Green Jack

by Alyxandra Harvey

Chapter 12

  Jane

  When Jane left to fetch a book from the library, a guard was posted outside to make she sure didn’t leave the Collegium grounds. The Garden video played endlessly, augmented with polls and percentages to encourage citizens to vote on their favourite couples. Jane knew the pairings would come down to science and genetics but that hardly made for interested viewers. Now they were invested, curious, desperate to be entertained when the reality outside the door was curfew, riots, and bonebirds.

  The next test, more terrifying than the threat of the Amphitheatre, was a publicized, filmed date with another candidate.

  Asher, to be precise.

  “The ‘date’ is in three days, Jane,” Kiri said. “I say “date” loosely because even though I don’t know exactly what’s going on, something clearly is not right. I mean, Asher?” Disgust boiled off her like waves of heat off concrete. She was a smoldering coal, Jane was grey ash.

  “We could give him stomach cramps,” Kiri suggested suddenly. “Hydrangea petals or philodendron leaves ought to do it. It should buy you a few days at least.”

  “If they don’t kill him.”

  She made a rude sound. “I’m a Seedsinger, remember? I know what I’m doing.”

  Jane nodded, different plans forming slowly in her head, closing over, choking her like weeds.

  “I’ll get extra for you to keep in your Oracle pouch, just in case,” Kiri said. “And then I’m going to find Micah and hug him. Because, damn. He’s looking better every day.” She rushed out, muttering to herself.

  Jane followed at a much slower pace. She wished she could talk to her mother, but she couldn’t talk to anyone. And her mother would just tell her to do her duty. She barely saw her sisters, but she wouldn’t risk them either. She’d never felt so alone.

  She took the back stairwell because the last time she’d passed by the Common Room, Belinda tried to read her palm to help place her bet for the Garden. But apparently, Jane had something in common with Asher after all. He was keeping to the back steps as well, punching the wall by the door. There were holes in the plaster and blood on his knuckles. Jane froze, but he’d already noticed her. His face changed: vulnerable anger to jagged fury. “Well, if it isn’t my new wife,” he said silkily, staring her down.

  “I’m not any happier about it than you are,” Jane pointed out. It was too much to hope he’d be reasonable. She felt the usual frisson of fear, the hot-cold sweat prickling her spine. She was going to feel it anyway, she realized, so she may as well make it worth something.

  “Get out of my way, Asher.” It wasn’t much, but her voice didn’t tremble. She sounded strong, even if she didn’t feel it. It was something.

  It wasn’t enough, of course.

  Asher yanked her off the last step, pressing her cheek against the jagged plaster before she could think of fighting back, never mind convince her body to obey her. His hand was a fist in her hair, burning her scalp. She realized there was another reason Enclave girls never grew their hair: it was too easily used as a weapon against them. “You’re the reason I’m trapped in the jackshit Garden. You and your damn genes.”

  “Not strong enough to fight in the Amphitheatre, are you?” Jane said softly, plaster dust dry and gritty in her mouth.

  His breath hissed out between his teeth. “Oh, you’re dead now, Highgate.” He twisted her arm behind her back, her wrist bending inexorably to the breaking point. Pain snarled and but up to her elbow, like dogs attacking. Finally, just before her tendons popped, the soldier set to watch her came through the stairwell door.

  “That’s enough.”

  Asher didn’t let go right away.

  “I said, enough,” the soldier barked, reaching for his Taser. “She belongs to Cartimandua now.”

  The other soldier set to watch Asher came up the steps at a dead run. “Settle it in the Amphitheatre, son.” But he couldn’t. He was sorted to the Garden. To her.

  The smile Asher shot at her may as well have been a poisoned arrow. The violence it promised made her feel pale down to her bones. When he stalked away, Jane smoothed back her hair with shaking, bruised fingers.

  Class wasn’t much better. Hieromancy was bad enough, but reading omens through the entrails of a bird was even more disgusting directly after dinner. Asher’s nails were red with the blood of the white dove. He loved hieromancy; he always found a way to touch the glistening insides, even though it wasn’t required. When the professor scrambled to his feet, bowing his head respectfully, everyone turned to follow his gaze.

  Cartimandua marched inside and suddenly everyone was standing. Jane tried to make herself small and invisible as Cartimandua walked the aisles in her in her leather tunic and tall boots. She admired numen tattoos, glanced at homework. She was friendly, interested. She paused beside Jane. “You’re Amaryllis’s daughter.”

  Jane nodded, her mouth too dry to form actual words. The throbbing inside her skull intensified. She rolled her neck slightly, trying to soothe the scalding licks of pain. “Headache?” Cartimandua asked, sympathetically.

  Jane nodded again. Having her mother’s full attention was bad---having Cartimandua’s full attention was so much worse. Cartimandua smiled and Jane wondered why it made her knees knock together. It was a normal enough smile. Except that it hid people in basements being experimented on, leaf masks being grafted onto human skin, blood on a linoleum floor. Jane fought against a flare of light behind her eyelids, showing her more images. Dryads with savage teeth, babies with oak leaves for hair, acorns for eyes. She swayed slightly.

  “Too much studying, no doubt.”

  A bell sounded, explaining her presence. Everyone knew the sound of that bell. It was clear and musical and terrible. “You know what to do,” the professor snapped. “Calmly proceed to the gates.”

  The bell called them form the Collegium grounds, down the streets to a cobblestoned courtyard by the parapet. Soldiers flanked the gate and stood on the ramparts. Cartimandua climbed a small set of stairs with a group of Enclave elders. Jane’s mother stood at the bottom of the steps, not close to Cartimandua’s inner circle, but not as far as she used to be. Kiri’s hand slipped into Jane’s, holding tightly as a woman was led through the crowd, weeping. The closer she came to the gate, the more pathetic her weeping became.

  “Lettice Warwick’s demerits tells us that she no longer wants to live here in the Enclave,” Cartimandua announced.

  “No, I’m sorry,” Lettice sobbed. “Please, I’m sorry.”

  Banishments were rare. The Enclaves offered relative luxury; hothouse gardens, mint tea, a parapet to protect them. But rules were rules, even here. And if you broke them, you were banished. Even if you were the sister of one of the elders.

  “We only value what is most important when it is taken away.” Cartimandua’s voice was gentle and all the more horrible for it. “This place is a privilege, not a right.”

  Lettice was forced through the gates of the parapet. She wore a lacy, beaded dress suited to a garden party. They gave her no supplies, no survival gear, no weapons. She would have to make it to the City before the Red Dust found her, or the wild dogs. No one moved to help her or to appeal for her reversal. She’d earned too many demerits and there was nothing else to be said.

  Jane knew she was looking at her own future if she tried to fight the Program.

  When Lettice tried to claw her way back inside, she was shot.

  There was a price to pay for living in the Enclave.