by Bella James
Maybe they could. Ruling a land full of ghosts would hardly be suitable for the Plutarch. He needed to keep his citizens alive so they could revere him, he could subjugate them, and they could continue to provide goods and services for Arcadia.
That's how the world worked.
But maybe the Arcadians had started the plague. Because when the rumors first came out, Julia hadn't even been taken from her home yet, dragged off in a bus to learn at the institute and become a blue Alpha. And back then, the plague seemed nothing more than a random case of influenza here and there. Everyone she knew believed the plague was rumor meant to discredit the Plutarch and probably in the Plutarch's court the belief was either the same or that the ruler had cleverly started a plague he could cure, to the benefit of his people – and his own image.
Only now people in reality were dying of a fictional plague. So maybe there was something everyone was missing. Maybe they'd talked the damn thing into existence.
Or maybe it had been there all along, and the fictitious nature of the plague had been the lie told by rebels so the people in the provinces wouldn't panic – and the people in the government would. Because after all, rulers had to have someone to rule. However much they might despise the citizens living in Pastoreum, Tundrus, Oceanus and even the borderlands outside the Forbidden Zone, the Plutarch had to have them.
So maybe Julia just wasn't privy to all the information.
It made sense that she wouldn't be told everything. That way if someone in the administration or the Aristocracy, or someone from the Institute where she'd been taught along with Oliva Bane, ran into and identified her, she couldn't give anything away when she was questioned.
And tortured.
Julia swallowed. The rebellion was in her blood. If the Oracle was right and Julia was a Bane and the Bane name really meant something, that meant she should be willing to die for the cause if need be.
Julia desperately didn't want to die. She wanted to see what happened next. She wanted to meet someone and fall in love. She wanted to see the Plutarch overthrown and the world bloom once he was put down.
She wanted to be one of the hands holding the whips when John Malvin fell.
Julia needed to talk to Livy.
CHAPTER 4
"Stop."
Selene's voice managed to ring off the marble in Livy's room despite the number of rugs and hangings meant to soften the sound.
"Get out of my way, sellsword."
The duenna's voice, on the other hand, was a snarl that simply fell away.
Livy watched the two women in fascination. There was nothing she could do yet. Her husband-to-be was expecting her for their trip to the upper reaches of the Plutarch's palace, where Olivia would meet with the new Oracle and describe her dream.
She had no idea how she was going to get away with that. Her dream was of rebellion. Over the course of the day since she'd taken refuge for her distress in a tale of her nightmare and the Plutarch, far from patting her on the head and saying Don't be a ninny, it was a bad dream, had determined to take her to the Oracle, Livy had panicked. There had to be some other story she could tell him, something that qualified as a nightmare and didn't qualify as a what if the rebellion fails? Nightmare, which just might get Livy killed.
Because that, she finally knew, was the terror behind her dreams. The ones in which villages fell and friends and neighbors perished and her own family was gunned down in front of her eyes. The dream was made up of her fear the rebellion would fail.
Fear the rebellion would fail, and that her family's involvement would come out.
Her father was back in Pastoreum, fixing plows as summer wore on. Harvest wasn't in sight yet, it was still early August – her father would be busy with traces that had ripped apart and oxen that needed re-shoeing, and making bullets.
These are freedom, he'd told her.
What does freedom mean to you? The examiners at the institute had asked her and Livy had said, Nothing. Because there was nothing it could be allowed to mean.
Across the room from Livy where she stood in the crimson dress of the day, one of the many dresses she'd wear during the days that led up to her wedding, Selene and Earnestine went head to head. The duenna insisted she was accompanying them to the Oracle. Selene insisted that Livy was her charge, and that the Oracle was upstairs in the same building they were currently in and the duenna could go do something with herself that sounded physically impossible to Livy.
She withdrew across the room, drifting onto a low couch where no one would notice her.
The dream was of the villages, of her family fighting against the Plutarch. And losing. That was her nightmare. That the villages would fall. That her family would fall.
All of her family. Even the faceless child in the dreams, the baby Livy's mother Madeline should have given birth to midwinter.
That was the dream that could get her killed as a traitor.
What if she were to dream instead a reversal. Livy sat up straighter. That was it. Reverse the dream. She'd tell the Oracle she'd dreamed that the Plutarch was falling, that he had gone to one of the villages, somewhere remote near the Forbidden Zone, and that the rebels had attacked and driven them into the wastes. That they were then ambushed by more troops and that the Plutarch, with Livy trying to reach him, fell in a barrage of bullets fired by a rebel.
She tried the story out. It held. If the Oracle saw the truth in her mind, and told it out of loyalty or fear to the Plutarch, there was nothing Livy could do. If the Oracles of Arcadia could actually read minds, she'd know Livy lied, and it would be up to her whether or not to expose Livy.
Just like it was up to Pip's roommate to decide what to do with the information she'd overhead when Livy was visiting with Pip.
If the Oracle didn't betray her, Livy would have learned something.
And if the Oracle couldn't read minds? Didn't matter. The Plutarch thought she could.
Livy tried out the story again. It held. It was so simple. She should have thought of it hours ago.
