Green Jack

by Alyxandra Harvey

  Chapter 54

  Jane

  Jane followed the captain through the Enclave streets, escorted by three additional soldiers. Everything looked the same, from the painted doors to the pots of peppermint leaves; she was the one who was different. Even so, all she could think about was Kiri. They stopped at the main Cella, the marble gleaming in the torchlight. Her mother waited in her best dress even though it was the middle of the night. Jane sagged with relief. One more person who was safe. And if her mother was safe, her sisters would be as well.

  “Is this your daughter?” the captain asked her mother.

  She looked down her nose at Jane. “Yes.” She didn’t say anything else, didn’t ask after Jane’s bruises or her disappearance.

  “Very good,” the captain said. “Thank you, Lady Highgate.”

  Lady Highgate. That was new. Jane felt mildly ill wondering what her mother had done to gain the new title. “Are you here to take me home?” she asked softly, knowing very well what the answer would be.

  “Of course not,” her mother replied. “Not until you’ve proven yourself to the Directorate. Until then, I’d have preferred you’d actually died.”

  Jane swallowed a surprise sting of tears, and moved from the vestibule and into the domed rotunda without a word. They crossed the mosaic floor, patterned with leaves and eyes. The Pythia statue loomed as beautiful as ever in the empty Cella, standing guard with the other Green Gods. They took Jane behind the statue and down an aisle of columns, into a set of basement rooms she hadn’t even known existed. “I don’t understand,” she said. “Why can’t I go home?”

  “I told you, there’s a bounty on your head. We sent word to headquarters. Until then, you’ll answer some questions.”

  “Of course, captain.” It was strange how easily her voice went meek, her eyes downcast. And yet finally, it felt like a shield, not a sword to be wielded against her. The sword belonged to her now. Suddenly, her eyes were lowered to hide a surge of triumph and determination. “May I have some water?” she asked when he pointed to a bench inside a room lit by candles and with a glass wall, dark as scrying mirror. “I’ve been running for days.”

  He nodded to one of the soldiers who scurried away. The room was cold and empty and white. The water she was given tasted like mint and she smiled. “It’s good to finally be home.”

  The captain paced in front of her, eyes narrowed. “You say you were abducted while on watch?”

  “Yes, captain. I thought I saw something while on patrol and went to investigate.”

  “Why didn’t you raise the alarm?”

  “I wasn’t sure if there was actually anything to raise the alarm over. It was dark and late and I was tired. By the time I realized what was happening, it was too late.”

  “How did they get away? The parapet is manned at all hours. We have sentries, patrols.”

  “I don’t know,” she said regretfully. “I’m a novice Numina, sir, not a soldier. They put something over my mouth and I was unconscious for hours.”

  “And where did these men take you?”

  “I didn’t say men, captain,” Jane returned. Caradoc had warned her they would try to trip her up on the details. “There were both men and women, I believe. I can’t be entirely sure. I was blindfolded most of the time. But when I finally escaped I was on the edge of a forest.”

  “You were there for two months?” he asked dubiously.

  She blinked. “Has it really been that long?”

  The pressure of his silence threatened to break her. She bit her tongue to keep from babbling. She jumped when the door opened and the soldiers snapped to attention, even the captain.

  Cartimandua.

  She wore the same tunic, her blue eyes shrewd and sharp. Jane could see the resemblance now, the same stubborn jaw as Caradoc, a certain slant to the cheekbones. Homesickness burned through her.

  “Thank you for sending word, captain,” Cartimandua smiled. Her dark hair was braided and coiled over her head like a crown. Knives bristled from the tops of her boots. The Directorate tattoo between her collarbones was dark as a jet pendant. “Jane, again. Interesting.”

  The last thing Jane wanted to be was interesting.

  “You left jus after we assigned you to the Garden,” Cartimandua continued.

  “I didn’t leave,” Jane said. “I was taken.”

  “How unfortunate. And did you happen to mention the Program to our captors?’

  “No!”

  “Hmm. And why did they take you?”

  She swallowed. “I assumed they wanted an Oracle. They kept asking me to read omens.” She could hear Caradoc’s voice in her head: tell as much of the truth as you can.

  “And they did this to you?” Cartimandua approached, gaze flicking from bruise to bruise to blistered feet.

  “Yes.”

  “And still you told them nothing?” She half-smiled. “You must be tougher than you look, Jane. I’m impressed.”

  “You’re assuming they knew about the Program to ask me,” Jane pointed out.

