Green Jack

by Alyxandra Harvey

  Chapter 32

  Jane

  Jane walked out onto a dock, following omens without conscious thought: turning here when a blue jay flew past, there when a pinecone dropped from a high branch. She didn’t know the rules here. There was no Directorate or Collegium, but there would still be rules. Under the beautiful trees were cooking pots and where there were cooking pots, there were schedules, if only for meals. And where there was water, there were water rations. She’d feel better when she knew the rules.

  Her numina mark hurt and her head still felt tender, like a sunburn inside her skull. The lightning forks of pain were gone though, replaced with a confusing swirl of half formed images. It was like trying to see in the dark. No matter how hard she tried to focus, nothing became any clearer. Until there was a familiar jagged flash of light.

  Saffron again, too pale and too still. Fire burning in the trees. Light through slats of wood set in the ground.

  “Hey, easy.” There was a hand on her arm, helping her to sit up. She hadn’t realized she’d collapsed. The sky had faded to pink and gold. “You all right now?” The voice belonged to a young man with pale green eyes that seemed cheerfully mad in his dark face. “I’m Nico.”

  “How long was I out?” Jane asked.

  “Not sure, not long I don’t think. Why don’t you come and eat. Looks like you need it.”

  She couldn’t actually remember the last time she’d had food that wasn’t protein paste in a foil wrapper. Nico chatted easily, as if finding girls unconscious on the pier was a regular occurrence. “Avoid the pickled rapini. It tastes like feet.”

  “Duly noted. What’s that?” Jane pointed to a cabin set off from the others, the roof cluttered with equipment, the kind you’d expect on a rooftop in the Enclave. Solar panels, wires, satellite dishes.

  “Caradoc’s private cabin,” Nico replied. “Locked up tight and set with alarms and traps.”

  “I wasn’t planning on breaking in.”

  “Then you’re smarter than me,” he grinned. “I tried on my third night in, on a dare from Roarke. Still got the scar to prove it.” He lifted the hem of his shirt, showing off abs he was clearly proud of, and a puckered scar.

  “Did he stab you too?”

  “Sort of.”

  “Then I guess I’ve been initiated,” she touched her bandage.

  “Oh right, he put out your eye. I heard about that.” They climbed the steps onto the wraparound porch around the hall. Inside, tables circled a central fireplace. A half wall ran along one side, open to a bustling kitchen with shelves stocked with jarred fruits and vegetables. On the counter were platters of fish, roasted greens, red beets, a basket of rolls and glass carafes of herbal teas. She didn’t see stewed livers or finger bones.

  “How long have you been a Greencoat?” Jane asked, mostly because the others had paused to watch them approach the food. She felt as awkward and out of place as she had her first high school dance. Her mother had chaperoned, and snapped at her to stop lurking in the corner. They had just moved, and she was new to the school, and the street, and didn’t know anyone, not even Kiri yet. She wondered if Kiri was worried, if she’d find a way to just be glad Jane was out of the Garden. She was probably mad Jane had taken off without her.

  “About three years,” Nico nodded a friendly greeting to a table of Greencoats. “My dad was a Mad Jack.” Jane had heard of them, they worshipped trees and considered the Spirit Forest to the only sacred place left in the world. To make a pilgrimage here was the ultimate spiritual goal, even though leaving the City was mostly impossible. After the first Jack had shown himself, the idea of the old gods of the forest and the earth mother had taken root again. It was peaceful for a few years, then the droughts and the earthquakes and the Lake Wars. Some of the villages still worshipped the earth mother but it had fallen out of fashion in the City.

  Nico shrugged. “He thought he’d find salvation or God or the Goddess or something but he didn’t know anything about living in the woods. He ate the wrong kind of mushrooms instead and died.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  He shrugged again, forcing the sudden serious gleam in his eyes back behind the curtain and easy-going charm. “Don’t get a lot of Enclave girls here. I like the accent. Very posh.”

  “Oh. Sorry.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Stop apologizing.”

  “I’m – –.” She cut herself off deliberately.

  He laughed. “Double helping of dandelion greens for my girl here, Kristoff,” he told the old man behind the sideboard. He was shirtless, with a long grey beard that reached to ribs tattooed with the dark branches of a winter tree. He arranged the food on her plate as artfully as any Enclave chef.

  A girl clamped her hand around Jane’s wrist when she reached for the plate. “Why is she eating? She’s from the Enclave, isn’t she?”

  Nico sighed. “Ease up, Livia.”

  “Since when do we feed the enemy?” she sneered.

  “She’s with the Green Jill,” Nico pointed out, rescuing the plate before its contents ended up on the floor. Jane’s wrist began to throb. Livia’s fingers pressed viciously onto her veins, leeching colour.

  “I heard she’s not even a fighter.”

  “So? Neither were you when you got here.”