Livy stood, stomped to the middle of the room, stared at the battling women and used some of the anger that so often burned inside her.
"Hey!" she shouted at her Centurion and her (unwanted) companion duenna. "The Plutarch is waiting and I have a dream to interpret."
Selene instantly turned. She knew how much Livy dreaded the audience with the seer, how much she'd simply want to get it over with. "I'm sorry. This woman is so irritating. I was only trying to explain – "
Earnestine instantly turned as well. "Rude child. You will learn your place."
Livy fully expected the woman to raise a hand against her then, but the duenna must have decided she didn't want to lose the hand, so she didn't strike Livy, simply fell in with them as Selene headed for the door that would lead them into the hallway.
Which was enough like the corridor in her dream to keep Livy ill at ease.
She'd be glad when the wedding was set and the waiting was over.
* * *
THE SHOUTING MATCH between the usually staid Centurion and the unpleasant Earnestine Balk ended with the ring of staves on marble and the imperious pounding on the door.
Gods, they're still knocking, Livy thought, though the knock was enough it might have sent lesser doors flying off their hinges.
Selene stalked to the door and opened it. Outside, her fellow Centurion stood, impassive and elegant in the red coats with brass buttons. Six of them: the Plutarch's honor guard.
He stepped out of their ranks the instant it became clear that – as always – there was no threat to him present in Livy's room.
No threat he knew about, Livy thought.
John Malvin pushed past Selene, came in to bow and offer his arm to his bride-to-be. Would he be every bit as courtly at her execution, Livy wondered. Or would he play the martial leader like the Centurions chief? Or would he be the brokenhearted husband left behind?
She had no intention of letting a situation develop in w
hich the rest of the world might find out.
"I'm scared to talk to the Oracle," Livy said in a whispery voice. She took her intended's arm and held on, letting her slight weight dangle just a bit, as if he held her up.
His eyes softened. The man had infinite capacity for believing Livy needed, loved and revered him.
His ego might prove one of the best weapons in turning the tide toward the rebel's side.
"I will be with you every step of the way, my dear," he said, patting the hand that now rested on his forearm. Grandly he swept Livy from the room. She caught flashes of her crimson, jewel-encrusted dress in the panels of mirrors that lined the hallway. They reminded her of flashes of fire, of the villages burning, of people dying and the death toll rising.
She couldn't back out now. She clung to the ruler, really needing his strength to keep her footing.
At the Institute they had leaned the Oracle lived alone in a kind of palace of her own, one bathed in the fires of incense and warmed to the breath-taking blast heat of summer. But that had been an earlier oracle, one the Plutarch had killed in a fit of rage. This new Oracle was brought to live closer, only up polished marble steps that curled around a tower and opened into a lacework of stone columns and arches. Ivy and wild flowers rioted up the stone, growing up out of a floor of stone, the stone itself some 100 feet from the ground below. The plants reached skyward, uninhibited; there was no ceiling to the Oracle's realm, yet brazier after brazier lit the place, feeding the heady warmth and reeking incense scent.
Livy began to sweat. Didn't matter – by tomorrow the crimson dress would be destroyed. Tomorrow the Plutarch would bring her another dress, something beautiful and extravagant, something set with stones that might have cost miners in Tundrus their lives, something that spoke of the frivolous belief that only what she wanted mattered.
Livy could only hope when citizens around the world saw her on communications screens, broadcast there, they'd know she hadn't chosen the dresses.
Selene followed them up the slippery marble stair. The six inch heels on Livy's shoes caused her to move with great stately decorum – to go any faster would cause her to slip, fall and plunge headlong.
They emerged at last from the somewhat cold stone walls of the palace onto the rooftop lair of the Oracle.
The blind seer greeted them before they crossed half the rooftop. "John Malvin. Olivia Bane. Selene of Pastoreum. Welcome." She stood to receive them and Livy saw this future teller looked much the same as the last. Silken white hair cascaded over her shoulders. She stood tall, slim, somehow regal in bearing. Long-fingered hands gripped her robes together at her throat.
"Of course we are welcome here. There is nowhere in the land where I am not welcome," the Plutarch said, disrespect heavy in his voice.
Livy glanced at him. The Plutarch believed in the Oracle's power. He used what she told him to plan his campaigns and dominate his people. Why should he so discount the courtesies he would pay just about anyone else?
Next minute she understood. The Oracle was a tool. As such, he'd give her everything she needed – the freedom of the air above her ceiling-free abode, the braziers to heat the world around her despite the summer heat that withered the plants across Arcadia, the incense and the food and the shelter and whatever she may need. But respecting her, that he would not do. The woman was every bit as much a prisoner as Livy herself.
You are wise, Olivia Bane. Were you so aware when you plowed the fields in Agara?
Olivia schooled herself not to jump. The Oracle's voice had spoken directly into her mind, a ticklish sensation, like having someone whisper much too closely into her ear.
Can you hear me?
Of course I can.
There was no need to ask her next question. The Oracle saw it in her.
I see bits of the future. Not so different from what most people see.