  She raised a brow sharply. “This one’s clever,” she murmured to the captain. She turned back to Jane who was trying not to squirm as her spine began to tingle.

  Not now, she pleaded to herself. Please, not now.

  “And you somehow managed to escape, and so close to the Trials. How convenient.” Cartimandua circled Jane so slowly she felt like a sparrow trapped in a cat cage. And she knew the exact moment Cartimandua saw her numina mark. Her fingers closed over Jane’s nape, digging in painfully. “Captain, you may go.”

  “But surely…is it safe?”

  Cartimandua turned her head slowly. “Don’t make me repeat myself.”

  The soldiers bowed and hurried out. Cartimandua slammed Jane into the glass wall. Jane’s cheek cracked against the glass, igniting her bruises. “You’ve met my baby brother, haven’t you, Jane?” She jabbed at Jane’s blinded eye tattoo. “What a bother he’s always been.”

  Jane felt blood tricking from her temple. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  She clicked her tongue. “I don’t like it when people play me for a fool, Jane. It makes me cranky.”

  Jane tried to swallow, but her neck was contorted at the wrong angle.

  “You know, your mother is most cooperative. A shame it doesn’t run in the family.” She tapped on the wall twice and the room behind it was suddenly flooded with light. The mirrored glass showed Kiri tied to a chair, crisscrossed with ropes and blood. Her left eye was swollen shut.

  Jane struggled in earnest. “What have you done to her?”

  “The council wanted me to take your family into custody.” She smiled, as if sharing a secret. “But I was a girl once too, Jane. And often, our friends are our true family. Especially at the Collegium, I’m told. I never tested strongly for numen, I’m afraid. Unlike you.”

  Her spine tingled. Cartimandua was doing all of this as much because she had no numen of her, as because she needed to protect a City.

  “We had to question her, you understand,” Cartimandua said, pleasantly, as if they were discussing scones. “I’m reasonably certain that she’s no threat---at least not to the Program, and certainly not now. It’s too late to stop it. I was going to let her go.” She sounded disappointed. “But she appears to have become rather useful.” She released Jane. “So I’ll ask you again. What is Caradoc planning?”

  “I don’t know!” Jane replied frantically.

  Cartimandua signalled and a soldier stepped forward to slap Kiri across the face. Blood dripped form her nose, spattering over her. “Please,” Jane shouted, pounding on the glass. “Stop,” she begged Cartimandua. “Please, stop.”

  “You have the power here, little novice,” Cartimandua replied, leaning against the wall. “Your words can stop this.”

  Jane rubbed her eyes. Kiri’s face kept fading away to other images, some past, some future: red dusted rooftops, the oppressive heat of the farm dome, Saffron lying too sti
ll, Caradoc’s blue eyes watching her through bare branches.

  “I’m sure my handsome brother filled your head with romantic stories of Green Jacks and life in the woods. You probably ate strawberries every day. Do you know what the Elysians eat, Jane? Mud and protein paste,” Cartimandua said. “My brother is the villain here, not me. He hoards the Green Jacks. We try to feed thousands, but he gets the ballads and the pretty girls sacrificing themselves for him.”

  She shook her head. “Do you have any idea how many lives we save? And still, the Elysians fight us at every turn. They have babies whom we feed, just to have them raised into rebels. It’s exhausting, frankly. And if I was as heartless as you’d like to believe, I’d snap your neck and hers. After long hours of torture.” She shrugged. “But I’ve never trusted torture. It’s not very efficient.”

  Jane tried to close her eyes, to stop the visions. But it was too late. She knew her pupils had changed, and Cartimandua had seen it. She pulled a syringe out of her pocket, filled with pale blue liquid, and jabbed it into Jane’s neck. On the other side of the glass, Kiri screamed.

  Jane sagged, weak and dizzy. She was no longer made of flesh and bone and numen, she was mist and smoke and might float away entirely. This wasn’t part of the plan. There was a plan, wasn’t there? She couldn’t be sure anymore.

  Cartimandua guided her to the bench. “What do you see, Jane?”

  Jane tried to push the images away. She bit her tongue, her lips, trying to stop the words from flooding out. She tasted copper.

  Cartimandua crouched beside her, waiting patiently. “It’s a truth serum,” she explained with a kind of gentleness that sent shivers skittering down Jane’s spine. “There’s no point fighting it.”

  The back of her neck was on fire but the rest of her might as well be drowning.

  “Tell me, Jane, what do you see?”