to be part of the bargain.

  “Three.”

  “There and a quarter.”

  “Done.”

  It was more than she’d ever seen at one time, never mind held in her own hand. They got an assortment of things for the rest of the produce (honey, cricket meal, oregano oil) and then circled back to Alaia. She now wore a leather pouch strapped cross wise between her breasts and next to two curved daggers. Enough to be safe, not enough to give it away that she was protecting something valuable. “Take the feathers, petite,” Alaia said. “It will look as though you bought something instead of sold something.”

  Saffron reached over to pick up a pair of blue jay feather earrings. The potato rolled from her hand under a swath of beaded material that hadn’t been there before. Killian blocked them by leaning on the table and looking bored.

  “Let me help,” Alaia smiled, pushing Saffon’s braids off her shoulder and inserting the first earrin
g in her left earlobe. As she attached the second into the pierced hole above the first, a packet of seeds and one small battery slipped down the back of Saffron’s collar. They lodged against the spot where the knife strap cut across her jacket.

  The walk across the rickety bridge back out into the moldy basement was considerably more cheerful.

  If just as vengeful.