  Livia’s cheeks went purple. Kristoff rapped Livia’s hand with the back of a wooden spoon. She snatched her arm back, glaring. “She eats,” Kristoff said calmly. “Everybody eats. Caradoc’s orders.” The old man façade crumbled, showing something else, something stern and unyielding.

  Livia dropped her gaze, turned it on Jane. She smiled insincerely, an animal show of teeth. “Oops,” she said, dumping her bowl of hot soup on Jane. Jane leapt back, too late to stop the burning spatter from hitting her arms. The bowl clattered to the floor, bouncing off her foot. She calmly wiped her arms dry. Livia was annoying, but she was no Asher. The worst part was the sudden silence, the weight of the stares.

  “Damn it, Livia,” Nico said, disgusted. “Why are you such a bitch?”

  “Watch yourself,” she spat at Jane, before marching away.

  “Welcome to the Grove,” Nico told Jane with an ironic smile.

  Kristoff added a strawberry tart to Jane’s plate. “You get double dessert, darling.”

  She smiled shyly. “Thank you.”

  He shook his head. “Those Enclave manners will get you into trouble.”

  She couldn’t understand why, but it was clear he was right.

  “Come on,” Nico said, guiding her to a table of his friends. They nodded to Jane with quiet curiosity but no one threw any soup at her head. Progress. She suddenly felt like she was back at the first day of the Collegium, trying to disappear in the crowd. How had the Collegium explained her absence? Or her mother? She hoped, fiercely, that her gift for being overlooked had made them forget her already. Either way, her mother would have come up with a good story.

  “Thinking that hard will give you indigestion,” Nico poked her with his fork. “Why do you think Caradoc looks so serious all the time?”

  He was sitting at a large table in the corner with three others. He was magnetic, holding everyone’s peripheral attention even as they ate their soup. There were as many hunting knives at his table as butter knives. She wondered how long he had been here, if he knew what they said about him in the City. He didn’t look like a deranged killer.

  Nico sighed. “Not you too. Everyone falls for Caradoc.”

  Jane turned away. “I’m not – I don’t even know him. He stabbed me!”

  He grinned. “Doesn’t matter. He’s a good guy, a leader, and nearly as handsome as me. Hell, I’m half in love with him too.”

  One of his friends snorted. He had blond hair and a metal stud in one eyebrow. “You’re so in love with yourself, there’s no room for anyone else.”

  “Don’t listen to him,” Nico said. “Will is just jealous because I turned him down.”

  Will rolled his eyes. “I have bett
er taste.”

  “No such thing.”

  Their easy banter put Jane at ease. The tension in her belly released enough that she could eat. “Hey, you’re an Oracle,” Nico said her suddenly. “Can you read the omens for me?”

  “Sure.” This at least she understood. It was familiar.

  “I want to know if Freya likes me.”

  “Life and death all around us; raids, this bloody heat, Directorate army constantly circling and he wants to know about his love life.” Will said, drily.

  “Everyone always does,” Jane replied. The girl in question had long hair in a tidy braid and wore leather pants. She was pretty in a petite pixie sort of way. “I don’t need to read the omens,” Jane added. “She likes you.”

  “How do you know?”

  “She’s glaring at me like I kicked her puppy.”

  Nico beamed at Jane. “Yeah?”

  Jane reached for the runestones in one of her many pockets. She didn’t have enough anise seeds to give out as a blessing, but at least this was a way she could thank him. Nico was like Kiri, the force of his personality had already acted as a shield and a map.

  Everyone at the table eased closer, watching her undo the ties to the leather bag. It wasn’t decorated with gold embroidery or painted with the all-seeing eye like the one she used for formal readings, but it had survived Red Dust, Ferals, and the Badlands. And so had she.

  Feeling more confident, she scattered salt on the table before pouring the runes into her hand. The smooth flat stones were marked in white paint mixed with powdered quartz crystal and crushed mistletoe berries. She couldn’t tell if there was the familiar tingle on the back of her neck, not through the burning ache in the raw flesh in the centre of the eye.

  She tossed the stones and the way they landed told her as much as the symbols did. Small personal treasures passed around the table as wagers were made. “What do you see?” Nico pressed.

  Jane noticed Freya glancing their way. She noticed the scatter of stones, the lone rune rolling to stop at Nico’s elbow, well outside the casting circle, symbolizing patience. “Luck is on your side,” she said. He leaned back, looking smug. “As things are now. Brag about this, and it all falls apart,” she felt compelled to add. “Omens are prediction of patterns – they’re not necessarily a guarantee.”

  He shrugged, not the least bit daunted. “When?”

  “Three weeks, maybe more.”

  His friends exchanged wager winnings but she wasn’t sure what outcome they had bet on. She leaned forward, lowered her voice. “Don’t charm her.”

  “How can I help that?” He drawled.

  “If you treat her like the other girls, that’s all she’ll ever be.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Are you speaking as an Oracle?”

  She shook her head. “Just as a girl.”

  Will shoved Nico right off the bench. “My turn.”