Livy sent back a question without forming it.
Imagine piling rocks upon a thin sheet of wood stretched between two blocks. Higher and higher, and each layer less and less wide, forming a pyramid, with most of the force bowing the center of the wood downward. Eventually the wood will snap and the rocks will rain down. Nearly anyone can foresee that. What I see is the pattern the fallen rocks will make, the individuals nearby who will be hurt by flying splinters or a ricocheting rock. What I see is what countries will go to war as a result of the collapse of nothing more than a pile of rocks.
And which individuals will you stand with? Livy asked.
Those who do not use rocks to break things.
It was enough. She could feel the Oracle within her mind, the woman's essential goodness and her intelligence. She wasn't a rebel or even a rebel tool, but she was on the side of goodness and light and freedom, and none of those things existed in the Plutarch's realm, or in his mind, or in his beliefs.
"I trust you know why we have come," the ruler said. He stood holding Livy's arm, possessively now, rather than supporting her, but when Livy looked up at his words, which sounded somehow rude beyond measure, she saw a small smile on his face.
It was a joke, she realized, and for perhaps the first time since she had met him in the winter, an early promising Alpha presented to the man who would be her world if she was Chosen, Olivia Bane saw John Malvin as a human. One who might actually believe his own beliefs, however misguided and dangerous those beliefs were.
The idea rocked her. Now she clung to the Plutarch again to keep herself upright, not because of the insane shoes but because of her sudden confusion. All her life Olivia Bane, granddaughter of her rebellious grandfather, himself the son one of the warriors at the very tail end of the Before Times, and a hunter in the wastes who gave his life to bring back artefacts his family could use or sell, had despised the Aristocracy and what it represented, and hated the Plutarch in his total abusive power. She had seen him as nothing more than a figurehead for the power she battered herself against.
Even with the revelation, she wasn't fooled. He was dangerous as a stray dog that begs a bite of food and then bites the hand that offers it.
"Tell her the dream," he instructed her.
Olivia raised her head automatically, sure and straight again. No matter how she might doubt what she knew of the ruler, she wouldn't doubt herself. Her grandfather had told her to be true to herself. That must mean herself was good enough.
"It's the same dream, over and over," she said to the Oracle, and she really did want to know the answer to the question she asked next. "Do repeating dreams mean something?"
The Oracle's lips moved upward in a slight smile. "It's not that easy, Olivia Bane. Sometimes a recurring dream means nothing more than the thing causing the fear or pleasure in the dreamer's life remains unresolved or continues to provide joy. Other times the dreamer may be working out a problem he or she cannot understand in their daily life. When they sleep, ancestral voices attempt to answer."
Did the Plutarch really believe such things? That ghosts spoke to dreamers in their sleep?
Do not mock what you do not understand.
I don't believe in ghosts.
The Oracle's laugher in her mind tickled. But they believe in you, Olivia Bane. Is that not the correct answer to disbelief?
"Last," she said aloud. "Recurring dreams may be warnings of events to come and dangers not yet recognized, or promises to be fulfilled."
John Malvin was growing restless. Livy nodded, and said, "I dream about flames. Like the villages, burning, I see people running. Always though we are on the edge of the Void, not even in the border towns, and everyone is running and screaming. The rebels are burning the village – "
The villages burn…
The government burns…
I understand what you're saying, Livy. We know who sets the fires.
So the girl with the white blond hair and the white blue eyes wouldn't expose her to the Plutarch. Very well.
"And there are rebels. We're trapped. I'm there. My – husband is there." She glanced up at
him, biting her lip, and felt him pat her hand comfortingly. The touch made her shudder inside and he took the shudder for her concern and held her more closely. "I'm running. My family is there, though I can't think why they would be, and my parents are already – " Here she really did choke, unable to go on.
"Your family is safe, my dear, and even now my forces hunt for your sister."
The one in the brothel next door? The Oracle asked.
Livy bowed her head. "Still, it's a difficult thing to see in a dream, no matter how much I believe you will keep them safe," she added hastily to the ruler, and then in a rush, she finished: the rebel with the gun, turning that gun on the Plutarch, who falls. "There's one more thing." Her voice sounded thick and tired. She was tired. "The plague. There's a plague running through the villages. One in the dream our ruler can heal."
Maybe she'd finally found the right combination of humble and hopeful, of worshipful and wifely, because he squeezed her hand and said, "Our physicians are working on it. Do not worry, little one – you are not at risk."
But everyone else is, Livy thought, the familiar anger flaring. Didn't matter. She'd found out what she wanted. There really was a plague, as her parents had said, and not just a random illness people were catching.
She stopped then, and didn't speak further, and as though he sensed Livy had gotten to the end of her dreams, the Plutarch turned his attention to the Oracle.
Who closed her dream white eyes and sang low to herself for several moments.
You play a dangerous game, Olivia Bane.
It is no game!
Peace, little one. It is serious. It is life. But there are still moves on the game board. Winning and losing are both simply more dangerous. A pause, and then a warmth bloomed inside Olivia's mind. The voice followed directly after. Your dream is real. But not the way you tell it.